prop?”
“Frankly, that’s a disappointment. My wile and I each entered the same order.”
“You’re stuck with it?”
“Oh, we may get a wedding cake order unexpectedly.”
“Eight dollars,” I said.
He looked at the cake. “Ten dollars”—then added, “Cash.”
I looked at Cliff. He looked at me. I opened my purse and he got out his wallet. We had six fifty-seven. Mr. Helen Hunt stared at the ceiling. Cliff sighed and unpinned his fraternity pin from my blouse, handed it over, and Mr. Helen Hunt dropped it into the cash register.
He took the little bride-and-groom off the cake, set candles around each tier, then fetched an icing gun. “What name?”
“Gabrielle,” I replied. “No, make it ‘Gabby’—G, A, double-B, Y.”
I called Madame O’Toole from there. Madame bends hair for half the girls on the campus. She lives back of her beauty salon and agreed to be panting and ready at seven-fifteen. Fast driving let Cliff drop me at six-ten. Junior was stringing Christmas tree lights across the front porch and Daddy was moving furniture. Mother was swooshing like a restless tornado, a smudge of dirt on her cheek. I kissed Daddy but Mother wouldn’t hold still.
I made three calls while the tub was filling, then dunked, put my face on, and inserted myself into my almost-strapless formal. Cliff honked at five minutes to seven; he looked swell in a tuxedo a little too small and the darling had two gardenia corsages, one for me and one for Gabrielle. We roared away toward the Snack Shoppe, hitting on all three.
We got there at seven-fifteen. I looked in and saw Gabrielle at a rear table, looking forlorn and nursing a half-empty coke. She was in a long dress which was not too bad but she had tried to use makeup and did not know how. Her lipstick was smeared, crooked, and the wrong color, and she had done awful things with rouge and powder. Underneath she was scared green.
I walked in. “Hello, Gabby.”
She tried to smile. “Oh—hello, Maureen.”
“Ready to go? We’re from the committee.”
“Uh—I don’t know. I don’t feel well. I’d better go home.”
“Nonsense! Come on—we’ll be late.” We got on each side and hustled her out to Cliff’s open-air special.
“Where is the party?” Gabrielle asked nervously.
“Don’t be nosy. It’s a surprise.” Which it was.
Cliff pulled up at Madame O’Toole’s before she could ask more questions. Gabrielle looked puzzled but her will to resist was gone. Inside I said to Madame O’Toole, “You have seventeen minutes.”
Madame looked her over like a pile of wet clay. “Two hours is what I need.”
“Twenty minutes,” I conceded. “Can you do it?” Over the phone I had told her that she had to create Cleopatra herself, starting from zip.
She pursed her lips and looked the kid over again. “We’ll see. Come along, child.”
Gabrielle looked dazed. “But Maureen—”
“Hush,” I said firmly. “Do exactly what Madame tells you.”
Madame led her away. While we waited Cliff called the Deke house and the senior dorm and stirred out five more men and two couples. It was thirty minutes before they reappeared—and I nearly fainted.
Madame was wasted here—she belonged at the court of Louis Quinze.
And so did Gabrielle.
At first I thought she was wearing no makeup. Then I saw that it had been put on so skillfully that you thought it had grown there. Her eyes were eight times as big as they had been and looked like pools of secret sorrow—if you know, a woman who has lived her hair was still brushed straight back but Madame had done it over. What had been a bun was now a chignon—“bun” wasn’t the word. Her cheekbones were higher, too. And Madame had done something to the dress—it clung more and seemed more low-cut. Riding high on her shoulder was the corsage and her skin blended into the petals.
Instead of the beads she had been wearing there was a single strand of pearls—resting where pearls love to rest. They must have been Madame’s very own. They looked real.
Cliff gasped so I poked him to remind him not to touch. Gabrielle smiled timidly. “Do I look all right?”
I said, “Sister, Conover would shoot Powers for your contract. Madame, you’re wonderful! Let’s go; kids. We’re late.”
You can’t talk when Cliff is driving, which was good. We got there at twenty past eight; our block was jammed and our house stood out in colored lights. Junior was on guard; he ducked inside.
Cliff took our coats I gave Gabrielle a shove and said, “Go on in.”
As she appeared in the living room the Downbeat boys bit it and they all sang:
“Happy birthday, dear Gabby!
Happy birthday to you!”
And then I was almost sorry, for the poor baby covered her face and sobbed.
And so did I. Everybody began laughing and talking and shouting and the Downbeat Combo went into dance music, not good but solid, and I knew the party would do. Mother and I smuggled Gabby upstairs and I fixed my face and Mother shook Gabby and told her to stop crying. Gabby stopped and Mother did a perfect job fixing what damage had been done. I didn’t know Mother owned mascara but I am always finding out new things about Mother.
So we went back down. Cliff showed up with a strange man and said, “Mademoiselle Lamont, permettez-moi de vous presenter M’sieur Jean Allard,” which was more French than I knew he had.
Jean Allard was an exchange student that one of the boys had brought along. He was slender and dark and he fastened himself to Gabby—his English was spotty and here was a woman that spoke his language… that and Madame O’Toole’s handiwork. Be had competition; most of the stags seemed to want to get close to the new- model Gabby.
I sighed with relief and slipped out to the kitchen, being suddenly aware that I had missed dinner, a disaster for one of my metabolism. Daddy was there in an apron; he gave me a turkey leg. I ate that and a few other things that wouldn’t fit on the plates.
Then I went back and danced with Cliff and some of the stags that had gotten crowded out around Gabby. When the orchestra took ten it turned out that Johnny Allard could play piano, and he and Gabby sang French songs—the kind that sound naughty, what with the eye-rolling, but probably aren’t. Then we all sang Alouette which is more my speed.
Gabby was gaining a reputation as a woman of the world. I heard one ex-Boy Scout say, “You’ve really seen the Folies Bergère?”
Gabby looked puzzled and said, “Why not?”
He said, “Gee!” while his eyebrows crowded his scalp.
Finally we brought out the cake and everybody sang “Happy Birthday” again and Mother had to repair Gabby’s face a second time. But by now Gabby could have washed her face and it wouldn’t have mattered.
Professor Lamont arrived while we were killing the ice cream and cake—Daddy’s doing. He and Jean Allard talked French, then I heard Jean ask him, in schoolbook English, for permission to call on his daughter. Doctor Lamont agreed in the same stilted fashion.
I blinked—Cliff never asked Daddy; he just started eating at our house, off and on.
Around midnight Doctor Lamont took his daughter home, loaded with swag. At the last minute I remembered to run upstairs and wrap up a new pair of nylons that would never fit Gabby but she could exchange them. So Gabby cried again and clung to me and got incoherent in two languages and I cried some, too. Finally everybody left and Cliff and Daddy and I tidied up the place, sort of. When I hit the bed, I died.
Cliff showed up next morning. We gloated over the party, at least I did. Presently he said, “What about Georgia?”
I said, “Huh?”
He said, “You can’t leave it at this. It ought to be poisoned needles, or boiling lava, but the police are
