Diana
Diana sits back in the specially designed chair that her best friend, Raina, has insisted she have her husband, Jake, get for her. Because “Honey, if he’s going to have me over here primping you all the time to go out to all these fancy functions with their fancy people then you are going to have a proper chair to sit in and make this all so much easier.”
Raina likes to refer to it as Diana’s throne, but really it is a cushioned and elevated hairdresser’s chair that has arms she could rest her arms on and a cushion at the shoulders that makes sitting in it for long periods of time, which Raina requires to ‘make her masterpiece’, less than a chore. Jake seems focused on things not being a chore for Diana. He says she’s had enough chores in her lifetime and he wants to rescue her from that sort of thing.
He is… so good. So too is Raina. Diana’s not sure she’d be able to function if not for her best friend. Circumstances of her birth made her suited to ‘that kind of life’ but her temperament…? It just doesn’t suit. She definitely has been in need of a fairy godmother to transform her and she’d lucky in that she has that in her best friend.
Putting words to thoughts, she says, “You are my fairy godmother, Rai.”
Raina dramatically presses her hand to her breast. “Please, honey, I’m a Queen.” She smooths a finger over one perfect eyebrow and slants a glance at Diana. “You’d need to make a baby before I could be a godmother.”
“We’re trying. It’s just Jake is at work so much.”
“You’d think with his father owning the company…”
“Jake says that just means he has to work harder to show that he’s earned his position.”
“He’s a damned prince, honey.”
Diana gives a soft smile. “I know. My prince.”
Raina takes Diana’s hand in hers, turning it over to look at the palm before arching her brows significantly. “Are you still doing that? What are your maids for?”
Diana gave a self-depreciating smile. “They are sweet girls but they don’t get the silver right.”
Raina graces that comment with an eye roll and goes back to sectioning Diana’s hair with the end of her comb. Diana speaks to her silence, “Old habits…”
As Raina starts a complicated weave pattern at the crown of her head, Diana slants a glance out the large picture window to her right to a giant oak that sits in a position of prominence in the pristine expanse of the back lawn. With the first hints of season change upon it, its leaves are just showing a hint of the fire within that will soon be released. Raina, ever aware of her shifts in attention and mood, follows the path of her gaze.
“The tree looks good.”
“I was worried when Jake had it transplanted but he brought in the best arborists and its flourishing.”
“It was nice of him to do it.”
“He knows how much it meant to me growing up.”
“Still nice.”
“He’s nice.”
“And fine.”
Her smile is genuine this time. “He is. I’m the luckiest girl in the world. Not only catching his eye at that dance but also having him put up with my running from him so much.”
“Men like to chase girls. Gets their…” An arch look, “blood up.”
“It definitely did that.” She tips her head and looks placidly into the mirror, meeting Raina’s reflected gaze. “I still think part of the credit for him noticing me goes to you. You made me so pretty.”
Raina presses a quick kiss to Diana’s crown before going back to her weaving. “I had good material to work with.”
Diana looks in the mirror, tries to see what Raina sees, what her mother saw, what Jake sees but… She wrinkles her nose. She doesn’t see it. I mean, she looks good. Pampered. Primped as only her best friend can primp her. Healthy, which hadn’t always been the case after her mother died and her dad remarried and then was away so often drumming up sponsors for the school and recruiting new students and schmoozing their parents and her stepmom was all about her own girls and pretty much ignored Diana except for when she wanted something from her, which, yes, was often so was she really ignored?
It wasn’t even like the tasks had been hard. They’d been ones she enjoyed. Baking, sewing, making things neat and tidy.
It was while she was working on one of the tasks that her stepmother had asked of her, making a dress for her stepsister, Flora, in the sewing lab that she first met Raina. She was in the middle of cutting a beautiful silk chiffon when a large but definitely delicate hand with perfectly manicured nails pinched up a piece and a voice with a subtle drawl said, “Girl, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid my hands on. And I have laid my hands on the captain of the rugby team.”
This startled a laugh out of Diana, the first of many the two have shared over the years.
“I love you.”
Raina blinks. “Well, isn’t that just out of left field, Sweetie.” She shakes her head and meets Diana’s gaze in the mirror. “I love you too, Princess.”
She’s called Diana that since the first day. Something about Diana’s dad being the headmaster of their private school, making him the King of their domain and Diana being his daughter that made her a princess. And, Diana was to take her word for her it because, quote “Honey, a queen knows royalty. Shut up and be my princess.”
Diana slants another glance towards the window and the tree, careful to not move under Raina’s rapidly weaving hands.
“You were there when she planted it.”
“When the headmaster’s wife wants all the little chillen somewhere, they go. Besides, honey, I loved her. She was one of the first people to make me feel…” a subtle shrug, “good in my skin. You know she got me into my first sewing class? Everyone said it was…” a wave of her hand in emphasis then back to the weaving, “well, not for me, but she just steamed right over those objectors.”
A smile fueled by reminiscence, bittersweet and sweet combined, curves Diana’s mouth. “She was good at that. Nothing stopped her. Until…”
Her lips curl in and she looks down, fighting a prick of tears.
Raina leans in to press her chin to Diana’s shoulder and her cheek to Diana’s cheek. “Shh. No ugly thoughts.” Diana feels Raina’s smile in the lift of her jaw. “Ugly thoughts make an ugly face.”
Diana looks into the mirror. “After you work your magic I don’t think anything can make me ugly.”
“Go on.” Raina rises back to her considerable height, supplemented by the ridiculous heels she refuses to give up though they are harder and harder to find – both because of her size and because things like pretty heels just aren’t being made so much. Other things consume people. It’s something that Raina loves to rail about when she gets her Umph Up, as she calls it. She starts stacking items – makeup and curlers and combs and Diana really can’t say what though she knows that Raina uses them like a… fairy godmother to transform her. “No, really, go on. I have to get.”
That said, Raina closes up her bags, loops the straps over her broad shoulders, and pushes back from the chair.
Diana pivots the chair on its base to look at her best friend. “What would I do without you?”
Another eloquent arch of her brows telegraphs Raina’s response to that. “Lucky you’ll never need to know. I’m here for the long haul, Sweetie. You aren’t just my best client and friend, you are my masterpiece.”
She says this every time she leaves Diana. And every time Diana tries to own it. A look in the mirror is really all it takes to appreciate Raina’s magical skill with brush and paint and all those other things that make up her art.
For a moment she lets herself think about the implications of the word. Masterpiece. A piece of art. Too often she feels that way, like she’s an inanimate object, made beautiful for others to look upon. She tries not to dwell too much on this. On the empty, beautiful world that she inhabits. It’s Jake’s world and she loves Jake and if he needs her to be a work of art? A Masterpiece? Well, she is good at doing what is needed to make those she loves happy.
With that in mind, as she does each time Raina says it, Diana banishes her impending melancholy and responds with, “So dramatic.”
It’s become a ritual, that response. And as part of that ritual Raina’s response is always different and always full of sass. She doesn’t disappoint with today’s quip. “Fairy godmother, baby. We’re dramatic all the time.”
With a flip of her thick auburn hair that owes more to art than nature, Raina sashays from the room. Diana watches her go, listening as Raina speaks to each of the maids, as is her practice, before leaving the house. Then, she swivels her chair back around. Her gaze skitters over the tree on the lawn and she smiles; that smile meeting her from her reflection as she turns fully back to the mirror.
A masterpiece? The tree is a masterpiece. Nature makes it so, as does the memories it evokes. That is what a masterpiece is. Something beautiful that makes you feel something. That is where it gains its magic, in how people respond to it. She is something beautiful, but does she make anyone feel anything? Not envy at the cost of what she wears or a subtle lust to take from her what she has or even a quiet satisfaction in having her as theirs. There should be more to this than just a pretty face made prettier by the skill of an artist. There should be more to her than that, shouldn’t there?
She’s so empty. Sometimes she thinks a baby would help but that has not been their blessing yet. Sometimes she thinks it’s her. Does a masterpiece have enough life to create life?
Her fingers twitch to pick up a cloth and wipe down the dressing table in front of her. Her feet twitch to move her about the room and pick up any stray dust that mars the perfection of the room. But, she remains as she is because she knows if Jake comes back from work and finds her working he will give her that look. That look that says “Sweetheart, you are better than this.” That look that says “Stop taking care of others. Let me take care of you.” That look with its subtle underlay of disappointment.
She doesn’t want to disappoint him. She doesn’t want to disappoint anyone. So she remains. Sitting. Still. A Masterpiece waiting for someone to give her magic.
Enter The Woods 