Beulah’s feeling of kinship was reinforced when the stranger lifted her hands, gasped at the flowers, and cried, “Oh, how stunning! What a lovely thing to see on a Monday morning. Flowers do get the week started out just right, don’t they?” She sounded like a Yankee, but as far as Beulah was concerned, anybody who loved flowers was a true sister.
“They purely do,” Beulah said happily. She turned to Bettina, who was staring, openmouthed, at this platinum-haired vision of feminine loveliness. “Bettina, honey, would you fill this bowl with water, please?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” Bettina said, and jumped up, scattering Kurley Kews all over the floor.
Beulah left Bettina scrambling to pick up the curlers and turned back to her customer. “Now, dear, how can we help you on this beautiful mornin’?”
The woman’s face became serious, and she looked around, as if she were making sure she had come to the right place. “I hope you do coloring,” she said hesitantly. “Not just shampoos and sets.”
“’Course we do colorin’,” Beulah said, in her most comforting voice. “We do tints, dyes, and color rinses, in all shades. And it sure looks like you could use some fresh color, honey, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so. Those roots are gettin’ just a teensy bit dark. And you’re way too pretty to let that happen, Miz-” She paused, letting the word hang delicately in the air.
“Jamison,” the woman said, holding out her gloved hand. “I’m Nona Jean Jamison. I’ve come from Chicago to stay with my aunt, Miss Hamer, over on Camellia Street. She needs a little taking care of, and I’m between… projects.”
“So nice to meet you, Miz Jamison,” Beulah said cordially, taking her hand. Chicago. She wasn’t surprised. She knew that bright blue bolero dress hadn’t come from Darling, or even from Mobile or Montgomery. Carson Pirie Scot and Company, on the Loop, maybe. Beulah had never been to Chicago but she had read that Carson’s on the Loop was the place to shop for women’s fashions. “I am Mrs. Beulah Trivette, owner of the Beauty Bower. And that’s Bettina down there on the floor, pickin’ up the Kurley Kews.” Bettina lifted a hand, waved, and smiled nervously. “Welcome to Darlin’, Miz Jamison. We’re a real friendly little town, and we’ll do our best to help you feel at home for just as long as you’re here. Now, if you’ll just let me have your hat, we’ll get started on those roots.”
Miss Jamison took off her hat and handed it to Beulah, who put it carefully on a shelf. “Actually,” she said, putting a hand to her hair and fluffing it up, “I don’t want the roots retouched. I want you to dye my hair dark. And bob it.”
Beulah blinked. “Dark?” she asked incredulously. This was the last thing in the world she would have expected. “You mean-”
“Dark brown.” Miss Jamison’s voice held a mournful quiver. “Black always looks so dead, I think. A rich, dark brown is what I have in mind. Like dark brown chocolate.”
Beulah paused, frowning doubtfully. She always said that her customers knew best, but when it came to beauty, she considered herself an expert.
“Are you real sure ’bout this, Miz Jamison?” She put her head on one side, studying the woman. “That platinum color is just right for you-with your skin tone and all, I mean. It looks so light and stylish. Dark is goin’ to muddy you up and make you look… well, older. And a bob-” She pressed her lips together. “Don’t you think it would be a shame to lose those pretty waves?”
She didn’t want to come right out and say so, but she hated to see all that beauty going out the window. Bob that beautiful hair, dye it dark, and Miss Jamison wouldn’t look anything like the extraordinarily stylish woman she was at this moment. She’d look like… well, she’d look ordinary. She’d look just like everybody else. That’s how she’d look.
“I know all that.” Miss Jamison sighed heavily and began to strip off her gloves. “I hate it, too, Mrs. Trivette. But I have my reasons. Believe me, this is not something I want to do. But when I think-” Her chin was quivering and she looked as if she were about to cry. She turned away, but not before Beulah (who was an empathetic person) glimpsed something like fright in her eyes.
Fright? Now, that was strange. Sadness, maybe, at losing all that beauty. Or even regret. But fright? Something else was going on here under the surface and Beulah knew it. But she had worked with women’s hair for a long time and understood that big changes were always scary, whether you were going dark to blond or blond to dark again, or getting bobbed after you’d had your hair long for your whole, entire life. When it came to that, getting bobbed could be a whole lot scarier than getting dyed.
Sympathetically, she patted Miss Jamison’s arm. “Well, hon, whatever your reasons are, I’m sure they gotta be good ones, to push you into takin’ such an important step.” She almost added “toward ugliness,” but thought better of it.
“Oh, they are good reasons.” Miss Jamison sighed. “But before we get started, there’s something else I need to ask. Do you happen to have a wig catalog I could order from?”
“Well, I do,” Beulah said, now more than a little confused. “But I thought you were wantin’ to color your-”
“Oh, yes,” Miss Jamison said hastily. “Yes, I have to go brown. But I was thinking about an auburn wig, maybe even really red? Not short, but not long, either. Doesn’t have to be real special.”
Beulah frowned a little. “As it happens, I might have what you’re lookin’ for right here in the shop. It’s a copper-red wig I used to practice on when I was at the beauty college up in Montgomery. I’ve loaned it out a time or two so it might not be in the very best condition. But it’s clean, and if you don’t care about a bare spot here and there-”
“Copper-red would be wonderful and a few bare spots wouldn’t matter one bit,” Miss Jamison said eagerly. “Could I see it?” And when Beulah found it in the closet and brought it out, she was delighted. “It’s perfect,” she exclaimed. “And better yet, I can take it with me. How much do you want for it?”
Beulah looked at the wig, thinking that it wasn’t as frayed as she remembered. It had cost three dollars, she recollected, and she’d already gotten as much good out of it as she was going to get. “How does a dollar fifty sound?” To her, that sounded a little high, so she brought it down. “Let’s make it a dollar.”
“A dollar fifty sounds good to me, considering that I won’t have to order and wait and wait,” Miss Jamison said generously, and watched while Beulah put it in a box. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to get that.”
Beulah couldn’t imagine why a platinum blonde who wanted her hair dyed brown would also want to pay a dollar fifty for a red wig, but that was none of her business. “Well, now,” she said, taking a pink cape off the rack, “you just come over here and sit down in the shampoo chair and we’ll get you started.” She raised her voice. “Bettina, darlin’, before Miz Bloodworth gets here, would you go into the kitchen, please, and fetch Miz Jamison a cup of coffee. One for me, too. Black.”
She had the feeling she was going to need it.
TEN
The story Bessie had told Liz and Verna on Sunday afternoon had awakened memories in her heart and a painful longing that she thought she had put away long ago, and for good. A longing for Harold? No, that wasn’t quite it, she told herself. Not a longing for him, for the man himself. Too much time had passed for that, and Bessie had already lived too much of her life on her own terms to wish it otherwise. No, what she felt was more of a longing to know why Harold had left and what had happened to him, and why he had never gotten in touch. She sighed. Maybe it was time to finally sit down and talk to Miss Hamer. Harold’s sister surely had to know more than she had let on.