Page 68 of A Part of Me and You
Juliette
‘It’s an evening for your new blue dress again, Mum,’ says Rosie, as she applies my makeup in the bedroom. ‘There’s no way you can go to Brannigan’s wearing your summer gear in that weather.’
She sticks false eyelashes onto my eyelids, much to my disapproval and insists on filling in my almost non-existent eyebrows and I have to admit, even though my patience is wearing thin with all this beautifying, it really is lovely to be pampered by Rosie in such close proximity, to watch her face as she concentrates on her work. It’s just that I am not used to pruning and priming and all these fancy things.
‘Are we nearly done yet?’ I ask her, marvelling as I always do at the amount of brushes and tools she goes through for what normally takes me three minutes maximum. Tinted moisturiser and a quick flick of mascara is as much as I do these days but for some reason Rosie is insisting that I need to make an effort this evening.
‘You are going to look a million dollars when I show you, so please let me finish,’ she says. ‘It will be worth the wait.’
We have spent the past two hours pampering ourselves and while it has been most enjoyable as I had a long soak in the bath, then had my nails painted a deep plum colour, fake tan applied and now this, I wonder why we have to go to so much effort when we’re only walking across the road to the local pub to hear some traditional Irish music.
Rosie concentrates with such precision and I try to stop my feet from fidgeting and my mind racing with all the other things I could be doing right now. My headaches, although they have eased a little now that I am well-rested and laced with painkillers, are still very much there and the knocking sensation I felt earlier has now turned into a dull repetitive thud.
Rosie goes to the dressing table and brings over my old faithful friend ‘Marilyn’ and I help her fix it on my head, not wanting to offend her by suggesting I wear a headscarf instead to avoid any discomfort or itching later.
‘Is that okay, Mum? You look amazing. Or is it too uncomfortable?’ she asks, admiring her work of art but obviously seeing the doubt in my face.
‘I was going to wear my multi-coloured headscarf, if I’m honest, love,’ I confess to her. ‘I know the wig probably looks much more glamorous and you have gone to all this effort but I can’t cope with much around my head when this headache just won’t shift.’
She fetches the headscarf with no fuss and gets me a mirror to fix it and I do a double take when I see how I look with my new lashes and brows and a fully made-up face that is tasteful and subtle and, for just a second or two, it makes me forget this demon in my head and the pain that it is causing.
‘Ta da!’ Rosie announces when the headscarf is in place and she holds the mirror out to give me a better look. ‘What do you think?’
What do I think? I think so many things when I look at my reflection but I can’t put them into words. I really can’t speak. I think I might cry if I do try to talk and I am determined not to let her see me cry, no way. Not tonight. I think of my beautiful girl and how creative she is and how she sees the need to bring out the good in others just to make them feel better. She has so much ahead of her and she has so much talent to share in this world. If only I could see the amazing woman she is about to become.
‘You don’t like it, do you?’ asks Rosie. ‘Oh, it doesn’t really matter, so don’t think you’re offending me and if it’s too much you can fix it yourself or just do it your way. I knew I wasn’t as good as Melissa. There’s just something about the way she contours that I can’t figure out, but—’
‘Ssh!’ I say to my baby girl and I pat the bed for her to come and sit beside me. And when she does I put my arm around her and she puts her head on my shoulder as we both look into the mirror together.
‘Here we go,’ she says, pulling a face. ‘This is the bit when you tell me we look alike now that we both have make-up on and then lecture me for wearing too much sometimes, and how I don’t need it because I have perfect skin and have no need for so much foundation?’
I shake my head and smile.
‘No, I am certainly not going to lecture you about make up because I can see how much time and effort you go to,to learn about all your brushes and applications, and I think you are a real natural,’ I tell her. ‘Even better than Melissa and that’s not me being biased. It’s true.’
‘Oh Mum, don’t exaggerate,’ Rosie says to me, lifting her head off my shoulder for just a second and then putting it back there. ‘Melissa is way better. You don’t have to pretend she isn’t. I can live with it. I’ve accepted it by now.’
She leans into the mirror a little to wipe off a black dot that has made its way onto her cheekbone.
‘I was going to tell you a story about when you were little, actually,’ I tell her as she does so and I can see her dimples starting to show when she smiles, just as she always does when she hears stories from her past. ‘You were just three or four years old and you got your hands on my brand new makeup collection and you came in to me from the bathroom with lipstick all over your tiny little rosebud mouth, your eyelids were a fetching shade of green and your cheeks were rosy and pink and I just couldn’t believe it. You even had mascara on your eyelashes but you’d missed them a bit and you’d brush marks all under your eyes.’
‘Oh no, I destroyed your makeup? You must have been so mad.’
‘No, no, well, yes you did actually destroy my makeup but that’s not my point,’ I say to her. ‘My point is that my first thought wasn’t that you had destroyed my makeup or made a mess in the bathroom that I was going to have to clear up, but it was that you had put all the different products on the right places and you were so young that I knew you could only have learned how to do so by copying me. You had been watching me so closely and it made me fill right up with love that you were imitating me with such clarity. You really were like my little shadow.’
‘Ah, that’s so sweet. I must have been a really cute child,’ she jokes and I can’t help but agree, of course.
‘You had the curliest brown hair and the cutest dimples and gorgeous green eyes that everyone remarked on when they saw you. You were always my little princess.’
‘Were?’ she jokes again. ‘Past tense?’
‘Youare, sorry,’ I say to her. ‘You are my little princess, though you’ve grown quite a bit in height since then. I think I have a photo of the makeup incident in one of your albums in the attic. When we get home, I’ll get it for you and I want you to look at that picture of that little girl and remember how proud you made your mum that day when you wrecked her makeup but filled her heart with a moment of magic that she’s never forgotten.’
Rosie snuggles into me again and then she lifts her phone and takes a sneaky selfie of us both and I barely have time to pose.
‘You rascal,’ I tell her. ‘Is it okay? Don’t be sharing that with your friends before I see if it’s okay!’
But instead of running and hiding the photo like she normally does when I say that, she shows me the photo of the two of us sat together just now, both looking fabulous and flawless – well, as fabulous and flawless as you can look with a headscarf on where you are meant to have long flowing locks, and I have to admit, it’s a good one even if I wasn’t quite ready.
