Since I’m speechless from shock and dismay, Mr. Cantwell keeps talking. “Aren’t there lyrics from a Broadway musical to that effect, Ohio? You should know all about that. ‘Anything you can do, she can do better.’ Something like that.”
Somehow I find my voice. “ ‘Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.’ Composed by Irving Berlin for Annie Get Your Gun.”
“You’re a regular compendium of information, Ohio. I’ve got to give you that. But when it comes to providing a testimonial, you’d be better off if your memory were less good.”
“Maybe I could meet with the lawyers again—”
“No need. Wyoming will touch down at JFK in a matter of minutes. As soon as she gets to the Four Seasons—”
He’s putting her up at the Four Seasons? One time he put me up at Motel 6!
“—the lawyers will meet her there.”
So Sherry doesn’t even have to trek to the law firm. Mr. Cantwell has instructed the attorneys to go to her. I take a deep breath. “I’m very sorry if I disappointed you, Mr. Cantwell. That’s the last thing I would ever want to do.”
He doesn’t say a thing, not a darn thing. I’d expect Don’t let it happen again, or There’s always a next time, but no reassuring platitude is forthcoming. Instead, when he does finally speak, it’s to bring up another of my failures. Or at least that appears to be his interpretation. “No murder on this trip, Ohio? Damn shame.” He hangs up.
I’m shaking as I return my phone to my handbag. “It’s bad, Trixie. It’s bad.”
We get into a cab whose driver is irritated that we’re going only to the Upper East Side instead of ten or twenty miles to an airport. I relay the Cantwell conversation to Trixie, whose face does register concern. That makes me worry even more. But as usual she does her best to make me feel better. “Sherry’s a very nice person, but she’s not super smart. So probably her testimony won’t be any better than yours.”
One can only hope. “Mr. Cantwell did once call her the dimmest bulb this side of the pond.” Those were the days. “But now he’s flying her to New York and putting her up at a five-star hotel.”
“There must be a good explanation for that.” But Trixie can’t come up with one and I can’t, either. She pats my leg. “You’re an excellent titleholder, Happy. Mr. Cantwell knows that. He’ll get over this whole testimony thing.”
“I suppose he can’t replace me with Sherry over this. I’d have to do something really bad for him to do that.” After all, it is a public-relations nightmare for a pageant to strip its winner of her crown. It requires her to do something that a majority of people would regard as a major misstep. Failing to lie under oath for the pageant owner would not qualify. When I realize that, I am somewhat mollified.
Somewhat. I would still much prefer to be on Mr. Cantwell’s good side.
We give the cab driver an outrageous tip to make up for the short distance and find ourselves staring at a storefront that looks more like a high-end boutique than a beauty salon.
“I’m surprised your mom had the nerve to walk in there,” Trixie whispers. “This place scares me.”
But walk inside Salon Marceau we do, with our perfectly coiffed heads held high. It is a chic space, but no salon can completely eradicate the smells of blow-dried hair and product. Blondie meets us at the reception desk, her expression sullen. At least she doesn’t appear to be tipsy, which she most certainly was when she tweeted Saturday night. She relieves me of Bernadette’s fur. “Our client will be very happy to get this back,” she tells me.
“I can assure you my mother feels the same way about her fur,” I say.
She narrows her heavily made-up eyes at me. “Describe the fur to me. So I know it really belongs to your mother.”
That is a reasonable request, even if it was snarkily delivered. I provide a description, including the fact that the name Hazel is embroidered in white thread on the lining.
“Maybe you just saw the fur in the closet when you were here,” Blondie says.
I lean closer to the fur-snatching smart aleck. “Why don’t you check the credit-card receipt for my mother’s overpriced facial? You’ll see that her last name is Przybyszewski, spelled—”
Blondie loses interest by the time I hit the second Z. “I’ll be back,” she says, and slithers away.
Before she reappears, a thin dark-haired man dressed all in black takes her place behind the reception desk. “You are being helped?” he asks. His French accent is so thick I half wonder if it’s fake. After all, such a thing could be an asset in the beauty business.
I assure him we are being helped and he busies himself on a laptop computer. Soon Blondie returns with my mother’s fur, but she blanches when she sees Frenchie. She pushes the fur into my arms—“Here it is”—and tries to strong-arm me toward the door.
“Not so fast.” I dig in my booted feet. “Let me make sure it’s okay.”
“It’s fine!” she hisses.
“Oh, my Lord,” Trixie whimpers a moment later, and I see why.
There are two rips in the lining, one so severe that the silk dangles well below the fur’s hem. Frenchie abandons the reception desk to join our trio. “Is there un problème?” he inquires.
I glare at Blondie. “There most certainly is.”
“I am Yves Marceau,” Frenchie informs us.
“He’s the salon owner,” Trixie whispers, but I already got that.
“Are you aware of what your employee here did?” I say. Since Blondie fails to utter a single syllable, I launch into a recitation of the facts. Frenchie remains silent, but his lips tighten with every detail. Occasionally he glances at Blondie, who I’m sure wishes she could disappear between the slats of the hardwood floor.
“Bien sûr,” he says when I’m done, “we will pay for the repairs to your mother’s fur.”
“I expect you to do considerably more than that,” I hear myself say. “I also expect you to comp my mother’s stem-cell facial.”
Trixie looses a quiet gasp. Frenchie jerks backward as if I prodded him with a hot poker. He spreads his hands wide. “But the stem cells … they are très cher.”
“If my mother had known beforehand how cher they are, she never would’ve gotten the treatment. The salon clearly took advantage of an older woman who was visiting New York from out of town.” I’m proud of that phrasing. I managed not to say what popped into my head first, which is from the hinterlands.
“I’m afraid to comp the treatment is quite impossible,” Frenchie tells me.
I sigh heavily. “It will sadden me a great deal to report this incident to my Twitter followers. They’re always so keen to hear my advice.”
“She has at least ten thousand followers,” Trixie pipes up to say. “My friend here is the reigning Ms. America.” Trixie boosted my numbers by a good 25 percent, but I’d do the same for her in a pinch.
Frenchie swallows. I have a feeling Blondie will be sweeping up shorn hair and cutting aluminum foil into squares on many a Monday morning to make up for this. Finally Frenchie is able to speak. “Here at Salon Marceau, the customer’s satisfaction is our number one priorité. Therefore I will grant your request.”
I bow my head. “It will give me so much pleasure to be able to recommend this salon to my followers.”
Frenchie goes on. “If there is anything else we can ever do for you—”
“I’ll let you know.” I make a move toward the door. “And I’ll send the bill for the fur’s repair directly to your attention.”
“Wow!” Trixie cries once we’re back on the street standing in the January sun. “You’re a master! You blackmailed the salon, too!”
“I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of, but my mom will be thrilled not to have to pay for the facial.” I really do think those snooty salon peeps saw my mother coming a mile away, so I’m extra pleased with this outcome. I resettle the fur in my arms. “So what do we do about getting her fur repaired?”
We head south on Fifth Avenue, in no rush to board the subway. “It’s ironic that it’s so warm, your mother would never wear her fur today,” Trixie says.
I get an idea. “Maybe the fur salon at Saks repairs its own furs.” I call the flagship store and find out that it repairs furs bought wherever.
“Of course you must have those tears repaired immediately,” I am told by a highly obsequious female. “Under what name is the fur registered?” I didn’t know it was registered at all, but indeed it is, under Bennie’s name. “If you can bring it in right away,” the woman says, “we can have it ready for your mother tomorrow.”
“Now that’s service,” Trixie says.
“She also told me they do reconditioning, glazing, and storage.” I can visualize a donut getting glazed but not a fur. As I am wondering if I can justify eating a glazed donut even though I’ve already downed a waffle and part of a chocolate chip muffin, my phone rings again. This time it’s Pop.
“Happy birthday, my beauty! I’m sorry I didn’t call before, but I had to do a few things at the salon before it opened up.”
Pop’s lady friend Maggie owns a nail salon. Out of loyalty to my mother I refuse to patronize it, although once a month when it has a Margarita Friday I reconsider my ban. “So Maggie’s roped you into helping her out at her salon?”
“Now why do you have to put it that way?”
I suppose that was uncharitable. “I’m sorry, Pop.” Trixie and I walk past yet another greeting card and stationery store with an elaborate Valentine’s Day display in the front window. I know I shouldn’t say what comes to mind, but I can’t help myself. “So, Pop, just what are your intentions toward Maggie?”
Silence. Then: “You really think that’s your business?”
“Yes, I do. I’m your daughter and I have a right to know.” That’s a stretch, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
“Young lady, it seems to me you’ve got your hands full running your own life. You shouldn’t be trying to run mine, too.”
And he doesn’t even know everything that’s going on with me. “I just—”
“I know what you’re going to say. That you don’t want me to propose to Maggie on Valentine’s Day.”
Actually, I don’t want him ever to propose to Maggie and especially not on Valentine’s Day. But what I say is: “I just don’t want Mom to get even more hurt.”
“Your mother is doing just fine. Bennie’s got them staying at the Plaza Hotel—”
“How do you know about that?”
“Rachel told me.”
I bet I know how that happened. My mother got Rachel to work it into one of her conversations with Pop that Grandma and Bennie were staying at the Plaza.
My father goes on speaking. “My beauty, it’s your birthday and I don’t want to fight. Not with my beautiful girl who’s the joy of my life.”
Darn. Now I’ll start crying.
“And it’s not that I don’t love your mother, because I always will. It’s not even that I love Maggie the same way I love your mother, because I don’t think I ever will. It’s that your mother and I got divorced for a reason.”
I hate when Pop says stuff like that. It’s a punch right in the gut of one of my fondest fantasies: that my parents will get back together.
“Don’t you want me to find happiness with somebody else?” my father asks.
Actually, no. But I can’t say that. So instead I offer a grudging compromise. “I suppose.”
We move the conversation onto less controversial ground, but before long we’re interrupted by another call on my end. I know immediately that this caller is not trying to reach me to convey birthday wishes. “Get in here ASAP,” Oliver orders. “I want to hear how you kept my father away from the theater last night.”
“Nothing’s wrong, is it?”
“Not a thing. And I want to know how you pulled that off.”
I’ll tell him, but I’ll keep some details to myself. No way will I divulge that Junior’s own father is the source of those AllThatChat.com posts. I don’t know what Junior would do with that information and for my own purposes I must lord it over Senior’s balding head for quite a while longer.
“Tell you what,” Trixie says when I get off the phone. “I’ll drop the fur off at Saks and you go straight to the theater. We can meet for lunch when you’re done.”
“Maybe by then Shanelle will be able to join us.” She had to catch up on work this morning, but knowing Shanelle she’ll fly through it.
I’m emerging from the subway station closest to the theater when I get a text from Oliver. Something’s come up and now he wants to see me in two hours. Great: a wasted trip. Then my mom calls. “You got the fur?” she asks me.
“Yes and no.” I explain what happened, including that the fur’s lining is ripped but now her mongo expensive facial is free. I don’t say it in so many words, but basically she’s getting off scot-free.
“So I’m getting a gift today, too,” she says, “thanks to you. By the way, your gift is back home. It was too big to bring here. Plus, that plane would probably lose it. Anyway, will you come over here and do my makeup for those photos?”
“So Kimberly’s coming through, huh?” That doesn’t surprise me. I’m sure that vixen is super eager to claw her way back to Jason’s good side.
“That husband of yours called to say she’ll be here in half an hour. By the way, I don’t like how close those two are getting.”
“You’ve never been a big fan of Jason’s, Mom. I would think you’d be thrilled if he went bye-bye.”
“I want you to leave him. I don’t want him to leave you.”
On that warm maternal note, I reroute myself to the Plaza Hotel. By now I could find it in my sleep. I have just set my mother up in a chair by the window in her room when Miss Kimberly arrives, again today done up in skinny jeans and a curve-hugging top. If she had any more makeup on, she’d get a citation. From the sheepish look she throws my way I can tell she’s still embarrassed by last night’s revelation of her married state.
Poor thing. My heart bleeds for her.
Perhaps my mother also senses Kimberly is wounded prey because she doesn’t waste a second before pouncing. “Where’s my son-in-law?” she demands.
Kimberly looks taken aback. “I think he went for a run.”
“You all done with that shoot of yours?” My mother is being fairly hostile given that Kimberly is doing her a favor, but that’s Hazel Przybyszewski for you.
Kimberly blushes. “Almost. We have a little more to do this afternoon.”
My mother harrumphs. I pipe up. “My mom really appreciates your taking the time to do this shoot for her.”
“I’m thrilled to do it,” Kimberly lies.
She sets her camera bag on the bed and busies herself with her equipment while I go back to work on my mother’s face. Her skin is so radiant that I bypass foundation and apply only the merest hint of powder. “So,” I say to Kimberly, figuring this might be my last chance to bring this up, “I was going over those recordings you make of the preview performances and noticed that you quit taping really early the night Lisette fell.”
Kimberly’s hands stop moving. “Did I really?”
“You missed the entire final sequence. Every other night you recorded all the way to the end.”
Kimberly says nothing. I instruct my mom to close her eyes so I can move on to eye shadow, but instead she twists toward Kimberly and blasts a query in her direction. “How do you explain that?” I guess she can’t resist an interrogation even though she has no idea what the point of it is.
Kimberly swallows. Then: “I got a text.”
I frown. “You stopped recording for a text? You’re not even supposed to have your phone on during a performance.” Those flashes of light are a real distraction, to actors and audience members alike. And Kimberly’s recording location, in the front middle of the mezzanine, is visible to both.
Kimberly shakes her head, clearly flustered. “I … I was expecting an important text.”
“From who?” I ask. “Jason? Damian?”
“Who’s Damian?” my mother wants to know.
“How do you even know his name is Damian?” Kimberly sputters.
“Because I overheard you and your Uncle Jerry in the ladies’ room.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Now Kimberly sounds semi-belligerent. “That time you were eavesdropping.”
“I still don’t know who Damian is,” my mother says. “And you can’t eavesdrop in a public place like a ladies’ room.”
Thank you, Mom! “Damian is Kimberly’s husband,” I tell my mother.
Her jaw drops. “Knock me over with a feather! This one is married?”
“I’m getting divorced,” Kimberly says.
“It had to have bothered you,” I say to Kimberly, “that Damian was seeing Lisette.”
“So her husband”—my mother gestures to Kimberly—“was keeping company with that woman who died on the staircase?”
“Exactly,” I say.
“Divorced, married, I don’t care,” my mother opines. “No woman likes it when her husband starts dating another dame.”
I only half hear what my mother is saying because my mind has started cranking in a new and shocking direction. I clutch the back of a chair. “Is there any chance, Kimberly, any chance at all, that Lisette fell down that staircase because she got distracted by the light of your phone?”