by Norma Klein
“But you said that when you flew out with me . . . I thought maybe that was just something you made up.”
“No, I was up there.”
“What for? You didn’t even mention it on the plane.”
“She called me all of a sudden, really depressed. She just broke up with someone and she was feeling really lousy. The funny thing was, the day after I got up there, they made it up.”
“Who was he?” I said, relieved. “Was he nice?”
“It’s a she, actually . . . Maria Lopez, some Argentinian girl.”
“I didn’t know Pam was gay!”
“Neither did she . . . I don’t know this proves she is. They just kind of fell for each other.”
“Weird.”
“They’re coming into the city this weekend. Do you want to see them with me? I told Pam we might all get together.”
“Sure . . . does she know about me?”
“Of course. I guess she’s a little worried that I’ll be critical of their relationship, but I don’t care. I mean, look, if it makes her happy, why should I—”
I thought of Felix. “Lots of very nice people are gay,” I said. “It’s just a matter of taste.”
“You haven’t fallen for some girl, have you?” he said.
“Joshua, come on . . .”
“Just checking. Hey, I missed you. The plane ride back was really dull.”
“I missed you a lot too.”
We talked some more. I told him how I felt about the cover. I didn’t tell him about what I was planning to do with my hair.
“How come you told people you took nude photos of me?” I said.
“I told one person,” Joshua said. “It just shows you can’t trust anybody.”
“Did you tell them I dumped you for an older man?”
“Look, Rust, there was this one guy I used to talk to . . . I guess I told him I was afraid. I never said you actually did it.”
“I think Daddy was pleased they said I never used my diaphragm.”
“Did you get a new one yet?”
“Take it easy! I will.”
“By Saturday?”
“Joshua . . . come on. I thought we were supposed to have so much in common besides sex.”
“We do . . . that doesn’t mean sex doesn’t count.”
“True.”
“Did any Hollywood types come on to you out there?”
“I was just there a week!”
“It only takes a couple of minutes.”
“You have a lot of faith in me, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry, Rust.”
“How do I know what you and Pam were doing that night before she made up with her friend.”
“We were reading her poetry.”
“Sure.”
He laughed. “She’s off men . . . she thinks they’re coarse and insensitive.”
“Even you?”
“She thinks I’m the best of the lot, but still not to be compared . . .”
I decided to believe him. He sounded sincere. Anyway, since I had that night with Felix, even though nothing happened exactly, my conscience wasn’t totally clear.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After school Wednesday I went to the drugstore near us, Mandel’s, and looked at hair dyes. I didn’t want to end up a real platinum blonde, since that would look odd with my coloring. I ended up buying this dye that Mom uses, called Apricot Haze. Her real hair color is brown, and this makes it turn out blondish red. That way people will really think we’re related when in fact it won’t be the real color for either of us. Also, Mom does it herself at home, so I know how it works. Basically, you put on these rubber gloves and pour it on your hair. Then you wait about half an hour or maybe less and wash it out. I think I’ll have Shellie do the washing out part.
What I feel worst about is cutting my hair. I’ve had long hair all my life, all except the first two years of my life when I was practically bald. I look sort of like a boy in my baby pictures. Then it suddenly began to grow in really fast and by the time I was in kindergarten, I had a whole lot of it. Mom used to braid it or put it in bunches with colored ribbons to match whatever I was wearing. I love long hair. I like the way it feels when it hangs down my back. I love washing it and drying it. In the winter it even keeps you warm, like wearing a scarf, and in the summer I like putting it up, which makes me look elegant and older. Joshua will feel terrible about my cutting it. But I don’t care. It’ll be worth it.
Shellie learned this odd way of cutting hair. What you do is gather all the hair into a ponytail. Then you just cut the ponytail off with a big strong kitchen scissors. For some reason that makes it fall in a nice way. So much hair came off! It all just lay there in heaps on the floor. Shellie looked at it in dismay. “It’s like that O. Henry story we read,” she said sadly.
“But I’m doing it for me,” I said. I looked at myself in the mirror. My head looked so big and my eyes looked gigantic.
“Listen,” Shellie said. “I want to fix it a little. You need bangs or something and curls on the side . . . otherwise it looks too . . . flat.”
I sat very still while she trimmed it with these other scissors she has. She has one that’s for thinning and shaping. She did it really carefully and slowly and when it was done, it looked like a real haircut, the kind you’d get at a store. One reason I didn’t want to go to a beauty shop, though, was because I was afraid I might change my mind.
We gathered all the hair up and put it in three large Ziploc bags.
“Don’t tell anyone I did it, okay?” she said. “Because your parents might kill me.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. We’d agreed that I would get up early on Saturday and go home before Shellie’s parents could see me so they wouldn’t know either.
We did the dyeing part in the bathroom. I sat on Shellie’s desk chair and leaned back in the sink while she poured this stuff on my hair. It really smelled bad, I guess because of the bleach. “Does your mother really use this?” Shellie said. “It doesn’t look like her color.”
“It changes once you wash it out and dry it,” I said. I began getting scared. This was probably the worst thing I’ve ever done. “Joshua probably won’t ever want to see me again,” I said mournfully.
“Come on,” Shellie said. “He doesn’t like you for your hair.” But she didn’t sound that positive.
She washed the dye stuff out a couple of times. You have to make sure to get it all out. My back was getting really stiff. Then I dried it with her blow dryer. But it was funny. With short hair it only takes around one second to dry it. I guess that’ll give me a lot of extra time that I didn’t have before. Then Shellie brushed it around a little. We both stood in front of the mirror, looking at me.
“You certainly look different,” Shellie said.
I did. I really looked like a completely different person. The color was okay. It wasn’t exactly like Mom’s. It was more red, but it was a lot lighter than my hair usually is.
“One good thing,” Shellie said, “is it kind of matches with your eyebrows and eyelashes.”
“It does?”
“Sort of . . . I think it’s cute, kind of. It’s just hard for me to get used to.”
“Me too. It’s not that I look bad, I just look like someone else.”
“You know who you look like?”
“Who?”
“Susanna Karpinsky.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Susanna Karpinsky is this petite blond girl who’s studied ballet since she was born practically.
“I mean, you look prettier, but you look like you might be a dancer or something.”
I shook my head. “It feels so light. It’s such a weird feeling.” I sighed.
Shellie began fixing up the bathroom. “Maybe you’ll develop a whole new personality to go with it,” she said.
“I hope not.”
But lying in bed, I began to worry. Maybe it was a rash, dumb thing to do. Maybe if I’d waited a little, people wou
ld’ve forgotten. I was afraid I might have another bad dream, but I didn’t. I slept really well. I usually do at Shellie’s house.
We set the alarm for six o’clock. It was really nice of Shellie to get up that early with me because she likes to sleep late on weekends. I tied a green scarf around my head and we went into the kitchen to have breakfast. All of a sudden, while we were standing there, waiting for the toast to pop up, Shellie’s little sister, Zoe, came in. “Hi,” she said cheerfully. She looked at me. “How come you have that weird scarf on?” she said.
“It’s a new style,” Shellie snapped.
“It is?”
After she left, Shellie and I began giggling. “God, wait till my parents see me,” I said. “I wish I didn’t have to go home.”
“They’ll get used to it,” Shellie said encouragingly.
“Oh, Shell!”
“Are you sorry you did it?”
I frowned. “No, not exactly . . . just nervous.”
“Call me later, okay?”
“Definitely.”
When I got home, Deel was up. She was in the living room, practicing her lute. “Hi,” she said. Then she looked up. “God, what happened to you?”
I still had the scarf on. I came into the living room and took it off.
Deel’s mouth fell open. “What? What’d you do? Are you crazy?”
“Ssh . . . I just wanted a change.”
“What happened to all your hair?”
I showed her the Ziploc bags.
“Seriously, why’d you do it? You look like Mom!”
“I didn’t want people to recognize me,” I said. “People were coming up to me on the street and pointing and saying things. It was awful!”
Deel kept staring at me. “Boy, Mom and Daddy’re going to have a cow,” she said with some satisfaction.
“Does it look really ugly?” I said, looking in the hall mirror.
“Oh, come on . . . you’d never look ugly no matter what you did. I don’t mind the style so much . . . but why’d you change the color too?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
I went in my room and went back to sleep till noon. It seemed like the safest thing to do. When I woke up, I heard Deel and Daddy talking in the kitchen. “She felt tired,” I heard Deel say. “She’s sleeping.”
“No, I’m up,” I called out.
Daddy opened the door to my room. When he looked at me, it was as though I had come home with one arm and one leg. “Darling, what happened to you?”
“I cut my hair,” I said.
He rushed over to the bed. “But . . . the color! What happened?” He acted like I’d been in an accident.
“I wanted a change,” I said, looking down. “I wanted to look different.”
“But sweetheart, you should have consulted us. Did you . . . tell anyone? Does Amanda know?”
“I didn’t want to tell anyone,” I said, “because I knew you’d stop me.”
“It’s just such a drastic thing to do.” He looked around in bewilderment.
“I don’t think it’s so bad,” Deel said. I could tell she was really enjoying the whole thing. “You have to kind of get used to it.”
Daddy touched my hair. “When did you do it?”
“Yesterday.”
We all sat there in silence. It was sort of as though I’d just been expelled from school. Daddy didn’t even seem mad, more just stunned and sad. He kept looking at me as though he thought it was a bad dream and he might wake up from it if he tried hard enough. Then Mom peeked in. She let out a whoop.
“Tat! How darling! I love it!” She rushed over. “When did you do it?”
“Yesterday,” I said softly. “Do you really like it?”
“I think it’s sensational. What a difference!”
“But she had such beautiful hair,” Daddy said plaintively.
“But it was too much,” Mom said briskly. “It overwhelmed her. All you saw was hair. Tat has such a delicate build. It was like half girl and three-quarters hair. Now you can really see her face.”
I smiled. Well, at least someone liked it. “I just did it because I was sick of people coming up to me on the street, you know, because of the cover.”
“But that would’ve passed,” Daddy said. “That was just a temporary thing.”
“Well, whatever the reason, I think it’s a hundred percent improvement,” Mom said. “Who did it for you, hon? It’s a marvelous cut.”
“I can’t tell,” I said.
“I’m so glad you went to someone good,” Mom said, inspecting me from all angles. “Some of those guys just butcher you, even the most expensive ones. This is a good, sensible cut . . . I love the little pieces on the side.”
“But the color!” Daddy said.
“It’s my color,” Mom said wryly.
“Yes, but I’m used to it on you,” Daddy said. “And Tat’s hair was such an unusual color.”
“True,” Mom said. “Well, dyes grow out quickly, a month or two. No, I agree, fourteen is a little young for monkeying with color, hon, though it’s lovely in a way.”
“What will Sampson and Liss say?” Daddy said. “They called Helen saying how Tat’s coloring was so perfect for Lolita.”
“Daddy, I’m not sure I want to be in Lolita,” I said.
“You don’t?” Mom and Daddy said in unison.
I looked down. “I don’t want to ever act again.”
“Darling,” Mom came over and took my hand. “This is all just . . . temporary. It’s always hard getting used to in the beginning. But, believe me, it passes. Next month they’ll have a new superstar and you’ll be totally forgotten.”
“That’s not true,” Daddy said indignantly. “She won’t be forgotten that easily.”
“I don’t mean forgotten in that sense,” Mom said. “I just mean in that sense of everyone gawking. Did you save your hair, sweetie?”
I showed her the bags full of it.
Daddy went over, unlocked one bag, and ran his hands through it. “It’s so soft,” he said mournfully. “Feel it.”
Mom put her head to one side. “It’ll grow . . . but I think it was definitely time for a change. She’d worn her hair that way since she was four!”
When Daddy had left, she said, “Hon, don’t mind him . . . Lionel just clings to the status quo like a mad beast. He can’t abide change in any way, shape, or form. He wants you preserved, forever, just as you were at six. This style really suits your face. Look at what it does to your eyes! You can really see your face for the first time in years.”
“I’m afraid Joshua will hate it too.”
“Look, hon, men are just . . . they’re like that. They like things one way, but one has to go forward. You’re your own person. You’re old enough to make decisions on your own. And if you don’t like the color, we can dye it back tomorrow.”
“We can?”
“Sure . . . the point is, it’ll grow in in a month anyway, but if you’d rather, we’ll just buy a bottle of dye and do it ourselves. I do it every month.”
“I know,” I said.
She looked closely at my hair. “See, the thing is, they didn’t do a really first-rate dye job. The cut is super, but they didn’t shade it in right. It’s a little too harsh, I think.”
I was supposed to meet Joshua, Pam, and Maria at twelve at the Museum of Modern Art. I put my hood up, even though it wasn’t that cold. Joshua was waiting outside, near the man who sells chestnuts. He hugged me. “Hi,” he said.
He didn’t even notice my hair. Of course most of it was under the hood. “Josh?”
“Yeah?”
“I have to tell you something,” I said slowly.
“What?” He looked suddenly anxious, like he thought I was going to say I didn’t want to see him anymore.
“I did something really stupid.” I looked at him pleadingly. “There was a reason for it, though. Should I tell you the thing I did first, or the reason?”
“The thing you did.”
I untied the strings of my hood. “There,” I said, letting him see.
“Your hair?” He looked bewildered.
“It was awful,” I said. “Everywhere I went, since the People cover, people kept staring at me and pointing and saying things . . . I couldn’t stand it!”
Joshua’s face had such a mixture of expressions it was hard to tell what he was feeling.
“Say something!” I said desperately.
“Well, I’m relieved in a way,” he said. “I thought—well—I thought it was something different.”
“I know what you thought.”
“What did I think?”
“You thought I fucked with Woody Allen or something.”
“Or something.” Joshua grinned. He looked at me. “It’s not so bad,” he said. “You look nice . . . just different. You look like a ballet dancer.”
“That’s what Shellie said.”
He touched my head. “You must weigh about ten pounds less.”
“Mom says we can dye it back to the same color if I want . . . should I?”
“Yeah . . . you’re not the blond type, somehow,” he said.
“In what way?”
“Well, blondes are usually more . . . giddy and lighthearted.”
“Aren’t I giddy and lighthearted?” I said, worried.
“Sure,” Joshua said. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”
“So, you’re not mad?” I said. “You still feel the same way about me?”
“Yes,” Joshua said. “You arouse the same calm, brotherly, protective feelings that you always have.”
“I thought I aroused wild, lustful feelings.”
“Oh, from time to time,” he said, moving closer. “Just occasionally . . . Speaking of which, did you get a new, you know what?”
“They should have a pill for men,” I said, kissing him.
“They’re working on it,” he said, “but till then . . .” He turned. “Oh, hi, Pam, hi, Maria . . . this is Rusty.”
“Hi, Rusty,” Pam said. “I’m really glad to meet you.”
They were a funny couple. Pam was tall and thin with straight brownish blond hair. She had a really big nose, but it kind of went with her face. It was what you’d call an “aristocratic nose,” sort of like a tapir at the zoo. Maria was short with a mop of black curls and big round black eyes. She was wearing a bright poncho striped in lots of bright colors.