by Nancy Warren
“Well,” he asked after a long silence had stretched between them, “what do you think?”
“I think,” she said very slowly, “that you need to say that again.”
He repeated it and the meaning appeared the same. Still, she felt wise to confirm she hadn’t made some ghastly mistake of comprehension. “You are asking me, Harriet MacPherson, to try out for the Bravehearts?”
“Yes.”
She said the first thing that came to mind. “But I’m not beautiful.”
“So what? You don’t have to be beautiful to be a cheerleader. I guess most of them are pretty cute, sure, but…” Steve gazed at her. “You could be pretty cute yourself, you know. Besides, you’ve always wanted to be a cheerleader.”
It was easy to smile at him, for she was truly grateful. But she shook her head all the same. “Some dreams aren’t meant to be, Steve. I’m happy to gaze at them from the sidelines and imagine I’m there.”
“But what if you could be there? Really and truly?”
“I couldn’t.” Why didn’t the man understand? “Trust me, they don’t choose girls in—” she gazed down at herself “—twinsets and kilts. They don’t choose girls who don’t know how to put on makeup or how to look…well, sexy.”
“I think you look very sexy,” Steve said.
Her jaw dropped. It really did. Not all the scolding she’d received for twenty-three years from two very proper aunts could stop the lower jaw unhinging itself from the upper and dropping in a most unladylike fashion. “You must be making fun of me,” she said when she could force her poor jaw to function again.
“No,” Steve said, “I’m not making fun of you. I do think you’re sexy. I’m not saying you’d notice it straight off, because you don’t. But it’s there. You’ve just buried it under all that—” he glanced up and eyed her twinset “—wool.”
As hard as she looked, she couldn’t see any sign he was mocking her. In all her days, no one but no one had called her sexy. Hardworking, yes. Reliable, yes. Intelligent, yes indeed. Athletic even. But never, ever had anyone suggested she, Harriet MacPherson, was sexy. But it was sweet of him to try to make her feel better. “Well, it’s kind of you to say so. But I already have a job.”
“I’ll talked to Earl if you want. I don’t see why he’d say no as long as it didn’t interfere with your work at the Standard.”
Her darn jaw must have come loose or something. Down it dropped again. “You would talk to the managing editor for me?” Her voice squeaked on the last word. Oh, Lord. It was like asking a little brown sparrow to audition to be a peacock.
“I bet he’ll like the idea. You could write a feature about the tryouts as a trade for the time off.”
“But I don’t have a hope in…in Hades of making the squad. Look at those women,” she said, waving her hand toward the cheerleaders’ table, “they’re magical, so pretty and…well, not like me at all.”
“Harriet, you’re looking at this all wrong. All you have to do is try out. Who cares if you don’t make the squad? At least you can give it a shot. That way you’ll never regret not trying.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“Because everybody should get a shot at their dream.”
Since she already knew she didn’t have a real hope of becoming a cheerleader, there’d be none of the hot heartache she’d suffered as a teen when she hadn’t made her high school team.
But, for one shining moment, she’d get her chance to dance with the squad.
She took a deep breath, let the excitement build within her. “All right,” she said to Steve. “I’ll do it.”
4
HARRIET’S EYES WELLED as she gazed in the mirror of the women’s bathroom—the same washroom where Steve had found her with the turkey baster, and where this craziness had begun. Raggedy Ann stared back at her. Harriet didn’t have much of a temper, but she was a redhead after all, and when she got mad, she got mad.
Right now, she was steamed. She threw her cosmetics bag on the floor and let out a very un-genteel shriek…just as the door to the ladies’ washroom swung open.
Mortification flooded her as she slapped a hand to her open mouth.
Tess Elliot strolled in, paused, and gazed first at Harriet, then at the open bag on the floor, and the lipsticks, powders and potions scattered far and wide on the dingy tile.
Tess was the Standard’s movie writer, a classy woman and a great reviewer. Harriet always agreed with her reviews, unlike Tess’s fiancé, Mike Grundel, who wrote reviews for the Star. She couldn’t figure out how those two had ended up together, when, in print, they couldn’t agree about a single thing. Tess looked awfully happy, though, especially now that she was covering hard news stories as well as doing movie reviews.
Harriet felt more than ever like crying. She liked Tess, but of all people for Raggedy Ann to bump into right now, Tess, with her perfect blond beauty, wasn’t the one she’d have chosen.
“Looks like the makeup counter at the Bon Marché just exploded,” Tess said, bending to retrieve the bag.
“Please, leave it. I’ll clean that up,” Harriet muttered, her throat raw with unshed tears. Tess must have heard her screech.
Harriet tore off a piece of paper towel from the industrial dispenser and ran it under water then scrubbed at the circles of rouge on her cheeks.
Tess didn’t reply, but kept gathering the makeup off the floor and replacing it in Harriet’s bag.
She rose and put the bag on the counter under the mirror, close to where Harriet was still scrubbing her cheeks. She turned to the bathroom stall then turned back. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Harriet laughed with a jerky hiccup that sounded like popcorn popping. “Make me look pretty enough to be a Pasqualie Braves’ cheerleader.”
Instead of joining in the laughter, Tess stared, excitement dancing in her eyes. “I saw the notice in our paper that they’re holding auditions. Are you trying out?”
Harriet gazed at herself in the mirror. The fluorescent lighting was no flatterer; she appeared pale, freckly, carrot-haired and over made-up. Where she’d tried to rub the rouge off her cheeks she’d merely spread it around in an uneven, blotchy mass. Now she looked as though she had a bad rash.
She sighed. If she couldn’t even manage to slap on makeup, what hope did she have? “No.” She sighed heavily. “I changed my mind. It was a ridiculous idea.”
“No. It’s not.” Tess patted her shoulder in a sisterly gesture that made Harriet’s throat clog again. “I saw you playing softball, you’re a natural athlete.”
“It’s not the athletic ability that bothers me. It’s…it’s…” She made a sweeping gesture from the top of her styleless red hair to her little-girls’-dress-up-party makeup to her frumpy clothing to her Mary Janes. “Everything else.” She sniffed. “I look as though I just stepped out of an English boarding school.”
“Well,” Tess said, “at least you got a great education.”
“But I didn’t go to English boarding school,” Tess wailed. “I went to Pasqualie High.”
Tess pressed her lips together and cocked her head to one side, squinting at Harriet in the mirror. “When’s the audition?”
“Today. After work. But I can’t do it.”
“I’m sure they’ll teach you the moves.”
“I can do the moves with my eyes shut,” Harriet said, closer than ever to tears. “But I don’t look like a cheerleader.”
Tess smiled, a smug, woman-to-woman smile. “I don’t know a thing about cheerleading moves, but I can help you look your best. You are as pretty as any of those cheerleaders. You just need to make the most of your natural beauty. Hang on for a minute, okay?”
Harriet nodded glumly while Tess went to the washroom then washed her hands. Tess glanced at her watch and the light caught her engagement ring, gleaming with newness. “It’s three-thirty now, we’d better hurry.”
“I don’t get off shift until four-thirty,” Harriet proteste
d.
“Well, tell your editor you’ve got a headache or something. We haven’t got a second to waste.”
Before Harriet knew what had hit her, she was sitting beside Tess in her perky red BMW speeding through the streets of Pasqualie.
“Where are we going?” Harriet finally asked.
“My mother’s. She’s a genius.”
“Your mother’s?” Harriet asked in horror. No, no. She wanted to look hip and contemporary, not put together by someone’s mother. The only thing that could possibly be worse would be if Aunts Lavinia and Elspeth were her makeup artists. She imagined herself going to the audition looking like a Betty Grable Second World War poster. She hadn’t even told her aunts about the audition. They’d watched her break her heart over tryouts in high school, and now that she was older she didn’t want to put them through the ordeal again.
Tess laughed. “Don’t worry. My mother’s brilliant. Trust me. I called her while you were getting your things together. She’ll be ready for us when we get there.”
For one wild moment Harriet considered opening the door of the BMW and throwing herself out. But they were going too fast and head-to-toe road rash seemed an extreme price to pay to avoid an audition. With a sigh, she resigned herself to showing up as a redheaded Betty Grable.
While Harriet was watching her last chance at her dream fizzle away, Tess pulled over to the side of the road and took a cell phone out of her purse. Although Harriet knew that now was her best chance to run, she remained in her seat. It would be rude to run away, and besides, on her own she was no better. On the cheerleader scale, Betty Grable still beat Raggedy Ann.
“Hey, Caro. It’s Tess. I’ve got a bit of an emergency.” Tess flashed Harriet a conspiratorial smile and winked at her.
Harriet was too stunned to wink back. Caro. Could Tess possibly be calling Caroline Kushner, Standard publisher Jonathon Kushner’s wife? Now she thought of it, Tess and Caroline were both society types and moved in the same circles—or at least they had until Caro and Jonathon split up, which pushed Caro out of Pasqualie’s power circle faster than you could spit the seed out of a grape.
But where Tess was approachable and someone Harriet actually knew, Caro was like a visiting cover girl when she showed up at the paper, always perfectly groomed and gorgeous, so it was really hard to see the person underneath the gloss.
“You have all that chichi exercise wear for Pilates and dance classes, right? I need a favor for a friend. Harriet MacPherson. She works at the Standard and she’s trying out for the Bravehearts…. That’s right, the cheerleaders, but she…” Tess glanced at Harriet and Harriet waited for her to explain that her wardrobe was beyond hopeless. “She forgot her workout gear and she lives clear across town. No time to pick it up. Could you be an angel and meet us at my mother’s with some of your stuff?”
Tess nodded and mmm-hmmed, then glanced at Harriet again. “She’s about your size. Maybe a little bigger in the bust and a couple of inches shorter.” She gave Harriet a thumbs-up. “Thanks a lot, Caro. Right. We’ll meet you there. I don’t know. You can ask her when you see her.”
She hung up and then pulled back out onto the road. “Was that who I think it was?” Harriet asked, hoping against hope that she wasn’t about to borrow clothes from a stranger who also happened to be her newspaper publisher’s estranged wife.
“Haven’t you met Caro? Jonathon’s wife? Or, uh, you know. I guess they’re separated. I’m not sure what the term is for that. They’re not divorced, but not living together. His separated wife doesn’t sound quite right. Makes her seem as if she split in two. Hmm. There should be a term, don’t you think? If only to ease social conversation.”
Harriet couldn’t help but laugh. “Uncoupled?”
Tess’s nose wrinkled. “That sounds like his truck uncoupled from her trailer hitch.”
She shook her head, the short blond hair dancing. “Hitched then ditched.” She glanced at her ring. “I hate seeing people break up before I’ve even got married. It makes me nervous.”
“I can imagine,” said Harriet, wondering what it would be like to be as confidently in love as Tess and Mike. She had a sneaking feeling it would feel pretty wonderful and all of a sudden an image of Steve Ackerman popped into her head. She really needed to get over her adolescent crush before she embarrassed herself.
“You’ll look great in Caro’s workout gear,” Tess said, interrupting her thoughts. “Everything she wears has a designer label, even the stuff she sweats in.”
“I only hope it’s big enough.” She was going to look like an X-rated Betty Grable if her breasts burst out of a too-small dance suit and all the designer seams split open.
This whole nightmare just kept getting worse and worse.
Before she was ready, Tess’s car pulled through imposing black wrought-iron gates, fortunately open, and buzzed around a crescent drive to pull up outside a gracious white-stone mansion.
Tess popped out of the car and ran up the three shallow curving steps while Harriet followed slowly, feeling certain she was going to wake up from this bizarre dream any second. Or throw up.
But the moment she met Tess’s mother, Harriet started to feel a niggle of hope.
Rose Elliot was beautiful. She might be Tess’s mother, but it didn’t stop her from choosing modern clothes, hair and makeup. Not only was she modern, but, Harriet soon discovered, very determined. And opinionated. She had a musical British-accented voice and Harriet suddenly felt as though she were being made over by Julie Andrews. She fought the urge to break out in song.
Almost as soon as introductions were made, Rose cupped Harriet’s chin and tipped her face to the light. “Hmm.” She turned Harriet’s face to the left and right, hmmed again, so that Harriet began to feel as though she were a show dog being judged. “Excellent possibilities. Wonderful bone structure, clear skin, lovely eyes.” She patted Harriet’s cheek then rubbed her hands together with glee. “How long do I have?”
“Less than an hour, Mother. Come on,” Tess urged.
Rose Elliot tsked. “I don’t know what you expect in an hour. I’ll do my best, Harriet, but it won’t be as much as I could do if I had more time. Never mind. You’ll still be the prettiest cheerleader on the field.”
It was such a motherly comment, and so much like what her aunt Elspeth would say, however patently untrue, that Harriet relaxed. What the heck. She was in this now, she’d have to see it through and simply remember she was doing this for a newspaper story. Nobody would care if she did poorly at the audition.
Except her.
Mrs. Elliot ushered Harriet up plush carpeted stairs, down an endless wide hallway and into the largest bathroom Harriet had ever seen, with acres of marble, huge mirrors and a full vanity. “I’ve got the hot rollers already warming. Now sit down here, dear.” She all but pushed Harriet into a velvet-upholstered chair in front of the vanity mirror.
“I wish we had time for a facial,” she said, shaking her head.
“We don’t,” her daughter reminded her.
“I know. I’ll only cleanse Harriet’s skin, then we’ll get the rollers in and then do the makeup.”
Harriet started to rise so she could wash her face with the bar of soap at the sink. But Tess’s mother pushed her back into the chair and secured her hair back from her face with a hair band. Then she squeezed some goop onto a cotton pad and smoothed the cool, scented cream over Harriet’s face and neck.
She removed that with another liquid from a different bottle, then came a third application.
“There we are,” she said. “Nice and clean.”
Harriet was amazed. No water? No soap?
Trust rich people to find a way to wash without having to get their hands wet. Still, her skin did feel nice.
“Now, I’ll put a light moisturizer on you. It gives the foundation a smooth base.”
Harriet nodded as if she had a clue what the woman was talking about. Foundation? Base? She felt more like a building under construc
tion than a cheerleader.
Now her skin was left alone to absorb the moisturizer.
Mrs. Elliot removed the hair band and picked up a hairbrush. She brushed Harriet’s hair until it shone and floated around her shoulders, snapping with electricity and sparkling with highlights. Then Tess’s mother began winding chunks of hair onto wide rollers in some complicated arrangement.
Harriet was so fascinated to be part of this very female ritual that her nerves settled while she watched the other woman’s deft fingers make fat red sausages of her hair. She’d come to the point where she felt fatalistic about the whole tryout. She’d purchased a videotape of the cheerleaders and practiced every move. She’d worked out at her old gymnastics club every day after work and hit as many dance classes as she could squeeze into her schedule for the past two weeks.
Physically, she was as ready as she’d ever be. And now, her looks were in the hands of Tess Elliot’s mother. She eyed the rollers skeptically. Maybe she’d come out looking like a Raggedy Ann doll who had stuck her finger in an electric socket, but she couldn’t look any worse than she would have if left to her own pathetic makeup bag and inept hands.
“Lean back and close your eyes, dear. I’ll start with a nice neutral foundation.”
Harriet did, and followed all Mrs. Elliot’s instructions while she was painted with a bewildering number of substances applied with more brushes than Picasso could have used in a lifetime. Finally her hair was released from the rollers and combed out and sprayed.
She emerged, choking and coughing from a cloud of noxious hairspray, to the satisfied smile on Rose Elliot’s face. “Well?” the older woman said, turning Harriet’s chair to face the mirror, “What do you think?”
To say a stranger stared back would have been an exaggeration. Certainly that was Harriet’s own reddish-brown hair, but it was styled so it fell in soft waves to her shoulders, with the front pieces gathered on top of her head. “To keep the hair out of your eyes when you perform,” Rose explained.
