exonerate her. Maybe Margaret had been stung by a bee and gone into shock. Maybe Evelyn didn’t kill her mentor and best friend.
But when the report was released, Evelyn knew there would be no reprieve. Margaret had extensive swelling of the face, lips, and tongue. She’d suffocated. The details were too horrible to think about.
The pathologist said the severe symptoms were caused by an overdose of Coumadin. Margaret had been taking the blood thinner for her heart. The pathologist believed Margaret had mistakenly taken a double dose of Coumadin and died from it. Her death was an accident.
Only Evelyn knew it was no accident. Only Evelyn knew she’d killed her best friend. And she couldn’t figure out how.
At the station, Evelyn stumbled through her standups, missed deadlines, flubbed her lines. She felt numb. She didn’t care, not even when the station did not renew her contract. She knew Tiffany would take her anchor spot.
She didn’t know why Margaret died, and that made her crazy.
Margaret had only had one-third of a normal dose of Coumadin. It shouldn’t have killed her, even if she was already taking the blood thinner. The sun, celery, and rue might intensify the effect, but Margaret was a brunette. It should have been blonde Tiffany who swelled up from the sun exposure. It should have been Tiffany who died.
All Evelyn could do was ask herself, “What went wrong?”
She found out at Margaret’s memorial service. Margaret’s grieving family displayed photos of their daughter throughout her too-short life.
Evelyn saw the first-grade picture of a grinning gap-toothed Margaret. The little girl was blonde-and not just blonde, but so pale her hair was almost white. In high school, a teenage Margaret used too much eyebrow pencil and mascara to darken her pale brows and eyelashes.
By college, Margaret was a stunning platinum blonde. It was only after graduation, when she got her first job at a little station in Sedalia, Missouri, that Margaret had dark hair. She was a brunette in every photo after that.
“You were Margaret’s best friend,” said her mother, a plump gray-haired woman in black. She took both of Evelyn’s hands in hers.
“I didn’t know she was a blonde,” blurted Evelyn.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Margaret had lovely hair. Natural platinum. But Margaret said she couldn’t take the ‘dumb blonde’ jokes at work. She said when she dyed her hair dark, her IQ went up 50 points.”
That’s where I went wrong, Evelyn thought.
Margaret was blonde. And Tiffany? She remembered why Dolly Parton said she wasn’t offended by dumb blonde jokes. “… I know I’m not dumb. I also know that I’m not blonde.”
Tiffany must have dyed her hair blonde. She recalled her nasty remarks about Mr. John being the city’s finest colorist… “so natural.” Of course. He certainly made Tiffany look natural. That’s why the poison salad didn’t bother her. She wasn’t a real blonde.
It was the ultimate blonde joke on a dumb brunette. It never occurred to Evelyn that Tiffany was a bottle blonde. She should have known. Everything else about her was fake. And in TV, mistakes start at the top.
Evelyn realized Margaret’s mother was still holding her hands and talking. “I told her, ‘Margaret, it is a sin and a shame to cover up that beautiful platinum hair.’ And you know what she said? ‘Mother, I would rather die than be a blonde.’
“Evelyn? Are you okay? Why, you’re white as a sheet, dear. Sit down here. It’s not healthy to be that white…”
Lah Tee Dah by ANGELA ZEMAN
HERMIONE LISTENBERGER CONTEMPLATED her name as she plucked a slow riff of perfect, clear notes from her six-string acoustical Gibson (the three-quarter size model to better fit her small frame).
The ringing tones mellowed the acrid air with a leisurely sweetness she hoped would entice the West 50th Street subway patrons to slow their mad pace. In a few moments, after the number 9 train resumed its screaming rush downtown, she’d segue into her next tune.
Just this morning she’d re-strung the guitar with all steel strings, although this type of guitar was really created for nylon. As the train sat gathering its strength, she took advantage of the relative quiet to listen hard to the steel’s sharper delineation of each note. As she had hoped, the sounds lingered longer, blending and reaching deeper into the tiled subway tunnel. The tunnel itself was her sound system.
Excellent.
Her attention returned to her name. Hermione possessed an orderly mind that trudged remorselessly down the path she had laid for herself. A new name was next on her agenda. Something memorable. Striking. Not for the first time, she marveled at her parents’ choice. Did it reflect the stultified Utica environment they adored? As soon as she had judged herself wise and strong enough to protect herself among strangers, she’d run to Manhattan with the desperation of a drowning man who knows only one place to find air. Hermione? Coupled with Listenberger it lost all hope of working as a stage name. For one thing, it was ugly. Now, ugly might have worked if it fit her musical image. However, she knew her music was strong. Also disturbing at times, an effect that delighted Hermione. But not ugly.
Also from long, detached inspections in bathroom mirrors she knew that she herself had beauty of a type. After careful consideration, she had eventually chosen to make her beauty an asset, to play it “up” onstage. Even though her current finances forced her to sluice her body as completely as possible in public facilities and to subsist mainly on juice and discarded sandwiches from overflowing trash barrels, her ivory skin was of such luminous softness that it seemed to invite touches from fascinated admirers. However, she allowed no touching. Her healthy abundant hair shimmered in any light, from bright brassy gold in the sun to a dusky red glimmer in the tunnels under fluorescent lights, even in subway air dusty with stressed steel and crumbling cement. In this July heat, tiny curls edged her peach-flushed face. In winter cold, she paled, her hair reddening by contrast, a flame in frost. Her figure had never had the leisure or the income to pad itself with baby fat. She had the lean litheness of an athlete.
Never mind. A name. Suddenly the edge of her consciousness registered that the train had left. After so many months, one learned to tune out the subway roar and thunder. So she quickly launched into a new song she’d written. With this one, she tasted success in its notes. Instinctively she knew this was going to be her signature, her door into the world of success.
She launched her voice, clear and high, with a fierce push on the highest notes, a rough drawl for the low ones: “Leave me now, I’ve moved on anyhow. Lah tee dah, down the MTA highway, the next stop will be better, lah tee dah…”
To her annoyance, a tall young man in vintage bell-bottom cords and a skin-tight tee shirt with the sleeves and neckband ripped out stopped short and stared at her in shocked recognition. She was used to this. Some of these guys were twice her size and sometimes nuts from drugs, or just plain nuts. Some were musicians who recognized her talent and wanted to use her to elevate themselves. Either way, she wished-oh how she wished- she had some means to keep him and those like him away, for there had been many.
This one was a musician. She read the thoughts crossing his face as if they were the moving electric letters on the Times Square news sign: He heard the work behind the melody, the breathing techniques that gave her voice the unearthly compelling quality that, although he probably didn’t know it yet, was her trademark. He would want to hook up with her. They all did. It was a Manhattan thing, nearly half the population wanting to be a singer, an actor, an artist. A thousand competitors for each elusive “break.”
Her eyes closed, not to submerge into the heat and thrum of the song, but in irritation. Yep, he was coming closer. She felt his intent stare through her closed eyelids. She opened her eyes and glared. Oblivious, he inched closer until rage, far too familiar by now, rose in her anew, choking the words in her throat. For a few lovely seconds an image of herself transformed into a she-wolf came to mind, bringing her visceral pleasure. With little
