Sweet Caroline(75)

Behind me, my little Hurricane Howard party is quiet and peaceful. Elle decided to join the festivities and is painting a hurricane scene in the corner by the boarded-up French doors. Mercy Bea flicks through Cosmo, reading embarrassing female anomalies out loud. Mitch pre-tends to watch the news, but the perpetual grin on his face tells me he’s hearing every word.

He’s so cool. When we finally hunkered down for the storm, he pulled out his guitar and sang a few hymns, then led us in prayer. The peace it generated reminded me of the night Jesus stopped by. Mercy Bea went through half a box of Kleenex.

A gust of wind crashes against the house. The lights flicker off. But before we can moan and complain, they flick back on.

“Howard best not leave us in the dark.” Mercy Bea rises from the breakfast nook with a Wal-Mart bag dangling from her fingertips. “Caroline, I brought a surprise.” She holds up the bag. “Hair coloring.

Let’s get you fixed up.”

“Color my hair?” On impulse, my hand reaches to the edges of my rough, dry, once-a-rich-brown hair. “Now?”

Mercy Bea shakes the bag. “Miss Clairol with extra conditioning. Now, come on. Aren’t you tired of that dried-out, mousy brown?”

“Who brings hair color to a hurricane party?” I sink my backside farther into the cool, leather couch.

“Mitch, convince her a little conditioning and color wouldn’t kill her?”

Mitch munches on an Oreo cookie from the coffee table junk-food pile—MoonPies, potato chips, M&Ms, Oreos, boiled peanuts. “It is a little mousy.”

“What?” I lean forward to see his face. “You would hand me over to this wanna-be stylist? Besides, what’s wrong with mousy brown?”

“Caroline, let’s goooo.” Mercy Bea motions for me to march to the bathroom, like a kid doomed for a Saturday-night bath. “Come on; it’ll be fun.” She produces a pair of shears. “I’ll trim the ends for you too.”

“Don’t you need a license for those?”

Elle calls from the kitchen, where she’s washing out her brushes. “I’ll do your nails.”

“Now, wait a minute, y’all.” I slide forward and slap Mitch’s knee a few times. “We can’t turn this into a girls’ night. What about poor Mitch?”

He waves off my comment. “After hearing Mercy Bea read out loud from Cosmo the past hour, I’m pretty much immune to girlie stuff in all its forms. Besides . . .” He points to the built-in shelves, “I’m going to peruse Jones’s old LPs.”

“That’s your last excuse, Caroline. Get cracking.” Mercy Bea shuffles me off to the master bathroom.

Mumbling as I change into an old, I-don’t-care-if-it-gets-stained T-shirt, I submit to Mercy Bea and let her dump a bottle of hair color on my head while Hurricane Howard howls over us like a hungry panther on a cold winter night.

“In twenty minutes, you’ll have lovely auburn hair, Caroline.” Mercy Bea scoops my hair on top of my head, secures it with a big clip, and tucks a towel around my neck.

“If you say so.” My skin tingles as the color slips down my scalp.

Mama was a naturalist. She gave up shaving her legs and underarms about the time I hit puberty. “Bondage,” she claimed. “Makeup, hair color, false nails, tweezing, shaving—tools to keep women in bondage to man’s idea of beauty.”

So, any discovery for me about bondage came from Cosmo, Hazel, Jess, and Elle.

I emerge from the bedroom. “Ta-da.”

Mitch looks around from the bookshelves, grinning, then laughing. “What? No mud mask?”

I pistol my fingers at him. “Shutty uppy.”

“Caroline, Iamoverwhelmedbyyourbeauty.”

“That’s more like it.”

Back to the albums lining the shelves, Mitch slips one from the row. “Have you looked at Jones’s collection? It’s amazing. Hundreds of albums in mint condition.”

“Y’all want popcorn?” Mercy Bea hollers from the kitchen.

“Popcorn is good,” I reply, standing next to Mitch, wiping my brow with the edge of my T-shirt. The strong scent of hair dye mingles with his fading cologne.

“The Carter Family, Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, original 78s and LPs.” Mitch flips through the stack. “Buck Owens, Homer and Jethro, Dixieland jazz, Glenn Miller—this is incredible.”

“Do you want to play one?” Jones’s record player from the seventies is on the bottom shelf. I lift the lid and click on the fuzz-covered turn-table. “Elle, can you mute the TV?”

Mitch eases a Buck Owens LP down the spindle, then sets the needle down on the spinning disc. The old speakers crackle and pop.

“Oh, that sound takes me back. The crackle of a needle on vinyl.” Mercy Bea leans across the kitchen counter, waiting for the microwave to produce a bag of popcorn.

Buck sings: “They’re gonna put me in the movies.”

Mercy howls along, almost drowning out Howard’s eerie wind song. Elle and I wince. However, Mitch takes the high harmony.

“All I gotta do is . . . act naturally.”

When the song ends, Mercy Bea jumps up for the popcorn. “Are there any Johnny Cash albums, Mitch? Now there’s a man for you.”

Howard shrieks with a surge of intensity. The muted TV screen shows us the hurricane’s eye looking down on Savannah.