The Beautiful Misfits, page 4
Now they had her as they fawned and oozed charm. Their attire was sleek and black. Hair dyed raven or oxidized impossibly platinum. Those beautiful misfits looked so perfect but had personal lives as colorful as any Flannery O’Connor created. Their lives ranged from dramatically heartbreaking to fall-on-the-floor hilarious. Lives salted with the type of absurdity that made them all the more endearing.
The regulars often bonded with those behind the glass. How could they not love a woman with the power to dole out free packets of the latest dark-spot corrector, maybe slip them a leftover mascara or cheek stain from last month’s gift-with-purchase?
What choice did those beauty advisers have but to sneak peeks at the logos on a woman’s handbag, the size of the diamond flashing against the left finger? Michael Kors? Common and not pricey enough. Louis Vuitton? Maybe, but could be a fake. Chanel or Christian Louboutin? Perfection.
An excellent beauty worker knew that once a woman experienced her warm, rose-and-spun-sugar-scented fingers, working in the creams and serums and touching their faces as no man had in years, the fine lines dissolved. And so did resistance.
Purses opened, credit cards smacked the counter, and a certain type whispered: “Can I just put it all in my pocketbook so my husband won’t see the Brigman’s bag?”
She would leave the store with at least half a grand or more on her card and a bag stuffed with potions and promises. She’d possess the latest colors, the perfect foundation, and delicate powders illuminating the skin. Her once-sagging eyelids would now rise with strokes of a blending brush, hues that seduced the face north where gravity tap-danced south.
Once a beauty adviser invited a woman to have a seat in her chair, it was like rolling out the flypaper. That chair, her willingness to enjoy a “free” half-hour service, well…that’s when self-restraint became skin deep.
Now Josie was one of them, a beauty worker in matte lipstick rolling out the flypaper. As she sat alone in the darkened booth, waiting for her lunch, tears fell in silence, the way dew beads before dawn. She thought only of Finley: how she hadn’t felt the stubble of his cheek against her own in more than a year or smelled the Dior Sauvage cologne on his Polos, the properly dressed addict that he was.
The last time they’d embraced on a rare sober day told a story of beginnings; hazel and amber eyes reflecting light with easy smiles. And middles: the sharp blades of shoulders and the push of ribs through skin gone gaunt.
As for endings, she begged God for a happy one.
She knew this wasn’t his fault. People thought addiction was a choice. A weakness of character. Josie had interviewed dozens of addicts for her Emmy-winning news reports and knew that most people grappling with this disease fell on the sensitive, whip-smart spectrum. They were Black and white and every color in between. They were rich. And poor. Gay and straight. They came from families intact. And families severed.
She thought of Dottie and how she wore her heart in her wide-open smiles and generous hugs. Her disability gave her an advantage in that she would never suffer the intensities that capsized Finley. He, who seemed skinless as he faced the world, all life’s hurts and injustices worming through bone and blood and sending missives to self-medicate.
As Josie sipped her hot tea and contemplated ordering a glass of white wine, the memories vanished when her phone dinged with a text. She jumped, nearly knocking it off the table, and her heart seemed to stop when she saw the message from Finley.
“I need money NOW! You know my PayPal link, so fucking USE it!!!” Instead of feeling crushed by his abusive words, Josie clasped her hands in prayer. Thank you, God. My boy is alive.
Her quaking thumbs flew across the keys. “You’re safe? Where are you?” She hit send, then realized her mistake. Blocked. One-way communication was all she could hope for unless she found phones he wouldn’t recognize. That had worked for a while, and she would leave him a trail of encouraging words, like Hansel scattering breadcrumbs. Find your way home, son.
He’d caught on and stopped taking calls from unknown numbers. Josie had become an expert in extracting meaning from every word he wrote. All caps told one story. Sloppy spellings told another. Punctuation revealed the hidden context.
This message told her unequivocally that Finley was back on drugs. He’d never talk to her this way when sober. Ever. It also told her he was super-pissed, typical after coming off a bender and needing cash for the next fix.
The phone pinged again. “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT! I CAN’T LIVE WITH DAD ANYMORE. SEND MONEY NOW OR YOU’LL NEVER HEAR FROM ME AGAIN.”
Anxiety scratched at her ribcage, and she summoned the server for a glass of wine, the guilt of her liquid crutch a penance she’d pay. Josie’s former moneyed friends had a hard time wrapping their heads around what had become of her boy. Here was a child of privilege and talent, a son of successful parents who had loved and, at times, probably coddled him as he’d been an only kid for nineteen years. Here was a young man who easily could have been a tennis pro or a doctor like his father, but instead wasted his days smoking dope and ingesting poison in a dark basement, baked eyes on a flat-screen TV and fingers hammering game controls.
Josie had witnessed Finley’s failures twist the faces of those high-achieving family-values types who grew uncomfortable just hearing his name. No one ever asked, “How’s your son doing?” They didn’t want an answer because to acknowledge him would rattle their armor of high-performing stocks and upscale addresses—such fragile walls they falsely believed protected their progeny. If Emmy-winning and much-beloved Josie Nickels had a kid on the skids, then no one was safe.
Those friends were gone and, with their departure, all that judgment. She thought about them while picking at her chicken curry, those women whose sons had snagged college scholarships and girlfriends looking as though they’d spent their lives exfoliating and toning and never drinking anything stronger than a Starbucks latte, coconut milk, no whip. Those please-and-thank-you girls destined for do-gooding and Junior Leagues.
She thought of Finley’s last girlfriend and tensed. That dead-eyed girl with the pinpoint pupils, the serpent tattoo crawling from her frayed tank and winding around half of her neck. She remembered the girl’s hands, fingernails chewed to pulp and blood, and dirty forearms inked in cultish emblems.
She wondered, as she sipped the glass of Riesling she had no business drinking, if they’d have another chance. She and her boy. She wondered, as she paid the check and boxed three egg rolls for her coworkers, if he’d live long enough for such a day.
Josie unwrapped a peppermint, slipped it under her tongue, and trudged back to her job hawking skincare and brow groomers. “A mall job at your age,” her mother had squawked. “With your education and all those Emmys you never even bothered to display.” It irked Josie when people flaunted their honors, lining trophies on mantels or hanging frames to walls so others could see and touch their self-esteem.
Her job didn’t define her. Success didn’t rest upon the golden statuettes she’d jammed in a Rubbermaid tub. Success meant getting it right with her son. Reaching his heart before it rotted, or stopped from a malignancy of his own making.
For now, she had her little girl to consider and this new job in cosmetics so unlike anything she’d ever done. Her mother had all but coded when Josie plunged from celebrity to service work in a matter of months, spiraling from prime-time news anchor in a huge metro market to slinging lipstick at Brigman’s. There were certainly worse jobs, such as sitting in an office eight hours straight.
At least she’d put some miles between this life and that one. Asheville was a good four hours and two states from her career detonation. Not many people from around here watched WSTA in Atlanta, Georgia.
Josie pushed away distressing thoughts as she entered the store through sliding glass doors, rubbing her arms as the cold air hit her. She made a note to “borrow” a sweater from the women’s department. She’d have to be extra cautious and rein in her clumsiness. No sense wasting what money she had on an ugly sweater doing nothing for her plus-size hips.
As she stowed her purse behind the counter, Monica shouted, “I smell Asian Dragon. Get your fanny over here now.” Her eyes zoomed in on the egg rolls, and she peeled off the standard white lab coat as if she were a dermatologist and not a makeup artist for Clinique. Josie held the food like a waitress serving haute cuisine. “Ooh, you’re spoiling us with all your treats,” Monica said.
“Well, you skinny thirty-somethings need them much more than I do.” Josie patted her plump belly, this extra weight like a new kid in town she’d have to get used to. Or rid of. But honestly, it didn’t trouble her and felt almost comforting. All those years in television of forcing her large bones into submission, whittling and carving her body into a shape God hadn’t intended. Every woman needed a vacation from self-scrutinizing. Life was too unreliable to spend it beating oneself down even if her past all but shouted for a Jerry Springer show.
Monica, whose mother is Asian and her father Scandinavian, personified Goth, her skin white and whipped as a wedding cake and made more so by lips stained the color of old blood. She dipped her egg roll in hot mustard and held it like a torch. “You look fabulous, honey,” she said. “Remember this every time you see a luscious dessert: ‘Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants a bone but a dog.’ It’s all about gobbling without guilt.”
Josie smiled. “I’ll have to remember that one. Burger King and Taco Bell have been my lovers of late.”
“Well, I understand. After what you went through back in Atlanta. I don’t know how you survived those vultures playing that video of your…your…anyway.” She reddened and ducked behind the counter for a bite of the egg roll. When she surfaced, soy sauce on her face, she nodded toward Josie’s counter to indicate a customer had walked up.
“You mean my giant hissy fit,” Josie finished for Monica. “That’s why women shouldn’t hold stuff in for too long. It’s like a girdle begging to explode.” She checked out the client at her counter, helping herself to the foundation testers. “Speaking of fits, I better get her before Pauline does.”
She would give this job her best, no matter what her uppity mother thought about it, and enjoy the women either chasing or delivering beauty. She would think of Finley tonight, after dark, after more wine. Nights were the worst with their inked skies like black drapes conjuring the sinister, suffocating her with all those what-ifs her therapist kept saying would kill her. Let it go, let it go, let it go, she’d chanted. All those clichés slapped up on walls for those who couldn’t deal with their truths.
The La Belleza client had taken a seat in one of the makeup chairs, flinging her Brigman’s shopping bags across the floor. Josie put on her professional I-am-stable-and-here-to-make-you-beautiful face. She approached the woman, reading her cues in the tapping foot and downturned mouth.
“Hola. How are you doing today?” The lady’s eyes shot skyward, not a full roll, but still. “I’m Josette or Josie. Either one. And you are?”
“In a hurry.”
“How about I treat you to a quick, ten-minute luxury service?” Josie’s sales were down, and La Belleza stressed that pampering led to upselling. And upselling kept shareholders in yachts and young women.
The woman grimaced and crossed her arms over a Bvlgari that cost more than Josie’s condo payment. “How about you match me in two minutes instead? And don’t let that other woman who works here near me. She always tries to sell me everything but my own dental work.”
Josie forced a laugh and reached into her velvet bag for her makeup brushes, trying to decide which foundation shade the washed-out woman in her chair might buy at fifty dollars a pop.
She glimpsed the fine May afternoon buttering the main entrance in sunlight. She longed to step into the rays, feel them against her face. The warm days had a way of infusing hope, and for a moment she could almost forget everything destroyed. How death rattled its keys, wanting her boy. How she’d better find a way to change the locks.
She marveled at the blooms escaping the Bradford pear trees, swirling in plain view as if snowing. Nearly eighty degrees and low humidity, perfect for a hike with her little girl had she forgone the wine like a proper mother.
“I don’t have all day,” said the woman in hot-pink leggings and an unforgiving Lululemon tank top, open in the back and revealing a spine resembling garlic knots and arms that looked like beef jerky. “I have Zumba in thirty minutes and a hot stone massage right afterward. All I want is a sample so don’t go and try to slap on powder and blush or the whole shebang.”
“I won’t,” Josie said, trying not to stare at those arms as she chose three testers from the unit. “I’d rather sample the goods myself before I buy.” She wasn’t going to push it with this lady who looked slightly embalmed in a yellow-based foundation with no blush or lipstick, a common problem she’d seen on older women going for the trendy nude lip only the Under-Twenty-Ones could pull off. “Let me sterilize this brush and then we can—”
“For God’s sake, just squirt on hand sanitizer and use your fingers. I’m not about to buy your overpriced brushes. I got my set at Target for twelve dollars.”
Josie continued fake smiling, reminiscent of a Miss Georgia contestant crowned first runner-up.
“Let’s get on with this,” the client said. “I came here one time and that skeletal woman working here—you know the one I mean—all but strapped me to this chair. For over an hour, mind you.”
The woman’s eyes traveled up and down Josie’s body, making her self-conscious. Josie took a brush and striped the woman twice below her jawbone, blending the foundation into her skin. “I think the cool tone works best,” she said. “Here, take a look.”
The lady swatted her hand at the mirror Josie held. “I can’t tell anything from this harsh lighting. I’m going to stand in front of the entrance and check in the natural light. Just go back to whatever it is you all do over here, and if I decide to buy it, I’ll find you.”
Josie’s smile faded as the woman race-walked, pumping those Slim Jim arms, to the entrance. She felt a charge in the air. A typical Saturday rush formed like a Category 1 hurricane with conditions ideal for intensifying.
The moon, waxing gibbous and a day away from its full expression, spiked the atmosphere with portent. She didn’t need charts or visuals to know exactly when a moon swelled. She saw it in faces—in tight smiles and manic eyes—and in moods that swung, tongues that turned sharper, voices that pitched higher. It was under such a moon she’d had her breakdown. Under such a moon both her babies came squealing into the world.
The Lululemon woman returned shaking her head. “I want something a little lighter. Dark shades age a woman. Your skin’s nice. All heavy-set women seem to have good skin.”
Here we go. Josie arranged her face with an understanding smile.
She tried to think of pleasantries, but her mind had suddenly gone fuzzy from the Riesling wearing off. “Everyone’s skin has something beautiful about it,” she said. “Now, let’s shape those brows after we get a good foundation match. I once read that a woman is never fully dressed without her brows.” The client’s mouth opened as if she was on the verge of a choir solo. Josie knew this was a lost cause and that her little bon mots weren’t effective. “Okay, let’s just tone your face and use…” She lost her thought. What was the point of trying to make this grump pot happy?
The woman continued scanning Josie from head to toe, assessing. She frowned and bit her lacquered thumbnail. “Aren’t you that woman from the news? Down in Atlanta who—” She stopped and pointed. “Well, I knew you looked familiar when I saw you. I can’t believe a woman of your caliber could up and lose control on television and embarrass her family like that!”
So she’d seen the viral video of her cataclysm. Josie’s cheeks warmed as she cleared her throat and rubbed her neck, knowing the red splotches were a giveaway. “I…well…I wish I could take all that back. I’m working on repairing things.”
The client fiddled with her hair and nodded. “That’s how strong women move forward and don’t wallow in the past. Quite a few may not understand how a broken woman can pop out of bed and carry on with her day. I lost a baby to pneumonia and four days later I pushed a grocery cart through Publix choosing a pork roast for what was left of my family. I remember I had on my grandmother’s cameo brooch and lipstick. Imagine!”
Josie felt the tension loosen. “I’m so sorry about your baby.”
“It was twenty years ago. Not a day goes by I don’t think about her. I listen to happy songs to take my mind off it.”
“When I get down and out,” Josie said, searching for a way to relate to this woman, “I listen to Miranda Lambert. Dixie Chicks or whatever they call themselves these days. Anything country and sad to put things in perspective.”
“That Miranda looks good since trimming up a bit. I see so many young women just let themselves go. You’d be a knockout if you’d sweat a little, maybe take a dance class or kickboxing. Get a better haircut and a deep conditioning.”
Her comment stung, but Josie had long ago realized that the rudest women were often the saddest, the most in pain. At least she’d called her young. That was something. She turned to the woman in her chair, considering how to respond, though her personal life wasn’t any of the client’s business. Just because a woman may spend more on foundation than a cable bill doesn’t mean she’s given carte blanche to insult. “I’ve been doing yoga here and there,” Josie said, touching a snarl in the back of her hair. Well, if she couldn’t see it, it wasn’t worth worrying over.
“Yoga is for all the liberals in this hippie town who’d rather lay around moaning on a mat than put forth any effort.”
