My Way Home (St.Gabriel Series Book 1) (St. Gabriel Series)

by Cynthia Lee Cartier

  There was a long silence from Tina’s end.

  “Tina, are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “So, can you get me in?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “If you can. My friend is here visiting. It’s for her sister, and she’ll be taking my hair with her.” And then I envisioned Loretta boarding a plane with my hair in her carry-on, and I laughed.

  “Cammy, is this a joke?”

  “No, Tina, I’m sorry. I’m serious. I’m going to do this. Can you get me in?”

  “I have a three o’clock. We can talk more about the cut when you get here.”

  “Nothing to talk about, I’m serious. I want it short, little boy short. I’ll see you tomorrow at three.”

  I said goodbye, hung up the phone and looked at Loretta who had a deer-in-the-headlights look. It was my hair, my marriage and my hair. I needed her to get a grip.

  When we walked into the salon the next day, there was an awkward silence, and Tina was waiting for me. Her arms were stretched out wide and everyone looked on with pity as she wrapped me up in her full, soft body. She smelled of the musk oil that had always comforted me. But that day, I was overwhelmed by the odor and turned my head for a gasp of air.

  I broke loose. “Tina, this is my friend Loretta Scott.”

  Tina did a double-take as many people do. “Friend, not sister?” she asked.

  “Friend and sister,” I said, and I stepped to Loretta’s side and circled her waist with my arm, “Since sophomore year of college anyway.”

  “Nice to meet you, Loretta.”

  I was ready to get started and walked toward the row of sinks in the back of the shop.

  “I’ll wait out here,” said Loretta.

  “No, I want you to come back with me. Tina, Loretta can come back too, can’t she?”

  “Sure.”

  Tina had a shampoo girl, two in fact, and never did that part of the gig herself. But that day was different. Tina wet my hair slowly, lathered slowly, and massaged my scalp slowly. It was like the last supper of haircuts.

  It made me think of Race and miss him. We used to lie in our big bathtub and he would shampoo my hair, massaging my scalp, and then he’d massage everything else. I missed him. I missed being touched.

  Had he shampooed her hair? The thought catapulted me back to the Anger Stage. I wished I could pass through those doggone stages and be done with them already. I didn’t realize that I shook my head a little to clear my mind while Tina was rinsing.

  “Too hot?” she asked.

  “No, fine.”

  Tina finished the rinse, then with my hair wrapped in a towel, she escorted me to a chair as though I might not make it without her assistance. It took three clicks before she chose just the right snap to fasten the cape around my neck.

  Carefully, she combed my hair out.

  “So,” said Tina, standing behind me as she ran her fingers through my hair, starting at my temples, just as she always did and then she would ask, “What’s it gonna be?”

  I would always answer, “Just a trim.” Then she would look disappointed at my lack of daring. But not today. Today is a new day.

  “Little boy short,” I said.

  Tina inhaled deeply and then let it out slowly from puffed-up cheeks. She turned on the blow dryer and reluctantly pulled the big round brush from my scalp to the ends of my hair, moving the dryer back and forth as if she was conducting a symphony. Chopin’s Funeral March should have been playing in the background.

  A hair salon with no talking, nothing but the whir of hair dryers and the clicking of curling irons, it was a little creepy.

  When my hair was dry, she braided a fat ponytail from the base of my neck, to the ends of my hair, and tied it off with a band. When she was finished, she bounced the braid in her hand, looked at me in the mirror, and counseled me, “Cammy, darlin’, during a time of personal crisis is not the time to drastically change your hairstyle.”

  “I’ve heard you say a new hairstyle can give a person a whole new lease on life.”

  “Yes, a style, not a scalping.”

  “Tina, please.”

  Tina opened the vanity drawer and fished around for a pair of scissors. I got up from the chair, chose a pair, and handed them to her. “How ‘bout these?” I asked her.

  She dipped them in the jar of the mystery-blue hairdresser’s solution and then wiped them dry. Looking at me in the mirror, she said, “Cammy, I just think—”

  “Tina, should I go someplace else?” Tears glazed my eyes. She was stealing my joy and she didn’t even know it.

  Loretta stood up from the neighboring chair and hit the air with her fist and yelled, “Off with her hair! Off with her hair!”

  I looked at Loretta, her fist still in the air, and another involuntary smile spread over my face. I threw my fist in the air and yelled, “Off with her hair!”

  Then Loretta yelled again, “Off with her hair!”

  Then the woman sitting two chairs down with foil spikes protruding from her head echoed, “Off with her hair!”

  Then one of the shampoo girls repeated, “Off with her hair!”

  Then everyone in the joint, except for Tina, took up the cry, “Off with her hair!”

  Tina took in another deep breath, opened the scissors around the braid, and worked the blades until she stood there with my braid of hair in her hand. What hair was still attached to my head fell forward in front of my eyes. It felt seriously light. I looked over at Loretta and saw a tear roll down her cheek.

  It’s just hair, I told myself. But it wasn’t just hair and everyone knew it.

  Tina gently laid the braid to rest on the counter and I cried. Pretty soon everyone was crying and I thought of what Tennyson wrote about the woman whose soldier husband was killed, “She must weep or she will die.”

  Yes, she must, no matter who’s around to see her tears.

  Through a sob, I sniffled out the words, “Now, make me sassy.”

  Tina tried to convince me that she could create an adorable short bob with what was left, but I didn’t want adorable. “Little boy short,” I demanded.

  Tina sighed deeply and said, “Okay, it’s your hair.”

  “It was my hair,” I said and held in another sob. “Now it belongs to Marni Scott-Robles.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Call

  Nothing bunched up between my head and the pillow. Virtually hairless, I lay in bed the night after getting my hair cut, rocking my head from side to side and thinking about how I could make Race completely miserable. But just as I had done with all such thoughts, I pushed it away. I loved my children much more than I wanted to bring complete and total destruction to my unfaithful husband, their father.

  Since Race had left, I had called Paul and Janie once a week. I didn’t want them to call the house and wonder why I wasn’t answering the phone. I kept the conversation to what was going on in their lives and didn’t tell them their father had left me. Deep down, I was still hoping Race would come back, and they’d never have to know. It was crazy.

  Loretta stayed for a week and was screening my calls when one came in from Janie, crying, breathless. “Mom, why didn’t you tell me? Are you all right? I’m coming home. I can’t believe Daddy would do this.”

  She had already spoken to Race and he had told her everything. I wanted to agree with her. Her father was a rat, an idiot, a selfish, stupid man. I wanted her on my side. It would be easy. She was almost there, and he was wrong.

  But I listened to the hurting sobs and the warble of my little girl’s voice, and I couldn’t do it. She was a thousand miles away. I couldn’t hold her and make sure she would be okay. It was happening to her too. It was her family falling apart. The father she adored was breaking her heart.

  In that moment, I decided that what was happening to our family would not be about me, at least not when it came to Paul and Janie.

  I had wanted Janie to stay close to home for college. We only lived a
few blocks from the school where Race taught, a good college. But Race insisted our children needed to go to a university where they would be exposed to other cultures, philosophies.

  I was mad at Race at the time. How many times had I been mad at Race over things that didn’t really matter? UCLA, her parents’ Alma Mater, was where Janie chose to go, the place where her father and I had fallen in love. That part I had liked.

  That night when Janie called, I was thankful she was away at school and not home where she could see my face and know what I was about to tell her was a lie, mixed with some truth but a big, fat lie.

  “Baby, I’m fine, really. You need to stay right where you are and finish the semester. You’re almost done. I’m okay. I promise. I wanted to tell you, but for now you need to be focused on your studies. People change, honey, that’s not necessarily something you have any control over. Your father loves you and your brother very much and cares about me. I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. We’ll get through this and be as happy as before. You hang in there. I’ll see you when you come home, and we’ll plant the vegetable garden and ride bikes out to Bear Falls and downtown to have lunch. It’s going to be fine. It’s just a few more weeks and then we’ll talk all about it. It’s going to be fine.”

  It was the first time I had ever said anything to either of my children that I didn’t believe to be true. When I talked to Paul, I gave him the same spiel. And so it went. I did not share my grief with my children.

  I hung up and hadn’t even set the phone down when it rang again. It was Race. When Janie had heard from a friend from home that her mom and dad had split up, she immediately called her father at his office to dispel the nasty rumor. Race had tried to warn me when he got off the phone with her, but the phone at the house was busy. Janie got her call through first.

  “Cammy, how did Janie sound to you?”

  “Upset, Race, very upset.”

  “Do you think I should fly out there?”

  “I don’t know, Race, that’s up to you. Don’t start asking me now what you should do, okay?”

  “I should have waited. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  He was really hurting. I could hear it in his voice. I wanted him to care for our children, but I wanted him to care for me too. The hurt he was feeling was for Janie. I’m the mother—she’s the child. It’s funny how you sometimes have to remind yourself of something so obvious when you’re a parent. I wasn’t going to kick him when he was down, but comfort him? I couldn’t do it.

  Janie and Paul called me daily the following week. Every time I hung up the phone, I was exhausted. Acting is hard work. Answering the phone became a full-time job. I couldn’t ignore it anymore in case it was the kids. If they couldn’t reach me, they would worry.

  Loretta went home and we made a deal that she would only call me on Sundays to check in. But there were lots of other callers. Some were genuinely concerned while others were looking for juicy details. I knew who was who. I eventually broke down and resorted to technology, which I avoid whenever possible—I got Caller ID.

  I forced myself out of bed every morning and tried to focus on what I needed to do. I had been thoughtfully relieved of most of my volunteer commitments, but I still had the plants to take care of at the food bank and the animal shelter.

  Plants, as it turns out, don’t have much of an opinion about divorce and they don’t take sides—two of the many things I love about them. Also, when you take care of them well, they always look so happy to see you.

  Minnie said I could come back to work at the garden center whenever I was ready. I wasn’t ready. Financially I was okay. Race had let me know he would keep his paycheck going directly into the checking account, and we would settle our finances later. He would make sure I had what I needed. All of that was in the note. Remember the note with the key?

  I stuck to the Rivers plan, did yoga with Kathy, and got up early every morning to ride five miles on my Schwinn. It was the same bike I’d had since high school and the one I had taken to college.

  I may not have had control over my husband, my life, not even my own mind, but my body was something I was able to get a handle on. Planning and preparing my meals and sticking to an exercise routine gave me a sense of order in my spinning-out-of-control life.

  I wrote to Beverly Rivers to tell her how she had changed my life. The truth was that Race, Paul, and Janie had been the only people who had ever changed my life. Race changed it the first day I sat in his classroom. Paul and Janie changed it the first time I held them and looked into their perfect little newborn faces. Again Race changed it, the day he told me I would live the rest of my life as a divorced woman. Even if I remarried someday, which I truly could not imagine ever doing, I would always be a divorced woman. And the day he told me he thought he was in love with Sarah Burns, he changed me.

  Janie came home at the end of May, and I encouraged her to follow through with her commitment of an internship with the local paper. It kept her busy and gave me time alone. Alone to lock myself in the bedroom and crawl into the dark tunnel of isolation and try not to think, about anything. I would set the alarm, get up, shower and dress again, make a fabulous, clean meal and be all smiles when Janie walked in the door. What a fraud.

  I was flat on my back on the bed, staring up at the soft-gold-colored ceiling of the master bedroom, one of my favorite rooms in the house. Actually, I loved all the rooms in my house. Each one had really good bones—arched doorways, deep window sills, heavy moldings, and built-in china hutches. It was my dream house and finding it was one of the most memorable days of my life.

  After Race and I moved from California and were married, I had taken a job working in a little dress shop. I did sales, window dressing, and some ordering. It was a pretty good job for a twenty-three year old with a liberal arts degree in a small town in Texas.

  I was out exploring on the Schwinn one day after work when I saw it, our house. The moment it came into view, I almost wrecked my bike.

  The house was white with lots of high and low-pitched rooflines. An arched opening led into a covered entry that protected the arched front door. Under the windows that were big and multi-paned, river rock planters were filled with peony shrubs that were drooping from the weight of their blooms.

  There were two huge oak trees on either side of the walkway that curved up to the front of the house, the way any self-respecting front walk does, a friendly, welcoming walk. Not like a straight walk, which says, “Don’t just stop by, please call first. Oh, and by the way, when you do come in, take off your shoes and don’t touch anything.”

  The best part was that it was a mess. The paint was peeling, the roof was missing shingles, the grass hadn’t been mowed for seasons, and the garden was out of control. There were old roses, magnolias, bluebonnets, and spent tulips and daffodils, all misbehaving themselves and crying out for boundaries.

  A fixer-upper, just what we could afford, someday. With $737.48 in our checkbook and no savings, even that lovely wreck was out of our price range. But I did find out who owned it and they weren’t interested in selling anyway.

  I rode by the house every chance I got. In my mind, I redid the gardens and redecorated every room. I hadn’t seen the rooms, but I used my imagination. When it came up for sale two years later, Race wasn’t excited, not at all. He wasn’t the handyman type.

  “It’s too big, Cammy, and it will take thousands of hours and money we don’t have to fix it up,” Race said without looking up from the papers he was grading.

  “We’ll do what we can as we can afford it. The expensive part is the labor, and I’ll do all the work I can myself. We’ll only hire what I can’t do.”

  Race looked up, raised his eyebrows, and tilted his head at my four-and-a-half-month-pregnant belly and asked, “Cammy, why can’t we find something turnkey? You know the kind—you turn the key and move in. I don’t want to spend every evening and weekend working on a house.”

  I spun his chair around and climbed into his lap.
“I told you, I’ll do it. You won’t have to lift a finger.”

  “I happen to love my wife and would like to spend time with her occasionally. I would like you not to be working on a house every evening and weekend either. And how are you going to be contractor and mommy at the same time?”

  “Naps,” I answered with a grin. That got Race to smile, and I knew there was hope. I extolled the virtues of the neighborhood and told him that it, being the shabbiest house on the block, was a great investment. “Location, location, location,” I reminded him.

  The winning ticket was Race’s parents. His mother was on my side the moment I described the house to her on the telephone. Anna Coleman is a fellow dreamer and lover of all things old. And his father, well, Raceter Coleman Sr. loves a good bargain and any possibility of a potential profit.

  I lived up to my promise, not letting the remodel consume our life and doing everything I could myself. Race’s parents gave me a table saw for Christmas, and I became a whiz with a hammer and a drill, a proficient painter and, not to sound braggadocios, a master at demolition.

  Two weeks before Paul was born, Race did help me hang wallpaper in the nursery and there were a few last-minute painting marathons, usually to put the house back together for a holiday or family get-together. But most of the time, the renovation happened when he was teaching as if little elves did the work while hiding from the literature professor.

  Room by room it took nine years to finish the project and then we had an open house—better late than never. The gardens were stunning and the house? It was perfect.

  It was a beautiful September day and we had set buffet tables inside and out, a string quartet from the college was playing in the garden, and Race was beaming. As our guests wandered and mingled, he came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, the way I loved, and he whispered in my ear, “You, Cammy Coleman, amaze me. I am so proud of you.” That was a great day.

  After our guests had left that evening, and Paul and Janie were in bed asleep, Race and I tried to make love in the hammock in the backyard, muffling our laughter at the impossibility of achieving any kind of workable position. If anyone ever tells you they’ve had sex in a hammock, question everything they say from that moment forward.