by Darien Arete
Darien Arete is a freelance writer and editor living in New Jersey. She got the idea for Permanent Wave one day at the hair salon, when an older man did, in fact, come in to get a perm. The rest is history.
Doug
March 1996
“Buenos dias, amigo. Como estás?” Daphne greeted him as he walked through the door of the shop.
“Uh-uh,” he said. “Not today. I ain’t got it in me to do our whole talk in Spanish.”
“Pero por qué? Es magnifico!”
As happy as he was to see Daphne, even she couldn’t improve his mood—and it was effing crappy this morning.
“Okay, okay,” she said, settling him into the shampoo sink. “No Spanish. No Italian. Not even a ni hao for you, I promise. I can tell you don’t have the patience for it today. So, tell me—in English—what’s going on.”
“I feel like every time I come in here, all’s I do is complain about my life.”
“Don’t be silly. You only complain half the time. The other half, I complain to you about my life. We have reciprocity, brother. That’s how friendship works.”
He couldn’t argue with that, and didn’t want to.
“I prob’ly shouldn’t even be sayin’ nothin,” he said.
“No secrets in the beauty salon.”
He smiled. “You’re right. Okay, here goes. Maggie wants another baby.”
“My goodness. After all these years? How old is your son now?”
“Just turned thirteen, and lemme tell you, he ain’t thrilled with the idea. Flat out said he ain’t helping with diapers or nothin’ if there’s another kid in the house.”
“Sounds like he’s acquired his teenage attitude good and early.”
“No joke. Kid’s on my last nerve.”
“So, how do you feel about the idea of having another baby?”
How did he feel? That was an effing fine question. The word that came closest to describing how he felt was shell-shocked.
It had started yesterday afternoon, evening, he guessed, as soon as he walked in the door after work. Mason and Maggie had been in the kitchen, arguing about which kind of takeout to order for dinner.
“We had pizza last night,” Maggie was saying. “And besides, it isn’t any good for you.”
“Oh, and Chinese is health food with all that MSG?” Mason said.
Kid was smarter than he looked, Doug had thought. And a lot smarter than his mom, and maybe even his dad, too.
“Hey there, family,” Doug had said, setting his keys down on the kitchen table and taking off his baseball cap. “What’s all the hubbub?”
Maggie scowled. “We’re working it out on our own. We don’t need any more cooks in this kitchen.”
“Seems to me the trouble is we ain’t got any cooks in the kitchen,” Doug muttered.
Mason snickered. “Good one, Dad.”
“Oh, that’s right, gang up on me, that’s fair,” Maggie said.
“Nobody’s gangin’ up on nobody,” Doug said. “What’s the problem?”
“Mom wants Chinese and I want pizza.”
“We did just have pizza last night, son,” Doug said. “Mom’s right about that.”
“Yeah, but we had Domino’s last night and that doesn’t count. I want real pizza—thin and pepperoni—for dinner. With a side of garlic bread.”
“And I think he needs to have at least one vegetable in his day,” Maggie argued, “which is why I want to order chicken and broccoli from Golden Palace.”
“Whatever’s in that stuff is not chicken,” Mason said, shuddering.
Smart kid, Doug thought again. But he couldn’t say so. You couldn’t just take your kid’s side against your wife. Not if you wanted to still have a wife come morning.
“Whaddya say we compromise? Burgers and fries?”
Maggie huffed. “Still no vegetable, unless you’re counting the French fries, and they don’t count.”
Doug gave Mason a wink and said, “No worries. We’ll get California burgers—lettuce, tomato, onion. All good.”
Maggie had thrown her hands in the air. “Do what you want. It’s obvious I’m never going to get my way, not even once, in this house.”
As she stormed off, leaving Doug to call in the order at the diner, he couldn’t help but wonder whose way this was. It sure as eff wasn’t his, getting greasy bags of takeout every night while paying for a brand-new upgraded kitchen with fancy granite counters and a six-burner stove—not one burner of which, as far as he knew, had ever been lit.
Mason clapped a hand on his father’s shoulder before leaving. It was the most affection the boy had shown him in years. Maybe ever. Eff, that was a depressing thought.
Once dinner was over and Mason had gone to his room to do homework (or so he said; Doug suspected the kid did more video-game playing than homework most nights), Maggie collapsed into her chair at the kitchen table, gazing at the takeout mess like it was too much for her to even think about cleaning up.
Holding in a sigh, Doug started gathering the debris on his own, balling up ketchup-covered napkins and foil burger wrappers with pieces of sickly pink tomato stuck to them. He was pressing everything down deeper into the trash can when Maggie said, “I think we should have another baby.”
Before he could stop himself, Doug burst out laughing.
“What’s funny about that?” Maggie asked.
“Ain’t we gettin’ a little old for that sorta nonsense?”
“Speak for yourself, old man. I have plenty of childbearing years left in my body.”
He slapped the lid of the garbage can closed and sat down across from her at the table. “I didn’t mean nothin’ like that. I’m just teasing.”
They were the words Daphne always used, the same ones that always made him feel good, like she was a real friend and all their banter made them part of a special team. Maggie hadn’t gotten the memo on that.
“Teasing, my foot,” she said. “You always do this: poo-poo my wants and needs.”
He wondered vaguely if that was true, because he sure couldn’t have told you what Maggie wanted or needed.
“I’m sorry, Mags. I just thought you were kiddin’. All these years and you ain’t never even mentioned the idea of having another baby. Why now?”
She sighed. “I don’t know, really. I guess it’s just that Mason’s getting older. He doesn’t need me anymore. I guess I feel like I need something to do with my time.”
He wanted to suggest that she try cleaning the house or cooking a meal once in a while, but kept his mouth shut, though he couldn’t stop himself from thinking it. Seriously: What did she do all day? He reached over and took her hand, noticing how cold her fingers were. Why were her hands always like ice? What was that old saying? Cold hands, warm heart? It sure didn’t feel like that in Maggie’s case. Some days, her heart seemed colder than stone.
“You ain’t gotta have another baby just to fill your time, do ya? There’s plenty to do.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno. You could get a part-time job or somethin’.”
She screwed up her face like it was the craziest idea anybody had ever had, that she, Maggie Endersoll, should work.
“I can’t get a job,” she said. “Who would take care of the house if I weren’t here? Who would take care of Mason after school?”
Doug felt like he was watching from outside his body as his beefy thumb popped up and he said, “One, I’m pretty sure Pro Maids’ll keep takin’ care of the house, same as they always do, long as we keep payin’ ’em, and—” His index finger popped up beside the thumb. “Mason’s thirteen. He don’t need a babysitter no more.”
Maggie slammed her hands down on the table and leapt up. “You are the worst human being I have ever met. You take me for granted. Every minute of every day of this entire marriage, you have treated me like garbage.”
She ran out of the room, crying in a way that Doug could only have described as “theatrical.” He sat there, stunned, and tried to decide what he was supposed to do. Go after her? That hardly sounded appealing. How were you supposed to talk a gal down when all she really wanted was for the fight to ratchet up to the next level?
And that’s when it hit him: Maggie was just as bored as he was. The difference was, where he listened to books on tape and dreamed of finding a bigger purpose in life, she created drama where there didn’t need to be any.
As much as he hated it, he realized they finally had something in common.
He finished cleaning up the rest of the dinner mess, then braced himself and went upstairs to find Maggie.
She was curled up on the bed like a little girl, and it occurred to Doug that that’s what she was: just a kid. She was a child who’d never lived on her own, had gone straight from her daddy’s house to his house, had never had to work or take care of herself, had no idea how to be a grownup at all. In a weird way, he found himself feeling sorry for her.
He sat down next to her and rubbed her shoulder with one hand. “I didn’t mean to upset ya, Mags. C’mon now. Let’s talk about this, huh?”
She flopped over onto her back and stared up at him. He noticed that her eyes were dry, clear. The tears (like he had suspected) had been for show.
“You’re really willing to talk about it?” she asked, her voice quiet and timid and not like Maggie at all. And just like that, he was back to feeling sorry for her.
“Sure I am,” he said. “I ain’t sayin’ right off yeah, let’s have a baby, but we can talk about it, yeah.”
“All I’m saying is, we should at least try. We’re not getting any younger and I don’t want us to look up one day and Mason’s out of the house and we realize we forgot to have another child.”
“Ya ain’t gonna get mad if I say something, are ya?”
“Depends on what it is, I guess.”
He shrugged. “I feel okay with our family the way it is. Ya ask me, if we’re gonna make a big decision, we oughta think about getting a boat, for down at the shore house, not havin’ a new baby. But that’s just me.”
Maggie dragged herself up to a sitting position and glared at him. “Are you actually equating a child and a boat?”
“Why not? They both cost tons of money and time. Seems like a good comparison, ya ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you,” she spat out. But she absolutely had asked him, though he forced himself not to mention it.
They sat there in silence for a long time, and then Maggie said, “So that’s it, then? I don’t get a baby because you want a boat?”
“Aw, eff it, Mags. That ain’t what I said at all. I’m just saying let’s be practical. Ya really want to go through all that again? The up all night, the cryin’, the diapers? I ain’t all that jazzed on it, myself.”
“Isn’t it worth it?” she asked.
Was it? He perked up his ears and could hear computerized beeping and popping sounds—Mason playing one of his video games—coming from the boy’s room across the hall. Kids were impossible, it seemed like. You put all your money and love and time into them, and by the time they can talk to you, they don’t want to, and they do whatever they can to avoid you. What was the payoff? When did you ever feel like it had all been worth it? Thirteen years in and Doug was still waiting.
“If you think so, babe, I’ll do whatever it takes to make ya happy. You know that, right?”
She leaned over and threw her arms around his neck, and it reminded him of a kid hugging Santa, too hard, in the mall at Christmastime. She really was just a little girl. And how do you say no to one of those?
“Then we’re trying? For real?” she asked.
He shrugged again. “If that’s what ya want, then okay.”
She beamed at him and jumped off the bed. “I’m so excited. Oh! And talk to Lou. Maybe you guys can go in on a boat together. Compromise, right?”
Yeah, he thought as he watched her grab the cordless phone from the nightstand and start dialing, doubtless to tell one of her gabby friends about all the intimate details of their lives. Yeah, life was all about compromise.
“So, you’re having a baby?” Daphne asked, tilting Doug’s head back to apply the perm solution.
“Guess we’ll see about that. Gotta say, I’m more jazzed about the boat, if I’m bein’ honest.”
“I would be, too.”
Daphne
March 1997
She tucked the flyer into the pocket of her smock. She’d brought a whole stack of them, thinking Erin could pass them out at the reception desk, but the moment she saw Carla’s usual smug face, Daphne had decided against it. Instead, she’d hand the notice personally to the clients she thought might appreciate it and not risk having a whole big blowout with Carla. And by the way, what does a woman with two divorces under her belt before age thirty-five have to be so smug about?
Joan was already sitting in the waiting area, ready for her highlights, with the standard look of exasperation on her face. Some people never changed—especially, it seemed, mothers whose sole achievement in life was pushing out a child. Once that kid was grown up and out of the house and the mother could no longer claim every one of the child’s successes as her own, the woman was utterly lost. Not that Joan didn’t try. She continued her bragging about “little Madeleine,” never seeming to realize that Madeleine (who came in to see Daphne for her own haircuts, now that she was in her twenties) wasn’t so little anymore.
As soon as she saw Daphne, Joan broke into a smile—one almost as smug as Carla’s. (If anybody ever tells you a salon isn’t the cattiest place on Earth, smack her—she’s a liar.)
“You’ll never believe the news, Daphne,” Joan said, sweeping into the swivel chair with the grace of an aging ballerina (albeit one with a broken leg or maybe some heavy-duty arthritis).
“Do tell,” Daphne said, throwing a smock over Joan’s body.
“My little Madeleine is getting married!”
Technically, Daphne had already heard this news, from Madeleine herself, just a couple of weeks ago. Only when Madeleine told it, it hadn’t been “marriage,” but “domestic partnership,” and the “groom” was a professional softball player named Janice.
“That’s amazing news,” Daphne said. “Who’s the lucky guy?” She couldn’t stop herself from getting the jab in.
Joan clapped her hands beneath her smock and said, “His name is Jack. He’s an investment banker on Wall Street. Great family, lots of money, so handsome. I couldn’t be prouder of my little girl.”
Delusion could be a powerful thing, Daphne thought, wondering if Joan really believed she was pulling off the lie—or if, maybe, there was a chance she didn’t even know it was one. Madeleine never talked about her mother (not that Daphne could blame her) when she came in for her haircut, so Daphne couldn’t be sure if the mother and daughter had a clue that Daphne knew the dirty details of both of their lives. Sometimes, being a hairdresser was like being a priest in a confessional: You heard the worst from people. Something about the intimacy of having another person’s hands on your head seemed to make people forget social boundaries and say the absolute most honest thing. Except for Joan, of course. In her case, the intimacy seemed to up the ante on the size of her lies.
“I couldn’t be happier for you, Joan,” Daphne said. “Give Madeleine my best wishes.” She bit her lip and tried to decide whether to show her hand. She went for it. “Or I’ll just tell her myself when she comes in for her trim next month.”
In the mirror, Daphne saw Joan swallow, hard. And there was the answer: The woman was lying and she knew it.
“Maddie comes here?” Joan said. “I didn’t realize . . .”
“Oh, sure, she’s been coming to me ever since she started college. Just a haircut, maybe highlights in the summer. Nothing crazy.”
Joan coughed. “I didn’t realize,” she said again. “That’s . . . wonderful. I always knew I raised my daughter to have good taste when it comes to the finer things in life, like good hair.” It was a fairly brilliant recovery, even Daphne had to admit.
“Speaking of the finer things,” Daphne said, tugging a flyer out of her pocket. “I have an art show coming up next week. At a gallery in Westfield.”
Joan peered down at the little piece of colored paper, squinting like someone who needed reading glasses but was too vain to admit it. “You’re sponsoring an art show? For the salon, you mean?”
“No, no, it’s my art. I do oil paintings, watercolors, that sort of thing.”
“I didn’t realize you were an artist.”
The woman sounded disappointed rather than impressed. Daphne wasn’t surprised. Most people seemed to like to think of everyone they met as all one thing: A beautician should only cut hair, and a doctor should only cure diseases. Mixing up skills and interests tended to make people ill at ease.
“I’ve only been doing it maybe nine months now,” Daphne said.
She watched as a wave of relief washed over Joan and had to suppress a laugh. Apparently, it was all right for a hairdresser to be a lousy amateur painter as long as she didn’t become a “real” artist.
“Oh,” Joan said, “well, that’s wonderful. I’ll do my best to stop by and see it one of these days.”
“No pressure.” The silence between them felt heavy as Daphne finished painting on Joan’s highlights. Maybe her first instinct had been right: Don’t try to mix business with pleasure, or, in this case, beauty with art.
The door jingled open and Daphne felt her whole body unclench when she caught sight of Doug. He, at least, wasn’t going to lie about a lesbian daughter or act like Daphne’s dabbling in art was less remarkable than a kindergartner’s interest in fingerpainting.
“Hey there, stranger,” she called. “I’ll be ready for you in a few minutes. Ask Erin to shampoo your head—unless you need to sit down for a little while and catch up with the new issue of Cosmo.”
Doug glanced at the magazines on the table by the door and shook his head. “Nah, I already know which sex moves drive my man wild.”
He paused only to pop a chaste kiss on Daphne’s cheek as he passed by on his way to the sink.
In the mirror, Joan rolled her eyes.
“What?” Daphne asked.
Joan motioned for Daphne to bend down, then whispered, “That poor man is in a time warp. It’s like he’s trapped in the early eighties and doesn’t realize that the Tom Selleck look might have worked when he was twenty and had jet-black hair. Now that it’s salt and pepper, all it does is remind you how old he’s getting. It’s such a shame. And honestly, even Tom Selleck keeps his hair trimmed short now. Haven’t you seen Friends?”
Strange, Daphne thought. It was exactly the same type of observation Daphne herself would have made just a few years earlier. How had she missed it? There was no denying the fact that Doug (just like everyone else) was starting to show his age. There was a good deal of salt in his pepper, as Joan had put it, but Daphne had overlooked it entirely. She could only blame friendship. Fondness must make you as blind as new love (not that she’d experienced that emotion in a while).
“All right, Joan, grab a seat at the dryer and I’ll check in on you in about half an hour. Doug, you ready to roll?”
Doug sat down in the swivel chair Joan had just vacated, but before wrapping a smock around him, Daphne produced another flyer from her own apron.
“Before I forget, here’s a flyer for my art show.” As if she might be able to forget. But it was better to say that. You never wanted to look too desperate and needy, even with a man who’d never technically be anything more than a client. Even if knowing he was coming today was the whole reason she’d chosen this day to bring in the flyers.
“Art show?” Doug said, smiling at the card in that too-appreciative and too-impressed way of his. “How’d that happen? I knew you were an artist, but I didn’t know your skills went past great hair.”
How had it happened? It was an excellent question.
Last summer, she had found herself sinking into a depression. It wasn’t all that unusual. In fact, the older she got, the more she realized that she tended to start feeling blue around early June, as the days got closer to reaching their maximum length (in terms of light, that is; she hated people who acted like summer days had more actual hours in them than others). The sadness lingered all summer long, as she endured the long, bright, lonely evenings and thought about all those other people out there doing things like taking vacations and frolicking with loved ones on beaches. It was only with the return of the chill in the air, the changing of the leaves, and, yes, the early nightfall that she started to feel somewhat human again. She couldn’t explain it, but this year, she had decided to fight it.
When the summer continuing education catalog came in the mail, she browsed through and realized that, outside of English as a second language, she had taken every course the local college had. Left without something to fill her time, she had grown desperate and looked into the local library’s offerings, where she found an introductory oil painting class that met twice a week (and only cost fifty dollars, plus materials, for six weeks). She had signed up immediately.
Art was one of the few areas left that Daphne had never formally studied. Sure, she had been to all the New York museums and could tell a Rembrandt from a Picasso, but her knowledge, she would be the first to admit, was limited at best. Having never learned to appreciate the various themes and movements in art history, she tended to prefer paintings that looked as close to photorealistic as possible, viewing anything simpler or more abstract as “too easy,” not worth the time it took to read the piece’s placard at the museum, much less study in depth or, God forbid, hang in her home. As she entered the library’s dingy basement seminar space, she harbored a hope that this class would teach her to understand and enjoy simpler artworks—particularly because she knew all too well that simple pieces were all she was capable of producing (if she could even handle that).
The first night’s class required the students—of whom Daphne was the youngest by at least thirty years—to paint a bowl of fruit that sat on a folding table at the center of the room, around which the students’ ancient, paint-spattered easels had been set up. Daphne looked at the bowl and its fruit (all of which was obviously fake, even from twenty feet away) and felt her spirits sink. A still-life like this was exactly the sort of boring “art” she had always sought to avoid. Who in her right mind, after all, would want to hang a picture of fruit on her wall when she could simply put out an actual bowl of fruit, which would be just as attractive and have the added function of edibility?
She embraced the painting challenge with all the enthusiasm of someone just selected for jury duty, but to her surprise, she discovered she was pretty good at painting ugly plastic fruit. In fact, from the right angle and distance (that is, about ten feet away from her canvas), the pieces of fruit almost looked real—even more so than their models there on the table.
The teacher—an aging former hippie with long gray hair and a dress that looked more like an army-green sack than a garment meant for a human—paused behind Daphne’s easel and stared, putting on, then taking off her glasses, and then putting them back on again. The librarian had introduced the teacher as Ethel Malone, supposedly a locally known painter and sculptor whose works had appeared not just in small suburban galleries, but even in a trendy shop in Soho known for supporting bold new artists. (Daphne would have guessed that this Soho appearance had occurred circa 1976 and had happened precisely once, and never again.)
“Did you study painting in college?” the woman asked.
Daphne turned to look over her shoulder. “Who, me? No. I was a history major. For a semester. I never finished college.”
Ethel’s lower lip puffed out a little (a sure sign of either appreciation or jealousy). “You have talent,” she said. She dug around in the pocket of her sack dress and pulled out a business card. “Call me tomorrow. I think you should come to my studio to discuss additional private lessons.”
Naturally. The whole “You have talent” or “You’ve got potential” or “You’re going somewhere, kid” line was always a ploy—usually by an older man to get a younger woman into bed, but in this case, Daphne assumed, by an older, struggling “artist” to snag an extra hundred bucks a week in private lesson fees.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t afford that,” Daphne said, though she probably could. After all, other than cheesy local classes and the basic necessities of life, what was she spending her money on? Still, it was always easier to plead poverty than to tell someone you were on to their ruse.
Ethel shook her head slowly, still staring, as if hypnotized, at the sad fruit bowl on Daphne’s easel. “No, no, you misunderstand me. There wouldn’t be any charge. I’d like to be your mentor.”
Daphne tucked the card into her purse and watched, wary, as Ethel strolled away toward the next student’s easel. Was there a possibility that the older woman was (like her male counterparts) looking for a younger piece of tail rather than a mentee? You never could tell with these hippie types: free love, tune in and turn on, and all that garbage. But it couldn’t hurt to give old Ethel a call.
If Daphne had been surprised at her own ability to paint a believable bowl of fruit, she was more than shocked to find out that Ethel Malone’s intentions were on the up and up.
She went to the woman’s studio the following Friday morning. Calling it a studio, Daphne thought, was rather pretentious. More realistically, it was a converted garage—and not even that. Midway through their lesson, the garage door opened and Ethel’s husband rolled through with his decrepit tan station wagon (which, like Ethel’s career, had likely seen its best days sometime in the mid-1970s), then walked into the house without a word to either one of them.
“That’s my husband,” Ethel had said. “He’s not into art.”
Most men weren’t, in Daphne’s experience—or women, either. But as eccentric as Ethel was and as much as she reeked of patchouli oil (the sixties are over, Daphne kept screaming inside her head), Daphne learned a lot from her and started to enjoy the process. She’d rush home from the salon at the end of the day to get some painting done, and it was an added bonus that her old hair-coloring smocks from Robert’s Hairdressers worked perfectly for catching drips of oil paint in her own “home studio” (okay, it was her kitchen, with a tarp spread over the floor).
She signed up to audit an art history class at Rutgers and spent more than she should on ponderously large, glossy coffee-table books featuring works by Van Gogh, Winslow Homer, Caravaggio. Her own paintings began to take on an ephemeral, fantasy quality she couldn’t explain, probably because it was so unlike the practical, rational personality she exuded in real life. Ethel said the pieces reminded her a bit of the work of William Blake.
It was Ethel who set up the gallery showing. Sure, it wasn’t Soho or the MOMA, but for someone who had never lifted a paintbrush nine months earlier, it was a big deal for Daphne. She knew she was too excited, putting too much feeling into it. She was sure she was going to be tragically disappointed when people came in, smiled politely at the pieces, drank their free wine out of plastic cups, then wandered out without buying anything. Or worse, maybe nobody she knew would even show up at all.
“Eff, Daphne,” Doug said with a low whistle. “It’s friggin’ groovy that you’re doing this. Who’da guessed that the gal who does my hair was a real, live artist?”
She felt her cheeks redden. It was ridiculous how praise could so easily embarrass you after so many years without much of it.
“It’s nothing special, just a few paintings,” she said.
“Quit that. I’m impressed, and ya got every right to be proud of yourself.”
“Enough about me and my silly show,” Daphne said. “What’s going on with you?”
Doug’s face fell, just a little, but it was enough for Daphne to know things weren’t great at home. That seemed to be the case more often than not, and she couldn’t help feeling sorry for the man. He was a good guy, despite his awful taste in hairstyles and facial hair. He deserved to be happy. Sure, there was a chance that his small shots of misery coincidentally fell precisely every four months, just in time for his perm, but that seemed unlikely. Besides, even a terrible person hardly deserved to be dramatically unhappy three times a year.
“Sorry,” she said. “I can tell you’ve got something you don’t want to talk about.”
“Nah, it ain’t that. It’s just . . . I dunno. Ya know how Maggie and I were gonna try to have another baby?”
“Sure, how could I forget?”
“It’s been a year and ain’t nothin’ happened yet, so you know Mags is getting all nervous. Let’s just say nervous Maggie ain’t the most pleasant version of my wife.”
“I guess I can understand that,” Daphne said. “It’s none of my business anyhow.”
“Course it is. You’re my friend, ain’t ya? Anyways, Maggie wants to go to one of them . . . whaddya call ’em? Fertility clinics. Get us tested and all that jazz. It’s been a lot of arguin’ back and forth on that front, that’s all I’ll say.”
“Well, I hope it goes well.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it’ll all be groovy.”
“Not far out?”
“Not this time.” He smiled and looked down again at the gallery flyer in his hand. “An artist. I’ll be damned. Good for you, Daph. Good for you. I can’t wait to get over there and take a look.”
She felt a timid smile—one that felt not like her at all—creep across her face. It shouldn’t have mattered, but she hoped he really would go to the art show. More than that, she hoped he would like her work. For some reason, she realized, his opinion mattered to her more than anyone else’s.
Doug
November 1997
“Dios mio,” Daphne said as he walked into the salon. “I know you missed your perm in the summer, but this is insane. You look like a sheepdog.”
He had to grin. There was nobody like Daphne to tell it like it was.
“Thanks,” he said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “How ya been?”
“Same old. Nothing ever changes here at Robert’s. You should know that by now.”
“Nah, that ain’t true. Every nine months or so you guys finally get a new issue of Cosmopolitan for the customers to enjoy.”
“You got me.” She led him to the sink and said, “So, catch me up. It’s not like you to miss your perm, shaggy dog.”
“No choice.” He swallowed, wondering how much he should tell her, then realizing he had nobody else to tell the whole truth to. His buddies were good enough guys, but it wasn’t like they were lining up for heart-to-heart talks.
She was about to start rinsing his hair but stopped, the spray nozzle in her hand. “What happened?”
He shrugged. “Wash me up and then I’ll spill.”
Seated in Daphne’s chair, black smock around him, towel tucked around his neck, Doug began to whistle, softly.
“Is that the theme to the Andy Griffith Show? Tú eres loco. Just tell me the story, and no more stalling. Do you have any idea what it does to a woman to know there’s good gossip coming and she isn’t hearing it?”
“Aw, you ain’t one of those chicks.”
“Stalling . . .”
He wiped the smile off his face. She was right. He was stalling. Because how do you tell something this big to the woman who’s supposed to be only your hairdresser but is somehow also your best friend?
“All righty, here goes,” he said. And he began.
It had started just a few days after his last perm, back in March. Maggie had woken him up before dawn one morning, tears in her eyes and a negative pregnancy test in her hand.
“Aw, it’s okay, Mags,” he said, eyes still droopy with sleep. “Maybe next time, ’kay?”
“We’ve been trying for over a year, and you agreed we could see a fertility doctor.”
“I know, but—”
“But nothing. I made us an appointment for Monday.”
“C’mon, Mags, do we really need that?”
“If we want a baby, we do,” she said. “And do not try to weasel out of that. You agreed to have a baby and we’re having a baby, come heck or high water.”
In another woman, the steadfast avoidance of profanity might have been cute, but after all these years, Maggie’s refusal to ever say even a single, mild curse word had become more irritating than endearing.
“I’m bettin’ them specialists cost a lotta money.”
“Can you really put a price on your own child? What’s Mason worth, huh?”
What were you supposed to say to something like that? Nothing, that’s what. He had just nodded, and obeyed, and on that following Monday, he had shuffled into the fertility doctor’s office to watch outdated pornography on an even more outdated VCR and make his “deposit.”
A few days later, sitting in the doctor’s office, he’d been expecting to hear the obvious answer: They were getting old, Maggie’s oven was full of cobwebs, his sperms were swimming around with those old man walkers. He didn’t expect what he heard instead.
“I’m afraid Margaret has a large mass on her ovary,” the doctor said, pointing at some splotches on the X-ray or whatever that grainy black-and-white picture was. “We’ll need a biopsy to determine if it’s cancerous, but we suspect so.”
There had been a candy dish on the doctor’s dish, full of candy corns, even though it had just turned April, nowhere near Halloween, and all Doug could do was stare at it, trying to figure out why a fancy doc with plenty of money would pick an out-of-season candy that nobody liked (too waxy) to keep on his desk.
“Douglas? Did you hear that?” Maggie had asked.
“A mass,” Doug said. “Yeah, I got it.”
Maggie had rolled her eyes, which told Doug he’d missed more of the talking than he thought. He did his best to tune in, listen harder, but those effing candy corns were hard to ignore. Could you trust a guy with a jar full of candy corns on his desk?
“So, we’re all in agreement, then?” the doctor finally asked.
Maggie was nodding, so Doug nodded, too, knowing she’d tell him what he missed (louder than she needed to) on the ride home. Not that he could blame her. This crazy candy-corn doc was here talking cancer, maybe, and instead of paying attention, Doug was too busy sizing up snack foods to be there for his wife of over fifteen years. He was a big goofy schmuck.
But he was wrong. Maggie didn’t shout at him the whole ride home like he thought she would. Instead, she just sat, stone still, in the passenger seat, staring out the windshield like maybe there were aliens landing on the Boulevard right there in Kenilworth, New Jersey.
“Eff, I’m sorry, Maggie,” Doug had said. “I was a real shmoe there in the doc’s office.”
She hadn’t responded, just kept staring at the road.
“What can I do, Mags? Take you out for a nice dinner? Getcha a good bottle of that white wine you like? Sky’s the limit, doll. We could even go down the shore house. I’ll call out from work for tomorrow—”
“I might have cancer.”
“I know, babe. I’m tryin’ to help.”
“No, I mean, I might really have cancer. I could die.”
Doug had slowed to a stop at the red light at Michigan Avenue and used the time to watch his wife. He had never seen her look so pale, almost drained, like a vampire had come along and sucked out her blood or something. He reached over for her hand, but she pressed her two palms together in her lap like she was praying, though he’d never known Maggie to be one for God and such. He took back his hand and accelerated through the light.
“What can I do, Mags? You’re scarin’ me.”
“You’re scared?”
“C’mon, babe, let me help you. I ain’t good in these situations.”
She laughed at that—a light, airy laugh that he knew was the closest she ever came to sarcasm. She shook her head. “Just take me home. There’s no sense trying to talk life and death with you, is there?”
What was that supposed to mean? He wanted to ask her but had the good sense to keep it to himself. She was the one having a bad day here; he got that. He would do whatever he had to make her feel better, even though he knew that probably wasn’t going to happen.
When he pulled into their driveway at the house, he had turned off the ignition and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She looked jumpy, skittish, like a stray cat, and he was afraid of making her even angrier. That’s when it occurred to him: She wasn’t mad; she was scared. And that scared him more than sharks and heights put together. How was he going to hold it together when the person he thought of as always in charge didn’t know what to do? Behind that question was another thought, one he quickly stuffed back inside his brain where it couldn’t get out: What was he going to do if Maggie died?
He cleared his throat and spoke without turning to look at her. He knew he couldn’t stand to see her pretty pale face or he’d freak out, maybe even cry for the first time since he first found out his mom was dead all the way back when he was twenty-one and had just started working at Hyatt, thinking the whole world was going to be his for the taking.
“I’m here for you, babe,” he said. “You know I ain’t good at talkin’ or figurin’ stuff out, but I’m here for you for whatever ya need, right? Anything. I’m here.”
She sat there, still as a statue, for a long time, then shook her hands like they were wet, brushed off her pants, and nodded. “Okay, then, let’s go inside. I’ll order pizza for dinner.”
“So was it cancer?” Daphne asked, bringing Doug back to the salon and reality.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. It was ovarian cancer. Stage three, they said, not that I get what that means, really.”
“Stage three means the cancer has spread beyond the immediate region of the tumor and may have reached nearby lymph nodes and muscles, but hasn’t yet spread to organs in other places of the body. It means the cancer is somewhat advanced, but there are generally still a number of potential treatment options,” Daphne said.
Doug smiled. “Ya sound like one of them boring brochures they give ya at the hospital.”
“Sorry. For being a boring brochure, yeah, but mostly for you and your wife. That’s terrible news. How’s she doing?”
As much as he thanked his lucky stars that someone like Daphne, someone who could have just done his hair and been done with him, was trying so hard to be a good friend, he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it. All these months, he’d had nobody to talk to about Maggie’s cancer, except Maggie herself, who did her best to pretend it didn’t even exist. The idea of suddenly being allowed to unload everything he’d been holding in made him feel like he needed a good long nap.
He sighed. “Aw, eff, it’s been rough.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Daphne said. “I’m here for you, but only if you want me to be.”
He almost laughed. They were practically the same words he’d said to Maggie when they first found out about her tumor, and all he’d gotten in return for them was icy silence and that fake brave face Maggie always put on when she was trying too hard to impress people. Hearing the words, and knowing there was real support behind them from Daphne, kind of made him want to cry. But he didn’t.
Instead, he told her the rest of the story, how the doctor had gone in and cut out the tumor, said things looked good but recommended a course of chemo, just to be sure. That had started by early May, and by Memorial Day, when Lou and Tommy and their wives were clamoring for a big cookout down the shore, to celebrate the new boat they had finally found and finished restoring, Maggie had lost her hair.
Doug had tried to get her to come away to the beach anyways.
“Come on, Mags, you love the shore house. Ain’t nobody gonna care about your hair. You can wear one of my ball caps. I always like a gal in a baseball hat, you know that. Sexy.”
“Have you gone insane? If I show up at the beach looking like this, they’ll all know.”
“Know what?”
She rolled her eyes. “That I have cancer.”
“Hold up,” he’d said. “You ain’t told your best friends that you’re sick? Why the eff not?”
“This is none of their business,” she said. “If I had my choice, even you wouldn’t know about it, and definitely not Mason. No child should have to see his mother dying this way.”
“First off, you ain’t dyin’. And second, the kid’s doing just fine. He ain’t even missed a beat.”
It was true. Mason had reacted to the news of his mother’s diagnosis with a teenagerly grunt, had asked what was for dinner, and had gone right back to his computer game. Deep down, Doug hoped the kid was just too broken up to show his feelings, but something told him the boy had taken after his mom and was putting on a stone face for the world to see. And if he really was like Maggie, there was a chance one of these days he’d explode, with only Doug as a witness, the one left to fix it, clean up the mess.
Maggie had shaken her head. “You go, if you want, but I’m not going to the beach. Not like this.”
“C’mon, babe. Ya gotta keep livin’. Else, what’s the point of survivin’ this thing?”
“I haven’t survived it.”
“That’s not what the doc says. Sure, ya lost your hair, but that’s just the chemo. It’ll grow back. You’re gonna be just fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Eff, even if I don’t, I gotta believe it, and so should you. What’s the point of all this? If ya ain’t got any hope, what’s the point of bein’ alive whether you got cancer or not?”
She sighed. “You’re hopeless. So naïve.”
“I like to think of it as lookin’ on the bright side.”
That had gotten a smile—just a little one—out of Maggie, but not enough for her to agree to take the weekend at the beach house or to go out on the boat.
“I’ll stay home, too,” he had told her.
“You don’t have to,” she’d said, but what he’d heard was “I don’t want you here.”
“I want to. I’ll get us some burgers, fire up the grill. We can have our own celebration, right here.”
“The burgers from White Diamond in Clark are better than home-cooked ones,” Mason had muttered from his seat on the couch, in front of some video game.
“Fine,” Doug said. “I’ll pick up White Diamond on Saturday and we’ll pretend it’s a barbecue. Extra onions?”
Maggie had given him a sad, tight little smile. “Whatever you want.”
She had headed up to their bedroom and flipped on the TV. The home shopping channel. She hardly ever ordered, but ever since the cancer news, she’d been watching the silly thing all day, every day. Doug didn’t get it. What, was she looking at all the stuff she’d never get to buy, since she was convinced she was dying? He almost wanted to grab her, shake some sense into her, but you couldn’t get rough with a woman anytime, especially not when she was all weak and bald from chemo.
“I’m gonna take a drive,” he had said, tossing his keys in the air on his way to the door. Nobody answered. Funny, he thought, how alone you can feel when you’re surrounded by the people who are supposed to love you best.
He got in his car and thought about heading down the Parkway and over to the bar at Casual Times in Clark, the place that used to be Penny Arcade. It had changed its name but kept the menu of nothing but fried food. Lou might be there, but Doug didn’t feel much like talking sports, for once.
Instead, he found his car heading toward Westfield, searching for an open parking meter on the same road where the art gallery that carried Daphne’s paintings was located.
It had been almost three months since she’d handed him the little card with all the info about her paintings, and for all he knew, the place didn’t even have her stuff anymore. Something told him to go anyways. Even if he just looked around at some other person’s weird art that he’d never be able to buy, he would at least be out of the house, away from Maggie and Home Shopping Network and Mason’s shoot-’em-up games and grease-stained bags of takeout food for a little while.
It was just a tiny storefront, the back wall full of empty frames—partial frames, so (he guessed) you could hold them up to your art and see which kind you liked most. The front of the shop had a white-walled cubicle off to one side, with a label: “Local Artist Daphne Crowne, Oils and Watercolors.”
Feeling a rush of relief, recognition, almost gratitude, he stepped inside the cubicle.
He’d never been to an art gallery before, only to big, cold museums (and even those he’d only visited back in grade school, and he’d done his best to avoid looking at any actual art). This place was simpler, homier, and it felt strange—almost intimate—to be so close to these canvases, the same ones Daphne had touched with her brush, had stood in front of trying to figure out what color should go where, so close he could reach out and touch them himself (if he wasn’t scared of getting yelled at).
He moved slowly through the cubicle, stopping in front of each painting, wondering what Daphne had been thinking, feeling, when she made each one. Most of the time it was easy. The picture of the faceless girl dancing on the beach? Daphne had been feeling playful, must’ve been in one of her moods where she likes to tease. But the picture of the golden-haired woman sitting alone in the dark, the red and black background behind her almost breathing with menace? That one, he knew, she’d painted when she was feeling scared, alone, hopeless. Doug felt his heart speed up. In some way, he felt like he was looking at Daphne herself in her loneliest hour, and he wished he could put his hand through the painting and tell the girl there—tell Daphne—that it was all going to be okay.
Paintings of people hung on one wall of the tiny room, and paintings of scenes or objects on the other walls. Across from the Red Girl, as Doug found himself calling Daphne’s portrait (though the card beside it said it was untitled), hung a beach scene: a view of a gray-shingled cottage beside a raging green sea. It seemed like a pretty normal thing to paint—everybody he knew had a picture of the ocean in their house, it seemed like—but the colors were different: the ocean too green (peridot, he wanted to say), the sand on the beach too pink, the house itself gray but somehow orange at the same time (the idea made no sense, but that was the only way he could explain it). It was like the Jersey shore he knew, but like he was seeing it in a dream.
He poked his head out of the cubicle and caught the eye of a lady with a black bun in her hair, all dressed in black, who was standing in the back of the gallery, by the frames.
“I wanna buy this beach picture,” he said.
“By all means, sir,” the woman said, click-clacking over to him on too-tall high heels. “Oh, that is a nice piece. The painter is a local artist, you know. From Kenilworth.”
He was about to open his mouth and tell the lady that Daphne was his hairdresser, that they were “friends,” but something told him not to. He didn’t want this stranger to know. He didn’t want to spoil the sense of intimacy he’d felt looking at Daphne’s pictures by letting somebody else in.
The painting was five hundred dollars—more than he had ever even thought about spending on something to hang on a wall. Eff, except for the houses and the boat and maybe his car, it was more than he’d ever spent on anything. And it was the last thing he needed to be doing right now, spending cash on art when his wife was going through expensive cancer treatments and he just went in with the guys to buy a boat. But it didn’t matter. He had to have it. Besides, the beach painting would look groovy down at the shore house, and he could tell Maggie it was a gift, something to cheer her up. Maybe having a new picture to hang would help him get her down to the house next weekend.
On impulse, he swung around and pointed at the Red Girl.
“I’ll take that one, too. Ya take credit cards, don’t ya?”
He didn’t tell Daphne about the gallery or the fact that he had bought two of her paintings. He even thought ahead enough to tell the gallery owner to keep his name anonymous in case the artist happened to be curious about who had bought her pieces.
He was glad to have Daphne to confide in, happy to tell her that Maggie seemed to have kicked the cancer and that her hair had even started to grow back by the end of the summer.
But that trip to the art gallery—and the Red Girl he hung on the wall of his basement “man cave”—that was just for him.
Daphne
November 1999
“It’s gonna be the end of the world, I’m telling you,” Carla was saying. “My husband says his boss has one of those nuke-you-ler bomb shelters all set and ready to go. We’re invited to use it, if need be.”
Daphne rolled her eyes, but didn’t say anything. This was Carla and, even after all these years, the blood remained bad between them. Besides, there were things in this world you simply couldn’t change, and idiots were one of them.
“Do you really think it’s going to be that bad?” Joan asked, from Daphne’s chair.
Carla stopped working on her own client and pointed her scissors in Joan’s direction. “Damn right. All the computers in the whole world are gonna stop working all at once, come midnight New Year’s. That means planes won’t be able to fly, nuke-you-ler power plants will fail, God knows what else. I’m telling you, stock up on your canned goods and water right now, or you’re screwed.”
Beneath Daphne’s hands, Joan shuddered a little. Daphne leaned down. “Don’t listen to her. At most, there’ll be a couple of hours where maybe the ATMs won’t work. Everything’s going to be fine. This is Y2K, not Armageddon.”
“Oh, why don’t you just pipe down over there, little miss know-it-all? Who do you think you are?” Carla said.
It was the first time Carla had addressed Daphne directly about anything other than actual work since the terrible night of their “double date” all those years earlier.
Daphne sighed. How do you deal with a woman like Carla?
Carla glared again and reached over to the counter in front of her station for her coffee cup. She was the kind of person who acted all fancy and cultured because she was drinking a caffè latte (though, of course, she was pronouncing it “kafe late,” so anybody with even a tiny bit of knowledge wouldn’t buy into her faux sophistication). Carla’s latest husband (the third) was a sixty-something-year-old man she called an investment banker, but Daphne had given him her deposit at the counter over at the Wells Fargo just a few weeks ago, so she knew the truth: The guy was a bank teller. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but Carla made it sound like he was running Goldman Sachs or something. How sad, Daphne thought—not that Carla was living a huge lie, but that she still thought Daphne was a bitch: Daphne, who was protecting Carla, letting her hold on to her delusions and pride, pretending to be this fancy lady when it was all too clear (from her clothes, shoes, teeth, and the fact that she still had to work six days a week on her feet all day at Robert’s Hairdressers) that she was nothing more than a middle-aged girl married to an old man and her big, high-society life was a piece of fiction. Not that Carla had ever read any fiction, Daphne assumed. The best liars didn’t need to.
“No comeback, huh?” Carla said, taking a sip of the coffee, then wincing because it was too hot. Daphne forced herself not to smile and went back to blow-drying Joan’s hair. It was better not to get involved and let herself be drawn into everyone else’s drama. It wasn’t that she felt above it; she just felt outside of it, not one of the gang, and at this point, she thought it made sense to keep it that way.
Besides, all this crazy talk about Y2K just made her angry. It was the kind of thing the news loved to seize on, because it was easy to get people worked up (and keep them from noticing how terrible everything else was).
Carla let out a huff and went back to her own client, still loudly expounding on her plans to spend New Year’s Eve with her husband and his boss (the bank manager, was it?) in the fallout shelter. If only there were a way to lock that thing from the outside, Daphne would be the first to encourage Carla to do just that.
The door jingled and Doug came in, making all of them turn.
“Well, well, ain’t I a lucky guy? All these beautiful ladies just to myself.”
Daphne caught Carla’s sneer out of the corner of her eye but decided not to let it bother her. You had to pity a woman like that. There was no other way to endure such a despicable human being.
“Grab a seat, Doug, I’m almost done here,” Daphne called over the roar of the blow dryer.
“So . . . like I was saying,” Carla said, shaking her head in Daphne’s direction. “I’m not saying you need a nuke-you-ler shelter like we’ve got, but at least protect yourself. Canned goods, lots of water, fill your car with gas and get a spare can’s worth. Oh, and don’t forget to fill the tub.”
“For what?” Carla’s client asked.
Daphne had heard the same advice on the news, but no one ever seemed to specify what the stagnant tub water was intended to be used for. Laundry? Bathing? Drinking water (but wasn’t that what the stockpile of bottled water they also said you needed was for)? Daphne concealed her smile as she waited to hear Carla’s analysis.
“Well, you know,” Carla said.
“No, what?” Joan chimed in.
“Just to have it,” Carla replied. “Better safe than sorry.”
Both of the customers nodded, as if that were a legitimate answer. Daphne felt her head shaking. People would never make any sense to her.
She tore the smock off Joan and gave her a smile (less a reflection of the woman herself and more gratitude that she was about to leave the salon).
“You’re all set, Joan. Erin will take care of you at the desk. I’ll see you soon.”
Joan pressed a five-dollar bill into Daphne’s hand and whispered, “Enjoy your man perm.”
Daphne smiled tightly. It was a shame, really, that Joan had never become Carla’s client. They were like two peas in a pod.
She looked over at the reception area, where Doug was flipping through an issue of Cosmopolitan. It was from this year at least, she thought. Better than usual.
“I dunno, Daph,” he said as she approached. “Ya think the all-juice diet is really gonna transform my sex life? Ain’t too clear what one’s gotta do with the other, huh?”
She leaned down to kiss his cheek. “So good to see you.”
He nodded toward Carla’s station. “Course ya are. I’m the only one ya know who ain’t quaking in my boots over this Y2K stuff. I’m the voice of reason, right? Who’d ever a thought that’d happen?”
“Not me, that’s for sure. Go get washed and I’ll grab the supplies and meet you at my chair.”
Five minutes later, she was rolling his hair. “You’re really starting to go gray here, brother. Es una tragedia terrible!”
“I know, it sucks. I’m startin’ to look less like Tom Selleck and more like Steve Martin.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. He’s got straight hair and you’re still rocking the old perm. But hey, what can you do? Life is catching up to all of us. So, how was your Thanksgiving?”
“Quiet,” Doug said. A shadow crossed his face and Daphne wondered if she should press.
“Go anywhere special?”
“Nah, we stayed home. Just me, Maggie, and Mason.”
“How old is Mason now?”
“Sixteen,” Doug said. “Kid couldn’t wait for supper to be over so he could leave the house and hang out with his friends.”
“It’s the age. What do you expect?”
“I always loved spendin’ time with my family, ’specially at the holidays.”
“Sure you did, Mister Far Out and Groovy. I think all those drugs you did in the seventies have scrambled your memory.”
“Aw, c’mon, I wasn’t never that bad. Not like some kinda hippie or something.”
“I’ll bet. So, you guys just do the traditional Thanksgiving stuff—turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce?”
Doug frowned. “If I’m bein’ honest, we went even lazier than that this year. I went and picked up the whole shebang from Boston Chicken.”
“Isn’t it Boston Market now?”
“Same difference, right?”
“How was that?”
“Effin’ awful. But at least Maggie didn’t have to cook. She ain’t been feeling too great lately.”
A shock of understanding ran through Daphne: Was the cancer back? She looked at Doug’s face in the mirror but she couldn’t tell if he was thinking the same thing.
“How’s she been?” Daphne asked. “I mean, these past couple of years since . . .”
“Since the cancer?” He shrugged. “She was good the first year, feeling okay, goin’ to her follow-up appointments with the doc, but I dunno. Seems to me like she’s gotten lazy this year. She had some kind of scan scheduled over the summer, but when I asked how it went, she wouldn’t tell me. I don’t think she even went.”
“Geez, Doug, that’s not good.”
“What am I s’posed to do? I’m her husband, I ain’t her dad. She don’t listen to me anyways. The more I push, the more she pushes me away.”
He stopped suddenly and met Daphne’s eyes in the mirror. “Sorry, Daph. I shouldn’t be unloading all this effing stuff on ya.”
“Don’t be silly. That’s what friends are for. And do not break out into song, brother.”
“I appreciate it, thanks. But enough about me. How was your Thanksgiving?”
Daphne suppressed a groan. Thanksgiving, even more than Christmas, always had a way of making a lonely person feel even more alone. Not that people didn’t try. They did, and she had to give them credit, but being forced to sit at a table with people (particularly people you weren’t all that fond of) was no better than heating up leftovers at home and eating in front of the television.
“Aw, you got a story,” Doug said. “I can tell from the look on your face. Spill it, chica.”
She did have a story. Not a thrilling one, but a story nonetheless.
It had started a few days before Thanksgiving, when her aunt Lorraine (Daphne’s late mother’s sister) called to invite her to the holiday dinner.
“Thanks so much, Aunt Lorraine, but I’m already—”
“Don’t tell me you have plans. I know you’re just going to sit in your apartment and watch the darn parade. I know you, little girl. And I promised your mother on her deathbed that I would take care of you.”
Daphne wanted to argue, to explain that a woman in her forties like herself no longer needed all that much taking care of, but she knew it was useless. Lorraine meant well, and it was sort of sweet, in an annoying way, that someone was making the effort. Besides, it wasn’t Lorraine herself who was the problem; it was her daughter, Loretta.
Two years younger than Daphne, Loretta had always been the wild child of the family: skipping school, stealing, getting arrested for smoking pot at sixteen. When Daphne had turned twenty-one, Loretta had immediately picked through her wallet and stolen the now-legal-drinking-age ID for her own underage use.
Loretta was not Daphne’s favorite person. And getting older hadn’t improved her behavior. Even now that Loretta was married and had a ten-year-old daughter, she continued to display her traditional addictive tendencies. Only last Christmas, Aunt Lorraine had had to cash out her 401(k) to help pay for a fancy alcohol rehab for Loretta, down in Florida. Loretta had stayed for two out of the recommended four weeks, and had immediately come home and started drinking again, Lorraine’s thirty grand flushed right down the toilet.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Aunt Lorraine said. “Loretta, right? I promise, Daphne honey, she’s back on the wagon. Everything’s all good. In fact, she’s hosting Thanksgiving, so go to her place. Dinner’s at three, but we’re telling people to come over any time after one for hors d’oeuvres.”
They sounded like famous last words to Daphne’s ears, but what could she do? Even watching Loretta’s boring kid play handheld video games did sound like more fun than a Lean Cuisine for one.
“Okay,” Daphne had said. “What can I bring?”
Nothing but yourself, Lorraine had said. Why do people always say that? Sure, they think they’re being good hosts, but the honest truth is, at least if you let the guest bring something, you can rest assured that that guest will have something they like to eat so they’ll be covered, no matter what you decide to serve. And isn’t the whole purpose of hospitality to make your guests feel comfortable?
Daphne decided to make cupcakes. She had a clever recipe that used Nutter Butter cookies, confectioner’s sugar, and candy corns to turn basic chocolate frosted cupcakes into miniature turkeys. Who wouldn’t love that?
She also made a mental note to bring a bottle of Coke or something with her. If Loretta really was back on the wagon, it meant she wasn’t drinking—and neither was anybody else. In these past several years, ever since Loretta’s drinking had come under surveillance by the family, whenever you went to her home for any kind of event, you were hard-pressed to get a glass of water, much less a goblet of wine. The saddest part was, back in the days when Loretta’s drinking was at its worst, she had been the consummate hostess: a dozen different kinds of wine, hot and cold appetizers (many of them homemade), catering from the best local deli, all on offer. Sobriety seemed to have drained not only the liquor but the life from her, and now it was nothing but stale potato chips and whatever soft drink you remembered to bring with you. Sometimes, Daphne thought it would have been better (at least for the rest of the family) if Loretta had just kept drinking, cirrhosis be damned.
On Thanksgiving morning, Daphne had gotten up, gone for a run in the brisk autumn air, showered and put on a simple black dress and boots, and was suffering through the cheesy Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade before getting ready to leave when she noticed a message on her answering machine that must have come in while she was in the shower.
“Hey, Daphne, it’s Loretta. Can you stop on your way over at the Baskin Robbins—you know, the one by my house—and pick up the ice-cream cake I ordered? It’s all paid for and everything, so you just have to give them my name. Okay, thanks. See you later.”
Daphne sighed. As if going to Thanksgiving dinner weren’t inconvenient enough, now she had to make an extra stop. But she shrugged. Miraculously, she was in a good mood. She didn’t even know why, but she was looking forward to dinner, and to the holidays that were coming right behind it. Maybe it was the knowledge that this was the last holiday season of the twentieth century (which had hardly been a friend to her) that was making her so chipper. In any event, she felt almost happy, and she wasn’t going to let her cousin’s laziness get her down.
Half an hour before she was expected at dinner, she headed out, reaching the Baskin Robbins (located just down the hill from Loretta’s house) with ten minutes to spare—plenty of time to retrieve the cake, drive up the hill, park, and be there right on time.
As if that might happen.
She breezed into the shop, manned only by a teenager who looked desperate for the clock to strike two, which was when the sign on the door said the Baskin Robbins would close for the holiday.
“Hi there,” Daphne said. “I’m supposed to pick up an ice-cream cake order. For Loretta Morello.”
The girl behind the counter sighed and pushed herself upright, heading over to check the freezer full of personalized cakes. She shook her head.
“Nothing for Morello.”
“Huh. Maybe Loretta put it under her maiden name. Is there a Brighton?”
The girl tilted her head, stood on tiptoes, squatted down, checking every last cake in the freezer. “Nope. Nothing. You sure you didn’t order it from Carvel? They got much better ice-cream cakes than we do. But don’t tell my boss I said so.”
“I didn’t order it. My cousin did.” Daphne wanted to kick herself for not bringing her cell phone along. It was getting harder and harder to find a pay phone these days; pretty soon you were going to have to carry around your little brick of a phone with you everywhere, just in case of an emergency.
“Look, do you have any that aren’t already sold you can sell me? I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”
The girl tugged a cake box out of the freezer. “Nobody picked this one up last weekend when it was supposed to be picked up. It’s not Thanksgiving-y, but you can buy it, if you want.”
Daphne pulled out her wallet. “Perfect, thanks.”
“Thirty dollars.”
“Are you kidding?”
The girl shrugged. “That’s what it costs. The personalized cakes are pricey, if you ask me.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” She handed the girl the money and picked up the cake, noticing only after she had stepped back outside that the cake read: “Mazel Tov on Your Bar Mitzvah, Benji!”
She couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. But at least it didn’t look like the holiday could get any worse.
Until it did.
She walked into Loretta’s house through the sliding-glass door in the back yard, as Loretta always insisted. In the kitchen, she found Aunt Lorraine, Loretta’s husband Joe, and her mother-in-law Bonnie, all frantic and stepping over each other, not even noticing Daphne’s arrival.
“Happy Thanksgiving!” Daphne said, if only to make them realize someone (who could as easily have been a masked gunman as an invited guest) had entered the house.
Lorraine glanced up, a tight smile on her face. She blew Daphne a kiss and immediately went back to basting the turkey without saying a word.
Loretta’s daughter, Michaela, burst into the room on a scooter, nearly running over Daphne’s foot.
“Hi, Aunt Daphne,” she said as she whipped past, around the kitchen island and back out of the room, like a gust of wind you can’t be sure happened.
Daphne always wanted to correct the kid, to remind her that they weren’t actually aunt and niece, but cousins, but that (like so many other matters, such as riding a scooter indoors) seemed to be a matter for a mother to address.
With a sigh, Daphne opened the freezer and jammed the ice-cream cake inside. It had become clear no one here was going to greet her, much less provide any instructions on what to do with the cake she’d been ordered to pick up. She set her cupcake holder down on the counter and sat down on a stool, glancing around at the lack of wine, beer, or even soda bottles and saying a silent thank-you for the bottle of diet Pepsi she’d tucked inside her purse.
“So, what’s going on?” she finally asked, when nobody had bothered to say a word after a solid five minutes had passed.
Joe rolled his eyes. “Take it you haven’t heard.”
“Heard what?”
“My crazy wife fell off the wagon again. She’s in the bedroom, half passed out.”
Daphne stole a glimpse at her watch. A few minutes past one in the afternoon. it made you wonder how early Loretta had started drinking to be completely in the bag just past midday.
“Sorry to hear that,” Daphne said. “I picked up the cake.”
“What cake?” Joe asked.
“The ice-cream cake Loretta ordered. She left me a message, asking me to pick it up. But when I got there, they didn’t have any order under either her married name or maiden name, so I don’t know what happened.”
Joe laughed. “I can guess what happened. Drunk bitch probably saw a commercial on TV this morning and somehow thought she had ordered the cake they were advertising. Wouldn’t be the first time. Sorry about that.”
Daphne contemplated asking for the thirty dollars she had spent fulfilling Loretta’s drunken delusion, but decided the poor man had enough troubles without having to fork over cash (especially for a rejected Bar Mitzvah cake).
Just then, Loretta stumbled into the kitchen, wearing stained gray sweatpants, a dark blue (also stained) sweatshirt, and heavy-looking felt slippers that Daphne could only assume actually belonged to Joe. Loretta’s eyes were bleary and her skin blotched. Her hair, usually streaked blond (though she hadn’t been to the salon for her reduced-rate highlights in longer than Daphne could remember), was brown everywhere but the tips, and looked like it hadn’t been washed in at least a week. In her hand was a red plastic cup, the kind you used at keg parties, not holiday dinners, and she had to lean against the counter to keep herself upright.
“I’m ready to cook, family,” she said.
Lorraine let out a huff. “We’re fine on our own, Loretta. Just go back to bed.”
“Oh, sure, that’s just what you would want. You never wanted me in your life anyway, Mom.”
Dios mio, Daphne thought. This was taking an even uglier turn. Nothing like the holidays to bring out every deep-seated familial resentment. All Daphne could do was sit there quietly and wait for her turn at the guillotine.
Loretta’s hazy eyes drifted over toward Daphne but couldn’t seem to focus. Holding the cup of wine up to her nose, Loretta peered over, then sighed, pushed off the counter, and wandered away.
Joe caught Daphne’s eye over the open door of the oven and said, deadpan, “Happy Thanksgiving.”
Sitting in her swivel chair at the salon, Doug chuckled. “Drunk cousin? That’s it? Aw, that ain’t the worst family holiday. I remember as a kid, all my uncles passed out in a row on our couch. Still got a picture of ’em to this day, looking like those ‘See no evil, hear no evil’ monkeys except drunks as skunks. Ain’t a party unless somebody’s outta control, right?”
“You’re forgetting the thirty-dollar Bar Mitzvah cake, but no, it wasn’t all that bad. I guess. Though there was one other little thing . . .”
“Spill.”
It had happened after dinner, but before dessert, while Bonnie and Joe were cleaning off the dining room table and loading the dishwasher and Aunt Lorraine was trying (in vain) to drag a mostly passed out Loretta away from the plate of untouched food in front of her and get her back into bed to sleep off the rest of the bottle(s) of wine she had apparently consumed.
It had looked like Loretta was finally beginning to cooperate, wake up a little, because she had swung her feet around in Daphne’s direction and seemed to have enough momentum to rise from the table, but she suddenly stopped, opened her eyes, and looked at Daphne. Then she said, “I saw your paintings.”
A thick ball of tension hung in the air while Daphne waited for Loretta to continue and say either “Nice work” or (more likely in Loretta’s case) “They suck,” but the follow-up never came. After what felt like an eternity of waiting with Daphne’s too-fragile artist’s heart pounding in anticipation (and the rest of her longing for that Lean Cuisine Thanksgiving dinner she’d skipped in order to come here), Loretta popped up from the table and shuffled away with her mother’s arm around her for guidance.
“That’s got to be the cruelest thing you can do to an artist—any kind of artist,” Daphne said, now, to Doug. “You say you saw the work but say nothing about it, good or bad? Even saying your work blows would be better than leaving it hanging out there. Seriously, it’s inhumane. It must be the same way for writers, if somebody says they read your book and then they don’t tell you if they liked it or not.”
“You sure you would really wanna know if they didn’t like it?”
“Well, not especially, I suppose,” Daphne said. “But I think it’s one of those rare instances when your grandmother’s advice actually applies: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Why even mention that you saw the work if you aren’t going to compliment it? Or criticize it? Just keep it to yourself. There’s no rule that says you need to share every thought that runs through your mind, am I right?”
Doug was quiet for too long.
“What?” she asked. “Did I say something to piss you off?”
“Nah, nothin’ like that. It just occurred to me I ain’t ever told you I went to your gallery. Way back when, back when ya first got your show.”
“Oh. I had no idea.”
There was a long moment of silence, and Daphne felt like she was back at that Thanksgiving table waiting for her drunk cousin to pronounce a verdict on her life’s work.
“Hell, Doug, are you actually doing the whole ‘don’t say anything if you don’t have anything nice to say’ thing to me right now? You know I didn’t mean you. I can take criticism from you. At least, I think I can.”
“Nah, I ain’t criticizin’. Who am I to criticize anyways? I ain’t no artist. And your paintings were beautiful, Daph. Ain’t sure why I never thought to tell ya before now. Just slipped my mind, I guess. I don’t know nothin’ about art, granted, but I really liked ’em. Really, really did. And I hope that makes up, at least a little bit, for your crazy cousin.” He gave her a wink in the mirror.
And he was right. Not only did it make her feel better about being left hanging by Loretta, but it made her feel like a real artist. Even after having her pieces bought and sold in local galleries for a couple of years, she’d always questioned their value. She always wondered if maybe they weren’t the kind of thing normal people (people unlike her, people without their noses stuck in a book most of the time) would appreciate and want to hang on their wall. It didn’t matter that Doug was hardly a qualified art critic. His approval was precisely what she had needed.
“It makes a huge difference, thanks,” she said. And she went back to rolling his hair, quickly, so he wouldn’t spot the tears glistening in her eyes.
Doug
March 2000
You know your life ain’t on the right track when going to a beauty parlor to sit and get a perm for two hours is looking like the highlight of your week—or, eff, your whole year so far.
That’s what Doug Endersoll was thinking as he entered Robert’s Hairdressers that Saturday morning. It had been a rough day already, and it was barely coming up on nine a.m.
He had gotten up at six like usual, not because he wanted to, but because his poor old body had been doing it for so long that it didn’t seem to know another way. Maggie was still snoring in bed as he tiptoed to the bathroom to shower and shave and try to enjoy a few quiet moments to himself.
It had been a rough couple of months. Right before Christmas, Doug had finally made Maggie go see her doc. She’d been sleeping all day, doing even less around the house than usual, and (the thing that really clued him in that something was wrong) had been showing zero interest in the holidays. Even if she wasn’t the world’s most devout Christian, his Mags had always loved the season—if only because it gave her a good excuse to do some extra shopping.
Sitting there in the waiting room while she had her X-ray or whatever kind of test the doc was doing, Doug thumbed through the stack of magazines and spotted a Cosmopolitan. He thought about picking it up, but without Daphne around to make fun of him, it was just another boring glossy full of ads for sparkly makeup and weird skin creams he would never understand. He was reaching for an issue of Car and Driver when the nurse popped out of the office and called him in to sit down with Maggie and the doc.
That meant there was bad news.
The cancer was back. It wasn’t like Doug hadn’t figured it out. But, from the way she was acting, he could tell Maggie hadn’t. And he just couldn’t get how that could be. It was her body, but she seemed as shocked as if somebody’d told her the sky she thought was blue all these years was really pink. Doug had never seen her face so confused and full of pain—not even back when the doc had found the cancer in the first place.
“Okay,” Doug said, since Maggie was just sitting there, saying nothing and staring at the wall with a totally blank face. “So, whadda we do? More chemo? Somethin’ else?”
“I’m recommending surgery,” the doc said.
“Ain’t that what they did the first time around?”
“They did remove the ovary that had the tumor after the initial diagnosis, but at this point, the cancer is now affecting the other ovary and, from what I can tell from the scans, may possibly have spread to the uterus as well. I think our safest course of treatment is a radical hysterectomy, including oophorectomy on the remaining ovary.”
It was all Greek to Doug, but he nodded like he knew what the doc was saying. No sense looking foolish. Nowadays, with that newfangled Internet and his computer at home, he could just look stuff right up and not even waste a whole trip over to the library.
“If you say so, doc,” Doug had said. “Whaddya think, Mags?”
She let out a long sigh and said, “I think I want to go home.”
He felt a flash of anger rush through him. It was just like Maggie to think only about the short term, to ignore the bigger picture. Only a person who thought takeout dinners every night were best for her family could refuse to even pretend to be hearing what the doctor was saying about her health. Doug almost wanted to smack her, and he might have, had it been Mason and not a woman, his wife, sitting there in the doc’s uncomfortable chair.
“I know this isn’t the news you were hoping to hear,” the doc had said. “But it’s essential that we take care of this as quickly as possible, to ensure the best possible outcome. I’m going to call over to the hospital now and reserve you a bed in the pre-surgical wing. I would suggest that you pack some things and head over there right away, this afternoon.”
“You got it, doc,” Doug said, reaching over the desk to shake the man’s hand and standing up to leave. “Let’s go, Maggie.”
She just shook her head, slowly, like she was one of those animatronic robot presidents they’ve got down at Disney World. The effing things had creeped Doug out a few years ago when they took Mason down to see Mickey Mouse (who was plenty creepy himself, though nobody but Doug seemed to notice it).
“What?” Doug asked. “Whatsa matter?”
“I don’t want to go to the hospital,” Maggie said. Her voice was dull. Lifeless.
The doctor cleared his throat like he was going to talk, but Doug held up a hand to let him know this was a matter for Maggie’s husband to take care of.
“You ain’t gotta choice, Mags. C’mon now. Get up and we’re gonna go home and get ya all packed up.”
She shook her head again. “No. They already gutted me like a fish once. They’re not going to do it again.”
Doug knelt down beside her (which, painfully, brought back memories of the day he proposed, all those years back—he couldn’t even remember, now, if he had gotten down on one knee like he was supposed to). He took her hand in his. Her fingers were cold, and they made him think maybe it wasn’t going to be too long now before they were cold forever, especially if she kept acting like this.
“Mags, don’t ya get it? You gotta do this. You ain’t got no other choice.”
“There’s always another choice.”
“Yeah, maybe, but this time, the only other choice is that ya die, and you ain’t gonna let that happen.”
“Why not?”
Another flash, this time of flaming-hot rage instead of just normal anger, bubbled through his blood. Why was it his job to make his wife want to live? Isn’t that every person’s own thing? If you don’t want to live, there’s not too much anybody else can tell you to change your mind, is there? Why was she sticking him with that responsibility? Like everything else in their marriage—going on almost twenty years now—this just wasn’t fair.
“Mags, I don’t know what to tell ya. C’mon. Ya got plenty to live for and ya know it. I ain’t gonna tell you to do the surgery. I ain’t gonna tell you that you need to live, for me or for Mason or for anybody but yourself. That ain’t my job. Ya gotta reach down and find it inside yourself or you’re lost. What am I s’posed to do here? You ain’t actin’ like the gal I married, that’s for fuckin’ sure.”
He saw the spark of irritation in her eyes and knew that the curse word had hit its mark.
“Watch your language,” she said.
He smiled. “There’s my gal. C’mon. Get up and let’s do this thing. My Maggie is a lotta things—and some of ’em really piss me off, if I’m bein’ honest—but she ain’t no quitter.”
She had nodded her head, looking stiff and numb, but she had let him lead her out of the office and home, where he’d packed her suitcase and told Mason what was happening. To his credit, the kid had teared up a little, wiping his nose on his sleeve as he watched his mom shuffle out the door.
“Be good, son,” Doug had said. “I’ll be home after she’s settled for the night at the hospital.”
“Doug? Earth to Doug?”
The sound of Daphne’s voice brought him back to the present moment, and he grinned with relief. Better to be here in the beauty parlor, surrounded by catty women and the stench of perm solution, than back in that doctor’s office trying to convince his wife she should want to live, even if that meant a little bit of suffering.
“Hey, Daph,” he said. “Sorry. Zoned out there, I guess.”
“You’re not having an LSD flashback, are you? Do I need to call a medical professional?”
“Nah, I’m all good,” he said. “Let’s get me washed up and permed, right?”
Daphne tilted her head and gave him a look, like she was wondering what was really going on in his head, but she was kind enough not to press, and he was grateful for that. He was going to tell her everything—he always did—but just for a few minutes, he wanted to soak up the feeling of how good it was to see her: her healthy skin and pretty blond hair, still in the same style she always wore, the ends trimmed so straight and sharp, it looked like you could’ve cut paper with them.
“So, how’s tricks, Daph?” he asked as she got him in her swivel chair and tucked the towel around his neck.
“Uh-uh,” she said. “Hai informazioni vitali; e ovvio. Dimmi.”
“You know my Italian ain’t great. Can’t ya ever talk Spanish, at least?”
“I’m here to challenge you, brother, not make you all cozy and comfortable.”
It was funny—even as she said it, he couldn’t help but think this was the one place in the world where he always felt the most comfortable, even when she was teasing him without mercy like some kinda playground bully.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Gimme a sec. You said I have vital info, right?”
She nodded. “See? I knew you would get it. You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for, my friend.”
The warmth that spread through his bones when he heard that reminded him of Christmas—of sitting beneath the tree as a kid, in his parents’ house, staring up at the twinkly lights and hoping the toy dump truck he wanted (with the back that really lifted) was going to show up, wrapped in colorful paper, on Christmas morning.
“Thanks, Daph. That means a lot.”
“Crikey, mister, will you just get to it already? I can feel my hair going gray waiting for you to tell me the news you’re sitting on.”
“All righty, I’ll tell ya. Keep your pants on.” He smiled to himself. He’d never thought of himself as a big talker, like some chatty gal who sat around gabbing with her friends all the time, but even he could admit it: There weren’t many better things than having somebody tell you to go ahead and talk, about whatever you want, for as long as you want. It was better than sex, because it made you feel more alive. It made you feel heard.
“Okay,” he said, feeling like he couldn’t keep savoring the moment without being a jerk. “A lot’s been goin’ on since I seen you last. ’Member how I told ya Maggie ain’t been feeling too good? Well, I was right. The cancer came back.”
“Jesus, Doug, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, really. She’s gonna be okay, we think.”
He did think so, but it hadn’t been easy getting there.
The surgery had happened four days before Christmas, which meant that their plans had changed from a big celebration with Maggie’s extended family to just the three of them—him, Maggie, and Mason—exchanging gifts around a hospital bed with Maggie frowning the whole time, like she was sure she was going to die even after the doc said they were able to get all the cancer out.
That wasn’t the worst part of it, though. And the worst part was something he wasn’t even going to tell Daphne, even though he liked to think he could tell Daphne pretty much anything.
The worst part was what he had let himself think. Yeah, sure, people are always going on about how you can’t control what you’re thinking, but it ain’t true, is it? Even a serial killer’s got to have at least a little bit of say in what goes through his brain.
It had been the day of Maggie’s surgery. They’d gotten to the hospital quick, just like the doc told them to, and Maggie had sat in the bed, tight-lipped, like she wasn’t gonna say a word the whole day, not even to Doug.
“It’s gonna be okay, Mags,” he told her. “The doc knows what he’s doin’, and this ain’t a big deal. I’m sure it’s the kinda thing they do here all the time.”
She didn’t answer.
“Mags,” he said. “Ya gotta talk to me. I know you’re scared—”
“You don’t know anything about anything. You act all heroic and noble, like you’re some kind of white knight riding in to rescue me, but the truth is you’re nobody. You’re just a guy who works in a warehouse and you don’t know everything is gonna be all right. You don’t know anything at all.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But I’m the guy you married, and that oughta count for somethin’, don’tcha think?”
He wasn’t there, in the room, when they came to take her out for the operation. He was sipping a bad cup of coffee, with some kind of chemical-tasting sweetener because the hospital cafeteria didn’t have any regular sugar. He’d thought maybe he could make it back to the room in time. How long does it take to drink a cup of joe? But she was already gone when he got back, and part of him was relieved.
A nurse made him leave the empty room, saying they had to keep it clear in case another patient got brought in.
“But ain’t this my wife’s room?” he asked.
“She’ll be moved to whatever patient room is available once she’s out of recovery.”
Nothing like that personal touch, he thought, as he settled down on a torn fake-leather chair in a waiting room with a color TV that only had two colors: green on top and pink on bottom. It reminded him of something his dad had told him about the early TVs back in the days of nothing but black and white—you could buy a piece of plastic to put over the screen, with horizontal bars of color, blue on top, brownish-beige in the middle, green on the bottom, to make the black and white look like there was sky at the top, skin for the humans in the center of the screen, and grass at the bottom. He didn’t remember it, but he felt like he could; it was like the way you think you remember saying your first words because you’ve heard other people tell the story so many times, but you know the memory’s not real.
He wished he could flip off the TV, or better yet, change the channel. He hated these effing talk shows, with all the ladies arguing over stuff he didn’t care about. Didn’t anybody else notice they was all talking over each other and you couldn’t catch an effing word?
He wished it was Sunday. Then, maybe the hospital would’ve had some kinda game on. The playoffs, maybe. That would take his mind off things. And he needed some help, because the stuff that was running through his head was starting to scare him.
For just a second there, when Maggie had been staring at the wall up in her hospital room instead of talking to him, the thought had run through his mind, and there was no getting away from it.
He had thought, with something like a glimmer of hope:
Maybe she’ll die.
Now, away from the hospital bed and from Maggie herself, he could step back, look harder at the thought, maybe make himself feel a little better, like it wasn’t the worst thing any husband had ever thought.
But it was. There was no getting away from that.
Because he was still thinking it, even now.
She could die. In surgery. It happened all the time; you heard about it. People went in for simple things, like a nose job or that thing where they suck out your fat through a tube, and they just . . . died. It was sure as eff possible that Maggie could die right there on the table with an operation as fancy as this one.
He wasn’t wishing for it. He knew that much, and he almost wanted to pat himself on the back for it. But if he was being honest, he wasn’t exactly not wishing it, either.
If Maggie was suddenly gone, just . . . not there anymore . . . wouldn’t he have to admit that life would be easier?
There’d be no more watching his language, shaking with fear that he might let an F-bomb drop. No more takeout food every single night. He might even be able to learn to cook. Wouldn’t that be something? There’d be no more tongue-clucking disapproval or angry glares or fights or begging for sex because Maggie wasn’t “feeling pretty tonight.”
Things would be so much easier.
It kept running through his head, the same thought: Maggie might die and then he would be free.
“Earth to Doug,” Daphne was saying now, in the beauty parlor. “Come in, Doug.”
He swallowed hard. “Sorry. Guess I zoned out there a sec.”
“You all right?”
He nodded, but even he could tell, looking in the mirror, that he was pale as a ghost. Daphne was just being nice and not saying anything (and that nasty lady Carla always tried to act like Daphne wasn’t nice—that Carla was a b-word, or maybe even a c-word).
“I’m fine,” he said. “How’ve you been?”
“Uh-uh, you didn’t finish your story. How’s Maggie? Did they get the cancer? Is she going to be all right?”
He felt a pang in his gut and wondered if it was regret. “Yeah,” he said. “She’s gonna be just fine.”
Daphne
March 2001
She hated coming to work on days like this, after being out too late (and drinking too much wine) the night before. Why do so many people insist on holding cocktail parties on weeknights? Sure, all right, she had to admit that Friday wasn’t technically a weeknight—she was just one of the few people in this world who actually had to work on Saturday mornings—but still. She hated having to put in an appearance, when all she really wanted was to be curled up, at home, with a good book and a cup of tea. At least, that’s all she had wanted until that other party last month.
Daphne had never been a party person. Call her crazy, but when you get turned into a “slut” after going home with the wrong boy freshman year, it kind of sours you on the public drunkenness experience that seems to be the centerpiece of any party, no matter how classy the hosts and venue may appear to be.
“Come on,” Ethel, her art teacher/pseudo-agent, had urged. “This isn’t some frat party with wet T-shirts and togas. It’s art lovers sipping pinot grigio and eating passed hors d'oeuvres.”
“Fine,” Daphne said. “But I’m home by ten p.m.”
Ethel winked. “We’ll see about that.”
And it had been better than a frat party. The people were well-dressed, the music subtle (and classical—that won bonus points in Daphne’s book), and the wine perfectly chilled and served in actual glasses rather than plastic cups.
“What did you expect? This is Manhattan, not Jersey,” Ethel whispered in her ear.
“People give New York too much credit. There’s just as much sleaze here as in New Jersey. The poor Garden State gets an unfair rap because nobody from other places ever gets to see anything but that smelly industrial strip off Route One next to Newark Airport.”
Ethel rolled her eyes. “I’m a Jersey girl, born and bred, but even I won’t try to say Jersey’s better than the Big Apple.”
“It’s the whole ‘city that never sleeps’ part,” Daphne said. “I have enough trouble sleeping on my own. I prefer that my geographical locations not share my insomnia.”
Ethel elbowed her. “Look! That’s Adam Putnam.”
“Who?”
“You’ve got to get out of that salon once in a while and learn about your industry.”
“The salon is my industry.”
“No way, sweetie. You’re an artist, whether you like it or not.”
“So, who’s the guy?”
“Adam Putnam. He bought one of your portraits a few months ago. Serious collector, too. You should talk to him.”
Daphne smiled. “That sounds about as appealing as a root canal.”
“What? He’s rich, good-looking, and he likes your art. What’s not to love?”
“I’m not looking for love,” Daphne said, wondering if it were true or not.
“You should be.”
A twinge of acknowledgment plucked at Daphne’s spine. Ethel was right. It had been years since Daphne had a real date, much less a boyfriend. It probably was time to climb back up on the horse, or maybe give up riding altogether.
“Ooh, okay,” Ethel said, suddenly grabbing her arm again. “Or, if you’re not into rich collectors, maybe you’ll be into rich gallery owners?”
“Isn’t that pretty much the same thing?”
“Not even close,” Ethel said. “That guy over there? Salt-and-pepper hair, great suit, purple tie?”
“Yeah, yeah, what about him?”
“That’s Graham Underwood. He owns Piccolo Gallery in the Village, but he’s totally hands-off. Nobody knows much about his taste because he keeps himself so private.”
“Fantastic. A reclusive rich guy nobody really knows. Are you trying to set me up with Batman?”
“Don’t be a wise ass. He’d be perfect for you. You can hole up in his mansion together and read books.”
That did sound appealing, Daphne couldn’t help but admit.
Iris held up her hands. “I’m not forcing anything. I’m just trying to get you out of your house once in a while.”
“I thought you liked how productive I was.”
“I do,” Iris said, “but frankly, I think you’re in a rut.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s all sad faces and lonely women lately. Where are the paintings about love and sex?”
“I don’t do sex.”
“That’s my point.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant,” Iris said. “It’s pathetic either way. Go. Talk to a man. I’m not saying date anybody or, God forbid, have sex and fall in love and get married. Just try to have fun and do something besides cut hair and paint sad pictures all the time.”
Daphne had opened her mouth to argue, to say she did lots of other things, like study languages and read and take classes, but she realized it would all just make her sound like even more of a loser. So instead, she downed what was left in her wineglass, grabbed a fresh one off a passing waiter’s tray, and marched over to introduce herself to a man.
But not the one Ethel had pointed out. If she was going to talk to a stranger, it wasn’t going to be some rich man who would think she was “below” him—and all rich men felt that way about all women, in her experience. Ignoring Ethel’s waving and whistling, Daphne headed to the wall at the back of the room, where a collection of Winslow Homer sea scenes was on display. If nothing else, she could at least enjoy Homer’s vibrant colors and the sense of movement in his work. Unless they were replicas, but she’d have to move closer to tell for sure.
There was a man standing there, a glass of brown liquor in his hand. “What do you think?” he asked, not turning himself from the painting in front of him.
“Breezing Up,” Daphne said. “It’s one of my favorites.”
The man turned, finally, his face inscrutable. “Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, really. There’s something dynamic about it. You can almost hear the wind shipping across the boat.”
The man smiled. “You’re not an art critic.”
“No.”
“So, who are you?”
“Daphne. Crowne.” She switched her wineglass to her left hand so she could shake his hand with her right.
“Aaron Jacobs. But I didn’t mean your name. I mean, who are you?”
“Nobody. I’m here with a friend. Ethel Malone.”
She saw the flash of a smile cross his lips but he wiped it away before she was sure—or could say anything.
“Ethel used to be a pretty good artist,” he said.
“Used to be?”
“Is she still working? Haven’t seen anything from her in years.”
“She’s teaching, mostly. But she shows her work at a small gallery in New Jersey. It’s called—”
He put up a hand to stop her. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Maybe you would have if you let me say the name. It’s in Westfield. And before you continue mocking, you should be aware that you’re addressing a Jersey girl and that Manhattan thinks too much of itself.”
A grin broke across his face. “I like your attitude, Ms. Crowne. And I’m from New Jersey myself. Though my gallery is here, of course.”
She felt her stomach sink in disappointment at the mention of a gallery. As unlikely as it was, in this setting (a party at a Manhattan art gallery), she’d been hoping to meet someone not directly involved in the art world.
“You own a gallery?” she asked, trying to hide the distaste on her tongue.
“Yeah, but I haven’t been there in years.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” she said.
“That’s not my work. Not mainly, anyway. I’m on Wall Street.”
“Of course you are,” she said. This was almost starting to look up. Even a boring stocks and bonds or banking job was better than being another starving (or stuck-up) artist.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.
Something about the fact that he was asking her the same question she had asked Iris just minutes earlier made her feel like this was something special. She hated herself for thinking it, for diving into the irrational pool of mysticism and nonsense, but it was there.
“Nothing,” she said. “I was just kidding.”
“So, what do you do?” he asked. “Wait, let me guess. You’re Ethel’s shrink.”
“I’m a hairdresser.”
“Too bad. She needs a shrink. Kidding.”
“She’s my art teacher.”
He smirked. “And I bet you’re already ten times the artist she is.”
He wasn’t wrong. In fact, the gallery owner, back in Westfield, had told Daphne she’d outsold Ethel for the past three years. Sometimes, Daphne wondered if the only real art-related income Ethel had these days came from the stipend the library gave her for teaching watercolor to elementary-school kids.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes,” he said.
“No, I—“
“Your secret is safe with me. Buy you a drink?”
“The drinks are free.”
“Tell that to Garrison.”
“Who’s Garrison?” she asked.
“Garrison McBride. He owns the gallery.”
“Oh. Well, I—”
“It’s not cheap throwing one of these shindigs, and nobody even thanks the person paying for it all. That’s why I stopped doing it.”
“You don’t have art openings at your gallery?”
“I imagine the manager does, but I don’t go. Haven’t actually seen the place in years.”
“You’re not into art, then?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“So, why’d you come here tonight?"
He smiled. “I had a premonition that I'd meet a beautiful woman.”
Sure, it was a line, but it was the kind of thing she wanted to hear right about then.
“So . . . you’re a hairdresser?” he said. “No joke?”
“What’s wrong with cutting hair?”
“You just don’t look the type.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Most hairdressers I meet look like extras from some old Whitesnake video, all big hair and frosted tips, even now, long after the eighties are over. But you look—”
“Normal?”
“I was going to say classy, but normal works. Not like a hairdresser and definitely not at all like an artist.”
“Next you’ll be telling me I can’t be a good artist if I don’t look weird.”
He shook his head. “Wouldn’t matter to me either way. I don’t know the first thing about art.”
“And yet you own an art gallery. . . .”
“It’s about the money for me. If my gallery manager can get a bunch of hipsters to pay top dollar for some swirly marks on a canvas, terrific. I’ll cash that check. But to me, it all just looks like scribbles.”
“Leonardo da Vinci—the Mona Lisa—looks like scribbles?”
“No, no. There’s art that looks like a picture—I mean, a real picture—”
“A photograph?”
“That’s what I mean. That kind of art’s okay. I can appreciate that it’s good or whatever. But still, who wants a weird picture of a lady you don’t know hanging on your wall? Or, even worse, some lady you don’t know who’s been dead for hundreds of years? It’s creepy if you let yourself think about it too long.”
“So what’s hanging on your walls?” she asked.
“Come back to Jersey with me and find out.”
Daphne glanced over at Ethel, deep in conversation with a guy in a pink Mohawk who had clearly lost track of time and space and thought this was London circa 1982. She caught Ethel’s eye and pointed to her watch, then jerked her head toward the door.
“You’re going?” Ethel mouthed.
Daphne nodded and waved good-bye—then followed Aaron out the door, thinking, What the hell? The guy didn’t care about art, but he had money and personality and a down-to-earth quality that reminded her a little of Doug Endersoll.
He would do, for the moment, at least.
Now, here she was, less than four hours after leaving his bed, and she was expected to spend the entire day on her feet, cutting hair and chatting as if she’d actually had even a hint of sleep (instead of drinking two whole bottles of champagne by herself) last night. At least it was a Doug day. Somehow, work was always a little easier on Doug days.
And speak of the devil . . .
“Whoa, Nelly, looks like somebody had a rough night. Not another dead cat, I hope?”
“That was like twenty years ago, brother. Sometimes having a good memory isn’t a pleasant quality in a man.”
“Sorry, Daph. But no kiddin’, what’s with the face?”
“Out too late last night. Now go get washed, then we’ll talk.”
She stood by the mirror of her station, pretending to prepare the rollers and supplies, but really, she was staring at herself, thinking about how long it had been since she’d done anything at all to change her look. Recalling something Aaron had said last night—that he loved redheads—sent one of her eyebrows shooting up. That was it. She was going to dye her hair. All these years as a mousy blonde? Maybe it was time to mix things up just a little.
“So,” Doug said, settling into her chair. “What’s going on?”
“I think I’m going to dye my hair.”
Doug frowned. “Huh.”
“What? You think it’s a bad idea?”
He shrugged. “Ain’t my call, but I like your hair that way it is.”
“I just thought . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I’ve had this exact same haircut in this exact same color since I was old enough to think twice about it. Maybe I should do something different, just for a little while.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“How’d you know there was a guy?”
“Who ya think you’re talkin’ to, chickadee?”
“Okay, there’s a guy, but I don’t have a lot of details to tell, because I only met him last night. Non è un rapporto molto lungo, eh?”
“It’s a relationship long enough to getcha thinkin’ ’bout changin’ yourself for him.”
Part of her wondered if Doug was right. Was she only thinking about this because there was a new man in the picture and her long-stuffed-down romantic fantasies were coming back to the surface? Or was this about something more, like maybe trying to figure out who she really was, after all this time doing the same old things and never seeing anything change?
“I think I’m changing myself for me,” she said, in a voice that sounded, even to her, softer, more timid, than her regular one. Change was scary—even if it was just a semi-permanent hair dye she was thinking about trying.
“Okay, girl, I believe ya. Now tell me about the guy,” Doug said.
Doug
November 2001
He heard it as soon as he opened the salon door: more gossip about September eleventh, or 9/11, as people were starting to call it. He hated that. He hated everything these days. Eff, life could get lousy sometimes.
“And now it’s going to be war, war, war. It’ll be another Vietnam, I’m telling you,” Carla was saying. “They’re already bombing Afghanistan, and what does Afghanistan have to do with anything? Isn’t the guy who did it all from, like, Iran?”
Doug saw Daphne roll her eyes and all the irritation got wiped away from inside him, like marks being erased from a chalkboard.
He leaned over to kiss her cheek and whispered, “Not a fan of the political talk?”
“Does it count as political if a six-year-old has a better grasp on the players involved?”
“I’m sick of hearin’ about it, ain’t you?”
She nodded. “It’s scary and depressing, and I have enough scary and depressing in my normal life.”
“How is your boyfriend?” Doug asked with a wink.
“Ha-ha-ha. He’s fine. How’s Maggie?”
He’d known he’d have to talk about it, but still, the question smacked him like a brick to the head.
Daphne gasped. “She didn’t . . . I mean, the cancer . . .”
Doug almost laughed. “No, no, Maggie ain’t dead. But we did get separated.”
“My god,” Daphne said. “I thought you guys were that old-fashioned couple who would stay together forever and die two days apart. What happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
And it was. It had started back years ago, before the cancer’s recurrence and the surgery, before the first cancer even. Eff, if he was honest, it had started when Mason was still in diapers.
It all came down to the fact that Maggie wanted another kid.
They’d had the argument on and off over the years, sure. Fact was, if they hadn’t had the fight, they might never have known about Maggie’s cancer until it was too late, so he thanked his lucky stars (yeah, even now that Maggie had moved out of the house) for that. But the fight had gotten old over time.
That’s why, a few months after the surgery and another round of chemo, when Maggie came to him, her head covered in peach fuzz, he probably didn’t react with as much class or patience as he could’ve (or should’ve).
And Maggie didn’t help anything by coming up to him right in the middle of a ballgame, while he was trying to unwind on a Friday night after another hard week in the warehouse. Eff, it wasn’t like he was asking for her to tiptoe around like some kind of mouse. Just don’t start up with the heavy, life-changing discussions when your man is kicked back in his recliner, beer in hand, with the Yankees slugging it out against the Red Sox on TV. Ain’t that obvious?
He didn’t know how long she’d been standing there, getting more and more pissed at being ignored, when she finally cleared her throat to get his attention.
“What, Mags? I’m watchin’ the game here.”
She perched on the arm of the sofa, blocking his view of the TV, and said, “I think we should try to adopt a baby.”
It’d felt like a punch to the gut, like he was one of those air mattress things and somebody was jumping on him, trying to get all the air out to try to roll him up and stuff him back inside the box. He sucked down the last of his beer and set the empty can on the coffee table.
“Let’s talk about it tomorrow, okay, Mags?”
“Tomorrow never comes in this house.”
“Mags, c’mon.”
She leaped up from the couch and threw her hands in the air. “It’s always ‘Mags, c’mon’ with you, like I’m the one being unreasonable.”
The words left his mouth before he could stop them: “Ain’t ya?”
“You sit here drinking beer and belching like some disgusting slob, and I’m unreasonable? For wanting to have your child?”
“Didn’t ya just say you wanna adopt a kid? By definition, that ain’t my child.”
“You are a son of a bitch.”
Something about the way she said it, all proud of herself, like she was really owning the curse word, mild as it was, made him even madder. Eff, he’s been holding his own tongue all these years and now she was allowed to let fly? That shit ain’t fair. It took all his willpower not to lash out. He forced himself to take a long, deep breath and close his eyes, because right then, Maggie—and the whole world—was looking to him like they were covered in some kind of angry red filter.
In that moment, he finally understood how a guy could kill his woman. A crime of passion, that was what they called that shit, right?
“Mags, not now, please,” he said, barely more than a whisper.
She laughed—that cold, nasty laugh he realized he’d started to think of as her trademark sound. “I don’t know why I ever married you. You promised me the world and all you did was steal my youth from me.”
She stomped out of the room, and it occurred to Doug that he’d seen more of her back, marching away from him, than her face these past ten years.
He had sat there for a long time, watching the ballgame without really being able to process what was happening on the screen. He knew she was in the kitchen. She’d be sitting there at the kitchen table, snarfling into tissues and tossing the wadded-up snot rags right there where they’d be eating takeout Chinese in an hour. She’d be waiting for him. She’d be expecting him to come in and hug her and say he was sorry and be the bigger person.
And he hated her for it.
Still, he dragged himself out of his comfy chair, dutifully plucked the empty beer from the coffee table, and headed into the kitchen. He was the kind of man who knew you were supposed to lie in your bed once you’d made it.
He put the can on the counter and sat down at his usual seat at the kitchen table. The kitchen table. It was another grievance of Maggie’s. She wanted him to put in an addition, build her a “real” dining room.
“For us to sit and eat takeout Big Macs?” he had asked when she brought up the idea.
That was the thing: In Maggie’s head, life had to match what you saw on TV—perfect home, perfect husband, perfect kids. Kids, plural. And it was like she had to have them whether she really wanted them or not.
“Mags, talk to me,” he said, sitting down at the table.
“What’s the point?”
“I’m listenin’, babe. Tell me what you’re thinkin’.”
“I’m thinking our family feels wrong. Not finished. And I want to fix that.”
“Eff, Mags, we finally got Mason outta the house and off to college. Can’t we just enjoy the quiet and each other?”
She scoffed. And he knew that was part of it: She didn’t like him anymore, maybe never had. This whole kid thing was an excuse, a way to fill the silence between them without having to admit that they weren’t in love anymore.
“I need more,” she whispered.
He reached over and squeezed her hand. It felt like a cold piece of meat he’d forgotten to throw out after a barbecue: stiff and lifeless.
“A kid ain’t the answer,” he said.
“Maybe it is. You can get them from China now—little girls, because they hate girls over there—”
He shook his head. “Ain’t we getting too old for this stuff? For diapers and school plays and whatnot?”
“You were too old for it the first time around, or at least you were bored by it all.”
She was right about that. He had never been cut out for fatherhood. Eff, what were you supposed to talk to kids about? If they didn’t like sports, anyway. Even now, he had nothing to say to Mason. Effing kid wanted to be a music major, learn to play the saxophone or some garbage like that. Sometimes he wondered if Mason was really the mailman’s kid or something; that’s how little he had in common with his own son.
Of course, he wouldn’t admit to any of it. So he lied.
“That ain’t true, Mags. I was never bored. You know how much I love you guys, you and Mason both. But it just ain’t our . . . I dunno . . . destiny, I guess, to have another kid. If it was s’posed to happen, wouldn’t it’ve happened by now?”
“No thanks to you!”
“What’s that s’posed to mean?”
“All you ever want to do is sit around drinking beer and watching TV—or reading one of your silly books.”
Maggie spat the last word at him like it was one of the curses she hated. What was wrong with reading books? Eff. He’d always thought chicks liked smart guys. Maybe he wasn’t some kind of Einstein, but he’d have thought his wife would appreciate him trying to be a better man.
It wasn’t worth the fight, though, so he switched gears.
“Look, Mags, we’re talkin’ about adoption here, ain’t we? Let’s leave my TV and books out of it, ’kay?”
She huffed. “Fine. Then let’s talk about adoption. I’m for it.”
“I know you are, but, Mags, c’mon. We’re gettin’ old, aren’t we?”
“It’s not like I can have another child of my own,” Maggie said.
“You make it sound like that’s my fault.”
“Isn’t it?” she muttered.
“Scuse me?”
She shook her head but kept her lips zipped. Doug squeezed her hand—too hard, he admitted it.
“Ouch,” she said, yanking her hand away. “That hurts.”
“Sorry. But what the eff was that supposed to mean?”
“What?”
“You think I made it so you can’t have a baby? I’m pretty sure the trouble down there was called cancer.”
Maggie rolled her eyes.
“What?” he asked. “Just say it.”
“Maybe I’d have known I was sick sooner if you’d been paying attention to me.”
“What the fuck?”
“Language!”
“Uh-uh. Effing bull. I call bull, Maggie. I ain’t the one who gave ya cancer. That ain’t fuckin’ fair.”
“And it’s fair what I went through?”
“I ain’t sayin’ it’s fair, but it ain’t my fault, neither.”
They sat there in silence for a long time, both of them breathing too hard. Eff, sometimes a fight with your wife was a tougher workout than lugging a hundred-pound box of hex nuts onto a scale.
Finally, he said, “Mags, c’mon. Why would we bring a kid into this?”
She sneered. “Into our home?”
He shrugged. “It ain’t like we’re all that happy. Why make a kid suffer the same as we are?”
“You’re not happy?”
“Jesus, Mags. You are?”
She tilted her head in a way that reminded him of a dog and stared at him. “Of course I am.”
But it was a lie, and he knew it because nobody who was saying something true and real would talk like she did, stiff and simple like a robot.
He swallowed. “I don’t believe you.”
She sighed. “What do you want from me?”
He felt like he was in some kind of Twilight Zone. Who was this person? Her eyes looked blank, like when you look at a person in a painting. Except Daphne’s painting. The girl in that one, hanging downstairs in his “workshop” (though all Doug ever worked on was changing batteries in flashlights and crushing beer cans for the recycle bin), had eyes as full of life as the woman who painted them.
“I . . .” he started, then stopped himself, because he really didn’t know the answer to her question. Or, at least, what he knew, he couldn’t say. How do you tell your wife that what you want is for her to be a totally different person?
“I want you to love me,” he finally managed.
She gave him a sad-looking smile. “That’s not going to happen. Not now.”
They sat there, both of them staring at the empty kitchen table and definitely not at each other, until he couldn’t stand the quiet anymore.
“So, whaddya wanna do?” he asked.
She shook her head. “What I want doesn’t matter. Obviously.”
He leapt up from the table and spun around, pulling another beer out of the fridge. “Shit, Maggie, this is crap. I don’t wanna adopt some random people’s kid from China and somehow I’m the bad guy. One little thing and I’m the worst guy you ever met.”
“I want what I want,” she said.
“And so do I.”
She smiled. It made her look like a witch from some old fairy-tale kids’ book. “And what is it you want?”
He opened his mouth, but shut it again just as fast. Because he had no idea what he wanted. All he knew for sure was that he didn’t want this. Not anymore. Maybe he never had wanted it.
“Maybe we should separate. For a while,” he said.
She smiled. She actually broke out into a big old grin, like it was Christmas morning or something. It was like she had wanted him to say it, maybe so she didn’t have to.
“So,” Doug said, as Daphne started working the permanent solution into his hair. “She moved out.”
“She did?”
“Yeah. I woulda figured she’d make me go to some crummy apartment, but nah. She moved in with her friend Karen. It was almost . . .”
“Too easy?” Daphne asked.
He shrugged. “Kinda. But I don’t wanna talk about that stuff. What’s been goin’ on with you? Cheer me up, would ya?”
“I don’t have anything cheery to say. The world is a mess. It’s barely time for Thanksgiving, and already all the stores are all decked out for Christmas. I went to seven different stores last week, trying to find candy corn to make my turkey-shaped cupcakes, and they didn’t have them anywhere. Only candy canes. When did society in general agree to skip Thanksgiving entirely and go straight from Halloween to Christmas?”
Doug smiled at her. He always loved the way she got so worked up over things that most people wouldn’t even notice. Maggie did the same thing, maybe, but somehow in his wife (maybe his almost former wife?), it wasn’t all that cute.
“Aw, c’mon now, don’t knock Christmas. I love when they started playing nothin’ but Christmas tunes on the radio. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”
She raised an eyebrow at him in the mirror. “Okay, I admit, I like that, too. But I do have one complaint.”
“Spill it.”
“Nobody ever plays the Latin version of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ anymore. I mean, I get that most people these days can’t comprehend a dead language like Latin, but objectively, the song is so much more beautiful in Latin than in English.”
He felt a swoop in his belly, like when you’re in a roller coaster and it drops from the top of the biggest hill. This was his one chance to impress her. It was like the gods of Thanksgiving and Christmas had teamed up to bring him this one perfect moment.
He cleared his throat and sang:
Adeste fideles,
Laeti, triumphantes,
Venite, venite in Bethlehem:
Natum videte
Regem angelorem:
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus
Dominum.
When he looked at her in the mirror, there were tears in her eyes.
“How . . . I had no idea. . . . You know Latin?” she stuttered.
“Nah,” he said. “I learned the song back in Catholic school as a kid and it just stuck in my brain. I ain’t got the foggiest clue what any of it means.”
But he got his reward. Daphne leaned down and planted a big kiss on his cheek. In another world, another life, maybe he would’ve said, “Hey, let’s go for a drink when you get off work tonight,” since he was kind of like a free agent these days. But this wasn’t that world and it wasn’t that life. So instead, he just patted her hand and said, “Glad I could help. Now, let’s get this perm done, huh?”
Daphne
March 2002
“There’s gonna be a war, you trust me on that. My husband used to be in the army and he says it’s gonna happen. We can’t just let those towel-head Iranians blow up our buildings left and right,” Carla was saying as Daphne entered the salon.
Fantastic: more gripping, highly intellectual political discussions. Just what Daphne needed today. At least it was a Doug day. She hadn’t seen him since before the holidays, and somehow, the months always seemed to feel longer when Christmas was stuck in the middle. It was like the Yuletide was some sort of time-slowing device, devised to torture those (like Daphne) who didn’t have families or close friends with whom to share all the traditional trappings of the season.
Being here, at the salon, didn’t help, either. It was difficult not to feel resentful of these people—people like Carla, who was on her third marriage to yet another husband who gave her whatever she wanted (short of the ability to not have to work anymore); people who had friends and families and lives that seemed (from Daphne’s outsider perspective, at least) full and happy. Daphne hated to complain, because she knew she should be grateful for all the things she had in her life. She was smart and funny and talented and artistic. Her paintings were still selling well and Ethel was always trying to get her to do more exhibitions, but Daphne’s heart wasn’t in it, not after all these years. It was the same as it had been with everything else: Italian, Mandarin, astronomy, mythology. She couldn’t get enough of her new interest for a few months, maybe a couple of years, but once she knew enough to be what the average person would consider an “expert,” the topic lost its appeal. She got bored and needed to find something to challenge her again.
Sometimes she thought it was better to just live her life already bored, coming to the salon each day, listening to the silly and pointless gossip around her, and then going home and pretending not to feel lonely. Maybe it was better than always hoping for more, because, at this point in her life, she had to admit the truth: More didn’t seem to be coming.
“What’s with that face?” Carla asked.
Daphne turned, a little bit shocked that her fellow beautician had finally deigned to include her in conversation after studiously avoiding it for years.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Daphne said.
Carla gave a smug smile. “Always thinks she’s better than the rest of us, that one,” she said, in a hissing stage whisper to the client in her chair,
It wasn’t worth getting into an argument, Daphne knew, but the comment bristled just the same.
She was grateful when the salon door jingled open and Doug strode in. No Christian had ever been so thrilled about Jesus Christ as Daphne was in that moment for her own personal savior.
She took him by the elbow and led him back to the sink herself, instead of waiting for the new shampoo girl, Heather, to do it.
“You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” she said.
“Effing right. I spread joy and cheer wherever I show my purty face.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Lean back.”
“So what’s going on that I’m such a ray of light, huh?”
Daphne shook her head. “You ever feel like the only intelligent being on a planet full of lesser life-forms?”
“Every effing day.”
He was kidding, she knew, but even so, she felt warmer, safer, like she had someone in her corner. Sometimes she forgot how lonely she was until suddenly she didn’t have to be lonely anymore—at least for a little while.
“So, what’s the problem this time?” Doug asked. “Lay it on me, girl.”
She felt tears spring to her eyes and hated herself for being so needy and desperate for the smallest sign of human affection.
“Uh-uh,” she said. “You talk. What’s been going on with you?”
“What’s to say?” Doug replied. “I live in a three-bedroom house all by my lonesome.”
“Still? You and Maggie haven’t made up yet?”
“Nah. I dunno, Daph. I don’t think she really wants to get back together. She acts like I’m the reason she never got a chance to live on her own.”
Daphne had to snort. “I love when married women say things like that. Like having the bathroom all to yourself somehow negates all the crushing, profound loneliness.”
“Daph—”
“Joking. Go on,” she said.
He had a look on his face, all screwed-up and concerned, but she flashed him a big phony smile and slapped his shoulder so he’d think she really was kidding. She’d already said too much.
He shrugged as she helped him up and out of the sink and rubbed his head with the towel. “What’s to say? My wife would rather live with her gal pal than me.”
“What does Mason have to say about it?”
“Kid don’t even know,” Doug said. “He’s away at college, and when he came home for break, Maggie came home for a few days and pretended like everything’s fine. Said there’s no sense ‘traumatizing’ him. Effing kid’s twenty and barely notices we’re alive. Don’t think he gives two effs if we’re living together or not, as long as we got plenty of frozen pizza in the fridge and video games on the TV.”
She tried to picture his home, imagining a generic suburban Cape Cod, with the TV running constantly and piles of Hungry-Man dinners stacked in the freezer. Was that the American dream?
But she kept the thought to herself. From what she could tell, other people wanted different things out of life. She seemed to be the only one who craved intellectual stimulation, creativity, beauty, and passion. She also seemed to be the only one who noticed that those things were in short supply these days.
“What about you?” she asked. “Are you happy?”
Doug sighed. “I miss having noise in the house, ya know? Quiet as eff without Mags and Mason around.” Then he brightened. “But I’m cookin’! You wouldn’t believe it. I’m a regular cookin’ sensation. Call Emeril and tell him there’s a new star chef in town.”
“Must be strange having to cook for yourself after having Maggie there all those years to do it for you.”
“You kiddin’? Only thing Maggie knew how to make was reservations. Old joke, sure, but in our case, right on the effin’ nose.”
“No joke? I would have expected you to have the kind of wife who slaves over a hot stove, making old-fashioned things like pot roast and meatloaf.”
“Why, cuz I’m fat?”
“No, because you’re like a throwback to another time.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Um, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s two thousand two and you’re getting a perm.”
“That’s a style choice. Ain’t any kinda reflection on my taste in food.”
“So, what have you been cooking?”
“Got me a cookbook: one thousand recipes from around the world. Made me a beef moussaka—that’s from Greece—last night.”
“Adventurous.”
“Yeah, well, Maggie wasn’t much for what she called ‘racial’ foods.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Anything foreign. Except Chinese. Or pizza.”
“Those have basically become American foods at this point,” Daphne said, hating herself for almost agreeing with Doug’s estranged wife, who seemed to be a bit of a moron.
“Yup. But I like to try new stuff. I’m having tons of fun.”
“Does that mean you’re not even thinking about getting back together with your wife?”
She didn’t know why she was asking. Technically, it was none of her business. She was just the perm lady. It was probably odd that she knew so much about Doug’s life to begin with. And though they had become close—at least as close as two hours together every few months or so can get you—over the years, she knew it wasn’t her place to pry. Besides, she would hate to have him think she was asking out of some other motive. Like maybe she wanted to move in and take Maggie’s place.
And that wasn’t true. At least, that’s what she was telling herself.
“I dunno, Daph. It’s a tough thing, ya know?”
She shrugged and forced herself to focus on the rollers in her hand. “Not really, no.”
“It’s like, you go into a marriage thinkin’ you’re getting one person, and you find out she ain’t who ya thought she was.”
“Okay, that I can relate to. But isn’t that true of any relationship?”
Now Doug was the one to shrug. “I s’pose. But the thing is, do ya just live with it, or are ya s’posed to do whatever ya gotta do to be happy? This is the only life we get, ain’t it?”
She swallowed hard, hating herself (for reasons she couldn’t have explained, even to herself) for offering advice she didn’t believe. “Don’t you feel like it’s a waste to have put in all that time and effort just to let it go?”
“It ain’t like a baseball card you keep in a plastic sleeve, hopin’ to sell for a profit.”
“Isn’t it?”
She felt a strange twinge, like hope rising, in her gut and tensed her muscles against it. She was acting like an idiot.
“You don’t really feel that way,” she said. “I know you well enough to know you love your wife.”
Doug made a face she couldn’t read and looked down at his hands in his lap. “I guess I do,” he said. “I mean, I loved her once. I guess ya keep lovin’ somebody, even after ya start hatin’ ’em, huh?”
“I’ll stay out of it,” she said. “It’s none of my business.”
“Hey, don’t talk like that. I value your opinion, Daph. You’re the smartest gal I know.”
“Just the smartest gal?”
“Nah, you’re right. You’re the smartest person, guy or gal. Sorry.” He grinned at her in the mirror. “Let’s talk about somethin’ else. Whatcha been up to?”
It was a good question, because she felt like she hadn’t been up to much of anything lately. Every night before bed, when she wrote in her journal (even though doing it now, in middle age, made her feel like a loser, rather than giving her that powerful feeling of routine and recording something for posterity she’d had as a child when she first started the practice), she realized that, most days, she hadn’t experienced any identifiable emotion, unless perhaps you counted ennui.
The most exciting thing that had happened to her lately was her trip to the Asian market to find ingredients for a new Thai recipe she’d found online.
The stench had bowled her over as soon as she stepped through the front door of the place. It was hard (for an unsophisticated white suburbanite like her, at least) to put her finger on what exactly the smell was, but she was willing to hazard a guess: moldy potatoes, decomposing fish bodies, pickled cabbage, and (perhaps inevitably) urine. There was more to it, she was sure—likely emanating from some of the unnamable products held in those jars on the shelves with only Chinese writing and no English translations. That stuff could be anything: soy protein, duck brains, ketchup. You could never be sure unless you could read that particular dialect, and Daphne was the first to admit that her years of ultra-basic academic Mandarin didn’t help at all when it really counted.
She suppressed a shudder as she made her way to the loose tea aisle, ignoring the stares of the all-Asian staff and clientele. Sometimes, they almost seemed threatening, like they’d do anything to get the little white lady with her patent-leather ballet flats and neatly tailored jeans out of their store. It had occurred to her more than once that the horrible odor she met at the door—the same stink that always forced her to limit her visits to under ten minutes, for fear of permanent nasal damage—was some sort of intentional sabotage. Perhaps the smell was contained in those aerosol sprayers around the store, the kind people often kept in their bathrooms at home (only those smelled like fruit or lavender, not dead aquarium life) and they only released their contents when a white person dared to stroll through the entrance.
She hated the place, but you couldn’t beat the tea selection or the spices, which you couldn’t do without when you were making Thai or Indian food.
“Daph? You okay?” Doug asked.
She blinked, realizing she had zoned out thinking about the Asian market. “Huh? I’m fine. Sorry.”
“Girl, you need a vacation. Or—and I hate to say it—a decent lay, if I ain’t being too inappropriate. What ever happened to that guy you were seein’?”
“Aaron?”
A little shock zapped her spine. She had forgotten all about her boyfriend.
“Um, yeah. We’re still together,” she said, reaching for the perm solution.
Doug tilted his head. The gesture reminded her of a dog wondering if you had just mentioned the possibility of going for a walk. And that made her think maybe she should get a dog for a little companionship. She almost kicked herself when she remembered—again—that she had companionship. With Aaron.
“You okay?” Doug asked.
“Huh? Yes, fine. Magnifico, prego.”
“You don’t sound magnifico. And even I know it should be magnifica, no?”
Jesus, even Doug was speaking better Italian than she was these days. She was really off her game.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Tell me more about what you’re going to do. My life is too boring.”
“What’s goin’ on with your painting? Ain’t ya world famous yet?”
The truth was, she had barely touched her paintbrushes in months. She felt phony every time she looked at a blank canvas. You were supposed to fill the space with the torments or beauties of your imagination, fueled by the realities of your hard-won experience, and she barely had any experience to speak of. Lately, she felt like she was watching or reading about life rather than living it.
“I haven’t been painting,” she said.
“Whatcha mean? You’re the greatest painter I ever seen. Better’n Van Gogh or Picasso, any of them idiots.”
A twinge of something she couldn’t identify—gratitude, maybe, or resentment at the idea of his pity (because it had to be pity, didn’t it?)—tweaked at her spine.
“I’m not an artist,” she said. “It was silly of me to try.”
Doug stiffened in his chair and turned to her. “Pardon my French, but fuck that. You’re the best artist I ever seen.”
She gave him a weak smile. It was sweet, really, that he was defending her, but how could someone who knew nothing about art, someone who’d never even seen her work, make this argument?
“I appreciate the sentiment,” she said, “but no offense, how would you even know?”
“I know cuz I got two of your paintings hangin’ in my house, ya dumb broad.”
The bottle of perm solution fell out of her hand like a wet rock and clattered on the floor.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“Sure,” Doug said. “I bought me two of ’em way back when, that time you had your first show at that little place in Westfield.”
“I had no idea.” She leaned down to pick up the errant squirt bottle, and noticed her arms were covered in gooseflesh. Why should it matter if some random salon customer had bought her artwork? Of course, she knew the answer: It mattered because no one else she knew, not even her few remaining family members, and certainly not anyone she worked with here at the salon, had bothered to go and see her paintings, much less buy one to hang in their home.
“Hey, hey,” Doug said. “Don’t look all sad. It ain’t a big deal. I went to your show, liked your stuff. Ain’t that the whole point?”
She swallowed hard. She had never been good at accepting a compliment, had never had anyone to validate her in any way. She didn’t know what to say.
“Hey, let’s talk about somethin’ else, huh?” Doug said. “I didn’t tell ya about my date.”
“You went on a date? Seriously?”
“I did. With a gal I found in the classifieds.”
“Dios mio, is that even still a thing? I thought online dating was the new wave of the future.”
“Old dogs, new tricks, eh, Daph? But don’t get your hopes up. If it’d gone well, I’d’ve led with that, right?”
She had to smile. Somehow, this rough-around-the-edges guy with his terrible vocabulary and grating New Jersey accent was smoother at understanding what she needed than anyone else she had ever met. She couldn’t help but be grateful for that.
“So, tell me the story,” she said, feeling relief flood through her. Whatever the tension had been between them, it was gone now, and they were just themselves, two people with nothing—and everything—in common.
Doug
December 2002
The salon looked like a sauna as he walked up to the door—the windows all steamed up. Or maybe he was thinking of the bagel shop. That place always got too hot on a cold winter’s day.
“Greetings, ladies,” he called as he strode through the door. An old woman with tiny pink curlers all over her mostly bald head was reading the latest issue of Cosmopolitan. He felt a tug of disappointment in his gut. He hadn’t realized he’d been looking forward to flipping through it. It wasn’t like he could pick up a copy of Cosmo with his paper and morning coffee. Or could he? Maybe he shouldn’t give an eff if Ernie, the guy who ran the corner deli, thought he was a fancy man. (Or, as Ernie would’ve put it, a fag.)
“I’ll be with you in a sec,” Daphne called from her station, where she was blow-drying the head of that prune-faced bleach-blond lady who always seemed to be here when Doug came in for his perm. He wondered if she was here every day. Some of these chicks didn’t seem to have a whole lot to do. He felt a twinge of guilt as he thought about Maggie, who spent at least one day a week in a different salon, getting her nails done. What a waste. Women. Who would ever understand them?
“Another perm?” the prune lady said. It was the first time, in twenty years of coming to the same salon, that she had ever talked to him. Maybe he wasn’t the world’s savviest guy, but he knew straight off that she wasn’t just being friendly.
He shrugged. “Once I find somethin’ I like, I stick with it. Makes life easier.”
The woman made a face (not that it was easy to tell, what with that sour puss) and turned away. He had to say it again: Women.
“Don’t be snotty to my friend Doug, Joan,” Daphne said.
“Snotty? Who’s being snotty?” the woman—Joan—said, her face pursing up so tight, she was starting to look more like a raisin than a prune.
Doug squeezed into a plastic chair with metal arms. It felt like the chairs he’d had to use back in school, always just a little too small for his body. He eyed the lady with the Cosmo and wished there were a way to get it: distract her, maybe, or just ignore all the rules of polite society and rip it out of her hand.
“You’re all set here,” Daphne said to the prune lady, who shook all over, like a dog after a bath.
“I feel like my hair is still damp,” the woman said, touching the back of her head lightly with her fingers, like she was scared she’d get burned or something. Crazy broad.
“No, you’re all good. And I’m running late for my next client. See you next week?”
The prune lady scowled a little bit but got out of Daphne’s chair. She gave Doug a dirty look as she moved to the counter to pay the receptionist.
Daphne nodded Doug over to her station, then led him straight back to the sink. As he settled into the reclining shampoo chair, she leaned down and whispered, “She was right. I didn’t finish drying the back of her head. I just couldn’t take her attitude anymore. I’d rather have you in my chair than that nasty puttana.”
Doug felt his cheeks pull into a grin. There’s nothing like having somebody choose you over somebody else—even if that somebody else was mean old prune lady.
“’Preciate it, Daph. But it ain’t like I was in any hurry.”
“Like I said, I did it for me, not you.”
“Fair enough. So, how’s tricks?”
“Every time I see you, you’ve reverted another decade in your choice of slang. ‘How’s tricks?’ I think that went out with the flappers.”
“It just came to me.”
“One of these days, you ought to write down all these Doug-isms. They’d make for an entertaining read.”
“I ain’t the artist here. That’s you, girl.”
“I’m not a real artist,” Daphne said, over the roar of the faucet.
“Aw, c’mon now. That’s effin’ bull and you know it.”
He’d seen Daphne on lots of bad days over the years—after breakups with guys, fights with gal pals, even that time she had to bury her dead cat—but he’d never seen her looking so glum.
“Hey, now,” he said, sitting up, even though the water was running down the back of his shirt. “Something’s wrong and I can tell. You ain’t good at hidin’ nothin’. Tell me. Maybe I can help. That’s what friends are for, ain’t it?”
She gave him a strange little smile. “It is,” she said. “But really, I’m fine. It’s just one of those days. Lady troubles, maybe. Let’s talk about you. What’s going on at work? Home? Give me the deets.”
“Deets? What’re ya, a teeny-bopper now?”
“Just trying to be casual. People are always saying I’m too formal.”
“Not me, Daph. I like the way ya talk. ’Specially when ya talk Italian or Spanish or that weird Chinese ya do.”
She frowned and pushed him back down under the faucet. “I don’t do that anymore.”
He sat up again, ignoring the wet. “Hey, now, what’s goin’ on?”
“Nothing, really. Just a bad mood. Distract me. Tell me what’s going on with you. And get back under this faucet before I have to break your knees.”
He sighed and obeyed. Women.
“All righty, then. Whaddya wanna know?”
“Anything. Just talk.”
He frowned. Her refusal to have a regular conversation was making him feel strange. She’d always been a good listener, sure, but she’d always done her share of talking, too, and this was something new. He didn’t like it. But he didn’t want to upset her, either. It was easier to keep women happy, if you had the chance. That’s one thing his marriage had taught him.
“Guess I ain’t told ya much about me and Maggie lately, huh?” he asked.
“Not a thing,” she said, and he saw that her face lit up. Maybe he was just being a distraction, but if it was working, he was happy. Anything to see her smile.
He smiled, too, even though the story he was about to tell was hardly a happy one.
“So, ya know Maggie and me got back together,” he said.
She tapped him on the shoulder. Time to sit up, finally. And thank God for that. He hated the way his belly stuck out when Daphne made him lie back in the effing sink. He felt funny enough in this place (even after all these years), the only guy in a room full of gals. He didn’t need them all staring at his gut. He couldn’t help but pat the mound of flesh. Maybe it was time to cut back on all those beers he’d been drinking.
“Yeah, it’s been a while now since you reunited,” Daphne said. “So, it was worth it, right? Love conquers all?”
“Eh,” Doug said.
“Eh? Don’t let your wife hear you say that.”
“I don’t mean to sound like a bastard, but life ain’t ever as exciting as ya expect it’s gonna be, is it? Marriage especially.”
“Wow. Now you’re making me think I erred gravely in encouraging you to get back together with your wife.”
“Nah, don’t be that way. You were right. It would’ve been like givin’ up on a marathon at the twenty-six-mile marker. Ya just don’t do that, right?”
She smiled a little. “I guess not. So, you’re happy?”
“What’s happy? I’m just livin’, ya know? Maggie’s happy. Mason’s happy. That’s what’s important, right?”
A shadow fell across Daphne’s face, and he felt panic flutter through his gut. He’d done it again, upset her.
“Hey, I’m just kiddin’,” he said, feeling like he needed to rush to make things better, even if it meant telling a little fib. “It’s great. Really.”
The look of relief on her face was worth the lie. But the truth was still there, behind it all: Things weren’t great. Not really.
He’d never told Daph the story, because it would’ve made him feel ashamed. All these years, he’d held his hairdresser up as an ideal person, the kind who didn’t let other people or little life problems get in the way, always learning and growing and taking on new challenges. He’d wanted to be like her, and going back to his wife, after feeling the sweet freedom of being single again, was like volunteering to be one of those lab rats they keep locked up in cages to experiment on.
That day, after Daphne said walking away from his marriage would be like letting go of a long-term investment, he’d told himself she was right and had made himself drive straight from the salon to the house where Maggie was living in her gal pal’s spare bedroom.
It was Maggie who answered the door. Of course it was. It was past noon on a Saturday morning, and most normal families were out and about enjoying their lives. It was only miserable people—like him, like Maggie—who was stuck inside, wallowing.
She sneered when she saw him. “What do you want?”
“Nice greeting. Ain’t seen ya in weeks. A simple hello might be nice.”
She shook her head, slowly, like she was tired. “Fine. Hello.”
“That’s better. Can I come in?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“C’mon, Mags. We gotta talk and ya know it. I don’t have to come inside. Come out with me. We’ll get a beer and a sandwich at the diner.”
“Since when does the diner have beer?”
“I dunno. They just do. Me and a coupla the guys was over there after bowling a few days ago. They got a whole bar and everything. It’s great.”
She sighed. “Fine. Let me just get my purse and put on some shoes. Wait here.”
She actually closed the door, right in his face, like he was sort of scumbag trying to sell her a vacuum cleaner or something. Effing bitch.
He tried to push off that feeling, the one nagging at him and telling him this was a mistake, even as he opened his car door for Maggie, drove her to the diner, and sat there watching her labor over what to order like some Hollywood prima donna vegetarian type. Eff, she’d always been a little high-maintenance, but either he’d forgotten what it was like to be around her or she’d gotten even worse since they separated.
“I’ll have the Cobb salad, no meat, dressing on the side,” she finally said, then practically threw the glossy, spiral-bound menu at the waitress.
“Why don’t ya just order plain old lettuce, Mags? Oh, wait. Ya already did.”
Maggie huffed and scrunched up her shoulders. “Did you bring me here to make fun of me?”
“Course not.”
“Then why?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but snapped it shut. The truth was, he had no idea why he was here—other than because Daphne had suggested it might be a good idea, and he couldn’t exactly tell his wife he wanted to get back together because his hairdresser told him to.
“Cat got your tongue?” Maggie asked, reaching for her water glass. Doug thought he saw a glint of something, playfulness maybe, in her eye.
“Yeah,” he said. “Somethin’ like that. So, how ya been, Mags? Really.”
Her shoulders softened. “Maybe I will have a glass of wine,” she said, as the waitress arrived with Doug’s beer. “Merlot.”
“There’s the gal I know.”
“What, drunk?”
He wanted to argue—“Eff, Mags, why do ya always gotta start?”—but he gave her a smile instead.
“So, tell me. How’s it goin’?”
She shrugged. “You know.”
“I don’t, Mags. Tell me.”
“It’s weird. Living with Sara. Having Mason come back and forth between you and me.”
“Mason don’t give an eff, does he? It ain’t like he’s a little kid, living at home no more.”
“He’s devastated, Doug. You should know that about your own child, even if you did your best to avoid him his whole life.”
A twinge of anger plucked at his kidney. He wanted to argue, but he remembered why he was here and decided to let it go. Again. “C’mon, Mags, I didn’t come here to fight.”
“Then why did you?”
There was still time to get out of it, he suddenly thought. He could tell her he just wanted to see how she was doing, buy her lunch, and go home. He didn’t have to do this thing. But then he remembered the investment, and Daphne’s advice, and he sighed and said, “I thought it was about time we talked. Ain’t this thing gone on long enough?”
“What are you saying?”
“I wanna get back together, Mags. C’mon home, won’t ya?”
The waitress arrived just then with Maggie’s wine—perfect timing for Doug to order a second beer (though he wished he could order a third, too, without looking like a drunk). Maggie took a delicate sip, like they were in some kind of fancy restaurant and not the same diner where they’d eaten buttermilk pancakes and eggs for two decades.
“I don’t know,” she finally said, setting down the glass and arranging it on her paper napkin just so. Doug fought the urge to reach over and knock the wine over, just to ruin Maggie’s careful work.
“What don’t ya know?” he asked, instead.
“If it’s a good idea. It’s not like we were happy together.”
“Are you happy now?”
She shuffled in her seat and took a long swig of wine. “No. I’m not happy now. Are you?”
He had to think about it, just for a sec. He pictured his brain putting the two sides—life with Maggie versus life on his own—up on one of them scales with the two hanging plates. On the “on his own” side was total freedom, gourmet meals (even if he did have to cook them himself), foul language (when he actually remembered there was nobody around to scold him and got a chance to use some), and license to fart with abandon. On the Maggie side was . . . well, Maggie. He peered at her across the table. Even all these years later, she was still a pretty woman, and he knew, deep down, she meant well. She wanted the American dream: a husband, a home, two-point-whatever children in good schools playing team sports. She’d never planned to make him miserable. But was that a good enough reason to go back to her?
“No,” he finally said. “I’m not happy, either.” He wasn’t sure if it was a lie.
A tear glinted in Maggie’s eye and she reached over to grasp his hand on the sticky green Formica tabletop. “Good,” she said. “Then I’m coming home.”
And just like that, they were back to the way things used to be: Maggie refusing to cook dinner, calling for takeout every night; Doug watching what he said, censoring his own thoughts to avoid offending his wife; Mason showing up at unexpected times, with a huge sack of dirty clothes under his arm, asking his mom to do his laundry. They returned to ordinary, boring, excruciating family life.
“What?” Doug said, now, his head covered in curlers, when he realized Daphne had asked him something.
“I said, so you really think it was the right thing to do, getting back together?”
He sighed and nodded. “Sure. Sure, of course it was.”
As he headed over to sit and read Cosmo and wait for the perm solution to take hold, he told himself Daphne had been right: It would’ve been silly to waste the investment he’d put into his marriage all these years. But what if trying to avoid wasting an investment made it feel like you were wasting your whole life?
Daphne
May 2010
Doug was already waiting, Cosmo in hand, when she rushed into the salon, dripping raindrops from her hair.
“Late much?” Carla muttered with a sneer.
“Sorry, I’m sorry, Doug,” Daphne said. “Heather, can you get Doug shampooed while I run in back and towel off? È un giorno pieno di pioggia.”
Doug beamed. “Lay that Italian on me, girl. I been missin’ that stuff.”
She watched as he followed the receptionist/shampoo girl meekly to the sink, then she ran into the office in the back. It would be unseemly to allow a room full of clients to watch a stylist towel her head like a wet dog shaking off after a bath. Of course, it had been a wet dog that got her into this situation, but she didn’t have time to think about it now. Doug was waiting.
He was already in her chair, damp hair clinging to the towel draped over his shoulders, when she wheeled in with her cart of rollers and perm solution.
“There she is,” he announced, to no one in particular. Daphne had always wondered at that—the way the women in the salon, even the old ladies who were always dying to chat with anybody who seemed willing, did their best to ignore Doug. Sure, Carla or one of her clients might make a snide comment here and there, but nobody but Daphne ever went out of their way to engage him in conversation. The funny thing was, he was pretty much the only one in the place who was ever worth talking to.
Doug peered at her in the mirror. “You got a story, girl. Digame. If I know you, this one’s gotta be good.”
“It’s not as good as the wet hair would suggest. But okay, here goes. First thing, I got a dog.”
“Today?”
“No, of course not today, you dolt. A few months ago, after the last time you were here.”
“Because of somethin’ I said?”
“You might say that. You mentioned how Maggie had never wanted a dog. And it occurred to me that I always had wanted one and what was I waiting for?”
“Good on ya, Daph. What kinda dog is it?”
“A mutt, really. Mix between pug and chihuahua—one of those newfangled fake ‘breeds’ they’re coming up with, like puggles and jugs and all that, to try to get some of the cuteness of the pug with fewer of the health issues.”
“What do they call yours? Pa-wah-wah?”
“That’s cute, but hardly pithy. They call it a chug.”
“Chug, like a beer?”
She gave him a faux sigh of exasperation as she started with the rollers. “If you must relate my dog’s pedigree to alcohol, then I suppose so, yes.”
“I’m just messin with ya. Go ’head, tell the story.”
It had been a rough morning. She’d gotten up long before dawn, as usual. She’d sneaked out of the house, leaving the dog (a three-year-old she’d adopted from the pound, not some helpless puppy) in his crate while she went for a quick five-mile run. She had seen on the news last night that there was rain on the way, and if she wanted to exercise today, the blissful, silent time before the rest of the town woke up was going to be her only chance. She’d been back home, soaking in the glory of her runner’s high, for all of ten minutes before her dog began barking at something outside.
Daphne had put down her water bottle and peered out into the pink morning light to see what had gotten the dog so upset. And there it was: the neighbor’s two dogs—a Scottish terrier and a gangly young boxer—running wild, unaccompanied, in the street outside, while the early traffic, everyone headed to drop off their teens at the high school across the street, backed up, trying not to kill the animals or break their car horns honking.
She had watched for maybe thirty seconds before it became clear that no one—not the drivers all piled up, bumper to bumper, and certainly not her neighbor whose dogs were causing the problem—was going to bother to do anything about the situation.
She sighed, stuffed her own dog into the house, and headed outside.
She didn’t have a plan. In all honesty, she had never actually even met the two wild-running dogs. She had only spied them from between her window-blind slats as they barked and dug in her neighbor’s yard. Still, they noticed her right away, seeing as she was the only human being not currently honking at them safely from the interior of a car.
She squatted down and made a kissing sound, hoping the dogs would simply stop their cavorting in the busy street and hurry over to investigate. They did.
With deft fingers, skilled from years of working scissors and wrapping unwieldy hair onto tiny curlers, she took hold of the dogs’ collars and dragged them next door, using her elbow to ring the doorbell.
The neighbor didn’t bother to come to the door. Instead, he shouted through the intercom he had installed: “Whaddya want?”
“It’s Daphne, from next door. I’ve got your dogs. They were running loose in the street.”
There was a growl over the crackling static of the intercom, then the neighbor said, “Damn boxer musta dug out under the fence again. Shit. Put ’em in the yard.”
The intercom went dead. That was, apparently, all Daphne’s neighbor had to say on the subject. No thank-yous, no kind words, not even any useful advice about how Daphne might go about unlatching and swinging open the heavy backyard gate while simultaneously holding on to a twenty-pound Scottie and a seventy-pound boxer, both of whom were trying to leap with youthful exuberance after having successfully gained freedom from their dreary and toyless yard.
She did it anyway, but not before the skies opened up, drenching her, along with her canine charges, who, she quickly realized, would just burrow out through the same hole they’d dug earlier if she didn’t take a moment to plug up the openings. Luckily, the neighbor’s grill was broken and strewn in pieces across the dead grass, so she used the lid and the base to cover the two largest holes she could find, hoping that would be enough to keep the crazy critters in their own yard—at least until she got home from work later and could take a more long-term approach to solving her neighbor’s problem. Because clearly, nobody else was going to do it.
By the time she got back home and walked her own dog, there was time only to wipe the worst of the mud from her arms and fingers before heading to the salon for the day and, of course, making a firm resolution not to send her neighbor a Christmas card this year.
“People!” Doug said. “What a tool that guy must be. Some folks ain’t worthy of havin’ pets.”
“Some people aren’t worthy of being on the planet, period,” Daphne couldn’t help saying. “Sorry if that’s bitchy.”
“Hey, no worries, Daph. I’d be bitchy, too, if I had to save some a-hole’s dogs in the rain. So, what else is goin’ on with you? How’s that boyfriend of yours? You guys been together a long time now, ain’t ya? How long’s it been?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
She knew exactly how long it had been, of course—almost to the hour. She just didn’t care. Because Aaron was no longer her boyfriend.
“In all honesty,” she said, “we broke up.”
“Aww, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up anything that’d make ya feel bad. Mind if I ask what happened? I really woulda thought this guy was the one.”
She smiled. “So would I. Until he wasn’t.”
Doug grinned. “Seems like that’s always the way, ain’t it? So, tell me. What happened?”
“It was the dog.”
“Come again?”
“He wasn’t nice to the dog. How can a woman spend the rest of her life with a man who isn’t nice to dogs? It’s simply not acceptable.”
“Not nice how?”
“Dios mio, I’m probably making it sound like he was a monster—one of those people who leaves a dog chained up in the rain with no food, like in those horrifying ASPCA commercials with that damn Sarah McLachlan song. It wasn’t anything like that.”
“But . . .”
“He just . . . didn’t get the dog, I guess. I mean, I’ve never been much of a pet person myself, but this little creature . . .” She stopped, tugged her phone out of her back pocket, and pulled up a photo of her little guy, curled up on her bed. “How could anybody ignore a face like this, when it’s coming over and trying to kiss you?”
“Aw, Christ, he really is cute. Eff. Now you’re makin’ me wanna get a dog. But Maggie would never go for it, and the last thing I need is more chores to do ’round the house. Eff, I’m s’posed to be thinkin’ ’bout retirement, at this age. But hey, back to you. You doin’ okay since this breakup? I’m really sorry to hear about it.”
“Don’t be. I’m not. At least the dog doesn’t steal the covers when we sleep together like Aaron did. Things have a way of working out for the best.”
Even as she said it, she didn’t believe it. When had anything, truly, worked out for her? Most of the time, it felt like she was no better off than she’d been thirty years ago, fresh out of beauty school, longing for some kind of “special” life—one that had never materialized, despite all her efforts.
“Guess so,” Doug said, though she could see in his eyes that he was as dubious about the notion as she was.
“So, what’s new with you?” she asked. “How’s the family?”
“Same old, I s’pose. Maggie’s good, Mason’s got a job—in some store where they sell refurbished video games, of all things—and we’re planning on spending the summer at the shore house.”
“You’re taking off work the whole summer? Che magnifico! I’m beyond jealous.”
“Like I said, I only got so long before it’s retirement time, so I might as well use all them vacation days I still got left, huh? It’s gonna be great. Just gotta get through Mags’s yearly checkup in a coupla weeks and we’ll be good to go.”
“How is Maggie? It’s been a long time since she beat the cancer now, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah, she’s been all good for years now,” Doug said. Daphne thought she saw a shadow cross his face, but it was gone so fast, she couldn’t be sure. “She’s still gotta go and get scans, tests, whatever, every six months or a year, dependin’, but it’s mostly a formality at this point. Mags is feeling good.”
“Still got the boat?”
“Course. I’d never get ridda that beauty. Ya oughta come down sometime this summer. We can all go out for an evening sail.”
“It’s a sailboat?”
“Nah, course not. It’s a regular ole motor boat, but sayin’ ‘Go out for a motor’ just sounds messed up, don’t it?” He laughed. “But seriously, ya oughta think about it. It’d do ya good to get out on the water, get some sun. We’d be happy to have ya.”
Their eyes met in the mirror, and then they both looked away. It was the first time in all these years that either of them had so much as mentioned the idea of seeing each other anywhere besides the salon. Decades of semi-intimacy, with her hands wound deep in his hair for hours every few months, and they had never so much as run into each other by accident at the grocery store. The thought of being “real” friends, of taking what they had outside—beyond this chair, this banter, this room filled with the stench of perm solution—suddenly filled her with terror. And if she had even the least bit of skill at reading other people, hearing the invitation come out of his own mouth had had the same effect on Doug.
“I’d love that,” she said, knowing perfectly well that they both knew it was a lie. “But you know how busy it gets around here during the summer—all the ladies want their highlights done before their fancy vacations. We’ll have to see how things play out.”
He gave her a smile and she could tell he was relieved. Even if he was the first person she wanted to share news with (even if that meant waiting months, at times), she knew, now, that they weren’t ready to be more than client and customer.
And it was just as well. After all, Doug was married. And Daphne really needed to find a man of her own.
Doug
December 2012
The salon was all decked out for Christmas when Doug walked in the door: There was a sad-looking artificial tree beside the reception desk, no more than three or four feet high and leaning like that tower in Italy that’s always on the paper placemats in a pizzeria. He was glad to see it. The humdrum attempt at decorating matched his mood. It had been months since he’d been out of the house, and he probably wouldn’t be out now if he hadn’t seen how bad his hair looked when he accidentally glanced in the bathroom mirror a few days ago. The beard, he could shave, but he could only go so long with this shaggy head before the neighbors would start to talk.
He wasn’t sure if he was looking forward to seeing Daphne or not. And that was a first.
“There he is, my shaggy dog!” Daphne called from the back of the salon.
He smiled in spite of himself.
Daphne strode over, hair bouncing under her Santa hat. Doug reached over and tapped the big white pom-pom in his hand.
“This is new,” he said.
“Buon natale,” she replied. “I decided it was finally time to embrace the cheesiness of the holidays like everybody else. I must say, it does make all those Bing Crosby tunes on the radio a little less annoying.”
“It’s cute.”
“That’s all you’ve got for me? Cute? Ah, you’re worthless. Go get shampooed and meet me at the chair.”
He had to smile. There was something about a woman being strict but not naggy that was appealing. Though he had to admit, even naggy sounded okay to him these days.
Five minutes later, sitting in Daphne’s chair, he felt the unmistakable warmth: the sensation of coming home.
“Spill it,” she said. “You haven’t been here in, what? Almost a year now? You had me thinking you were cheating on me with some other hairdresser.”
“I thought the politically correct term was stylist nowadays,” he said.
“Do I strike you as the kind of person who gives a crap about political correctness? Call me whatever you want.”
“As long as ya don’t call me late for dinner?”
“Good lord, is that an old joke! It had white whiskers when my grandfather used to tell it.”
“I missed you.” He heard the words come out of his mouth before he could stop them, and felt the burn of shame spread to his cheeks before he saw in the mirror that he was blushing. Blushing! Like he was some kinda schoolgirl!
She patted his shoulder. “Back at you, amico. So, tell me. Why’d you skip your appointments? You’ve never done that—not for so long, anyway—before. I almost checked online to make sure the Star-Ledger didn’t run your obituary.”
He swallowed. It was time. “Not mine, it didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maggie died.”
Daphne dropped the curlers in her hands. They clattered to the floor, but Doug was the only one who heard the noise over the strains of some pop tune blaring from the overhead speakers. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
He hated the fact that he was smiling, but he couldn’t not smile. He was so relieved to finally be able to tell someone else—somebody besides Mason and the friends he and Maggie had shared, or the neighbors who were still bringing over smelly casseroles even now, months after it had happened.
“Just what I said. Mags, she died. The cancer came back.”
Daphne was paler than he’d ever seen her, looking like some sort of ghost under that red velvet Santa hat. She reached up, like she suddenly realized she was wearing it, and dragged it off her head, tossing it onto the ledge in front of the mirror. She was shaking her head.
“No,” she said. “That can’t be. Last time you were here, she was fine. You were going on vacation. . . .”
“Vacation didn’t happen. ’Member I told ya she hadda get her regular tests? They came back bad. I dunno all the jargon the docs use, but the point is still the same: The cancer came back, and this time, my gal couldn’t beat it.”
Daphne turned and leaned against the mirror, not looking at him, still shaking her head. Eff. If he would’ve known she’d get so upset, he would’ve faked it, pretended everything was still okay. Eff again.
“Hey, c’mon now, Daph. It’s okay. Mags is in a better place, or at least that’s what the priest at the funeral kept harpin’ on about. It’s been almost three months now. That’s why I never showed up for my last perm. I . . . eff, ya know how it is. It’s just hard gettin’ used to somethin’ like this.”
Daphne’s eyes were glistening. Were those tears?
“Shit, Daphne, say somethin’. I didn’t mean to get ya all upset.”
“I feel like I knew her,” Daphne said. It was almost a whisper. “Do you know what I mean? I feel . . .”
“What?”
She shook her head again. “Call me crazy, but ever since I got my dog, I’m a sentimental wreck. I feel like I finally know what love is, and if I even think about someday losing the little guy, I practically burst out weeping. I can’t even imagine how you must feel. It’s stupid. But it’s almost like . . . I don’t know. I feel like Maggie was a relative of mine. A cousin or something. Just . . . one I never actually met, I suppose.”
“I gotta tell ya, that makes me feel freakin’ great. And Maggie’d feel the same way. I’m sure of that. Mags knew you were a good friend to me. Ya always have been.”
This was a change: He was getting a chance to make Daphne feel better (at least, he hoped he was), instead of the other way around like all these years he’d been coming to her for his perms. It felt nice.
Suddenly, Daphne sniffled, straightened up, and then came around behind his chair, as if nothing had happened. She started rolling his hair again.
“So, what happened?” she said. “Tell me.”
He’d been worried about this. Even though part of him had figured it’d be better to just not say a word about Maggie, now that he was here, with Daphne, he felt better than he had since he and Mags had heard the doctor say that horrible word: terminal. If he was telling the truth, he was actually feeling good. And he wanted to tell Daph the whole story. He needed to.
“Well, like I said, last time I saw ya, Mags was waitin’ on her checkup with the cancer docs before we could go away on our vacation,” he said.
It had seemed so simple, nothing but a formality. They had gone so far as to pack their bags and buy groceries to bring to the shore house. It had never crossed their minds—or it never crossed his, anyways—that the doc would say anything other than “You’re good to go.” When the doc said there were abnormalities on Maggie’s scan, Doug had felt his stomach drop. He figured Mags felt the same, but the look on her face said he was wrong about that. She looked stoic, ready. He knew in that second that she had known for a while she was sick again. She had just kept it hidden from him.
For the first time he could remember, he felt grateful to his wife instead of thinking she should be feeling thankful for him.
“Mags? You okay?” he had said. She had nodded, stiffly, all held together and strong, not caring about anything silly and pointless, like she was some kind of warrior or maybe a priest.
He’d turned to the doc. “What the fuck?” He ignored Maggie’s gasp of horror, wondering what kind of person is more upset about a curse word than a death sentence. “You said she was outta the woods. We thought everything was gonna be fine.”
“Mr. Endersoll, I never said—”
“Nah, course ya never came out and said nothin’. Gotta protect your ass, don’tcha? But this is bullshit and you know it. There’s gotta be somethin’ ya can do to save her.”
“Stop,” Maggie said. “It’s fine. They’ve done everything they could.”
“What the hell are ya talkin’ about, Mags? This is crap. They ain’t never given one inkling that anything might be wrong. And now you’re . . .”
“Dying,” she said.
He shook his head. “Uh-uh. It ain’t true. There’s some kinda mistake. Run them tests again.” He got up and started pacing around the doc’s office, like a bear stalking the garbage dumpster at a campsite. Somehow, all the guilt he’d been stuffing down inside—for not caring all that much when Maggie left him, for never finding any kind of joy or happiness from family life like he knew he was supposed to do, for (almost) wishing Maggie dead back when she had her cancer surgery all those years ago—was coming out as a wild, protective instinct to save his wife, like the doctor was a mugger with a gun and not just an aging asshole with shitty breath and an even shittier bedside manner.
Then, suddenly, all the energy felt like it was draining out of him, and he had to sink back down into his chair. He looked at Maggie and said, “But we’re goin’ on vacation.”
Maggie sighed. “We are going on vacation. But it’ll be our last, so let’s enjoy it, okay?”
And they had, mostly. Maggie had, anyhow. For Doug, it was hard not to see every little thing—every lobster dinner they ordered, every crabbing trip, every sunset sail out on the bay—as grim and full of meaning, the kind of thing Daphne would call “existential,” but Doug would never say himself, since it was the kind of word he sort of understood but never felt smart enough to use in real life.
And Maggie made it worse. She spent the summer with a weird smile on her face—beatific, he thought the word was, all blissful and superior like an angel or one of those flat-looking paintings of saints you see in those old Orthodox churches or whatnot. He almost felt like she was making fun of him, for trying so hard to make her last days special.
She refused to let him tell Mason what was happening.
“It’ll just crush the poor boy,” she said.
“He’ll be crushed even worse when I gotta call him and tell him ya ain’t around no more.”
She had just shrugged and gone back to staring out the window of the beach house at the white foam on the breaking waves. Doug’s own wave, one of resentment, rushed through him. It was just like Maggie to take the easy way out and leave him to clean up the mess. Of course she didn’t want to tell Mason she was dying. Why should she ever be the bad guy? All these years, since he and Maggie had gone through their separation and reunion, Mason had treated Doug like a bad smell, like the man who had left Maggie and then had come crawling back. And now Maggie was keeping up the illusion.
But what could Doug do? You made sacrifices for the people you loved, even long after you weren’t totally sure you even loved them anymore.
“Whatever you want, Mags.”
He’d kept repeating that line, like one of them hippie mantras, through the summer, as Maggie said good-bye to her favorite places and foods, and forced him to tag along. There were days when he felt like the third wheel, like Maggie was really out on a date with the fried shrimp platter or the shrimp fra diavolo at Marco Polo’s.
“My last margarita,” she’d told him one night in August, on the patio of the River and Rail Mexican restaurant in Cranford, where all the cool young professional kids liked to hang out, making Doug feel fat and old and chronically unhip.
“Mags—”
“Don’t say it’s not. It is, and I’m okay with that, so you should be, too.”
It was the same old story: Doug had felt a feeling of his own and Maggie insisted on telling him what he should be feeling instead. Part of him wanted to smack her, to remind her that (as much as she’d always tried to ignore it) he was a whole other human being and had a right to his own thoughts and ideas. But then he remembered that people who were dying kind of deserved to get what they wanted.
He just had to squash down the little nagging voice that kept reminding him that all people were, technically, dying. It wasn’t just Maggie.
“Whatever you say, Mags,” he had told her.
He’d said it again, at the end of the summer when they came home from the beach house and Maggie was hardly more than a skeleton despite a month of eating all her favorite foods. Truth was, Doug had to admit, she’d mostly just ordered her favorite foods, and left the eating to him.
And he’d said it again when they checked into a dreary pink room with seashell wallpaper at the hospice and Maggie still refused to let him call Mason to come and see her.
“Let him remember me the way I was,” she said.
Doug had opened his mouth to argue and realized (as he’d done so many times over the years) that there was no arguing with Maggie. She was right all the time—whether she was actually right or not.
“Whatever you say, Mags.”
Maggie made a face and turned away, staring at the TV screen even though the set wasn’t on.
Doug got out of the chair he’d been sitting in, sat on the edge of her bed, and wrapped his hands around hers.
“Babe, don’t do this,” he said. “You’re just scared, and I get that. Anybody’d be. Eff, I’m scared, too. But the doctors know what they’re doin’ and we just gotta trust in ’em. And, well, God, I guess.”
She let out a huffy-sounding laugh. “Don’t talk about God, not you, the one who won’t even come with us to church on Sundays.”
He opened his mouth to argue, to say he was supposed to be Catholic and had no business in the Lutheran church she dropped Mason off to (and then went for coffee on her own; the kid had told Doug once that Maggie hadn’t sat through a service in years). But some things, he realized, never changed. In Maggie’s head, Doug was the bad guy and she was the martyr, and it wasn’t worth fighting about.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s leave God outta this, if you want. But, Mags, c’mon. You know I love you, and I’m trying my best to help out.”
She sighed. “Well, it’s not working. Look, why don’t you go get Mason? Grab a bite. I’ll be here forever, so there’s no sense waiting around.”
He hated his stomach for growling at the mention of food. He’d been trying so hard to be the good husband.
“Nah, I’m good. My place is here.”
She turned and looked him dead in the eyes. “What I’m trying to tell you is, I want to be alone.”
A lump formed in his throat and he fought to swallow it down so he wouldn’t burst out crying. As much as Maggie had always been a difficult chick, as tough as their marriage could be, it’d never occurred to him that she might not actually love him.
He’d thought he was the only one in their marriage who wasn’t in love.
He got the lump down and stood up. “Okay, Mags. Whatever you want, you got it. But I ain’t leavin’, okay? I’ll be here, cafeteria, waiting room, the bench out front. Whatever. Text me if you change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
He’d been hit—punched in the nose—once, back in junior high, and Maggie’s statement hurt worse.
He went to the door, stopped, and turned to say. “Good lord, Mags. Whatever you’re feelin’ now, I know it’s just the fear talkin’. But you have a choice here. This doesn’t have to be the end. Fight, won’t ya? Just fight. You’ll come through this and everything'll be just fine.”
He had left before she could argue against him . . . because he knew, deep down, she would win.
And she did. Two days later, she was gone.
Daphne
April 2014
Spring was in the air—at least, that was the tired old cliché that popped into Daphne’s head as she sneaked into the salon through the back entrance that morning.
It felt like yesterday she had gone to bed at the end of the day to a gray world encased in ice, and somehow she’d awakened this morning in the Garden of Eden, with robins chirping, flowers popping up in her garden, and blossoms on every tree in town—pink, white, yellow, green. She felt like she’d slept too long and missed it all, but even if her head was misty and almost hung over, she felt that tingle of excitement in her belly: The winter was finally over.
The thing was, she didn’t just mean the winter season was over. It felt as if her whole outlook and psyche were coming out of a deep freeze.
All of a sudden, anything was possible.
And it was all because of a book she had finished reading last night, some new self-help thing about not letting other people’s dramas drag you down. She had picked it up on a whim—not really thinking of herself as the type to need a self-help book, but for some reason, it had spoken to her. And now she was ready to live it: She wasn’t going to allow other people’s nonsense to ruin her mood, or her life in general. Nothing was going to spoil her day: not Carla’s sniping or her clients’ delusions about their beauty or even her own failures to ever create the kind of life she had expected. She was not going to give a crap about any of it, and maybe, for once, she was going to be happy.
Or maybe she was just drunk on sunshine. It happened at least once each year, when the world briefly looked friendlier than it really was and she was able to (briefly) let herself believe things were finally going to be okay.
So be it, she told herself. She was feeling optimistic. It was the kind of day where you could almost forget that your whole life was a disaster and believe anything was possible. And besides, Doug was coming in for his perm today.
It was Doug’s first appointment of the year, and Daphne had to admit that their past several perms—ever since the whole “Maggie is dead” revelation—had felt strained, awkward, though she couldn’t have put her finger on the reason. She was surprised at how hard she had taken the news of Doug’s wife’s passing—much harder than she would have expected, given that she had never even met the woman. If she was being entirely honest, she had gone home that night and cried, almost as much as when her own parents had passed away. But she had gotten up the next day feeling steady and stoic (if still a touch weepy—something she noticed mainly when her little dog climbed up beside her and licked her nose, which made her burst into tears all over again).
The news about Maggie had changed her—that was the point. Over the course of the winter, and especially on New Year’s Eve, she had felt a peculiar, fluttery sensation in her stomach that left her body feeling weaker than normal, almost drained, almost (dare she say it?) more “mortal” than usual. Most of the time, like every other person on Earth, Daphne was able to go about her daily business without thinking (too much) about the inevitability of death. Knowing that Maggie was dead—even if they’d never met, even if the woman had been little more than a topic of gossip to Daphne for all these years—served as a stark reminder that death could, would, come for Daphne sooner or later, too.
She shuddered to think of it. And she wouldn’t think about it. Not today. Today was going to be a good day. She’d been waiting for a decent one for much too long, and she wasn’t going to let it slip away.
“There’s my buddy!” Doug’s voice boomed across the salon, and for a second, Daphne thought she saw the hairspray bottles on Carla’s station rattle at the sound. If only a few had fallen . . .
“Good to see you, amico caro,” Daphne said, reaching up on tiptoes to kiss Doug’s cheek. “Come stai?”
“È un giorno bellisimo, no?”
“Sì, sì,” Daphne said. “But go get washed. I want to get started. We can bullshit in other languages while I roll your head.”
She almost offered to wash his hair herself, but they had a new girl training, and the poor kid had to learn sometime. Besides, you don’t get an older man in the salon every day. Best to get the girl over any discomfort she might be feeling. At this rate, Doug would keep coming in for the rest of his life (thank the gods). Daphne admitted there were times guilt got the best of her, when she almost broke down and told Doug the truth: that the perm look had been passé when it was fresh, and now, over thirty years later, it was pretty much a train wreck. Then she remembered what would happen if she did that: Doug would stop coming in and would just get a trim at the nine-dollars-a-cut barber like every other guy. She couldn’t allow that—not the loss of a client, but the loss of Doug from her life. Maybe it was selfish, but she couldn’t feel all that guilty about not wanting to lose the only person who’d ever been really supportive of her all these years. So, she had kept her mouth shut all this time. And she’d continue to do so today. She was feeling too good to do anything that might ever lead to sadness.
Doug settled into her chair and grinned. “Ya look like one of them cats—the ones that ate the canary. That’s a sayin’, ain’t it?”
“Indeed it is. And you’re rather perceptive. I do feel pretty good today.”
He squinted at her. “Let me guess. New boyfriend? Nah, that ain’t it. Your dog win a ribbon at the Purina dog chow show or somethin’? Okay, I give up. Tell me.”
“It’s nothing specific,” she said. “Maybe it’s just a touch of spring fever.”
“Be grateful ya ain’t got allergies. Otherwise, you’d be singin’ a different tune, girlfriend.”
“I’m just happy,” she said. “Ever have one of those days where you just wake up and the world seems bright and shiny?”
“Damn straight, I do, ’specially on days when I get to come in here and hang out with you.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, my friend.”
“Wow, you are in a good mood. Ain’t sure I ever saw you smile this much. Got any of them happy pills to share?”
“I don’t know what it is,” she said. “I feel giddy. Even the bitches around here aren’t spoiling my day, for a change.”
“I gotta know, though. If it ain’t a new man, it can’t just be the weather. This ain’t even the first nice day we had this year.”
“I know. It’s puzzling. It’s like I woke up this morning young again.”
“Aw, c’mon, Daph. You ain’t old.”
“All evidence to the contrary. But no, I’m not. I mean, sure, I have to accept that certain things have passed me by, like having kids, for example—”
“Hey, now, ya got plenty of time,” Doug said.
“Um, no, I don’t. Perhaps you’re unclear on the biological facts of human reproduction, or you’re forgetting I’m a woman and not a man, Charlie Chaplin.”
“I didn’t think you were all that big on kids anyhow.”
“I’m not, and it’s just as well. My point is, a week ago, I probably would have burst into tears thinking about the finality of my biological clock being run out, but today, all I can see is the bright side, like how much freedom I get to enjoy because I never got tied down to children. Of course, I do have the dog, and unlike a human baby, he’ll always need help with his bathroom functions and so forth, so maybe a kid would have been easier. . . .”
“Yeah, I s’pose pets are tough. They keep bitin’ long past preschool age. Course, my own kid bites in his own way. Guess they all do.”
“My point is, all of a sudden, I don’t care about any of the nonsense that normally operates somewhere inside me, functioning as some type of low-level, never-ending depression. Today, it’s gone and I just feel happy.”
“Ya get one of them lobotomies overnight or somethin’? Or did ya just start drinking heavily? Whatever it is, sign me up for some of the same.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is your appointment. We should be talking about you. Are you happy?”
He tilted his head like he was thinking hard—too hard—about the question. Then he said, “Yeah, Daph, I think I am. Not as happy as you, maybe, but happy enough.”
“Uh-uh. No such thing as ‘happy enough.’ I just figured that out this morning, but it’s the unmistakable truth. So, tell me for real: Are you happy?”
He shrugged. “What’s happy? Eff. I mean, shit. Keep forgettin’ I’m allowed to swear these days. Thing is, it ain’t been an easy coupla years, after Mags and all. And with Mason barely talkin’ to me.”
“You have been talking to him, though? After everything? I mean, I understand he’s a grown adult now, but you’re still his father, and he still needs you. Or so they say.”
“I do what he lets me. I call him here and there, but mostly he hangs up on me. These days, I keep it to the big days, like say, Christmas mornin’ to say merry, merry and all that stuff. But that’s the thing. Last Christmas, some girl answered his phone, put him on before he realized it was dear ole dad. So, I at least got a chance to say how are ya before he hung up on me.”
“Nothing like progress. Who was the girl?”
“Hell if I know. Gotta say, though—it’s a relief. Always worried the kid might be a gay.”
“A gay? What century are you living in, Doug? Silly question, I suppose. You are here getting a perm.”
“If it ain’t broke . . .”
“Let’s agree to disagree on that one. But seriously, back to the topic at hand: happiness.”
“I’m as happy as a guy in my shoes can hope to be. Nah, more’n that. I’m actually pretty content these days. I’m back to feeling almost as free as I did during those days when Mags and I separated.”
“And how free did you feel then?”
“Like I could do anything I felt like. Don’t make that face. Ya know I ain’t talkin’ about chicks and whatnot. I just mean, I can cook up somethin’ fulla cheese and fat if I get the urge. Or try a new restaurant—if I can find a buddy to go along with me, that is. Ain’t much fun eatin’ a fancy meal all on your own. The waiters look at ya with too much pity.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “I can’t remember the last time I had a meal in a real restaurant, with actual cloth napkins. It’s too humiliating to sit there by myself, with a book, like the old maid I am.”
“Aw, now, Daph, ya ain’t—”
“Honesty, my friend. We’ve always told each other the truth, haven’t we? And we both know perfectly well that I am, indeed, an old maid. But here’s the thing: I don’t mind it. I read this book about not letting the crap in life get you down, and since then, I’ve been embracing the shithole my life seems to be. It’s like, once you know things aren’t ideal, you can kind of overlook the lousy parts and enjoy the good parts, if and when they come along.”
“You gotta tell me the name of that book. Ya ain’t never steered me wrong before.”
She had to smile. “I’m like your Henry Higgins.”
“Never did manage to see that show, but I did read the play.”
“Pygmalion? Seriously?”
“What? I ain’t a complete moron, am I? Ya set a good example for me all these years. I been learnin’.”
She sighed. It had been a long time since she’d felt like she was learning anything. As good as she felt today, there was a twinge of sadness at all this talk of self-improvement. She missed it—even if nothing she tried ever seemed to change her life in any appreciable way.
“What’s that look for?” Doug asked. “Ya suddenly got all cloudy.”
She shook her head. “I’m fine. Just thinking it’s been a while since I read a book that wasn’t just popular trash or took a serious class or something. I haven’t even been practicing my languages every day like I used to.”
“I was thinkin’ the same thing. In fact, I was plannin’ on lookin’ at the online course catalog for the continuing ed at the community college this week. Summer classes oughta be startin’ in another month or two. There’s gotta be something worth signin’ up for. Ya ought take a look, too.”
She pictured herself in a classroom with her brand-new, fresh-smelling textbook on the student desk in front of her, and the butterflies of happiness she’d had inside all morning suddenly returned to her gut.
“That sounds like a good idea. Now, let’s get back to this perm, huh?”
Doug
June 2014
It took him twenty minutes to find a parking spot and he was glad he’d been so nervous that he’d left himself half an hour to spare. Every lot at this effing community college was marked “No parking except for teachers” or “deliveries” or “space aliens.” Where were the regular old normal folks—the ones who were actually paying tuition to take the classes and keeping the effing place in business—supposed to park?
It felt like a bad omen. He’d managed to make it almost forty-five years, since his own skin-of-the-teeth high school graduation, without setting foot in a classroom. What in the name of all that’s holy had made him decide to go back now? And for a cooking class? Just because Maggie was gone didn’t mean he suddenly needed to be Emeril Lagasse, or whoever was famous for cooking these days. Weren’t there enough choices in the frozen food aisle at the supermarket? If you got down to it, it was just plain silly for a grown man (okay, maybe more than grown, he admitted) to want to learn to cook for himself. He’d done all right for himself all these years—better in the kitchen than Maggie, anyways.
But when the course catalog came in the mail and he had flipped through it, something about the class—”World Cuisines”—had made him sign up.
It was probably stupid, he told himself. But it didn’t have to be a total waste of time. He’d go this one time. That’s it. If the class sucked, he didn’t ever have to come back (or try to find a parking spot at this crazy place). Sure, he’d be out almost two hundred bucks, but he’d survive. And he couldn’t ignore the feeling that there was some reason he was supposed to be here.
He tugged open the classroom door and told himself, this is it—last chance saloon—and as he shuffled inside, he spotted it, there at the first table right at the front of the room, the reason he’d been drawn here.
It was Daphne.
He couldn’t have told you what thoughts were swirling through his mind as he approached her because they weren’t thoughts so much as emotions: twisty, swirling feelings all rushing up at him like a wave at the beach when you’re body surfing and get knocked under, losing your breath and worrying, just for a second, that you might not be able to break back up through to the surface again.
He wasn’t thinking, not at all, as he dropped down on one knee before her, took her hand in his, and said it:
“Marry me.”
As the words came out of his mouth, he realized they were the first ones he had ever spoken to her outside the walls of Robert’s Hairdressers. He’d never talked to her, never seen her, never . . . done anything else with her except there, inside the beauty parlor. And still, he was surer about this than he’d ever been about anything in his whole life.
She gave him that little smirk, with one of her eyebrows raised just a tiny bit higher than the other, like the whole world was amusing, or maybe a little bit stupid. She tilted her head, broke into a grin, and said, “What took you so long to ask?”
“Is that a yes?” Doug asked. “You’re really sayin’ yes?”
“On one condition.”
“Name it.”
“You’ve got to start going to somebody else for your damn perm.”
Without even a response, he pulled out his phone, still there on one knee, and dialed another salon, in the next town over, to make himself an appointment. When that was done, he punched off the phone, slipped it back in his pocket, and took Daphne’s hand.
“Done.”
She leaned down to kiss him, but stopped just shy of his lips. “On second thought, maybe it’s time to stop with the perms completely.”
He shrugged, retrieved the phone, and hit redial.
“Shades Salon. This is Michelle. How may I help you?”
“Yeah, hi, I just called to make an appointment for a perm. I’m gonna need to go ahead and cancel that, if ya don’t mind.”
He gave Daphne a wink, ended the call, and moved in for the kiss he’d been waiting for all these years.
