Then Miss Posey cast a glare at Sam. “Or perhaps a neighbor who doesn’t turn our nice, clean neighborhood into a foul-smelling mule farm.”
“Pony, not a mule,” Sam corrected, then wished Miss Posey a pleasant evening and retreated inside to change into her one-piece dotted culottes.
Sam had big plans with a small file tonight, as she looked forward to leafing through Raul’s notes and coming up with a scheme to stop Cook Pharmaceuticals once and for all.
By the time Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show came on television, Sam’s AAA map was unfolded across her dining room table and she had charted her directions to Morewood Heights, home to the richest men in Pittsburgh. But driving to Thomas Cook’s mansion was only the first plan of attack. The real battle would be grabbing his attention—and holding it long enough to find proof of malpractice, which was a much loftier war. There was only one person who could help Sam with that.
A master manipulator. The most deceptive dame Sam knew. And professionally pretty.
The front door swung open.
“Avon calling!” Minnie Stanton chimed from the entryway, nudging the door shut with her rear. “Mummy to the rescue!”
Sam’s mother whirled into the dining room like a dervish, lugging a blue floral tapestry tote, which she slung with a huff onto the table. Fido trotted his way over, nuzzling Minnie’s elbow with his nose despite her attempts to shoo him away.
“Can you please put this thing outside? He is going to poop all over the floor.”
“That’s why he wears a manure bag.”
“And he won’t stop bumping me with his nose.”
“Those are his love nudges. You should be honored, since Fido doesn’t approve of just anybody. Horses can smell pheromones, which determine if you’re friend or foe—”
“Thank you for the science lesson, dear, but let’s move on to more important things.” Minnie patted her magician’s bag of tricks and miracles guaranteed to turn Sam from homely to hot-to-trot in one sitting. “Now, this won’t be easy,” Minnie warned, unzipping the sack full of color palettes and creams. “Do you need a Valium before we start?”
“No, Mom, I can handle it.”
“And it might be downright painful,” Minnie added, holding up a pointy metal object that glinted under the dining room light.
“I’ve got a high pain threshold.”
“You probably won’t recognize yourself afterward, Samantha,” Minnie concluded with a click-click of the tweezers.
Sam squirmed. “That’s the whole reason I called you, Mom.”
Minnie giggled gleefully as she clapped with excitement. “My little girl is finally becoming a woman!”
“You’ve been waiting for this moment since I was born, haven’t you?”
“Well, you never did like dresses or makeup or dollies as a child. So yes, as a mother who specializes in beauty, this is a landmark day for me.” Minnie grimaced, leaning forward with a curious expression, then plucked a stray hair from Sam’s brow with a flourish. “One down, thirty to go!”
By the time Minnie’s makeover was complete, and she held up her silver hand mirror in front of her daughter’s face, Sam couldn’t decide if she looked more like an It Girl or Cousin Itt. Her eyebrows were rimmed with angry red blotches, her lips stained an unnatural pink, and her bronzed face no longer matched her pale neck. But she looked feminine. Pretty, almost.
“Were you paying attention to how I applied your makeup so you can replicate it?” Minnie asked, stacking bottles and jars and tubes into a canary yellow train case, then handing it to Sam.
“Yes, Mom. I took notes.” Sam held up the notepad on which she had written each step down, from the eye liner to the lip pencil and everything in between.
“Maybe try smiling, dear. And don’t act so quirky.”
“But quirky works for me.”
“Oh, honey, quirky doesn’t work for anyone. You know there’s a pill for that.”
“Mom, I’m not taking a pill to change my personality.”
“Okay, okay.” Minnie waved off Sam’s scowl, giving up the battle she knew she would never win. “So who is all of this for, anyway?”
“I never said it was for anyone.”
“Oh, come on, Samantha. It doesn’t take a mother’s intuition to know this is obviously for a man. You’ve never shown an interest in cosmetics or beauty before. And certainly not at eleven o’clock at night. Is this about that Raul Smothers fellow?” she wondered with a wink. “I had a feeling about you two.”
“Can’t a girl decide she wants to learn how to act like a proper woman without an interrogation?” Sam deflected, knowing a woman’s propriety was her mother’s—and society’s—correct answer to almost any question.
“Fair enough,” Minnie conceded. “I can’t say it doesn’t make me happy that you might at last find a husband.”
And marriage was the solution to almost any dilemma.
“I can assure you there is no husband waiting in the wings. Just me, Fido, my plants, and my column.”
“I really wish you’d quit daydreaming and be practical, Samantha,” her mother chided anytime Sam revisited her passion for botany. Or writing. Or both. “Writing and gardening won’t pay the bills. Stick with secretarial work. That’s where the money is. Along with the eligible bachelors,” her mother added with a wink.
Minnie went home feeling optimistic that her daughter would finally, most certainly, assuredly land a man. And Sam went to bed feeling terrified that she would undoubtedly, most certainly, assuredly lose her job. But more than that, as Sam gazed at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she hated the version of herself staring back. Lips sticky with gloss, eyes hooded under a velvet purple, floral hairpins probing her scalp…
She had been forced to become someone else in order to become herself. In her tight-fisted grip to keep the job she fought so hard for, and made enemies over, she had exchanged her very dignity. With a splash of water and a dollop of face soap the makeup disappeared, but the worry over the secrets Raul knew about Thomas Cook stuck to her long into the night.