Open Season (7 page)

Daisy could be convinced, but she couldn’t be bull-dozed. She gave their proposition a moment’s thought. “I want to try it my way, first. Then, if I’m not satisfied, I’ll find a consultant.”

Having known her all her life, both mother and aunt knew when she’d made up her mind. “All right. But don’t let Wilma do anything to your hair just yet,” Aunt Jo warned. “The damage could be irreversible.”

“Wilma does your hair!” Daisy said indignantly.

“Honey, I don’t let her anywhere near me with chemicals. The things I’ve seen in that beauty shop would make your blood run cold.”

Daisy had a sudden vision of how she would look with green frizz, and decided she’d wait before booking an appointment with Wilma. Maybe she
should
go to one of the bigger cities
to
have her hair done, even though that would mean a trip every month for maintenance, and even more money. Wilma might be bad, but she was cheap.

On the other hand, Wilma might be cheap, but she was bad.

“Remember Normandy,” she muttered.

“Exactly,” said her mother in a tone of satisfaction.

Daisy was stubborn enough that she stopped by the drugstore on the way home and spent an astonishing amount on a small bag of makeup. Mascara, eye-shadow, blush, lip liner, and lipstick barely amounted to enough weight for her to feel them in the sack, but she was twenty-five dollars lighter in the pocket and she hadn’t even bought the good stuff. This project of hers was turning into a real money pit.

She also spent some time researching the beauty magazines, and chose one that seemed to give the most instruction on makeup application. Anyone who could read could learn how to do this, she thought with satisfaction, and went home with her goody bag and instruction manual.

“What did you get?” Aunt Jo demanded as soon as Daisy walked into the house.

“Just the basics.” Daisy listed the contents of the bag. “I don’t want to try anything complicated, like eyeliner, until I get the hang of the other stuff. I’ll put all of this on after supper, and we’ll see how it looks.”

Because it was her birthday, supper was one of her favorites: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans. She was too on-edge to do justice to the meal, though; a lot had happened that day, and her nerves wouldn’t seem to settle down. After the kitchen was cleaned up, her mother and Aunt Jo settled down in front of the television to watch
Wheel of Fortune,
and Daisy went upstairs to put on her brave new face.

She studied the beauty magazine first, studying the correct way to apply eyeshadow: lightest shade under the brow, medium on the lid, dark in the crease. That sounded simple enough. There were diagrams using Audrey Hepburn-type doe eyes as an example. Daisy opened the little container and stared at the four shades of shadow, in various shades of brown. Brown was so dull; maybe she should have gotten the blues or greens, or even the purples. But if she’d gotten the blue, it wouldn’t have matched her green eye, and if she’d gotten the green, it wouldn’t have matched her blue eye. She couldn’t even imagine the purple, so she’d settled for brown.

It seemed as if she’d settled for brown a lot in her lifetime.

She carried her little trove into the bathroom and lined everything up on the vanity. The eyeshadow applicator was a tiny foam-tipped wand; she picked it out of the slot and swiped it across the lightest shade of shadow, then swabbed the color under her eyebrows as directed. She eyed the result in the mirror; well, that was practically unnoticeable. Relief warred with disappointment.

Okay, the next step was the medium shade. There were two medium shades, but she didn’t suppose it mattered which one she chose. She swiped one of the medium shades across one lid and the other on her other lid, so she could compare the two. After a moment of critical examination, she decided she couldn’t tell much difference between them. Her eyes looked more dramatic, though; kind of smoky. Feeling a little excited now, she used the darkest shade in the crease of her lids, but she misjudged the amount of shadow she needed; the resultant dark stripe looked like some kind of tribal marking.
Blend.
The magazine said to blend. Daisy blended for all she was worth, trying to spread that dark stuff around.

Okay, so now she looked more like Cleopatra than she did Audrey Hepburn. All in all, that had been fairly easy. She’d just take it easier with that dark shade the next time.

Mascara came next. Mascara, according to the magazine, gave eyes impact. Enthusiastically she twirled the wand around and around in the tube, then began swiping it on her lashes.

The end result looked as if caterpillars had crawled up on her eyelids and died.

“Oh, no!” she moaned, staring in the mirror. What had she done wrong? This didn’t look anything like the models in the magazine! Her lashes stood out in thick,
clumpy spikes, and whenever she blinked, her upper and lower lashes wanted to stick together. After she had pried them apart the second time, she did her best not to blink.

She would be a coward if she stopped now, wouldn’t she? She had to see this through. Blusher couldn’t be as bad as mascara. She swiped the small brush across the oblong of color, then carefully applied it to her cheeks.

“Gracious,” she whispered, eyeing the little container of color. How could it look so much darker on her face than it did in the container? Her cheeks looked sunburned, except sunburn never attained that exact shade of hot pink.

Grimly she applied the remaining items, the lip liner and lipstick, but she couldn’t tell if it helped the situation or made it worse. All she knew was that the end result was hideous; she looked like a cross between a rodeo clown and something from a horror movie.

She definitely needed help.

Grimly she went downstairs, where
Wheel of Fortune
still spun. Evelyn and Jo stared at her, eyes round and mouths agape, stricken into silence.

“Holy shit,” Aunt Jo finally blurted.

Daisy’s cheeks burned under the blusher, making the color even brighter. “There has to be a trick to it.”

“Don’t be upset,” her mother begged, getting up to put a comforting arm around her. “Most young girls learn by trial and error in their teens. You just never bothered, that’s all.”

“I don’t have time to learn by trial and error. I need to get this nailed down, now.”

“That’s why we suggested a beauty consultant. Think about it, honey; that’ll be the fastest way.”

“Beth could show me how,” Daisy said, inspired.
Her younger sister didn’t slather on the makeup, but she knew how to make the most of her looks. Besides, Beth wouldn’t charge her anything.

“I don’t think so,” Evelyn said gently.

Daisy blinked. Big mistake. Prying her lashes apart, she said, “Why not?”

Evelyn hesitated, then sighed. “Honey, you’ve always been the smart one, so Beth staked out being pretty as her territory. I don’t think she’d handle it very well if you asked her to help you be pretty as well as smart. Not that you aren’t pretty,” Evelyn added hastily, in case she’d hurt Daisy’s feelings. “You are. You’ve just never learned how to show yourself to advantage.”

The idea that Beth might be even the teensiest bit jealous of her was so alien that Daisy couldn’t take it in. “But Beth always got good grades in school. She isn’t a dummy. She’s both smart and pretty, so why wouldn’t she help me?”

“Beth doesn’t
feel
as if she’s as intelligent as you. She finished high school, but you have a master’s degree.”

“She didn’t go to college because she married her high school sweetheart when she was eighteen and settled down to raising a beautiful family,” Daisy pointed out. In fact, Beth had what she herself had always wanted. “Not going was her choice.”

“But you always wonder about the choice you didn’t make,” Aunt Jo pointed out, underlining Daisy’s last thought. “Evelyn just means you shouldn’t put Beth in that position. She’ll feel bad if she turns you down, and if she helps you, it’ll be like wearing wool during the summer: miserable and itchy.”

So much for that idea. Luckily, she had another one.
“I guess I could go to a department store in Chattanooga or Huntsville, and let them do my makeup.”

“Actually,” said Aunt Jo, “we thought of someone right here in Hillsboro.”

“Here?” Puzzled, Daisy tried to think of anyone in Hillsboro who even remotely qualified as a beauty consultant. “Who? Has someone new moved into town?”

“Well, no.” Aunt Jo cleared her throat. “We thought Todd Lawrence would do nicely.”

“Todd Lawrence?” Daisy gaped at them. “Aunt Jo, just because a man’s gay doesn’t mean he qualifies as a beauty consultant Besides, I don’t know if Todd is ‘out.’ I’d hate to upset him by asking, if he isn’t” Todd Lawrence was several years older than she, at least in his early forties, and a very dignified, reserved man. He had left Hillsboro when he was in his early twenties and, according to his doting widowed mother, did quite well for himself on Broadway, but since she never had any newspaper clippings or articles to show mentioning his name, everyone thought it was probably a mother’s fond bias that led her to think he was so successful. Todd had returned to Hillsboro some fifteen years later, to take care of his mother during her last year of life, and since her death had lived quietly and alone in the old Victorian house on the edge of town.

“Oh, he’s ‘out,’ ” Evelyn replied. “For goodness’ sake, he opened an antique and decorator store in Huntsville. And how many straight men know what color mauve is? At Easter, Todd told me how good I look in mauve; remember, that’s what color my dress was this year? And he said it in front of several people. So he’s out.”

“I don’t know,” Aunt Jo said doubtfully. “Mauve isn’t really a good test. What if a man’s wife has had
him looking at paint chips? He might know what mauve is. Now,
puce
would be a real test. Ask Todd about puce.”

“I’m not asking him about puce!”

“Well, other than asking him outright if he’s out, I don’t see how else you’re going to do it.”

Daisy rubbed her forehead. “We’re getting off track. Even if Todd is gay—”

“He is,” both sisters said confidently.

“Okay, he is. That still doesn’t mean he knows anything about makeup!”

“He was on Broadway, of course he knows about makeup. Everyone in the shows wears makeup, gay or not. Besides, I’ve already called him,” Evelyn said.

Daisy groaned.

“Now, don’t take on,” her mother admonished. “He was as nice as he could be, and said of course he’d help you. Just give him a call when you’re ready.”

“I can’t do it,” Daisy said, shaking her head.

“Take another look in the mirror,” Aunt Jo suggested.

Reluctantly Daisy turned her head to look in the mirror over the gas log fireplace. What she saw made her wince, and she surrendered without even another twinge of conscience. “I’ll call him in the morning.”

“Do it now,” Evelyn urged.

D
aisy’s insides jittered nonstop. Setting up an appointment with Todd Lawrence had been nerve-racking, even though he was just as nice as her mother had said. Not only was she still worried he was offended—though if he was, he hid it very well—but there was something so
humiliating
about having to ask for help in something as simple as applying a little bit of makeup. What had she done wrong? She knew she wasn’t stupid, but was she so basically inept at this sort of thing that she was doomed to failure from the start? She could hear the jokes now: Daisy Minor get a husband? Hah-hah; she can’t even put on mascara.

And did she really want a man who couldn’t see the real her, just as she was, but who needed a layer of gloss before he even noticed her?

Well, yes. She’d tried the “real her” way and gained
exactly nothing. Zippo. If she had to gloss herself in order to get what she wanted—namely, a family—then she would gloss as brightly as needed.

Her new awareness of how dowdy she was almost paralyzed her as she was getting ready for work. For once, she hadn’t laid out her clothing the night before, and now she stood in front of the closet staring at the selection of boring skirts and blouses and dresses. She couldn’t bear wearing those, not one more time. She dithered until, for the first time in her life, she ran the very real risk of being late to work. Finally she grabbed a pair of black slacks and pulled them on. She had never before worn pants to work, but that was because of her own stodginess, not any rule by the town council. This was yet another break with her old way of life, and her heart hammered in a combination of fear and excitement. She didn’t have any stylish tops, of course, just her regular, boring white blouses, but she put one on and tucked the hem into the waistband of her slacks, then buckled the belt and slipped her feet into black loafers.

She didn’t dare look in the mirror to check the result, just grabbed her purse and ran downstairs.

Aunt Jo raised her eyebrows when she saw her, but didn’t say anything.

“Well?” Daisy demanded, even more nervous under that silent regard.

Evelyn came out of the kitchen and stared at her daughter. “Nice,” she finally said, nodding her head. “Different. And the pants show the shape of your butt.”

Ohmigod;
now she wouldn’t be able to turn her back to anyone all day long. Aghast, she swiftly checked her watch. There was no time to go change clothes. “Why did you have to say that?” she moaned.

Evelyn smiled. “It’s okay, honey. If I remember correctly,
men are partial to butts. See if you can remember to priss when you walk.”

“Priss,” Daisy repeated numbly, still unable to take in that her mother—her
mother!
—thought it was a good thing for her to show the shape of her butt.

“You know. . . back and forth.” To demonstrate, her mother strolled across the room, her hips swaying in a gentle rhythm that drew attention to her own rear end. The movement was so astonishingly sexy that Daisy was shocked. Her
mother?
Her intellectual, unsophisticated mother?

“But not too much,” Aunt Jo advised. “Or it’ll look like two pigs fighting to get out of a sack.”