Nowhere but Home A Novel - By Liza Palmer Page 0,16
she is thin, Merry Carole. Just a slip of herself. You said you been feeding her?” Fawn talks as if I’m not there.
“We had a proper Sunday supper,” Merry Carole says, focusing on the hair she’s cutting.
“You’d think after working in all those fancy kitchens you would have bothered to eat some of it,” Fawn says, anxiously swiping my lifeless bangs out of my face.
“I was working in all those fancy kitchens making food for other people,” I say.
“Look at you,” Fawn says, her voice breathy.
Fawn is my mother’s age and would like to think of herself as a maternal figure in our lives. But she’s too much like our mother to be anything close to maternal. Merry Carole and I play our parts anyway. While Fawn and my mother trolled the bar scene back in the day, like two peas in a pod, Yvonne Chapman was the happily married friend who finished out their tight trio. Momma and Fawn would lament their love lives while Yvonne endlessly doled out relationship advice to the hapless duo, trotting out her happy marriage like a prize pig. When Mom stayed away for days at a time, Fawn and Yvonne would always come by with a couple of Happy Meals, an apology, and the assurance that Mom was doing the best that she could . . . she really was. We took the food, but could never quite swallow the excuses. I don’t begrudge Fawn any of it. She wasn’t our mother. She chose not to have kids and is now happily married to a roughneck named Pete who works the oil rigs on the Coburn back forty. And Yvonne? Well, she made her bed.
“I want to cook supper for you guys tonight if you can make it. All of you,” I say, hoping that the customers don’t think I mean them.
“We’d love that,” Merry Carole says, brushing the freshly cut hair from her customer’s shoulders.
“Pete and I are definitely in,” Fawn says.
“Is Dee working today?” I ask, scanning the salon. Dee Finkel is my oldest friend in North Star. When I left I remember thinking how small her dreams were—she wanted to get married, have some kids, and work in a hair salon. I was going to set the world on fire. No, you go ahead and cut some old lady’s hair in some backwater in Texas Hill Country. What an epic jerk I was.
“She’s back in the shampoo room.” Merry Carole nods toward the back of the salon.
“Six? Tonight?” Fawn says, trying to hammer out the details.
“Sounds perfect. Don’t bring a thing,” I say, walking toward the shampoo room.
“I can’t wait!” Fawn says before launching into a diatribe about how worried she is about me.
I walk into the shampoo room and see Dee pouring big gallons of shampoo into smaller bottles of shampoo that are next to the washing stations. She looks exactly the same.
“Dee Finkel, is that you?!” I say, walking toward her.
“Dee Finkel?” Dee asks, still focused on the shampoo. I stumble a bit, thinking she would welcome me with open arms.
“It’s Queenie. Queenie Wake?” I ask, my voice half of what it was.
“Oh my God, you’re so funny! I haven’t been Dee Finkel in years,” she says, setting the gallon of shampoo down and wiping her hands on her apron. We hug for an awkward amount of time and I find myself patting her back to break free.
“It’s so good to see you,” I say, backing away from her. Of course she wouldn’t be super glad to see me. I was a heinous bitch the last time we saw each other.
“How long are you back for?” Dee asks, her arms folded across her chest. She looks like an adult. A grown-up I’d see in public and think would certainly have nothing whatsoever in common with me. She looks healthy and vomit-inducingly happy. Her dark hair is more styled than it used to be. That’s probably because she’s the lowest stylist on the totem pole here and everyone’s experimental head of hair. She’s wearing flowery capri pants and a light pink sleeveless blouse to go with her usual (not today apparently) sunny outlook.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, my smile quickly fading.
“But not long though, right? You’re already planning to go to some other big city, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, well . . .” Dee’s face is tight. She starts to move for the shampoo again.
“If you’re not Dee Finkel anymore, who are you then?” I ask, trying.