Stay Tuned (8 page)

My car trunk was loaded down, and I pulled out of the parking lot of
Posh Couture
, satisfied that Cher’s wardrobe choices would show off the new and improved me.

Stage One transformation:
 
Complete.

Stage Two:
 
This was where Candace came in. I hit her number on speed dial, praying she’d finally answer.

“Crisis central.” Candace quipped. She had such a knack for making me laugh.

“Your crisis or mine?” I was interrupted by ear-piercing shrieks in stereo. “Are those happy screams?”

“Let’s see,” Candace replied after a door closed firmly in the background. “Sure. Happy screams, yes. The girls just found a lizard in the laundry basket. Daddy’s taking our new little friend outside. How’s your day been?”

“Fabulous,” I bubbled and gave her the quick and dirty version of my shopping escapade.

“Nice,” Candace agreed, without a trace of jealousy. I loved her for that. Then again, her closet was probably full of the same designer clothes I’d just bought. “I want to see all of it!”

“Done,” I said.

“Meet me for some dinner? I want to hear all about what else happened at the station. Marcus can keep the kids,” she whispered. “The promise of a little nooky later will do wonders.”

I could have hugged her. Candace was my safety belt on life’s merry-go-round, my conscience, and keeper of all juicy secrets.

“That sounds wonderful. But first, I need a favor…”

“Now, start from the beginning,” she commanded with a sweep of her hand.

Hitting the high points, I recapped last night’s drama—some of which she had seen—the punch, the spattered blood, then Alyssa’s attention-getting antics, and Drew’s reaction. I ran through the breakfast fiasco, Chris hidden behind the newspaper, speaking only in grunts, and my worry about filling in on the anchor desk.

“And his only concern,” I rolled my eyes dramatically and leaned back in Candace’s chair, “was whether or not I could get his shirts from the dry cleaners.”

“Uh-oh.” Candace clucked her tongue, one hand on the denim hip of her Joe’s Jeans. Her blue eyes flashed and she tapped the heel of her Jimmy Choos on the ceramic tile floor.

“I told him, ‘Get your own dry cleaning.’”

Candace’s eyes widened. She stepped back and did a double take. One hand flew to her mouth. Her huge diamond engagement ring caught the light and winked at me, as if to say:
 
Nice going. Now say goodbye to your marriage.

My stomach cramped. I envisioned Chris, furious, packing his suitcases. It had happened once, a long time ago. Would he leave again? Over something so minor?

“You said that?” Candace finally managed to choke the words out.

I bobbed my head and stared at the toes of my scuffed suede Borns, suddenly wishing I could hit a rewind button and take back the day, or at least the morning. If I worried long enough, even the new clothes hidden in the trunk of the car would start to take on a sour note.

“Maybe I should call him and tell him I’m sorry,” I said, chewing my lower lip. Candace knew what had happened last time.

Before I could continue beating myself up, Candace let out a whoop and slapped the side of her thigh. She laughed so hard she doubled over and tears streamed out of her eyes.

Candace gasped for breath and steadied herself. “You’re way overreacting. And he’ll get over it.” Wiping her cheeks, she bit her bottom lip. “Melissa, was he listening to you?”

I didn’t want to answer.

“I don’t know, not really,” I said slowly. “He was in a hurry, and he’s under a lot of pressure at work, but—”

The moment I opened my mouth to defend Chris, Candace shot me a searing look. “Don’t whine to me and then pretend everything’s hunky-dory. You always tell me that Chris won’t talk about work; he won’t talk about his parents. He’s part of the problem, but so are you. Neither one of you want to communicate. Something’s gotta give.”

I knew what was coming next. The Dr. Phil lecture:
 
“If you don’t want to change your life, quit complaining about it.” I’d heard it so much I could give the talk myself.

Candace and Dr. Phil made it all sound so logical. But what if things were so awful they couldn’t be fixed? My mind raced with the possibilities, insecurities mounting like storm clouds ready to burst with rain. No. It had to stop. I was being irrational and needy, two things I hated.

“Enough is enough, right?” The words escaped before I could stop them.

Candace cocked her head and studied me. “Enough what…?”

“Enough worrying, enough feeling sorry for myself, enough being afraid—”

Okay, I was running out of reasons. Breathless but happy, I looked up at Candace, who beamed back at me. I had just given myself permission to live my life. Just like that.

“It’s okay to change. To re-invent myself.”

“Good.” Candace nodded approvingly and winked. “Now what about that favor?”

We bent our heads over a dozen hairstyle magazines, ripping out shots of Reese, Victoria Beckham, and Cameron Diaz. None seemed quite right. I had been on the darker side of brunette forever, my stubborn refusal to change over the years.

Until she found it.

Without a word, Candace held up a page. I had to admit—it was attention getting—without being off the charts wild. It was a cut that grazed the shoulders, accented with just the right amount of highlights. The stylist had added a bit of fringe around the eyes and jaw. Best of all, it wasn’t too drastic and had just enough movement to make it look touchable, yet professional.

The shade decided it for me in the end:
 
Rich chestnut brown, with gold and caramel intertwined. The model’s coloring even matched mine, pale cream, with hazel eyes that seemed to pop off the page.

“It’s perfect,” Candace breathed.

I didn’t want to ask
if
she could do it, for fear she’d say no, or slap me silly.

Without another word, she left the room. Candace banged around, poured and mixed, humming to herself the entire time. Five minutes later, she reappeared, swathed in a black apron, a bowl of hair goop in each hand and a gleam in her eye.

She went to work, each strand on my head pulled and pasted into submission.

Twenty minutes later, foils in, and a clear plastic bag over my head, we waited for the chemicals on my hair to work their magic.

Candace settled into an ecru velvet couch in the front of the store. I perched next to her on an overstuffed chair. In the quiet of the salon, we toasted our progress with some wine.

As the glasses clinked together, and we watched traffic sail by the window, I suddenly realized I had monopolized ninety percent of the conversation since screeching into the parking lot and unloading every bit of my personal baggage.

Thank goodness for best friends. For true friends, the ones who love you no matter what. Even with foil in your hair, looking every bit the Martian bride. I was lucky to have Candace. Really fortunate.

Setting down my wine glass, I leaned toward her. “Thank you for all of this, Candace. Really. You’re the best.” I reached out and squeezed her hand.

Candace flashed me a smile and leaned back against the pillows. “Anytime.”

I took another sip of wine, letting the warmth cascade down my throat. “Is life good? The girls? Marcus?” I asked. “Forgive me for not asking sooner…”

Candace grinned up at me and swirled the tiny slosh of red in the bottom of her glass. “Can’t complain.”

For the most part, Candace didn’t complain. She didn’t have to. Candace was content reading Dr. Seuss to her five-year old twins, arranging play dates, and scraping Play-Doh off the floor. Her butt didn’t sag, thanks to hours of Pilates. The salon was a resounding success. Her husband made loads of money as an international attorney and was handsome in a Clive Owen sort of way. If she weren’t so down-to-earth, smart, and funny, people would hate her.

Which was impossible, of course. Candace had been there. She’d had heartbreak, the disappointments. She knew what it was like to want something from the depths of your soul.

After years of being happily childless, Candace had an epiphany in the middle of the grocery store.

Amid hurried shoppers and flashing display cases, Candace watched a mother comfort her screaming newborn, and then leave her entire shopping cart full of cereal, milk, and bread.

Right then and there, she’d decided she had a hole in her life as big as the Grand Canyon.

The next several months were a blur. Rounds of exhausting, unproductive sex with her husband, and reading every how to-get-pregnant book she could find filled her life.

Fertility testing was next. She drove hours for appointments and paid outlandish sums of money for medicine. It was suggested more than once that “advanced maternal age” was to blame for her inability to conceive.

She was just thirty-nine. The age label hardly seemed right.

Candace ignored most of it, and at one point even joked about naming the baby Clomid if she ever did conceive. Two rounds of in-vitro fertilization later, still no pregnancy.

The whole time, Candace remained my sounding board about my work woes, Kelly’s occasional boyfriends, or Chris’s late hours. I thought she was handling everything just fine.

Until I realized how selfish I was.

On Candace’s fortieth birthday, at a gala celebration at the country club, my best friend disappeared for an inordinate amount of time. Marcus started to panic. I began to look under tables and in closets. After nearly calling together a search party, I found her in one of the bathroom stalls hovering over a copy of the latest letter from her doctor.

A teary-eyed Candace held up the thick, embossed paper and said, “One last chance, that’s all they say I’ve got…before I need to explore ‘other’ options.”

She started to sob again. “Like a surrogate.”

Candace was desperate. She couldn’t be reasoned with. So, I grabbed the note, scanned it, and said the most comforting thing that came to mind.

“Bastards.”

She nodded, wiping and smearing her right eye with mascara. “Uh-huh.”

It was my chance to be the one who didn’t panic, to come up with a reasonable plan of action. I considered my alternatives:
 
We could leave and drown our sorrows over waffles at IHOP, we could stay and make up a story about Candace twisting her ankle—the reason for the tears—or I could take her home and let her cry it out.

“It’s…because…I’m old. Advanced maternal age.” Candace snuffled, wiping at her nose with handful of toilet paper.

“That’s crazy,” I retorted with a frown. Of course, I was six years younger. Hitting the big four-oh seemed a zillion miles away. I could afford to thumb my nose at aging.

“Forty is young,” I said staunchly. “It’s the new thirty.”

“Liar,” she snapped back, snatching the paper from my hand and crumpling it. Candace stood up, pushed me out of the way, and opened the stall door. Like a female Kobe Bryant, Candace took her best shot and launched the balled-up letter in the air. Making a perfect arc, it landed in the wastebasket ten feet away.
Swish.

Wow.

Candace immediately sniffed back her tears and looked at me, suddenly calm. “It’s a sign.” In a few moments, the blotchiness disappeared from her face.

“A sign?” I repeated, wrinkling my forehead.

“A sign. That I need to be thankful for what I have. A good husband. A great business. I need to stop with the pity party.”

Without another word, Candace dragged me out of the bathroom, never bothering to fix her makeup. She kissed me on the cheek, grabbed Marcus, and went home. She proceeded to cancel all of her appointments for the next week and booked a flight out of town. A mini-escape to Bermuda, with its pink sand and hibiscus-lined streets.

A week later, she was back, happy, rested. And pregnant. She was late; she’d done a test. A thin blue line appeared on pregnancy test number one. Then on number two, and number three just to be sure.

Candace and Marcus were doubly blessed with twins eight and a half months later. The memory of it all made me smile.

Candace put the finishing touches on my new look. Hair done, my back to the mirror, she smoothed blush onto my cheekbones. Wisps of her makeup brush tickled against my skin. Tiny thoughts nagged me as she worked.

What do I want? Do I need a new start?

Should I get back to my dream of working on the
Travel Channel
or one of
National Geographic
’s new shows?

Granted, everything in my life was fine. Fine, but safe. Fine, but routine.

I sat perfectly still while Candace swept on yet another coat of mascara.

“Okay, okay, time to stop daydreaming. Almost done.” Candace stepped back and surveyed her work. She cocked her head and nodded. “Not bad, not bad at all.” She started humming
Bootylicious
under her breath, a smile playing on her lips. “Oh, yeah.”

Head turned, I blocked out the telltale smirk Candace used when she felt she was absolutely, positively right. She spun me around in the chair and waited.

“I can’t look,” I said, half-jokingly, keeping my head down. “What if I don’t like it?”

Candace’s toe clicked an impatient staccato on the tile. “Stop it.”

“But…” I squeezed my eyes shut tight.

“Just stop it. All of your second-guessing. I mean it. You said so yourself. Enough is enough. You are
not
going to do this.”

“Do what?”

More clicking. “Talk yourself out of it. I absolutely, positively won’t let you.”

I didn’t answer.

“Not until you look,” she said smugly.

I opened one eye, then the other. “Oh.” I stared at the mirror.

It
was
me. Only ten times better. Maybe one hundred. I even
looked
like one of those anchors on FOX or MSNBC. Drew might not recognize me. And there was a better than average chance that Chris would sit up and take notice.

The shape of the cut flattered my face, with little wisps curving into my cheekbones. The color made the hazel of my eyes pop. My lips and skin glowed, every mark and microscopic blemish was smoothed and covered. Did I tell you Candace was a genius or what?

She filled a bag with MAC cosmetics, brushes, loads of StudioFix, and handed it over.

In that instant, the heavens opened up and the angels sang. It seemed like it, anyway.

I blushed like a bride. “Candace, have I told you lately that I love you?”