Chapter 9 Georgia
Georgia
My insides are a mess of worry, but I have to push through the glass-paned door and let the slapdash bell barely hanging there
bump around.
Junie is right behind me and wordlessly flips on the light.
The sight of the place cast into detail slams right into my middle, and I gasp for breath. Coming here to physically face
our predicament feels like living out an episode of all the worries I’ve lost sleep over in years gone by. Since Mama died,
I’ve been convinced we were in some way branded to have bad luck, destined for the short straw. Not that I really had proof.
No proof until now, that is.
It’s chopped up and torn up, and every shred of what it’s supposed to be has been pulled out. The entryway podium, usually
overflowing with the appointment book, purses, cups, customer offerings, is gone. The candy jars along the far wall (aka the
Bribe Center for children in tow) are gone. Every iota of character has been stripped. The spaceship hair dryers are draped
in tarps as if they’re mourning, and the maroon carpet is only a memory. Mama swore for years she’d replace it with linoleum—just
as soon as she won the lotto.
Not a single Dolly portrait remains.
I cross the room to the boxes on the other side.
“Anything that came off the walls went into those,” Junie says.
I crouch, lift a lid, and tenderly leaf through the contents, check on each Dolly as if to make sure they’re still breathing.
“It’s worse than I imagined,” I say.
“Your stuff is there too,” Junie says.
I glance over at the box beside me that has Georgia scrawled on it in Tina’s handwriting. It’s my own set of clippings, the ones Tina started tacking up around the shop when
I had any sort of accomplishment after Mama died. Whitetail is not a big town, after all, so the newspaper is often willing
to report on nonevents like the high school canned food drive. I often wondered if Tina thought this place was a direct line
to Mama in the afterlife, that she could show me off by putting me on the walls. They’re going to be so disappointed, so embarrassed,
when they learn I never amounted to much. I tear my eyes away; now is not the time to digest that.
I stand and look around the shop.
Regret floods me swiftly, starting at my toes and climbing into my throat where it threatens to choke me. I avoided this place
for so long, steering wide around it when I came home, convincing myself it wasn’t a place for nonstylist Louises. It sat
too close to my most tender pain point, the name, and Mama’s intentions for me. I didn’t have to come here to see my sister
or the rest of them. And yet I never once doubted June’s would be here—forever and untouched. I believed—foolishly—that it was so permanent and that my mother’s memory was so potent that it simply couldn’t be budged. I was sure it’d be
waiting for me until the day I got up the guts to show up. But now, in front of my eyes, it’s nothing like it was; it’s been
shorn of possibility. It’s been gutted, just like I feel.
Junie opens her mouth to say more, but the front door clatters again with the arrival of a newcomer.
“Georgia Louise! You’re here!” Aunt Tina shrieks. Her thin, birdlike arms wrap around me.
I lean into the hug, Mama’s little sister, her version of a Junie. Tina has always made me feel loved and welcome and like
I’m not entirely cast out. “Well, you know it’s not like me to sit out a code red.”
“Tina!” The snappy tone precedes Randy entering the shop. He looks as ghastly as he is, greasy, likely smelly—not that I ever
get that close—lazy on all fronts. His T-shirt is covered in stains, and the neckline is stretched to a point I fear a nipple
sighting. “I’m taking the car. I gotta see to a thing. You can text me, and I’ll try to come.”
Tina releases me and turns to him. “Well, how are you thinking I’ll get home?” The joy that sang in her voice in greeting
me is gone, and what’s left is frail and apologetic.
Randy throws out his arms and gawks like a moody teenager. “I dunno, woman. That’s your problem to figure out.”
As though his ugliness conjured her, Aunt Cece sweeps in behind Randy. “I know you weren’t speaking to my sister like that.”
Cece steps in front of him, and she looks ready to swing. “Right?”
Randy breaks eye contact and shuffles toward the door. “Whatever. See ya.”
Silence sits in the room, Cece fuming, my jaw wide in shock, and Junie tutting and muttering under her breath. When car tires
screech outside, Junie speaks up. “Enough is enough, Tina.”
Tina pulls in a breath, looking frantic. “I’m sorry, Junie. I’m sorry he upset you.”
Junie flashes me a look, and her eyes say get a load of this.
“I don’t think—” I say.
“Did he not upset you?” Junie asks Tina. “You shouldn’t put up with that.”
Cece nods, lips squeezed together. I’m sure she’s got a boatload of more colorful language regarding Randall the Awful, and I’m fully behind her.
It’s probably the one and only thing Cece and I see eye to eye on.
Even though I have tried, her affection for me could fit on the head of a pin.
Ever since I was a girl, she’s been aloof.
Cece’s chilliness, or put more kindly, her emotional restraint, makes particularly little sense considering the fact that
she and Mama were twins, and Mama was well-known for hugging strangers and initiating impromptu dance parties in public. Mama
was the lucky twin, born first, however. She elbowed her way out of the womb seven minutes before Cece to seize the name and
the shop and all the hoopla that comes with it. I secretly wonder if Cece is bitter she lost out over so little.
Then again, Randy is one of those issues that unites women because he is a case study in the struggles of modern dating, an
undercover bad date taken hold. Twelve years ago, when he and Tina first met, he was kind, took her out, made her happy. Next
he moved into her little house with promises of a ring, a marriage, a family of some variety, pets, and construction of that
white picket fence she’d always dreamed of. But since that moment, he’s done nothing but sit around and take up space, not
a box checked. I love Tina to bits, but to be frank, she’s a complete pushover. She is so bent on making other people happy
and so terrified of ruffling any feathers that she keeps her blinders on and the leech housed under her roof.
It’s always bothered me, how he stole those dreams from her, but what bothers me more is that she won’t stand up to him and
kick him to the curb, won’t demand the life she wants and deserves. Instead, she simply lets him run her life and kill her
dreams slowly, one day at a time. All because she’s too polite to say no.
“I used to be friends with the sheriff’s daughter, if we need to call in a favor for an eviction,” I say quietly.
Junie ducks behind Tina where no one but I can see her, a devious grin spread over her lips as she begins to raise the roof. I bite the inside of my cheek to prevent my face from breaking out to match.
“Mm-hmm, I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” Tina doesn’t meet my eye. “Anyway, Georgia, did you hear what happened to my
wig wall?”
The moment breaks, and it’s as if the four of us are reoriented to the state of the shop, the issue far more pressing than
Randy could ever be.
“Tell me,” I say.
The wig wall is an interesting feature at June’s that dates back to Mama’s time. It got most use from Mama during her chemo,
and she expanded it generously as a silver lining for herself. But Dolly has also been known to wear wigs, and Aunt Tina is
fond of them, so they’ve stayed. Tina, bless her, periodically takes the things down and shampoos them, blows them out, and
styles them like pooches at the groomers. It’s quite a sight, like she’s working her way down her queue of bodiless clients.
Wig maintenance was a task Mama assigned her during her treatment, and like the rest of us, Tina has clung to the words that
woman left behind.
“Well, I’ll tell you I came in here and they were pulling things apart with all those beauties still lined up on the shelf.”
I glance at Junie, who’s now blushing slightly.
“I didn’t get a heads-up on any renovations, so I came in and very politely asked them to pause so I could please take down
the wigs before they were ruined, and don’t you know it, they ignored me.” Tina huffs. “I was extremely nice about it too. I guess they were innocents, ignorant about how wigs work.”
I squeeze her arm. “Thank you for taking care of those,” I say. “You’re right. Construction dust would’ve ruined every single
one.”
Tina smiles.
“We cleaned yesterday,” Cece says. “I’m not sure it’s getting better than this until it’s patched back together.”
I cross my arms and take stock of the place once again. “And you’re sure about seeing clients.”
Junie shrugs. “What other choice do we have?”
“We should hang something over the drywall holes,” Tina says.
I would’ve snagged a few of Moon’s wall “tapestries” on my way out had I known. Though entirely off-brand for June’s, they’re
exactly what’s required to do the job. “I agree,” I say. “Let’s spruce her up a bit.”
There’s no direct mention of the fifty grand we’ll need to actually fix this, and I suspect the calm is due to the fact that
they all assume I’ll come up with the cash. But there is no quick fix to be had; this is one verifiable, unmovable problem.
“I’ve got a bunch of stuff at home,” Junie says. “A few little rugs we can throw down in the entryway, some wall coverings.
Y’all know how I am—when I see a yard sale, I just see little babies needing a home. And I love it when the babies I rescue
find homes close to me.”
Cece looks blankly at Junie like she simply cannot imagine relating in a single way to any of what she just explained.
“You’re such a sweetie,” Tina says. “Why don’t you run up to the house and grab them and we’ll help you set up?”
“Need help?” I ask Junie.
She shrugs. “Ok, but it’s not a big job.”
Junie calls out, “Be right back,” and she and I head outside.
She tosses me the keys to the truck, and my heart flutters.
I love driving her truck. We climb in and I crank it, then roll down the windows as I tear out of the lot and let the wind run through my hair.
We ride in silence, aside from Junie setting a loving hand on my shoulder and squeezing once.
I idle in the driveway while she runs inside, and as promised, Junie reemerges quickly, holding a box stacked high with an eclectic mix of home decor and a tote bag on her shoulder.
She drops her things in the truck bed, and I drive us back to the shop.
Once I’ve parked in Junie’s spot, we round the truck to the bed.
Junie grabs the box. “Will you get the bag?”
I nod, already reaching for it. As I lift it, I hear the familiar clink of glass bottles. “What’s in here?”
Junie looks over her shoulder at me and winks. “Provisions. For sprucing the shop.”