by Lexi Eddings
“Coulda been, but we both know it wasn’t.”
Chapter 12
If a problem can be solved with a little power
shopping, it’s not really much of a problem, is it?
—Shirley Evans, while poring over a wig catalog
Mr. Evans stomped over to his front door and held it open for Heather. “Let’s go in. It’ll be safer there. Guess you’ll be wanting some coffee,” he added with a note of hope in his voice.
Heather had been warned about Mr. Evans’s “Take No Prisoners” brew. Lacy claimed her father’s coffee was stout enough to carry its own mug across the table and had been known to make grown men cry.
If Mr. Evans could only find a way to introduce his coffee into the squirrels’ water supply, they’d probably run themselves into the next county on the jolt of caffeine alone.
She decided not to suggest it. Mr. Evans had already shown himself willing to go to extremes to win this undeclared war.
“No thanks, Mr. Evans. I’ve had a cup already and one’s my limit.”
“Well, a single cup won’t do for me. That’s why I always make a big pot. Shirley and Lacy and Laura are in the family room.”
Laura was Jake’s sister. She had the same dark Tyler eyes and hair and was going to be a bridesmaid alongside Lacy’s sister, Crystal. Laura was pretty and petite and would look great in whatever dress Lacy chose for them to wear.
Even the hurt-your-eyes pink one.
“Expect they’re looking for you,” Mr. Evans said. “But I warn you, they’ve been all a-twitter since the UPS man came this morning.”
Once inside, they passed by the formal living room to the right and headed toward the informal dining space at the back of the house. Mr. Evans peeled off toward the kitchen on the left. Heather followed the sound of feminine laughter to the right, into the family room that adjoined the eating space.
Her friend Lacy, Laura Tyler, and Mrs. Evans were seated in various versions of the lotus position in the middle of the space, surrounded by lavender boxes, some open, some yet to be. Lacy was holding a mirror for her mother, whose hair had somehow turned pumpkin orange and grown into a shoulder-length pageboy overnight.
“What in the world?”
“Oh, Heather, there you are.” Shirley Evans turned to greet her, but didn’t rise from her cross-legged posture on a pillow on the floor. “Come and see. It’s the most wonderful thing.”
Jake’s sister, Laura, grinned at her. “I’ll bet you had a hand in this, didn’t you?”
“In what?” Heather asked.
Shirley waved a piece of paper in the air. Heather couldn’t make out the company logo on the letterhead, but it seemed to be decorated with a long string of free-flowing commas and mathematical symbols.
It reminded her of Michael’s tattoo.
Now you’re being a goose, she scolded herself. Stop looking for him everywhere. You’ll see him soon enough tonight, silly.
“Now don’t be modest, dear. Somehow”—Shirley winked hugely at Heather—“this company received my name as a new cancer patient and I was chosen to try out a whole line of wigs.”
She pulled off the orange pageboy to reveal a completely bald head. Not a head full of wispy clumps. Not the thinning hair with the scalp showing through of most cancer patients. Mrs. Evans’s head was bare as an ostrich egg.
Heather gasped. “But . . . you haven’t been on chemo long enough to lose it all.What happened to your hair?”
“Well, when I received notice that these wigs were coming, I decided not to wait for it to fall out. I mean, would there be anything more depressing than having your hair come out in handfuls?” Shirley shuddered. “Anyway, I decided to—oh, what is it the kids say nowadays? Oh, yes!—go big or go home. So I had Lolita from Hair Today Gone Tamale come over and just lop it all off.”
“Hair today gone to what?”
“Oh, surely you know Lolita Alvarez.”
“Yes, we’ve met,” Heather said. Lolita was a licensed barber who volunteered at the hospital. She came in once a week to give haircuts and shaves to patients who’d been there long enough to need one.
“Well, she and her husband, Hector, recently opened a new business that combines both their talents. Hair Today Gone Tamale. It’s out on the highway. They renovated the old Sinclair station, you see. She cuts hair in the side where they used to sell Skittles and Jujubes and motor oil. And Hector turned the garage bay into a commercial kitchen and take-out place. He makes the best tortillas in town.” Shirley rolled her eyes expressively. “And his churros are to die for.”
Heather knelt down between Laura and Lacy, surveying the dozens of boxes. There were wigs in all colors and hair lengths. “But what’s the deal with all these wigs?”
“Well, according to the letter that came with them,” Lacy said, “Mom is supposed to try them all on and keep the ones she wants. Any that don’t suit her can be donated to the hospital. I expect there are other cancer patients who need one or two.”
Heather nodded. The lady who ran Simply Chic on the Square gave classes on the many ways to wear a silk scarf, but a wig would help patients who were going through chemo feel far more normal than the most artfully tied piece of cloth.
“The hospital will be glad to accept whatever you can spare,” Heather said, taking Mrs. Evans’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “I’m glad to see you in such good spirits.”
“Why wouldn’t I be with all these goodies?”
“When was your last treatment?” Heather asked.
“It’s been a few days,” Shirley said. “I won’t lie. I felt like I’d been rode hard and put up wet that first day. But as you know, the farther I get from chemo, the better I feel. I refuse to let it get me down. It’s meant to do me good in the long run.”
Heather smiled and nodded, but she knew Mrs. Evans was putting up a brave front. She’d seen it often enough with her patients. Most of them made little deals with God whether they were even aware of it. If they were nice enough to everyone, if they maintained a positive outlook, if they hid how horrible they were actually feeling, nothing bad would happen.
“Your mom has a great attitude,” Jake’s sister told Lacy.
“And why shouldn’t I? I have my family and friends. I know people are praying for me. I’ve always been a big believer in living each day as it comes, and cancer is not going to get me today,” Shirley said with a tremulous smile that brightened into a real one. “Besides, what woman wouldn’t be thrilled with all these wigs?”
“I would have bought you a wig, Shirley,” Mr. Evans said as he came from the kitchen to settle at the round oak table in the eating space. He bore a copy of the Coldwater Gazette and a steaming mug big enough to be mistaken for a beer stein. The fragrant aroma of arabica beans that had given their all emanated from it. Heather would have been tempted to try a cup if she hadn’t been strongly warned against it.
Good thing his coffee doesn’t taste as good as it smells. Otherwise, it would have to be a controlled substance.
“I know you would have bought me one, George,” his wife said. “But this way, I can have one for each day of the week.”
Ah! The Evans family motto in action. Just like Lacy says: If a little’s good, a lot’s a whole bunch better. Wonder if Michael thinks that, too? She gave herself an inward shake. And there I am thinking about Michael again.
Mr. Evans rattled his paper before disappearing behind it. “Just don’t keep that red one,” he grumbled. “If folks see me squiring a pretty redhead around town, they’ll think I’m cheating on you.”
“Oh, do you really think so?” Mrs. Evans blushed and shot him an impish grin. “What fun!”
“Shirley!” He lowered the paper so he could lift a reproving eyebrow in her direction.
“Well, if they’re gossiping about us, they’ll be giving someone else a rest,” she said. “Let them talk. I know you love me and you know I love you. Our marriage is rock solid and that’s all that counts.”
He made a hmph-ing noise, but Heather suspected he was secretly pleased, because the corners of his mouth kept turning up before he dived behind his paper again.
“Speaking of rock solid,” he said, “I was reading the other day about the negative relationship between the cost of a wedding and the length of the marriage.”
Mr. Evans kept his paper up this time.
Sort of like a shield.
“According to this study, it seems the more you spend on the wedding,” he went on, “the less likely the couple is to stick together. They had all the figures and charts and graphs to prove it, too.”
“Oh, that’s nothing but twaddle,” Shirley said.
“No, it’s not. It’s science.”
“And how did science work for you with the squirrels today, dear?” she asked with syrupy sweetness.
Without a word, Mr. Evans drained his gigantic coffee mug, rose from the table, and stomped back into the kitchen.
Probably for a refill.
“You know,” Shirley said as she put on a long wig that would have looked more at home on the bootylicious Beyoncé, “I hear tell some couples enjoy pretending they don’t know each other. Take a look at this wig, George. This could make pretending you don’t know me easier, don’t you think?” When he popped his head in from the kitchen, she stood and gave her hips a seductive shake.
“Shirley! Not in front of the children . . .” Red-faced, Mr. Evans waved his hand toward Lacy, Laura, and Heather.
“They’re hardly children, George. In fact, now that Lacy’s getting married, we owe it to her to share what we’ve learned about staying together in our many years of marriage. And one of the biggies is that every relationship needs a little spice from time to time.”
He blinked at his wife as if she’d suddenly sprouted a second head. Then he headed for the front door.
“Where are you going, George?” Mrs. Evans stood, the long locks flowing in bouncy curls down her back.
“To Cooper’s Hardware to see if he’ll take that blasted Pests Be Gone off my hands.”
“All right, dear.”
He slammed the door behind him.
Then Shirley pulled off the long wig and substituted a short-haired one in her own glorious white color. She looked like herself again.
“And that, girls,” she said as she smoothed down the bangs, “is how you make a husband be gone. Now, then. Let’s clear out these wigs and make plans to spend some serious money on Lacy’s wedding!”
Chapter 13
The beauty of reality TV is that it gives the illusion
of letting viewers spy on a stranger’s life without being
arrested as Peeping Toms. It’s gold for the networks
because we can fill airtime cheaply without bothering
to pay those pesky union wages to writers and actors
and the rest. But don’t kid yourself. There’s nothing
real in a reality show. If there was, who would watch it?
—Louise Katzman, producer for
Forget-Me-Not Features and mentor
of Judith Hildebrand, aka “Stiletto Girl”
“A PhD in Cinematic Arts, Theory, and Practice, years slaving away as a gofer for people with less talent in their whole bodies than I have in my pinkie finger, and where did it get me? Stuck in this pitiful fleabag!”
The Heart of the Ozarks Motel and Car Wash was the bus line’s drop-off point for Coldwater Cove. It wasn’t quite as bad as Judith made it out to be. The linens were worn, but they smelled faintly of bleach and the windswept freshness of having been line dried. The hardwood floors could have benefited from a resanding and staining, but they were much cleaner than any sort of carpet would have been. A small refrigerator chugged away in the corner, and near the sink, which was located separately from the rest of the bathroom, sat a coffeemaker with the basic fixings for a caffeine delivery system, if you weren’t too picky.
Starbucks, it is not!
The motel’s biggest fault was that it was old and tired. Pretty much everything Manhattan was not. In Judith’s mind, that was synonymous with worthless.
She hefted her oversized roller bag onto the chest of drawers. The vintage piece of furniture listed an inch to the left but stayed upright under its load. She decided then and there not to unpack her bag. Not only was she hoping to get what she needed on Michael Evans and get the frack back to civilization ASAP, she really didn’t want to open any of those drawers. She’d surely be overcome by the scent of mothballs and lace doilies.
At least, there was no evidence of bugs.
In her week and a half of riding the bus, she’d seen more cockroaches in terminals than she’d known existed in the world. Of course, it wasn’t supposed to take that many days to travel from New York to Oklahoma. But she boarded the wrong bus in Chicago and ended up in Memphis for a day and a night.
The flat Midwest accent and its hard r’s gave her trouble. To her ears, everyone west of Ohio was growling all the time. As she traveled south, a bit of a drawl crept in, and that made it worse. She caught herself listening to how people said things, not what they said, so she was a step and a half behind in most conversations.
She was usually the smartest person in the room. It irritated her to be so out of her element.
Of course, Michael Evans had warned her that everybody in Oklahoma sounded like him. Why had she ever thought his rough cowboy baritone was hot?
Even worse than the people was the land. It was so empty. Barring Chicago, of course, she could travel for hundreds of miles in any direction and not see anything she would remotely class as a city. Even the places that claimed to be were more suburbia than central core. There was too much sky. Too many trees and endless cornfields and hills and hollows. They all looked alike.
The empty vastness of the plains made her feel so exposed and, though she’d never admit it, so alone. She was a city girl. She needed the friction of all those lives rubbing up against each other. Without that constant static prickling around her, she felt drained and adrift.
“How do people live out here?” she wondered aloud as she checked her watch. Only three in the afternoon. Since she wasn’t going to bother unpacking, there was still enough time to get some work done.
She fastened on the little lapel camera that was disguised as a pin and scooped up her laptop bag, making sure the computer was on. The camera would feed into a file on her Toshiba. Then she headed out the door, being careful to lock it behind her with a real key.
Not a code, not a key card, a fricking metal key with the name of the motel and the number of my room on it! May as well leave the door ajar and invite the locals to help themselves.
She dropped by the motel office and rang the bell on the counter. A middle-aged woman with impossibly blond hair and far too much lipstick for the amount of eye shadow she wore ambled out through the long strings of beads that formed a curtain between the lobby and backroom.
“I need a cab,” Judith said.
“Sugar, you are plumb out of luck. We don’t have no taxi service hereabouts,” the woman said. “But if you’re wantin’ to go to the Walmart for some things, you can borrow my Buick. It’s parked out front.”
Like many lifelong New Yorkers, Judith had never learned to drive. And she’d sooner vote Republican than be caught in a Walmart.
“What? Uh, I mean, no, I don’t think so.” Judith almost stammered in her surprise. Why would a total stranger offer her the use of her car? How did the blonde know she wasn’t some serial killer on the run and lying low in this backwater? Judith could very well take her car and disappear with it into the wasteland of fly-over country. The Buick might never be seen again. The bleach in the motel clerk’s hair must have fried her brain.
What’s wrong with some people?
But the clerk continued to try to be helpful. As it turned out, the motel was only located a few blocks from what the woman called “the Square.”
“And you’ll find half a dozen cute litt
le shops along the way if you take Maple Street.” The clerk drew the route onto a touristy little map with oversized versions of shops that had sponsored it marking their locations. “O’ course, if you’re worried about gettin’ lost, I can put up the BE BACK SOON sign and drive you across town to the Walmart.”
Lost in this teeny excuse for a town? Don’t make me laugh.
“I’ll walk.” Judith snatched up the map and headed for the door.
“Well, if you get turned around, sugar, just ask anybody for directions. Everyone knows where Heart of the Ozark is. They’ll set you to rights.”
Judith was from New York. She’d never be foolish enough to let anyone know she was lost. If you don’t look like you belong, you’re an easy mark.
“Have a nice walk, now,” the woman said cheerily.
“Thank you.” Judith blinked in surprise at the words that had popped out of her mouth. She wasn’t in the habit of saying “thank you.” It was rare when anyone did something for her that deserved thanks. But foolish or not, the woman had suggested Judith use her car. And then followed it up with the offer to give her a ride. So she guessed that called for a “thank you.”
And besides, everything I say is being recorded. If I want to banish my Stiletto Girl image, I’d better be professional at all times.
She was aiming for Diane Sawyer meets Julie Chen.
And likeable. I have to be frickin’ likeable. Louise always said that was my biggest problem. That reality show made me the person people love to hate.
The woman gave her a friendly wave and hurried back to catch the rest of The Price Is Right.
Judith set out, feeling like she was about to invade the enemy’s stronghold—because Michael Evans was the enemy, no doubt about it. Her career, which may not have been stellar up to the time she first laid eyes on him, was at least on an upward trajectory. After he christened her “Stiletto Girl,” Louise made her embrace the bitchy persona for that reality show about getting tattoos. She became a walking punch line in the film community. She’d been grateful to get a job fetching some director’s coffee.
