Page 25 of SEAL'S Baby Surprise
“You know, if you’d waited just a little bit, I could’ve gone to the store and gotten some dye. We could have made you a strawberry blond or a brunette. Shoot, we could have dyed your head goth-girl black.”
He begins moving the clippers over my head. “But it’s okay. You’ll maybe look like a cancer victim for a while. But one thing about hair, the stuff grows.”
He makes one last pass with the clippers, and says, “There. That’s the best we can do until it grows out some.” He hands me a square shaving mirror out of his kit.
The mirror is so small, I can only see pieces of my face and hair at a time. I look like a concentration camp refugee.
My eyes are huge and blue. My scalp, where my hair used to be, is just as white as a super-fine sheet. Anyone can see my hair came off recently.
Besides, I look awful! Someone is making a whiny, keening noise, and I realize it’s me!
I don’t want to see anybody. I don’t want anybody to look at me! I run into the van, into my tiny alcove, draw the curtain, curl up on the narrow bed, and hide under the blanket.
12
AUSTIN
I standin front of the van door and try to wrap my head around what just happened. I’d already picked up on the idea that my Lady Mermaid might be a sandwich or two shy of a picnic.
Ark wouldn’t let her hurt herself, and I’d collected up all the sharp stuff I could think of and locked it in the gun safe.
What? Yeah, I’ve got a gun safe. I’ve got a hunting rifle and my granddad’s old pistol. Neither one of them qualifies as a weapon of mass destruction. I take them out to the range for target practice once in a while. I don’t even go hunting.
But, you know, sometimes it just pays to have a little something on hand. Just in case the world gets hit with an EMP or a zombie apocalypse. They’re both registered, and, since I have a kid, they stay locked up.
With Lee acting crazy, and the way she had been waving those scissors around, I just feel happier locking up all the knives, scissors, and even the nail clippers. It’s got a combo lock, and it’shidden. No, I ain’t gonna share where. What do you take me for? Some kind of dummy?
But now, with the immediate problems taken care of, I just stand there and shake for a minute. What kind of hell has my Lady Mermaid been through to come apart over her hair, of all things?
I’d done a little stint as a bouncer when I’d gotten back stateside. I’d quit when I couldn’t stand the state of the humanity that came into the bar at night.
It had been on the rough side of town, and a lot of the boys who had come in and gotten plastered were hoping to pour out some kind of dream life. But all they’d done was get in a little deeper.
After that, I’d kind of drifted around until I stopped over at a commune for a little while. They’d had a yoga teacher that knew her stuff, and a couple of licensed mental health counselors, and I’d begun to get my head together. But there were too many people, so I’d bought the van, fixed it up, and gone on the road.
They say just about every weirdo on the planet winds up in California. Or is that just a line from that movie about kids, native Americans, and buffalo? I should watch it again. It’s a good movie and had been part of my personal reconstruction. I’d watched it a lot while I’d been looking for Julia.
Speaking of whom…“Hey, Judy-Rudy,” I call out as my girl comes running toward me. She jumps into my arms. I swing her around and set her on her feet. “Want to go shopping?”
“Sure, Daddy. I need new shorts. Mine are too tight.”
“Guess I’ve been feeding you too good,” I say. “Want to go to the Dairy Palace for lunch?”
“You bet,” she says. “Can I get a coney dog?”
“Of course, you can,” I say.
As we walk toward the small restaurant, Julia asks, “Why isn’t Lee coming with us?”
“Lee’s not feeling good right now,” I say. “She decided she didn’t like pink hair, so she cut it all off. I think it surprised her, how it looks now. She’s hiding in her bed.”
“We should get her a wig,” Julia says. “That’s what the foster mom did for Charlotte when she had chemo. She had a regular wig for when she went to school or shopping. But she also had costume fantasy wigs. We had fun with them.”
“That’s a good idea,” I say. “Maybe we should get some scarves and veils, too.”
“I like that idea,” Julia says. “It can be like Halloween. Maybe even some masks?”
“I don’t know about that,” I say. “But we’ll see what the Goodwill has.”
