The Box Garden (5 page)

At Mr. Mario’s Beauty Box the eyes of the receptionist transfix me. Green-hooded, beetle bright, too close together, riding above a sharp little nose like glued-on ornaments from a souvenir shop.

“I don’t know if we can fit you in today,” her voice clinks away uncaringly. “What about tomorrow at three?”

“I have to go out of town,” I stutter. Am I pleading? Am I giving way to my tendency to be obsequious? I firm up my voice, “It has to be today.”

“Well,” she says tapping a pencil on the appointment book—and already I can see she is going to work me in—“Mr. Mario himself is free in twenty minutes. If you only need a cut, that is,”

“That’s all I need,” I chant gratefully, “just a cut, just a simple cut.”

She stands up suddenly, reaches across the kidney-shaped desk and tugs a hank of my hair. “About three inches?” she demands.

Three inches off? Three inches left on? What?

“Three inches?” she asks again, more sharply this time.

“Yes, yes, three inches, that would be fine.”

I have never been to Mr. Mario’s before. In fact, I avoid beauty salons almost entirely except for the occasional cut and one or two disastrous hair-straightening sessions in the days when Watson was trying to transform me into a flower child. Mr. Mario’s place shimmers with pinkish light. Light spills in through the shirred Austrian curtains and twinkles off the plastic chandeliers. Little bulbs blaze around the mirrors reminding me of movie stars’ dressing rooms. Pink hair dryers buzz and the air conditioners chum. The wet, white sunlight of the street is miles away. I wait for Mr. Mario in a slippery vinyl chair, suddenly struck with the fear that this rosy elegance might hint at undreamt of prices. Much more than fifteen dollars, maybe even eighteen. Or as much as twenty. Twenty dollars for a hair cut, am I crazy? I turn to the kidney desk in panic, but the receptionist eyes me coldly, leanly. “Now,” she says.

Mr. Mario marches me to a basin, thoroughly, roughly, drenches my hair and neck, and then he seats me in front of his mirror. For a moment I am reassured by his relative maturity; he has a mid-life shadow of fat under his chin, and his fingers are competently plump and strong. Taking hold of my hair at both sides he pulls it straight out and regards my image in the mirror. Together we stare in disbelief: such Irish coarseness, such obscene length, such unspeakable heaviness.

“What did you have in mind?” he inquires sleepily.

“I don’t know,” I gasp. “Something different. Just go ahead and cut.”

“Okay,” he yawns and stepping back he examines me from another angle. “Okay.”

The sight of the razor raises new fears—where did I hear that razor cuts are more haute than scissor cuts? This might even cost—I feel faint at the thought—as much as twenty-three dollars. And then I’ll have to tip him. Another dollar. God, god.

My hair begins to fall to the floor, and without a hint of delicacy he kicks it to one side where it is almost immediately swept up by a girl in a green uniform. Too late now.

He combs, sections, and clips silently and steadily, his lips curled inward with concentration. “Coarse,” he says finally, breaking the silence.

“Yes,” I confess, “it runs in the family.”

“Italian?” he asks with a flicker of interest.

“No. Half Irish, half Scottish.”

“Yeah?” His interest evaporates.

To my right a small shrunken woman of enormous old age sits swathed in a plastic cape; her wisps of hair are briskly sectioned for a permanent, and the pink scalp shows through like intersecting streets. One by one I watch the tight plastic rollers being wound and pinned to the bony scalp. I imagine the ammonia burning through her thin, pink skin, aching. Why does she do this to herself? Her chin wobbles like a walnut as though a scream is gathering there. Her lips move, but she says nothing.

On the other side of me a vigorous woman of about fifty bends forward and lights a cigarette while her rollers are removed by the slimmest of boys in striped purple jeans. “Yesterday,” she says, blowing out puffed clouds of smoke, “I went all the way to the fish market for some red snapper.”

“For what?” the boy asks, leaning toward her.

“Red snapper. It’s a fish. And ex-pen-sive! But I was in the mood for a splurge. Well, I cooked it in a little butter. Then you cover it, you know, and leave it just on simmer. Not too long, say about ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes,” he murmurs, back-combing her gunmetal shrub.

“Ten minutes. Then just a little lemon, you know, cut in a wedge to squeeze. And my husband said to me, you know, you could serve this to the P.M. if he happened to drop by.”

“He liked it, eh?”

“So he said, so he said, and he’s a hard man to please. Tonight I’m going to do lamb chops. You like lamb?”

“Not too much.”

“It’s all in how you do it. Most people don’t get all the fat out, and with lamb you’ve got to get all the fat out. But do you know what really makes it?”

“What?” he listens. I listen. Even Mr. Mario seems to listen.

“After you brown it really well, you add just a sniff of white wine.”

“White wine?” The striped-pants boy seems a little disappointed.

“You don’t have to use the expensive stuff. Why waste good booze in cooking. Just the ordinary poison will do you.”

“Do you want to have a little hairspray?”

“Just a little. My husband says it’s bad for the lungs. Did you know that?”

“Maybe.”

“No, it’s true. The whole atmosphere’s being destroyed by spray cans. But just a little. It’s awfully humid out. And I’ve got to pick up the lamb chops. That husband of mine.”

Husband. Strange word. Medieval. Husbandry, husband your flocks; keep, guard, preserve, watch over.

“Bitch,” Mr. Mario whispers lazily in my ear as she leaves.

I say nothing, only smile, obscurely gratified that I have somehow gained his favour. He cups my head with his hands, turning it slightly, then begins cutting again, slowly, slowly, alternating between razor, scissors, clippers; razor, scissors, clippers. Cautious as a surgeon.

“Hold still now,” he hisses. “The back of the neck is the most important.”

I begin to feel sick. Could this possibly cost as much as twenty-five dollars? In New York hair cuts cost up to forty dollars—where did I read that? Mr. Kenneth or something. But this is Vancouver. Still with inflation and everything, twenty-five dollars is not impossible. Twenty-five dollars! Stop cutting, I want to cry out. That’s enough. Stop.

Then he is going all over my head with an electric blower and a little round brush, catching my hair from underneath and drawing it out into rounds of dark fur. Turning, rolling, curving. Stop, stop.

At last. Flick, flick with the brush. Off with the towel. A puff of spray. I stagger to the kidney desk.

He follows me, drowsy-eyed.

Now.

“How much?” my mouth moves.

“Fifteen dollars,” he drawls.

I pull out the bills. Blindly stuff an extra dollar in the pocket of his smock. Run for the door. And in the dancing, white heat I see myself blurred across the window. Or is it me?

Oh, Mr. Mario, Mr. Mario. Always, always, always I’ve wanted to look like this. Soft, shaped, feathered into a new existence. Me.

My lips perform the smallest of smiles. My neck turns a fraction of an inch. My legs stretch long and cool and slow. What’s the hurry. Slowly, slowly, I walk home.

Greta telephones to say good-bye. “Is it true,” she asks, “is it true what Doug says? That Eugene What‘s-his-name is going with you?”

I picture her holding the phone in an attitude of anxious, frowning disbelief, her crow‘s-feet deepening. (Greta’s crow’s-feet reach all the way to her soul.)

“Yes,” I tell her briskly. “Yes, Eugene happened to have a convention in Toronto at the same time. Wasn’t that lucky?”

“A dentists’ convention,” Greta says sadly, dully.

I want to comfort her. Poor Greta with her Gestalt therapy, her psychodrama, her awareness clinic, her encounter group, her trauma team, her megavitamin treatment and now her obsession with meditation. All she needs is just enough psychic epoxy to keep her from slipping apart. Can’t I summon a few words to reassure her? Is my heart so hard that I can’t give her those few words?

“Look Greta,” I say, “thanks for phoning, but I’ve got to run. Seth just got in from band practice and I’ve got a million things to do.”

“Seth,” I turn to him.

“Yes.”

“You have the phone number in Toronto? If anything goes wrong?”

“It’s on top of the list you gave me.”

“Well, look, Seth, if you lose it, just on the wild chance that you might lose it, you can ask the Savages. I gave it to Doug too. You never know.”

“Okay.”

“And you’ve got enough money?”

“Sure.”

“Positive?”

“All I need is busfare and milk money.”

“You might have an emergency.”

“I’ve got plenty.”

“Just to make sure, you’d better take this extra five.”

“You keep it, you’ll need it.”

“I’ve got lots. Your father’s cheque came yesterday. And I got paid today. I’m rich for once. You take it.”

He pokes it in his back pocket. “I’ll take it but I won’t need it.”

“I wish you were coming. I hate leaving you here like this.”

“It’s okay,” he smiles across at me. “Anyway, there’s band practice every day this week.”

“At least we’ll be back for the concert. Did you get the tickets?”

“Yeah.”

“For Eugene too? And his kids?”

“Yeah. In my wallet. Want me to hang on to them ‘til Saturday night?”

“Maybe you’d better, the way I lose things. Anyway, I hope everything goes O.K. here.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“It’s just that Doug and Greta can be a little... well ... you know.”

“Uhuh.”

“A little too much.”

“I know.”

“Just tune them out, Seth. If they start getting to you.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll be ready after school? When they pick you up?”

“I’ll be ready.”

“And you won’t forget your suitcase?”

“No.”

“There are clean socks for every day. And I put in your Lions T-shirt in case it stays hot like this.”

“Thanks.”

“And your retainer is in a plastic bag under your pajamas.”

“Okay.”

“Your toothbrush. What about your toothbrush?”

“I’ll put it in tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t forget.”

“I won’t.”

“I sound like a clucking hen. I know I sound like an old hen.”

“No, you don’t.”

“It’s just that I’m sort of nervous, I guess. All the rushing around and the whole idea of Grandma,”—I say the word Grandma with a sliding self-consciousness since Seth cannot even remember seeing his grandmother—“getting married and everything. It’s just got me a little more rattled than usual.”

“That’s okay.”

“That’s why I’m clucking away at you like this.”

“I don’t mind,” he says smiling.

“You’ve got a nice smile, you know that?”

“I ought to for eight hundred bucks.”

“I don’t mean your teeth. I mean you have really got a nice smile.”

“Thanks. So do you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“I wish you were coming.”

“I’ll be okay,” he says. And then he adds, “And you’ll be okay too.”

“There’s nothing about myself that I like,” I say to Eugene as we lie side by side in our lower berth. Contentment, momentary contentment, has lulled me into confession. “The bottoms of my feet are scaly,” I tell him, “and have you ever noticed what big ugly feet I’ve got? Slabs. And two huge corns. One on each foot. I’ve had those same corns since I was thirteen.”

“Luckily no one dies of corns.”