Rich and Pretty(57)

“Let me show you how it’s done,” she says.





Chapter 15


The morning is cool. Sarah is in the library, waiting for it to be eleven past the hour, when the local channel recaps the forecast, but also hiding from Willa. It doesn’t work.

Willa sweeps in with purpose, takes Sarah by the hand. “Don’t worry, darling, it’s going to clear.” Willa shakes her cell phone in the air triumphantly. “I’ve got an app. Hour by hour. It’s saying noon. So don’t you worry.”

Sarah isn’t worried, in fact; it’s April, what did they think? She no longer cares about whether the weather will hold, but Willa seems almost to want her to be unhappy. If Sarah is petulant, that will give Willa something to do; if Sarah is grumpy, that will reinforce Willa’s value. Sarah doesn’t want it to rain, obviously, but she wants Willa to somehow be proven wrong. After tomorrow, she’ll never have to see her again. She turns the television off before the weather report even comes on and goes upstairs to wait.

Willa has been calling the bedroom “the bridal suite” and “the staging area” alternately: the former possessed of too much grandeur, the latter too silly. Neither can elevate what is, after all, Sarah’s childhood bedroom. In this room, what can she be but a girl again—all that childish ephemera: years’ worth of yearbooks, framed certificates for this or that accomplishment; a Lladro figure of a horse; a sterling, hollow pig, filled with Kennedy half-dollars. Behind the door of the walk-in closet—the only space where Sarah was allowed to exercise her decorative instincts, her adolescent psyche made visible. There, glamour shots of horses torn from the pages of magazines gave way to a parade of soft, shirtless lads, interchangeable really, the stars of screens large and small, Jonathans and Tylers and Aarons and Eriks, who were then ripped down, supplanted by postcards of paintings, stolen from the gift shop at the Met, an Avedon portrait of Allen Ginsberg ripped from the pages of Huck’s New Yorker, though she never managed Howl, a photograph of Sylvia Plath she found God knows where. Even here, this assemblage wasn’t necessarily the real Sarah. There was an artifice to it, she was aware even as she had assiduously set about Scotch taping.

Danielle, the hairstylist, is waiting for her, sipping a gigantic paper cup of coffee, as is Lauren, sitting on the edge of one bed and reading an old Vanity Fair. Danielle arrived half an hour ago, rolling a suitcase, black, efficient, the sort a flight attendant uses, in her wake. But now she’s unpacked, the tools of her trade arrayed neatly on the bureau, atop clean, white towels that she must have brought with her.

Danielle came recommended by Willa. Sarah had only glanced at her portfolio, a panoply of dewy brides with stunning updos and tousled manes, but upon meeting her, Sarah knew she was the one: It’s hard not to be impressed with a woman like Danielle, a hairstylist who wears her own hair shorn to the scalp, something black women are uniquely capable of pulling off. Danielle wears a black tank top and black jeans, and Sarah considers, resentfully, her well-formed biceps. After all these weeks of dutifully lifting and dropping those stupid pink barbells, she doesn’t have much to show for it. Danielle had listened carefully at their meeting and seemed to agree that what Sarah envisioned—hair back, not up—was the right thing to want. Danielle had taken Sarah’s face in her hands, studied the shape of her head, and the whole thing was so intimate, so loving, her warm, strong touch. Danielle was the kind of woman you’d let do anything to you.

“You look lovely this morning,” Danielle says. “How are you feeling? Nervous?”

“A little,” Sarah says. Why lie? She can admit to Danielle what she won’t admit to Willa.

“First things first,” Danielle says. “Have you eaten?”

Sarah shakes her head. She hadn’t even tried. Not morning sickness, thankfully, just a disinterest in her usual bowl of yogurt and cereal.

Danielle frowns. “This is your job,” she says, accusingly, to Lauren.

“She doesn’t want to eat,” Lauren says. “I tried!”

“You didn’t tell her she has to?” Danielle shakes her head. “You have to.”

“Maybe I should eat.” Sarah’s still not hungry, but if Danielle says she must, then she must.

“You should. A boiled egg, something with some protein, and some fruit, just because.” Danielle sips her coffee.

“So should I . . .” Lauren trails off. “Should I, like, go downstairs and boil an egg?”

“You should,” Danielle says. “That would be the right thing to do.”

Lauren puts the magazine aside and stands. “Okay. One boiled egg, coming up.”

“Make it two,” Danielle says. “One isn’t enough. And find some fruit.”

Sarah finds it reassuring that even Lauren is cowed by Danielle. Lauren stands, sort of shrugs, leaves the room. Danielle’s tone isn’t unkind, but she’s clearly someone to whom other people listen.

“I’m all set up,” Danielle says. “You’re going to sit here. The light is good right here.” Danielle has pulled one of the little benches from the end of the bed to a spot in the sunlight, by the window.

“Sounds good,” Sarah says. “Are you ready for me now?”

“No, no,” Danielle says. “Once you’ve eaten, we’ll start.”