An Odd Man Out (part ten)

The Resident

Chapter Four

An Odd Man Out

[rerunning the last several entries to help readers catch up, because I haven’t added to this story for months]

Meanwhile, Claudie’s garden grew, and her need to be outside; and he found her missing from the house when he got home. He poured his Diet Coke and his bowl of Cheerios. He knew she was slicing sod, snipping weeds. Or in the woods, digging roots. The woods were theirs, and where not, were Teconieshe’s, and so she was free to build her edge of wild phlox and geranium, pat her ferns under her rhododendrons…

He had run through all the rooms, shouted out the back door—

The first time.

“John, I want to be very honest.”

Claudie began with these words when she had a line to draw. He expected (still, and always) the line to be, “I can’t stay married to you.”

“That annoys me so much. I’m not sick in some way, I’m not a wandering moron. If I’m not in the kitchen when you come home, I’m fine. Please.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh! Well done! Thank you.” Tilt of the head. “Cross my heart, John, I’m not being sarcastic. That’s exactly the phrase you want. You used to say the weirdest things when you were…not quite in the right.”

And she gave him a hug, and they fixed their frozen pizzas together, and he damped his transgressive panics ever after—

But.

The kitchen window’s light could be wonky…the laburnums were out there. Claudie wore a certain amount of cosmetics, and he knew the Venn diagram of Not Right had a very small overlap of You’re Allowed to Mention This.

“Is there a green powder?” he asked of a counter girl, softly. At Penney’s. He had learned this store; he did not want to learn another.

“You don’t want eye shadow? You want foundation powder? You want Coty, or something like that?”

He nodded, being told these things about himself, growing numb.

“Yes, there is. You use it to get rid of redness. I don’t think we sell it, though. You need more of a specialty place. Ummmmm…”

He hadn’t asked her to be so helpful, and was now hostage to this um.

“You know, I bet Shear Delight, they do makeup, they don’t just do hair. Or Shawn would know where to order.” Shear Delight, she told him again. Up that way.

He walked the mall in a fog of concentration, naming each business he passed, and none was Shear Delight. But what did salons look like?

Under a marquee of purple script, up a crossing passage, smelling like something unpleasant and familiar (which, long afterwards, Claudie told him was perm solution), he found it.

“Hi! Do you need an appointment?”

Again: “Hey there, hi! We do men, it’s okay.”

He shuffled in, able just now to realize he wasn’t going to buy green powder for his wife.

He bought her a $16 bottle of shampoo for curly hair.

In fact, a sheer delight. “You’re so amazing, John! How would you even think of this?”

45

Tithonians

An Odd Man Out (part one)

(2022, Stephanie Foster)