MAKE ME A MATCH (Running Wild)

by Hutchinson, Bobby

  “Can’t you do it again?”

  The answer was no. Karen said it softly, respectfully.

  “No, I’m sorry, Myrna, your hair is just too fragile, stripping it and re-coloring again could make it break off.”

  But in her mind she screamed it. NO, NO, NO! Her hands were shaking. To disguise that, she fussed with the green cape around Myrna’s shoulders. She’d colored and dried and styled and then re-colored, re-dried and re-styled Myrna’s hair. She’d been at it for over five hours, and she absolutely, positively wasn’t going to do it again. No matter what color her hair was, or what style Karen came up with, Myrna looked like a gerbil anyway, nothing was going to change that.

  Had anyone ever pointed that out to her? Karen bit her tongue.

  She had other customers waiting. She had an appointment with Simon’s kindergarten teacher at three forty-five. She figured Simon had probably been using bad language again; the teacher hadn’t told her what it was about. And now she had Junella breathing down her neck and giving her significant looks because it was a rule at Scissor Happy that the customer was always right. “I can’t possibly color it again today, Myrna, because the chemicals will seriously damage your hair,” Karen explained for the third time.

  “Well, I suppose I could come back tomorrow.”

  Karen’s stomach was cramping again. “That’s way too soon, Myrna. I’m going to give you some products to revitalize and strengthen it. I’d wait at least a month.”

  “A month? A month ? Oh, no, I can’t live with this for a month. When I called for an appointment, Junella told me you were wonderful at coloring, and now just look at this, and I have a cocktail party to go to tonight.”

  Myrna’s retrograde chin disappeared entirely into her skinny neck and her eyes became mean little slits. “I don’t want to be unreasonable, dear, but I’m not paying until I get what I want.”

  Which meant that Junella would deduct the entire amount the salon charged from Karen’s paycheck, and she had that whopping bill from the boys’ dentist to pay, and she’d have to ask Eric for money again.

  Bargain. Stay calm; try to placate.

  “I’ll only charge for a wash and set today, how’s that?”

  Myrna’s voice rose another octave. “I don’t see why I should pay anything, dear. This is not what I requested. I’ll just have to speak to Junella about it.”

  “You do that.” Karen tried to remember the hints Soph had given her about managing anger, but it was all she could do to stop herself from screaming at Myrna.

  “Junella? Myrna would like to talk to you.”

  Junella materialized behind Karen’s station, her marble hard eyes at odds with her maple sugar smile. “Is there a problem?”

  She knew darned well there was. Everybody in the shop knew there was. Karen could feel the other operators’ sidelong, pitying glances. They knew, just as she did, that Junella had deliberately given her this impossible customer, because Karen needed her job too much to refuse. Everyone knew one of the other girls had quit two months before because of Myrna Bisaglio.

  “I don’t like to complain,” Myrna lied, “but just look at this color, does this look like Champagne Blonde to you, Junella?”

  Junella had never in living memory defended any of her employees and Karen figured she wouldn’t start now, so she squirted hairspray on Myrna’s do and left the two of them agreeing that the color was definitely wrong.

  She tried to stop her hands from shaking as she combed out Emily, a sweet little lady with a walker and not enough hair to do much with. Karen dropped a can of mousse twice, and still Emily tipped her. When Emily was done, Karen changed her shoes— Junella insisted that everyone wear heels in the shop—grabbed her handbag and headed for the back door where she kept her bicycle.

  Junella called, “Karen? Karen, I’d like to speak to you, please.”

  Karen figured it was the better part of valor to pretend she didn’t hear. She hurried out the door. If she had to deal with Junella now, she was liable to blow the job.

  Her heart was hammering. On the street, she took time to look around carefully before she got on her bike. Ever since the fight in the bar, she’d wondered if Jimmy might be waiting for her after work, waving those divorce papers and ranting over them and the broken nose Eric had given him.

  “An ordinary guy doesn’t have a chance with you, not with Saint Eric around,” Jimmy used to sneer. He’d been a foster child, moved from one home to the next, never knowing what it was to have family.

  She’d thought in the beginning that she could love him enough to fill that emptiness, that having the boys would make Jimmy whole, but instead it had made him even more insecure. He drank, and they fought, and yeah, she ended up comparing him with Eric. And when that final fight went spiraling out of control and he hit her, she’d admitted it was over.

  So why had she dragged her feet about the divorce? Somewhere, deep down, had she gone on hoping that Jimmy might grow up, that he might become the man she’d thought he was in the beginning?

  Maybe. But as months passed, and then years, and he never made an effort to see her or the boys or support them on a regular basis, she’d realized that Eric and her sisters were right. Jimmy might not have it in him to be a husband or a father, but he did have a monetary obligation to his sons. She’d had Fletcher draw up the papers, and she’d signed them, and now she’d have to take the consequences. She was pretty sure Jimmy wouldn’t come to the house, but she’d warned the boys not to open the door until she looked through the peephole. They’d dissolved into giggles, because they thought she was saying pee hole.

  Pedaling hard toward Simon’s school, the fresh air and the freedom of movement eased the ache in her stomach and the tightness in her chest. Tessa was coming over tonight, and Karen couldn’t wait to introduce her old friend to Simon and Ian.

  Eric was coming too, to take the boys out for soccer boots, so she and Tess would have time to catch up on old times.

  What would she tell Tess about her marriage? Sure, it had been bad. Maybe Jimmy was a psycho like Sophie claimed, but she’d tell Tess she’d never regretted marrying him, because of her boys. Tess would understand.

  She’d told her sisters that once, and Soph looked at her as if she were nuts.

  “You could have chosen someone sane and had them anyway,” Sophie reasoned.

  “But then they wouldn’t be Simon and Ian.”

  “No, they wouldn’t,” Anna agreed. “Every soul has one particular astrological pattern. No two are exactly alike.” Then she spoke to Sophie as if Karen wasn’t sitting right there.

  “She chose this particular path as a drastic lesson in self-esteem. The universe does that sometimes; she had to marry Jimmy so she’d really begin to understand her own worth.”

  Sophie blew a raspberry. “Isn’t that sort of like hitting your head on the wall because it feels good when you stop?”

  “The universe has no respect whatsoever for our personal comfort,” Anna proclaimed in a prim voice.

  Anna, and her answers for everything. She had a husband who adored her, yet for all her so-called insights about other people, she didn’t see that since she’d gotten on this astrology kick Bruno wasn’t as lighthearted as he’d always been. Karen knew by the way he was with the boys that Bruno wanted a family. Anna always said she wanted kids, but not right now. As the oldest of the girls, thirty-six, she didn’t exactly have eternity to make a move.

  Which was exactly what Sophie said about Rocky. No doubt about it, the Stewart family wasn’t doing so hot in the relationship sweepstakes.

  “Getting Eric to settle down with one woman is a lost cause,” Sophie had said six weeks ago, when they found out he’d dumped someone they’d all half-liked. “We’ve left him to his own devices where women are concerned, obviously it’s time for us to step in.”

  So they’d methodically screened all the eligible women each of them knew.

  Anna’s friends either taught school or did past li
fe regression, and although they’d had lunch with the two most likely, they’d had to eliminate them. The teacher was hung up on unions, which wasn’t Eric’s favorite subject, and the regressionist kept talking about somewhere called Lemuria, which had apparently existed long before Canada was inhabited.

  Next they tried a doctor friend of Sophie’s without realizing she was a lesbian. Anna even did her chart without cluing in to that little detail, which showed how far off astrology could be.

  Karen couldn’t think of any possibilities. There were two single stylists at work, nice women, but definitely not the brightest bulbs in the lamp.

  And then Karen had met Tessa at the Body Shop in the mall and had what Anna called an epiphany, because all at once Karen remembered that Tessa had been in love with Eric the whole time they were growing up.

  Tessa was single again, sexy, smart, sassy and heterosexual. Not only that, but she was a Taurus, which Anna had said was a perfect match for a Gemini as far as marriage was concerned. There was the little matter of getting them together without making Eric suspicious.

  It was Sophie who came up with the brilliant idea of getting him a membership at Synchronicity for his birthday. Sophie was devious in a way Anna and Karen weren’t.

  “If he has any idea we’re manipulating him into dating Tessa, he’ll go to any lengths to avoid her,” Soph explained. “But if we give him a membership, he’ll have to at least talk to her. Oh, this is sooo perfect.” Sophie rubbed her hands together with glee. “He’s gonna absolutely hate getting a membership for his birthday, and he’ll be worried about the money and try and get a refund—we’ll make sure he can’t—and then he’ll find some way to piss off all the women they line him up with. And all the while, Tessa will be there right under his nose. Don’t even mention her name to him if you can help it.”

  Karen hadn’t. She hadn’t even told either of them that both of them were coming to her place tonight. Knowing Eric’s track record, Karen was worried about Tessa. “Should we maybe give her some idea what we’re doing, see how she feels about it?”

  “No can do,” Sophie insisted. “They both have to figure this is their own idea if it’s going to work.”

  “But Tessa could get her heart broken, you know what he’s like with women,” Karen argued.

  Anna had been tapping frantically on her laptop as her sisters talked. “Listen to this,” she commanded. “I don’t have Tessa’s exact moment of birth, but even without it, she and Eric are compatible. Their relationship is in the ninth house; it has a fated feeling about it.”

  “There you go,” Sophie said. “Who are we to argue with fate?”

  Tessa wasn’t arguing, but Shelby Goodlight must have thought she was, because she kept going over and over the fact that the dentist Clara had lined Shelby up with had turned up for their second date wearing black dress socks with sandals, which Shelby considered ugly, ugly, ugly, no matter what Tessa might think.

  Tessa thought that after twenty-three minutes on the same subject, it was past time to move on, and that matching Shelby, who had an overbite, with a dentist could have been a bracing experience all round. Wrong again.

  “He also suggested I have my teeth bonded, whatever that involves,” Shelby was saying. “Then when I asked what the chances were of him giving my mother a discount on a root canal, he went ballistic.” Shelby raised her eyebrows and held her palms out in a go-figure gesture.

  “Dentists just aren’t sexy, Tessa. I know they make good money, but obviously they’re cheap, and besides you’d have to floss before and after, maybe even during, so don’t line me up with anymore, okay?”

  Tessa made ridiculous promises and sympathetic noises and Shelby finally left. Tessa ate a Zone bar to keep up her strength and to counteract the cigarette she’d smoked just before Shelby arrived. When the phone rang, she almost let the machine take it, but she told herself she did have a responsibility here. She sighed and picked up.

  It was her mother. Why hadn’t she followed her instincts?

  “Tessa, you busy?”

  Tessa sighed and steeled herself. “No, Mom, not at the moment.”

  Maria was a good mother, in the sense that she loved her daughter, cared what happened to her, wanted the best for her. The trouble was, she’d somehow gotten it in her head that since they were both single—she and Tessa’s father, Walter, had divorced when Tessa was twelve—and since Tessa lived in Vancouver again, they should be girlfriends.

  Maria had decided that every Friday night was their “date night.” Tessa was trying to break her of it, but it wasn’t proving to be easy. She loved Maria. You had to love your mother, but she didn’t see how this best friend thing could ever work, and she was right.

  The last time they’d been out together on one of these Friday night disasters, Maria must have read an article in Cosmo on what girlfriends talked about. Leaning across the vegetarian pizza they were sharing, she’d said, “Tessa, which vibrator do you think is worth buying?”

  What did you say when your mother asked a question like that?

  “It’s a matter of personal taste, Mom,” she’d managed to gulp. “And also on how much money you plan on spending.”

  It just wasn’t natural to discuss vibrators with your mother. Next thing, her father, also single, would be asking her advice on Viagra.

  “I’m calling about tomorrow night,” Maria said, and Tessa was pathetically grateful for an ironclad alibi.

  “Sorry, Mom, can’t make it, I’ve got a date tomorrow night.”

  Three weeks ago, Clara had matched her with Alistair Farnsworth, a dot-com millionaire. Tessa had been out with him twice and she figured he was a dot-com dud, but she was duty bound to play by Clara’s rule—three strikes before you dumped him.

  “That’s why I’m calling. So have I.”

  Tessa waited a beat. “So have you what?”

  “Got a date.” There was smugness in Maria’s tone, but there was also apprehension.

  Tessa sat bolt upright. This was new, this was interesting. She’d been on the verge of trying to line her mother up with her favorite older male client, Kenneth Zebroff, just to get out of any more discussions about vibrators. “You have? Way to go, Mom! God, this is wonderful. I’m thrilled for you. Is it anybody I know?”

  Maria drew in an audible breath and let it out again. She spoke so softly Tessa had trouble hearing her. “Actually, it’s Walter.”

  “Walter who?” Tessa didn’t know a Walter, except for…..

  “Walter as in Walter McBride? My Dad? You’re going out with my dad?”

  She couldn’t keep the horror out of her tone. These were two people who’d fought their way through Tessa’s childhood, battled ferociously over the divorce settlement for five years after the fact, and couldn’t be in the same room without having an explosive argument that left Tessa sick to her stomach and anyone else present running for cover.

  “What happened to—” Don’t go there, Tess. The last time she’d visited her father, maybe three weeks ago, there’d been a blonde named Buffy at his apartment at ten on Sunday morning, and she’d seemed very much at home. She also had bigger breasts and smaller hips than Tessa.

  She rearranged the question. “What happened that made you think this was a good idea?” Besides brain seizures that erased every scrap of cogent memory in both your graying heads.

  “It was your grandmother Belinda.”

  “Ma, Grandma Blin died sixteen months and”— Tessa glanced at the desk calendar—“four days ago.” Maybe her mother had actually had a stroke or something, because she wasn’t making much sense.

  “I know that, Tessa. Of course I know when my own mother-in-law died, for goodness’ sake. But I think losing her has changed your father, for the better. We’ve talked quite a lot and we both feel we’re older and wiser now, and maybe for the good of the family we should try to at least be friends.”

  The family? What family? The last she’d heard, Tessa had been an only child, and she
and Maria and Walter were family by merit of blood alone. Maybe she had a sister somewhere in an institution, and they’d never told her?

  “Please don’t tell me you’re doing this for me, Ma. Because I’m really okay with you guys being divorced, honest. I mean, I wasn’t when I was a teenager. I pretty much despised both of you and longed to be an orphan, but most teens hate their parents whether they have reasons or not.”

  She was babbling, but she had provocation. “It wasn’t as if I had no one to talk to about it either; there was always Grandma Blin.”

  Who used to agree that the pair of you were prize assholes. Tears filled Tessa’s eyes as a nostalgic grin came and went. Tiny, optimistic, fiery Grandma Blin had been Tessa’s mainstay all during her childhood, and it was her death that had allowed Tessa to quit her boring job and move back to Vancouver, because Grandma Blin had left Tessa her house, an adorable pink two bedroom cottage on a quiet street just off of Cambie, stuffed with furniture and layered with the crocheted doilies Gram churned out.

  “So where are you guys going?”

  The thought of her mom and dad out on a date made her desperate for a smoke. There was the faint possibility that she and her own date could walk in some restaurant and meet, God help her, her mother and father.

  Tessa didn’t think she could handle that.

  “To Bellingham.”

  “Bellingham?” It was a town just over the U.S. border. “Why are you going to Bellingham?”

  “There used to be a pub that your dad and I went to. We want to see if it’s still there.”

  At least it got them out of the city. Tessa was tempted to tell her mother to take mad money with her for transportation home, just in case things went as usual, but she held her tongue.

  “I want you to know where my will is, Tessa. It’s in that cubbyhole in the sideboard. It’s really straightforward; it leaves everything to you. You know who my lawyer is, Trudy Hopman at Maxwell and Hopman.”