Catch 26 Read online

  “Nice hair. Not too thin, considering your age.” She heard the voice as if from a distance, and glancing up at the mirror, watched Randi watching herself as she combed her elderly client’s hair.

  Smooth, and smooth again. Silk. She drifted away to that painting.

  “This is a terrible cut for you, though, Mrs. Turner. Too severe. And aging, don’t you think?”

  Aging. Behind half-closed eyes, the child in Frannie suffered a hurt, and for a moment, she couldn’t reply.

  “So how would you like to look?” Randi asked.

  Her eyes flew open.

  How would she like to look?

  In the mirror, she compared their reflections. Above her own face … lined and pasty, framed by her sparse and badly dyed hair, Randi’s great gorgeousness glowed. It didn’t glow. It burned.

  This room, though. It was terribly bright, wasn’t it? Frannie looked down as, just off-center in her breast, she began to feel an alien something stir. Something she was terribly afraid of. It was only a kind of a … pang, at first. Then a bubble. Then a swelling of … oh God. Of yearning. It was yearning. She scrunched up her toes in her sneakers and reflexively smoothed her skirt to keep the intrusive thing down, and yet, panicky now, because she sensed it wouldn’t stay down, she distracted herself from the thing with a comma of hair on the floor’s clean white tiles: some little thing the broom had missed. And she’d opened her mouth to mention the hair, when she heard herself say, rather loud, in a voice that was nothing like her own, “I’d like to look young.”

  “Young?” Randi grinned brilliantly as Frannie looked into their suddenly blurred mirror-image.

  Oh God. Even her teeth were perfect.

  “You mean younger than you are, Mrs. Turner?”

  A balloon in her throat burst to flittered shreds and the terrible thing gushed out.

  “I’d like to look young. I’d like to look young like the girls outside. Like you. I’d like to, you know … have a figure again. And these liver spots gone. I’d like my hands not to have all these … veins.” She fought down a childlike urge to sit on her hands. “And nice teeth like yours, but all my own. I mean, yes, it would be wonderful to be beautiful, too.” She tried to smile. “But more than that, maybe, I’d like to be young like girls are today. To have a job. Be paid. Be … sure of myself. Empowered, that’s the word! And attractive to men again. Oh, attractive to men! Even to sleep with anyone I liked.” She reddened, but Randi, seemingly transfixed by her own reflection, hadn’t noticed. Which was fine. The last thing Frannie needed at this moment was to be looked at.

  “But almost more than that.” She fixed her eyes desperately on that curl, but nothing could stop her now. She was talking fast, too. To herself? To that spiral of hair? Certainly not to this fantastic creature behind her. And here it was, all in a rush … “I want more than anything in life, before I die, I want to find a man who’ll love me as much as I love him. Who’ll love me even more than I love him, perhaps. ” She lifted her head and found Randi’s sad eyes in the mirror now. Watching her.

  “And one other thing.” Her heart seemed a fist of loss and pain, her lips felt dry and numb. “I wanted – want – to have a child.”

  Omigod. Omigod. Despairingly, Frannie looked down at those ropy, capable, hands of hers, now clutching her skirt, now clutching her bulging thighs. Was this really her? Or was it some other her? And where was all this other stuff coming from? And in front of a stranger! Her face was all wet with saliva and tears. With both her hands she tried to rub it dry. She wanted to retch in shame.

  Randi, watching her in the mirror now, leaned down and cupped Frannie’s shoulders in her hands. Her touch was welcome, yet intrusive. Frannie tried not to shrink away.

  But Randi didn’t notice. Or noticed and didn’t care.

  “Would you like something to drink, Mrs. Turner?” she asked, concerned. “I hate to see you so upset.”

  Upset? That didn’t begin to describe all that Frannie was feeling, all that she’d vomited up. What she’d really like to drink wasn’t – well, it wasn’t likely to be in the icebox – no, the refrigerator – of The Hair House.

  “Yes, I would,” she said in a second voice that wasn’t her own – this one, quavery and elderly— a voice that seemed sad in this all-too-intimate space. She swiped at the last of her tears and straightened, clearing her throat and attempting a laugh. “I’d love a vodka and tonic.”

  Randi winked conspiratorially, then knelt in a singularly graceful motion and opened a cabinet door beneath the counter.

  “Don’t tell them outside.” She giggled, brushing away her brazen hair. “I happen to have exactly that. Right here.”

  Triumphantly, she rose and placed a sparkling cut-glass tumbler and an icy bottle of Grey Goose on the marble countertop. The two clinked slightly, and were followed shortly by a small bottle of tonic and a bright wedge of lime. Randi turned to pour the syrupy liquor into the tumbler, then squeezed the lime between finger and thumb and added the tonic. She watched as Frannie shakily took the drink, and then she spoke in a voice that sounded huskier than before.

  “I actually do understand, Mrs. Turner. And I’ve been studying you since you first walked in and, you know, I can help you so much more than you can imagine. Because I agree: you could do with a real change. Not precisely a makeover, though. And definitely not your conventional makeover. That’s so hackneyed, like the type of thing they do on reality shows, you know? And not my style, in any case. What I think you really need is … a kind of vacation from yourself.”

  Frannie had been sipping at her vodka. It was much too strong and far too early in the day, but it was helping.

  “Yes, I might have several interesting things in mind for you, Mrs. Turner. But this morning – for now – let’s just begin with the hair.” In the mirror, Frannie saw Randi approach the chair again, the rattail comb in hand. She was smiling affectionately at Frannie’s reflection as she resumed her hypnotic combing. “Let’s just start with this hair.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Almost three exhausting and thrilling hours later, a buoyant Frannie Turner, clasping her woolen lapels as she leaned across the car seat, checked her image in the rearview mirror one more time. Her hair was so chic, with all these subtle auburn highlights. It felt all springy and soft and … feminine, too. She loved this hair.

  What would Stanley say?

  Well, if he didn’t like it, she just wouldn’t care. Anyway, Stanley hated change in general: computers, cell phones, new people, haircuts.

  She clutched the icy wheel. And if her hair upset him, what, for God’s sake, would he say when he heard about the date she’d made to meet Randi for a drink tonight at the Admiral Casino? Alone?

  Oh God. An evening out that didn’t include Stanley was as much unlike her as … this wonderful hair. But Randi had incredibly and generously offered to divulge to Frannie what she called her private arsenal of “age-defying secrets.” And since she was leaving St. Louis the following morning, she’d suggested they meet tonight.

  Frannie’s hands were cold. Pulling on her brown-leather gloves, she started up the car, but sat for a minute more, the engine idling. She’d let it warm up while she thought about how to handle this. On the pretext of fixing her scarf, she checked the mirror once again. She’d never be a Randi, but right this minute, she thought she looked, well – pretty great.

  Frannie tapped at the radio buttons with fingers that were warming up at last. She’d figure it out on the way home. But right now, she was feeling like a lot of Elvis. Or the Stones.

  As she entered the house, she could hear Stanley putting something in the dishwasher and she felt the familiar dull flutter behind her breastbone. She could tell him that Arlene and Marge wanted to meet her tonight to, what? Watch an awards show? That might be good. He’d be disdainful, but he’d find less fault with some “girl thing” than he would with her going to the Admiral, of all places. Would a benefit committee meeting be better? Or … what? The me
eting with Randi felt crucial.

  He’d heard the closet door close and, frowning, limped out of the kitchen.

  “My God, what have you done to yourself?”

  “I thought you’d like it, Stanley,” she replied, self-consciously reaching up to touch her hair and pausing at her earring. Frannie managed a grin. “What do you think? All the girls in the beauty shop said they thought I looked terrific.”

  “Well, what would you expect them to say?” He turned away, and stiffly she followed him back to the kitchen, where he busied himself with the glasses in the dishwasher.

  “You know they’re there to sell you expensive haircuts, don’t you? I mean your hair looks okay, I guess, but have you ever heard anyone say to someone leaving a beauty shop that they looked worse than when they walked in? They’re employees there, aren’t they?”

  Why did he have to prick her every balloon? Make her feel ignorant? Was it unintentional, or was it really about him and her? Maybe he just needed to show her, once again, how smart he was. Because it was important to Stanley to be smart, although Frannie knew he was. He’d graduated eleventh in his class at dental school.

  “Well, what is it you don’t like about it, Stanley?”

  She primped a tiny bit but he wouldn’t look her way.

  “It was better the old way. You know I always like things the old way.” Delighted with his own eccentricity, he smiled a lovely smile and readjusted a tumbler. When he smiled like that, she sometimes remembered how much she’d once loved him.

  “Anyhow, you trying to look younger or something? We’re neither of us ever going to be that again. You’re not some kid, you know.”

  With one unpleasantly damp hand, he pulled her own away from the earring her fingers had stuck on and pulled her into the light. “See those?” His finger tapped what she knew were the liver spots on her face. “And these?” He pointed to the backs of her hands. “You can’t change what you’ve become. Just accept it. Like I do.” He shut the dishwasher hard and yawned. “And that reminds me, Helen Maynard called.”

  That reminded him?

  “She said not to let you forget that tonight is their party for Norman’s nephew and that she called you about it a month ago and you said we’d come. Have we met him?”

  Norman’s nephew. A low bell chimed.

  “Oh, you remember, Stanley. He’s the one that’s been staying with them while he’s in law school. And no, we’ve never met him.”

  He was about to begin the familiar litany about dumb parties and people they didn’t know, but Frannie broke in. “You know, I really don’t want to go tonight either.”

  He turned to her, surprised.

  “Well, we’d better. What do you want me to do? Go alone? And anyhow,” he squeezed some hand sanitizer onto his palms and rubbed them together, massaging his fingers and his thumbs “the way Helen sounded on the phone, I got the feeling that maybe a lot of other people have decided not to go. She said, quote unquote, that she needs us. Though what do a bunch of seniors have to say to a law-school student, anyhow?”

  “So she’s counting on us?”

  “It sounded like it. And anyway, what? You have something better to do?”

  His grimace bared his yellowed teeth. They were all his own. He was so proud of that.

  Frannie didn’t answer for a minute. He waited.

  “All right,” she said, with aching reluctance. “Let me make a phone call. Then I’ll start getting myself together.”

  Dragging her handbag off the little hall table, she tucked it under her arm, shut the bedroom door and lowered herself awkwardly into the low Victorian slipper chair. On her dresser, among the photos of Stanley on his boat and Stanley with his golf foursome and Frannie with her mom, was that old, old picture of the two of them, taken a day or so after they got engaged.

  Frannie closed her eyes. Randi’s number was right in this purse in her lap.

  She didn’t want to make this call.

  She opened her eyes to those photos.

  He’d been so handsome then, Stanley. She’d almost forgotten. Not handsome, exactly, but cute. At least, that’s what her friends had said: “cute.” He’d been taller, of course – maybe a couple of inches – and he’d had that wet-sand blonde hair (so soft, it might have been a girl’s) and she’d liked the way it grew on the back of his neck. In certain lights, Stanley’s chin had the shadow of a cleft – like Cary Grant’s. Plus, there was a scatter of freckles on his nose that were cute, definitely cute. He’d seemed sexy and unique back then. And so mature. She’d loved the way he dressed: Harris-tweed jackets; blue Oxford-cloth button-down shirts slightly chewed at the collar, yet neat; rep ties; wrinkled khakis. And when, among summer’s long shadows, they’d French-kissed on the lawn behind her grandparents’ house in Clayton, he’d seemed so gentle, so easy to be with, so adult, and yet so interestingly remote in what she took to be a mature and manly way. Okay, a little insecure every now and then – she remembered noticing that – but unquestionably sophisticated. He’d given her a book about Norman Rockwell. He could whistle Carmen. She was sure he knew it all.

  Although she knew a little bit as well.

  She’d never wanted Stanley to find out, naturally, or to think she was “fast”, but Frances Elizabeth Kaye had, in fact, gone all the way with Arthur, her previous boyfriend. She hadn’t told her friends, or her mother, God forbid, or anyone else at all. Ever. Which may have been why, in her freshly unvirginal heart, her transgression had oppressed her so. And festered. And it was certainly why, if she hoped to save herself from slut-dom – if she hoped to marry and have children and be good – Stanley Turner looked like It.

  He was responsible and safe. They both liked barbecue. And Dylan. And crucially, he’d told her that he loved her. Which was why, when he’d proposed after two years of going steady, Frannie, faux-reluctantly, had agreed to have sex before marriage with him. Mainly because Stanley was concerned about whether he would fit or not, an issue that seemed to consume him.

  He did, of course.

  But Frannie could have told him he would.

  She’d thought they’d have babies right away. She was delighted to learn he wanted them too.

  But after they’d been married for a year or so and nothing had happened, Frannie grew anxious – a little. She’d always assumed she’d be one of those girls who got pregnant right away. Otherwise, why all those warnings about premarital sex?

  It was on their third anniversary that Frannie showed him her hidden stash of having-a-baby books, and the carefully kept ovulation calendar. He was surprised, pleased, and enthusiastic.

  But the baby didn’t come.

  They tried for months, and then for years. To the point of arguments, silences and eventually – to the grueling rounds of doctors, recommended positions, blood tests, to the rabbits that didn’t die. And every now and then, in those first years, sitting side by side on the sofa watching sitcoms with kids, or in bed after sex, Frannie and Stanley would cry.

  So she started on hormone pills. The latest thing.

  Seven, twelve years went by and she didn’t conceive. Despondent, now, they made the trip to the office of the famous Chicago gynecologist who, having subjected her to a weeks-long sequence of questionnaires, blood tests, x-rays, and painful exams (slumped in her slipper chair, Frannie caught her breath) he’d announced she could never have children.

  Frannie hauled herself up out of the chair and leaned against the wall beside her “Primavera”.

  After that, Stanley had changed.

  He went to bed early.

  But she was sorry, she’d said.

  Rolled over when she slipped in beside him.

  But she was sorry, she’d told him again.

  Avoided her goodnight kiss.

  Oh God, she was so sorry.

  He slept in the guestroom for a long time after that. Left the house without a goodbye. Picked at her about her clothes, her lateness, her smile. (Her smile!) And why hadn’t she filled
the gas tank? Did they really need another new painting? Wasn’t she supposed to walk the dog? And just what did she do all day?

  Early on, she’d thought he was having an affair with the hygienist. Gradually however, she understood he no longer liked her.

  So she’d asked.

  Once.

  They’d been driving home from a party at the Hargreaves’, the same party where a sweaty Peter Hargreaves had danced her into his mother-in-law’s empty bedroom and kissed her wetly, his mouth a wash of gin and weed. Where Frannie had shocked herself by kissing him back, pulling him to her, yanking at his belt.

  Peter had moved away from her a little, thrilled.

  “Do you want to?” he’d asked.

  Days later she thought that if he hadn’t asked.… if he hadn’t asked, it would have all gone well. Because she liked Peter. Liked his sweet-smelling pipe and his pocket watch. His seductive grin. If she’d been honest with herself – which she mostly tried to be – of all their male friends, he was the one she most often thought about in bed. Still, his question brought her up short.

  Adultery. Her?

  But that night at the party, her body burned for him, and moving to the open window, she slid its filmy curtains aside and leaned her elbows on the sill, pretending to look out, but really, offering Peter her, um … ass.

  If he comes over here now, if he touches me and, all right, even if he outright asks again, she told herself, I’ll do it.

  She heard the bedsprings sigh behind her.

  No! He’d just sat down!

  She turned to face his shadow on the bed.

  “So do you want to?” he asked huskily. “Tell me if you do. I’m right here – ready.” He’d unzipped his fly and although it was very dark, she was fairly sure he was waggling his penis at her.

  Why hadn’t he just “taken her”, the way they did in books? She’d been hoping to be taken in adultery.

  “Damn it, Peter. Why ask? Why make me say it? Why not just do it?”

  And all at once, she found the wine was wearing off, so that before he could zip his fly or open his mouth, she’d rushed past him, back to the party, panicky and ashamed.