Page 45 of The Husband Diet
16
Hungry Eyes
Tonight was the school Thanksgiving play and both the kids were starring in it, Warren being the Indian chief and Maddy a devoted pilgrim. Despite my courtesy car, Julian offered to drive us and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Not that I’d refused vehemently.
So, I was going to see him again.
Another woman’s heart would flutter with sheer joy at the thought, but my insides squished and contracted like it was trying to free itself from a vise. The last time I’d felt like this had been over Tony Esposito, whom I loved with a passion all through junior high.
As I always planned everything to death, there was one last thing that I still absolutely needed to do before tonight.
‘Lucy, do me a miracle,’ I pleaded as I sank into a chair at Lucy’s Hair Salon.
This was maybe the second time I’d been here in many, many years. My hair grows slowly and it comes out in curls, which I’ve been pulling back into a tight bun that hurt my face for years. I’m convinced it really has acted like a face lift. If only I could do that to the rest of my body.
Lucy combed back my wet hair, talking to my reflection in the mirror. ‘What’ll it be?’
I sighed. ‘I don’t know. Chop it all off, but don’t make me look like an idiot. I have no time to do my hair in the mornings – or on weekends, for that matter.’
When I let it down at the weekends, my hair, finally free, didn’t know which way to turn, like prisoners who feel out of place in society once they get out after forty years. ‘Or just shave me bald – I don’t care anymore. I give up.’
Lucy looked at me for a long minute and then sighed, shaking her head. ‘You know how many distress calls like this I get?’ she asked. ‘You’re just having a bad hair week, that’s all.’
‘More like a bad hairlife,’ I corrected as she ran her hands through my wet, shampooed, heavy mane.
‘Naw! Give me an hour and you’ll see! Now, what do you do for a living?’
Was she going to charge me according to my earnings? ‘I’m a hotel manager.’
‘Ah-ha,’ she exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at me. ‘So, you gotta look good always, and in no time, am I right?’
Was that not every woman’s dream? ‘Uh, yes.’
Now I remembered why, among other reasons – like never having the time between making paper dolls with Maddy or doing some baseball swings with Warren – I’d never returned to this place. Lucy was odd. And her assistants were two gossipers. They reminded me of my two youngest receptionists, Lesley and Lindsay – remember them? The ones who missed working in joints? These two were dead ringers for them. Every time their heads joined to exchange some information, Lucy whirled around and gave them a glare very similar to my hairy eyeball. It worked. They parted as if on fire and scrammed back to their stations, busying themselves with rinsing sinks and wiping seats.
She turned back to me and lifted a lock, examining it. ‘You never cut it, never style it. Why?’
‘No time,’ I replied, and she shook her own sleek head.
‘Your hair could be so much more beautiful and glossier with a haircut and a protein mask. And your face is so pretty. Why do you let yourself go like this?’ she asked as if talking to her best friend and not a customer she hardly ever saw. ‘Look at this skin – like a porcelain doll’s!’
Yeah, I thought to myself. A doll’s head on a stuffed elephant’s body. I used to do that to my toys when I was a kid – pull Barbie’s head off and stick it on another toy, possibly a fat animal. If I couldn’t be slim, then nor should she. Boy, did I come up with freaks of nature. And for punishment, now my head looked like itbelongedto my body. It served me right.
Lucy clipped and feathered, layered and pulled as I wondered what freak of nature I’d surface looking like. At this point, anything would be an improvement.
When I finally emerged from Lucy’s beauty salon, I didn’t recognize myself. I actually loved my hair – feathered but full and really glossy. It even made my face look slimmer, classier, as if I had it together and wasn’t a delusional maniac constantly searching perfection. If perfection existed, it was my hair tonight. I passed shop windows, barely recognizing myself as I admired the new me. I had to make a point of going out more often.
*
Paul came over that afternoon more dramatic than his usual dramatic self, and just in time to help me get dressed.
‘If this isn’t fate, I don’t know what is,’ he said out of the blue.
Fate? I wondered as Paul adjusted my new blue jersey wrap dress – the one that made me look 20 pounds slimmer. Could he be right? Could it be some mysterious galactic force that had brought Julian and me to the same spot? Could Julian really be interested in me as a woman? But then the usual pragmatic me took over.
‘It’s just a school play, not the royal wedding,’ I groaned, handing him the silver lace shawl Nonna had made me. ‘Ira can’t come and my car’s still at the mechanic’s (that much was true), so Julian offered to drive us.’ I never mentioned the courtesy car, which was sitting on the driveway in full splendor, with a green ‘you break it, we fix it’ logo along the sides.
Paul beamed at me as he did my make-up. I knew I hadn’t looked this good in a long time. Like hell I could have worn something like this a few months ago. My policy of not eating everything in sight and shaking my ass in tango classes was working nicely, because now I could actually get to the lesson in a vertical position, and I could finally catch Maddy as she shot across the back garden when before I’d only get a few meters in before clutching my spleen. Yes, definitely feeling fitter now.
