“Well, I don’t want to go too radical,” Flo says.
“Okay.”
“Maybe just a little streak of blue?”
“Sure. Over the temples?”
“Maybe just over one?”
“Of course. Let me show you the shades we have.” She brings over a little card with what looks like tassels of hair. Flo points to a turquoise color and Renee says, “Perfect. Now, should we give you a little trim, too?” She runs her fingers through Flo’s hair like itneedsa cut.
“I guess so,” Flo says. “Not too much.”
“Not too much,” Renee says. She takes out her scissors and snip, snip, snip, all of a sudden Flo looks a little better. Then Renee goes to mix the color, and now Flo is excited. She really is. She bets when she goes home she’ll go straight to her mirror even though she’s already looking into a big, big mirror.
Before she leaves the salon, Flo tips everyone, including the hair washer, who is sitting in back eating her lunch and talking very loudly on the phone. “I KNOW,” she’s saying. “RIGHT???” When she looks up and sees Flo standing there holding out a ten-dollar bill, she screams. She does, she screams a happy little scream, and Flo thinks, Well that was worthtwentydollars!
When Flo pays her bill, Binh says, “You live near?”
“Yes,” Flo says. “Two blocks away.”
“I’ll give you a ride,” Binh says. “I have to go to the bank. Come with me to the parking lot, out back.”
“Oh, I can walk home,” Flo says, and Binh says, “No, I think maybe you should ride with me,” and so Flo does.
When she gets home, she realizes she’s awfully tired. But she takes the time to look at herself in her bathroommirror, the nice haircut and the sweet little streak of blue, a little piece of sky, a little piece of heaven right there. She lies down for a nap but first slips off her shoes and socks to look at her wondrous pedicure. There it is. It’s hard to see, but it’s there. So much of life is like that.
In a little blue cardboard suitcase in the basement, I got something stored that might surprise you. It is the teddy bear I got for Christmas when I was five years old and there he still is. I named him Paddle and I remember I deliberated for a long time about whether I should call him Piddle or Paddle. That seems strange even to me now, but I guess I had my reasons. I took off his blue ribbon and gave him a sheriff’s badge I got as a prize in a box of cereal. I’ve kept him all these years. I guess he looks a sight now but there have been times in my life when I needed him, like when I had a severe flu one year when I was in my sixties, and do you know I really thought I might die. And I told Terrence, too, I said, Terrence I believe I am going to die. I believe I am dying. I was wondering if we should call and get me some extreme unction. And Terrence was sitting on the bed beside me and he said hush now, don’t you ever say such a thing, and his eyes got wet. He said you wait right there and he disappeared for a while and when he came back to my bedside he had Paddle. I laughed but I took that old bear and held him smack up against my chest and do you know pretty soon after that I started to feel better.
I used that bear when Terrence died too, and it’s a wonder Paddle didn’t float away on that occasion when I got him so wet with tears. But he was a comfort always.
I know he’ll get tossed, least I sure think so, and if I came upon him unknowing, why I’d toss him too. That bearreminded me about the early days of AIDS when it was still called the Gay Plague, and those young men dying and dying and nobody knowing at that time what to do and Tommy Finton (you remember him, he was your age and a big high school football star) came on home to his parents’ house to die and I heard all he wanted was cream of tomato soup and the bear he had when he was a child. Marilee Zimmerman lived next door and she told me she visited him and she said that bear was in the crook of his arm the whole time and it moved her so. I guess that’s why I’m telling you about my bear now, you might could give him a fond gaze before he’s tossed. I would ask that you leave him in his little suitcase where he has lived all these years, I don’t like to think of coffee grounds or the like being dumped on him. You know Terrence once read me out a newspaper article about some gay men who wanted to come home to die and their families didn’t want them. I gasped when I heard that, I like to fell out of my chair. That can’t be true, I said, and Terrence nodded somber. I looked away from him and stared out across the kitchen and I was so mad that that’s all I could do was sit and stare.
Also in the basement, in a Red Owl grocery bag, you’ll find the clothes I made for your walking doll. Patti Playpal, I believe she was named, but you called her Vivien Leigh, which I think was because when you asked me who my favorite movie star was I told you Vivien Leigh. You were so tickled to have those clothes for Vivien, nighties where I smocked the bodice, and two pairs of pedal pushers, a black silk evening gown, and a pleated skirt with a black leather belt that Terrence made in his basement workshop. “Is this okay?” he asked when he held it up to show me, and he actually seemed worried like it wouldbe going on a Paris runway. But it was just a perfect little belt with a buckle and little grommets and I liked it so much I wished I could wear it. Anyhow, you just loved everything. I made clothes for that doll until suddenly you were done with her and one day you came over and rang my doorbell and when I answered you handed me a paper bag and said, Here, I’m done with these but my mom said I can’t throw them away so I’m giving them back to you.
I confess my feelings were a bit hurt but that’s the way things go, everything on Earth is ever changing. I sat on the sofa after you left and I looked at everything I had made and then I put the bag in the basement thinking I’d donate the doll clothes somewhere but I never did. I guess I should have, but it was like I was saving part of you as a little girl.
My friend Claudia Thompson had a big metal trunk that was her husband’s from when he was in the Army and it was nigh about stuffed with her children’s things and then her grandchildren’s—drawings, handprints in clay, Christmas cards with Santa’s beard made with cotton balls. She showed me once and I said what are you going to do with all that and she said oh hell, I don’t know. I just like to come and sit by it sometimes and rifle through. I think about their little hands, and sometimes I just about come to tears and so then I have to think about how sometimes they were little shits, too.
Say did I ever tell you that one time not long before she died Claudia couldn’t get out of her tub and she had to call the fire department—thank God she’d brought her cell phone in with her—and they came and yanked her out. They had to bust open the door and she yelled at them NOW BEFORE YOU COME IN HERE YOU GO AND GET MY ROBE OFF MYBED AND WHEN YOU COME IN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES UNTIL YOU CAN THROW IT OVER ME. And they did it. I never did meet a fireman wasn’t an awful nice person. They all had a good laugh after Claudia got out safe and sound and she sent them off with some molasses cookies she’d just made.
I wonder why you don’t read stories like that in the newspaper rather than the ones make you practically have a heart attack of sorrow.
I got one more thing to tell you about before I’m off to bed even though I’m not much tired. And that is a silver mirror I keep on my dresser. If you turn it over, you’ll see there’s a little message taped to the top says,Don’t you dare.That message is one Terrence wrote to me after I’d been doing my usual complaining about getting old and ugly. I can’t hardly stand to look at myself in the mirror, I told Terrence one day, and he said don’t you talk that way. I spect I kind of frowned and he said don’t you know I love how you look now? Ho, I said, that’s because when you look at me you remember how I used to look. And he said, To be honest, I suppose there’s some of that. But I love how you look because all the years it took you to get those wrinkles you were with me and we were in love and we still are. Well, I said, you sure enough do look at pretty young things, and he said so do you! You look at pretty women more than most men, now why is that? I had to think about that and then I said, I guess I’m just plum mad at them. It felt kind of good to admitit.
“Well, Teresa, I justlovedmeeting your Jim,” Flo says. “And you are absolutely right, he is a very nice man. A wonderful man! I know you can see that plainly. And what I can see plainly is that he is in love with you.”
“I don’t know aboutthat,” Teresa says.
“Yes you do.”
“I think he was quite taken withyou,that blue streak in your hair and yourverycool nails!”
Flo grimaces. “Is it too much?”
“It’s wonderful! It’s fun!”
Flo crosses her arms and moves the rocker back and forth. The temperature has dropped and she’s cold, but she doesn’t want to go in yet. “Fetch me that afghan off the sofa inside, would you please, Teresa?”
