by Gail Rock
I was moping along the sidewalk staring at the scuffed toes of my saddle shoes when I heard a car horn toot just behind me. I looked around and there he was. Mr. Davenport was pulling up beside me in his neat, tan Chevrolet convertible. He rolled down the window and leaned across the front seat.
“Hi, Addie.”
“Hi, Mr. Davenport!” I said, wishing I had worn my good coat and hat.
“Can I give you a lift anywhere?” he asked. “It’s freezing!”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said, and got into the car. He had stopped to give us kids a lift before, but this was the first time I had ever been alone in the car with him. If only I had met him coming home from Irene’s when I looked better.
“Which way are you going?” he asked.
“I’m just going over to Irene Davis’s to have my hair done,” I said, trying to sound as though I did it every day.
He smiled.
“Getting ready for the big night?”
“What big night?” I asked, trying to be blasé.
“The Valentine’s Dance!” he laughed.
“Oh,” I said. “That! It’s all so childish.”
“It’ll be fun,” he said.
“I don’t even know if I want to go,” I said. “I might just drop by for a little while and see what’s happening.”
“Well, there’s a reason I want you to be there,” he said, looking over at me.
“What?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you at the dance,” he said, and smiled.
I smiled back at him, trying to be casual, but my heart nearly stopped. What could he want to tell me? It had to be something special—something he was saving for an occasion like the Valentine’s Dance. Maybe he had finally realized that I was much more mature than my thirteen years, and we would have a heart–to–heart talk. I felt almost as though he had asked me for a date.
We pulled up in front of Irene’s house, and I jumped out.
“Well, see you at the dance,” I said.
“Right,” he said, and drove off, waving to me as he turned the corner.
I was so elated over this new turn of events in my relationship with Mr. Davenport that I almost forgot why I had come to Irene’s that afternoon. As I knocked on the door, I was busy daydreaming about what a new hair-do was going to do for me. It would make me look a lot older—with any luck at least sixteen. And with that and my high heels and new dress, Mr. Davenport couldn’t help but be impressed.
Suddenly Irene opened the door, and my fantasy evaporated. There she was in her pink smock, swept-up blond hair and open-toed wedgies, with bright red toenails poking out. I could not believe that my father would have anything to do with this woman.
“Hi, Addie,” she said in a friendly tone of voice.
I had never been to her salon before, but she knew me because Clear River was such a small town that most of the 1,500 people knew the other 1,499.
I returned her greeting, feeling a little uncomfortable. I had to find out more about her, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it.
“I was sure surprised when you made an appointment,” she said. “You’ve never been in before.”
“Oh, I’ve never even had a permanent before,” I said. “But we’ve got a big Valentine’s Dance tomorrow, and I wanted my hair to look different.”
“I’ll be at that dance,” said Irene. “I’m gonna play the piano for the King and Queen ceremony.”
I looked over at her. Could that have been the dance she wanted my father to go to? I hoped she wouldn’t jazz up the music too much and ruin the dance.
“How’s your grandma?” she asked.
“Oh, she’s fine.”
“And your dad?”
“Fine,” I said tensely. I was supposed to find out about her, and she was giving me the third degree.
“Did your dad suggest you come over here for a permanent?”
I looked startled. What a question! That showed how little she knew about my father!
“Gosh, no!” I said. “He doesn’t even want me to have a permanent. He thinks they’re stupid!” That would stop her.
Irene gave me an odd look in the mirror.
“Well, you know how men are,” she said cheerfully. “They don’t know anything about what it takes for us to look glamorous.”
I didn’t like her including me in that “us.” I had no intention of ever looking anything like her.
She motioned me to a chair in front of the mirror, and I plopped down and looked around the room as she got her equipment together. There were a couple of big, silver, bullet-shaped hair dryers on one wall, a shampoo sink with a mirror over it, several mismatched chairs, and a coffee table covered with movie magazines. There were photos of swanky, movie-star hair-dos on the wall, and a little rolling table which held every imaginable color of nail polish. Over in one corner was an evil-looking electric permanent machine with wires and clamps dangling from it. I eyed it with some misgivings. On the counter in front of me was a garish, gold-plated trophy of a Greek goddess with wings. I inspected it closely. It was engraved “Mrs. Irene Davis, Third Prize Hair Styling, Nebraska State Cosmetologists Convention, 1947.”
I was a little relieved to see that. At least she had some talent. I thought again about how glamorous I would look when she finished.
Irene unbraided my hair and brushed it out.
“My, you sure got pretty hair, Addie.”
“Thank you,” I said, watching her every move carefully in the mirror.
“Well, we’re gonna fix you up real fine for the big dance. Let’s see if we can find a style you’d like.”
She brought over a huge hairstyle book, and as the two of us leafed through it she discussed the merits of some of the various hair-dos.
“Rita Hayworth wore that in her last film,” she said about one glamorous, swept-up style.
I glanced up at Irene in the mirror and saw that it was almost like her own.
“No,” I said distastefully. “That’s too overdone.”
Irene laughed.
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess it’s too much for somebody your age.”
Her remark annoyed me. I hoped she didn’t think I was just a kid.
“Well, I do want something that will make me look older,” I said worriedly.
She smiled.
“Not too old,” she said. “I think we can come up with something you’ll like—something that looks like you but just a little more sophisticated.”
“Yeah,” I said happily. “Exactly.”
She moved me over to the shampoo sink and tilted my chair back and started washing my hair.
“So how do you like being in the seventh grade?” she asked.
“OK,” I said, squinting to keep the soap out of my eyes.
“You’ve got that Mr. Davenport for a teacher, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“He’s a cute one, huh?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. I thought it was disgusting! Calling a grown man like Mr. Davenport “cute.” Billy Wild might be “cute,” but Mr. Davenport was handsome.
“Like having a man teacher for a change?”
“Yeah,” I said again. I suddenly wondered if Dad had said something about me to her, or if he knew about my feelings for Mr. Davenport. Then I thought it was unlikely. I had never mentioned it to him, and even though Grandma had caught on, I doubted that she told Dad.
“Is he a good teacher?” Irene asked.
“Oh, sure, he’s great!” I said enthusiastically. Then I realized again she was finding out more and more about me, and I hadn’t been getting anywhere with my investigation of her.
“How long have you been in business?” I blurted out.
“Me?” she said, surprised. “Oh, about six or seven years now. Let’s see—seven years in April! Golly, it doesn’t seem that long to me.”
She rinsed my hair and sat me upright again.
“You don’t want a manicure, do you?” she asked.
I looked at my hands and quickly hid them under the apron she had draped over me. I would need to do something about my nails before seeing Mr. Davenport at the dance, but I would do it myself. I didn’t want Irene to see what my hands looked like from playing basketball in gym class and messing around in my paints.
Anyway, I thought all that stuff about make-up and manicures was a little confusing, and I didn’t want Irene to know how ignorant I was. The other girls’ mothers helped them with such things, but Grandma wasn’t up on the latest styles, and I had to be more observant than most girls to learn how to put myself together.
I watched as Irene put lotion and curlers on my hair and wound each one tightly to my scalp. She was very intense about it and seemed to be concentrating very hard.
“How can you stand to do this over and over all day long?” I asked. “Don’t you get bored?”
She gave me a surprised look in the mirror. “Gosh, no!” she said. “I think it’s real creative, trying to help all different kinds of people look their best.”
“I never thought of it that way,” I said.
“Well, it’s just like any other job,” she went on. “You get out of it just what you put into it. If you’re enthusiastic, then people like you and like what you do, and you have a good time, and it’s just that simple.”
Her enthusiasm numbed me, and I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“You remember to tell your grandma hello from me,” Irene said. “I always thought she was such a fine person. She’s sure done a wonderful job of raising you since your momma died.”
I was going to reply, but Irene rattled on.
“Course a girl your age would like to have a younger woman around once in a while I suppose, to help with clothes and make-up and hair and all that …”
She was watching me in the mirror as she said that, and I wondered how she knew what I had been thinking a few moments before. She couldn’t have guessed; she was just making a brazen hint. I wondered if she had tried to use that line on my dad.
“No,” I said, very cool. “Grandma’s done very well by me. I don’t think it matters what age she is.”
“Well, that’s a wonderful thing to say,” Irene said, but she didn’t sound particularly convinced.
I tried once more to launch my investigation.
“What do you do in your spare time?” I asked. “You have any hobbies or anything?”
She looked a bit surprised at the question. “Me?” she said. “Oh, gosh … nothing special. I bowl once a week, and I love to dance,” she laughed. “Like to kick up my heels.”
I gave her a disgusted look which she couldn’t see.
Then she did what I was dreading. She moved me over by the electric permanent machine.
“So you do the permanent on this?” I asked apprehensively.
“Yep, this is the monster,” she said, laughing. “We hook you up and plug you right in.”
“You have any special training for this?” I asked. “A license or anything?”
“Just beauty school,” she said.
“Looks like it would burn your head off,” I said nervously.
“Haven’t lost a customer yet,” Irene said cheerfully, and started hooking one of the machine’s metal clamps to each curler on my head.
She turned on the machine, gave me a pat on the shoulder, shoved a movie magazine into my hands, and went on about her work across the room.
I sat there stiff as a board, expecting to be electrocuted any minute and wondering if the result was going to be worth all this trouble.
Chapter Six
The afternoon of the Valentine’s dance I must have changed my mind twenty or thirty times about whether I was going. One minute I imagined how glamorous I’d be—sweeping into the gymnasium in my new dress and high heels. Everyone would marvel at how much older and more mature I looked. Mr. Davenport would look at me and smile and ask me to dance and tell me what he had been waiting to tell me all this time.
The next minute I saw myself slouching into the gym all alone, with everyone whispering and glancing at the only wallflower there without a date. My dress and shoes and hair would look all wrong, and Mr. Davenport would have to struggle not to laugh when he saw me trying to be grown-up.
I kept hoping I would suddenly come down with the flu or measles or something so the decision would be taken out of my hands, but I was disgustingly healthy.
Grandma, who had a strong stubborn streak and a very direct way of dealing with any opposition, was having none of my indecision. She forced me into a kitchen chair that afternoon and wet my newly permanented hair and rolled it up in rag curlers. I jiggled and jerked around in my chair.
“Hold still,” Grandma said. “You’re nervous as a cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs.”
I laughed in spite of myself. Grandma knew her old country expressions always tickled me, and she would dredge them up at crucial moments to relieve the tension. I would always try to think of one to answer with, and then it would become a game as we batted them back and forth. She almost always won.
“Steady as a rock,” I said, holding out my hands.
“Shakin’ like a leaf,” she answered.
“Cool as a cucumber,” I said.
“Hotter than a two-dollar pistol,” she said, hand on my forehead.
“Calm as a—uh—calm as a … a … clam!” I said.
“That ain’t a sayin’!” she laughed.
“Yes it is!”
“Never heard of it,” she said.
“I just made it up!” I said.
“Don’t count!” said Grandma.
“Oh, phooey!” I said irritably. “Aren’t you finished?”
“Addie,” she said quietly. “Just calm down. Everything’s going to go just fine.”
I wanted to believe her.
I ran around with my hair in curlers for the rest of the afternoon, helping Grandma put the finishing touches on my dress and making sure her best rhinestone bracelet looked OK with it. My dress was a pale pink taffeta. It was very chic and understated, I thought, and made me look very mature. In my more positive moments, I expected everyone at the dance would comment on how I had aged, seemingly overnight.
After dinner, I started my final preparations. I put on my best white slip, a new pair of nylon stockings, and my hated garter belt.
As far as I could tell, garter belts had been invented by the same people who had thought up medieval torture instruments. My garter belt was a disgusting, flesh-colored satin, and fastened about the waist with hooks and eyes in the back. Since you could never hope to fasten hooks and eyes without seeing them, you had to put the garter belt on backwards, hook it over your stomach, and then wrestle it around so that the hooks were in the back.
That left three long strips of elastic dangling down each leg, to fasten your stockings to. Each strip of elastic had a pink rubber knob and metal clamp on the end. The trick was to capture the top of your nylon stocking over the pink knob and then press the knob into the metal clamp before the stocking slipped off the knob or the elastic slipped out of your hand and snapped up and hit you in the face.
To add to the confusion, the strips of elastic were adjustable up and down, and there were three different lengths of stockings you could buy. So you had to work out the right combination of stocking length and elastic adjustment for your particular legs or else your stocking would droop down around your ankles like elephant skin, or they would be held so taut by a too-short elastic that you would have to walk all bent over like the hunchback of Notre Dame.
If that wasn’t enough, you also had to worry about the seams in the back of your stockings being straight up and down. In order to do that, you had to see the back of your entire leg from ankle to thigh all at the same time while holding your leg straight and simultaneously keeping a firm grasp on the rear elastic strip of your garter belt with one hand and a firm grasp on your stocking top with the other hand. There was, obviously, no way in the world anyone could do
all of that at the same time. I hated garter belts.
After a lot of wrestling with the stockings, the seams appeared fairly straight, and I pulled on my old chenille bathrobe and started putting on make-up. It would be the first time I had ever worn any in public, though we practiced using it at slumber parties.
I stood in front of the bedroom mirror, squinting a bit to see without my glasses. Grandma watched closely at my elbow, and Dad stood in the doorway looking apprehensive.
“Thought they didn’t wear war paint until high school,” he said.
“Well, this is a special occasion,” Grandma answered.
I was concentrating hard, trying to pat some of Grandma’s loose powder on my face and raising a cloud of powder dust that nearly choked me. When the air cleared, Grandma handed me a hanky and suggested I wipe off a bit of it.
Then I used some of her cream rouge to color my cheeks a bit, and she watched closely to see that I didn’t use too much and look like a “painted woman.”
The next step was lipstick—a brand new tube of “Ruby Red” I had bought at the Clear River Pharmacy that morning.
I started coloring in my lips very carefully, rolling them around over my teeth as I had seen women do, trying to draw a straight line.
“Looks a little heavy on the left side to me,” Dad said.
“Not through yet,” I said, mumbling through my facial contortions.
I was twisting this way and that, trying to see, almost holding my head upside down. “The light in here is awful!” I said irritably.
“Try not to get any on your teeth,” Grandma said helpfully.
“Can’t do it if you talk to me!” I said, annoyed.
I finished and mushed my lips around together to even out the color, then made a big puckery mouth at myself in the mirror.
“Oh, boy!” said Dad. “I can’t take any more.” He turned and left the room.
