Chapter 10
Thoughtfully, Susanne walked into the cafe, allowed herself to be seated and listened to Danny order for himself and for her.
"We can take the truck back home," he picked up the one-sided proposal where he'd left it at the entrance, "and find someplace down there we can live until I finish this next trip. One thing for sure: when I return from that I'll be able to recognize you.
"Now, then, where will we be married? Church or at the registrar's, or does it matter?"
Susanne looked at him in wonder. As far as Danny was concerned, she was his to order around.
"We're not engaged," she reminded him.
"Good thing. Don't have to go through all that shower business; make your folks and mine waste a lot of money on the wedding. This way, we walk in single and walk out married."
Sweetly Susanne smiled at him. "Not in this state, Danny. We've a three-day waiting period. Remember?"
"By George, you're right. I'd forgotten. Well, good. Truck will be ready to roll late today. Gives us more time. I'll pick you up at daybreak, drive home and call in a minister, maybe after church services on Sunday, to tie the knot. Now that's settled."
And he settled down to steak and fried potatoes.
She merely settled in the booth. Had he said he loved her, didn't want to go on without her; had he said he wanted to marry her in order to care for her; in fact, had he said anything at all about her and not talked about himself exclusively, she would have been impressed.
He hadn't. His whole concern had been his own reaction to the change in her; a reaction he hadn't analyzed.
"You're not eating."
"I am not hungry, nor can I eat a steak at noon."
"Well, eat what you can."
He went on with his plans, not theirs, all during the steak, potatoes and inevitable apple pie. Finishing, he ushered her out and, hooking her elbow under his arm, asked about the courthouse.
"My car's parked not far from here," she told him.
"I'll drive," he announced when they reached the car, and held out his hand for the keys.
"No," she replied thoughtfully, "I haven't given up the wheel yet. Get in, Danny; we need to talk."
She'd heard most girls swooned at the very thought of masterful men. She had never felt less like swooning, more like zooming up and out of his life. Had he not been the Danny she'd known for so long, she'd have been tempted.
"Danny," she began, "doesn't it occur to you I have a beauty salon to run for four more months?"
"Oh, that. Henri can manage it. Hell, honey, any man who could handle a motor transport in the Army could handle a piddlin' little old beauty shop."
"Could you?"
"Me! I wouldn't be caught within a mile of one unless it was to drag you out. No real man would."
"Danny, Henri is more of a man than you. You are just a teen-age kid who hasn't grown up. Oh, yes, you are."
She had started the car, driven out and was traveling too fast for him to risk leaping out. "You have the same set of values you had in high school. They crystallized in college. That's why you're fighting me."
"I'm fighting those confounded hairdos, that clown makeup, the ratty change in you."
"No, you're not. You're angry because I no longer symbolize the girl you knew in -high school and college. I've dared to change, temporarily, but you're not quick enough to see that. You just resent change."
When he started to argue, she silenced him with one telling line.
"We didn't marry right after graduation because you wanted to find yourself. All right. Danny, have you been looking for yourself?"
She had driven to the big terminal where his truck was garaged. Now she stopped, aware his hand was already opening the door.
"Danny, in high school and college I was pretty sure I loved you. But I've grown up. If you're still interested, come back and see me after you've settled on what you intend to be."
"You've changed," he charged as he stepped out.
"Things should," she replied wistfully. "Change can be growth."
Danny gave her a man-to-wayward-child smile. "See you next trip through; you've too much good sense to let a beauty mart throw you."
Susanne drove off, wondering if she had let the Hair-After bias her judgment. She'd talked to Danny as she'd talked to the woman with mother-in-law trouble.
All right, she told the girl in the rearview mirror, Danny had it coming. Imagine being expected to remain exactly the same my whole life just so he won't be disturbed. Marriage is a two-way proposition.
She had a picture of being married to Danny. It would mean living "medium rare," as she called it, in a middle-class home in a middle-class town, with security wrapped around every venture like a smothering comforter.
I'd almost sooner be married to Henri, she decided. At least there'd always be a surprise hanging over her head. Or on it, she qualified, one hand going up to the tower of Pisa above her.
Marriage to Danny would mean a permanent home, from which nothing short of a hurricane or a fire would force him to move.
Why, in no time at all he'd look upon me as part of the furnishing, as he'd look at an easy chair, never seeing it needed reupholstering or perhaps a mended spring. He'd like it the way it was when he acquired it.
Yet habits were not easy to change. Having thrust Danny out of her life, Susanne reached the salon looking bereft. And Henri, on watch, literally leaped across the intervening space to glance first at her left hand, then at her hair.
"I have had word," he intoned gravely, "that every woman tonight will wear this tower of Pisa arrangement. We will change, yes?"
"Who cares?" sighed Susanne. "I have the hat," he confided, leading her to his chair. "It will create the illusion."
He waited until she should that point of relaxation where women talked. When she didn't, he probed a little.
"You are too tired from yesterday?"
"No, I just cut off a leg, and it hurts me even though I didn't need three legs."
Danny would have sent for the nearest psychiatrist. Bert would have been at least temporarily mystified. Henri grasped the allusion immediately.
"Four legs are good, but three, never. With the two you make progress."
Henri was so comforting. Susanne nestled into the chair and went to sleep.
She awakened to stare at the girl in the mirror in horror. She was wearing a Christmas tree on her head, wide at the base and tapering to a point. Its branches, or folds, carried shining gadgets, and at the tip was a shining star.
Lights which had been turned off were turned on. She relaxed. Just a bauble.
All around the booth were beaming faces.
"My," breathed Dove, "you sure will be the talk of the conference in that."
"So seasonal," murmured Bettine.
Lurline, with a glint of mischief in her eyes, said, "Just plug her in and let her revolve,"
Henri stood behind her chair, a fatuous smile on his handsome face. He was well pleased with the picture he had created. Too bad. Imagine lopping off two men in one day.
"Would Aunt Mary Morgan have worn such a conversation piece to a conference?" she asked.
Every face registered shock except Henri's. His revealed an expanse of defeat. Susanne had asked the one question he couldn't answer and retain the right of the hat to sit on that head.
Lurline came in quickly with soothing words. "You wear everything so beautifully, Miss Susanne, we forget you are not a model as well as the proprietor, but of course you are right. Miss Mary looked regal regardless of what she wore."
Julie seemed to be awaiting Susanne, "judging from the mischievousness in her eyes. Of course they would be happy to exchange that Merry Hat for something more conservative. Miss Susanne was wearing the silver-beige this evening? Then would she care to try this?
The glistening toque sat neatly on her head, leaving just a fringe of silver curls below, curls that took on the sheen of the beige.
Susanne drove back to the apartment to dress, walked in and paused. A florist box sat on the tiny foyer table, a gargantuan box of candy beside it.
"And just when I had the pain of that third leg out of my mind," she moaned, "come roses and chocolates;"
"He brought them," Maggie said from the inner doorway, "and asked questions, such as did I think you would change back to yourself, and how could he help you before it was too late?"
"Oh, dear," sighed Susanne. "What did you tell him, Maggie?"
Maggie maneuvered her into the living room, removed the two boxes from her hands and settled her into an easy chair.
"Got him talking so's I'd know what to say. He told me this beauty bit was a racket. I told him that was what they'd been saying back in the days of Cleopatra, but looked to me it was the one racket that didn't peter out with time.
"Then he said he wanted to make a good safe home and wanted you in it. Security, he said, was his goal. So I said to him, 'Well, there's security and security, and a lot of them that has financial security don't have it emotional like. A wife wants more than a house with good foundations.' "
Oh, poor Danny, thought Susanne, he'd never have been able to understand Maggie.
"What did he say?" she asked eagerly.
Maggie shook her head. "Said just to let him lay those foundations, get you in the house and the key turned, and he'd prove me wrong."
A moment later she asked, "What's that?"
Susanne repeated her words. "My sympathies are with him. I must have changed; else how would I ever have thought to marry him?"
"Could be you didn't. Think, I mean."
Henri arrived at the appointed time, carrying a short spray of tiny slipper orchids. Susanne was puzzled. They were almost "the identical color of her suit. Then he asked Maggie for a particular clip from Miss Mary's jewel box, and she understood.
She looked sparkling. Thank heavens the heavens sparkled with frosty stars that night. Rain would have completely destroyed the illusion.
As Henry acted as nominal host to out-of-town members and other local beauticians, Susanne had little to do but bob her head and say, "So happy," which was only partly a lie.
Susanne the girl was anything but happy. Susanne, Miss Mary's heir to the Hair-After, was happy to meet those in the profession.
They were really a wonderful group, no different from any other business or professional group except there were more women taking an active part, not there merely as wives brought along because it was an open meeting.
She wasn't really surprised at the number who spoke of "Miss Mary." But she hedged when a few earnest ones drew her aside to ask if she intended to carry on Miss Mary's therapy.
"I haven't the wisdom," she replied so unhappily they wondered.
Henri deposited her with Lurline and Dove, then began circulating. Susanne watched. He was surely popular with both men and women. He had poise, distinction and executive ability.
Now why hadn't Aunt Mary left the Hair-After to him?
Words between Dove and Lurline alerted her.
"You can certainly tell the men from the boys," Dove exclaimed, then turned to. explain to Susanne. "I meant the operators from the models."
Susanne looked at her own staff. Each was beautiful, each smartly groomed, yet none looked as she had that noon.
Beauticians, she decided, might show a trend, but they did not shock the eye with the ultimate of that trend.
That was a real thought provoker. Then why had Henri repeatedly treated her as a salon model? Each time, she remembered, her interest rising, it had been just when Danny Harper was due to see her. Was the timing coincidental? Oh, it must have been. What possible motive could he have for wanting either to discourage Danny or to encourage him?
Oh, she was being fanciful. Here came Henri, looking at her as though she were the prize of the evening.
The thought left her completely within the next few moments. Henri was introducing her to all of the important people with such pride, stressing the fact she was "Miss Mary's niece and very much like her beloved aunt."
Then they were seated at the head table, and for all of a half-hour Susanne dined in peace. A twinkling hat far down one table caught her eye, and again doubt zoomed in like a black cloud.
If Henri were so proud of her as the successor to her Aunt Mary, why had he tried to make her wear that terrible Merry Hat? Imagine sitting up here on the dais in that!
The speaker of the evening took her by surprise. Imagine beauticians being dedicated to a cause!
Two months ago she would have jeered. Now she was remembering Henri's words about gardening. Why not have beauty wherever possible? Why must the world be a dull, lusterless place to be good and efficient?
And what was this speaker saying? That one of the most important therapy treatments in mental homes was changing the patients from drab, beaten individuals to well-groomed men and beautiful women.
Danny should hear that!
Why, she had a friend who taught the mentally retarded and accomplished as much with daily showers and clean new clothes as with the actual books and exercises. Hair trimmed and a new shirt, hair curled and a new frock, and they took their places behind their desks with pride of achievement and attempted concentration, a first step.
And now, the speaker having been applauded, came the big moment, more or less synchronized over the nation.
The parade of models revealed for the first time the impending changes in hair styling.
Now that is odd, thought Susanne as the first model came into a spotlight. Probably a page of some kind. A slim, boyish figure with an extremely short haircut, capris, shirt, and a hip-length cape tossed back over one shoulder to reveal a glittering lining.
"Ah," murmured Henri beside her, "the Martian look."
Martian? Oh, outer space, where, according to illustrators of science fiction, girls wore the type of clothing, and presumably hair styles, which least impeded their travels.
And here came a model looking like El Greco at his best, the hair shining black.
Another was a tomboyish figure with a raffish hair trim, smooth in back but in front hanging in elfin locks to the brow.
Beside her, Henri groaned. The groan was repeated throughout the big dining room. Beauticians were looking at one another as well as at the models.
The new styles, Henri whispered, were not only revolutionary; they would revolutionize the business. Not a permanent wave was visible; nothing but mannish short-cut hair such as only a well-trained barber could hope to achieve.
Arid this new style was coming in immediately.
How long could the Hair-After last?
"This," cried a voice down the table, "is worse than automation. This strikes a death blow at the executives as well as at the workers."