Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle

by Reinhardt, Susan

  Don’t they know while they are celebrating, while they are spouting, “We can finally put this behind us and get on with our lives,” and, “Justice has been served,” when they say all this to the TV cameras and to friends and relatives, that the man or woman walking off in the orange jumpsuit has nothing but time. Time in which to plot evil schemes and revenge, time to rearrange the criminal events in such a way they come out in his favor. Time to concoct a “serious illness” defense. Or grounds for mistrial.

  A lawsuit from Bryce was “unlikely,” the lawyer had said. Unlikely. What was more likely was that my son needed more appointments with the therapist and that I had tons of work to do at Top of the Hill, which required lots of charm and chitchat. I’d have to shelve my own troubles because today was hair day and a half-dozen ladies had signed up for my unlicensed skills, including Annie Sue who wanted the Meg Ryan haircut to go with her new attitude and boozing ways.

  “I’m going for Meg’s choppy and casual look,” she said when I showed her the celebrity cuts magazine and she chose her hairstyle. “I reckon it’s time I lost the wig, and maybe I could get me a few more admirers at Bubba’s if I favored Meg Ryan. What do you think? You think all them fellers will swoon and buy me beers? You know I’ve been back twice more since you took me?”

  “I took you twice, remember?”

  “Thank God I don’t,” she said, mouth popping open, wig falling to the floor, hand slapping that jutting bone she calls a knee.

  I had to run this haircut by Theresa Jolly, who ran it by Annie Sue’s son, who said, “I don’t care what you do with her hair. Keep her happy. If she’s happy, I’m happy.” Theresa claims the 80-year-old son stands to inherit quite a small fortune when Annie Sue passes on. Her husband, a doctor who died 50 years ago, had left her enough of a settlement that she’d built a fine lifestyle for herself. Plus she had saved and invested well.

  This son, this only child from a previous boyfriend who refused to marry the pregnant Annie Sue, was well aware that as long as his mama held on, he would have less and less time to enjoy the benefits of her will. Might as well let her drink and ruin her health.

  “Hurry her on out of this world so I can finally see the world,” Theresa said, quoting the son’s possible thoughts. I was in her office, showing her all the goods and supplies the stores had donated when she told me the plans Annie’s son was probably making.

  “He’s waited longer than a patient old buzzard,” she said. “I hope the woman lives to be 110. Hey, you look tired. You want some coffee?”

  “Thanks. I’m all right. Not sleeping too well, I guess.”

  “This is my high-octane coffee,” she said, stirring her cup with a pencil and pouring me a cup with a pack of Equal. “He can’t wait,” she said, returning to the subject of Annie Sue’s son. “He’s ready to go on a spending binge, though what the greedy old fart could possibly need to buy beats me.”

  “Guess some never grow out of loving money.” I drank the coffee, the brackish Folgers Theresa leaves sitting in the carafe all morning, not making a new pot until after lunch.

  “I hope she drinks away all her CDs and her pension and her savings. You wouldn’t believe what she pays to stay in this place. It’s outrageous, probably eating her alive financially. I hear they sold one of her two houses to front what they thought would be a two-year stint before death. Ha! That was over a decade ago.” She opened her desk drawer and removed a box of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies, helped herself to a couple and passed them to me. It was a routine we had—coffee, conversation, cookies.

  Then she said with a mouth half full, “I don’t know why he doesn’t just take her in and save all that money. Or he could build her a small apartment onto his house. He must think every day will be her last. He’ll come in and ask, ‘How’s Mother?’ and we say, ‘Healthy as a team of horses,’ and his entire face droops. Listen to me telling all this when I have no business rattling my mouth. I know you’ll keep it confidential.”

  “Sure I will. Annie Sue has let on to some of this.” I stood to leave and grabbed two cookies, though I really wasn’t hungry. I’d give them to Mr. Walsh down the hall. He liked to eat sweets when he wasn’t too busy fondling himself. “Thanks for the coffee. I’d better hurry to the beauty shop.”

  “I hear they’re lined up, excited as the first day of school.” Crumbs tumbled from her mouth, settling in the goo of her heavily glossed lips.

  I walked down the long hallway toward the nursing station, which resembled an island in the middle of isolation and exile. The center pod serves as the hub for each wing: nurses and aides and frustrated LPNs busy flipping open the metal lids of charts, scribbling notes and calling doctors, chatting amongst themselves about the goings on of the residents or the happenings in their personal lives. I loved this about nursing, even if we were in a place where endings are played out in a lingering, solitary and infantile manner.

  I loved these old men and women. Most of the staff here, far as I could tell, was fairly decent in the treatment of the residents. With a bachelor’s in nursing, which Bryce should have let me pursue, I wanted more than anything to legally care for them. Instead, he thought I was humpty-dumptying with the head of the department. My plan now is to go for two years and earn a B.S., then work part-time with the geriatrics who had no one to love them or touch their affection-starved flesh on a steady basis, if at all. The rest of the week I wanted to work in the Neonatal Intensive Care nursery where the smallest babies in the world, some weighing only a pound and born three and four months early, fight for life.

  St. Mary’s in Spartanburg has a wonderful NICU, known for its abilities to save those itty-bitty lives and give them decent futures. I didn’t want to be a nurse in the middle of life’s tapestry, tending those struck with the first chord of reality and bodily breakdown, taking care of the 45-year-old woman with cancer, 50-year-old men with blocked arteries and colon polyps. That was too emotionally tough. I’d learned this the hard way during the two years of pre-nursing in college, before like a fool I switched to psychology, but not before seeing first-hand those people forced to step out of their youth and dreams and straight into failing health and poor prognoses.

  But to start from the beginning . . . when life first unfolds from the womb . . . and then to catapult directly to the end, when time is measured in months or a few years . . . these were the moments I’d wanted. Beginnings and endings. No middles. I didn’t even want the middle of my own life.

  The nursing staff nodded when I walked by, pushing a cart loaded with Clairol and curling wands, hair potions that smelled of professional salons, of watermelon and apples, the sweet scents of cherries. Oh, these ladies were going to feel good when they removed their wigs and hairpins and unleashed what few hairs were left for me to tend and tame with warm water. I can imagine how scrumptious it feels to be touched again when so many years had gone by with nothing but a few pats, good doggie, and maybe the obligatory peck on the cheek upon receiving visitors who watched the clock and counted the minutes until they could leave.

  “Can’t wait to see them after the big makeover,” Loretta, an LPN with the crackly smoker’s voice boomed out. “You gonna have to have a fashion show and let them all model for us.”

  I smiled, gave a thumb’s up and wheeled my cart of cosmetic glory down the East wing where the beauty parlor was located at the end of the hall. Each room I passed was decorated like a grade-school teacher’s, the name of the resident written on the door in the center of huge construction paper daffodils, tulips, pansies and the occasional needlepoint square typically referring to the beauty of Heaven and the Hereafter.

  Many of the folks, behind the veil of confusion and the cobwebs of age muddling their eyes and hearing, knew full well they were in the final square footage of their lives. They bided their time in a box with two twin beds, blinds, a cheap ruffled valance, a dres
ser, maybe a chair from home that held them up for years and a few old pictures in dusty frames of relatives tied by blood but who rarely, if ever, dropped by to visit.

  Of course, there were always the exceptions, the devoted daughter who came to feed her mother every evening and sit with her for several hours, the husband who arrived every single day, twice most days, to bring his wife the fresh gowns he had washed and dried himself at the local Laundromat. He would bathe her and talk to her and she would never say a word. If a tear ran down her face, he considered that an understanding between them. It was enough. For four years he’d done this, pausing only to eat in the cafeteria and sit with other older ladies or gentlemen, helping them cut their fried fish and Salisbury steaks.

  I continued down the hall, slowing at each door, taking in the familiar odors: the soiled diapers and linens, the overpowering cleaning solutions, the Glade and Lysol giving the air a thick, almost suffocating quality—all a necessary arsenal of agents to mask the odor of decay and bodies breaking down before the heart would give up. I’d duck in and see ladies in cotton print nightgowns, all curled like children on the tops of the bedspreads. Some would wail, fling arms and legs at random. It was hard to witness, but Top of the Hill sure tried, with its perky activities director who organized bingo and old-time music, cakewalks in wheelchairs, anything she thought they’d enjoy. Most of them participated but wore sad, defeated faces registering utter indifference.

  Twice a week I’d pass these doors with their cheerful preschool decorations and marvel at the sameness. Then one day, wham! An out-of-the-ordinary visitor would pop up and take me by complete surprise.

  We have a woman on Kathy’s floor, 94-year-old Martha Stradley who is 110 percent in la-la land and has a great-granddaughter, a sullen woman who dresses from head to toe in black and is covered in henna markings and piercings. She stays 10 minutes and leaves behind bumper stickers placed all over poor Martha’s bed. The last batch said, “You! Out of the Gene Pool,” “We Still Prey” and “Just Say No to Sex With a Pro-Lifer.” We had to rip them off fast before the glue set and stripped the laminate from the beds and the inspectors came and ruled our institution unfit or cult-affiliated. One thing I loved about nursing homes was the way everything stayed unpredictable, especially the personalities of the residents. They could be talking about God and Glory in one breath, and in the next call you a mother-f’er.

  “Good morning, ladies,” I said as I approached the “salon” and the three old women waiting for me to unlock the doors to beauty. Two sat strapped in wheelchairs, the other tapping a walker. The rest who were waiting earlier must have wandered off, forgetting why they were there in the first place.

  Annie Sue wasn’t there yet but the morning was fairly young for her. She could be sleeping off a hangover, though I think the only time she drinks are the few occasions I’ve taken her.

  “Who are we going to turn from regal queen to a nubile princess first?” I cooed to my octogenarian kindergartners. I fumbled with the key and cart and crammed everything inside the small room that had a shampoo bowl, a vanity, swivel chair, two ancient chair-type hair dryers, several drawers and shelves filled with shampoos, conditioners, pink foam and bristly curlers and assorted products from the past. There was also a handicapped-accessible restroom and a Coke machine, a bunch of old Reader’s Digests and Guideposts, and two candy dishes, one for regular sweets and another for the sugar-free kind.

  “Is that you, Lizzy?” a woman I never met in my life asked. She wheeled closer to me and picked at my shirt. “Is it you? Why, you ain’t paid me the least bit of attention since you ran off with my husband.” She scrunched her face up and the wrinkles multiplied. “You ain’t gonna be stealing no man when I’m done with you. I told you that hooking up with a married man was bigamy.”

  I raised my eyebrows and said, “I think you’re mistaken. I’m Dee, your unlicensed, happy-go-lucky beautician.”

  I glanced at the other two women and noticed the one standing banged her walker to the rhythm of her howls as she cracked up with that old-lady-like, wood-splitting laughter. The second, also in a wheelchair, said nothing, just moaned and stared at her poor gnarled fingers, each bent like bad road, curving this way and that, as if someone had broken them during an evening of torture.

  “Come on and let’s get you started,” I said. “Here, take a look at this ‘Hollywood’s Hottest Cuts,’ and pick yourself a favorite.”

  She snatched the magazine and clumsily pointed, beat upon actually, a style on page 11. Farrah Fawcett, circa 1977, with the caption beneath the winged and sprayed creation that read: “Go back in time when women looked like women. You, too, can have this feminine, sexy look. Farrah fashioned it, but anyone with hair below her shoulders can copy it.”

  “How long’s your hair, Mrs. . . . Watkins? It has to be a certain—”

  “Don’t you dare refer to me as Mrs. Watkins. Mr. Frank Watkins got him another wife while I’s still a married to him. Is that you, Lizzy?” she scooted up close as I tried to wedge her strong, bulbous head into the shampoo bowl. Before turning on the water, I combed out her gray hair and was surprised by its length and how it felt like a duckling’s down.

  “I’ve wanted to be Farrah since ‘Charlie’s Angels’ first came on back when I was young enough to still have me a strong fancy for men. I liked what’s his name, Bos. Bosley. That’s the one them Angels was always talking to about this and that.” She reached up and fiddled with her hair. “Give me some of them blondish flippy things that pouffed back off Farrah’s face, since people tell me I favor her.”

  I bit my lip as hard as I could to keep from laughing and washed her hair in shampoo she complained of smelling like “boiled rat fat.” I toweled her head and wheeled her to the booth, drying her hair and trying to comb out the soft wet snarls. She jerked and yelped and tried to swat me with her purply-bruised hands, every finger strangled in a ring swollen with large stones.

  As I began cutting her hair, snipping and layering, creating much needed texture and volume with razors, she rattled incessantly about Frank and his big appendage and how I, Lizzy the man stealer, better make her look just like Farrah or she would see to it personally that I fried in a vat of hot Crisco.

  She held Farrah in her lap, a veined index finger punching the picture, as if I didn’t hear her the first time.

  “You get me to that point and maybe Frank will leave you and come back to me.”

  “I don’t even know Frank. What happened to Mr. Gentry?”

  “Who? We talkin’ about Frank here, not Mr. Gentry.”

  I finally managed to get the highlights in her head and stick her under the dryer with a magazine she couldn’t read but would hush her up. While her color took hold, I turned to see Annie Sue who had broken in line and was grinning wildly.

  “Annie Sue, I’ve got two before you, sweetheart,” I said, noticing the other women were gone, replaced by Annie Sue and a wooly-headed woman I’d seen only in passing.

  “You don’t anymore,” she said, slapping that thigh, jumping a few inches off the ground for effect. “I gave them both a $5 bill and they said I could go first. I have to get my Meg Ryan look today because there’s a man at Bubba’s who thinks I’m hot stuff.” She winked and let that mouth pop open, showing those yellow but sturdy 104-year-old teeth.

  “While that old thing’s cooking under yonder, put a little Meg in me,” she said, guffawing. “I don’t want none of that heavy shampoo like you put on doflotchamajig or whatever the dingbat’s name is. Give me some regular smelling stuff and then whittle away.” I removed Annie Sue’s wig and saw that the matted material left growing on her scalp was in horrible shape, and even a speck of harsh color would scald her head to skull and vaporize her remaining strands.

  “Only thing for us to do is go black or brown,” I said. “Bleach will kill you.”

  �
��Fine, fine, then give me this here Posh Spice woman’s hair. I think that will be sexy on me, don’t you?”

  “Who is Posh Spice?” I asked, for it had been awhile since I’d been updated on current trends.

  “Victoria Beckham,” she said matter-of-factly, which made me wonder why in the world she couldn’t apply her celebrity memory to the written test at the DMV. Then maybe she’d have a driver’s license. She handed me a tattered photo of a scrawny brunette with a pixie cut. “Here’s a picture I tore out of the Enquirer.”

  “We may can pull that off. You certain?”

  “Sure as sugar. Posh is friends with Tom Cruise’s people. You know she’s in high cotton.”

  I got her in the shampoo bowl, and, after I’d put the cream rinse in and was about to help her over to the mirror, she sprang up like a wound toy and bounded from the chair, zipping to the counter to check her wet head in front of the vanity. She cast off the towel and the sight before me was shocking. There couldn’t have been 100 hairs on her head. She reminded me of a dog we had when I was young, a fluffball that once wet took on a completely different appearance, not even resembling a dog but more or less a large and very wiggly eel. If Annie Sue had been a dog, she’d have been a Chinese Crested.

  I snipped and cut, careful not to slice through her bared scalp and used a blackish/brown temporary rinse instead of a permanent dye. I was afraid the dye would kill off the rest of her hair and eat her tender pink scalp to bone.

  After we got the color on, I took a razor, some mousse, gel and hairspray and finished Miss Annie Sue’s Victoria Beckham hairstyle. She grinned at herself in the mirror, turning this way and that, finally adding, “I need some eyeshadow with such a short cut, and also I do believe, some rouge and lipstick.”