Sealed with a promise (12 page)

  Pickett got that
I’m taking over now
look in her eyes. Uh-oh. When Pickett looked like that, she was getting ready to set people straight. Emmie had seen it enough times to read it easily, but she wasn’t sure how often her family had. As she’d told Caleb, Pickett didn’t assert herself around her family. When she disagreed, she subtly moved away from them.

  “Don’t y’all wish,” she asked brightly, “same-sex unions were legal in North Carolina, and we could all come together like this for Lyle?”

  Emmie didn’t think Pickett’s relatives wished anything of the kind. Their denomination was not so vocally anti-gay as some, but conservatism in the area ran deep. They had come to terms with the fact that Lyle would never marry, and to the community, they presented a united front of support. That might be as far as they could go.

  “I wish,” said Mary Cole in the tone of someone settling an argument, “for
all
my daughters to be happy. It isn’t possible to treat all one’s children the same. Each child is different and has different needs.”

  “Then trust me. I’m happy the way I am! I don’t want to get married to anyone. Pickett’s starry-eyed right this minute-she doesn’t know what she’s getting into.”

  “Yes, I do,” objected Pickett.

  As one, all her sisters and her mother turned to her. “
No, you don’t,
” they said in unison.

  Everyone laughed longer and harder than the moment called for. Laughed until they had to grab tissues. Mary Cole cautiously dabbed under her eyes then looked up to catch Pickett’s laughing but slightly affronted expression. “Oh honey, we’re not doubting your competence.

  It’s just that nobody knows what the future will bring. Now, I need to check on some last minute things, and y’all need to concentrate on getting Emmie fixed up.”

  Extra chairs had been added at the long vanity with its ceiling-high mirror, where the stylist, Trish, stood surrounded by the implements of her trade. Beyond scissors, comb, and hair dryer, Emmie didn’t recognize most of them.

  The closet doors opposite were also mirrored, and with the women doubled and tripled by reflections, Emmie felt like a mud hen surrounded by a hundred birds of paradise.

  The bird of paradise was, strictly speaking, a flower, not a bird, which somehow made the simile more apt. And more depressing. She wasn’t even the same species as these women. No, not species,
phylum.
She visualized the taxonomy charts she’d studied in Biology 101. No, plants and animals were a different kingdom. Her evolution had diverged from theirs so long ago, they weren’t related at all. The degree to which she didn’t belong among these exemplars of the feminine arts was inescapable. Nor did she wish to belong. She had found her place among the utilitarian desks of the classroom. Against the institutional beige of her natural habitat, she blended in perfectly.

  “Since we don’t have much time to get Emmie ready,” Grace broke in on Emmie’s contemplation of the forces of natural selection, “we will have to be efficient. The best way for someone to shampoo her hair is in the shower, don’t you think?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Emmie was in absent-minded professor mode,” Lyle, torso wrapped in a fluffy white towel, explained to the others from where she leaned, nonchalant in her partial nudity, against the vanity. “Come out of your ivory tower,” she admonished Emmie, not unkindly, “and try to focus on the mundane matter of getting this show on the road.”

  “Your hair, Emmie. Trish wants it washed. The easiest way will be for someone to shampoo it for you while you’re in the shower.”

  Emmie’s heart thudded heavily in her chest, and her shoulder throbbed with each beat. Though they had roomed together for four years, even Pickett had never seen her naked. She hated to be looked at.

  “That won’t work, Grace,” Pickett spoke up. “Emmie is modest. We can’t ask her to-”

  “Well, she can’t bend over a basin. It won’t take but a minute.”

  “Okay,
I’ll
do it then,” Pickett put in. “You won’t mind too much if it’s me, will you?” she asked Emmie.

  Emmie swallowed her rising panic. “I can do it by myself. Really.” Her arm wasn’t useless, just painful.

  Grace ignored her. “Trish has worked a miracle with your hair, Pickett. I’m not going to let you ruin it. You know how your hair gets in humidity.”

  “Well, I’m not going to let
you
make her uncomfortable.” Pickett’s ocean blue eyes turned stormy. Pickett too frequently let her sisters take advantage of her good nature, but in defense of her friend she became a tiger. “Emmie doesn’t have to do anything-”

  Lyle, the sister next in age to Pickett, opened the door to the bathroom. “Come with me, Emmie. The rest of you, give us ten minutes.”

  Lyle waited for Emmie to pass in front of her, then closed the door behind them. She sat on the turquoise tile rim of the huge whirlpool tub massed with tropical foliage. She tucked the large Turkish towel she wore more securely over her breasts then held the free ends together while she crossed her long slender legs.

  “I have three words for you: Suck. It. Up. I don’t know what you’ve been off doing with that homage to the power of testosterone, but we’ve got forty-five minutes until we have to be at the church. My baby sister wants you in her wedding. You,
your participation,
is the only thing she has insisted on. But I was watching her face. She was one inch from telling you that you didn’t have to be the maid of honor-all because you don’t want to accept help getting dressed. You’re not going to ruin Pickett’s wedding by looking like you were dressed by chimpanzees.”

  “Dressed by chimpanzees!” That was a little harsh. She was always properly covered, and nothing clashed. Still, the glimpse she caught of herself in the dressing room mirrors surrounded by Pickett and her sisters had accused her. Even in various states of undress, they looked sleek, soft, yet sculpted.

  Lyle went on as if Emmie hadn’t spoken, “And you’re not going to give her cause to feel guilty by further injuring your shoulder.”

  “I can do it. I’m only a little slow-”

  Lyle cut her off with a look of compassion, respect, and irritation. “Oh, you’re courageous enough to try hooking a strapless bra with a dislocated shoulder, I’ll grant you that. But sometimes love requires the sacrifice of our shortcomings.”

  “Strapless bra?” Emmie’s cheeks grew numb as she felt the color drain from her cheeks. Visions of people pointing at her breasts, boyish sniggers, and crude gestures assailed her.

  “What did you think you would wear under a dress styled like that?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think.” When she’d agreed to be Pickett’s maid of honor she hadn’t thought further than being expected to wear a dress of Grace’s choosing and stand in place. How she would look had seemed immaterial, since all eyes would be on Pickett anyway. Too tired to stand any longer, Emmie sank down on the rim of the tub beside Lyle.

  “Grace and I disagree about a lot of things,”-in a rare, kindly gesture Lyle laid her hand over Emmie’s-“but I will say this, her taste is infallible. She wouldn’t put you in anything unbecoming. Or immodest,” she added, coming closer to the source of Emmie’s distress.

  Emmie saw girls all the time on campus boldly wearing little breast-hugging tank tops that left no doubt about the precise amount of their endowment. When she emerged from her scholarly daze for long enough to notice these girls, their unrestraint amazed her. She knew she could never wear anything like that. She would die.

  However, faced with displaying her breasts for three hundred wedding guests to stare at, the prospect of one woman seeing her naked in the privacy of a bathroom seemed almost negligible-proving that even total mortification was relative. The gallows humor wrung a pained laugh from her.

  Misunderstanding the cause of Emmie’s laughter, Lyle stood. “I don’t have time to convince you everything is going to be okay. It really boils down to this. You’re going to have to trust us, and let us help you.”

  It was close to something Caleb had said. She was caught up in forces beyond her control, about to be thrust into a spotlight on a stage she had abdicated many years ago. She wasn’t helpless though, unless she refused assistance when it was offered.

  The shortcoming she’d had to sacrifice to accept Do-Lord’s help was temporary. Her arm would heal, and she would be normally competent again. The shortcoming she had to sacrifice
now
was her bone-deep incompetence in the feminine arts.

  The insights were rushing at her faster than she could assimilate them. The best way to fight off a sense of being overwhelmed by an enormous task was to choose one short-term goal.

  Emmie stood and faced Lyle. “What do I have to do right this minute?”

  “If you like, I’ll leave you alone so you can undress and get in the shower. You can even cover yourself with a towel while I soap your hair.”

  Emmie almost grasped the opportunity to avoid the small mortification. With Lyle’s cooperation she could probably keep a towel draped around her throughout. Then she remembered gym class and the contortions she’d used to dress and undress without ever baring herself. Would letting someone see her naked for a few moments really be more agonizing?

  “Or, I can stay here and help you with all of it.”

  Emmie kicked off her low-heeled pumps and reached for the Velcro tabs that secured the sling. “I could use your help.”

  “You know, if I took some weight off,” Trish remarked, running her comb through the long wet strands of Emmie’s hair, “I think your hair would have some natural wave.”

  In the shower, letting Lyle’s cool, impersonal, but always gentle, fingers free her from her clothes, and following Lyle’s cool, impersonal, but always gentle, commands to turn around or bend a little, a feeling of unreality had come over Emmie. She had waited for the dreaded hot, sick feeling of being looked at, steeling herself to bear it, and it had never come.

  Now she felt as if deep inside, a strut that supported all the internal fabric of her existence, had lost its steel. On the inside she wavered and fluttered as she never had before. She didn’t like the feeling very much, but it made her reckless.

  “Cut it,” she told Trish.

  Trish traded an amazed look with Grace that let Emmie know they had been talking about her. Probably what a lost cause she was. Grace looked stunned, but hopeful.

  “Are you sure?” Trish asked.

  Emmie wasn’t, but she nodded anyway. She wasn’t sure about anything. Emmie was wearing thong panties chosen by Grace and a strapless bra that mounded her breasts together and pointed them at the world like bazookas- both things that had never before entered the realm of the possible.

  “I’m going to bring it to where it will just touch your shoulders and add some layers.” Trish reached for her scissors and smiled at Emmie in the mirror. “I’ll bet you wear it long because you can’t be bothered with regular haircuts. Don’t worry, this will be almost as easy, and hair won’t get caught under your sling.”

  “I brought your medicine from the other bathroom.” Pickett handed her two capsules. “And you’re supposed to take it with food, so I fixed you a snack.”

  Unable to take her eyes from the scissors flashing and snipping around her head, Emmie swallowed the pills and chased them with the milk Pickett placed in her hand.

  Her head felt oddly weightless twenty minutes later when Trish turned off the blow-dryer. She turned her head back and forth, and as Trish had promised, strands no longer snagged in the sling. Her head moved easily, uninterrupted by constant painful tugs. Miraculously, since Trish had started work on her, even the pain deep in her shoulder joint had abated. If for no other reason, the haircut was worth it.

  Trish moved a couple of strands a quarter inch and stood back. “Do you like it?

  She giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” Pickett smiled at her affectionately in the mirror.

  “That there could be anything practical about all this.” Emmie waved at the feminine impedimenta- electrified wands, bottles and sprays of what Trish called “product,” brushes, huge round things and short ones that looked like paint brushes, tiny pots of color, a case that had to contain fifty lipsticks. She didn’t slow herself down worrying about any of this stuff.

  She broadened the gesture to include her dress that someone had hung on a closet door. The dress fit so snugly, a thong was required so panty lines wouldn’t show. It was silly to need special underwear, when all you had to do was buy loose-fitting clothes.

  The thought was more complex than she felt up to explaining, what with her head bobbing like a helium balloon. “If I’d known a haircut would make my shoulder stop hurting, I’d have done it days ago.”

  Everybody laughed.

  Finally, Grace touched a tissue carefully to the corners of her eyes. “Emmie, you are priceless!”

  “Now, do you see why I love her?” Pickett chuckled.

  “I’ve always seen why you loved her,” Grace averred.

  “Me, too,” echoed Lyle and Sarah Bea.

  “She’s special and courageous, and the perfect antidote to Grace’s perfectionism,” Lyle told Pickett. “We’re lucky you adopted her into this family.”

  “I may be a perfectionist-though I prefer to think of myself as having high standards,”-Grace grinned- “and y’all think I’m the bossy big sister, but you have to admit I was right to bring in Trish.”

  “I’d like to take credit that you’re out of pain,” Trish said, focusing on her professional duties, “but more likely, your pain meds have kicked in. Now is probably a good time to wax your eyebrows.” She pulled a small Crockpot from the back of the vanity. “Close your eyes.”