Barbara Ashe
As our story unfolds in 1984, Barbara is a 33 year old lawyer, the mother of two children, and married to a prominent surgeon, Dr. Charles Ashe. An extremely attractive woman, Barbara currently thinks of herself as overweight and old. In high school, she was both the head cheerleader and the class Valedictorian. Both the girls and boys in high school also thought of her as the sexiest girl in school. She was a college cheerleader, a straight A student, in the top 10% of her law school class, yet she believes herself to be of no more than average intelligence and ability. In 1984, when Barbara looks in the mirror, always frowning, her eyes focus on and magnify a little loose skin over her prominent cheek bones and a thin wrinkle running down the side of the chin bone. Several times a day she pats her little stomach in disgust as a pound of fat remains from her second pregnancy.
“She is always hunched over, terrible posture, wearing those awful baggy cloths. And her eyes are sad and watery all the time,” Sonya tells Charles her first impression of Barbara.
During years of cheerleading in middle school, high school, and her freshman year of college, Barbara developed a habit of using teenage vocabulary such as “wow,” “you guys” and “hooray”. Four years of college in which she received perfect marks but never settled on a major, achieving a general degree, and three years of law school in which she never took her classes to heart, had little effect on her vocabulary outside the classroom.
Even at age 33, an unbiased observer would say that Barbara is dramatically attractive: tall, thin yet buxom, with large bright blue eyes, eyes that glow, below long black eye lashes and naturally curly, coal black hair that falls behind her shoulders. She has a tight, sculptured face. Her chin is distinctive, long and cut flat at the bottom, and her big blue eyes are very alluring under glowing black hair.