Isle of Palms

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “My ex-husband is as gay as a goose and he loves to create . . . I don’t know, scenery?”

  “He’s what?”

  “Listen, Bettina, here’s what I’m thinking. This salon has gotta have the seal of confession between us girls. We’re gonna be living together, right? We’re all gonna be telling each other everything sooner or later. So, yeah, my ex-husband is gay, but there’s a story that goes with it. . . .”

  “I’ll bet there is!”

  “And, I’ll tell you all about him and me. Eventually. In fact, he’s coming in this morning. You’ll adore him. Everyone does.”

  “Jeez, my Bobby thinks decorating is the same thing as making a pyramid outta his empty beer cans! Right? Ain’t it the truth?”

  Bettina began to laugh and sort of snort like crazy and her whole little body shook when she did. It was the kind of contagious laughter that I had been starving for, but I sure hated to think about her cussing in front of clients. I never did that and I hoped she wouldn’t. I made us two cups of coffee and handed one to her. We clinked the rims and toasted.

  “Welcome to Anna’s Cabana,” I said. “My husband and daughter changed the name.”

  “You’re shitting me, right?”

  “I never shit anybody, Bettina, and never say ‘shit’ in front of the clients or you gotta put a dollar in the cussing box.”

  “No problem. You ain’t gonna get my money.”

  “Good! Mine either!” Well, I thought, I hope that takes care of that! “Yeah, so they changed the name and ordered a new sign. Sign’s supposed to be coming this morning. Then we’ll have two. This one’s neon, no less. We’re gonna have a little confusion over that, but I figured what the heck. They were so excited and full of beans over it and I don’t care too much.”

  “I woulda done the same thing. After all, they built you a movie set and everything.”

  “Exactly!”

  “Shit! I got it! Here’s what we gotta do! We gotta make T-shirts! We can sell ’em! On the front they can read ANNA’S CABANA and on the back we can put FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE PALMS SALON AND SPA FOR ABOUT FIVE MINUTES!”

  “Definitely!” Definitely not!

  Well, I thought, shoot. I’m holding a one-way ticket to Tacky Town and the train’s leaving the station. Too late to get a refund. Maybe everything would all work out fine. I sure hoped so because I had everything I owned—and didn’t own—riding on it. I showed her how to use the coffeemaker and then we began arranging our work areas. It was about eight-fifteen when Brigitte arrived.

  Brigitte was the total opposite of Bettina and that was probably a good thing. Too many nut bags in my tiny cabana would drive me out of my mind. She swung in the door and stood there looking around in astonishment, which I completely expected.

  “Okay. Help me here. Am I in the right place?”

  “It’s a long story, but yeah, you’re in the right place. Pretty crazy, huh?”

  Brigitte was quiet for a few minutes while she thought about her response—a quality I would no doubt come to value, given the velocity of Bettina’s mouth.

  “Yeah, but you know what? Every single salon in Charleston looks the same—boor-ing! This place has personality!” She took the cup of coffee I handed her and gave a low whistle at the bamboo walls and waiting area. “I like it; I really do. In fact, I like it a whole lot! It reminds me of a boutique from the seventies or something, but, like, these lights and everything are from The Jetsons. You know what I mean? The real question is when did you do all of this?”

  “My ex-husband is a Whirling Dervish. He got a bunch of friends of his together and they went insane.”

  “Tell ’em the next time they get bored they can take it out on my house! Man!”

  “You can tell him yourself; he’ll be here shortly.”

  Brigitte was a total professional. You could tell by the way she dressed. She wore black linen trousers and black leather slides with a starched white linen shirt. Somehow, she wasn’t wrinkled, a miraculous feature given the humidity. Her collar was open and her sleeves were rolled up. Her makeup was natural looking, and her brown bob was shining and moving. This was a woman of some no-nonsense style who could handle anybody—meaning an irate client—with a cool head. I hoped.

  At eight-thirty, in rolled the rest of the troops—Emily, Jim, and Lucy.

  “Hey! I brought Krispy Kreme doughnuts! Y’all come have one!” Lucy said.

  Everybody said hello, everybody had a doughnut, and, inside of thirty minutes, we had our first client in Brigitte’s chair and another at Bettina’s table. Jim, who had clearly established himself as everyone’s darling, hooked up the stereo. Pretty soon Frank Sinatra songs filled the air with nostalgia and romance.

  I was combing out Mary Meehan’s freshly washed hair when the door opened wide and who stood in the entry but Miss Mavis.

  “I’ve come to make an appointment with Anna for a wash and set,” she said to Lucy. “Does she do pin curls?”

  You could tell by the way she held herself she didn’t much like having to deal with Lucy.

  “Well, hey, Miss Mavis!” Lucy said. “If you want to maybe read the paper for a few minutes, I’ll bet she could squeeze you in right away.”

  “Not today?” Miss Mavis said, and leaned in to hear what Lucy had said repeated.

  “I said, Yes! She can take you in a few minutes! Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll get you a cup of coffee?”

  Unfortunately, Lucy’s reply was a little too loud for Miss Mavis.

  “You don’t have to shout, young lady, I’m not deaf, you know.” Miss Mavis drew herself up in a huff and turned away, taking a seat on the far side of the reception area.

  I took a deep breath and rested my hands on the back of the chair for a moment. I had known my client, Mary Meehan, forever.

  She giggled a little and said, “Who in the world is that woman?”

  “She’s my next-door neighbor.” I just shook my head. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  I went up front as fast as I could. Miss Mavis was sitting in a knot, as far away from Lucy as possible. If body language could be used as a weapon, Lucy would have been missing a limb. I sat down beside her. I knew now that when I talked to her I had to be sure she was watching my mouth as I spoke. I took her hands into mine and I said to her what I thought she needed to hear from someone who cared about her sensitivity.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Miss Mavis! What a wonderful surprise! I just need ten minutes, okay?”

  “That’s fine,” she said, “and I think I would be glad to have that cup of coffee now. Just black.”

  Lucy, whose face was tomato red, jumped up to get it. Miss Mavis shot her another blow dart.

  “You just stay right there, Lucy. Anna will get it for me, won’t you, dear?”

  I already had the pod in the machine and the coffee was beginning to drip. I winked at Lucy, which made her feel somewhat better, and smiled at Miss Mavis.

  “How about a doughnut?” I said to her.

  “Oh, I couldn’t!” she said, waiting for the slightest encouragement.

  “Come on,” I said. “They’re still warm.”

  “Well, all right. One can’t hurt much. Gotta keep my figure, you know.”

  I handed her the coffee and a doughnut on a napkin and went back to Mary, who was deeply engrossed in a cell phone call with her husband.

  “Just put Sophie in the house,” she said.

  Sophie was her dog, not her daughter.

  “Sorry!” I whispered to her.

  “That’s okay.”

  I started to blow out her hair and noticed in the reflection of the mirror that Emily was standing around doing nothing. When I was through with Mary, Emily and I were due for a chat. It made me crazy when she did this. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, as Sister Guilt used to say. If there was one thing I truly detested, it was sullen teenagers standing around collecting attitude like metallic filings. She needed to find something to do or else she was
going to drive me crazy.

  “Emily? Honey? Go get Daddy, okay?”

  Jim was in the back unpacking another box of something he had bought to enhance the Cabana. He came over with four bottles of hair product.

  “This stuff is guaranteed to keep your hair straight like the runway girls,” he said.

  “Yeah, sure!” Mary said. “In this weather?”

  “Well, we’ve got that spray, you know,” I said, not really paying attention. “Is that shampoo?”

  “Heads up, just for a minute. That’s salon talk, you know.” Jim gave one of his irresistible grins that made Mary swoon a little. “First, you wash with this.” He held out the open bottle for me to smell.

  “Fruit cocktail!” I said. “God! You could drink it!”

  “Lemme smell!” Mary said. “Wow! I love that!”

  “Then, you apply this serum and this conditioner that you rinse after five minutes,” he said. “Last, you spray one shot of this stuff on the roots and comb it through. They swear it gives you flat straight hair that shines like glass.”

  “Where’d you get this stuff?” I said.

  “Why should I tell you?” he said with a wink. “Actually, if Mary will be the guinea pig, and if this stuff works, I was thinking you might want this to be your salon private label shampoo and treatment line. They do it for curls too!”

  “Straighten me out,” Mary said. “I’m game.”

  And so Mary got straight hair and Miss Mavis got pin curls and then I asked Jim to show Emily how to use a broom, which she began to use.

  “You want spending money for the summer, don’t you?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, shocked that someone of her intelligence had to push a broom to pay for her henna tattoos and eyebrow studs. “I guess so.”

  “Well, it’s the best I can offer you. You can take lunch orders for clients, straighten out perm rods, Windex the glass shelves, keep the magazines straight.”

  “Anything else?”

  “If I think of it, I’ll let you know.”

  She didn’t really mind being in the salon. She was more or less pretending to be put upon. In addition, considering her loss of funding from Trixie, she wasn’t about to argue. Lastly there was Lucy, the direct link to David and therefore a social life. David had a job at Barnes & Noble in Towne Centre for the summer. I imagined they would wind up seeing each other after work. My secret was that I hoped David being around would cause her to change her hair color back to blond. It wasn’t that I had anything against her experimenting with hair color. How could I? It was that she looked more like me when her hair was its natural color and I wanted that association to be more obvious.

  The phone rang all day and at about three o’clock, a delivery man from Abide-A-While showed up with a palm tree with a stuffed toy monkey hanging from one of its limbs.

  The card read:

  Let’s monkey around!

  Congratulations and good luck!

  Love, Arthur

  Well! I said to myself, this is a good omen. A promising one.

  I called him to thank him.

  “You didn’t have to do that, but I loved it. Thanks.”

  “Well, I just thought you needed to know what was on my mind.”

  It had been so long since I’d been pursued by an eligible man, that I couldn’t find words to respond. I could feel myself blushing.

  Finally I said, “Yeah. So? Um, well?” There I was, the adult with the cool head, reduced to a pigtailed schoolgirl with Band-Aids on her skinned knees, stuttering.

  “Well put. So how’s your first day going?”

  I knew he was snickering at me, which only made me feel all the more lamebrained.

  “Really good. Yeah, really good. Lucy brought in doughnuts.”

  What a stupid thing to say! Tell him how much you loved the walk on the beach last night. Tell him how you thought about him when you were trying to sleep. Hellfire, girl! Doughnuts?

  “Krispy Kreme.”

  “Well, that’s pretty special.”

  Dead silence.

  “You there?” I said.

  “Anna?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I can’t get you out of my mind.”

  “Shit. Me either.”

  Bettina perked up from her table. “That’s one dollar,” she said. I could see her shoulders shake with laughter.

  “I want to see you later, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, “me too. Around nine?”

  “Sure. I’ll pick you up.”

  I hung up the phone and looked around. Bettina, her client, Lucy, Brigitte, Jim, and Emily were all staring at me.

  “Holy hell,” Emily said, “Mom’s in love.”

  “One dollar!” Bettina said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I have a date. Period.”

  “Sit,” Brigitte said. “I’ll blow out your hair.”

  “I’ll do you a manicure,” Bettina said.

  “Anna,” Jim said, “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Where are you going?” I said. Was he jealous?

  “Berlin’s, honey,” he said, “you need a dress!”

  Before I could stop him, he was out the door. He wasn’t jealous. He was a generous saint.

  “I wish I had an ex-husband like him,” Brigitte said.

  “Don’t we all?” Bettina said.

  I had two more clients that afternoon, and three walk-ins showed up from the real estate office in our shopping center. Bettina left at five and Brigitte was all done at six.

  “Not bad for a first day,” Brigitte said as she straightened up her station. “I’m too tired to eat and that usually means I worked! Anna. I think this is going to be a very busy place!”

  “Thanks. I kept having nightmares that I opened for business and nobody came—you know, like that lonely Maytag repair guy?”

  “Hardly. I think we had better find two more stylists and quick! When June rolls around and all the touristas show up, this place is gonna be a crazy house.”

  “I hope you’re right! Tourists! Ugh!”

  “The girls from the real estate office threatened to tell all their renters about us.”

  “Well, we gotta take the good with the bad, I guess. See you tomorrow.”

  Overall it had been a promising day. I began the business of closing details—wiping out the sinks, wiping down the counters. Emily was helping me.

  “Daddy never came back,” she said.

  “Call his cell,” I said. “Tell him if he doesn’t get here, I’ll just meet him at home.”

  “Okay,” she said and went up front to call.

  Lucy came toward the back sinks where I was trying not to chip my French manicure that I adored.

  “Here’s your appointment list for tomorrow,” she said. “I gave this one an extra half hour because she wants a perm or highlights or something that sounded like it needed more time.”

  “Good plan,” I said, “thanks.” Then I looked at the list. My day started at eight and I was booked solid until seven. “You trying to kill me?”

  “No, just protecting my investment!” she said. “Don’t y’all think it’s time for cocktails? Oh, Emily? David called and he wants to know if you want to go to the movies tonight. I told him yes, you would. Is that okay with you?”

  Now all eyes turned to Emily, whose face was stricken with panic.

  “Sure,” she said, “why not?” She went to the powder room, closed the door, turned on the fan, and screamed.

  “AAAAUUUUUWWWWW! I hate grown-ups!”

  Lucy and I burst out laughing. The door opened and she came out.

  “I’m fine now,” she said with a decided smirk of delight over her date with David.

  “Good,” I said, “let’s get out of here. We’ve got hearts to break.”

  Twenty-three

  Long Walk off a Short Pier

  JIM showed up at the house around seven, loaded with enough shopping bags to kill a camel. I was just getting rea
dy to serve another gourmet dinner (“gourmet” meant to be humorous) of this crazy pasta that Emily loved when she was a little girl. First, you fry four pieces of bacon until it’s really crispy and then drain it. In some of the same grease—not too much or your heart will explode—you cook a chopped onion and dissolve a chicken cube. Then, you throw in a can of tomatoes and crumble the bacon back in it. Cook and drain the pasta, throw it in the sauce, stir around some Parmesan cheese, and, baby child, it’s Yum Yum Time.

  Add frozen garlic bread, salad in a bag, and I’m feeling like the fastest cook in the East, or something. Oh, yes, I was swimming in the excellence of the day. New business, possibly a new boyfriend, and here was Jim to change my image with something wonderful to wear.

  “Okay, girls! Gather ’round! Gather ’round! Daddy’s home with lots of goodies for his women!” He threw the bags on the floor and himself on the couch. “I’m dead. All my bones ache! My feet are arthritic! I’m an old, old man. Wow!”

  He played dead, bringing on a fit of giggles from Emily. Moody as she could be, Jim knew the exact location of her funny bone.

  I poured him a glass of wine and brought it to him. “Here, precious!”

  “Did you buy me something too?” Emily said.

  “You know I did!”

  Emily pulled off his shoes and rubbed his foot and I took his other foot and tickled the sole.

  “Stop! That drives me nuts!” He laughed and tried to twist away from us. “Why do you vixens torture me like this?”

  “Oh? You’re ticklish?” I said. “I’m sorry, honey! I didn’t know that!” Then I rubbed his foot. “You hungry?”

  “I could eat a horse,” he said and sat up. “Actually, I ate horse once. It was quite good. It’s a delicacy in some places, you know.”

  Emily looked at him hard, searching for the liar within. Realizing he was speaking the truth she said, “Euuu. Euuu. Euuu. Gross.”

  “For this I spend a fortune in tuition? Euuu? Let’s eat.”

  “Eat first, review the booty later?” Jim said.

  “Yeah, it’s getting cold.”

  We served our plates in the kitchen and remarked on what a good thing it was that we were all on the skinny side.