Chapter 41
It’s true what they say about getting the things you always wanted—it’s never what it’s cracked up to be.
I’d spent my entire childhood yearning for a best friend.
I’d never even bothered yearning for a lover.
Suddenly I had both. It was hard to fathom that someone in my position could ever feel anything other than joy.
And so, it came as a surprise to me that, on occasion, I did feel bored.
“Want to go to the beach?” Daphne said.
It was a hot Saturday afternoon, and the bees were having a fine old time buzzing around in Mum’s lavender. Daphne and I lay on our backs on the grass in the shade of the oak tree.
“Nah,” I said.
“We could have a hit of tennis?”
“Just the two of us? Boring.”
I knew I was being difficult, but the heat made me irritable and everything Daphne suggested seemed like too much effort. And yet, her spirits would not be dampened.
“We could walk down to the train station?” she suggested.
Back then, the train station, insofar as our interest in it, had very little to do with catching trains. It was a chance to interact with the boys away from the watchful eyes of parents and teachers.
I rolled to face her. “Are you mad?”
“No. Come on. Billy won’t be there, he’s still in the hospital. You might even see Christos!”
I rolled onto my back. “So? I don’t even like Christos.”
“Oh yeah? Then why are you blushing?”
“I’m not,” I said, but my cheeks felt hot.
“So if I looked in your diary, I wouldn’t see lovey-dovey stuff about Christos?”
“No!” I said. “Gross.”
I hadn’t told Daphne about my relationship with Mr. Loukas. He had insisted that we keep it between us for now, which made sense, and besides, I had a feeling Daphne would disapprove of the age difference. Anyway, there was something delicious about having a secret. Made it feel even more romantic.
But Daphne wasn’t giving up. I sighed. “Fine, we’ll go to the station.”
Daphne jumped up, delighted.
“But,” I said, “if we’re going to the station … maybe we should tart ourselves up a little?”
Daphne scoffed. “Nonsense. Look at us! Any boy would be thrilled to have us, just as we are.”
You had to admire her chutzpah.
“Still,” I said, “it might be nice to put in a little effort, don’t you think?”
She considered this. “Do you have any makeup?”
“Nope.” I grinned at her. “But I know where to find some.”
Daphne warmed up quickly to the idea of putting a little effort in before we went to the station. By the time I was sitting at the dressing table in my parents’ bedroom in front of the mirror, she might have even been mistaken for someone who was enjoying herself.
She opened the drawer. “This is a beautiful dressing table. You should put it in your room, Mabel.”
My mother’s cosmetics were exactly as she’d left them—Max Factor, Rimmel, Revlon, neatly laid out in rows, next to a zippered bag full of brushes. As Daphne laid them out on the tabletop, the scent of my mother rose into the air, then settled over me—a featherweight cloak of grief and memory.
“No peeking,” she said, covering the oval mirrors with a large towel. “Wait until I’m finished. I’m going to make you look marvelous, darling.”
Daphne tied a scarf around my hair, then went to work with Mum’s Max Factor Crème Puff Powder, her blush, her lip liner, her lipstick.
She layered on eyeshadow and bossily told me where to look as she applied several coats of mascara.
She tilted my head this way and that, considering me, before digging back into the palette for another color, or into the drawer for a different brush with which to blot and blend.
“I know quite a bit about makeup, did you know that?” she said, as she applied what must have been the fifth coat of lipstick.
It was a blessing that I couldn’t reply. While Daphne professed to know quite a bit about a lot of things, as yet I hadn’t seen this knowledge translate to any sort of skill in any particular area. Proving this point, she picked up a blusher brush and started patting my eyelids with it.
“There,” she said, pulling back to admire her work. “Now, time for hair.”
It was fair to say that Daphne never did anything by halves. She went to work on my hair, brushing and teasing and pinning and spraying, until my mother’s can of Cedel hairspray ran dry.
It was impossible not to think of my mother as I sat there, surrounded by her scents and her things. It made me sad, but it also felt precious, and intimate. I found myself holding very still, willing it to never end.
“Right,” Daphne said finally. “Ready to see the new you, darling?”
“Ready, darling.”
With a flourish, she removed the towel from the mirror. “Ta-da!”
For a moment, I just took it in in silence.
My lips caught my eye first. They were shiny and pink and … at least twice their normal size.
And my eyes—covered in pearly blue shadow and ringed in black, gloopy liner.
Two bright pink circles sat high on my cheeks.
And my hair. My hair. It had been scraped back off my face and was plastered down flat. It looked—I reached up to touch it—and felt wet.
Behind me, in the mirror, Daphne’s face became uncertain. “I used this stuff.” Daph held up my father’s Brylcreem.
Words escaped me.
“It’s possible,” Daphne said thoughtfully, “that I may have gone a little heavy on the blush.”
She pulled a tissue from her sleeve and spat on it. I leapt off the chair.
“What’s wrong?”
“I look like a clown!” I exclaimed. “And my hair. What have you done to my h—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence; I was overcome by a propulsive burst of laughter. My stomach muscles spasmed.
Daphne was also laughing. “Blimey, you’re right! You’re a clown before it puts on its wig!”
“With two black eyes!”
We fell to the floor, snorting and rolling around like farm animals. When Daphne let out a fart, I thought I might die laughing.
It went on and on—each time one of us got it together, the other set us off again. We laughed so hard and for so long that we didn’t hear the front door open, or the heavy footfalls on the stairs. We didn’t hear anything at all until he was standing in the doorway.
“What the hell is going on in here?” my father roared.
And just like that, the laughter stopped.