“Be careful—don’t accept any rides from strangers. Put your hoods up. You’ll catch cold!”
I saw Kelli nod, but Kris ignored me.
“And don’t get your feet wet! You’ll get a…sore throat.” By now the girls had disappeared into the building. I rolled the window up and drove on thinking that tonight I’d stop by and pick up Kelli’s favorite meal—chicken nuggets and French fries. Nights Neil slept at the station the girls and I bached. We’d eat pizza, tacos—anything junky—but when Daddy was home we ate balanced nutritional meals. Neil had started to tease “his girls”—that’s what he called us—that we enjoyed his absence, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Neil Madison had been my life from the first time I laid eyes on him at a junior high dance. I didn’t remember how many years I’d loved the husky football quarterback, but it was a long time before he noticed me and even longer before he reciprocated my feelings. But when Neil Madison fell, he fell hard. January 5 we would celebrate nine years of marriage, and I could honestly say that I loved the man more today than I had that stormy winter afternoon I’d walked down the church aisle—in a practically empty church because an ice storm had paralyzed Oklahoma City traffic. Out-of-town guests and relatives were stranded in nearby hotels. Only the pastor, Neil and my parents made the ceremony. We’d spent the first forty-eight hours of our honeymoon in the airport Holiday Inn Express, waiting for flights to Jamaica to resume.
Those had been the most idealistic days of my life. I smiled and signaled, merging onto the expressway. We were young, in love, full of hopes and dreams. Neil had been with the fire department a little over a year and I hated his job—hated the risks his occupation involved. I was a born, certified, card-carrying worrywart. I constantly worried that something would happen to him, but he’d only smile and say when the Lord said his time was up, he could be eating a doughnut at Krispy Kreme. Since we both believed in God and the risen Christ, I consoled myself with the knowledge that He would never hand me more than I could bear, but deep down I knew that if God ever took Neil, I would blame Him till the day I died.
I pulled into the parking lot of La Chic, the trendy salon where I’m employed. The salon was located near various up-scale hotels and shopping malls, and enjoyed a five-star rating. I recognized a couple of vehicles. The red convertible belonged to my client Rody Haver. High Maintenance Rody, her husband called her. Rody permed her long blond hair one week, and the next she’d be back, sick of the curls and wanting a straight style. I’d cut her hair in a spiky, carefree punk look and when she’d leave she’d give me a huge tip and say she loved it! The next week she’d be back, claiming blond washed her complexion out—could we do something in red? I’d tell Rody I could make her hair any color she wanted, but I’d advise against putting any more product on an already stressed condition. But Rody would want red, so when she left she would be tinted a gorgeous shade of Amber Flame. She would declare this the real Rody. She loved it!
The next week I’d get a call and Rody would say that her husband, an entrepreneur with unlimited resources, didn’t care for red; she was thinking maybe something in ash. I’d pencil in a new appointment, but common sense told me Rody would hate ash, which she did.
We’d go back to blond—which she admitted was really her color—but could I do something about extra conditioning? The ends of her hair felt a bit brittle.
Her hair was breaking at the ends, and the last time I’d shampooed, her follicles felt like corn mush.
Rody was already in my chair, thumbing through a hairstyle magazine, when I stashed my purse at my workstation and flipped on the curling irons. Outside rain splattered the front plate glass and I noticed ice was starting to accumulate on sidewalks.
“I need to get home as quickly as possible,” Rody said, eyeing the worsening situation.
I glanced at my appointment book and saw that we only had a trim, so that wouldn’t take long.
“I love coming to you, Kate. You can fix anything! You’re always so cheery and helpful.”
I smiled, basking in Rody’s compliment. Actually, I was good at my job. Give me a bad color, perm, cut or weave and I could usually send the client out with a smile on her face. I took no credit for my talent, knowing it was a gift, one that I loved and one that gave me more clients and travel than I wanted. A couple of days a week I had to fly to other states to teach classes on perm and color. The remaining three I got to work here in Oklahoma City, and go home to my family at night. I was a born cosmetologist—about the only thing I couldn’t fix were my own self-defeating thoughts.
At the shampoo bowl, we chatted. Rody said her husband was taking her to Maui over the holidays. I said that was nice—Neil and I planned to go to Hawaii some day. The trip wouldn’t happen until the kids were older; I needed a new stove and refrigerator before I even thought about grass skirts and Hawaiian sunrises.
Back at my station, I fastened a cape around Rody’s neck and went to work. There wasn’t much to work with, and the improvement would be negligible, but I had a feeling that if Rody wasn’t messing with her hair she wasn’t happy.
“Neil’s talking about retiring at forty-five,” I said. Only last night I’d lain in his arms and we had dreamed of the time when I’d quit work, and he’d leave the fire station. He wanted to move to his grandparents’ farm in Vermont. He loved the east, loved the smell of sap dripping in his grandfather’s woodlot—and even more, loved his grandmother’s plates of steaming hotcakes and butter, drenched in maple syrup.
“Just think, Kate. I’ll only be forty-five, still considered young, and with my fireman’s pension we can make it. I can help Gramps run the farm, and you can stay home and raise the girls—go to PTA meetings, bake cookies, play bridge with your friends.”
I’d laughed. I’d worked since I was nineteen and I couldn’t imagine staying home, but it was a nice dream. I’d can from the fruit orchard, and make pickles and jam. I’d fallen asleep listening to thunder and rain rattle our old two-story home in a moderate-income subdivision, dreaming of long, color-drenched Vermont autumn days in our new one-story house with dark blue shutters. Neil would build the house next door to his grandparents. His parents lived nearby, so in Vermont the girls would get to see Maws and Paws every day if they wanted.
Mentally sighing, I finished Rody’s trim, blew loose hair off her neck with the dryer, then drenched my fingers with repair serum and ran my hands through the blondish, reddish, ash-speckled, shorn locks. In thirteen short years, my worries would be over. No more listening for the phone to ring, no more fear or paralyzing siren wails in the night, no more worrying that my husband, the man who was my life, would not come home.
I would be a woman of leisure—a mother and housewife whose only worry would be what to do with all that maple syrup.
I left La Chic around three; sleet had turned to a cold rain, but I stopped at the cleaners before I picked up the girls. Frieda Louis was coming out when I was going in. Frieda lived a couple blocks away, and our kids played together occasionally.
“Kate! How nice to see you.”
“Frieda.” I paused. She always looked as if she’d stepped out of a magazine—every hair in place, flawlessly applied makeup. I felt like an unmade bed next to her.
“Have any storm damage last night?”
I shook my head. “A little wind. We took shelter in the Fowlers’ basement and were up most of the night. How about you?”
“The wind took off an awning on the north side, but Jim had it back up by noon. Don’t you hate this freaky weather?”
I hated it. Oklahoma had come by the name “tornado alley” legitimately.