Free Mama Gets Hitched by Deborah Sharp

special-occasion events,” Tony said. “We’d do everything from décor to food.”
    Henry and I looked at each other over the rims of our coffee cups. He zeroed in like the attorney he was: “Is a wedding the kind of special occasion you’ll handle?”
    Tony nodded.
    “Looks like you arrived in the nick of time, then,” I said, my tone as neutral as a judge.

Betty Taylor was busy at Hair Today, Dyed Tomorrow, combing out a permanent for the wife of the president of the local branch of First Florida Bank. She grinned above a head full of unnaturally dark curls as Mama and I came in, bells jangling on the beauty parlor’s door.
    “Mornin’ ladies.” She punctuated her greeting with a hurricane-force blast of hair spray. Coughing, First Florida’s First Lady squeezed her eyes shut.
    “I see you’re working, Betty. How ’bout I come back for our consult some other time?”
    “Oh, no you don’t, Mace. I think you’d rather go to the dentist than come to my shop. Sit down over there, next to that hairdryer.” She pointed her purple comb to a far corner. “I’ve got to finish here and then I have one quick cut to do. We can talk about your hair then.”
    Mama reached up on tiptoes to grab a handful of my hair. “I’m thinking something with lots of curls, Betty.”
    “Ow, that hurts!”
    “But it has to look nice with the girls’ bonnets.” She let go of my hair, her hand making a hat-shaped arc above my head.
    Bonnets? Lord deliver me.
    “Aren’t the parasols enough, Mama?”
    “In for an inch, in for a mile, Mace. You can’t be half a Southern belle.”
    Mama had been promoting fancy hairdos for the wedding. Of course I’d been resisting. Betty was supposed to persuade me to go along today by showing me sample styles in some kind of beauty book.
    “Don’t worry, Mace,” Betty said. “I’m a professional. You’ll look gorgeous.”
    I glanced at the bank president’s wife, who looked like a poodle in earrings.
    Muttering darkly, I grabbed a People magazine and took a seat to wait. Mama bustled around the shop, straightening up and lighting her aromatherapy candles.
    “Hey, y’all!” A voice came from the supply closet in the back.
    “Hey, D’Vora,” Mama and I chorused.
    Betty’s twenty-something beautician trainee, D’Vora had made a big boo-boo last summer involving peroxide, an overly long cell phone call, and Mama’s platinum dye job. But all Mama’s hair grew back; and she’d forgiven D’Vora for the mishap.
    Now, I looked up from an article on Angelina Jolie’s brood to see D’Vora emerging from the closet, juggling several bottles of shampoo and conditioner. I wondered which ones were responsible for the smells at Hair Today: green apples, tropical fruits, and citrus, all overlaid with the ammonia-like odor of permanent solution. Add in Mama’s aromatherapy candles and the lingering cloud of hair spray, and the shop was an allergist’s nightmare.
    As D’Vora began restocking shelves, I saw she was wearing her customary, jazzed-up uniform: painted-on purple pants and too-small smock, zipper revealing her cleavage. Appliquéd flowers and lilac-colored butterflies along the neckline further accentuated her chest.
    Like C’ndee, D’Vora was a fan of the “If you’ve got it, flaunt it” school of fashion. They shared that, along with the fanciful use of apostrophes in their self-created first names.
    “I saw y’all through the window at Gladys’ this morning,” D’Vora said to Mama, who’d stepped in to help her shelve the hair products.
    “You should have joined us, honey.”
    “She was running late, as usual.” Betty shot D’Vora a sharp look as she rang up the bank president’s wife.
    “Sorry, Betty,” D’Vora recited by rote. “Anyways, who was that gorgeous guy at your table?”
    Mama supplied the details on Anthony Ciancio as I leafed through People . What is it about Hollywood that makes celebrities go crazy? The star of a kids’ show arrested for