I Should Have Known Better

I should have known better.

            It was an omen, a foretelling.

            “I don’t think I put my make-up kit in the car,” I said.

            “Surely you did.”

            “No, the more I think about it, the more I’m sure I didn’t. Let’s stop at the next town and check. They’ll have a store where I can buy make-up.”

for little emergencies

            “Let’s get where we’re going and then we’ll check. If it’s not there, then we’ll find a drugstore. Don’t you have a little kit in your purse?”

            “That’s just for touch-ups – little emergencies. This is a big emergency.”

            “Let’s get to the hotel first.”

            “Ok,” I said.

            I should have known better.

            I knew it…no make-up kit. I made do with a bit of pressed powder and an odd shade of lipstick for that evening at a darkened restaurant and an even darker stage show. Funny thing, though, the next morning, he didn’t want to get the car out of the hotel’s garage. Walking around the French Quarter, we ogled through opened doors, drooled over estate jewelry, and sipped a Hurricane, but saw no place for a girl to buy make-up. “We’ll do it tomorrow,” he said.

           

"...another man done gone."

Tomorrow came and we never went anywhere that sold make-up. I was rather plain-faced for the long weekend. I felt like Marie Laveau, a woman who should never be seen in the light of day, one of those creepy, back-alley New Orleans haints, a witch who lives in a hollow log with a three-legged dog. He insisted, “You look fine.” 

            The disastrous trip continued with upside down maps, dysfunctional directions, a drag queen show, and it ended in a cotton field.

            “What’s that?” I said to break the tense silence as the car sped along highways through Louisiana fields.

            “Cotton.”

            “No, it’s not. That’s some kind of bush with flowers.”

            He twirled the steering wheel and the car ran off the highway, bumped onto a dirt and rock patch, and braked to an abrupt stop. “Get out,” he said.

            “Uh-oh.” My eyes widened. He turned to open the driver’s door and I grabbed the keys from the ignition. His intention was to give me a lesson in how cotton grows, showing me the flowering stage. Just like he’d given me lessons in direction giving, map reading, and tassel twirling.

I should have known better.

because you just never know

            Speed ahead several years. As we pulled away from the church, our future ahead on the highway out of town, past the paper mill, onward to El Dorado and points south, I had a bad feeling.  I looked into the back floorboard.“Uh-oh.”

“I don’t have my make-up kit,” I said.

            He did a 180 degree turn. When we screeched to a stop at the church, Daddy was aghast. “Are you bringing her back, already?”

            “She forgot her make-up kit.”

            While husbands may come and go, a girl and her make-up should never part.