Becoming the Butlers by Penny Jackson

“Rachel!”
    I tried to study a crack in the sidewalk as she waved her hand frantically in front of my face. “Rachel…Earth to Rachel. Remember me? Cynthia. We met yesterday on the plane.”
    Cynthia and her friend both wore black sleeveless dresses and black headbands and black flat ballet shoes. Even in Madrid the two still hadn’t left Greenwich Village.
    “Are you going on the tour?” the other girl asked.
    “We just finished. The clock room’s neat. But the world’s largest sangria bowl’s the best.”
    Cynthia glanced around and quickly pulled a mirror out of her bag and smoothed back her hair. Then, after applying some red lipstick which I thought was too bright for her pale face, she turned to me and nonchalantly asked, “So where’s your father?”
    “Yeah,” her friend added. “The Robert Redford look-alike.”
    I saw my father six yards away and tried to get to him before Cynthia. Too late. She had spotted him and was by his side before I could take a step.
    “He’s divorced, right?” her friend asked me, raising a brow.
    “Is that what she said?” I asked indignantly.
    “But I thought your mother ran away…”
    “Did he tell her that too!” I said.
    My father eventually returned with Cynthia and said since the line was so long why didn’t all three of us go out to lunch? Cynthia pointedly ignored her friend, who eventually walked away with a sulky expression. My father, now more sober, looked up budget restaurants in his guidebook and found one only a block away. I told him I wasn’t hungry, and besides, I thought we were going on the tour. My father gave Cynthia a look that meant “adolescent” and said we would go on the tour after lunch. The two spoke Spanish all the way to the restaurant. I thought I’d go crazy if I had to listen to any more of this, and said I’d wait outside for him to finish.
    “Wait outside?” my father cried. “What are you going to do?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll look at postcards.”
    My explanation seemed to satisfy him and the two went inside and sat at a table by the window. I watched Cynthia fix her gooey eyes on James and saw her blush up to her earlobes when he leaned over to light her cigarette. I quickly walked away and headed toward a tourist arcade down the street. My father had let me keep a lot of money and I felt a vengeful urge to spend all of it. The postcards bored me, and I didn’t want the stuffed bull the store proprietress kept pushing in my arms.
    I stopped in front of a beauty salon, and stared at my reflection in the polished glass. Why did everyone think my father was the movie star? For once I wanted people to look at and admire me. A pretty girl in a smock smiled and gestured for me to come in. Because she didn’t speak English, she gave me a book of photographs. Most of the women were blonde and when I pointed to one photograph she cocked her head and asked, “Rubia?” I realized that rubia must mean blonde and thought, why not? The two most gorgeous kids in my class, Olivia Butler and her brother Edwin, were both blonds. My father probably wouldn’t be confused with Robert Redford if he were a redhead. Nothing very good ever happened to me and it was easier to blame it on the color of my hair than anything else. As a blonde, people might even think I was a different person. Which was all right with me. Almost anyone else was better than Rachel Harris with her crazy mother and father.

FOUR
    My father later claimed that if Cynthia hadn’t been with us that afternoon, I wouldn’t have bleached my hair. My act was childish revenge, a cheap way to get his attention. I wasn’t too thrilled with the results either. In a brownout, or at night, beneath a dimly lit streetlight, I might look blonde. But in the sun my hair was light pink, like cotton candy, and the dye had left a sweet, burnt sugar smell.
    Cynthia saw me first.
    “Oh my God!” she exclaimed.
    “What’s wrong?” my father asked, turning around. A