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They made
certain they were alone in the powder room beneath the stairs and locked the door behind them to guarantee privacy. Sunny leaned against the door and drew an exasperated breath. “And you wonder why this is my first time back in three years. Do you blame me for staying away? She was all but frothing at the mouth, crazed with a lust to know all the titillating details of my life in the big city.”
Fran was sitting at the aproned vanity table repairing her lipstick. “Are there any titillating details of your life in the big city?” She cast Sunny a teasing glance in the oval, framed mirror. Sunny’s icy stare only evoked another laugh.
“Relax, Sunny. This is Small Town, U.S.A. What else have people like Mrs. Morris got to do?”
“Watch the grass grow?”
“Right. They have to occupy themselves with each other’s business. And, let’s be frank, you gave them a lot of material to work with several years ago.”
“I wasn’t trying to get their attention.”
“Well, you got it anyway. For all these years, they’ve been dying to know why you did what you did. Your parents moved away soon afterward, so they were no help in supplying an answer to the riddle. Now you show up looking like a character straight off the set of Dynasty, by all appearances unscathed by the incident. They’re dying to know what prompted you to do such an unheard-of thing. Can you blame them for being curious?”
“Yes, I can blame them. The gossips practically drove my parents nuts with their childish curiosity. Mom and Dad couldn’t go anywhere without being on the receiving end of snide looks and prying questions. Even so-called friends pestered them about it. They bowed to the pressure and left.”
“I thought they left because your dad got that job in Jackson.”
“That’s the reason they gave me, but I never believed it. I was the reason they relocated. I’ve got to live with that, Fran.” She took a lipstick from her miniclutch and dabbed her lips with it. “But thanks for the compliment about me looking like one of the women in Dynasty .”
Fran smiled. “Ladies around here wear either short cocktail dresses or long formals. They never heard of matinee length. All their hems are even, not raggedy like yours. No one would think of putting tangerine and violet together, but it looks sensational on you,” she said, admiring Sunny’s dress. It looked like the artful crisscrossing and draping of several scarves.
“And, my word, my word,” Fran exclaimed, clapping her cheeks in theatrical horror, “have you really got two holes pierced in one ear? You’re bound to be a pinko! I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were a Yankee or two in your family tree.”
Laughing, Sunny swatted the air inches from Fran’s nose. “Be quiet! You’re making me laugh, and I don’t want to laugh.”
Fran clasped Sunny’s hand warmly. “I know you didn’t want to come back here, and that the only reason you did was for my wedding. I realize what a sacrifice it was, and I appreciate it.”
“I wouldn’t have missed your wedding, Frannie. You know that. Although...”
“Although you don’t understand why I want to get married again,” Fran finished for her.
“Something like that.”
Sunny stared earnestly into Fran’s eyes. It seemed to her that Fran was only digging a deeper rut for herself. She had had a chance to take her two children and leave this backwater town after obtaining a divorce from her first husband. But Fran had stayed, stuck out all the gossip, and was getting married again.
“Sunny, I love Steve. I want to marry him, have a baby with him.” Fran’s expression pleaded for understanding. “I thought I was in love with Ernie, but I only saw what everybody else did, a dashing football hero. Unfortunately, that was the sum total of what he was. When he couldn’t be that anymore, he fell apart, turned to drinking, turned to other women. They still cheered him on instead of telling him to grow up as I, the nagging wife, did.
“Well, Steve’s as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. He loves me, he loves the girls. He’s not as handsome as Ernie, and he hasn’t got that built-like-a-brick-outhouse body, but he’s a real man, not an overgrown child.”
Sunny patted Fran’s hand. “I’m happy for you. You know that. I think the world of Steve for making you whole again. It’s just that I can’t imagine anybody actually choosing that kind of life. I feel lucky to have escaped it.”
“Only because you haven’t found the right man to share it with.” Fran arched her brow. “Speaking of which, I don’t suppose you’ve seen your ex-fiancé.”
“No, and I hope I don’t.” Sunny fiddled with her hair. “He and Gretchen are still married, I suppose.”
“Yes, but one hears things. The scuttlebutt is that—”
“No!” Sunny said. “I don’t want to know. I won’t stoop to the level of everybody else in town and yearn for the latest gossip.” She looked at Fran’s hairdo critically. “Your hair is perfect. Where’s that slipping pin you mentioned?”
“That was only a ploy to get you away from Mrs. Morris.” Fran popped up off the vanity stool in a movement almost too spry for a thirty-year-old mother of two children.
The friends left the powder room, giggling like girls, the way they had done through junior and senior high school. Fran drew a more serene face when they reentered the salon. Her intended spotted her and moved toward her and Sunny.
“Hon, the president of the company just arrived from Baton Rouge,” Steve told her. “He can’t wait to meet you. Says he wants to see the woman who convinced a confirmed old bachelor like me to get married. ’Xcuse us, Sunny.”
“Surely.”
