Free Seventh Heaven by Alice; Hoffman Page A

formed an arch above their house. He still smiled easily and amused himself, and although he’d taken a few steps, he was in no great hurry to walk. Whenever he stumbled into Nora’s arms, she would think it wasn’t possible for her to love him any more than she did, and yet each day she did; she loved him so much that she discovered that her hands and feet had grown a little larger to make room inside her for all that she felt, and because of this she had to go out and buy new boots and gloves and have her high heels stretched by the shoemaker up on the Turnpike.
    Nora loved to celebrate birthdays, but because James’s fell on a Saturday she didn’t have time to make a cake from scratch; she didn’t even have time for a mix, because Armand’s was so busy she wound up staying till four when she should have been home by two thirty. The only plus about working overtime and having to pay her baby-sitter an extra dollar fifty was that she had that many more customers to whom she could pass out invitations to Tupperware parties.
    â€œI’m not so certain I like this,” Armand said when he got hold of an invitation. He had left one of his best customers teased but not combed out so he could talk to Nora privately, over by the sinks.
    â€œActually, it’s very classy,” Nora said, thankful that Armand had no idea she was also trying to sell her clients magazine subscriptions. “Salons in Manhattan have fashion shows. They give makeup demonstrations. I should bring my Tupperware right into the shop with me. I could start next week.”
    Armand thought this over, and finally agreed to a ten percent cut of the profits. Since he’d have no real idea of what the profits were, Nora figured she would slip him a five and that would be that. And even if he found out she was stiffing him, he wouldn’t fire her. Nora was good for business. She wore her hair in a French twist and she’d let her nails grow exceptionally long and had found a new shade of polish that suited her—Roman Red—and women who’d never had manicures before asked for the same color. The customers were crazy about her; they rearranged their schedules so they could come to the shop on Saturdays. She had one client who came by bus all the way from East Meadow.
    â€œThe hand,” Nora always told her clients, “is the window into the soul.”
    All right, she knew it was supposed to be the eyes, but what was the difference? She held her clients’ hands and commented on their cuticles and their skin tones. When she realized that she got bigger tips each time she gave advice on color coordination she stopped talking cuticles. She had a gift for telling a client which colors were right for her, whether shades in the orange family or the scarlet range were best, and she often suggested whole wardrobe changes. “No gray for you,” she’d advise a washed-out client. “Purple,” she’d whisper to a housewife who was splurging on a manicure for the first time in ages.
    On James’s birthday, she left Armand’s with her tip money folded into an envelope in the pocket of her black car coat. Snips of hair stuck to her sleeves and to the soles of her shoes. She took the bobby pins out of her French twist and shook out her hair as soon as she was out of sight of the beauty parlor, then ran her fingers through her loose hair as she rushed into the A&P. She quickly found what she needed for James’s birthday and headed for the front of the checkout line.
    â€œYou don’t mind taking me first, do you?” she asked the checker, a sweet-faced blonde named Cathy Corrigan, who was so startled by Nora’s request that she began to ring her up, even though there was a discontented line stretching over to the fruit bins.
    â€œMy baby’s birthday,” Nora announced to the checkout line. She held up a packet of blue-and-white-striped candles. “You did a