In Front of God and Everybody (21 page)

I guess you could say my backside got sore the rest of the day from sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear from Miss Delaine. I hoped she'd hurry and get me that information about Mr. Rance because the next day was Saturday, and that was the day of the Big Date. But she didn't.

I called the library bright and early on Saturday, hoping for a miracle. Mrs. Heathcliff answered the phone and told me in a real snotty voice that Miss Delaine wasn't working that day.

I asked if she knew anything about the information Miss Delaine was getting for me.

“I do not,” she said, all snippy and curt. “If she said she'd call you, then she will. Bothering the other librarians with your questions will not hurry the process.” Then she hung up on me. Boy, oh boy.

At lunch, while Mama and Daddy and me and Ian ate beans and cornbread, Isabel said she wasn't hungry. She sat on the front porch and smoked. Myra Sue kept saying she wasn't hungry, either, and needed to go work out, but she wasn't getting away with it. You'd think after three weeks, ole Myra Sue would learn she couldn't get away with everything Isabel did, even though she kept trying. She finally choked down a little yogurt and gagged on a sliced tomato.

Daddy watched her for a while. He sat back in his chair and frowned at her real big. His eyes shone bright blue in a face all brown from the sun.

“I don't have time to sit here and watch you try not to eat, Myra Sue,” he said.

“Then don't,” Myra Sue said. “I've been eating without your help for years and years.”

I stopped chewing so I could hear whatever new punishment would be added to her list.

Daddy looked at Mama. “Honey, I'm sorry to ask this of you, but maybe if you'd fix her a grilled cheese? I seem to remember that being her favorite.”

“I can do that, but—”

“Don't bother, Mother. I refuse to eat such a greasy, nasty thing.”

Daddy stared at her so hard that even I squirmed.

“Your mother will fix it, and you will eat it while I go back to fixing the fence.”

“I won't!” She tried to stare him down, but my daddy is stubborn.

“Wipe that sneer off your face, Myra Sue. You'll sit here until you eat it, or until you're old and gray. Take your choice.”

She pooched out her lower lip and folded her arms across her chest. I figured that dumb girl would not see another episode of
Days of Our Lives
until she saw the Pearly Gates.

Right then, the back screen door opened and Grandma came in. I stared at her, and what I saw caused a great big hunk of cornbread to hit my stomach, unchewed.

“Grandma!” I screamed, goggling and choking. “What did you do to your hair?”

Gone was the soft gray bun she'd worn the whole entire time I've known her—which has been my whole entire life. Her hair was now a soft brown with a touch of red, and it was short, short,
short
. I nearly died right there at the dining table. Every one of us stared at her as if she'd lost her mind, which I figured she must have done.

“It's a modified pixie cut. Like it?” She patted that modified pixie and giggled. “I went to Bella Donna's in Blue Reed.”

Blue Reed was sixty miles away. Probably Faye at Cedar Ridge, or Jane in Ava, or any other beauty shop person in a fifty-mile radius never in a million years woulda done what had been did to Grandma's hair. I hated it.

She held up a sack from Walmart. “Here's the makeup I bought for the rest of my makeover. Where's Isabel?”

Daddy coughed so hard, I thought he'd collapse all his sinus cavities and both lungs. Ian's eyes grew big, but he didn't say a word.

“We gotta get back to work on that fence on the back pasture before I turn the cows out in it,” Daddy said in a strangled voice as he hightailed it out of the kitchen with Ian right behind him. A second later he opened the back door again, stuck his head in, and said, “You eat your food, Myra Sue.”

Mama didn't make that grilled cheese right away. She was too busy gawking at Grandma.

My sister seemed to forget about gagging on her lunch.

“Grandmother,” she said in That Tone, “if you were going to change your hair, why in the world did you choose that silly style?” She must have forgotten her own orange head. “It's much too young for you.”

“Myra Sue!” Mama gave her the Look. She finally dragged her eyes away from Grandma long enough to start the grilled cheese sandwich for Myra Sue.

Grandma didn't seem as disappointed by that reaction as you might think. In fact, she looked kinda smug when she replied, “Isabel suggested it. She showed me a picture of an older woman with this same style in one of her dance magazines. Chas at Petite ChouChou Salon knew just who she was talking about. He done a real good job, didn't he?”

My sister blinked a dozen or so times. Boy, she was getting as good at it as Isabel.

“Let me look at it again. Let me see the back,” Myra Sue said. “Oh yes! Now I see it. It's darling! Just perfect for you! You look an absolute dear, Grandmother.”

Oh brother. I hated it even more, knowing ole Isabel had been the one to think it up.

The hinges of the front screen creaked as the door opened. You could hear the sharp
click, click, click
of high heels on the wood floor, and a second later ole Isabel herself clipped into the kitchen. She brought the stink of her nasty cigarettes right in with her.

“Grace!” she said, beaming. Boy, you wouldn't believe it, but when Isabel beamed like that, her whole face lit up. I'd never seen such a thing. It actually made her look kind of . . . pretty. “Your hair is darling!”

She put down her cigarettes and empty coffee cup to circle Grandma as if the woman were a mare for sale during the Fox Trotters weekend up in Missouri. “Absolutely darling!”

“That's what I said,” said Myra Sue, giving the rest of us a superior smirk.

“She doesn't look like Grandma with that hair,” I declared. “And what is this? Everybody Color Your Hair Week? Mama, you'll stay a redhead, won't you?”

“That's enough, April Grace,” Mama said. “What's with you two girls, anyway? Where are your manners?” She turned to the woman who clawed into Grandma's Walmart sack like she was digging for gold. “Isabel, would you like another cup of coffee?”

Isabel frowned critically at a bottle of Maybelline foundation she pulled out of the sack. Without looking up, she picked up her cup and held it out.

“Yes,” she said.

“Please,” I added.

This time Mama didn't say a word to me as she took the cup and filled it. I figured since she'd just brought up the subject of good manners, she didn't want to contradict herself.

“Let's see what else you have,” Isabel said to Grandma as she dove into the bag again and emptied it with gusto. “Rose blush, peach blush, blue eye shadow, green eye shadow, pink eye shadow, silver eye shadow, ivory powder, beige powder, light and dark concealer, blue eyeliner, black eyeliner, brown eyebrow pencil. Oh, didn't you get tweezers? Your eyebrows . . . Well, do you really want woolly worms above your eyes? It works for Brooke Shields, but she's a young girl.”

“I got tweezers at home,” Grandma said.

“Well, we must have them,” said Isabel.

“We have tweezers,” Myra Sue practically shouted in her enthusiasm to be of assistance. “Shall I get them, Isabel darling?”

“Yes, dearest. Run and fetch them, though I doubt they will be of a quality I need. On second thought, bring me the ones out of my makeup case on the dresser.”

I did not approve of this whole business.

“Tweezers is tweezers,” I muttered. Isabel looked at me darkly. “Are you gonna paint her face right here in the kitchen?” I asked. “Mama, won't they be in your way?”

“It's okay.” She smiled as she sat down. “I want to see Mama Grace transform into a movie star.” She looked at the assortment of makeup on the table. “My goodness, Isabel, are you going to put all this on her?”

“I'll use what I need. In the absence of a salon nearby, I believe I can do a reasonable job. I am a professional, after all.”

I tried to remember what Grandma had told me, and I thought of Mama's generous attitude toward Isabel. I attempted to find something nice about the woman. I thought hard and came up with this: she's offering to help without being begged.

Well, what did you expect? That's the best I could do with what I had to work with.

Mama eyed the receipt. “Mama Grace, this was quite an expense.”

Grandma reached out and snatched the ticket from her.

“It's all right. I want to look nice,” Grandma said as she began to remove items from their individual packaging.

“But will you ever use any of this again?” Mama asked.

Grandma stuffed discarded wrappings into the store sack. “If Isabel will teach me how to put it on, yes.”

A vision of Bozo the Clown popped into my head, so I had a coughing fit.

Myra Sue trotted into the room with the tweezers. “These are just magnificent,” she sighed, handing them to Isabel.

They looked exactly like the ones in our medicine cabinet, and I said so, but no one paid me the least bit of attention.

Only because I did not want to witness the process by which my grandmother was to be transformed, I jumped up from the table and began to clean up the kitchen. No one said a single, solitary word about my industry.

“Eyebrows first,” Isabel announced. “Now, Grace, you'll have to relax. And don't draw your face up like that. This won't hurt a bit.”

I heard plenty of grunts and yips as eyebrows came out by the roots.

“What are you going to wear tonight, Grandmother?” Myra Sue asked at one point.

“Yes, tell us!” Mama said.

“You did buy something in a boutique, didn't you?” asked Isabel. “You aren't wearing some discount-store bargain, are you?”

“Yowch! Be careful there, sis,” Grandma said. “You're gonna draw blood yet. I bought me the prettiest dark-green dress you ever saw at Sally's on the Square. It's got a big, lacy collar and padded shoulders. Y'know, I ain't worn padded shoulders since 1945! Who'da thought that now in the 1980s they'd be in style again? And there's lace on the bodice and a wide belt.”

“What did Mr. Rance think of your haircut and new dress?” Mama asked.

Grandma gave her a blank stare. “Woo?” she asked, all innocent like.

“You said he was taking you to Blue Reed,” I piped up.

She had the grace to blush. “Well, now, he'd didn't take me.”

“Mama Grace! Did you go by yourself?” Mama said. “You shouldn't have—”

“I didn't want to be bothered, Lily! Sometimes I'd like to have some time to myself, do some things without everybody watching me. You people won't even let me go to Cedar Ridge to buy groceries by myself anymore. Gotta send April with me to make sure I don't die on the way there. You act like I'm old!” She sounded plumb disgusted.

“We just want what's best for you, Grandma,” I told her, though it was certainly never my idea to ride along with her.

“That's right,” Mama said.

“Well, then.” Grandma acted like there was no more to be said, so the rest of us shut our mouths. I turned around and went back to my dishwashing. But about a minute later she hollered, “
Oh my!
I just thought of something awful!”

She said this with such panic that I spun around, slinging soapy water across the cabinets, floors, and the makeup artist herself. Isabel sputtered and spewed way more than a few drops of dishwater called for.

“What's wrong, Grandma?” I said, ignoring Isabel's glare. She had plucked away half an eyebrow, and I had to swallow hard to keep from screaming when I saw it.

“My purse!” Grandma nearly shouted. “I don't have a purse.”

Now, I figured this meant she had misplaced it again. I dragged my horrified gaze from her brows.

“Well, I can go find it for you,” I offered. “Did you look in the crisper of the refrigerator? You left it there just last—”

“No, no. Not that purse,” Grandma said. “I mean an evening bag. I need something fancy to go with my new dress and my new shoes.”

“And your new hair,” added Mama.

“And your fabulous new face,” Myra Sue put in.

“Yes, it must be something elegant,” Isabel said.

“Something chick,” Grandma agreed, nodding.

Isabel and Myra Sue exchanged a look that I did not like.

“If Grandma wants to look chick,” I told them hotly, “then that's her perfect right.”

“It's not
chick
,” my sister said. “It's pronounced ‘sheek.'”

“Well, it's spelled
chick
,” Grandma said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Chick
.”

“It's spelled c-h-i-c. It's French,” Myra Sue said, all snooty.