“Granny, come sit down at the vanity and let me blow-dry your hair and curl it for you. It looks pitiful,” Allie said.
Irene clapped her hands. “And my fingernails and toenails, too. Let’s have a beauty shop day. I could trim your hair and put it up in sponge rollers.”
Allie wouldn’t let her grandmother near her hair with a pair of fingernail clippers much less scissors, and she doubted if there were any sponge rollers left in the house. It had been years since she’d seen even a stray one.
“Let’s do you all up pretty first and then we’ll talk about my hair and nails. It might be time for dinner by then, and I was thinkin’ about chocolate chip pancakes.” Allie evaded the idea with expert precision.
Irene clapped louder. “I like it when you stay home with me, Allie. You know I can’t remember too good these days. Sometimes whole days get away from me.”
Allie gave her a hug. “You smell like baby powder.”
“It’s a nice clean scent that goes well with any perfume,” Irene said seriously. “I bet I’ve told you that a hundred times.”
Allie led her to the vanity and set her on the cute little brass stool with a pink velvet pillow. “Yes, you have, but it takes a lot of tellin’ for me to remember. Now, while I do your hair, you can tell me stories about when you were a little girl.”
Irene prattled on, telling tales of her childhood that Allie had heard dozens if not hundreds of times. Letting her own mind wander while she curled her grandmother’s thin gray hair and did her nails in the bright pink nail polish that she liked, she kept going over and over the details of that morning. Did she miss a sly wink? She slowed the events down and could honestly say that he had not even looked her way when he introduced her as the woman who’d been working on his house.
“And then you grew up and married that sumbitch.” Granny’s final words brought her back into the present.
“Yes, I did,” Allie said, and her phone rang.
Granny stuck out her lower lip in a pout. “This is supposed to be our day. Don’t you dare invite that boy from next door over here. He’ll get in our way and ruin everything.”
Allie checked the ID hoping it was Blake, but no such luck. “It’s Fiona, Granny, not Blake.”
“Give me that phone.” The older woman jerked it out of her hand. “Fiona, Allie did my hair and my nails and I’m all pretty for you to come home this weekend. Are you on the way? I miss you so much. When was the last time you came home? It’s been five years hasn’t it?”
A pause and Irene set her mouth in a firm line. “Bullshit! You were not home at Thanksgiving. I might be old, but I ain’t stupid. I know…who in the hell is this? I don’t want any magazines so stop calling here.”
And like that, in the blink of an eye, Irene was off in another time warp. “Take this phone and tell those people that I’m sick to death of them buggin’ the shit out of me about magazines. And they are not getting my credit card number, either.”
“Fiona?” Allie said. “Are you still there?”
“Mama called and told me about Granny running off again this morning. I bet she was a sight in that getup. And she said that Blake looks at you like he could eat you up, her words, not mine. And that she invited him to dinner tomorrow after church so she could see y’all together. She’s worried about all this, Allie,” Fiona said.
Allie had forgotten about dinner the next day. She couldn’t face Blake that soon. She would plead a headache, which might not be a lie the way it was pounding right then, and stay home from church. As soon as the family left, she would run away to Deke’s and stay there all day.
Fiona raised her voice. “Are you still there? You didn’t hang up on me, did you?”
That’s when Allie heard the cling of a cash register in the background and lots of people talking at once. Fiona worked in a prestigious law firm in Houston, so why were there noises like a fast food place in the background?
“Where are you?” Allie asked.
“At work,” Fiona said quickly. “Well, not actually at work. I’m at a coffee shop right next door getting a midmorning cup of coffee.”
Allie tried to blink away the headache, but it didn’t work. “I thought I heard cash register noises.”
“Got to go. Just wanted to let you know that Mama is watching you close. See you at the wedding this spring,” Fiona said.
Allie hit the END button and shoved her phone back into her pocket. She heard a soft snore, more like a kitten’s purr, and turned to find Irene curled up on her bed in a ball, sound asleep. Figuring it was a fine time to straighten her grandmother’s room and keep an eye on her at the same time, Allie, hurried off to the utility room for her basket of cleaners.