the tumbler, then squeezed the lime between finger and thumb and added the tonic. She watched as Frannie shakily took the drink, and then she spoke in a voice that sounded huskier than before.
“I actually do understand, Mrs. Turner. And I’ve been studying you since you first walked in and, you know, I can help you so much more than you can imagine. Because I agree: you could do with a real change. Not precisely a makeover, though. And definitely not your conventional makeover. That’s so hackneyed, like the type of thing they do on reality shows, you know? And not my style, in any case. What I think you really need is … a kind of vacation from yourself.”
Frannie had been sipping at her vodka. It was much too strong and far too early in the day, but it was helping.
“Yes, I might have several interesting things in mind for you, Mrs. Turner. But this morning – for now – let’s just begin with the hair.” In the mirror, Frannie saw Randi approach the chair again, the rattail comb in hand. She was smiling affectionately at Frannie’s reflection as she resumed her hypnotic combing. “Let’s just start with this hair.”
Almost three exhausting and thrilling hours later, a buoyant Frannie Turner, clasping her woolen lapels as she leaned across the car seat, checked her image in the rearview mirror one more time. Her hair was so chic, with all these subtle auburn highlights. It felt all springy and soft and … feminine, too. She loved this hair.
What would Stanley say?
Well, if he didn’t like it, she just wouldn’t care. Anyway, Stanley hated change in general: computers, cell phones, new people, haircuts.
She clutched the icy wheel. And if her hair upset him, what, for God’s sake, would he say when he heard about the date she’d made to meet Randi for a drink tonight at the Admiral Casino? Alone?
Oh God. An evening out that didn’t include Stanley was as much unlike her as … this wonderful hair. But Randi had incredibly and generously offered to divulge to Frannie what she called her private arsenal of “age-defying secrets.” And since she was leaving St. Louis the following morning, she’d suggested they meet tonight.
Frannie’s hands were cold. Pulling on her brown-leather gloves, she started up the car, but sat for a minute more, the engine idling. She’d let it warm up while she thought about how to handle this. On the pretext of fixing her scarf, she checked the mirror once again. She’d never be a Randi, but right this minute, she thought she looked, well – pretty great.
Frannie tapped at the radio buttons with fingers that were warming up at last. She’d figure it out on the way home. But right now, she was feeling like a lot of Elvis. Or the Stones.
As she entered the house, she could hear Stanley putting something in the dishwasher and she felt the familiar dull flutter behind her breastbone. She could tell him that Arlene and Marge wanted to meet her tonight to, what? Watch an awards show? That might be good. He’d be disdainful, but he’d find less fault with some “girl thing” than he would with her going to the Admiral, of all places. Would a benefit committee meeting be better? Or … what? The meeting with Randi felt crucial.
He’d heard the closet door close and, frowning, limped out of the kitchen.
“My God, what have you done to yourself?”
“I thought you’d like it, Stanley,” she replied, self-consciously reaching up to touch her hair and pausing at her earring. Frannie managed a grin. “What do you think? All the girls in the beauty shop said they thought I looked terrific.”
“Well, what would you expect them to say?” He turned away, and stiffly she followed him back to the kitchen, where he busied himself with the glasses in the dishwasher.
“You know they’re there to sell you expensive haircuts, don’t you? I mean your hair looks okay, I guess, but have you ever heard anyone say to someone leaving a beauty shop that they looked worse than when they walked in? They’re employees there, aren’t they?”
Why did he have to prick her every balloon? Make her feel ignorant? Was it unintentional, or was it really about him and her? Maybe he just needed to show her, once again, how smart he was. Because it was important to Stanley to be smart, although Frannie knew he was. He’d graduated eleventh in his class at dental school.
“Well, what is it you don’t like about it, Stanley?”
She primped a tiny bit but he wouldn’t look her way.
“It was better the old way. You know I always like things the old way.” Delighted with his own eccentricity, he smiled a lovely smile and readjusted a tumbler. When he smiled like that, she sometimes remembered how much she’d once loved him.
“Anyhow, you trying to look younger or something? We’re neither of us ever going to be that again. You’re not some kid, you know.”
With one unpleasantly damp hand, he pulled her own away from the earring her fingers had stuck on and pulled her into the light. “See those?” His finger tapped what she knew were the liver spots on her face. “And these?” He pointed to the backs of her hands. “You can’t change what you’ve become. Just accept it. Like I do.” He shut the dishwasher hard and yawned. “And that reminds me, Helen Maynard called.”
That reminded him?
“She said not to let you forget that tonight is their party for Norman’s nephew and that she called you about it a month ago and you said we’d come. Have we met him?”
Norman’s nephew. A low bell chimed.
“Oh, you remember, Stanley. He’s the one that’s been staying with them while he’s in law school. And no, we’ve never met him.”
He was about to begin the familiar litany about dumb parties and people they didn’t know, but Frannie broke in. “You know, I really don’t want to go tonight either.”
He turned to her, surprised.
“Well, we’d better. What do you want me to do? Go alone? And anyhow,” he squeezed some hand sanitizer onto his palms and rubbed them together, massaging his fingers and his thumbs “the way Helen sounded on the phone, I got the feeling that maybe a lot of other people have decided not to go. She said, quote unquote, that she needs us. Though what do a bunch of seniors have to say to a law-school student, anyhow?”
“So she’s counting on us?”
“It sounded like it. And anyway, what? You have something better to do?”
His grimace bared his yellowed teeth. They were all his own. He was so proud of that.
Frannie didn’t answer for a minute. He waited.
“All right,” she said, with aching reluctance. “Let me make a phone call. Then I’ll start getting myself together.”
Dragging her handbag off the little hall table, she tucked it under her arm, shut the bedroom door and lowered herself awkwardly into the low Victorian slipper chair. On her dresser, among the photos of Stanley on his boat and Stanley with his golf foursome and Frannie with her mom, was that old, old picture of the two of them, taken a day or so after they got engaged.
Frannie closed her eyes. Randi’s number was right in this purse in her lap.
She didn’t want to make this call.
She opened her eyes to those photos.
He’d been so handsome then, Stanley. She’d almost forgotten. Not handsome, exactly, but cute. At least, that’s what her friends had said: “cute.” He’d been taller, of course – maybe a couple of inches – and he’d had that wet-sand blonde hair (so soft, it might have been a girl’s) and she’d liked the way it grew on the back of his neck. In certain lights, Stanley’s chin had the shadow of a cleft – like Cary Grant’s.