Finding the Forger

by Libby Sternberg

  But this kind of deep thought has not penetrated to the Founding Mothers of our Dress Code Constitution, and, as Sarah had predicted, Mrs. Taney asked me to remove the bandana on Wednesday afternoon.

  When I took it off, Barbara Jaworski fainted. Fell like a tree right in the back of English class, and barely missed hitting her head on the folding table with our English projects. Boy, was I ever embarrassed! I started saying “I’m sorry,” while Taney rushed to get the nurse.

  While I thought there was a cause-and-effect thing going on here, it turns out Barb had a fever and was coming down with the flu. She was sent home early.

  On Thursday and Friday, I didn’t want to risk any more hair casualties, so I managed to work the wiry strands into two pigtails, which would have been a cute retro style if it weren’t for the fact that I don’t look good in pigtails.

  This whole hair ruckus, though, kept me from focusing too much on the Sarah/Kerrie ruckus, which seemed to quiet down into an uneasy truce. My guess was that Sarah had given in and given up on the Boston trip. Whatever had happened, it did the trick, at least enough for Kerrie and Sarah and I to eat lunch together with some polite, if frosty, conversation about our school work. We scrupulously avoided two subjects—the weekend, and college applications.

  I thought a lot about the museum weirdness and even tried to get more out of Connie after school on Thursday, but all she would tell me was that there were some “improprieties” and maybe it was a little deeper than just some misplaced artists’ supplies.

  “Art theft,” I’d announced standing in her doorway, and I could tell from her quick smile that I’d hit the bull’s-eye.

  “That only happens in books,” she said.

  “Why else would they be checking out the modern stuff? You don’t need to restore something that was just painted, for cryin’ out loud.”

  She said nothing.

  “And they’ve contracted with you because they don’t want the police in on it—it would get in the papers. The alarm going off and the cops coming freaked them out.” Woohoo! I was figuring it out. Her body language was giving it all away—she was squirming, picking non-existent lint off her skirt.

  “The stolen art supplies,” I said, suddenly inspired, “was just a cover—something they said to keep the cops from digging deeper.”

  “Your hair’s looking a little better today,” she said, emphasizing the “little.”

  Ah-ha. In Balducci language, her response had meant “you are correct, oh wise younger sibling, but it will cost me too much in pride and honor to admit it, so I must insult you in this sly, subtle way. Please forgive me.”

  So I had all this to think about as I headed into the weekend.

  Ah, the weekend. I was in one of those friend dilemmas. Sunday was the museum shindig Sarah had invited Doug and me to. I was really looking forward to it because not only would I get to be with Doug at some posh get-together. I’d also have a chance to play PI at the “scene of the crime.”

  The fly in this ointment? Call me crazy, but I don’t think Sarah had invited Kerrie. Probably because she knew Kerrie and Doug and I were doing the mall crawl on Saturday together, so we’d have had an opportunity to girlfriend-bond, and Sarah would want Sunday for her own chance at that emotional pie. Plus, Sarah had given up the trip to Boston, so she might not have been feeling very “inviting” to Kerrie. Didn’t I tell you I felt like a kid in a bad custody case? Pulled back and forth?

  My dilemma—should I mention the museum thing to Kerrie? Or, should I suggest Sarah invite Kerrie, too? And if, as I suspected, Sarah was deliberately leaving Kerrie out of the invite, should I decline to attend as well?

  In religion class, we deal often with “love thy neighbor” stuff, but we don’t get into real-life details like this. And, as they say, the devil’s in the details.

  I’d have to think about it. But for now, I put it off. Friday evening was rolling around and I was headed to a hair doctor, then out to dinner, then back home and some blissful time emailing Doug, who would be home from his part-time job. Then Saturday, I’d see him in the flesh. Ah, life was good. Moral dilemmas could wait.

  On Friday afternoon, right after school, my mother picked me up. The fact that she did this emphasized just how bad this hair thing was. She took off work early to drive to school, chauffeur me to Hair Force One, and back home after I was done. If I thought about this too much, I could get really depressed.

  To add to the sense of crisis, as soon as I walked through the door of Hair Force One, the beautician took hold of me as if I were an accident victim entering an emergency room for treatment. “Oh, dear, come right this way. Yes, we were told you’d be coming …” Really made me re-evaluate the impression I had made all week and the control I thought I’d mustered over The Hair Situation.

  After they tucked me in the chair and placed the plastic apron over me, my mother stood nearby, explaining the perm event, which only added to the atmosphere of medical crisis. During this recitation of the disaster, the beautician nodded sagely while I looked from her to my mother, half expecting someone to connect me to an IV drip and heart monitor. I was beyond caring. I didn’t want to wear pigtails any longer. I couldn’t wear the bandana. Anything would be better. Anything.

  For an hour and a half, they shampooed and conditioned and clipped and shaped, and I felt comfortable, my ego-wounds soothed. There’s something ultra-relaxing about sitting in a beauty shop chair, having someone fiddle with your hair. The very name— beauty shop—makes you feel pampered and special. As if anyone who walks in looking foul will automatically walk out a beauty. I, for one, was ready to believe.

  By the time the beautician—Nell was her name—handed me a mirror to take in the 360 degree view of my new hair, I was ready for small improvements—the frizz tamed, the Brillo controlled, the Annie ratcheted back a notch or two to, oh, “understudy” level maybe. My expectations were modest.

  Instead, when I finally let myself look at my new hair with wide open eyes, what I found was, well, what I was aiming for in the first place—casual attractiveness.

  I couldn’t believe it. My heart started pounding. I thought I heard angels singing. I knelt and kissed the ground Nell walked on.

  Well, not really. But I sure was grateful.

  My hair was cut short—much shorter than I ever would have opted for on my own—and it was tinted a little with reddish highlights. The frizz was cut off, leaving only waves, nice natural-looking waves that framed my face and trickled down my neck. I was dumbstruck. I was moved.

  “Do you like it?” Nell asked.

  “Uh. Yes. Yes. A lot,” I managed to say. I was already envisioning which earrings would look good with this new style. Maybe big hoops. Or even fake diamond studs—the ones my mom bought from the Avon saleswoman last year. This was perfect. This was hair nirvana. Hair paradise. A little make-up and the right clothes and I would look … human!

  “Bianca, I’ve been wanting you to get your hair done like this forever,” my mother said, standing next to the chair. “It sets off your face so well.”

  While she paid for this extravagance, I continued to walk on clouds. Doug would be so impressed. Doug would love it. Everyone would love it.

  My mother even listened intently to Nell explaining the benefits of some million-buck shampoo and conditioner, and then—I am not making this up—Mom bought some for me! So this is how gorgeous women lived—buying million dollar shampoos and hair treatments, having people stare at them in a good way, not the “what’s that on your head?” way.

  In fact, as soon as we left the shop, I caught a guy staring at me—the “hmmm … nice” kind of stare. I sopped it up like a sponge. I was where I wanted to be—in Lovely Land.

  I was beginning to wonder if I was dreaming, but when we ended up at my Aunt Rosa’s restaurant, yet more manifestations of my altered state occurred. The waiter, who usually made bug eyes at Connie, started hitting on me! He hovered near my place while taking our orders (only a f
ormality at Aunt Rosa’s since she told us what was good and we ordered it or suffered family excommunication). He placed the bread basket in front of me. Ignoring everyone else, he asked me if I would like more iced tea. Even Tony picked up on it and muttered something about how I should ask him out. I kicked Tony, of course, while thinking “darn straight he likes me. I’m a babe.”

  Life was good. And by the time I got home that night and did my IM routine with Doug, I was feeling like nothing, but nothing, could drag me down.

  Chapter Seven

  THEN CAME SATURDAY, which started out well enough. Pancakes, made by Mom, Connie in a good mood, Tony silent (hey, what more could I ask for?), and I was still feeling pretty—well — pretty.

  I didn’t even fret over what to wear. The night before, I’d laid it all out on the one clean spot on my dresser—a khaki skirt (almost like Connie’s, but hotter), black long-sleeved tee, gold hoop earrings, and clogs.

  Things didn’t really start going wrong until right before I left for the mall. I was standing at the door waiting for Doug to pick me up when Connie breezed by.

  “Guess you heard,” she said, sipping on some herbal tea that smelled almost as bad as my hair the morning before.

  “Heard what?”

  “That museum thing—now they’re fingering some guard.”

  “What?” A guard—Hector? And fingering him for what? But before she had a chance to answer, I saw Doug pull up and I had to go before he tried to parallel park in the one open spot on the block. I’d seen Doug try to parallel park before. It’s not something women and children should watch.

  So when I went to the car, I was already feeling out of sorts. Then—more bad vibes! Really bad! Kerrie was sitting in the front seat!

  Instead of picking me up first and then going together to retrieve my girlfriend, Doug had violated the first rule of Girlfriend/Boyfriend Regulations—that is, the girlfriend comes first! Always.

  When she saw me, Kerrie, a big grin on her face, said, “Here, let me get in the back.” But just then a car behind Doug started honking because he was double-parked and I muttered a quick “that’s okay” and slid into the back seat. Or I should say, I sulked in the back seat, because that’s what I felt like doing. Sulking.

  To make matters worse, Kerrie had on an outfit almost identical to mine. Except instead of a miniskirt, she had on tight khaki jeans. But her black long-sleeved tee hugged her body in ways mine never would, so whatever beauty points I got for my hair were canceled out by Kerrie’s other points.

  Life wasn’t fair.

  Yes, Doug eventually noticed my hair, but mentioned it only in a perfunctory way, and only after Kerrie said something about it. And I’m not sure he would have said anything at all if she hadn’t done a little gushing. Then, he chimed in with a soft “yeah, looks great” and a nod.

  So this tainted my entire visit to the mall. It beat in the background of my afternoon like an annoying itch I couldn’t scratch. I wanted to get Doug alone so I could be the center of his universe for a few hours. And I wanted to get Kerrie alone so I could tell her I wanted to be alone with Doug. And neither possibility seemed possible.

  We took the usual route—from CD store to bookstore to clothes store. But even then Kerrie stole the limelight. I thought I’d get Doug’s take on a few dresses for the Mistletoe Dance. Sure, my mom was sewing something special for me, but I knew if I saw something really hot, I could get it and she’d probably say okay. When I saw a black velvet number in The Limited, Kerrie oohed and ahhed over it so much that Doug said maybe she should try it on, too. Need I tell you who filled it out better?

  By the time our afternoon was over, I was ready to curl up and cry. At least I had the consolation of knowing that Doug would probably suggest he and I do something alone together that evening. In fact, I viewed the whole Saturday afternoon date as a warm-up to the real thing that evening. I’d even looked at the movie schedule and picked out a few flicks I thought we could catch together.

  You can imagine my surprise, then, when he dropped me home first, and not Kerrie! When he first pulled onto my street, I just figured it was another manifestation of Doug’s Driving Affliction—he drives slow, is easily distracted, and has an inner compass perpetually askew. He then announced he had to get the car back to his parents because they were going out and their other car was in the shop, so he figured he’d loop around and drop Kerrie off after me.

  Because of his lack of parking skills, he once again had to double park, which meant no “walk to the door,” no intimate words of regret about not being able to go out together that night (and why didn’t he tell me this earlier?—I could have gotten Tony to take us somewhere!), no nothing. At least I was sitting in the front seat by this time. But with Kerrie in the back like some chaperoning grandma, do you think Doug was going to lean over and give me a sweet smooch on the kisser?

  “I’ll call ya,” he said a little wistfully. Yup. Wistful’s all I got out of this expedition. And wistful does not feed a girl’s soul, let me tell ya.

  To make matters worse, Connie wasn’t home when I came in, so I couldn’t pepper her with questions about the museum situation. And I didn’t want to call or IM Sarah about it because Connie’s little hint about Hector would just upset Sarah. Sarah probably suspected Hector, too, but was too besotted by him to admit it. Sheesh. Life sucked.

  The house was as empty as my heart. Mom had left a note saying she was out shopping and there were leftovers in the fridge.

  The fridge. Emblazoned across it, using my poetry magnets, was the following free-form ditty, which perplexed and angered me:

  Beauty Style Whatever Drama is in the Hip

  “Drama is in the hip”? Who was doing this and why wouldn’t they tell me? Why couldn’t I get together with Doug—alone? Why was Kerrie turning into my nemesis? And how come it didn’t matter that I finally felt pretty?

  Little did I know that it would matter, a great deal, the very next day.

  Chapter Eight

  THE NEXT DAY, I went to Mass with Mom. Sometimes I don’t get up in time for church, but that morning I was up before anyone else in the house. Anger does that to you. Turns you into an early riser. Connie and Tony on the other hand, were sleeping in, or at least pretending to, so they didn’t have to go through the lowered-eyes routine when Mom asked if they wanted to go to church with her.

  I figured I needed all the help I could get, so I tagged along, wearing my khaki skirt and black tee again. And it was worth it. At least two people noticed how good I looked. One was old Mrs. Pompano, whose kids grew up with my grandparents. She squinted at me after church and said, “Is that Bianca? My, my, she has grown up so fast,” which, in old person’s speak, means “that bod’s smokin’!”

  The other was Richard Goldolfi, the choir director, who saw me after church and asked me to join the choir. While this might not seem like a compliment at first blush, you have to understand Goldofi. He’s in his early twenties, just graduated from college, and is looking for a “little woman” big-time. He’s been on more blind dates than, well, a blind person. His asking me to join the choir meant I was moving into the “eligible” category.

  The real payoff, though, came that afternoon when Doug and I joined Sarah at the art gallery party. But let me back up a minute and share something strange.

  When I got home from church, Connie told me Sarah had called.

  Sarah had called on a Sunday morning? Early Sunday morning? Early Sunday morning wasn’t chat-with-your-friends time. It was eat-cinnamon-buns-and-read-the-comics time. Or it was go-to-church-with-family time. If Sarah had called me this early, it was because something was wrong. Immediately, I thought it was another fight with Kerrie.

  “She said she’d catch up with you later,” Connie said when I tried to bump her off the computer to call back.

  By the time “later” rolled around, I’d worked myself into what I’d call a “productive simmer.” It was productive because I couldn’t sit still, and s
o I finished a project for Music that wasn’t due until Friday, got a head start on a book I needed to finish reading by Christmas break, did some cyber-shopping for Christmas gifts, painted my toenails and fingernails, and shortened a long black dress.

  The black dress was originally long because we had to have black dresses or black pants for school chorus. Kerrie had given me a long black skirt she didn’t like any more, and I used that for chorus now instead of my long black dress. So I actually hemmed the darn dress in about an hour and had a new addition to my wardrobe. It looked really good, too—just a plain sleeveless thing. So good, in fact, that I decided to wear it to the art gallery.

  Normally, I’m not a dress person. I’m more of a slacks or skirt person. But I was still so miffed about my day yesterday, and still wanting that “ooh-aah” payoff from Doug about my hair, that I decided I would overcome my dress phobia and look nice for a change. I paired the dress with dangling gold earrings and a thin gold chain my mom gave me last Christmas. After borrowing Connie’s strappy sandals (she wouldn’t miss them), I waited at the door for Doug so he wouldn’t have to park.

  When my mother saw me, she practically did a double-take.

  “Bianca, you look very sophisticated!” But then she had to also throw in her usual “Mom” warning (every compliment is followed by a warning). “But you’ll get cold. Take your jacket.”

  My jacket was not a jacket. It was a parka—no, make that an inflated balloon costume that made me look like the Michelin tire guy—and if you think I was going to put that over this black race-car of a dress, you’re nuts. Heck, I’ve had buyer’s remorse over that parka since the day after I bought it. My eye-rolling must have instantly communicated all this because Mom left the room and returned a few minutes later with a dark green pashmina shawl.

  “Here,” she said, handing it to me. “I was going to give it to you for Christmas, but it’ll look so nice with that dress.”