There was no point in applying. But I watched my hands as if they belonged to someone else, wiping off the carrots and ripping out the ad.

The director of the academy, Mrs. Maria Vasquez, sat behind a kidney-shaped oak desk in a room with pale aqua walls. Metallic-framed photos of beautiful women were hung at measured intervals. The smell of the studio and workshop rooms drifted into the administrative area, a mixture of hair spray and shampoo, and the tang of penning chemicals. A beauty shop smell. I loved it.

I concealed my surprise at the discovery that the director was Hispanic. She was a slim woman with highlighted hair and angular shoulders, and a stern, strong-boned face.

She explained that the academy had accepted my application, but they had only so many students they could provide with financial aid each semester. If I couldn't afford to attend the school without a scholarship, then did I want to go on a waiting list and reapply next year?

"Yes, ma'am," I said, my face gone stiff with disappointment, my smile a thin fracture. I gave myself an instant lecture. A waiting list wasn't the end of the world. It wasn't as if I didn't have a lot to do in the meantime.

Mrs. Vasquez's eyes were kind. She said she would call me when it was time to fill out a new application, and she hoped to see me again.

On the way back to Bluebonnet Ranch, I tried to envision myself in a green Happy Helpers shirt. Not so bad, I told myself Organizing and cleaning other people's houses was always easier than cleaning your own. I would do my best. I would be the hardest-working Happy Helper on the planet.

While I was talking to myself, I didn't pay attention to where I was going. My mind was so busy, I had taken the long way instead of the shortcut. I was on the road that passed the cemetery. My car slowed and turned onto the cemetery drive, heading past the cemetery office. I parked and wandered among the headstones, a granite and marble garden that seemed to have sprung from the earth.

Mama's grave was the newest, a spartan mound of raw earth that interrupted the orderly corridors of grass. I stood at the foot of my mother's grave, somehow needing proof it had really happened. I could hardly believe my mother's body was down there in that Monet coffin with the matching blue satin pillow and throw. It made me feel claustrophobic. I pulled at the buttoned collar of my blouse, and blotted my damp forehead on my sleeve.

The stirrings of panic faded as I noticed something beside the bronze marker, a liberal splash of yellow. Skirting around the edge of the grave, I went to investigate. It was a

bouquet of yellow roses. The flowers were in an inverted bronze holder that had been buried so the top rim was flush with the ground. I had noticed vases like that in the catalog at Mr. Ferguson's funeral home, but at three hundred and fifty dollars apiece, I hadn't even considered buying one. As nice as Mr. Ferguson had been, I didn't think he would have thrown in the expensive addition, especially without having mentioned something.

I pulled one of the yellow roses from the bouquet, and brought it, stem dripping, to my face. The heat of the day had brought it to its strongest essence, and the half-open blossom was spilling out perfume. Many varieties of yellow rose have no scent, but this kind, whatever it was, had an intense, almost pineapple fragrance.

I used my thumbnail to peel off the thorns as I walked to the cemetery office. A middle-aged woman with reddish-brown hair shaped into a helmet was seated behind the welcome desk. I asked her who had put the bronze vase at my mother's grave, and she said she couldn't release that information, it was private.

"But it's my mother," I said, more bewildered than annoyed. "Can someone just do that?...Put something on someone else's grave?"

"Are you askin' if we should take it off?"

"Well_. no..." I wanted the bronze vase to stay right where it was. Had I been able to afford one. I would have gotten it myself. "But I do want to know who gave it to her."

"I can't tell you that." After a minute or two of debate, the receptionist allowed she could give me the name of the florist who delivered the roses. It was a Houston shop named Flower Power.

The next couple of days were taken up with going on errands, and filling out the application for Happy Helpers and going for the interview. I didn't get a chance until later in the week to call the florist. The girl who answered the phone said, "Please hold," and before I could say anything, I found myself listening to Hank Williams crooning "I Just Don't Like This Kind of Livin'."

I sat on the lid of the closed toilet seat, the phone loosely cupped to my ear. and watched Carrington play in her bathwater. She concentrated on pouring water from one plastic Dixie cup to another, and then adding liquid soap and stirring with her finger.

"What are you doing, Carrington?" I asked.

"Making somethin'."

"Making what?"

She poured the soap mixture over her tummy and rubbed it. "People polish."

"Rinse that off—" I began, when the girl's voice came through the receiver.

"Flower Power, can I help you?"

I explained the situation and asked if she could tell me who had sent the yellow roses to my mother's grave. As I had expected, she told me she wasn't authorized to divulge the sender's name. "It says on my computer there's a standing order to send the same arrangement to the cemetery every week."

"What?" I asked faintly. "A dozen yellow roses every week?"

"Yes, that's what it says."