by Dan Begley
I haven’t seen much of Bradley, which is a good thing, at least for now, because it means I don’t have to explain what I’ve been up to on Monday and Thursday nights, or why the writing is suddenly going so much better, or do I know some strange guy who’s been chatting up his sister at the studio. But in a way I wish he were around, in the sense that I’d like to pinch some information out of him, namely: did he ever think about setting me up with Marie? I think I know the answer: Hell no. That’s because she’s been living in North Carolina for the last few years and I’ve been in St. Louis, and even though she’s been back for five months, I’ve been living with Hannah the entire time, except the last week. But even so, I still don’t think he’d do it, because he’d just assume she wasn’t my type, what with the dancing and hairstyling and Kenneth Cole T-straps. That’s the thing about Bradley: he can be so narrow-minded. Though sometimes, I guess, so can I.
CHAPTER NINE
Marie and I meet around noon at the studio parking lot. I was afraid Rosie might show up, not in person, but in the form of Marie wearing big hair and too much makeup and a matching earring and bangle set for the big day out. But she looks the same as always—fresh, natural, with flared jeans and flip-flops and a gauzy white top, maybe even a spritz of Calvin Klein’s euphoria and some lip gloss in sheer peach (Bare Escentuals? MAC?). She’s driving a convertible VW bug, top down, and since I’ve shown up again without my car (today’s excuse: it’s at the shop), she drives.
Dance Loft is one of those mom-and-pop stores, though I’m guessing pop didn’t want to have much to do with it since I’m the only guy around. The signs are homemade—“Women’s Tops,” “Men’s Shirts,” “Women’s Skirts,” “Men’s Ball Hugging Pants with Lots of Sheen” (at least, that’s the sign I would have printed up)—as are the price tags. There are a fair number of sparkly and glittery items, as you might expect, but also a few pieces you could almost wear out in public, for a nice occasion, maybe dinner at Cardwell’s. One skirt, a little black one hanging right there on an end cap, catches my eye. Marie sees it too.
“You like that?” she asks.
“Not my size. And my legs are a little too hairy to pull it off. But on the right person, I’m sure it would look great.”
She slips it off the rack and holds it up to her waist. Slit and all, it reminds me of something Molly might wear—to class. “Shows a lot of leg, doesn’t it?”
“Denim, actually,” I say, since that’s all I see of her below the hemline.
She glances at herself in the mirror, adjusts the skirt this way and that, and I’m tempted to tell her to try it on, just for fun, since I wouldn’t mind seeing just how much non-denim leg it covers, or doesn’t. But I don’t, since that would be a little self-serving. In the end, she seems embarrassed about the whole thing and puts it back on the rack.
The shoes turn out to be more expensive than I imagined. I’ve paid this much for basketball shoes, but that was for real shoes. If I were alone, I might just walk out of the store, give it more thought, see if I’m a hundred percent—and a hundred dollars—committed to this whole dancing gig. But I don’t want to seem like a cheapskate, and Marie has assured me a dozen times that the right shoes make a huge difference, and the saleslady has promised that if I don’t like them or they don’t work out, for any reason, I can bring them back, so I pick up a pair of size eleven unisex Urban Trainers in black with crisscross Velcro fasteners.
“How about lunch?” I say, when we get outside. “I’d like to pay you back, for your time.”
“Don’t worry about it. This was fun.” In the sunlight, her top is a little sheer, and without even trying, I catch a glimpse of lace.
“I’m doing this for me, Marie. I’m hungry. Shopping for dance shoes always takes it out of me. How about that pizza place you mentioned?
“Fratelli’s?”
“Yeah. Can you take me?”
She gives me a look like I’m trying to con her. “I’ll take you. Just don’t try to make me eat anything.” She tugs at her waistband. “Still working on those last five pounds.”
But of course, we get there, and the place smells great, and maybe she’s a little hungry after all, so we both take a look at the menu and agree on a large Hawaiian pizza, thin crust, which should be just about right for two, one of whom only plans to nibble. Right. So that’s what we order, plus two root beers.
“Do you always have Saturdays off?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Every other one, usually. Unless it’s December or prom season or something like Mother’s Day weekend or Valentine’s Day. Then the place gets crazy busy. Today, since it’s none of those, I’m free. Though I do have an appointment at three.”
“On your day off? That’s odd.”
“It’s a bit of a special circumstance. I have a customer who’s been through a nasty divorce and she’s been trying to date, but she keeps getting guys who drink too much or are too much into their money or cars or themselves. She finally met a guy she likes, and they’ve talked a couple times on the phone, but they both have kids and getting their schedules to coordinate is tough. Tonight’s the first night they’re going out, just the two of them. A jazz club, which she told him she likes, so she thinks it’s a good sign. She’s a little nervous, so I told her to come in and we’d give her a style for the night.”
“Wow. And you got all that info just by cutting her hair?”
“People sit in those chairs for a while. They talk.”
“And you like hearing all that?”
“I don’t like hearing that people have problems. But I like people, so if they trust me enough to talk, I listen.”
The waitress brings out our root beers and sets them on the table.
“So does that have anything to do with why you got into hairstyling in the first place?” I ask. “The therapy part?”
She fiddles with her straw wrapper. “Maybe a little. I mean, I used to do all my friends’ hair in high school, and we’d talk about our boyfriends or parents or whatever, and I got a kick out of that. But I think the real reason is that I figured out pretty early I wasn’t cut out for college, and I’d have to make a living somehow, and if I had to spend the rest of my life getting up in the morning and doing something, it might as well be something I enjoyed. For me, that was cutting hair.”
I suppose a bank robber would also say he enjoys getting up and doing his job, so I’m not sure that qualifies as the number one reason to choose a career. But whatever floats your boat, I guess. “Hey, listen, Marie. Can I ask you something that may sound a little rude or insulting, but I don’t mean it to?”
“Sure you do, at least a little. Otherwise you wouldn’t put it that way.” She manages to say it without sounding sour. “But go ahead.”
She’s right, of course. That’s why we use those disclaimers, “I don’t mean to sound rude or judgmental or racist or selfish or cold-hearted,” so we can go ahead and say something rude or judgmental or racist or selfish or cold-hearted. Now I feel a little sheepish. “Are you sure?”
She nods. “I’m sure.”
“Okay. People spend money on haircuts and mousses and gels and shampoos and blow dryers and flat irons and color treatments, and if you added it all up, worldwide, it has to be in the billions every year. Agree?”
“Agree.”
“So here’s my question: Isn’t it just hair?”
She takes a long moment to mull it over, and I can tell she’s giving it real thought, the way she keeps narrowing her eyes and playing with her lower lip and looking like she’s about to speak, then stopping, then cycling through the whole routine again.
“The quick answer or the philosophical one?” she finally says.
“Quick.” Then, to distance myself from her brother, “I hate philosophy.”
“Then, yep, it’s just hair. An outgrowth of dead cells from follicles in the dermis, composed primarily of keratin, with a certain color, texture, thickness. And that’s pretty much all it is.”
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“Good. Now the philosophical one.”
She gives me a mock-stern look. “And you won’t laugh?”
“We’ll see.”
She picks up on my tone immediately. “Fine. Forget it.”
“Oh, go on already. I won’t even crack a smile.” Which, ironically, makes us both smile.
“All right, then,” she says, pushing her root beer a little to the side. “Everybody says it’s what’s on the inside that matters. And it’s true. That’s where you want to have it together and be kind and patient and have all those good qualities. But we also have these bodies and faces, for better or worse, and these are us, too. There’s nothing wrong with taking a little pride in the way you present yourself to the world, coming up with the best possible version of you. And hair makes a difference in how we look. Certain lines and curves and colors and styles flatter a certain nose or eye color or mouth or chin. That’s what we study in cosmetology school, how to assess an appearance, see what might look better, bring out what’s most attractive or appealing or natural. Because the eye knows what it likes when it sees it.”
“Sure it does. Just like with the ancient Greeks.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, not that I read much, or know much about the ancient Greeks, other than they were Greek and lived in Greece.” Shit. “But I think I heard they used to build some of their temples based on certain geometric proportions that tended to please the eye. Plus, some of their columns tapered as they got higher, because it made them more aesthetically pleasing from the ground.” I fear I’m confusing her. “Uh, prettier, like you were saying.”
“Yeah, thanks. I got it. And the other thing about hair is that it has this kind of symbolic quality. For instance, say you just got a new job, or lost your boyfriend, or started a diet, and you want something to reflect a goodbye to the old you and hello to the new you. Most people can’t just go out and buy a new car or house or have plastic surgery. But what you can do is change your hair. Go shorter or more styled or change a color. And even though it’s just hair, something about it taps into a deeper place inside and makes you feel like a whole new person and gives you confidence and a different attitude.”
She might be on to something with this last part, hair tapping into a deeper place. There’s hair as strength—Samson of Samson and Delilah; hair as beauty—Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus; hair as a cable to heaven—the dreadlocks of Rastafarians; hair as sign of obedience—the monk’s tonsure or the military’s crew cut; hair as ladder—Rapunzel. We have movies and plays and TV shows about hair: Hair, Shampoo, Hairspray, Barbershop, Friends (isn’t that what that show was about?). We even have hair as embodiment of the crudest tendencies of human nature: the mullet.
I look at her sitting there, her own hair back in a loose ponytail draped over her shoulder, sunglasses pushed on top, and I can see the resemblance to Bradley. Not so much in the looks but in the things she says. Or rather, the way she says them. Like she… believes in them.
“I’m curious, Marie. With all the thought you put into this, your clients must’ve loved you. Why’d you leave North Carolina?”
She stirs up the ice in her glass. “Because Rosie opened her shop and we made a promise to each other that whoever opened a shop first, the other would come and help out. She beat me to it.”
I sit up straighter. “Wait. She opens a shop, so you pack it all up and move?”
“Not the day I got the call. But a few months later.”
“And you made this promise when you were how old?”
“Eighteen.”
Eighteen? What kind of person makes a teenage promise like that and keeps it almost ten years later? For a class clown, like Rosie. Worse, what kind of person holds her to it?
“I’m surprised she didn’t let you out of it.”
“She offered. I wouldn’t let her.”
“But… but what if you’d been married, or had a kid in school, or had a place you didn’t want to leave?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. That wasn’t how it was, so I don’t give it much thought. But I guess things would’ve managed to work out okay. They always do.”
Oh boy oh boy. Here we go. That’s the kind of harebrain lamebrain mushbrain nobrain two-bit idiotic worthless-piece-of-crap comment that people always make, and it always drives me crazy. As if the universe has nothing better to do than tend to comets and asteroids and black holes and antimatter and the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and create a weather pattern or two and keep the planets orbiting the sun, but oh, let’s make sure everything comes up roses for Susie Smith in her crappy little life. Things don’t just work out; people make them work out, with planning and finagling and haggling and sheer grit and effort. And then there’s no guarantee. But for whatever reason, today, sitting here with Marie, I can’t seem to muster up my usual ten-gallon hat load of moral indignation to give her the tongue-lashing she deserves. Maybe I’m just too hungry.
“Anyway, I don’t think it’s a big deal,” she says. “I’m just another pair of scissors in her shop. It’s not like I’m saving lives or anything, like you are.”
“Pardon?”
“With the drugs you rep.”
“Oh, right. No, of course not. Those drugs certainly help people out. But I really can’t take too much of the credit, since, you know, I didn’t actually invent them. And speaking of inventions, look what’s coming our way. Pizza!”
It’s a stroke of masterful timing, and allows me to steer the conversation to pizza, then the studio, then dance, and keep it far away from pharmaceutical drugs and saving lives, and Jason, so that in this instance, on this one occasion, for this one time only, I’m willing to acknowledge that maybe every once in a while the universe does manage to turn away from more important matters—management of the Andromeda galaxy, let’s say—and toss us measly humans a freebie.
Marie has done a kindness for me—taking me shoe shopping—and when I get back to the apartment, I pay it forward to the characters in my novel. Each time I’m tempted to put a knife in someone’s back, have her look silly or stupid or say something half-baked about a Kate Spade purse that makes her sound like a shopaholic ditz, I give her a different line, make her not so foolish, even make her seem sensible and bright. It’s the only outlet I have right now for my charity. That, and my mom. I go over there and cut the grass, my usual job, but this time I skim the pool, which is above and beyond.
After I’ve taken a dip of my own, to cool down, and I’m lounging in back with a beer, she pulls up into the shade of the back drive. She sees me and I give her a small wave, but she just sits there in the car, like she’s in no big hurry to see me or anyone else. Maybe I’m wrong, though, and it’s just a good song on the radio. Finally she gets out.
“I thought you’d be heading out about now with the Saturday Night Club,” I say as she crosses the patio. My mom teaches at a college prep school, and she and a few colleagues usually hit the symphony or a gallery opening or movie at the Tivoli on Saturday nights.
“I canceled,” she says, her tone clipped. “I’m not much in the mood.” She pulls out the chair across from me, roughly, the metal legs scraping on the concrete.
“You okay?” I ask.
She ignores me. “Scott called this morning. He wanted me to know about your father. That’s where I was. At the hospital.”
My instinct is to ask, “What happened?” until I realize I know what happened. He had a heart attack. He had surgery. It’s the first time I’ve given him any thought since Thursday night. Of course, that’s the last thing I can tell my mom. For years now, I’ve played this little game with her called “Big Fat Lies”: I lie to her that my dad and I are good, we’re fine, we’re great, heck, sometimes we even go out for drinks, and she believes me. (Why wouldn’t she?) She feels guilty enough about the divorce as it is, so this is my way of protecting her from worse.
“And how is he, today?” I say it like I’ve been keeping up.
She looks at me
hard, almost a glare. “So you’re concerned, are you?”
I don’t like this. “Sure. Yeah. Why wouldn’t I—”
She angrily waves me off. “Oh, Jesus, Mitch. Cut the act. He asked about you, wanted to know what you’ve been up to. Since the two of you haven’t talked in months. Months. Why didn’t you tell me things had gotten to this point?”
I shrug. “I figured I’d deal with it. And I knew if I told you, you’d be upset and try to do something.”
She rubs at her temples and takes a moment to recollect her thoughts. I wish she’d just drop it. “How long has this been going on?”
“A while. Forever. Look, who cares? We’re both done with it. He has his life and I have mine, and that’s how it is. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, Mitch. It’s horrible.” She’s on the verge of tears, she’s so worked up. “Your father had a heart attack. He almost died.” Her eyes bore into me. “For god’s sake, don’t you care?”