by Sharon Short
Then I stared over at Winnie. She was fussing with the books, trying to arrange them just so.
This was Winnie? My literary best friend? My all-individuals-are-equally-important-in-the-sight-of-God best friend, who knew the reading tastes of everyone on her bookmobile route, and who made sure her shut-ins got a fresh supply of their favorite books every week? I didn’t recognize her.
I needed some real coffee. Around people I’d definitely recognize—across the street at Sandy’s Restaurant. So I left. Owen and Winnie didn’t notice.
I crossed the street to Sandy’s. Just before I went in, I looked back at my laundromat.
Now that my window said, “Josephine Todeferne’s Laundrette” in fancy script, it didn’t look like my place at all.
Not at all.
At least things were normal over at Sandy’s Restaurant.
The framed Norman Rockwell poster was still hanging in its spot on the knotty-pine paneling—the Rockwell of the police officer in blue uniform sitting at a diner stool next to a runaway boy. I just love that poster.
And then there was dear old Sandy herself. I took my usual spot at the counter and Sandy came right over to me, with a fresh mug of coffee. Just plain, black coffee. No froth.
As usual, Sandy had on her blue-and-white checked apron—which cleverly matches the place mats—right over her favorite NASCAR T-shirt and black leggings. As usual, her bluish-white hair was teased up so high that if she wanted to take a drive somewhere later on, she’d need an extra airbag just for the hairdo. And as usual, her voice was a gravely bass, made so from about 50 of her 60 years being spent smoking.
I could have hugged her, just for being her usual self.
Sandy said, “Lord, child, you’re a sight. You okay?”
I grinned. Sandy, as usual, was blunt to the point of rude. What a relief. I’d have cried like a baby if she’d been nice.
“I’m tired—trouble sleeping. I just need my usual.” Then I took a nice, long sip of my regular, plain, black coffee.
Sandy stared at me for a long moment, then shrugged. A few minutes later, she was back with my usual Monday morning breakfast: one biscuit, split open, smothered in sausage gravy. And a glass of cranberry juice. I applied ample salt and pepper to my biscuits-and-gravy, then happily set to eating. Away from Owen and Winnie, at least, life in Paradise was still normal.
I was about half way through my breakfast when the bell on the front door tinkled. Just one of the other regulars at Sandy’s, I thought happily, coming in for breakfast—as usual.
But then Cherry sat down on the stool next to me and said, “Oh, Josie, I am just so thrilled to see you! Have I ever worked up an extra special treat for you!”
I jumped, sloshing some cranberry juice on the cloth placemat. I waved at Sandy—I needed some club soda to dab on the place mat or getting the stain out when I did the restaurant’s laundry on Thursday was going to be difficult.
Then I looked over at Cherry. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Josie, honey, I just walked by your laundromat. Winnie and Owen told me the good news about Tyra Grimes being here! So, you just finish up your breakfast, because it is time for your makeover! Hair cut, coloring, perm, a facial. . . ooh, it’ll be so much fun! I’ve always wanted to do a celebrity!”
So much for life being normal. Tyra Grimes celebrity fever—apparently more infectious than mad cow disease—had already spread from Owen and Winnie to Cherry. The rest of the town couldn’t be far behind.
I said, “I don’t want a makeover.”
“You may not want one, but, honey, you sure need one. You’re going on national TV, remember?”
I remembered. My stomach clumped back into a peanut-shaped—and now gravy-soaked—knot.
“No need for me to change how I look for one little TV spot. All I have to do is share my stain expertise. No one will care about how I look, because they’ll just want to hear what I know.”
Sandy came over and I asked for the club soda. She obliged, and I started dabbing it onto the place mat.
Meanwhile, Cherry was saying, “Please, Josie? You’ve got to let me redo you. If Tyra Grimes sees what a wonder I’ve wrought with you, then maybe she’ll put me in touch with the right people in Hollywood and I can go do hair there. That’s my big dream, you know.” I knew. Everyone knew. She’d been telling everyone about it since she was in third grade—but she’d never traveled any farther west than Indianapolis.
I kept dabbing at the place mat, not quite able to bring myself to look at Cherry. “Now, Cherry—”
“And, honey, we’ve got to get you some new clothes. You can’t be running around in your jammies, for pity’s sake.”
Oh Lord—I still had on a robe and Tweety Bird nightshirt and slippers. With all that was going on, I’d forgotten about how I was dressed. No wonder Sandy had looked at me so funny.
Cherry took my silence for interest. “Okay—we’ll need ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures . . .” she whipped out a camera from her purse. The flash went off in my eyes. “You blinked!”
I couldn’t see anything except the aftershock of the flash, but I heard the tinkle of the bell again.
“Josie, I really need to talk to you.” That was Chief John Worthy’s voice. I swiveled in his direction, to the right, even though I couldn’t see him—my eyes still hadn’t cleared.
“I just saw Owen and Winnie,” he said. “You should have told me about Tyra being here, because when filming starts, we’ll need crowd control. Or will security be coming with her crew?”
“Turn this way, Josie.” Cherry swiveled me to the left. “Stop grimacing!”
Flash! The bell tinkled again. Another flash.
“Josie, you little devil you, you really did it!” I recognized the voice of Cornelia Hintermeister, the mayor of Paradise and top seller of Joy Jean Cosmetics for all of Mason County. “Now, we’ll need a parade—maybe we can use some of the floats from the Beet Festival Parade.”
“We can’t do anything of the kind!” hollered Chief Worthy. “We haven’t gotten paperwork for the traffic control for a parade, and we need it at least two weeks in advance—”
Cherry swiveled me to her. Flash! Flash! “I think that does it for the ‘before’ pictures. Now, we’ll have to find some makeup to keep you from looking so washed out on camera, and—”
“Josie, I need to talk to you! When can I interview Ms. Grimes—” that was Henry Romar, the editor, chief reporter, and president of advertising at the Paradise Advertiser–Gazette.
My vision, at last, cleared—and I was rewarded with the image of dear old Sandy, one hand on her hip, glaring at me, pot of coffee in her other hand.
“Get outta here,” she growled at me, “before the whole town comes in here after you and breaks the place to bits.”
I slipped off my stool, turned, and was blocked by the Mayor and Chief Worthy and three ladies from the church and the reporter and several other people who were hollering my name—and Cherry, who saw her opportunity and took it.
She grabbed my elbow and pulled me through the crowd. “Make way! Josie will get back to you on matters of crowd control and media and such. Right now, she’s late for her makeover!”
I went along with her—anything to get away from the crowd.
It was late afternoon when I emerged from Cherry’s a new woman. Well, at least a woman with new hair. Or changed hair, anyway—since, strictly speaking, it was still my hair.
Much to Cherry’s disappointment, I refused the facial and manicure and pedicure she was sure I needed.
But here’s the thing about my hair.
I hate it.
I’ve always hated my hair. Its color is dull—a bland shade somewhere between light brown and dark blond. It’s fine and thin and gets split ends if I even sneeze.
And there’s this one strand that insists on plopping right down in the middle of my forehead. I’ve tried hairspray and gel and mousse, but suddenly, this one strand’ll start to quiver�
��I swear it will—and then plop down right over my left eye. I’ve even nicknamed it—the Forelock from Hell. And don’t even mention bangs. Bangs make me look like a girl-version of Howdy Doody, except with dull-colored hair. Not pretty.
So I’d long given up on having any kind of style at all, and just went for clean and out of the way years ago. I shampoo it, and while it’s still wet, just pull it back in a ponytail.
So when Cherry said she could do miracles for my hair, I thought, why not? I didn’t want to go back into the laundromat and deal with Winnie and Owen. Or anywhere else in Paradise, where I was sure I’d just be greeted with more Tyramania. Truth be told, I didn’t want to deal with Tyra herself, either.
Besides, Cherry was doing my hair for free—on account of me now being a celebrity-stain-expert-to-the-stars.
And when Cherry turned me around, and at last I beheld myself in the mirror, I got very, very happy.
No, that’s not quite putting it strongly enough. I was in a state of bliss because I had been transformed, all by one cut, perm, and dye job. Thanks to my new hair, I was popular and beautiful and smart and successful and hip and right on and cool and with it and all those great things I’ve never been and never knew I wanted to be until I saw how I looked in that moment.
The Forelock from Hell was no more. My hair was a soft strawberry blond, short and perky and wavy, curling around my ears. I even looked like I’d lost about half of the twenty extra pounds I’ve been carrying around for the ten years since my high school graduation.
I hugged Cherry. I floated in bliss out of the door—as if even my tattered robe and Tweety slippers had been transformed by a fairy godmother’s wand into a power suit. I felt tall, thin and beautiful, and ready for the Tyra Grimes Home Show. No, I felt ready for more than that. Why stop at just being a guest on the Tyra Grimes show?
Why not have my own show? The Josie Toadfern Stain Removal Hour of Power—no, no, the Josephine Todeferne Cleanliness-Is-Next-to-Godliness Show. I could have sponsors. Spinoffs. My own production company, even. Yes, I was suddenly caught up in the very madness I’d tried to escape.
But then I stepped out into the brilliant bright light of that spring day in Paradise, and reality hit. Thanks to Billy Toadfern himself, who had reappeared in Paradise, right in front of my laundromat—with his very own effigy of Tyra Grimes.
5
Billy’s big, hairy, naked belly bounced in keeping with his back and forth marching in front of my laundromat. Billy carried a homemade wooden cross on which he’d put his Tyra Grimes T-shirt—armpit sweat stains and all. At the very top of the cross, he’d put a Halloween monster mask—green face, warty nose.
A crowd had gathered around Billy, blocking the doors to several establishments besides mine—Tony’s Pharmacy, the Antique Depot, Grunning’s Watch and Shoe Repair. The gathering wasn’t friendly. Everyone was shouting at Billy to shut up and go away.
Still, I could hear Billy over everyone else. “The devil has come to Paradise! You think you’ll find fame and fortune with Tyra Grimes here, but mark my words, she brings trouble!”
I ran toward Billy and the crowd—never mind that I still had on my robe and Tweety Bird nightshirt and slippers—hoping to get Billy to go up to his apartment. I looked around for Winnie and Owen, but in my moment of need, they were nowhere in sight. Owen would be at the Masonville Community College by now. And Winnie was up in my apartment, I supposed, getting ready for Tyra’s “soirée.” Lord only knew where Tyra and Paige—who I still hadn’t even met—might be. I looked around for someone who might help—and saw Lewis Rothchild.
He was the only one not shouting at Billy. His expression was a curious mix of satisfaction and grimness, his smile a half-grimace. I veered over to him.
“Did you put Billy up to this?” I demanded.
“No. Somehow he’s figured out that Tyra is evil all on his own.” I was about to ask what that was supposed to mean when a little girl, Haley Gettlehorn, started tugging on my robe and Lewis’s pants.
“We came out of the laundromat to see what the ruckus was,” Haley was wailing, “and somehow I got lost from Mama, and—”
Before I could say anything, Lewis knelt down next to her. His smile changed, all at once, to one of genuine gentleness—a most amazing transformation. Then he said, “I bet if I put you up on my shoulders, you can spot her. How about it?”
Haley nodded. Lewis hoisted her up onto his shoulders, stood, and in a second Haley clapped and pointed. “There she is! I see her! Mama! She’s coming!”
A few seconds later, Becky was by us, gathering Haley into her arms. As they disappeared into the crowd again—which was growing angrier and more restless—Lewis looked back at me. “You would do well to listen to Billy. We all would.”
Just what was Lewis’s problem with Tyra? I was about to ask him, when a hush came over the crowd as an SUV—bigger, newer, and shinier than anything usually seen in Paradise—pulled up and parked in front of my laundromat. The passenger door opened, and Tyra Grimes herself stepped out.
She stared at Billy—a bemused look on her face—when suddenly, as if pulled by some magnet, she looked over to us.
She stared past me to Lewis, looking at him as if she was taking him in, bit by bit. Her face was expressionless and pale.
And Lewis stared back, equally riveted, equally expressionless—but beneath the surface was anger. Cold, hard anger.
Tyra looked away first.
By now, a slender, young black woman had gotten out on the driver’s side and stood beside Tyra. Paige, I thought.
Mayor Cornelia Hintermeister stepped forward from the crowd. “On behalf of Paradise, I’d like to apologize for this buffoon—”
That miffed me. Billy could be an idiot, that was true, but he’d served Paradise long and well as a preacher, and now he was trying to make an honest living as a Cut-N-Suck salesman.
“No apology needed. I’m used to encountering a few people who aren’t exactly fans. Hard to believe, but perhaps they’re just so decorating-impaired they feel intimidated by little old me?” With that she gave a twittering laugh. The crowd twittered along with her.
Maybe Lewis was just one of Tyra’s decorating-impaired un-fans—although his funeral home chairs did have nice upholstery. I turned to look at him, but he had disappeared. No, there was something more about why he didn’t like Tyra . . .
I didn’t have time to finish the thought. My attention was drawn back to the crowd by hollers of, “Stop! Somebody stop him!”
Billy had surged forward and was now facing Tyra, who looked totally unworried and just smiled up at him.
“Why,” she asked, “are you protesting me, my dear man?”
“Look at this T-shirt,” Billy shouted, shaking his T-shirt-on-a-stick. “What if these people knew how it was made?”
“Why, it was sewn together, of course,” Tyra said, laughing.
Again, the crowd laughed along with her.
Poor Billy turned as red as the shirt. That was all the Billy-taunting I could stand. I put my head down and like a little bull—I was feeling mighty empowered by my new hair—I pushed my way through the crowd to Billy.
“Make him stop, Josie,” someone near me hollered.
“Yeah,” someone else shouted. “He’s your cousin, Josie, do something about this.”
But Billy hadn’t even noticed me. Or the fact that angry Paradisites were closing in around us, no doubt ready to drag us away from Tyra and sacrifice us for her, if she should so choose. For the moment she simply looked bemused.
I saw Chief John Worthy moving toward us.
I grabbed Billy’s arm, but he shook me off. So I grabbed him by the chest hairs and yanked, but he barely flinched. He started shouting, crazy loud, “Tyra Grimes is evil!”
Chief Worthy was moving fast and glaring at Billy—and I knew if Billy didn’t shut up, he’d end up in jail. I also knew Billy wouldn’t shut up. So I did the only thing I could.
I jerked Billy’s
cross-effigy of Tyra Grimes away from him, and whacked him over the head with it. Billy went down with a moan, into a heap between Tyra and myself.
The grotesque Halloween mask went flying off the top of the cross, and landed right on Tyra’s head. The crowd went quiet.
Chief Worthy had made his way over to us, and now looked at Tyra with grave concern. “Are you all right, ma’am?”
“I am fine,” Tyra said, putting a little space between each word. She plucked the monster mask off the top of her head, mussing her usually perfect hair.
“Would you mind returning this to your cousin,” she said, holding the mask out to me.
I took it. “I’m sorry for the ruckus Billy’s caused . . .”
Tyra held up her hand to silence me—a gesture which, I’m sorry to report, worked perfectly. “We have much to do before this evening’s gathering,” Tyra said. “Assuming, of course, your apartment is still available.”
Tell her to go, a voice inside urged. Billy’s figured out the truth about Tyra, I could hear Lewis saying. She’s evil, I could hear Billy shouting . . .
“Assuming,” Tyra added, “that you still wish to have your expertise—and your charming town—featured on my show.”
The crowd gave a gasp, all at once.
Now, here’s the thing I’ll always wonder. If I’d told her no, I didn’t want to be on her show anymore, would she have gone away? Would the murders that soon followed have been avoided? Maybe not. Maybe we Paradisites were just bit players, and Paradise just a backdrop, for a drama fated to be played out somehow, somewhere, with or without us. Or maybe I just want to see it that way to make myself feel better about what came later.
In any case, at that moment, all I really knew was that the fate of Paradise suddenly seemed to rest with me . . . that the best chance for the recognition our town needed lay with Tyra . . . and that she—and the people of my town—were waiting for my answer.
I smiled at her. “Of course you’re welcome to have your party at my apartment.”
