A Forever Thing (7 page)

Fancy sucked in air to say something.

Hattie shook her head. “Not a word, or I’ll quit, and you’ll never
know the story. At first I reckoned I was going through the menopause and had the flu at the same time. I went to the doctor, and he
told me I was going to have a baby. There I was, past forty years old
and expecting a baby I didn’t want. Orville wouldn’t let me give it
away. I begged him to let me go away for six months and give the
baby up. Say I was in a sanitarium for the tuberculosis or some
other disease. He wouldn’t hear of it. Said we’d muddle through it”

Fancy pinched her own leg. Yes, she was awake, and this wasn’t
a nightmare. Hattie had just said that she didn’t want to have
Gwen. How could a mother not want her child?

“I was the laughingstock of the whole town. Married at seventeen and took more than twenty years for me to have a baby. I
named her Gwen after my sister. I was eight when Gwen was born,
and when she died two days later, Momma cried. I hoped if I
named your mother Gwen, she would die in the hospital when she
was two days old, and I promised God I’d cry a bunch of tears if
she would. She didn’t die, but Orville did when she was six months
old, and I was angry with her for living and him for leaving me to
raise her by myself.”

Fancy wanted to leave the room and run from the information
overload.

“She wasn’t a bad child, so that was a help. But I just never could
love her like I was supposed to. I guess I wasn’t born with motherin’ instincts, or maybe I got tired of babies, since I’d been the
oldest of six kids. I made sure she had what she needed, took her to
church to teach her right from wrong. But I failed at that too.”

Fancy cocked her head to one side.

Hattie went on. “She thought she was in love. What does a kid
know at fifteen? Not a blessed thing. I forbade her to see that bad
boy and thought it was over. Then there she was, married, expecting a baby, and he was dead. Another kid for me to have to raise
when I didn’t even want her. So there I was, shamed again”

Fancy felt as if time stood still.

“So Gwen finished her schooling with courses at home and then
went to work at the bank when you was two years old. That meant
I had to put up with you underfoot in the shop. Every time I looked
at you, with those big blue eyes, I saw your father. The rest you
know. Gwen met Les when he came into the bank for something or
other to do with his great-uncle’s money. A few months later she
run off with him and took you with her. It was the happiest day of
my life. And that’s why I want you out of my house and gone when
I come home. I didn’t want your mother, and I don’t want you
around me either.”

“But she was just a baby who didn’t ask to be born,” Fancy whispered.

“And I didn’t ask to have her,” Hattie retorted.

“You couldn’t just love her because she was a part of you?”
Hattie shook her head. “I just plain didn’t want a baby. Now go
away. Tell Miss Tandy and the ladies I’ll be back, and we’ll set up
our appointments like always. They like to come to the shop and
gossip. I reckon I like to listen to them, and doing their hair keeps
my hands from getting stiff.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Fancy was amazed she even had a voice. Every
other part of her body was numb.

“Don’t just sit there.”

Fancy stood slowly and bent down to kiss her grandmother on
the forehead.

Hattie wiped it away.

“Good-bye, Granny,” she said.

Hattie turned her face to the wall and shut her eyes.

Fancy didn’t know how she got home or how long she’d lain on
the top of the twin bed in the room she and her mother had shared
all those years. She blinked into the present when the digital clock
on the nightstand separating the twin beds clicked over at eleven
minutes past eleven.

That had always been an inside joke between her and Gwen. If
either one saw the clock at precisely eleven-eleven, when all four
ones were lined up, then they got to make a wish.

Fancy wondered what she’d wish for. That she fill her grandmother’s life with love and happiness?

She slung her legs over the side of the bed and went to the
kitchen, where she popped open a can of cold soda pop and carried
it to the living room. Fancy figured she would abide by her grandmother’s wishes and be gone by the time Hattie came home. She
could always work at the gift shop until the next school year and
get a few days a week at the school as a substitute teacher.

The phone rang, and she jumped. “Lord, don’t let it be Momma.
I can’t tell her.”

Her eleven-eleven wish was granted.

“Hey, girl, you still awake?” Kate asked.

“Yes, I am. You at work?”

“No, the person I was replacing decided to work, so I had a
four-hour nap, and now I’m wide awake. I’ve got a panful of hot
tamales left over from the cafe. Want me to bring them over?”

“I can make a pitcher of iced tea. I’ll be so glad to see you. It’s
been a horrible day.”

“Chris?” Kate asked.

“Worse than that. I’ll leave the porch light on. Don’t even bother
knocking. Just come on in”

Kate found Fancy with a glass of tea in front of her at the kitchen
table. She set the tamales in the middle of the table, got out two forks, and fixed herself a glass of tea before she sat down. From the
look on her friend’s face it had really been a stinker of a day.

“Okay, shoot,” she said.

“You’re not going to believe it. I’m not sure I do, and I was there
listening to it,” Fancy said.

“Hattie?” Kate asked.

Fancy nodded.

“Do we need to call Sophie?”

“Probably, but it’s so late, and we’ll see her in a couple of days,”
Fancy said.

“Then start talking.”

Fancy laid it all out, verbatim, as best she could.

Kate whispered hoarsely, “She said it just like that? She hates
you and your mother because she didn’t want a kid when she was
forty?”

“That’s the way she put it. Do I tell Momma?”

“Lord, no!”

“It might bring her peace of mind.”

“If you ever do tell her, do it in person.” Kate still couldn’t believe the story.

“You’re right. I’m glad you got booted out of the job tonight. I
didn’t realize what a load would be lifted in just telling someone.
Thanks, Kate”

“That’s what friends are for. Get a fork and get busy before
these tamales get stone cold.”

Fancy dug in. “Hungry as I am right now, I could eat them with
icicles on ‘em.”

“Are we going to tell Sophie?”

“Oh, yeah. We don’t keep secrets from one another.”

They arrived in force at exactly ten o’clock on Monday morning. Tandy led the pack through the side door into the beauty shop.
A tall, stately woman, she walked with confidence, blue-gray hair
scarcely in need of a wash and set, green eyes twinkling as she
donned one of the dozen snap-front dusters Hattie kept on hangers
in the closet with her other supplies.

“What do we do first?” Fancy asked.

“I remembered and wrote it down. Myrle washes Tandy’s hair,
and you’ll set it and put her under the dryer. I wash Myrle while
you are rolling Tandy’s hair so she’ll be ready for the next roll-up.
Then Viv washes my hair, and I’ll be ready for the curlers. It’s all
right here,” Leander said.

“So you take turns washing, and Granny does the rolling?”
Fancy said.

“That and combing out,” Leander said.

“I’m not so sure I can do you all justice on the comb-out,”
Fancy said.

Myrle was busy removing pins from her upswept hairdo. She
was eighty years old, and her hair had always been dyed red, even
back when Fancy was helping Hattie out in the beauty shop. “Don’t
worry. We’ll help with that too” She grabbed a brush and went
about getting all the tangles out of her hair. “It’s good to be where
we belong on Monday morning. An old woman ought to have a
decent Monday when she couldn’t find a single old man to dance
with over the weekend.”

“Ah, Myrle, if you did find one who was willing, he probably
wouldn’t be able,” Tandy teased.

“Honey, if I find one who’s willing, I’ll dance the leather off his
boots.”

“Good grief, Myrle, you are too old to be going to honky-tonks
and dancing like a teenager,” said Mary, a Hispanic lady with saltand-pepper hair and twenty extra pounds on her short frame who
crossed herself and rolled her eyes.

“Old is for those who are half-dead. If I can talk one of those
silver-haired dudes into two-steppin’ with me, I’ll buy him a big
breakfast when the honky-tonk shuts down,” Myrle said. `And don’t
you be praying for my soul. I’ll get to heaven on my own merits”

Pansy giggled. She was a rancher, grew rodeo-stock cattle, and
wore her dyed jet black hair in chin-length layers. Her eyes were
crystal blue and her jeans tight.

Myrle pointed a finger at Pansy. “Why don’t you go dancing
with me?”

“Why should she? All them young men living in her bunkhouse.
She can get any one of them to twirl her around the bunkhouse
floor,” Tandy said.

Pansy shook her head at the good-natured teasing. “Not a one of
them young guys could keep up with any of us on the dance floor.”

“Y’all need to talk about something other than honky-tonks
around Miss Fancy,” Viv said. Like Myrle, she had long hair she
wore twisted up the back, but hers was gray. Standing at five feet
three inches, she was probably fifty pounds overweight and had
two chins and bat wings under her arms.

“I doubt it. Fancy is thirty years old. She’s not a naive kid anymore,” Myrle said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s danced a
few line dances in her life.”

Fancy picked up the roller tray and started on Tandy’s hair. “You
ladies talk about whatever you want to. It won’t bother me a bit”

“Thank you,” Leander said. Of the six, she was the smallest, not
much taller than Fancy, and the youngest, with brown hair in a
wash-and-dry style that required little or no curling.

“I remember Tandy, Myrle, Viv, Mary, and Pansy. I don’t remember you.” Fancy looked at Leander.

“I’m Leander Wilson, and I was only here a couple of times before your momma moved away. I’m her age, and Tandy is my aunt. She talked me into coming with her one day fifteen years ago. This
place and these crazy women are addictive. I think the only reason
they keep me around is because someday the law is going to take
their driver’s licenses, and I’ll still be young enough to bring them
to the beauty shop.”

“So you’re the only one with a husband?” Fancy asked.

“Had one. Got rid of him ten years ago. Haven’t found a replacement yet, but then, I haven’t been looking real hard. Got a
daughter who’s twenty-five and a grandson who takes up a lot of
my time,” Leander said.

“Don’t listen to her, Fancy. She’s got a boyfriend who takes up a
lot of her time too. Policeman down in Abilene. Ten years younger
than her, and if she ever tosses him out, I’m having a face-lift and
a tummy tuck and setting traps for him,” Myrle said.

“Did you go to school with my mother?” Fancy asked Leander.

“No, I went to school down in Baird. Wound up in Albany after
I married.”

Fancy put Tandy under the dryer and started rolling Myrle’s
long red hair. “How long until you need a dye job?”

“Two weeks. Every four weeks those gray roots start showing.
Hattie’s been keeping it red for me for more than forty years now.
Back when she first put in the shop I lived down the street two
houses. Them were the days, weren’t they, girls?”

Tandy kept one ear out of the dryer so she could listen. “Depends. What was it? ‘62?”

“Yeah, about the time you started buying up everything in the
county and turning it into rental property,” Viv said.

“Been right profitable. Raised five kids on rental houses, so I
can’t complain,” Tandy said loudly over the sound of the dryer.

“About the time my mother was born?” Fancy asked.

“That’s it. Crazy times, those were,” Pansy said. “Sometime during that year we were all pregnant or giving birth. Even Hattie. She
didn’t seem too happy about it. Been married all those years and no
children, and then-boom-right out of the clear blue she thinks
she’s in menopause, only it was pregnancy. I always had the feeling
she was embarrassed to be having a baby at her age, but then, she
was a private person, so I mighta been wrong.”

Fancy kept rolling hair and nodded.

“We were all younger, except for the dancin’ queen over there.”
Mary nodded toward Myrle.

“Hey, I’m only eighty. Hattie is eighty-seven. I’m still younger
than she is,” Myrle argued.

At noon Tandy called the Dairy Queen and placed orders for
lunch. Her hair was finished, so she drove her ten-year-old black
Cadillac to town to bring back the burgers and malts. By two
o’clock they were all beautified and fed, and the jar on the table
was full. After they left, Fancy counted the money. One hundred
and twenty dollars for doing practically nothing but listening to
six women bicker, tell tales about the past, and tease one another
about the future. Not bad for her first Monday of unemployment.
She put the cash into an envelope and tucked it inside the money
drawer for her grandmother. She had no idea how much Hattie still
depended on the beauty shop to pay her bills.