“It’s all right, Rab,” she soothes. “It happens. You know how many batches of sugar I’ve burned? It happens in an instant.” She snaps her fingers. “You don’t think I’m just going to stop teaching you because of this, do you?”
The look on his face suggests that’s exactly what he was thinking.
“Do me a favor, please, and take this to the dishwasher,” she says, handing him the pot. “And when you come back we’ll give it another go, okay?” He nods and takes the pot. When he returns, Susan steps back and lets him measure out sugar and water and start the burner back up again.
“Just make sure to keep a sharp eye on it once it passes two hundred and fifty degrees, because the temperature can spike really suddenly, and that’s when you have to act,” she advises.
He nods, staring intently into the depths of the copper pot.
“Nice,” she says, as the sugar begins to slowly dissolve into a clear liquid. “On your way again!” She laughs and pats him on the back, noticing the tension in his shoulders ease just a touch.
* * *
By six thirty, the pastry kitchen feels very far away, and Susan is longing for it. At least there she feels competent. But instead, here she is, in front of the bathroom mirror, cursing and scrubbing away what feels like her twentieth attempt at putting on some credible eyeliner. Her poor eyelid is turning pink and irritated with all the effort.
“Argh!” she grunts, wondering if she should just give up, crawl into bed, and skip the opening of the play. But she can’t do that: Kay would be terribly disappointed. And Philip too. And she wants to see it; she just hates the dressing-up ritual. Even as a child, she’d hated having Julia practice hair and makeup on her.
Speaking of Julia …
“Problem?” She’d evidently overheard her younger sister’s exertions and is now leaning gracefully against the doorframe, arms crossed, smiling just enough to express amusement, but not enough to risk causing wrinkles.
“It’s … this … thing,” Susan answers, waving the eyeliner. “I can’t get it to go on evenly. It’s possessed!”
Julia shakes her head and holds out a hand. “Give it here and sit down.”
Susan obediently plops down on the closed lid of the toilet, feeling ten years old again.
Julia bends down in front of her, cocks her head this way and that, narrows her eyes, and nods. “Close your eyes.”
Susan does and feels smooth, sure strokes and something wet spread along her lash line.
“You wouldn’t struggle with this if you wore it more, you know,” Julia tells her, moving on to the second eye. “Practice makes perfect, and all that. Open.”
“I don’t feel like I have time for it,” Susan says, flicking her eyes open. “And who cares what I look like when I’m in a kitchen, anyway?”
“Don’t think of it as how you look to other people, then. Think of it as bringing out your best self. I wear makeup because it makes me feel pretty.”
“You feel pretty because you look pretty to other people. So it’s not really just for you, is it? You’re dressing yourself up for everyone else.”
“Just like you’re doing now.” Julia reaches for some blush and goes to work. “Or is it just one person you want to look pretty for?”
Susan colors and ducks her head.
“Don’t do that—I’ll smear. Well?”
“Yeah, I guess I want to look pretty for someone else.”
Julia pauses with the blush and meets Susan’s eyes. “And who might that be?”
“I—Philip, of course,” Susan stammers. “Who else?”
“Did you know that Chris is coming tonight?”
“What? No. Why? How?”
“I think Lauren invited him.”
“He’s coming on a Friday night? That’s one of the busiest restaurant nights of the week!”
Julia shrugs. “Take that up with him. But you’re over him, huh? It’s all Philip all the time now?”
“Yes, I’m over him,” Susan answers with more conviction than she feels. “And he’s definitely over me.”
Julia smirks. “And Aunt Kay says I’m the bad liar.” She begins poking around in Susan’s makeup bag, pulling out lipsticks and testing them on the back of her hand.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I saw how the two of you were at that Festival. It was cute. But if I were you, I wouldn’t give him another chance. He blew it, up and leaving like that when you were still so wrecked over Mum.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
Julia pauses in her lipstick testing and looks up.
“Isn’t it?”
Susan shakes her head. “I dumped him. Badly.”
“Oh.” She tucks the rejected lipsticks away. “The way Dad and Aunt Kay raged about him, I thought it was the other way around. And I thought he was a real prick for doing that, too.”
“That’s sweet,” Susan says, surprisingly touched by Julia’s sisterly feelings. “But what were Dad and Kay so upset about?”
Julia shrugs. “Ask them.” She holds two red lipsticks up to the light and studies them.
Into the silence, Susan asks, “Do you ever think about Mum, Jules?”
A long pause, then: “I try not to.” Julia shoves a lipstick back in the bag.
“Not at all? Not even the nice memories?” Susan can’t believe that someone would—or would want to—eradicate their mother’s memory like that.
Julia swallows. “We all have our ways of coping, okay, Suze? So spare me your judgment. You bake like you’re trying to feed half the city, Meg buries herself in diseases, and I just try to move on and look forward.”
“I’m sorry,” Susan says quietly.
Julia blinks a few times, then turns to her sister, proffering the final choice of lipstick.
Susan reaches out and takes it. “Thank you.” She stands and faces the mirror, tracing the lipstick over her lips. Julia steps back and watches.
“Is it getting serious, this thing with you and Philip? I mean, it looks it.”
“Too new to tell,” Susan answers, blotting and reapplying.
“Have you slept with him?”
“No.”
“Will you?”
Susan’s startled by the question and takes her time answering. “I don’t know.”
“You should,” Julia tells her briskly, leaning toward the mirror and fussing a bit with her hair. “It’ll do you good, I think, to get out there, be a little crazy. Who knows? You might like it.” She straightens up and smiles another tiny smile. Susan smiles back, more widely.
“You’re not half bad, you know that?” she says. “And your eyeliner game is spot on,” she adds, looking at herself in the mirror. The face that looks back is, as Julia said, possibly the best-looking version of herself. Intense eyes, a subtle flush, and full, sensual, scarlet lips. She smiles again, thinking that Philip will probably like it and trying not to wonder if Chris will too.
“Don’t make me blush,” Julia says with a shrug. “We’ve got to work on your wardrobe, though, Suze. I mean, what you have on isn’t too bad, although you really should invest in Spanx or something, but just about everything else …” She sighs. “Come on. We’ll talk about it later.”