Chapter 31 Cece
Cece
Cece stands at the bar and pours herself a glass of water.
She knows she is terrible; she never should’ve said that to Georgia. She didn’t deserve it. It’s just that the sight of her
here in this infuriating beauty shop, giving the place loving looks, and getting comfy like she might easily be seduced out
of her dreams by the charms of this place, its people, the fun that Cards undoubtedly becomes, she can’t stand it. Cece can’t
let that happen.
Cece watched her twin sister, the one out of all of them who seemed beyond the grip of family influence, pushed and pulled
until she bent to tradition, and it took something from June. Her delight, her will, her confidence, perhaps—not that she
didn’t have some to spare. Dot’s relentlessness over the name changed June’s understanding of the way she was loved by the
women who came before her—largely and loudly, yes, but certainly not without limits. It was as if June admitted, in naming
Junie, that she wasn’t more powerful than this place. That though she and the rest of them loved this place like another one
of them, loved the magic that occurs inside these walls, they were also bound to it, indebted to it, and subjected to its
whims and wishes. For themselves—and for their girls.
The fire inside Cece starts to burn out as she watches Georgia lope out of this place with her old boyfriend. Now Junie’s boyfriend? She can’t keep track, and it all looks like another issue waiting to happen.
Tonight, Cece drank too much—on account of the nerves she’d worked up. In truth she wouldn’t mind the bank or the haircare
brand or whoever pleases repossessing this place, but she didn’t want to let the girls down. She wanted to pull through for
Junie and Georgia, and let’s be honest—for their mama too.
Instead, she’s screwed it up on all fronts, taking out her frustration on Georgia when it’s herself she’s upset with. Well,
herself and her grandmother, Dot, because she’s the one who turned the naming into something ugly.
Cece pushes out of the back service door and into the warm air of the night. She lights a cigarette, out of sight of the others
who would take it away and stomp it. It’s rebellion and self-destruction, and it matches the urges curled up inside her.
Grandma Dot once owned this shop, though she didn’t start it. That was her mother, June, who opened the place in the 1930s
as a basic spot for the locals to come for a haircut. Dot wasn’t a June, and that fact was likely both the spark and the fuel
for everything that happened. Dot’s older sister, June the second, took off to California after high school. Apparently, she’d
been talking about it ever since junior high, yet the entire family was shocked when she followed through and made plans a month before graduation. Once she bought a house out there and settled into a
child-free beach bum lifestyle, it was clear she wasn’t coming back to claim the shop. It was Dot’s to take.
Dot’s mother, June, the original one, handed it over, but she did so with some misgivings. As far as Cece has heard, straight
from her mother’s mouth, June saw Dot’s interest as an obsession that was unhealthy and worried about what it would do to
her daughter. She didn’t quite foresee how her fixation might impact others in the family.
Cece walks under the light of the streetlamp and knocks the cigarette ash into a bush.
Dot was obsessed with the name, and even after she had the shop, it was as if she was holding out for her sister to give her
the name too; it wasn’t like she was using it. Dot eventually married and popped out babies, first four boys in quick succession
until the fifth arrived, a girl she could name June. Two years later a final girl arrived, Clementine, in whose house the
girls live, a surprise baby or an insurance policy, depending on who you ask. If Dot couldn’t have the name, one of her children
would. Or so legend goes.
Dot’s baby, June the third, became Cece’s mama—Georgia and Junie’s grandmother. She was quiet compared to the others in the
family tree but also ever-present in her support and love. She passed down the family stories and didn’t spare details, as
if she was preparing her girls in some way, schooling them to play the game of the family politics.
Dot didn’t let a day pass without mentioning how lucky Cece’s mama, June the third, was to have had three girls to help her
run the shop: Cece, June, and Tina. For a while Cece figured that was how all grandmothers were—obsessive over the lineage,
the family business, names. When she grew older and met some other grandmothers, she realized they weren’t like Dot at all.
Maybe they weren’t all the active, playful adults they are nowadays, but they were softer. Kinder. Interested in who their
grandchildren were, not just what they could offer.
Cece drops the cigarette to the ground and puts it out with her toe. She bends to pick it up and goes to toss it in their
dumpster.
Cece never liked her grandmother Dot, but it wasn’t until later, when Cece was an adult, that she truly learned to hate Dot.
That was when Cece found out about the rest of what happened back then, before any of the nonsense with threatening June over naming her two girls happened.
Truly, it was Dot who started this whole thing the generation before, messing with Cece’s mother, June, over the twins, Cece and June, born seven minutes apart.
Dot was ready to raise hell over seven minutes.
Seven minutes, if you could believe it. Seven minutes for a lifetime’s worth of dragging themselves across hot coals all for the namesake of June.
Their mother called them to her bedside as she neared death, a few years before June got the cancer diagnosis, and she told
them the whole story. Their father, the only other person who would’ve been privy to this information, died years earlier
from a heart attack. Cece sometimes wonders if it would’ve been easier simply not to know; it’s another thing that makes her
hesitant to tell Georgia and Junie the full gamut of Dot’s drama. In some ways, it seems like an opportunity to halt Dot’s
influence.
As Cece turns to walk inside, she spots blue lights approaching.
“Aw, crap,” she mutters under her breath. She hurries in through the back door and yells, “Five-0, y’all! Cover the tables,
hide your drinks. Hell, hit the floor for all I care.”
Chairs screech and the volume drops to a murmur.
Junie and Tina leap into action, pulling patterned tablecloths from a stashed bag and efficiently laying them out over the
gambling.
On her way to the front door, Cece calls to the group at the bar, “Slide this in back.” Three gamblers slowly guide the table,
bracing the glass bottles for protection.
Cece slips out the front door and closes it behind her. The lights inside the shop turn off as the police car pulls up. When
it parks, Mike Costas steps out, and Cece lets out a breath of relief.
She smiles at him. “Evenin’, Mike. Anything I can help you with?”
Mike approaches, removing his hat. He gives her a look like she should already know. “Cecelia, I do my best to turn a blind
eye.” He sighs. “But when y’all are so loud that my junior sheriff in training drives by and calls in a safety check, you
tie my hands.”
Cece nods. “Apologies. We did get a little rowdy tonight.”
The sheriff nods. “We’ve got some new guys on deck, so take that information and proceed accordingly. There’s only so much I can do.”
“Yes, sir,” Cece says. “I appreciate the notice.”
He turns and walks back to the car, then stops before getting in and says, “Just promise you’ll win some money off that Hank
McKeegan. Cheats at golf every weekend.”
“I’m doing my best,” Cece says, and she raises a hand as the vehicle pulls back out onto the road.