What Was I Thinking? (28 page)

Still, to make any sort of profit selling
clothing, I would need mass production capabilities. And all of my own bras had
been made of synthetic fabrics, with molding and stretch and cling. I had no
idea how to make one out of the fabric available here.

I walked on, thinking.
Sunscreen,
sunscreen.
What ingredients would I have access to? Where would I blend
it? What kind of container would I sell it in? Would I have enough money to
make a batch? What could I reasonably charge?

Finally, my various unprotected body parts
complained so much that I caught the Skinker Trolley and went back to Roland
House. I still didn’t want to see anyone, though I was doing pretty well at
ignoring my horrible mistake of the night before and all the associated worries
and fears.

I slipped up to my room unseen, filled my
tooth-brushing tumbler with water from the bathroom tap, and sat down for a
good think and a long drink of water.

I took a moment to kick of my tennis shoes and
pull off my now-sweaty socks, and then, in a moment of inspiration, I unearthed
my shoulder bag from its hiding place in the bottom drawer.

I dug out one of the ballpoint pens I’d dropped
in the day I took it with me to pick up my car. I needed to make notes and if I
could avoid struggling with a fountain pen while I was at
it,
that
would be helpful. I got out the little notebook, too. I would need
a larger notepad soon, but this would do for today and it meant I didn’t have
to talk to anyone or go shopping.

My fingers bumped something in the bottom of
the bag and I pulled it out. Lip gloss! I had completely forgotten it was in
there. Lip gloss with
all natural
sunscreen.
SPF 30.
Now, there was a find. Natural ingredients
would be much more available to me here than anything from a chemical company
and this would have an ingredient list…and the active ingredient was titanium
oxide.
Great.

I, personally, would not call that a natural
ingredient. Sure, it came from the earth—from rutilated quartz, to be precise,
but you couldn’t just dig it up or crush some leaves together to get it.
Deriving titanium oxide from rutilated quartz took a very industrial process,
with chloride, if I remembered correctly. If the process had even been
developed by now, it was unlikely to be available to me.

Drat.

Still, lip gloss was an idea. So was
conditioner, come to think of it. I would try concocting a few recipes for
items I missed and see what worked best. I settled down to make notes, and the
hours flew by. I was very surprised when the dinner bell rang below.

Dinner was uncomfortable, at best. Bert and I
were icily polite to one another and poor Augusta obviously didn’t know what to
do or say. She could tell something was wrong, but she had no idea what.

Eventually, I took pity on her and opened up a
conversation. Well, it was for me, too. I was bursting to talk about my ideas.
“Augusta, I went to the fair today and just walked around and looked at the
vendors. It gave me some notions about products I might develop. I’d love to
discuss them with you, if you would be interested.”

“Why, I’d like that. What kind of products were
you thinking of?” She grinned for just a moment. “You haven’t figured out how
to stir up this Diet Coke stuff you miss so much, have you?”

I laughed. “No, and I wouldn’t dare. You don’t
want to cross the Coca Cola Company. If anyone would travel a century to sue
for patent infringement, they would. No, I had some thoughts about skin
products.
A cream to protect a lady’s face from the sun, and
a clear lip balm that would also protect against the sun, as well as soften the
lips.”

Bert snorted. I ignored him. So did Augusta.
She did such a good job of it, I wasn’t positive she’d heard him.

“That sounds very interesting, Addie. With your
beautiful skin and the way you look so much younger than your age, ladies will
find your endorsement most convincing.”

“Look younger than your age?” Bert again, but
he didn’t sound so rude this time, just baffled.

I looked him in the eye for the first time all
day. “That’s your mother’s opinion, yes,” I said, evenly.

“Nonsense,” he retorted. “If you looked any
younger than you are, the truant officer would be trying to send you to
secondary school. As it is, you’re barely old enough to have finished your
studies.”

I looked at him for a moment. Was it possible
we’d never discussed our ages? I guessed it was. It hadn’t come up. “Bert,” I
said gently, realizing I was probably giving him what he would consider to be
the second extremely nasty surprise of the day, “I’m twenty-nine. I will be
thirty on December fifteenth.”

He dropped his fork and gravy splattered onto
his crisp, white shirt.

* * * *

A week later, I finally faced facts and asked
Augusta about canceling the engagement party. We were in the morning room,
sewing as usual, but I was experimenting with an idea for a bra. When I’d lost
the argument about bras with Janice, back when she had been fitting me for my costume,
she’d told me that the woman who patented the first one had started out with
handkerchiefs and ribbon on her very first design, so I was starting there
myself. I thought grosgrain ribbon would be nice and sturdy for the bottom
band.

Augusta was opposed to the cancelation, which
surprised me. “But Augusta, surely you can see that Bert and I are not suited.
Marriage is clearly out of the question.”

“Nonsense, dear.
All couples have little
squabbles. A few more days and all will be well.”

I sighed. I didn’t want to go into it, but this
was way more than a squabble, and I wouldn’t be doing Augusta—or Bert, or
myself—
any favors by pretending otherwise.

“No,” I said gently, “it’s not. Last week we
discovered things about each other that
neither of us can ignore,
or
reconcile ourselves to. When divorce becomes common, the problem we
have will be called ‘irreconcilable differences.’”

“Oh, surely not!
You told me on our carriage
ride that you loved Bert too much to consider leaving him, and that kind of
love doesn’t disappear overnight. Really, I think you should give it more time,
dear Addie.”

I had said I’d loved Bert and I had meant it.
But how could I love the Bert I’d come to know? On the other hand, maybe the
reason I was alone long after all of my friends were paired off was that I gave
up too easily, or was too picky about men. Maybe, in fact, maybe I quit on
everything when the going got too hard and I needed to break the habit.

Now I didn’t even know my own mind. Just like
an adorable, little lady! I blinked back tears, staring down the sewing in my
hands. Could I still love Bert? Did I? And how would I figure out whether I’d
gotten an infection? And I didn’t
think
I could have gotten pregnant, but there was that joke about what they call
people who use the rhythm system of birth control—parents. I had too much to
worry about and I couldn’t sort it out at all.

I guess I had been quiet for a while, and
Augusta read that as agreement. She pressed her advantage, “We can’t cancel the
party at this late date. And I’m sure you and Bert will have made up by then,
anyway. Let us talk of other things.”

So I nodded, still fighting tears, and the
party, as well as the engagement, stayed in the plans.

She brought up my ideas for a cosmetic
business, no doubt to cheer me up by humoring me. “Have you made any progress
among your experiments? Cook tells me you’ve borrowed ingredients and bowls now
and again.”

“Yes, I have. I hope it hasn’t been a problem.
I don’t really know which ingredients are expensive and which common and I
really don’t want to be demanding.”

She waved a hand. “Do not let it trouble you,
child. I know it is crass to speak of money—and you have hinted that it is
where you come from as well—but I am a very, very wealthy lady with little to
amuse myself. You are welcome to anything the household can provide—the more so
if I can join in some of the fun.”

I smiled. It felt like the first time since I
woke up in Bert’s bed that horrible morning. “I would love to have your help.
Experiments go much better with a partner to consult. And thank you for your
generosity,” I added as an afterthought.

“To tell you the truth, I have started out
trying to replace items I miss the most—aside from my soda, that is.” We both
smiled at that.

“And what would that be? I cannot say that I’ve
heard you speak of missing anything else. In fact, you never complain about
what must be a very difficult adjustment for you.”

That was nice to hear. I felt as if I
were
constantly complaining, but apparently I had managed to
keep it all inside, as I intended. Good thing she couldn’t read thoughts.

“What I miss the most is something we called
conditioner. It was a hair product, used after washing, to smooth out the hair
and make it easier to comb out tangles.”

“Have you had any luck? Mrs. Horner tells me
you’ve had spices, teas, fruits, and oils—oh, and mayonnaise—all on different
days, many of them boiling or made into tea. I confess I’ve been very curious
about what could be made from such a mixture.”

“Well! I’ve had varied success, but it wasn’t
all for the same project. I am used to conditioner made from chemicals, by big
companies, but the fashion magazines used to give advice on how to make various
products from kitchen ingredients and I’ve been trying to remember the recipes.

“Mayonnaise is supposed to be good conditioner,
especially when mixed with avocado. I tried mayo by itself, but I wasn’t very
happy with the results. Olive or sunflower oil are also recommended for
conditioning. Mrs. Horner let me have a little olive oil, and it
did
condition my hair, but it was too
much. My hair seemed all greasy afterward and I had to wash it over and over to
get it clean. I think it will take a lot of experimentation to come up with a
product that works and doesn’t make a horrible mess of both the kitchen and the
bathroom.”

“And the teas and fruits and
spices?
Are they good for this conditioning?”

“Some of them are to make the products smell
better and can be added to a conditioning oil or to the castile soap to make a
more luxurious shampoo, but most of them I’ve been using to try to save my hair
color.”

“Save your hair color?”

“Yes, to keep my grey roots from showing too
obviously. You know how upset Bert is about my age. Imagine if he started to
notice grey hair!”

“Hmm. Trouble indeed. Have you had any luck?”

“I’m not sure. It looks okay to me, but I think
I might be kidding myself. I was wondering if you would take a look at my hair
in bright sunlight and give your opinion.”

“By all means!
Let’s adjourn to the solarium
directly! It should be very bright in there just now.” Augusta dropped her
embroidery into its basket, on the floor beside her chair, with obvious
eagerness.

I couldn’t help smiling. “Augusta, I suspect
you of wanting to abandon your needlework.”

“Oh, yes my dear! What dreary tasks with which
we fill the days! Come now and tell me of your experiments while we determine
the results.”

And so we went into the solarium, locked the
door behind us, and I unpinned my hair. I set a chair directly in the glare of
the morning sun, and bowed my head, encouraging Augusta to examine my part, and
then re-part my hair to look at roots in other sections. While she was doing
it, I explained that I had been rinsing my hair weekly in a mixture of rosemary
and sage that had been steeped in hot water for hours and then stored in a
fruit jar that Mrs. Horner had been kind enough to provide.

“It’s supposed to restore natural color to hair
that’s gone grey,” I explained. “But I don’t understand how the mixture would
know what color the hair used to be, so I’m very confused.”

At last she was finished and sat down beside me
in another pretty, wicker chair.

“What do you think?” I
asked,
all nerves. “The chamomile tea and the lemon are also for the hair color—they
are for two different recipes for brightening blonde hair—but I haven’t tried
them yet. I thought if just restoring the grey…”

“It looks very nice, dear.”

I gave her a look. It wasn’t anywhere near as
fierce as the one that had stopped Bert in his tracks, but it was a quelling
look, all the same. “Augusta, don’t let me make a fool of myself. I’m relying
on you to tell me whether I’ve covered my grey sufficiently, or I need to try a
different
recipe,
or whether it’s hopeless and I need
to wear turbans until all my hair is uniformly grey.”

She grinned at me. She wasn’t as easy to quell
as her son. “Okay, then.” She stopped to grin some more. “I sound just like
you, don’t I?”

I narrowed my eyes at her, to absolutely no
effect.