Al three monitors above Andrew’s desk came back to life.
As you might imagine, Yvonne steered the conversation to much safer shores, and my mother chatted along as if she didn’t have a care in the world. My mother combed the dye through Yvonne’s hair and massaged it into her roots. She wrapped the wet strands in a towel and placed a shower cap over Yvonne’s head.
“We just need to let it sit for ten minutes,” my mother cooed, “and then it’s time for your big unveiling!”
The director’s voice came from offscreen again.
“While you’re sitting, Yvonne, why don’t we shoot some interview drop-ins with Mrs. Connor?”
“Marvelous,” Yvonne cooed. “Are we set?” The director answered yes. “So tel me, Sophie, how did you get into the beauty shop business?”
“It’s an interesting story,” my mother began, which was always a sure sign that it would be just the opposite. I took this as an opportunity to chat some more with Andrew.
“I’m kind of disappointed,” I told him. “I thought my mother would defend me a little more. Hel , I thought she’d defend herself.”
“Don’t be too hard on her. Celebrities have that effect on normal folk. I’ve seen Yvonne be a lot ruder than that to some of our guests during the commercial breaks, but when the cameras start to rol again, everyone’s stil there smiling and chatting away. Nobody stands up to people like Yvonne.
Even people who’ve had to eat her shit for years keep coming back for more. Exhibit A: Yours truly.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Everyone’s got to make a living. And I can always hope that one day her key light fal s on her head. At least I have that to look forward to. Who knows, maybe one day I’l get the chance to start a show of my own.”
“She’s ready,” my mother chirped, and Yvonne settled back at my mother’s station. The shower cap around her head ensured that not a single lock of her new hair color revealed itself. The director moved the cameras around a bit to make sure they captured the look on Yvonne’s face as she saw the results of her dye job.
Yvonne wiggled her shoulders excitedly. “I can’t wait to see what you’ve done, Sophie. Wil I be terribly, terribly glamorous?”
“You’l feel like you’re in The King and I, ” my mother promised. She eased off the shower cap, revealing the tightly wrapped towel beneath.
“I’ve always loved Deborah Kerr in that movie,”
Yvonne whispered. “So elegant!”
“Dear, dear, Yvonne,” my mother answered, pul ing away the towel, “I meant the other star . . .”
My mother enjoyed the shocked silence for a moment before finishing her sentence. “. . . Yul Brynner, darling.”
Gasps and one short yelp came from the production staff in the salon.
Yvonne couldn’t seem to catch her breath. “I’m . . .
I’m . . . I’m . . .”
“A bitch?” my mother offered. “An insufferable, homophobic, anti-Semitic poser with bad implants and a worse attitude?”
Yvonne’s eyes narrowed into slits. Her faced flushed a radio-active shade of red. “I . . . You . . .”
“What is it, dear?” my mother asked sweetly. “I’m just trying to help. You know how we ‘service people’
are.”
“I’m bald! ” Yvonne screamed.
Andrew and I ran from the bus into my mother’s shop. Every face in the room was white—even the African-American ones. Nobody knew what to do or say.
“Don’t you hear me?” Yvonne’s screamed again.
“I’m bald! Somebody do something.”
“We offer a ful selection of wigs,” my mother said pleasantly. “Perhaps something in the style of Eva Braun? You can wear it with your swastika.”
Out of the crew’s shocked silence, one woman, I think it was Margie the light hanger, let slip a low chuckle that grew into a palms-over-the-mouth giggle and final y erupted in a loud and hearty guffaw. That set off the woman next her, then the queeny beautician, and soon half the room was cracking up.
“You, you, you.” Yvonne couldn’t find the words.
She ran her hands over her smooth head. “You al . . .
suck! I hate you al !”
That got everyone laughing, final y free to put in her place the tyrant who had oppressed and terrorized them for years.
“They’re al laughing at me!” Yvonne wailed, like Sissy Spacek in Carrie. Only, Sissy was the hero of that piece.
I made my way through the crowd to my mother’s side. “You OK?” I asked her.
“Never better,” my mother said. “You ask me, she deserved a lot worse. She’s lucky she didn’t come in for a bikini wax.”
I kissed her cheek. “My hero.”
Yvonne looked at us. “You two . . . you two know each other?”
“Oh!” my mother said. “Let me introduce my son, Kevin. You had such kind things to say about him.
And me.”
Yvonne stared at the two of us, open-mouthed. I suspected it was the first time in years she’d been speechless.
“I know the trim I gave you may be a tad extreme,”
my mother continued. “But once I saw your true nature, Yvonne, I couldn’t resist making the outside you match the beauty within.”
“You, you cunt! ” Yvonne cried.
My mother put her hands to her cheeks in mock outrage. “Such language! In front of my child, no less.”
“You vicious, kike cunt! ”
“Yeah, yeah,” my mother said. “Fuck you, Kojak.”
She triumphantly turned her back to Yvonne and took my arm. “Let’s go, my darling, faggot son.”
Walking her to the door, I ran into Andrew.
“Are you going to be al right?” I asked him.
“Peachy,” he answered. “She’l probably fire me for this.” His face was lit with joy.
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Sure is. Watching Yvonne today, I realized just how miserable I am working for her. There has to be something better I can do with my life than work for that nightmare.” He turned to my mother. “Thanks, Mrs. C. I owe you.”
“Darling.” My mother threw her arms around him.
“I’m so sorry if I got you into trouble with that terrible woman.”
“No, real y,” Andrew said, “it’s a good thing. I need to move on.”
“Such a good boy,” my mother said, stil pressing Andrew against her ample bosom. “If Kevin wasn’t so hung up on his conflicted bisexual boyfriend, you’d be perfect for him.”
“Hmmm,” Andrew replied to my mother, but smirked at me over her head, “Kevin didn’t give me al that detail when he said he was involved with someone.”
“Wel , Kevin’s like that,” my mother answered.
“Always afraid to show his vulnerability. Even when he was a little boy, when he’d wet the bed, he’d take the sheets and . . .”
“Maybe we could save the humiliating walks down memory lane for another time,” I suggested.
“See?” my mother said to Andrew.
Andrew disentangled himself from my mother.
“Sorry it didn’t work out for you being on the show.”
“Oh.” My mother sounded surprised. “You don’t think they’re going to air this?”
“Uh, no,” Andrew said. “Of course not.”
“Huh,” my mother said. “I think it would make for a very exciting episode. I could see it playing to a broad range of demographics across a wide spectrum of households sampled by the Nielsen ratings.”
I looked at her with a WTF expression.
“What?” my mother asked, as if she always talked like that. “I took a book out of the library about television programming. I thought if I was going to be getting into the business, as it were, I might as wel learn a little about it.”
I considered tel ing her that one appearance on Yvonne didn’t exactly put her on a level with Brandon Tartikoff, but I knew I’d be wasting my breath. I turned to Andrew i
nstead. “So, you’re going to be OK?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’l find something. Or maybe even start my own thing.”
He gave me a hug and whispered in my ear,
“Listen, if things don’t work out with Ambivalent Man, give me a cal , OK?” He took one of his business cards out of his pocket and pressed it into my palm. I put it in my wal et.
“I wil ,” I said.
Just then, Yvonne’s screaming voice cried out
“Andrew!” only spread out over several seconds, so it was more like “Annnnndddrewwwwww!!!”
“Sounds like they’re playing my song,” he said cheerily.
“Maybe Yvonne’s song should be ‘I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair,’” my mother suggested. “Oh, I guess she can’t real y sing that anymore, can she?” My mother laughed at her own joke.
Andrew chuckled and walked away.
I took my mother’s hand and we headed for the door.
“You know,” my mother said, “I hope I did the right thing. Do you think I went too far?”
It was reassuring to hear her ask. Til that moment, my mother had never shown any sign that she even understood the concept of “too far.” Or, at least, that it could apply to her.
“You kidding? She’s probably needed someone to tel her off for years. I was proud of you! But making her bald? That took courage.”
“Oh, that? Please. Her hair had been treated, colored, and straightened so many times that it was two or three blow-dries away from fal ing out on its own. I just hurried the process along a little. Trust me, I’ve cooked spaghetti that was in better shape than her hair.”
Behind us, we heard Yvonne continuing to scream, Andrew raising his voice to be heard above the roar, and the director making calming noises while more than a few staffers whispered and snickered among themselves.
“They real y don’t like her very much, do they?” my mother asked.
“Apparently not.”
“I can’t imagine what that must be like,” my mother said. “Everyone at Sophie’s Choice Tresses loves me, you know.”
“I know, Mom.”
“I’m a very good boss.”
“The best.”
We’d reached the front door. My mother warily regarded the crowd that had gathered outside to watch the taping through the window. They were stil there but stood stock-silent, the “We Love Yvonne”
signs hanging limply by their sides.
“Would you describe them,” my mother asked, “as an angry mob? Because, if so, maybe we should wait awhile before going out.”
“They look more stunned than angry,” I said.
“Yvonne is quite beloved,” my mother observed.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have depilatorized her. That could have been a mistake, ratings-wise.”
“You don’t have any ratings,” I reminded her.
“Yvonne is the one with a show, not you.”
My mother continued to study the crowd. “We al have ratings, dearheart. In one way or another.”
“In that case, let’s go face your critics.” I put my hand on the door handle.
“I don’t know about this. Do people stil get lynched? I have a very sensitive neck.”
“I don’t know,” I said, opening the door and pushing my mother outside, “let’s see.”
The crowd stepped back a bit as we emerged.
They surrounded us in a half circle and openly gawked at us, as if waiting to see what horrors my mother might commit next. We were like twin Frankenstein monsters being eyed by torch-bearing vil agers.
Then, from somewhere to the left, I heard someone slapping something, then the same sound to my right, then from everywhere, the noise swel ing and rising until I realized it wasn’t slapping but clapping.
“Way to go, Sophie!” someone cal ed.
“You got her!”
“That bald bitch better not show her face around here again!” That was from Mrs. P., the doughnut lady.
My mother brought her hands to her bosom.
“You’re not al mad at me?”
“Mad at you?” a gray-haired woman with one of my mother’s signature beehives asked. “Why would we be mad at you? That stuck-up Hol ywood cooze thinks she can come here to Hauppauge and insult one of our own? You gave her what she deserved!”
“You could hear us?” my mother asked.
“We didn’t have to,” Mrs. P. said, coming over to put an arm around my mother. “We could see everything through the window. We know you, Sophie. For you to do a thing like that, that woman must have . . .” She finished her sentence in a long string of Yiddish that meant nothing to me but got half the crowd laughing.
“You’re good people,” another woman offered.
“We love you, Sophie,” one of the young girls with the “We Love You, Yvonne” sign shouted, proving just how fickle a teenage girl’s affection can be.
My mother was choking up. “You’re al so kind to me,” she croaked. Mrs. P. wrapped her up in a comforting hug.
“You know what I’m going to do?” Mrs. P. asked.
“Tonight, when I close the store, I’m going to stop by your house with a chocolate layer cake. You know, that one you love with the red and pink roses on top?
I make those by hand, you know, not from a mold. It’s an art.”
My mother nodded into Mrs. P.’s fleshy shoulder.
“You deserve a treat tonight, after what that woman did to you,” Mrs. P. told her.
I had to say the whole thing made me see my old neighborhood in a new light. Everyone there had seen what my mother had done to Yvonne. None of them had the slightest idea what, if anything, Yvonne did to deserve such a fate. But they al stood behind my mother and supported her, for no other reason than she was one of their own.
It was pretty cool.
Soon, almost everyone in the crowd was lined up behind Mrs. P., waiting to give my mother a hug, a handshake, or just their best wishes.
My mother, who spent her entire life believing she was a star even when no one else was paying attention, lapped up the attention like a kitten devouring a saucer of milk.
It was kind of touching to see my mother final y enjoying in real life the applause she previously only heard in her head.
Mrs. P. came over to give me a hug, too. “You’re a good boy, Kevin.”
“Thanks.”
She pressed her cheek against mine and her lips to my ear. “That’l be twenty-two fifty for the cake. I’l take it now if you don’t mind, sweetheart.”
17
All I Ask of You
“Bald?” Tony asked me for the thirty-third time.
“Completely bald?”
It was almost midnight. After a day spent with my mother deforesting one of America’s most beloved personalities and a dinner in which she alternately compared herself with Golda Meir and Martin Luther King Jr. (“Someone had to take a stand for those who have no voice,” my mother congratulated herself, to which my father responded, “Why couldn’t it be your mother who has no voice?”), I was glad that Tony came over as promised.
“Total cue bal ,” I said. “Professor X with fake boobs and overinflated lips.”
We were lying in bed, which was pretty much our favorite place. Truth to tel , it was pretty much the only place we spent any time together. Being with a guy in the closet made it easy to plan your dates.
“Wow.” Tony whistled. “Remind me not to piss off your mother anytime soon.” He ran his fingers through his own thick locks. “I’ve kind of gotten attached to this.”
I put my hand between his legs. “She’s not the one you need to worry about,” I said. I squeezed his bal s.
“Screw with me and you’l lose a lot worse than your hair.”
“Oh, a tough guy, huh?”
I squeezed him again. “Scared yet?”
“Mmmm,” Tony moaned. “Terrified.”
A stirring tower under the sheet made it clear fear wasn’t the only thing he
was feeling. “You like it rough, Rinaldi?” I pul ed his bal s tighter. He moaned again. I pul ed harder.
“Fuck,” he hissed.
I took my other hand and wrapped it around his cock, tugging in the other direction. Like a taffy pull, I thought.
Precome leaked onto my hand and I used it to slick my palm’s slide to the base of his cock, getting it slippery and wet. I worked my hands in synchronicity, sliding up his shaft with one while pul ing his bal s with the other. The sweet slithery sensation on his dick competed with the aching pressure from his overstretched sac. I tormented him, up and down, back and forth, pain and pleasure, teasing and torture. He arched his back and threw back his head.
“What are you doing to me?” he rasped.
“Everything,” I said, throwing a leg over his pelvis and straddling his waist. I bent over and took a nipple into my mouth. Bit it with a bit more vigor than usual. “I’m going to do everything to you.”
I sucked his nipple hard, and when it was at its most distended, bit down again.
Tony grabbed my head and groaned. “I don’t like pain,” he croaked. His achingly hard cock told me he didn’t mind a little discomfort, though.
“It’s not pain,” I said. “It’s love.”
Tony bucked into my hands. “How do I know the difference?”
I looked at this man who was always so wil ing to
join me in bed but so unready to be anywhere else with me. He looked so hot like this, his eyes rol ed back in pleasure, the wel -defined muscles of his chest and arms straining with the pressure of holding back and letting me run the show. He was so perfect in so many ways.
But was he perfect for me?
“I don’t know,” I said. There was a catch in my voice that probably sounded like passion to him.
“Maybe there is none.” Then I bent over to kiss him and tried not to think so much.
“Come on,” I said, “please?”
“No,” Tony said, his tone resolute.
“Pretty please,” I pleaded.
“No way.”
“Pretty please with sugar on top and the dessert topping of your choice spread over your body and licked off by yours truly.”
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