The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

by Susan Wittig Albert

  But she betrayed none of this when she said cheerfully, “Good mornin’, Miz Biggs. And how are you on this beautiful Monday mornin’?”

  “Oh, Beulah,” Mrs. Biggs said, and gulped back a sob. “I tell you, I am so discombobulated, I just about don’t know whether I’m up or down or inside out!”

  “Bettina,” Beulah said, divining that Mrs. Biggs had something on her mind, “why don’t you go in the back room and fold the towels while I do Miz Biggs?” Bettina, understanding the situation, picked up a basket of towels and vanished.

  Beulah went to the shampoo sink. “Miz Biggs, you just come over here and sit yourself down in this chair and put your feet up on this stool. A nice shampoo with plenty of hot water is always balm to the soul.”

  A few minutes later, Mrs. Biggs, draped in a pink cover-up cape, was lying in the chair, face up. Her eyes were closed, her toes were turned up, and her head was in the shampoo sink. Beulah was beginning the second lather, humming happily to herself. Next to cutting hair, she loved to wash it, pushing her fingertips firmly into the scalp, scrubbing and massaging and rinsing and scrubbing and rinsing again. For her, it was joy, pure joy, and she prided herself that her clients loved it, too. They always smiled blissfully and, when she was finished, told her that she was the best shampoo artist they had ever met, which for Beulah was every bit as good as the money she got paid for a job well done.

  Mrs. Biggs, however, wasn’t smiling, blissfully or otherwise, and the frown furrows between her eyes were deep as ruts on a muddy road. Beulah didn’t like the look of that. Frown furrows on a lady’s face were a sign that something unhappy was going on inside the lady’s head and heart—something that might keep her from becoming as beautiful as possible.

  As the shampoo bubbles frothed like meringue through her fingers, Beulah used her standard question to get Mrs. Biggs’ mind off whatever was making her unhappy. “How’s every little thing over at your place? Mr. Biggs doin’ okay, is he?”

  Mrs. Biggs opened her eyes, then closed them again. “Everything is just hateful, Beulah.” Her voice became bitter. “Mr. Biggs is havin’ himself an affair. He won’t sleep with me, but he’ll sleep with her.”

  Beulah’s jaw dropped. Clients sometimes said unexpected things, especially when they were flat on their backs with their eyes shut and their heads in the shampoo sink, which tended to reduce their inhibitions and divorce them from their everyday realities. But in all the years she had been asking her how’s every little thing question, nobody had ever answered it quite that way. She was awfully glad she had sent Bettina to the back room to fold the towels and that there was nobody else in the shop to hear what she’d just heard.

  Especially because she didn’t believe it. Artis Biggs had finished sowing his crop of wild oats before he got to be twenty-one. Now fifty-something, he was a man of upstanding reputation, a deacon in the Four Corners congregation, a former mayor, and the manager of Darling’s best hotel. If this story got out, and whether there was anything to it or not, the scandal was going to rock Darling to its very foundations—not to mention what it would do to Four Corners. Hank’s father, the Reverend Dr. Trivette, would be shattered. He put his faith in all his deacons.

  What’s more, Beulah felt strongly that Mrs. Biggs shouldn’t go around saying such things, right or wrong or somewhere in the middle. What went on between a woman and a man in their bedroom should be held sacred and not told to anybody, not even to the woman’s beautician in the privacy of the shampoo sink at the Beauty Bower. And if Mrs. Biggs was telling this story here, she could be telling it anywhere. Everywhere, for that matter, and to everyone. To Mrs. Hancock at the grocery, or over at Mann’s Mercantile, or (heaven help her) to Mrs. Adcock, Darling’s most notorious gossip.

  “I am downright sorry to hear that,” Beulah managed. “I hope it turns out for the best.” She changed the subject hurriedly, saying the first thing she could think of. “Bettina just got back from the Mercantile a bit ago. You should see what she bought—three yards of the prettiest pink cotton you’d ever hope to see. She’s going to make new smocks for us, with The Beauty Bower embroidered across the front in old-timey letters. When we get through with your shampoo, I’ll have her show it to you.”

  But Mrs. Biggs was not to be distracted by pink smocks or old-timey letters. “He’ll regret this,” she cried fiercely, her eyes squeezed shut now, her pudgy fingers clutching the arms of the shampoo chair like swollen claws. “Soon as I catch them. They’ll both regret it!”

  Beulah pulled in her breath, feeling unsure and helpless in the face of such wrath. “Well,” she ventured, “maybe it’s not what you think. Appearances can be deceiving sometimes. People don’t always—”

  “Not this time!” Mrs. Biggs cried, smacking the flats of her palms on the arms of the chair. “I have seen him with my very own eyes, Beulah, coming out of those rooms. They do it on the second floor, you know. Every chance they get. Every morning.”

  “Oh,” said Beulah, and began to hurry with the rinse. Maybe a little splash of cold water would cool Mrs. Biggs down and make her think twice about what she was saying. But the lady was so heated that even a little rivulet of cold water dripped on her forehead didn’t dampen her fires.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Biggs said fiercely, clenching her fists. “Oh, yes, Beulah, oh, yes, yes, yes. The awful truth is that men are lecherous and treacherous by their very natures. Their natures, mind you, deep down in the depths of their souls! And not just Mr. Biggs, either. Why, do you know, when I went into the Dispatch office this morning to leave an advertisement for the hotel menu, Mr. Dickens tried to kiss me!”

  “Kiss you?”

  Hastily, Beulah squeezed the water out of Mrs. Biggs’ hair. She was seized by an unaccountable and nearly irresistible urge to giggle. Charlie Dickens was a confirmed bachelor who never displayed any interest in women—although Beulah had heard that he might have his eye on Fannie Champaign, who owned the hat shop on the square. And of course, she knew that Mr. Dickens and Mrs. Biggs had been high school sweethearts. But that was decades (and eighty or ninety pounds) ago.

  “Yes, kiss me!” Mrs. Biggs kicked her heels against the stool. “Why, the man was so passionate, he nearly knocked me off my feet. I swear, Beulah, it was all I could do to escape from the place with my virtue intact. As soon as I am pinned up and dried and combed out, I am going straight to the sheriff and swear out a warrant against Mr. Dickens for assault with attempt to molest. I’m sure Bessie Bloodworth will testify to what happened. I bumped into her as I was running away from him this morning. She saw how terribly upset I was.”

  “Oh, dear,” Beulah said faintly, looking down at the sink. The drain was clogged with a large clump of Mrs. Biggs’ hair and the water wouldn’t go down. She turned off the faucet.

  “Oh, dear is right!” Mrs. Biggs was shrill. “And then I am going back to the hotel and wait for that husband of mine to go prancing up to that second floor. I am going to catch him in the act. In the very act, you just wait and see if I don’t.”

  But Beulah wasn’t listening. She was staring in horror at the clogged drain, at the hank of wet hair she was holding in her hand, and at the large and clearly visible bare spot on Mrs. Biggs’ shiny pink scalp.

  Mrs. Biggs stopped talking. Her eyes flew open and she caught sight of the horrified look on Beulah’s face. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Beulah was so dismayed that she almost couldn’t answer. But true beauty could never be served by a lie. She took a deep breath and uttered the terrible truth.

  “It’s your hair, Miz Biggs. It’s falling out!”

  Mrs. Biggs screamed and struggled to sit up. “My hair? My hair is falling out? What have you done, Beulah Trivette? What have you done to my beautiful hair?”

  “I . . . I just shampooed it the way I always do,” Beulah said in a small voice, knowing that a beautician worth her Montgo
mery College of Cosmetology certificate of achievement should never find herself in such a terrible position. “Honest, Miz Biggs, all I did was—”

  Wet hair dripping, Mrs. Biggs boosted herself out of the shampoo chair and ran to the mirror to examine the bare spot on the side of her head. “Just look at what you’ve done!” she shrieked wildly. “Just look!”

  “But I didn’t do anything,” Beulah protested. “I only washed your hair the way I always do and—”

  “I will sue you!” Mrs. Biggs cried. She ripped off her cover-up cape, threw it on the floor, and stamped on it. “I will tell everybody in town that you’ve ruined my hair! I will destroy you. You will never have another customer!”

  Beulah looked down at the hair in her hand, remembering something she had learned in cosmetology school. A suspicion began to form. “Miz Biggs,” she said, “those diet pills you’re taking. What did you say they’ve got in them?”

  “My diet pills are none of your beeswax!” Mrs. Biggs cried hysterically, searching around for her handbag. “And don’t you try to change the subject, Beulah Trivette. I am going to sue you, do you hear? I’ll take you for every penny you’ve got!”

  Beulah carefully laid the hair aside and took a deep breath, thinking that Mrs. Biggs’ response was totally out of proportion. Put it together with the story about her husband fooling around and Mr. Dickens trying to kiss her, and it was beginning to sound as if the poor woman had finally and totally lost all her marbles.

  Was it the Change, which had driven Beulah’s great-aunt Clarice to pick up a butcher knife and attempt to amputate an important feature of great-uncle Abner’s anatomy?

  Or was it an inherited malady? (Beulah had heard that Mrs. Biggs’ mother, Lucretia Dupree, had once spent six months in the State Hospital for the Insane.)

  Or was it—

  Beulah straightened her shoulders. Whatever it was, she had no doubt that Mrs. Biggs, who was well liked and well connected, could do a great deal of damage to her and to the business of beauty to which she had devoted her life.

  “Please sit down, Miz Biggs,” she said as soothingly as she could. “Let’s just get you pinned and dried and try to figure out what’s goin’ on here. I’m sure I can style your hair so nobody will ever know—”

  “So nobody will see that you’ve made my hair fall out?” Mrs. Biggs cried. She picked up a magazine and threw it violently against the mirror. “So nobody will notice that you’ve ruined me forever?”

  “But I didn’t,” Beulah insisted, trying to be reasonable. “I just shampooed you, the way I always do. Please, let’s just—”

  “Let’s just nothing.” Mrs. Biggs located her handbag and snatched it up. “I am leaving! And don’t you try to stop me, Beulah Trivette. I am going to hire myself a lawyer!”

  And with that, she flung open the door and stormed out of the Bower, her hair limp and dripping wet over her shoulders.

  Bettina came running into the room. “Oh, my goodness, what happened?” she asked anxiously. “Where is Miz Biggs going? Is everything all right, Beulah?”

  “No,” Beulah said miserably. “Everything is all wrong, Bettina.” And then it all hit her like the ceiling caving in on her head and she began to cry.

  Bettina put an arm around her and sat her down in the shampoo chair that Mrs. Biggs had so recently vacated. “There, now, you just rest yourself for a minute and cry, honey. A cry will do you a world of good. You just have a good one while I fix us some nice cold lemonade.”

  Bettina was right. Twenty minutes later, after a nice long cry and a cold glass of lemonade, Beulah had a plan. She left Bettina in charge of the Bower and set off to Lima’s Drugstore, on the southwest corner of the courthouse square. There, she went to the pharmacy counter at the back of the store and asked Mr. Lima if he had any of Dr. W. W. Baxter’s diet pills in stock. He took a slender cardboard package off the shelf and handed it to her. Peering at the contents, which were printed in the tiniest of letters, she saw that the pills contained strychnine, arsenic, caffeine, and pokeberries.

  Arsenic! Her suspicion was confirmed. Back at the Montgomery College of Beauty, she had learned that arsenic—even fairly low dosages, over an extended period of time—could make your hair fall out. Strychnine poisoning, she had read somewhere, could result in extreme agitation, anxiety, and delusions.

  Well, that’s exactly how Angelina Biggs had behaved: agitated, anxious, and delusional. The pills were supposed to be safe, of course, and there was such a thing as the Pure Food and Drug Act, which was meant to keep manufacturers on the straight and narrow. But the government couldn’t be everywhere at once, even if it had the best intentions in the world, which it probably didn’t. And mistakes could easily be made in the manufacturing process. For instance, what if somebody dumped too much arsenic into a batch of pills, or too much strychnine, or both? And what if Mrs. Biggs took twice as many as she was supposed to? Or three times as many?

  She glanced at Mr. Lima, a tall, thin man in his early fifties, dressed in a long white coat. He was standing behind the counter, recording a prescription in a ledger. She waited a moment, then cleared her throat. At last he raised his head, looking at her over the tops of his gold-rimmed glasses.

  “Were you wantin’ to purchase those diet pills, Miz Trivette?”

  “No,” she said, and put the package down. “But I’m worried about someone who has purchased them, Mr. Lima. I’m afraid she may be taking too many, and the pills are seriously affecting her health.”

  Mr. Lima pulled his brows together. “Who’s that you’re talkin’ about?” he demanded brusquely. “Directions are printed right there on the package—one a day, ever’ mornin’. And I tell all my customers not to take too many. Arsenic and strychnine—” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Well, you gotta be careful, is all. That’s exactly what I tell anybody who buys these things. Follow the directions and be careful.” A frown. “Who’d you say it was?”

  “It’s Miz Angelina Biggs,” Beulah said, and looked Mr. Lima square in the eye. She added, “Reason I’m worried, Mr. Lima, is her hair’s fallin’ out. I saw it when I shampooed her over at the Beauty Bower, not a half hour ago. And she’s tellin’ some pretty wild stories about a couple of our menfolks here in town. To tell the truth, she sounds like she’s ravin’.”

  With a sigh, Mr. Lima went back to his ledger, running his finger down the page. “Well, it says here that Miz Biggs bought three packages two weeks ago today.” His finger tapped the column. “Three packages, twenty-four pills in each package. I s’pose if you can get a look at those packages, you can count what’s left and tell how many she’s taken. That way, you’d know for sure.”

  Beulah frowned, trying to imagine asking the anxious, agitated, and delusional Mrs. Biggs if she could count her diet pills. “And just how do you suggest that I do that?” she asked.

  Mr. Lima stretched his thin lips in a bleak and unhelpful smile. “That, Miz Trivette, is your problem, not mine.”

  TEN

  Lizzy

  Lizzy prided herself on her ability to manage Mr. Moseley’s office, but that Monday, things happened that seriously challenged her organizational and management skills. It was one of those days when if it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

  For instance, Lizzy was just getting a good start on her “Garden Gate” column (she had written the first two items) when Ophelia dropped in. She came to say that she had delivered Verna and Clyde to the Murphy place and they were comfortably installed in Lucy’s front bedroom. But Ophelia stayed a little longer and then stayed some more, and then finally came out with what was obviously bothering her. She had to find a job.

  “A job?” Lizzy had repeated, surprised. “But—”

  “Please don’t ask why,” Ophelia said miserably. “I just have to get work. I can type sixty words a minute without any mistakes, and I can s
pell, and I can take shorthand. Well, I can with a little practice,” she amended. “I had shorthand, back in high school, and I still have my Gregg book and some old steno pads.” She looked around. “I was wondering . . . that is, do you think Mr. Moseley could use another assistant?”

  Lizzy thought about her workload, the firm’s bank account, and said, regretfully, “I really don’t think so, Ophelia. I can ask Mr. Moseley, but even if we needed the help, which we don’t, we couldn’t afford it.”

  Ophelia sighed. “Well, I had to start somewhere. You were the first person I thought of. Can you come up with any other possibilities?”

  Lizzy frowned. “Jobs are pretty scarce just now. I guess if I were you, I’d look in the Dispatch want ads. Or maybe I’d run a work-wanted ad myself.”

  Ophelia brightened. “That’s a swell idea, Liz. I think I’ll go downstairs and talk to Mr. Dickens about running an ad. I wouldn’t have to put my name in it, would I?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe something like Excellent typist looking for work. Sixty words per minute, no mistakes, also shorthand. Something like that.”

  “I’ll do it,” Ophelia said decidedly. “That’s a lot better than hoofing it from one business to the other, looking for work. That’s so depressing.”

  Lizzy nodded, although she wasn’t sure that a newspaper ad, all by itself, would get Ophelia a job. She’d probably end up hoofing it—and even then, finding something would be a matter of luck, one of those right-place-at-the-right-time things. “I hope you get what you’re looking for,” she said.