Am I Right or Am I Right?

by Barry Jonsberg

  I examined myself in a shop window. Even though you could stick two fingers up my nose and use me for a bowling ball, it was an improvement. I tied the bandanna around my completely shaved head and headed for the bus stop.

  Chapter 11

  A reflection on the positives in life, after mature consideration

  Chapter 12

  Just your average date, part one

  Here’s another poser.

  You have secured a date with a young man who makes Orlando Bloom look like the dog’s dinner. Unfortunately, a deranged hairdresser has viciously attacked your head, necessitating a drastic solution that has left you doing an uncanny impersonation of a potato. You put on your glasses and look in a mirror. Ears stick out of a shiny globe, like handles on a hardboiled egg. If you went out on a sunny day, you’d dazzle the pilots of passing aircraft, precipitating a major catastrophe. What are you going to do?

  Do you cancel the date or go ahead and hope he doesn’t mind being seen in public with a bespectacled skinhead?

  I tried other options. I went into the Fridge’s wardrobe while she was out and found a blond wig. I had no idea why she owned one. Possibly it was a remnant from some ghastly costume party. You couldn’t describe it as a top-of-the-line accessory. It had the consistency of freeze-dried straw and contained enough static electricity to run a small appliance. I put it on.

  I looked like Goldilocks with breast implants.

  I decided to call Jason and call the whole thing off. I mean, what choice did I have? Maybe I could rearrange it for three months’ time, when I’d look as if I was at least a candidate for the human race. I’d even called the number—my finger was poised over the last digit—when I thought again.

  If I gave him the elbow now, there was no chance of reclaiming the situation. There were probably dozens of girls waiting in the wings to snap him up. Girls with washboard stomachs, master’s degrees in soccer administration, tiny halter tops, and long flowing hair that shimmered sexily as they walked. No. Jason was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  I replaced the handset.

  So what if I had a head like an inflated marble? There’s more to attractiveness than the physical. I had a personality. I could be warm, charming, witty. Why should I prejudge Jason, compartmentalize him as a shallow chauvinist, when all the time he could be searching for an intelligent soul mate? For all I knew he was a closet Buddhist. To hell with it. I’d go. I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t.

  I felt better once I’d made the decision, so I locked myself in my bedroom and cried for two hours.

  I was buggered if I was going to school, though.

  Thursday evening wasn’t too bad. I stayed in, watching Discovery while simultaneously trying to decipher the arcane mysteries of probability theory. As far as I understood it, the probability of waking up the next morning with a full head of hair was zero, while the probability of Jason dropping me like a handful of warm diarrhea was approaching one. While these amusing notions passed through my head, I kept one eye on the driveway. If the Fridge turned up, I could be in my bedroom before her key hit the front door. I needn’t have worried. Once more, the Fridge was missing in action. By the time I hit the sack at eleven o’clock, she still wasn’t home.

  I slept surprisingly well and woke refreshed. For a moment or two, I had difficulty believing my recollections of the previous day and had to check myself out in the mirror. The early morning light glinted off my pate and made intricate patterns on the ceiling. The birds stopped singing. I had the cranial characteristics of a Tibetan monk.

  I wrapped my head in a towel (at least I was still thinking rationally and strategically) and slipped downstairs into the kitchen. The Fridge was home—the car was parked in the driveway—but there was no sign of her. Probably still sleeping. I made toast and thought about rubbing Vegemite on my scalp, but decided against it. It probably wouldn’t do anything and I’d spend the day with a cloud of flies buzzing around my head. Or, worse, stuck to it.

  Keeping my voice quiet, I called school and told them I wouldn’t be in on account of a severe inflammation of the clack picked up at work. Then I pinned a note to the Fridge on the fridge, telling her I wasn’t feeling crash-hot and needed to catch up on sleep. I padded back up the stairs and into my bedroom, where the day stretched out interminably before me. At least I’d have time to plan what I was going to wear.

  I was surprised to discover my resolution to go ahead with the date hadn’t diminished overnight. If anything, all remaining doubts had vanished. If Jason was the kind of guy to be put off by someone who’d shaved her head for charity, then he could shove his impeccably fine features where the sun don’t shine. This would be a test. A test of his inner beauty. What did I have to lose?

  This line of thought cheered me immensely and I turned my mind to matters of apparel. One thing was clear. I couldn’t wear any of my glasses. I tried them all, believe me. But it was impossible.

  The kind of glasses I like are bold. Well, not so much bold as downright arrogant. And they wouldn’t work. Stick a brightly colored pair of specs on a cantaloupe if you don’t believe me. So this left one option. A few years previously, I had tried contact lenses. I think I was going through a self-conscious stage before I discovered that the best way of overcoming embarrassment at wearing glasses was to make them a feature. A sort of in-your-face, stuff-you-if-you-don’t-like-’em, I-couldn’t-give-a-rat’s approach.

  Actually, this discovery was prompted by the physical pain involved with contact lenses. Getting the buggers in was torture. It was like sticking thumbtacks into your eyeballs. And every time I blinked I felt like confessing to crimes I hadn’t committed.

  I still had the contact lenses and the expensive gunk they came in. It was time to give them another go.

  I perched in front of the mirror, one lens balanced delicately on an index finger, the fingers of the other hand prying my left eyelid open, tongue sticking out the corner of my mouth in concentration. Then it was simply a case of bringing the lens onto the surface of the eyeball in one smooth, decisive action. Unfortunately, due to the reflex action that in prehistoric times was invaluable in preserving my forebears’ eyesight, I would blink at the critical moment, spinning the lens off to a corner of the bedroom, where it would disappear into the carpet. Then I’d spend half an hour finding the bloody thing, cleaning it, and going through the whole process again.

  I spent the entire morning doing this before I managed to get both lenses in. Feeling proud, I stood in front of the mirror and examined the results. True, I couldn’t see much because my eyes were streaming with tears, but it didn’t seem too bad. I thought the swelling would probably subside by the time I met Jason.

  That left my clothes. I could go for the bold approach. Trousers, waistcoat, maybe even a tie. Too sexually ambiguous, I decided. Or there was the feminine angle—print dress with soft, flowing lines, complemented with chunky Doc Martens. My head could act as another stylistic counterpoint at the other end. Too schizophrenic? And what about my head itself? Should I go out bareheaded, scalp gleaming in the light of streetlights, or would a scarf be better? Maybe a floppy hat? Could I keep it on throughout the movie? Dubious. With my luck, I’d sit in front of a dwarf and be forced to remove it. No, there was no way I could go the entire evening without Jason finding out. What if he tried to run his hands through my hair during the film? I could imagine his scream when he discovered he was fondling a boulder.

  I had made little headway on the thorny problem of appropriate dress when I heard the Fridge leave, about three-thirty. The front door slammed and there was a crunch of tires on gravel. I waited ten minutes before I went downstairs. I’d seen too many films where an unsuspecting bald heroine had been caught by sneaky decoys like that.

  I got to the front room and the phone rang. It was Candy from Crazi-Cheep.

  “Hello, Calma?” she said. “I was wondering if you could work tonight. We’re short-staffed again.”

  “I can’t, Candy
,” I replied. “I’ve got a bone in my leg.”

  There was a five-second pause.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Hope you’re better soon.”

  I put the phone down and the doorbell rang. Typical, I thought. For hours the Fridge is home and open to the public and nothing happens. As soon as she leaves, it’s open house. I snuck over to the curtains. I might have mentioned already that the view from the window is not perfect, but this time I was lucky. Swirling paisley material and a glimpse of long blond hair told me Vanessa was at the door.

  I didn’t hesitate. I unwrapped the towel from my head, raced to the front door, opened it sharply, and went, “Boo!” Vanessa screamed. The look on her face was priceless. I was making a habit of getting a reaction out of Nessa these days. She stood stock still for a moment, eyes glazed, her mouth describing a perfect little O. If I’d tapped her forehead with my finger, she’d have gone over like a felled tree.

  “Wassup, Nessa?” I said. “Care to come in and give my skull a buff and polish?”

  And then she started to laugh. Really laugh. Laugh in a way I’d never heard from Vanessa before, as if an internal barrier had been breached and what was bubbling up was fresh, pure, unstoppable. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed too, bent double, tears running down my face and threatening to wash my contact lenses onto the welcome mat. We held on to each other, lungs struggling to get air, pain like a sharp band along my side. Laughing.

  Fact File

  Common name: Vanessa Aldrick

  Scientific name: Hippius noncommunicado

  Habitat: This creature spends most of its time asleep to conserve energy. Can occasionally be seen searching through sad racks of clothing in secondhand shops or in the folk section of record stores.

  Mating habits: Unknown. Scientific studies are proceeding.

  Appearance: Brightly colored, the Hippius noncommunicado is nonetheless a retiring creature. Favors loose-flowing, garish plumage and is renowned for its inability to evolve.

  Distinguishing characteristics: Normally unresponsive to human contact, but is loyal and supportive if treated with patience and kindness.

  Status: Possesses hidden depths while appearing barely sentient.

  Sometimes you think you’ve got someone pinned down and classified and then they leap up and surprise you.

  Vanessa came into the house and disappeared off to the toilet, pleading a severely weakened bladder. I heard her giggling from the front room. I wiped the tears from my eyes and a thought skittered across my mind. Was this why I liked Vanessa? Because I could sometimes provoke such reactions from her, though her natural tendency was toward gloominess? Was she merely a mirror I held up to my own wit? It was an uncomfortable thought and I put it to one side. It occurred to me I was doing that a lot recently, postponing stuff. Was I a procrastinator? I’d think about it tomorrow.

  When Nessa came out, we sat on the couch and I told her about my disastrous trip to the hairdresser. I didn’t even have to exaggerate for comic effect. The truth was bizarre enough. I set her off laughing again. I liked it when Vanessa laughed. She got all these sparks in her eyes. Her smile injected her face with life. She looked beautiful.

  It was a pity she looked like that so rarely. Nonetheless, I reflected, she had come a long way since primary school, when a smile from Nessa coincided with the appearance of Halley’s comet. I liked to think I’d helped her in that regard. Since we’d become friends she smiled much more frequently. Vanessa had also been disastrously accident-prone. She missed heaps of days from school and would come in with bandages and Band-Aids up her arms. Fell off her bike, slipped in the shower. But not since we’d teamed up. I wasn’t sure how to put this down to my influence, but I was prepared to accept the credit.

  “Listen,” she said after I finished the sad and sorry tale of my misadventures in grooming. “I’m going to the movies tonight. I swear to God I’m not going to check out Justin.”

  “Jason,” I said.

  “Whatever. I’m spending the weekend with Dad and I don’t want to get to his house too early. I need to kill some time.”

  Nessa, like me, was in a single-parent household. Unlike me, however, she had a father who showed interest, so every month she’d spend a weekend with him. I got the impression she wasn’t keen on it. She never talked about him, for example. Mind you, she rarely talked about anything, so I suppose that wasn’t a clinching argument. It was just a feeling I had.

  “Do you want to come with Jason and me?” I asked.

  Her eyes widened in surprise.

  “No,” she said. “Not at all. I just told you in case you spotted me and thought I was spying on you.”

  “Good,” I said. “I wasn’t going to invite you, anyway.”

  I smiled when I said it, though, and she knew I was joking. Her eyes sparked briefly.

  “Just as well you mentioned it, however,” I continued. “You’re right. I might have come to the wrong conclusion if I’d seen you in the next row hiding behind a supersized popcorn.”

  Vanessa left about ten minutes later. She had to pack for her weekend stay. She touched me on the arm when we got to the front door.

  “I hope you have a great time tonight, Calma,” she said. “Really. And I’m sorry I was such a loser when you told me.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Forget it. And give me a hug.”

  In the end, I decided on a simple outfit. Long blue fisherman’s pants, a white halter-neck top I had been saving for a special occasion, and black leather flip flops. I checked in the mirror and was pleased with what I saw. Mind you, what I could see wasn’t crystal clear. Those damn contact lenses were still giving me grief.

  Oh, and I wore a dark, floppy hat. Very floppy. Completely spineless. The hat, not me. Well, me as well, when I come to think about it.

  I set off very early for the date. I hadn’t intended to. My brain had issued firm instructions to the rest of my body that a lateness of at least ten minutes was required, on the grounds that this would ensure Jason would be tingly with anticipation, scanning the crowds of passersby for my face.

  FastF™

  I saw the Fridge.

  FastF™

  It was all over in a flash, a fraction of a second, a single frame in the spool of time. Too quick to be sure.

  But I was sure. It was the Fridge.

  I moved towards the restaurant, but Jason separated from a crowd and I stopped. It wouldn’t have taken much to go over and check, peer in through the window at the customers, but suddenly I was scared of knowledge and its implications. I smiled at Jason and we collected our tickets.

  From: Miss Moss

  To: Calma Harrison

  Subject: Sonnet

  * * *

  Calma,

  I’d like you to try a Shakespearean sonnet! As you know, the sonnet form is (essentially) fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, with a specific rhyme scheme. The Shakespearean form has a rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefefgg—in other words, you finish with a rhyming couplet. Have a look at Shakespeare’s sonnets—you will already be familiar with a good number, like sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”—but don’t be put off. I’m not expecting work of his standards!

  Write about a person who is, or was, important to you (we might as well keep to the subject matter that old William was obsessed with).

  All the best,

  Miss Moss

  When Kiffo Died

  * * *

  Some things are best forgotten, Mother said: When spinning days are steeped in pain enough, Why resurrect what’s buried in the head? But if we can’t forget…that’s when it’s tough, When images revolve against our will And in our dreams press heavy on the eyes—A red-haired boy, a car, a bike, a spill Of earth and sky, a crumpled form that lies Beside a road. The imprints of these things Are stamped upon my mind. I see again His hair, his freckled face and memory brings The dead to life, refreshes like the rain.

/>   When Kiffo died I knew I’d lost a friend.

  I did not know the void would never end.

  Chapter 13

  Just your average date, part two

  Jason was drop-dead gorgeous. He was wearing dark chinos and a collarless shirt. My head broke into a sweat as soon as I saw him. He smiled and I worried that a thin sheen of perspiration would slide from under my hat and baste my face, like those portable water features.

  If Jason noticed anything about my head, he didn’t say anything. The hat I was wearing was floppy all right, but close examination would reveal an absence of tresses flowing down my back. I tried to keep facing him. He’d find out soon enough, but I wanted to be in control of the timing.

  We picked up tickets. He paid, thank God, and I didn’t protest too much. Independent creature though I am, the fact that my checking account held one dollar and twenty-four cents militated against chipping in. Jason suggested we have a drink before the film started, as we had forty-five minutes to kill, and I was happy with that. For one thing I wanted to get the revelation over with as quickly as possible. If he hated my scalp, there was still time to call the date off. I didn’t want to be sitting next to someone in the cinema and know he would sooner have his toenails ripped out with red-hot pliers than be seen there by any of his friends.

  It was getting to make-or-break time.

  We sat down outside Giorgio’s, a little Italian coffee shop on the outskirts of the mall, and ordered two hot chocolates. Jason wanted to sit outside to smoke and I didn’t object. If you were going to do a grand unveiling, then it was fitting to do so in front of the entire city. Maybe there’d be speeches and a ribbon-cutting.

  “Love the hat,” said Jason. God, his eyes were gorgeous.