Catch 26

by Carol Prisant

  “Really?” Frannie was doubly impressed. New York!

  Arlene seemed mollified. She leaned back in her chair.

  “Ready for dessert?”

  On her return, Frannie found Stanley asleep in his chair with his “second lunch” still in its transparent wrap in the icebox. She hung up her coat, tiptoed to the bedroom and perched on the edge of the crisply made bed. (Good, she’d remembered.)

  Opening her handbag and fingering through her worn brown wallet, she found it: the beauty shop’s number on the back of a Nordstrom’s receipt. She could, of course, wait a month or six weeks if she wanted to. She’d just had color, after all. Still …

  She reached for the phone.

  “Hair House.” The nasal voice of a twelve-year-old bored receptionist.

  “This is Mrs. Stanley Turner. I’m calling for an appointment with Randi. Arlene Mann gave me her name?”

  “Hold on a minute. I’ll check the book.”

  A longish pause, during which Frannie heard the dull whirring of … blow driers?

  “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Frannie Turner. I’m friend of Arlene Mann’s.”

  Muffled conversation.

  “Hold on a minute, would you? I have to check something.”

  “Fine.”

  It was a full twelve minutes by the nightstand clock, in fact, during which Frannie cleaned scraps of dog-eared papers and receipts out of her wallet and counted her change in her lap and, after that, wandered over to the closet wall to gaze, possibly for the thousandth time, at her cherished print of “Primavera”.

  She’d bought it in college, just before her last art history finals. It was a superb reproduction. It had been expensive, too, but she’d treated herself – not just because the image was head-spinningly beautiful, but because the owner of the store had taken the time to point out that Botticelli’s original painting actually represented love, marriage, and fertility.

  Love. Marriage. Fertility. She and Stanley had gotten married before she’d had time to do anything with her precious art degree and, of course, married women didn’t work back then. She regretted not having used her education now, she’d enjoyed those classes so. But this print still gave her visceral pleasure, and reminded her every day that art and beauty were the truest joys in a disappointing world. More than once, “Primavera” had saved her.

  The phone in her hand sizzled to life.

  “Well, you’re really lucky, Mrs. Lerner.”

  “It’s Turner.”

  “Awesome. Really awesome! Randi says she can fit you in tomorrow at 2:00!”

  “Tomorrow! Oh, I am lucky. Thanks so much! So I’ll see you then. Oh, wait.” She was an idiot. “Where are you?”

  “We’re on Clayton Road, about a mile past the Starbucks in the Arch shopping strip. Right next to the Schnucks there.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there. Thanks!”

  For the second time today, she stood before the bathroom mirror. This time, she was grinning foolishly at – she wasn’t sure what. She tugged at some strands of lifeless hair. Bangs? Blonde, like Arlene? Tomorrow she’d be a new Frannie Turner, maybe. Maybe she’d treat herself to a new hairbrush. Or a lipstick.

  She returned to the bedroom.

  Nothing would really make a difference, though. Not a haircut. Not a color change or a new hairdresser. She’d been here before.

  And yet – Frannie made a mental effort. She smoothed the lank brown strands of hair behind her ears, sat on her own side of the bed and, opening her night-table drawer, cupped a well-worn deck of cards in her hand and dealt them out on the bedspread.

  Some women ironed clothes to quiet their minds. Some worked crossword puzzles. Frannie preferred her cards: sometimes Chinese Patience, sometimes Solitaire.

  She cheated a little at both.

  When Stanley coughed himself awake at 5:30, it was dark outside and she was winning.

  She swept up the deck, slipped it back in the drawer, and went to the kitchen.

  Just a night like every other, she thought. Early dinner – this morning’s chicken and broccoli for Stanley, some frozen thing for her, the dishes in the dishwasher, TV, bed. And the silent phone.

  She sometimes imagined her son.

  If she’d been a good mother – and of course she would have been –they’d have played trucks on the linoleum kitchen floor when he was small and gone Halloweening on chilly, moonlit nights. She’d have helped him with the hard spelling words and with his art and music (science and math would have been Stanley’s responsibility). And because she’d been that good mother, he’d have grown up to drop by for dinner on nights like tonight. She’d have cooked his favorite food: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, lima beans. (He would have loved lima beans.) And afterwards, he’d have given her a hand with the dishes and while she washed and he dried, maybe, they’d have laughed as he described how her granddaughters were the best spellers in school. A family tradition, he’d say, smiling down at her. And maybe they’d talk together about the time she taught him walk-the-dog with his yoyo and took him to the St. Louis Museum of Art. Which he’d hated.

  He’d call, now and then, too, just to see how she was.

  Because, in the entry hall lately, Frannie had been smelling something. Something like bad breath and stale clothes. Like unwashed hair. Like mothballs.

  The scent of people growing old.

  But tomorrow. Tomorrow smelled like hope.

  CHAPTER 2

  Frannie left so early for her hair appointment that she had time to kill, so she stopped by her favorite store. Still, crossing Aunt Teeks and Uncle Junks’ parking lot, she found herself explaining to the Stanley in her head for the umpteenth time, that she never spent much, really. Nice little things for the house, mostly: an antique cup and saucer; a dented brass warming pan once; a figurine; and if she was really lucky, every now and then, a painting. She loved paintings best. Especially of mothers and children.

  And yes, she told that mental Stanley, I know what that means!

  Closing Aunt Teeks’ jingly door behind her, it struck her, not for the first time, that thirty or forty years ago, antiques shops smelled like old people’s hatbands and mildewed attics. Now they smelled of lemon-scented furniture polish and, God … was that incense? No, just a terrible perfumed candle on the desk of a young man she’d never seen before. Minding the store for Sally, she supposed, although he seemed transfixed by the computer on his desk and barely looked up as she entered.

  Frannie ventured a modest “hi” and a perfunctory smile that was meant to indicate her sincere hope of avoiding conversation. She really had only a half hour before her appointment.

  He looked up at last and returned her smile. “Hi. How are you?” He’d closed his computer. Oh, dear.

  “I’m good. In a hurry. On my way to an appointment. Just thought I’d stop by to see what Sally’s got in lately. I haven’t been in for a while.”

  “Well, you just go right ahead and have a look around. Sally had to go to Ladue for a house call. But a lot of new things have come in recently. And if you want to see something, just ask.”

  He bent to the reopened laptop.

  Frannie moved deeper into the familiar shop and scanned its pegboard walls. She invariably checked the paintings first.

  Over in the far corner. That, she thought. That looked new.

  But from here, she couldn’t really see what it was. It might be just a reproduction. She thought she liked the frame, though. Kind of voluptuous. Darkened old gold with … too many chips for Stanley to let her live with? She picked her way through rocking chairs and side tables.

  Close up, she could see it now, and it definitely looked like an old oil painting. Unusually dark, though, with a great many trees and several figures – really a lot of figures! And the whole thing was obscured by a uniform, caramel-like crust, so that even the parts that were obviously flesh were dense with a murky brown. But that had to be a good sign, Frannie thought, trying to edge
closer. It had been hung above a squat china cabinet. Too high for her. Were they biblical characters? Gods? She looked around for a stool, found an old metal thing and placed it in front of the cabinet. Carefully, she stepped up.

  Now she could make it out.

  They weren’t gods at all, she was pretty sure. They were people, but only a few of them, half-seen through the bushes and trees, appeared to be dressed. In classical garments. Most of the figures, now she squinted, most of the figures were naked. Even the men. Moistening her index finger while covertly watching the boy at the desk, she swiped it across one large male figure. She was right. They were naked. And dancing. Some were – could they be drunk? And those four or five squatting men were, what? Rolling dice? But mostly, leaning away a bit, she could suddenly see, mostly they were making love. Having intercourse. Right out there in the open. And strangely, for a second or two, the scores of intertwined legs and arms and bodies actually seemed to be moving. Doing impossible, fascinating things.

  Wait. Wait! She gripped the cabinet’s marble top. She had to be imagining this. She’d been doing a lot of that lately: reading sex into things when really nothing was happening at all. She felt mildly aroused now, though.

  Stupid old woman.

  Frannie fumbled in her handbag, found her glasses and stood on tiptoe for a better look. Buttocks and breasts and oh, yes, here … here was a couple wound together on the grass, and over there … another, halfway behind that tree! They weren’t moving anymore. She must have imagined it.

  But all of a sudden, something in Aunt Teeks felt very wrong. Unnatural and wrong. Frannie yanked the glasses from her nose and stared around her. She was alone. No one else here but the boy, and he was lost in his machine. She felt faintly cold, however, and the light in the shop had somehow dimmed. Queer. And was it snowing outside? She peered through the windows. No. But March was a little late for snow, wasn’t it? Uneasy, she turned once again to the picture.

  But now there was something about it that reminded her of … of what? Of something she’d seen once at school? Because it was really beautifully painted, she thought. Or at least, all of the hands were well done, and she remembered once reading – though it was probably untrue – that carefully rendered hands were one of the ways you could spot the work of a genuine artist. Each face was quite different from every other, too. That had to mean something. It was really well done, Frannie thought, smiling to herself, because it was lovely to find her art history alive and intact after so many years.

  All of a sudden, she knew she had to own it. But as she began to reach for the price tag, she very distinctly felt that the young man at the desk was looking. And no doubt laughing at the old gal falling all over herself to check out the sex. She wouldn’t turn his way to see, but, stepping cautiously off the stool, Frannie smoothed the front of her good navy coat, adjusted its belt and moved a few feet off to devote a minute or more to a neighboring landscape. Narrowing her eyes and tilting her head from side to side, she scrutinized the canvas as she thought an art expert might. In case he was looking.

  Could the naked picnic be an Old Master?

  Weren’t all the good ones in museums?

  But what did Frannie Turner know about art, actually?

  Also, why would a genuine Old Master be in a Clayton antiques shop? Would a painting this good, this old, actually show up here, in this shopping mall? And what’s more, if it was really an Old Master, why hadn’t someone already bought it? Like Sally. Sally was the kind of dealer who prided herself on knowing everything about everything she sold. So if this thing was genuine, why hadn’t Sally already sold it or taken it home for herself?

  Abandoning the depressing landscape, Frannie stepped up on the stool once again and reached for the yellow tag dangling from the frame. Leaning sideways, a little, she squinted to see: $3,500.00.

  Well! That was why!

  Ruefully, she left the stool, pushed it aside, removed a green glass vase from a nearby table and held it up to the light. She wasn’t looking at the vase, of course. She was thinking. If Sally hadn’t claimed that painting for herself, it was probably a reproduction of some kind. A photograph or a print of a genuine painting, most likely, fitted into this handsome old frame.

  She was just deciding to go back and feel the surface to see if it felt smooth, like a print, or three-dimensional, like an oil, when her coat sleeve fell back and she caught the time.

  She was going to be late.

  Hurriedly, she stepped back on the footstool and ran her fingertips across its surface.

  The painting felt rough.

  So it hung in her mind as she pushed open the scarlet-framed glass door of The Hair House. Unhappily, she wasn’t moving fast enough to avoid her own reflection in the glass. Matronly, she realized. And tense, somehow. Really tense. Which seemed odd, considering how much she was looking forward to this.

  Directed to a shiny pink bench by, yes, a twelve-year-old receptionist, Frannie tried to seem interested in last-week’s tattered People.

  But at 2:35, as she was beginning to rehearse a courteously worded complaint, the receptionist trilled, “Mrs. Lerner? Randi’s ready for you? Just follow Ashley to the back?”

  “Turner,” Frannie corrected softly, as, from nowhere, one of the several blonde girls appeared. This one was swinging a plastic water bottle in one hand and clutching a small sparkly phone in the other. She led Frannie to a curtained alcove.

  “You can take your things off and leave them in there, Madame.” The girl sucked deeply on her bottle, looking neither at Fannie or ‘there.’ When you’re ready,” she added, daintily replacing its screw-top, “Randi will see you over here.” With one black-and-yellow-patterned fingernail, she indicated a closed velvet curtain just down the hall.

  Frannie ducked into the cubicle and emerged in minutes, still tying the fastenings of the gown into the square knot she’d learned from Stanley’s sailing phase. With her pocketbook firmly on her arm, she crossed the hall and, still a little nervous – for no reason she could think of – she parted the heavy curtains.

  The booth was considerably bigger than she’d expected it to be. Really spacious, in fact. With unusually patterned pink wallpaper (animals of some sort?) but far too many glaring lights. At its approximate center, an adjustable pink-leather chair on a pedestal faced a handsome Rococo mirror, beneath which were several French cabinets, all painted pink, and leaning against these cabinets, her scissors in hand, was Randi.

  She wasn’t what Frannie had expected, either.

  Randi was breathtaking.

  All of six-and-a-half feet tall, she somehow seemed even taller. That’s what “majestic” must mean, Frannie thought.

  She was thirty-ish, maybe, or younger. Or older. A widow’s peak punctuated a classic, heart-shaped face with wide-set, cat-green eyes, high-bridged nose, pillowy lips turning down ever so slightly at the corners – à la Hepburn – and not a trace of lipstick. None at all.

  Frannie moistened her own dry lips.

  Capping the whole effect was her hair: a gingery, bright red. Thick and wavy, it fell loose to her shoulders in ribbons of fiery soft curl.

  Venus stood there, letting herself be looked at.

  All fake, Frannie thought unkindly, blinking against the light.

  Sour grapes, she rebuked herself, because. No. That nose. Those lips. Had to be real. Were real. And that hair had to be real, too, not just because of the eyebrows – an identical coppery hue – but because of that redhead-creamy skin. Not a freckle on it, either, Frannie noted. And all that along with a long, long neck, toned, slender arms and a wraparound cherry-red smock that more than suggested the body beneath: high breasts, wasp waist, wide hips, full thighs and slim (unstockinged) calves. Shiny and smooth, those calves; faintly muscled, like a runner’s. Narrow feet, too, Frannie saw, bound by strappy red sandals, metal-studded. With skyscraper heels.

  No one looks like that, she thought hopelessly. No one’s that perfect. No. This Randi was someone out
of nineteen-fifties Hollywood or a bad novel. But what was she doing here? Cutting hair? Why wasn’t she on magazine covers or doing the five o’clock weather?

  Venus moved. And spoke. A level, alto purr.

  “Mrs. Turner?” She searched Frannie’s face. “I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you.” She extended one child-soft hand.

  “Oh Randi, thank you so much for seeing me so quickly. I know how in demand you are, and oh God, I couldn’t believe my good luck in getting this appointment. Thank you so much. I really mean it. I really appreciate this.”

  She was babbling. She hated babbling.

  “In fact,” Randi responded, smiling warmly, seeming not to notice, “when they told me it was you, I juggled my schedule. Because when I did your friend Arlene, you know – she told me about you – how you’d been girls together, how you’d both decided to ‘grow old gracefully’?” (Had that perfect lip curled?) “So I was really anxious to meet you in person. Why don’t you sit right here?” She indicated the pink throne.

  “To meet me? Why?” Frannie asked, relaxing her too-substantial self into the chair. The seat gave softly. It was a little slippery.

  “Oh, just because.” Randi answered. Soundlessly laying her scissors on the counter, she reached for a small black rattail comb and ran just the tip of one tapered index finger along its row of pointed teeth. Her nails were unpolished, virginal ovals. “Because it seemed you might be just the sort of challenge I like.”

  “I did? It did?”

  What on earth could Arlene have told Randi to make her seem like a “challenge”? Should she be flattered? Or offended?

  “Let’s just have a look, then.”

  Randi pushed herself away from the counter, stepped toward Frannie in one fluid move and then she was behind her, running the fine black comb through her hair. It pulled a little, once or twice, but it didn’t hurt. It felt almost soothing, actually … sliding smoothly down to the ends and back, down to the ends and back. Obscurely, Frannie felt cherished. Beloved. She sensed her eyelids beginning to droop.