The First Cut is the Deepest

The First Cut is the Deepest-part one

The First Cut is the Deepest 

*This short story is based on Ilsa, a character from my forthcoming novel, Mating for Life (out with Simon & Schuster on June 24!). You can learn more about the book here: http://www.marissastapley.com/about-mating-for-life.html) and find links to pre-order here http://www.marissastapley.com/buy-mating-for-life.html)

By Marissa Stapley

Ilsa's mother, Helen, kept talking to her makeup artist and the makeup artist had to keep saying, "Just a minute, hold that thought, stay still," while she lined a lip or shadowed an eye. Helen would close her mouth and wait, then resume the nervous-seeming chatter. Maybe it's the champagne, thought Ilsa--although it wasn't that Helen didn't normally talk so much. Or that she wasn't used to drinking champagne. It was just that she wasn't normally so effervescent. Ilsa's mother was exuding something unfamiliar, at least to Ilsa. She got the sense Helen was trying too hard, bucking herself up. And isn't it the bride who is supposed to be nervous? But Ilsa wasn't. She was feeling something else, something that had its roots in anxiety but wasn't quite that either. Whatever it was, it was building steadily and making her feel claustrophobic, even in the ridiculously vast hotel suite.  

There was music playing, piped through speakers that were hidden somewhere. The music had been turned on just after they popped the cork on the bottle of champagne, Ilsa, Liane and Fiona standing awkwardly around Helen while she loosened the cork and proposed some sort of a toast in that uncharacteristic, over-bright voice. She said, "Long live true love," and Ilsa knew she didn't quite mean it. An awkward silence had followed until someone turned on the radio. The song that was now playing could be heard above Helen's chatter and the more quiet conversation of Ilsa's two sisters, who were sitting side by side: Fiona, the eldest, was having her hair done in a severe-looking French twist; this didn't surprise Ilsa. Liane, the youngest, had shrugged and said, "Whatever you think, I don't normally do anything more than a ponytail." So her hair artist was twisting and braiding Liane's fine, red-blond hair into a loose up-do. " (This is what they called themselves: "hair artist," "makeup artist." And Ilsa, who was supposed to be a real artist--a "painter," she had taken to calling herself lately, and it seemed just as false as "artist," like something she was putting on-- felt something she didn't like. Smug, self-aggrandizing. Who am I to say what is and is not "art?") 

Meanwhile, Ilsa's hair was already in a low chignon with an orchid tucked into it. Her dress, which was hanging imperiously across one of the doorframes, was ivory lace, with thin silk straps and a loose, low-cut bodice. It hugged her waist and hips, but gently, tastefully, before flaring and falling just to the floor. When Ilsa looked at it she wanted to bury her face in it, but she knew that would smear all the makeup that was making her face feel caked and coated, as though she herself was a painting of an entirely different person. "You're such a natural beauty," the makeup artist had repeated as she administered to a silent Ilsa, earlier that morning. Eventually Ilsa had wanted to ask her why, if this were true, there was a need to layer her face with so much makeup.  

The music: a female pop star singing. I would have given you all of my heart, but there's someone who's torn it apart. And Helen now telling the makeup artist about how this song had provoked professional envy in her, how she had never envied another songwriter as much as she had envied Cat Stevens, back in the sixties, when he had written and released this song. "That was my heyday, the sixties," she said to the artist, then looked shy, unsure--probably because there was a good chance the woman holding the blush brush, who was in her mid-twenties, had never heard of Helen Sear. It was odd. Ilsa had never seen Helen try to impress anyone before. It was as though Helen couldn't stop herself from talking, from trying to make noise in the room so that things would seem more festive. "I know it's a simple song," Helen was saying, "but it's just so heartfelt, don't you think? And so true."