Dancing with Molly - Lena Horowitz Page 0,17

ate more bacon with Dad in silence, and tried to appear pleased about this. I was really hoping to just read this morning. I found this book called Noggin about this guy who wakes up five years after dying of cancer and finds that his head has been attached to somebody else’s body. I have a sneaking suspicion this is how I will feel once a stylist does my hair and makeup.

Dad was cleaning up the dishes, so I helped him clear the table. His French toast is a work of art. It seemed like the least I could do. As I helped him load the dishwasher, Dad said he was very proud of me. I was like, For what? And he just laughed in that way he does and said, Promise me something? I sighed and said, Okay, fine. He told me that he knew all this girly stuff wasn’t really my thing, but he said he really wanted me to try to let myself enjoy it. He said, Don’t wish it away, then he smiled and said, One day you’ll be an old fart like me and you’ll look back and wonder where all the time went. I said he wasn’t an old fart and that I’d try to have fun and let Mom fuss over me a little. I guess he’s right. At least I don’t have to try to figure out what to do with my hair.

Later . . .

I just got home from the salon. I do not recognize myself in the mirror. I can’t stop staring. I was not at all convinced that I would have a good time, and during our first appointment to get facials at the spa, I was certain that it was the most horrible mistake of my entire life. This woman poked and squeezed and scraped more crap out of my pores than I could believe. I literally had tears running down my cheeks. I felt like she was peeling my face completely off. She kept telling me to hold still and I wanted to scream HOW ABOUT I TAKE THE SANDPAPER TO YOUR FACE AND THEN YOU TRY TO HOLD STILL?

But then I thought about my dad saying to try to enjoy myself, and after a while the crazy bitch with the pokey face stick of death put down all of her torture devices and steamed my face again and then rubbed it with this really great soothing lotion that smelled like cucumbers. She covered my whole face in gauze and ran this wand thingy over it that she claimed was zapping my skin with a low-level electrical current, which probably would have been alarming had she started with that, but it just felt like little pops against my skin and after she’d almost squeezed my nose entirely off my face, I was just relieved that what she was doing wasn’t making me cry.

At the end, when I joined my sister and my mom in the waiting room, Ashley looked as traumatized by her facial as I had been by mine. I told my mom that what we had just experienced was cruel and unusual punishment and she just laughed and said, Sometimes pretty hurts. Which for some reason totally cracked me up. Ash started laughing, too, and before I knew what was happening, a little woman who might have come up to my chin had me sitting with my feet in a tub of warm water and she was scrubbing my heels with what appeared to be a wood rasp. Ashley was sitting in the giant leather recliner chair next to me. Her feet are notoriously ticklish. She kept squealing and jerking and splashing the poor lady who was trying to give her a pedicure. That woman looked like she’d been sprayed with a hose by the time she was done, but Ashley had flawless “Pink Princess Perfection” on every toe. Mom and I totally giggled the entire time watching Ash jerk around in that chair, begging for mercy, and as I walked over to the manicure table with those foam spacers between my toes, I realized something:

I was actually having fun. With my mother. And my sister. Doing girly stuff.

I picked a deep red nail color called “Passion Pit” for both my toes and fingernails. Mom insisted that I get tips so that there was a little bit of length on my nails, and I didn’t argue. Once we were all done at the spa, we