Me, Dead Dad, and Alcatraz

by Chris Lynch

  Carol grunted.

  “So who did this to you? You can tell me,” Nardo said as he began taking exploratory snips of my hair.

  “My uncle,” I said grimly.

  He stopped clipping. “Oh. Well, I usually don’t get an answer, since it’s actually just a joke question. But okay. Is this uncle of yours the devil, or just a very, very bad hairstylist?”

  “He’s...”

  What was he? I didn’t know what he was. And what was it about getting your hair cut that made you feel obligated to answer questions?

  “I don’t know what he is, actually.”

  “Close family, huh?”

  “Well, no, I guess not.”

  “What do we have in mind today, Elvin? Something radical? Bold? I’m guessing you are looking for something new, because that’s why the winds brought you here. Do you have something in mind? Or see something you like on the walls?”

  The walls had dozens of pictures, divided equally among men’s and women’s styles, with very little difference between them. They could have all been the same mannequin with the wigs switched for each new picture. And the truth was, not one of them looked remotely as slick as the maestro himself.

  “Can you make me look like you?” was what came flying out of my mouth. I felt myself turn red with embarrassment, but was glad it came out anyway as long as the result was going to be that I was as devilish cool as this guy.

  “No.”

  I deflated. Not in any good way, though.

  “You can’t?”

  “I can, of course. But I won’t. Nobody gets to look like me. That’s the rule.” He pointed dramatically toward the back of the shop, to a sign posted on a door, that read “We are sorry, but nobody can look like Nardo.”

  “Anyway, my friend Elvin, you are a very handsome young man in your own right. You do not need to look like me. We just need to find the details to complement what you already have.”

  I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the picture. Of Frankie. It was his most recent class picture. He gave it to me for my birthday.

  “Can you make me look like this, then?”

  He took the picture from me, stared at it, and expressed himself.

  “Oooh, mama. Isn’t he nice. Do you know this boy? I mean, he’s no Nardo, of course, but he is awfully nice anyway.”

  I slumped. “That means no, then.”

  He couldn’t quite bring himself to stop studying the Greek god in his hand, but he could spare me a thought at the same time. “Hey, hey, didn’t we already have trouble with this? No more of this low self-esteem nonsense, or I will make you ugly. I can do that, too, you know.”

  “Sorry. We wouldn’t want that.”

  “No. Now about this. You don’t have curly hair, for starters.”

  I tugged at a corner of the picture. He wouldn’t give it up. I craned. “It’s not curly, exactly, though. It’s wavy, really.”

  “Yes, true. And it isn’t as... dark as yours, or... quite the same texture. And his hair is thick....”

  “I have seen the picture, Nardo. Many, many times. Seen the real thing a lot too. I understand the gargantuan nature of the request. I just thought maybe if you were really talented...”

  “Hmm. An awfully big challenge to set a person for a slow Sunday. But I do like a challenge. You have come to the right place, Elvin. Probably the only place.”

  “Great,” I said, clapping my hands, buzzy with excitement now.

  “First we’ll need to wash this mop.” He pulled me out of the chair, led me to another chair, and leaned me back all the way over till my head was in the sink. “So this uncle who did this to you...,” he said as he began running warm water and his fingers through my hair.

  “Oh, I guess he’s probably all right. I’m still getting used to him. I thought he was dead, but he’s not. He’s out with my mother right now.”

  “Your uncle goes out with your mother? What does your father think of that?”

  “Not much. He’s dead.”

  “Are you sure? You were wrong about the other guy.”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Oh,” he said, working some honey-smelling shampoo through my hair with an extra-gentle motion, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. They’re not really out-out; they’re at church.”

  “Oh,” he said again, stopping even the shampooing to sympathize. “I am sorry. They always have the worst hair of all.”

  He went back to his very fine work of shampooing, rinsing, conditioning, and rinsing my hair. It was a pretty relaxing treatment for a haircut, a whole different world from old Sal. I was nearly asleep by the time Nardo revealed that his mother went around telling people that she had had affairs with Jimi Hendrix and Ernest Hemingway and at least two Beatles, but she wasn’t certain which ones.

  “They will screw you up, your relatives, if you pay too much attention to them.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “Good. And take better care of your hair.”

  “Right. Less attention to relatives, more attention to hair.”

  “Bingo. Key to life.”

  Finally I had the key.

  4 Hairy-Handed Gents

  DING-DONG-DING-DONG.

  Mikie’s doorbell did not actually make that sound. It was more like the sound of castanets because the little hammer inside the bell got muffled by dust bunnies and his mother liked all things Spanish so she left the Castanet sound.

  Ding-dong-ding-dong.

  But the ding-dong sound was in my head as I stood there pressing the button, and had been since I left Mysterious Ways Hair with Nardo waving and shedding tears of joy over my new look, if not his shame in creating it. Ding-dong would not leave my head ding-dong.

  Finally the door opened.

  “Oh my goodness,” yelped Mikie’s mother, Brenda. She rushed out to the stoop and gave me a big hug. Brenda was just shorter than me now, and a lot smaller in bulk, so my being consoled and mothered by her as if I had shown up bloodied and battered was all the more humbling.

  “Mikie,” she called as she dragged me in out of the public’s gaze.

  Mikie came hopping down the stairs, stopped on the last one, then echoed his mother’s concern. Echoed it with a laugh, however.

  “Elvin, you got a perm?”

  “I did not get a perm,” I snapped.

  “You got a perm, Elvin,” Brenda said.

  “I did not get a perm! Nardo said he was not giving me a perm. I asked him if I was getting a perm, and he assured me that I was not getting a perm, and I believe him. We are friends. His mother dated Jimi Hemingway, and when I asked him if I was getting a perm, he swore to me that I was not getting a perm, so I did not get a perm, he did not give me a perm, and I do not have a perm.”

  “Oh Elvin,” Brenda said, very, very, very sympathetically.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  “If it’s not a perm, Elvin, then what is it?”

  “It’s a wave!” I said, rushing past them both, down the hall, to the bathroom. “A wave, anybody can see this is a wave, a wave.”

  They followed me down the hall and huddled together in the doorway.

  “Oh Elvin,” Brenda said again. It was like being stabbed in the stomach with a hockey stick when she did that. Only she seemed to be in as much pain over it as I was. “I did that when I was pregnant. My God, how I cried....”

  “I am not crying; I am not pregnant; I am big boned. I am splashing water on my face because I am hot, not for any other reason.”

  “Didn’t they have any mirrors there, El?”

  It is one of the few truly reliable things in life that the word up can have two or more syllables when you need it to. “Shut uh-uh-uhp.”

  I splashed lots of cold water on my face, but it only continued getting hotter. We could make tea off my face now. Mikie’s mother went away toward the kitchen. Perhaps for tea bags. I continued splashing, and took a good hard look at myself in the mirror.

  I
stopped splashing my face and began madly scooping handfuls of water onto my head, then stroking my hair, flattening it down, matting it down.

  And watching it sproing back up again. More water, more water. I increased the pressure, slapping myself pretty hard now—and a more deserving head slap was never administered—in a desperate attempt to get the hair back flat to the head where God intended it to be. But the more I slapped, the more the hair worked against me. The weight of the water kept it down for roughly a second before all those curls—waves!—literally bounced back.

  “Wow,” Mike marveled, “you’re actually making it worse.”

  God, he was right. It was getting taller, tighter, stronger. If I flattened it any more, it would be an Afro.

  “Brenda,” I called desperately.

  She came running back to the bathroom. “Yes, hon,” she said in that voice that made me feel sorry for the poor chump she was talking to.

  “Can we... wash this out, please? Can you help me here? With... this?”

  I thought she might cry. “Elvin. Do you know what perm is short for?”

  “It is not a perm.”

  “Whatever it is, it is permanent. You can’t wash it out; you have to grow it out. We might possibly be able to do something about the dye job, though, if that’s any—”

  “It is not dyed. Highlighted. It is just highlighted, to bring out my natural color....”

  “To bring out Frankie’s natural color,” Mike said.

  I turned on him like a badger. “Who said anything about Frankie?” I demanded. “What are you pulling Frankie into this for? Frankie’s not even here. He’s not, is he? What could any of this have to do with Frankie? Frankie doesn’t even know Nardo, right, which makes you look pretty foolish right about now, Mike.”

  “Sorry, El, jeez. It was just that you looked a little bit like him for a minute there. Or at least your hair did.”

  Helloooo?

  I turned away from Mikie and toward the bathroom mirror once more. Had it worked? Was Mikie toying with me?

  Could I really, in any way, resemble Frank? Was Nardo a genius after all? I looked myself straight in the hair, to give myself an honest summary.

  Maybe. The hair was still wet from the struggle and not quite right because Frankie doesn’t do the wet look, but maybe. Turn this way just a bit, no, too much, back the other way a little, then, maybe. Squint. Head down. “Turn that light off for a second, would you, Mike?”

  “What are you doing? You look like you’re practicing to stare somebody down, or pick somebody up.”

  “Good. Dangerous, yet alluring.”

  “If you say so, El.” He clicked off the light.

  There. There it was. Frankie. Or, anyway, Frankie’s slightly shorter, heavier, darker, blurry brother.

  But close enough. I clapped once and rubbed my hands together.

  Which brought up the light like a clap-on automatic light.

  And clap-off, no more Frankie. I looked like myself. Except with hair that Barbie would have been proud of in the 1960s. Oh, and fatter. The hair made me look fatter. I slumped.

  “Jeez, Elvin,” Mike said. He could take no more, came right over and pulled me physically away from the mirror and out of the bathroom with a tight arm around my shoulders. He led me straight into the kitchen and sat me at the table. Brenda put the tea on. I like tea. I like Brenda.

  “Stop staring at my mother, El, and talk to me. What is wrong with you?”

  “I don’t want an uncle.”

  “What, so you did this”—he gestured at my head—“to scare him away?”

  “I’m serious, Mike.”

  “Maybe you should be less serious.”

  Brenda brought tea. I thanked her seven times, until she left the room.

  “It is serious,” I told Mike, “and you know it.”

  “Right, so okay, it is a shock to have him show up after all this time. Make the best of it. It might turn out great.”

  “He wants to tell me things.”

  “Good. You should be told things.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be told things.”

  “Oh, there’s no maybe about it, Elvin; you do not want to be told things. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hear them anyway.”

  “You don’t seem to understand. I don’t want to.”

  “Consider the possibility that he may have good things to tell you. Like, maybe your insanity is a specific family variety, and he’s nuts too and brought the cure with him.”

  “There is no cure.”

  “You’re hopeless, you know.”

  “That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

  “Give the guy a chance, El.”

  “No. He has suspicious hair, he is too skinny, and he took my mother away from me on a Sunday to go to church, and that is not how our Sundays are supposed to go.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “What, hmmm?”

  “Maybe that’s what you’re afraid of. That he’s going to steal your mother away because he reminds her of your father.”

  “Oh,” I said, standing up so quickly that my chair skidded across the room and bumped into the refrigerator. “Oh, that’s just stupid. One, why would I care, if some guy wants to spend a little time with my mother? And two, no way is some stranger going to come along and steal her away from me. No chance.”

  I was losing track myself, of whether I was doing myself any good here or not, but I was getting concerned. The pressure of events, of the last couple of days, was mounting. The dead uncle, the hair, church, it was all gathering in my head and gumming up the works badly.

  “The point is, you are worried that Alex is going to shake things up.”

  “I don’t like things shaken.” My voice was approaching normal now.

  “I know. But I think you’ll be making a mistake if you don’t give your uncle a chance. Maybe you’ll enjoy getting to know him. Maybe you’ll learn more about your history and stuff.”

  “Lucky me,” I said. “People chase all over the world trying to trace their roots. I have roots that come tracing me.”

  “You’re magnetic,” Mike said with a big smile as his dog ambled into the room. Mike had the only local copy of Grog’s scary little reproductions. She looked like a hairy tropical fish or something, but she had a surprising charm that made her seem cuter. And smarter. Possibly because he named her Maryann, rather than, say, Grog. He scooped her up and the two of them grinned at me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “But honestly, Mike, if Alex has tough stuff to say to me, I don’t think I am going to be able to take it.”

  “Let’s test you out then,” he said. He stopped grinning. Maryann did not. “Elvin Bishop,” Mike said with such convincing gravity that I started sweating instantly, “I am sorry I have to tell you this, but as your hair is drying, it’s looking more and more like a Nerf ball.”

  Well. Well then.

  “Well then.”

  “Just trying to help, El.”

  “Thank you, Michael.”

  “Oh no.”

  Brenda came scurrying into the room. “Did he call you Michael?”

  “I’m afraid he did.”

  I didn’t often call Mikie by his full first name. Apparently this had some meaning.

  “Calm down, Elvin,” she said.

  “I am very calm,” I said as I shook Mike’s hand.

  “Right, sure,” he said, pulling his hand away from me. “Except that you are never calm. So when you do this, when you pretend to be calm, when you call me Michael and shake people’s hands and stuff... you’re not fooling anybody, Elvin.”

  I patted my Nerf ball head. “Please don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I probably just need a nap.”

  “Yes,” Brenda said, putting an arm around me and giving a good hard squeeze. “I think maybe if you just go home and lie down for a while, I think you’ll feel better when you get up.”

  I nodded, and headed for the door. Then I thought of something and walked back to Mike and leane
d way down close to him.

  “How come your dog is so much better than mine?” I said.

  I didn’t wait for an answer. Whatever my point was, I had probably made it.

  The fresh air was good, but really there is only so much fresh air can do. I was actually getting more wound up and not less as I approached my house. What was I going to say to Alex? More to the point, what was I going to listen to? God stuff? Was he here to save my soul? If he was, then could I just surrender it, leave it right there on the floor, and walk away quietly so he could take it and be gone?

  The quickest and easiest way to have him gone was what I was interested in, and though I knew that was unfair, I couldn’t change my mind.

  And that was the state of my mind as I swept through the front door, confident that me and my hair could hurry things along.

  Except there was nobody there. And as far as I could tell, neither my mother nor Alex had been there since I left, since they went to church several hours earlier.

  They certainly should have been home by then. This was inexcusable, and it had to be all his fault.

  Mikie was right. Alex was a dangerous threat to my way of life, intent on turning everything upside down.

  He did say that. He did.

  And now Alex had even spoiled the relaxing nap I was supposed to have for myself. The downward spiral was dizzying.

  Right. The first order of business was to get my hair sorted out. I couldn’t be bossing people around the house and telling somebody to get lost and stamping my authority over everything with everyone marveling at my new head. Brenda said it couldn’t be washed out, but that was because she had had a perm, the poor thing, and I had a wave.

  I marched that wave directly to the bathroom, dropped to my knees at the tub, and threw the taps on full force.

  Once my head was soaked, I groped around for shampoo. I grabbed this bottle of bright green stuff with a pump top, and I pumped and pumped away until my head felt like a great big, frothy trifle pudding.

  But it didn’t smell like that. It smelled kind of appley, and herby. It smelled lovely, in fact. As I worked it through, I started to get some of that relaxation I was hoping to achieve with my nap. I was doing a bang-up job of it too. I would even go so far as to say that my massaging shampooing technique was the equal of Nardo’s. And the scent of my hair product beat his by a country mile.