ODD NUMBERS

by M. Grace Bernardin

  Allison leapt over to where Vicky stood, hugged her hard and fast, then stepping back she bowed her head humbly and placed her hand over her heart. “Allison’s Charm School at your service. I am honored.

  “Let’s see, we need a book, a big book,” Allison said, her countenance beginning to brighten. “What’s the biggest book you own?”

  “What do we need a book for?” Vicky asked bewildered.

  “Your dictionary, that’s it! The one I got you for Christmas.”

  “I thought you were teaching me to walk, not talk.”

  “I am teaching you to walk,” Allison said and then donning a French accent, along with a melodramatic tone and hand gestures, she continued. “You must trust me–your teacher. Madame Allison knows the secrets to beauty and charm,” then turning the French accent off, she said, “now get the damn dictionary.”

  “All right then,” Vicky said complying as she walked toward her small book shelf.

  “Now put the book on your head,” Allison said as soon as Vicky retrieved the book.

  “Madame Allison says,” Allison said again donning the fake French accent. “Put the book on your head and walk across the room without letting it fall to the floor. Beauty does not come without a price, without sacrifice. Now, let us see,” Allison said in the phony accent, putting her hand to her chin, as she observed Vicky walk. “You have excellent posture. You stand straight and tall like an oak tree.”

  “My grandma told me not to slouch.”

  “Yes, but something is still wrong,” Allison said with the fake French accent.

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Vicky said catching the thick heavy book as it toppled off her head. “No one walks like this. Not unless you got a broken neck and you can’t move your head from side to side. You gotta move like you’re wading through a pool of molasses to pull it off. Heck, I’ve never seen you move that slow, girl.”

  “Yes, yes, you’re right of course. When one moves too quickly one is out of balance. Balance is the key here; to be centered, to move in harmony with one’s surroundings. All living creatures move toward such a one, are drawn to the soul in complete balance,” Allison said in her French accent.

  “Would you quit talking like Pepé le Pew.”

  “Okay, it’s me again,” Allison said resuming her normal voice. “Honestly though, it is all about balance. I get to moving too fast and my pace throws me off balance. Some people’s postures throw them off. But you, I can’t figure out what it is that throws you off. Try it again.”

  So Vicky put the dictionary back on her head and began walking, all the while aware of Allison’s scrutinizing gaze.

  “Ah ha! I have it,” Allison said all at once, startling Vicky as she steadied the book back on her head. “It’s your feet. They hit the ground too hard.”

  “I’ve always had heavy footsteps. It’s why I chose to live on the ground level. I used to live in an upstairs apartment and the neighbors below me complained. Said it sounded like the ceiling was going to cave in when I walked around. I’ve always been hard on shoes. It’s why I don’t like to wear them.”

  “Yes, yes, and your stride is too long.”

  “That’s because I have long legs,” Vicky said.

  “Yes, but it’s something else,” Allison said as she stopped to ponder it.

  Vicky pondered the question too. Sometimes she felt as if gravity held her too bound to the earth. Never leaving the ground for long, she was destined to come crashing back down, despite her fears of descending from those great heights. But she wanted to rise above it all, to fly effortlessly with just the slightest movement of her arms like how she’d done in dreams. She wanted to float and wondered what it would feel like to be weightless. But that was all just a dream. Her feet were firmly planted on the earth, the hide of her feet were rough and calloused. She remained locked to the ground with all of its harsh realities: the dirt, the dust, and the soil. That made her who she was, but, oh, if she could just fly, just once.

  “Try floating,” Allison said almost as if she’d read Vicky’s thoughts. “Close your eyes.”

  “Now you want me to walk around with this heavy thing on my head and my eyes closed?”

  “Try it,” Allison said. “Forget about the book on your head. Focus on your feet. Let your feet skim lightly across the floor,” Allison said.

  Vicky looked on disbelievingly. “Just humor me, all right.”

  And so Vicky closed her eyes. “Think light. Think light,” she said to herself as she began to move. After a while it seemed it was not her feet that she needed to focus on, but rather her chest. With her eyes closed she could imagine a string tied about her sternum and threaded through her chest wall lifting her shoulders back even further and pulling her up and up, lifting her feet up with each step. She imagined it nearly lifting her off the ground. Suddenly the weight was gone from her head.

  “That’s it! That’s it!” Allison said. Vicky opened her eyes and Allison had removed the book from her head. “Keep going, keep going. Feel how your feet just glide like a figure skater on ice. What was it Peter Pan said? Think happy thoughts. That’s the key to flying. Just think happy thoughts and you lift right off the ground.”

  Vicky thought about it as she walked ever so lightly, her stocking feet skidding across the top of the carpeting. She realized the heaviness wasn’t in her feet at all. It was in her heart. And truthfully, when she thought of her Francis, she felt lighter. Perhaps she already walked like a lady when he was near.

  “You’re floating. You’re really floating, Vicky,” Allison said her cheerful optimism exuding with every syllable she uttered.

  “It doesn’t come naturally. I don’t know if I can keep it up all evening, though. It’s tiring,” Vicky said, skidding across the floor.

  “The control top hose and the high heels will help,” Allison said.

  “That’s right, I gotta get all dolled up, don’t I? You know I never get dressed up, not like that anyhow. I don’t know which I hate worse, high heels or panty hose.”

  “They were invented by a misogynist, you know,” Allison said.

  “A what?”

  “Here,” Allison said handing her the dictionary. “That’s M-I-S-O-G-Y-N-I-S-T.”

  Vicky flipped open the dictionary and went to sit in her rocker as she looked the word up. She wrote the definition in her notebook.

  “You don’t have to try so hard Vicky,” Allison said. “There’s really nothing wrong with the way you walk. It’s really all about attitude, and you’ve got plenty.”

  “Yeah. All bad.”

  Chapter 25

  A single red carnation boutonniere is what Vicky selected for Frank to wear in the lapel of his suit coat. She opened the white cardboard box in which it came several times just to see it there, freshly cut from the florist and placed so delicately in a small cellophane bag, folded over at the top and held shut with a white pearl straight pin. Carefully she would place it back in the refrigerator, only to take it out again a little while later for another peak. The effect upon Vicky of seeing that single red carnation was as magical as if fairy hands had cut the flower itself and placed it in that box.

  Tonight was the night, and she was so restless all she could do was pace, smoke, and check the boutonniere. She never knew what to do with nervousness, even the kind she was feeling now, the good kind of nervous excitement in anticipation of something wonderful. She wished she had a little alcohol to quell her jittery gut but she hadn’t kept liquor in her home since the last time she got drunk. She’d gotten rid of all of it and had faithfully abstained since then. She toyed with the idea of running down to the liquor store.

  “It’s not like I’m gonna get drunk,” Vicky told herself as she paced and smoked. “Just a drink to take the edge off.” But some unknown fear caused her to hesitate. Maybe it was the spirit of her grandmother. “Fool!” she said stopping in her tracks and smacking herself on the side of the head. “You can’t let anything screw up this day.<
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  When Allison, Sally, and Barb arrived they descended on her apartment without as much as a knock.

  “Yoo hoo, anybody home!” came a high-pitched, yodel-like holler from Sally.

  “We’re here,” Allison called, and in they stormed like a regiment of military troops with their duffle bags over their shoulders.

  “You better not be doing anything to break your nails,” Sally said, observing Vicky moving furniture and running her vacuum cleaner.

  “Well, if I’m supposed to be queen for a day then this place better look like I got a maid. Besides, Stepmother says I can’t go to the ball unless I finish my chores,” Vicky said.

  “Well, I’m your fairy godmother and I have just relinquished you from your chores,” said Allison as she took the vacuum cleaner and put it away.

  “What’s with y’all anyway, you fixing to move in?” Vicky said eyeing a pink duffle bag marked “Mary Kay” which Sally had over her shoulder.

  “Our work tools,” Allison said setting her canvas bag on the kitchen counter, reaching in, and pulling out a hair dryer with one hand and a curling iron which she flicked open and shut with the other. “Since you refused to go to the beauty salon, the beauty salon has come to you.”

  “Our Vicky feels it’s silly and frivolous to spend that kind of money on herself,” said Allison.

  “Haven’t you ever been to the beauty salon, Vicky,” asked Sally.

  “Well, sure. I’m not that big a hick. I used to go to the Clip ‘n Curl in Providence with my Grandma. She got her hair permed and set there. But see, everybody knew everybody there. All the beauticians were neighbors and friends, just like y’all. A stranger can’t know how to make you look good. Oh, sure, they can make you look like some model in a magazine, but they can’t make you look like you.”

  “Allison’s going to do your hair and I’m doing your nails and makeup,” Sally said placing the pink bag marked “Mary Kay” on the dining room table.

  “And just what the heck is your role, Doctor Barb,” Vicky said to Barb.

  “Whatever you need me to do,” said Barb.

  “I know, Doc, you could write me a prescription for a strong sedative,” Vicky said, half-joking.

  “Sorry Vicky,” said Barb. “I can’t do that, but I can give you a massage. Nurses give patients massages before surgery. It helps relax them,” said Barb.

  “Surgery?” Vicky said.

  Barb gave Vicky a neck and shoulder massage as she sat at a chair in her kitchen with a towel wrapped around her wet head. Barb didn’t realize it but she was doing more for Vicky than Allison and Sally with all their rushing around and chatting and setting up. She was glad that Barb had a role. Vicky could see so clearly how out of place the plain and pragmatic Barb was in the feminine world. She wondered if she was the only one who could tell that everything about Barb tended toward the masculine. It wasn’t terribly blatant but it was there and she wondered if Barb had figured out just who she was yet.

  Vicky could relate to Barb in some ways. She often felt more at home in the masculine world, even though the very core of her being was feminine with this insatiable desire to nest and this quest for beauty. It was the perversion of that instinct that Vicky detested, that caused her to run away from the world of women. And yet here she was submitting to this makeover.

  Allison plugged in the blow dryer then reached into her bag for a large rounded brush. The thought returned again to Vicky. Why was she going through all this silliness? She felt it was wrong somehow–vain and shallow. She had to let them know and she had to do it now.

  “Wait!” Vicky hollered as Allison removed the damp towel from Vicky’s head and began to brush her hair. Vicky shooed Allison’s hand away and rose to her feet.

  “What’s wrong, Vicky?” Allison asked.

  “Why are ya’ll so into this?” Vicky said rising quickly to her feet. “Why is it so dag-nabbed important for y’all to do this stupid make-over?”

  “This is our gift to you. Just accept it,” Allison said with such sincerity that it took Vicky completely off her guard.

  “I accept it,” said Vicky.

  “Now, let me do something with your hair before it dries on its own and frizzes up,” Allison said, as she finally rose to her feet.

  “Hey Al, you was gonna cut my hair, I mean…” Vicky said, her tongue stammering to correct herself as her brain sought the proper grammatical conjugation. “You were planning on cutting my hair, weren’t you?” asked Vicky.

  “I was just planning on trimming the ends,” said Allison pulling a pair of scissors out of her bag.

  “Why don’t you just go ahead and cut it. Get rid of this bad perm for once and for all,” said Vicky.

  “Are you serious?” asked Barb.

  “You’re kidding,” said Sally.

  “No, I’m not kidding. Cut it all off,” said Vicky.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” said Allison. “Let me get this straight. You want me to cut your hair short?”

  “I don’t know about short short, but definitely something different,” said Vicky. “You’re always saying I need to get the hair off my face. I’m gonna show off this scar of mine with pride.”

  “All right, but I’m not to be held responsible if I do a hack job.”

  “You won’t do a hack job. I’ve got faith in you.”

  A magazine picture of a starlet (one whose hairstyle Allison thought particularly perfect to show off Vicky’s features and long neck) was the aid and inspiration for the haircut. So Allison clipped Vicky’s hair slowly and painstakingly, frequently pausing to look at the magazine picture and get advice from Barb whose eye seemed to be quite good in assessing the correct angles and equal lengths of things. Sally did her nails, fingers and toes, while Barb straightened up her apartment and floated in and out of the kitchen giving opinions.

  During the midst of all this, Vicky was affected by the most profound emotion–gratitude, yes, but something even more. She didn’t fight the tears that welled up because she wanted to let them know, wanted to tell them some way, but couldn’t find words. Sometimes tears are the only means to communicate.

  Sally stopped filing Vicky’s nails and looked up.

  Allison quickly grabbed a hand mirror off the kitchen counter and held it in front of Vicky. “I think you look great.”

  Vicky tried to focus through the blur of tears. The image of three faces, startling in their contrast, appeared before Vicky. Her eyes darted to the pretty and ever-concerned face of Allison on her left to the comical face of Sally on her right (whose attempts at reassurance made her look even more comical) to the reflection of her own face in the hand mirror, dead center between the other two. Her face appeared stark, exposed, almost embarrassing in its candor. Her lashes and all around her eyes were damp with tears, her reddened nose more prominent than usual, and her eyes seemed larger with the shorter hair. And then there was the scar, which one might’ve thought more noticeable with the hair no longer there to hide it, but strangely, by the simple fact of it being so plain and exposed, the eyes disregarded it and were drawn away from it back to the focal point–her hazelnut brown eyes.

  “My Lord, my eyes look enormous!” Vicky’s voice cracked and wailed as she put her hand over her face and sobbed silently.

  “You have beautiful eyes, Vicky. You can see them now,” said Allison. “They’re not hidden. Oh God, she hates me! I made her look like Marty Feldman. Vicky, I’m so sorry. Please don’t cry.”

  “That’s not why I’m crying. It’s…it’s because y’all are so nice, so…so good to me,” Vicky said and broke down in sobs. Sally handed her tissue after tissue.

  “I’ve never been…” Vicky paused and wiped her eyes and blew her nose, all the while trying to retrieve just the right word to describe this act of love. “Lavished… that’s it! I’ve never been lavished before. Just put that mirror away and don’t show me my face again until you’re finished.”

  “Just for the record, you do not loo
k like Marty Feldman,” said Sally

  “Shall we continue lavishing?” Allison asked.

  “Lavish away,” Vicky replied.

  The hair at last was finished and together Allison, Sally, and Barb all gathered around her forming a semi-circle. They were smiling. These were sincere smiles that broke upon their faces quite spontaneously. A good sign, Vicky thought, but then she never doubted.

  Allison smiled a mixture of pride and surprise. “Before I let you look in the mirror Vicky, I have to warn you. It’s a change, a real change.”

  “That’s what I wanted,” Vicky said. “Now let me see.”

  Allison held the mirror in front of Vicky’s face. She was indeed all face with the different layers brushed back on the sides, just a wisp of auburn bangs sweeping across her forehead and auburn fringe adorning the back of her long neck. It was the same old features but brighter and more alive. Vicky wondered if it was the hairstyle or all the lavishing that made her look so lit up.

  “Thank you,” Vicky said rising to her feet and putting her arms around Allison

  “Thank you for trusting me,” Allison said.

  “All right,” said Sally breaking the mood, “when I start making up your face there’ll be no more crying, so you might as well get it all out now.”

  The trick would be getting the women to leave before Frank got there, Vicky thought as she changed into her gown with this one blissful moment of privacy she had in her bedroom. Allison and Sally brought cameras and they wanted pictures of her in her gown so they refused to leave until she got dressed. Vicky stepped out of her bedroom and into the living room to the flashing of cameras.

  “Now listen ladies, I don’t mean to be rude, but you gotta hurry it up. I don’t want you hiding in the closet or hanging around the hallways when Francis arrives,” Vicky said.

  “Vicky, how do you feel?” Allison asked beaming.

  “I feel downright beautiful. I’ll never be able to thank you enough, but there’s just one thing.”