A Forever Thing (26 page)

They went through the house and left Tina’s bag with extra clothing on the sofa. Hattie wouldn’t like even that much clutter, but
Fancy only gave it a second’s consideration. It was her house now,
not her grandmother’s. At least until it sold, and hopefully that
would be soon, because every day she spent with Tina stole away
another portion of her heart.

She went through the door into the utility room and turned on
the heat in the beauty shop, just enough to take the chill off. If it
got too hot, the ladies would begin to “dew up,” as Tandy said with
a giggle when she talked about sweating under the hair dryer. Tina
stood in the doorway and took in yet another strange place.

“Did you ever go with Kay-Kay to the beauty shop?” Fancy asked.

Tina shook her head and looked at the big metal things in the
corner. They didn’t appear to be something that Fanny was afraid
of, so she took a step farther inside the room.

“How about with your momma?” Surely someone as selfcentered as Maria would want to keep her hair cut perfectly.

“No,” Tina whispered.

“Well, then, come on in here, and I’ll show you what we do. First
we’ll wash the ladies’ hair right here. They sit in this chair that goes back and put their head right here, like this.” Fancy sat down
and slung her head backward. Now why in the devil didn’t she
think of this place before? It would be the perfect way to wash her
hair without getting the bandages wet. Leander would probably be
more than glad to help her with it.

She hopped out of the chair and went to the styling chair. Tina
followed her cautiously, staying away from the two big things on the
other wall. Fancy picked her up and set her in the chair and took a
clean brush from the roller rack.

“Watch me in the mirror. I’m going to put your hair in pigtails
this morning. First we part it down the middle and put a clamp on
this side, and then-shazam!-we make a pigtail.”

Tina stared at the little girl wearing a brand-new pink jogging
suit in the mirror. She held a doll and a bear in her lap, and when
Tina blinked, she did too.

“Who’s it?” she asked Fancy.

“That’s you. Aren’t you beautiful?” Fancy laughed.

“And that’s Fanny!” Tina giggled.

“You’ve seen yourself in a mirror before, haven’t you?”

Tina’s face went serious. “Too big.”

“The mirror is too big?” Fancy mused aloud. Then she remembered when she was a child. She’d always been short, and even
with a bathroom stool to help her brush her teeth, for years all she
could see in the medicine-cabinet mirror were her eyes and the
top of her head.

“Up higher?” Tina whispered.

Fancy used the foot pump to raise the chair. “There you are
right now. See what pretty pigtails you have?”

Tina tilted her head to one side and then the other, smiled, and
frowned but didn’t take her eyes from the mirror. She held up the
doll and the bear both so they could see themselves too.

“Fanny has pigtails too.”

“Yes, I do. Just like you.”

Tina shook her head. “No. Fanny’s pi’tails are brown.”

“That’s right, and yours are black. We’re different, but we’re
alike because we’re both short, and that makes the mirror too `big:
Now let’s look at the dryers before the ladies get here. They’re over here.” Fancy swirled the chair around and brought it down to the
lowest level.

Tina took one look at the big metal contraptions and grabbed
Fancy’s hand, squeezing tightly. Since Fancy had been raised from
a tiny baby in the beauty shop, she couldn’t understand at first
why, of all things, Tina would be afraid of the dryers.

“They won’t hurt you,” she said.

Tina held back and whispered, “Monsters.”

“Hmm. They do sort of look like monster heads, don’t they?
But they aren’t. They just dry wet hair. Let me show you.” Fancy
flipped the dial and sat down in a chair, pulling Tina up into her
lap. She adjusted the dryer over her head. The heat made her scalp
prickle, especially around the bandage. She threw the dryer back,
and it automatically went off.

“Hot,” Tina said. “Loud.”

“It makes a lot of noise and gets hot, but that’s all it can do. It
can’t eat you up”

Tandy and Leander arrived at the same time. Tandy’s short,
slightly blue hair was definitely in need of a shampoo and style.
Leander’s blond hair didn’t need anything, but she headed straight
for the hooks at the back of the shop and put on a snap-front duster
over her jeans and long-sleeved blouse.

“We got company?” Tandy followed Leander.

“This is Tina. And, Tina, this is Miss Tandy and Miss Leander.”

“Looks like her father only prettier,” Tandy said.

“She’s his, all right. Look at the shape of her face,” Leander
said.

“How’d you two know?”

“Kate called Tandy, and she called the rest of us. We’ve been
dying to see her, but we didn’t want to make a big to-do for fear
we’d scare the bejesus out of her,” Tandy said with a laugh.

Viv carried a pan of brownies when she pushed the door open.
“I thought we’d eat in today. Mary’s bringing tamales, and Myrle
is supposed to bring a salad.”

Tandy stooped down and looked at Tina. The little girl returned
her stare without fear. “Can you and Fancy make sweet tea?”

“I can put the sugar in it,” she said seriously.

“Good, that’ll be your job after a while when it’s lunchtime. Do
you like tamales?”

“Tamales and macky cheese,” Tina said.

“Well, we don’t have macky cheese today, but we do have salad.”

“That’s yucky.”

“How about brownies?” Tandy asked.

“I have brown crayons in the box. And lellow and red and brue.”

Tandy sat down on the floor and roared. “This is going to be a
fun morning. I can feel it in my bones. Where is Pansy?”

“Right here. I wouldn’t miss today for one of Miss Maud’s prize
Angus bulls. So where is she?” Pansy shed her black leather jacket
and kicked off her muddy boots at the door. She wore snug-fitting
jeans and a tee, and her dyed black hair definitely needed the roots
done that day.

“She’s right here, and we’re discussing brownies. Go get your
hair washed, and Fancy can get at those roots. They look horrid,”
Tandy said.

“Well, darlin’, you need to have Fancy put something on your
hair that doesn’t turn it blue. You’re too young to go around looking like an old woman. Let her make it the color of her hair. That’s
what color it used to be “

“What do you think, Tina? Should I make my hair the color of
Fancy’s?” Tandy asked.

Tina reached out and touched Tandy’s short hair. “No pigtails.”

“No, but Fancy is fixing to tell us all about those pigtails of hers.”

“Yes. Like Fanny’s,” Tina said.

“So you are first today, Pansy?” Fancy started the water, holding the spray over her hand until the water warmed.

“Yes, and if Tandy is going blond, then I’m doing something
different too. Strip it. Take as much color as you can off.”

“I’ve never done that,” Fancy said.

“It’s just hair. If you ruin it, I’ll buy a wig until it grows back. I want
one of those short dos. Light brown with blond highlights until the
gray grows out; then I’m going blond. That should shock everyone”

Tandy pulled Tina into her lap and asked, “What’s his name?”

Tina held up the bear. “He’s Smokey, and this is Dora.” She introduced her two toys.

“I can tell what she watches on television. I was really talking
to you, Pansy. What’s his name?” Tandy asked again.

“I might just want a new style,” she protested.

“Yes, and I’m the queen of Albany,” Tandy said.

“Oh, all right! I might as well tell you. It’s Thomas James.”

“The lawyer. Where’d you meet him?”

“At Maud’s sale. We’ve been out a couple of times.”

“He’s ten years younger than you,” Mary said.

“So?”

Tandy giggled like a schoolgirl. “So can he dance?”

Fancy laughed with them as she washed Pansy’s hair and followed her to the chair, glad that they were far more interested in
Pansy’s new beau than in quizzing her.

It lasted until she picked up the scissors to cut Pansy’s hair.

“Okay, enough about us and our love lives. We want the whole
story, including what happened to your head,” Myrle said. “And,
Tandy, you will share Tina with us today. It’s been a long time since
we’ve had a baby in our midst, and we all get a turn to hold her”

“She’s almost three,” Fancy said.

“Are you sure you didn’t birth her? She’s as tiny as you were at
that age,” Myrle said.

“I wish I had. She and I get along just fine,” Fancy said.

“Talk. Begin with Monday after we all left, and bring us up to
today,” Tandy said.

“Little corn has big ears.”

“Then don’t say her name, but don’t you dare leave out anything.”

“It’s not that big of a thing. I went to help Theron Warren because he’d just found out he had this daughter, and when he went
to meet her, he wanted someone there who was good with little
kids,” she said.

“Monday night. Start there, and details. The long version, even
if it lasts all day. I ain’t going nowhere until I look as young as
Thomas James,” Pansy said.

Fancy told the story for the second time. The six older ladies
pried even more information out of her than Kate and Sophie had.
She finished the story up to and including the night before at the
same time she turned Pansy around to see the new hairstyle. It was still a rich dark brown even after they applied stripper, but she
had applied highlights according to the directions on the box she’d
found in the storeroom. If all else failed, she might make a halfdecent hairdresser someday.

Pansy hopped out of the chair. “It’s lovely. See? We don’t need a
full-fledged beauty operator. We can all read instructions. Thomas
is going to kiss me tonight for sure!”

“Speakin’ of kissing, do you mean to tell us, Fancy, that a whole
week you’ve been close to that good-lookin’ hunk of man, and you
didn’t even kiss him?” Myrle asked Fancy.

“No, I didn’t say that, but Little Corn is listening.” She motioned
to Tina, who was sitting on a footstool listening to every word.

“Well?” Myrle looked at Fancy.

“It was just one of those in-the-moment things. Remember what
I told you about those ears,” Fancy said.

“When Fanny got blood on her ears, I gave Daddy my hair
things,” Tina said.

“Yes, you did, sweetheart, and that helped so much. On his own
he would have made me look awful,” Fancy said.

Tina smiled brightly.

“She reminds me of you,” Leander said. “She’s an old soul.”

“Oh, don’t start that stuff,” Myrle said. “I don’t believe in astrology or any other New Age stuff. We make our own decisions and
live with the consequences. We don’t get reincarnated to get a
second chance.”

Fancy was glad they’d gone on to another subject and she was
out of the spotlight. They argued about old souls versus new souls
for a while, went on to the latest gossip about every man, woman,
and child in Albany, and had lunch. Tina slept on a pallet as far
away from the dryers as Fancy could get her, and Fancy finished
the last touches of Tandy’s hair, turning her into a light blond.

Tandy checked her reflection in the mirror and smiled. “You
done good. I’m going to Abilene tomorrow. Want to make a list,
and I’ll go by the beauty supply? I’ve been doing it for Hattie for
years. You’re probably getting low on some things.”

“Thank you. That would be great,” Fancy said.

Tina only showed up in Fancy’s bed twice during the next five
days. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday they went into town to
the beauty shop. Tuesday they cleaned house for Theron and did
laundry. Thursday they grocery shopped. The weather had been
fairly nice on the beauty-shop days, so when the ladies were gone,
she and Tina played at the city park for half an hour. On Tuesday
and Thursday they’d played in the backyard, with Tina being careful not to go too near the yard fence because she still wasn’t sure
about the longhorn cattle on the other side.

Theron called the beauty-shop number on Friday afternoon and
told her not to cook supper, that they were going to Abilene to eat
out that evening as a thank-you to her for all she’d done that week.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“My treat. Your choice”

“I’ll be thinking about it, then,” she said.

Dinner out would be a nice way to sever the ties between her and
Tina. Surely by now Theron had found someone to keep her or else
a day-care center. Fancy’s job was within hours of being finished,
but it didn’t bring the freedom she’d figured it would. Tina-and
Theron, if she were honest-was plowing deeper and deeper into
her life, and she wasn’t sure she could handle the pain of the upcoming separation.

Fancy chose a pair of jeans and a starched western-cut shirt
from the closet. She’d wear her new boots, and her hair was coming down out of the pigtails even if it did irritate the wound. When
Leander helped her wash her hair that afternoon, they’d changed
the bandage, and she said it was scabbed over and drying up. So maybe the pigtails were finally and permanently a thing of the
past. She’d just have to be very careful she didn’t yank a brush
through her hair.