Lost & Found: A Charm for Trinity Ch. 02

I don't mind being left alone at the parlor; as junior partner, I like to keep my hand in, and I do enjoy being part of town life. It really is a proper beauty parlor now; as well as the latest hair and nail fashions, we offer complete facials, manicures and pedicures, or a combined program of skin, hair and nail-care, even a tanning booth. We got it after someone told Ellie Hoosen chicken grease helped tanning, so she rubbed herself down with it and laid out one baking hot day in the parking lot, wearing an indecently small bikini; it smelled like Grandma's chicken cookout day out there, and pretty soon every weasel for miles around was lined up waiting for her to stop moving. Stella took the hint, bought a booth, and Scotty and daddy installed it for her.

The ladies of the county just keep coming back, so we must be doing something right. We have three trainees here in Holden's Crossing alone, and another two parlors, one in Gainsboro, and the other in Chavez, staffed by girls I trained, so I have to stay on my toes to keep all the plates spinning and make sure they're doing things the Trini way, because that's the formula that works. I'm happy to say business is booming, so I'm kind of busy. I feel secure in the knowledge Kadey-Rae's in the best possible hands all the time I can't be with her.

Stella loves it that I'm so deeply involved in building the business; her two sons keep far away from the salons just in case Stella starts hinting they might want to get involved one day, or take over from her; they're happy to be mechanics and NASCAR drivers; the only way to get them through the doors would be to tell them it was Nude Hairstylist Night or a Wet T-Shirt Trampoline Challenge; otherwise, they keep well clear and concentrate on avoiding marriage, any hint of inheriting the business one day, and chasing girls up in Monte Vista, far enough away from home to keep prospective second-nighters from ever finding them.

When they're not doing that, they're corrupting Scotty with pictures of naked V8 engines posing all lewd and alluring, and dragging him ever deeper into their world of polished and chrome-plated automotive porn.

I'm pregnant again, almost four months now, so I'm beginning to show. Scotty is still in a haze; he's besotted with his little girl, but he's hoping for a boy this time around; somebody has to share that beautiful car with him! We'll find out at my next ante-natal clinic appointment and scan in a couple of weeks, so my fingers are crossed for a son for Scotty, although I know if it's another girl he'll be just as delighted. In the meantime, life continues at full pace for us, and, at last, we've become what I always wanted to be: a normal, young, suburban family in a town where everyone knew us.

To celebrate, last Christmas, my gift to Scotty was the thing he'd always wanted, but had never dared buy: his very own John Deere ride-on lawnmower, complete with custom paint job, cherry red to match the Torino, Go-Faster stripes, a Vargas-girl 40's pin-up artwork on the cowling of me with a Peek-a-Boo hair hairstyle and dressed in a few wispy strands of nothing much, done by one of the art-student girls up at the college, and a CD sound-system; he spends his life working to make our home a better place for me and his children, so I thought it was time he had a favorite toy, just to even things up a little. Now he can hold his head up proudly with the other husbands of the town.

*

Last week, Mom asked me to help her sort through all of my little-girl clothes that she'd boxed and stored, to see if there were any I wanted to keep as mementoes, or for Kadey-Rae, or to give to Thrift. Scotty had gone with Stella's two sons to rummage through heaps of rusty metal at yet another Auto Swap-Meet, so Kadey-Rae pulled me over to Mom's house and we helped Mom sort through the boxes in the attic and the garage. All of my clothes from kindergarten days and onward were sorted and put in one pile or another, until finally only one little pair of rolled-up red Oshkosh dungarees was left; I looked at them wistfully, remembering how they'd been my most favorite thing in the world, and knowing full well I'd never throw or give them away, they were just too precious to me. Wrapped up inside them was my 'Tinker Bell' trinket box. Obviously I'd put it there to keep it safe.

When I opened it, inside was a little leather package tied tightly with red threads. My eyes pricked with tears as soon as I saw it: my magic charm, lost so long ago. In all my happiness with Scotty, my baby, and my life back in the heart of my family, there had always been a tiny, sorrowful, empty place deep in my heart where a piece of my magic was missing. My eyes blurred with tears as I took it out and showed it to Mom, telling her what it was. Of course, she cried a little as well, but we were both dying to know what Scotty had put in there nearly twenty years before to keep me safe from the ogres and goblins. I cut the threads and carefully opened the little age-stiffened roll of oiled leather.

Inside, there was a Tootsie Roll wrapped in a little note written in pencil on a bubblegum wrapper, in Scott's careful, eight year-old script, and a small lock of chestnut hair carefully tied with red thread; the note read:

"This is a magic kiss and a piece of me to keep my baby-girl safe; I love you, Trini." followed by a big wobbly X. Now it was my turn to cry, really cry, finally understanding just how much and how deeply my darling Scotty has loved me from earliest days, and how well his magic charm had worked; it gave me the only thing in the world I'd ever wanted, it had given me my Scotty, my very own piece of magic. I really have been the luckiest girl in the world.