There was once a woman who wanted above all things to be beautiful. She spent all she could afford on creams and treatments that promised or implied that they would make her beautiful, but she always looked the same. Just a little older every year.
She'd have been better off putting her money in real estate.
One night she was looking sadly in the mirror, acknowledging to herself that not only was she ugly, but she was old as well.
She sighed. ``If only for just one day I could have been beautiful. Just one day.''
She lay down on her bed with a slice of cucumber on each eye and plain organic yoghurt all over her face. When the phone rang she let the answering machine kick in as she removed the cucumber slices and wiped off her face. She was surprised to hear a voice from long ago. She picked up the phone.
``Darla! This is Michelle. Where are you?''
``I'm on the freeway - I got your number off information - your name's still the same - can I come by? Where's your house?''
The woman was delighted. She and Darla had been best friends in primary school and junior high. Then Darla had got so pretty. So popular.
She gave Darla directions to the house.
Darla showed up at the door with all the sweet breathlessness of a child and the ravaged face of a bitter woman.
They stood in the kitchen drinking tea and laughing and talking too fast too loud about their common memories and tales of disaster and success of friends and enemies from long ago.
``I never heard from you after you graduated - where did you go? I did see you in the paper when you were queen of the roundup that year...''
``Oh, yeah. Well I left after that. Went to Chicago with some loser who said he'd make me a model. Jerk. Thanks for nothing. I did get on a couple of soaps...you might have seen me...'' Darla looked wistfully out the window at the back of the fire station.
The woman thought that Darla was probably a little too drunk to be driving.
``Do you remember ninth grade chemistry?'' asked Darla.
``Ninth grade chemistry? Mr. Zit's chemistry?''
``Do you remember the fun we had? We made silver chloride. We got better results than Shaun, and he's a doctor now. That was the best fun I ever had.''
The woman looked at her in surprise. ``But you had everything - you were so pretty!''
``Yea, well, pretty ain't all it's cracked up to be.''
She was on her way to Cheyenne where her mother was dying. She couldn't stop.
``We have to get together and spend some time,'' she said.
``That would be great,'' the woman answered. She walked Darla to her car and handed her a bag with two sandwiches and a Pepsi. They hugged goodbye.
``Take care,'' Darla said.
``You take care,'' the woman answered. They looked at each other then, really for the first time. They hugged again.
``Remember what we used to say?'' Darla said, ``Be brave, that's what we used to say.''
``Yea,'' said the woman, ``but brave ain't all its cracked up to be either, is it?''
She watched Darla's car go down to the freeway entrance.
She went back inside her house and cut fresh cucumber slices for her eyes.