Windchill Summer

by Norris Church Mailer

  So now you know it all. I will wait to hear from you. If you don’t want to keep on writing, please let me know that, too, so I won’t wait for a letter and have false hopes. Even if you can never love me, I love you, Jerry.

  Still and forever, throughout all eternity,

  your Carlene

  —

  She folded the letter, put it into an envelope, and carefully laid it in the bottom of her box, under the pictures of Shirley MacLaine and Sandra Dee. She would mail it when she could.

  37.Cherry

  “Lucille, are you really, really, really sure you know what you’re doing? I would dearly hate to have all my hair fall out.” “Cherry, who do you think you are talking to? I took the curl out of your hair, didn’t I? I can surely put it back in. You forget I have done numerous permanents on every single old woman out at the nursing home, and I think I know how to do them by now.”

  —

  My head was leaned back in the shampoo bowl at the beauty school, and Lucille was scrubbing my hair between her hands like she was washing out a sheet. It filled up the whole bowl. She had already sprayed me in the face with the sprayer and gotten water down my neck, soaking me to the skin, so it didn’t seem to me unreasonable to think maybe she was not all that familiar with the proceedings. Either that, or she was just her usual clumsy self, and I couldn’t get mad at her for that.

  I didn’t mean to hurt Lucille’s feelings, but it was pretty scary, having two harsh processes done on your hair so close together. People got bald-headed like that. And it didn’t make me feel any better to hear about all the old women she worked on. I’d seen them leaving the beauty school. The owners of the old folks’ home loaded them on a bus and brought them all to the school once every two or three weeks to get their heads washed and set, and perms when they needed it. They only paid a dollar each for the shampoo and sets, since it was students doing it, and three-fifty for the perms. Dye was an additional seventy-five cents. You could always tell when they had just come from the beauty school, in the Haven of Rest bus that was painted white, with a big gold cross that went across the top and down the back bumper. Each little face peering out of the windows was engulfed by an enormous helmet of ratted-up bouffant hair, dyed blond or purple or blue or red or whatever color the girls felt like putting on them. They needed the practice, and the old women didn’t seem to mind. They thought they were getting a bargain, which they were, and they liked the attention. But I sure wouldn’t have trusted anybody that was there at that school with my hair, unless they were blood kin. I might have gone to the Kwik Kurl, but Miss Dottie was so old now that I didn’t trust her. Nobody under thirty went there anymore. Besides, it would have hurt Lucille’s feelings.

  —

  The girls looked at my hair like they were starved and it was a fresh piece of meat when I walked in. Most hairdressers were scissors-happy—students more than most.

  I wouldn’t have been at the beauty school at all, since I really loved my straight hair, except that it had started to grow out, and the roots, of course, were curly and made it stick out and look weird. Plus, nobody else liked it, and after a while I got tired of defending it. To tell you the honest truth, it never looked like Cher’s anyhow. It was too coarse and thick.

  Lucille’s short-term solution was to put a perm in the straight part so it would match the curly part. Frankly, I was a little dubious, but I had to do something. I couldn’t wear a scarf to moosh it down all the time.

  —

  Lucille finally got all the soap rinsed out, toweled off my hair—I don’t know why they use such skimpy little towels in beauty shops; she had to use four—and brought me over to her workstation.

  On her dresser was a mannequin head whose hair had been curled and straightened and ratted so many times that it was just wisps. I looked at it with pity, like an old friend who had been too many times around the block. I had a bad feeling that if I wasn’t careful, I would look just like it.

  Lucille dragged over the tray with the pink and green perm rods and poured the permanent-wave solution into a bowl. It smelled like ammonia and rotten eggs. Then she started combing me out, which looked like it was going to take a while.

  “Your hair is just rats. I wish you’d let me cut some of this off. You would look so cute with a little poodle cut.”

  “Forget it, Lucille. You know I’m too tall and my head is too little for short hair. It would look like a fuzzy white peanut on top of football-pad shoulders. Just put the perm in and make it like it used to be.”

  Even with what all I just told you, I probably wouldn’t have been doing this at all, except Tripp had mentioned more that once how he missed the curls. I never thought I’d say it, but I would have done almost anything he wanted me to. I’d always had contempt for women who were slaves to men, but now was a different story.

  “You and Tripp finally did it, didn’t you? I can tell. It was about time. I thought it was never going to happen. You were the oldest virgin in this town.”

  “What do you mean, you can tell?” I whispered. “Is it stamped on my forehead or something?”

  “You’re loose as a goose. And you’ve been avoiding me because you knew I’d know. A woman can always tell. Well? How was it?”

  “Lucille!”

  “Oh, come on. Who do you think you’re talking to? Tell.”

  “It was incredible. Fantastic. I can’t describe it. So I won’t.”

  “Good girl! I sure envy you. Jim Floyd won’t be coming back until Christmas, and I’m as tight as a wound-up spring. I have to take a cold bath every night. Doing it to yourself just isn’t the same thing.”

  “Lucille!” I shrieked in a whisper. She has no judgment whatsoever about what she says or who might hear her.

  I don’t know why I was so uncomfortable talking about this with Lucille. I had never had much trouble before, but then I had never had much to tell before. I needed to change the subject before she started to go into details about her and Jim Floyd, which she loved to do. I had heard it all before, and each time was more lurid than the last. It was hard not to picture poor Jim Floyd hanging on for dear life, feet flapping.

  “What’s happening in the land of Dallas dead people?” I couldn’t think of anything else that might interest her enough to throw her off the subject. “Is he getting to embalm them by himself yet?”

  “Yeah. But not fresh ones. The school has these unclaimed bodies of transients, plus a few who decided to leave their bodies to science and save the price of a funeral—or their families decided for them—and they can’t use them for a year, in case somebody comes forward and claims them, or the family changes its mind or something, so they just let them sit in a vat and soak.”

  “Are you serious? That is so grody! How can Jim Floyd stand to embalm a year-old body? The smell must be horrible.”

  “It is, but you get used to it. The thing that is killing him, though, is the class work. Jim Floyd didn’t know he’d have to take stuff like organic chemistry, and he’s not all that great at math in the first place. He is studying like crazy, which is not easy with his job at the hospital and all, but he’s afraid he might flunk out. I may try to go down there for Thanksgiving and cheer him up. I don’t think I can wait until Christmas.”

  It was almost impossible for me to see Lucille’s attraction to Jim Floyd, especially now that I knew he had his hands in year-old bodies. But whatever rings her chimes, I guess, is fine with me. At least I finally knew how she felt. I would die if I had to be separated from Tripp for half a year. We saw each other every day now that school had started, and most nights, too. The drawing class was the highlight of the school week, because I got to sit next to him for four hours and work, which in an odd way was a turn-on, just casually brushing his leg or his arm, heat radiating out and enclosing him and me in our own little world, right in the middle of the rest of the class, while we both drew the same model.

  He was an incredible artist, on top of everything else. He had the most un
usual way of drawing the figure I had ever seen. He started with the pupil of the eye, then the rest of the eye, then the face, and finally the head and whole body. It was so perfect, too. He didn’t use the loose, broad strokes like most of us had to, to get the proportion first and then gradually fine it up. He hardly ever used his kneaded eraser, and the drawing was neat and tidy and perfect from the first stroke on—meticulous, just like everything else about him. I should have known from the way he took care of his car he would be like that.

  The house he rented, while a little old and shabby, was spotless too. His underwear drawers were immaculate; each pair of Jockey shorts was folded into a little square and put in perfect rows. So were his socks; he rolled them into round balls, toes tucked into the tops. His shirts were starched and ironed and hung exactly an inch apart on the rod, all facing the same way, and he had special pants hangers neatly set apart from the shirts. The cans in his kitchen cabinets were alphabetized, with the labels all facing out. There was not the smallest piece of crud behind the faucets in his bathroom. I had always thought of myself as being pretty neat, but next to Tripp, I was a slob. I guess it was his army training, but the army hadn’t made Bean any neater. Baby was always complaining that he hardly ever changed his socks or underwear. He wore the same pair of leather pants every night when they performed, and I’m sure they were funky beyond belief. If I was her, I don’t think I could stand it. Since we had had that fight, I wasn’t about to tell her to break up with him, but I think she would be happier without him.

  It took Lucille forever to roll the long hair onto the rods, and then she dribbled the solution all over my head with a cotton ball. I had a towel over my eyes, but the thin, cold liquid ran into my ears and down my neck, and the fumes seeped through the cheap, skinny towel. It smelled almost as bad as the straightener had.

  “How much longer till you take it down?”

  “I have to let it set for thirty minutes. Cool your jets. Tell me about the job at the Family Hand. Who all have you sold bongs to?”

  “Just kids from the college, mostly. Nobody you really know. Rainy Day made some crazy clay pipes, though, that are best-sellers. The bowls are little men’s heads, and they have big bloodshot eyes and mustaches and beards. They are real works of art.”

  “Does your mama know what it is you sell?”

  “No, and she won’t. I take her things home, though—jewelry and stuff. I get a discount. If you want anything, just let me know.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything much that is my style. The colors are not really right for me.”

  “Not much pink.”

  “No, not much pink. I might get one of those pipes, though. They sound real cute.”

  “What would you do with it? Smoke grass? Come on.”

  “I might. Why not? Have you smoked it again?” Lucille dropped her voice, which was good, since a girl came over to the next booth and brought along a woman with a towel around her head.

  “Not yet,” I whispered.

  Actually, that was a lie. We had smoked pot several more times, and the sex was outrageous on it. I tried to describe to Tripp the things I saw, and he thought it sounded almost like I was hallucinating on acid. I hated to lie to Lucille, but we were in the beauty school, and even though we were whispering, you never know who could be listening. I wasn’t sure I would tell her different later, though. It was almost too personal, like inviting someone into the bathroom with you. Like I said, everyone needs to keep things to themselves that nobody else knows.

  It was scary how good I was getting at sin and breaking the law. Every time I went to church, I expected the roof to cave in. I felt like I had been sprayed with glow-in-the-dark paint that would flash like a neon sign—SINNER, SINNER, SINNER—but everyone just treated me like they always had. I began to wonder if some of them might be hiding things, too. The whole business of good and evil seemed completely turned around to what I had always been taught. How could something so good as loving Tripp be considered so bad?

  Tripp had gone back with me a few times, in spite of the hell and Old Testament sermons, and thought it was fascinating, especially the shouting and talking in tongues and the healing services, where Brother Wilkins lined people up and said, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, BE HEALED,” and slapped them on the forehead whereupon they fell down in a faint. It must be really different from the Catholics.

  Speaking of Catholics, I couldn’t believe it, but I had found out that my practice teaching next semester would be at St. Juniper’s Catholic Boys’ Academy, up near Buchanan in the Ozark Mountains, about seventy-five miles from here. It was the best of all the assignments, because the supervising teacher, Father Leo, was known as a really cool priest. He had long hair and played rock-music tapes in class and smoked cigars, and they had a great art department.

  The school was deep in the mountains, up high by itself, and looked like a medieval castle. At the center of the campus was a stone church, with huge windows of brilliant stained glass portraying St. Juniper and Jesus and Mary and a lot of other saints, which I would ask Tripp about. It had turrets with round red-peaked roofs and, I kid you not, a moat around the church that you had to cross on a wooden bridge, which was guarded by stone gargoyles on either side. When I went for my interview, Father Leo said they threw the bad boys in there for the alligators to eat. I stopped and stared, trying to see the alligators, until Father Leo laughed and I felt really stupid.

  Even so, I guess Father Leo liked me, because I was the one he picked. The art department was off in a building by itself, across a creek with another wooden bridge, and had several pottery wheels, kilns, pedal sinks, and a lot of other great art facilities. It would be so much fun. The only thing that was going to be weird was that I would be the only woman in the whole school, except for the lunchroom ladies and the secretaries. They had no women teachers and no girl students. That part was a little daunting, but after all, they were only high school boys, and I would be twenty-one. A grown-up. Their teacher. I would start right after Christmas vacation—only three months away. I couldn’t believe it. I was almost out of college.

  —

  Lucille started to take down the perm. “Uh-oh.”

  “What do you mean, uh-oh? What’s wrong?”

  “Uh-oh, my gosh. Cherry, I think your hair is breaking.”

  “Breaking? Lucille, what do you mean, breaking?” I could hear a little hysterical note come into my voice.

  “Calm down and let me think! It may not be so bad. Come on, let’s wash the solution off.” There was definitely a little hysterical note in Lucille’s voice. My heart started to race.

  We went back to the shampoo bowl and she took all the rods out and poured shampoo on my hair. It felt really funny. Lighter.

  “Cherry, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you have short hair.”

  “What!” I jumped up, slinging water everywhere, and looked in the bowl. There was a big wad of white hair at the bottom. I felt my head, and my hair was really short in some places. I started to yell.

  “LUCILLE, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME! I’M BALD!”

  “Shhh, stop that howling! No you’re not! Come back over and let’s see what we can do.”

  By this time, all the girls had heard the ruckus and were standing around staring.

  “WOULD Y’ALL PLEASE GO ON BACK TO YOUR OWN BUSINESS? I NEED ROOM TO THINK!” Lucille screamed at them, and they scurried away, sneaking looks over their shoulders.

  I stared at myself in the mirror. It was a poodle cut, or at least some of it was. The rest was still long and curly. I looked like a sheep in the middle of shearing.

  “Oh my Lord, Lucille! Do something,” I wailed, tears starting to stream.

  “All I can do is even it out. Stop crying, Cherry. It will look really cute. Please stop crying. It doesn’t make it any easier for me to cut your hair with you bawling like that!”

  “You’d bawl, too, if it was your hair!”

  I
wiped my hand across my eyes. My eyelashes were coming unglued. I peeled them off and put them in a Kleenex, then tried to pick off the glue, gobs of which were sticking my eyelids together. Tears dripped down my cheeks as Lucille went to work cutting the rest of my hair off. Big piles lay on the floor, like white wool. I never realized before how big my ears were. They were kind of pointed, like an elf’s. Mr. Spock ears, that’s what I had, and I never even knew it. The girls started to come back. They couldn’t help themselves.

  “Ooh, it’s really cute! I love it!” one of them said. The others all agreed, and oohed and aahed some more, but what did they know? They were student hairdressers. Obviously, they would all love hair that was cut down to the scalp.

  “No, really, Cherry, it’s adorable. You will be really happy this happened. You’ll see.” Lucille was getting more and more excited as the girls carried on about what a great cut it was.

  It was a short Afro, just long enough to pull a little in front of my ears to half hide them, and a fringe of curly bangs, a few corkscrew tendrils down my neck.

  “Go and fix your makeup, put on these hoop earrings, and every girl in this town will want a haircut just like yours. I promise.”

  Lucille took her own gold hoops out of her ears, real ten-carat ones that Jim Floyd had given her for her birthday, and handed them to me. I went to the bathroom, fixed my lashes and makeup, put in the earrings, and stared at myself. It was different, I’ll say that for it. I did have a little head, though. My neck was as long as a goose’s, and my head seemed to bob around like a dandelion on a stalk. I had no idea what everyone would say, but there was nothing to do about it at this late date. Maybe I could get a wig or a fall or something until it grew out. Maybe this was my punishment for being vain and for all the stuff with Tripp and for lying to Lucille and For the pot and for everything else. It sure seemed like punishment to me.