by Betsy Carter
ON THE FOLLOWING Saturday, Tessie opened her Jerry Box, took out the ad from J. Baldy’s, and stuffed it in her handbag. She had never been to a fancy beauty parlor. In Carbondale, she’d gotten her hair cut at the same barber’s where Jerry had his cut. In Gainesville, she went to Regina’s, a place a few blocks from her house. For six dollars, Regina, whose copper-colored hair was piled atop her head and flowed down her face like lava, would wash and cut Tessie’s hair. “Ain’t no point in teasing this,” she’d say, holding Tessie’s limp hair in her hands as if it was some spit-up from a baby. “It’d be like trying to make a bee hive out of a spider web.” Then Tessie would tip Regina fifty cents and leave the one-room win-dowless shop feeling more worn and haggard than when she’d first come in.
J. Baldy’s was like no place she’d ever been. The walls were a soothing peach color, not white peeling paint, and light streamed in from the large bay window in the front. There was a receptionist, and classical music played softly from a hi-fi. Tessie pulled out her clipping with the 20 percent discount coupon. “I have a noon appointment with Mr. Baldy.” She kept her voice steady and made it a point to look Delilah in the eye.
Delilah looked her up and down. Another scholarship case, she thought to herself, and said he’d be with her in a moment. Tessie sat down on a blue brocade armchair. She reached into her purse for the envelope she received Thursday morning. Again she read the note written in the hasty hand of Barone:
Dottie, We only danced one dance and yet the music keeps playing in my head. I took you in my arms and the world melted away. Then life intruded, with a bang (and a splash) and our magic bubble burst too soon. Have the next dance with me. Your place, a week from this Saturday night. I’ll bring the food and music.
A familiar voice sliced through her daydream. “Why of course I don’t plan to go into the water today,” it said, rather shrilly, “not with this masterpiece I am carrying on my head.” It was Victoria Landy, unmistakably. Tessie looked up, straight into Victoria Landy’s ice-blue eyes.
“Well, of all people,” said Victoria. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” Tessie covered the Baron’s note, as if someone might cheat off of it. She hoped that Victoria hadn’t seen her hand Delilah the coupon. “Yes,” she answered, running her hand through her hair. “I thought I’d try something new.”
“You’ve come to the right place. This man,” said Victoria, turning to Jésus, “is the Albert Einstein of hair. Aren’t you, Jésus? Jésus, this is my friend, Tessie Lockhart.”
Victoria never took her eyes off Tessie when she called her “my friend.”
“How do you do, Jésus,” she said, aware that by accepting Victoria’s gesture of friendship, the two women had sealed a pact.
“What are you doing after your appointment?” asked Victoria.
“Nothing much,” shrugged Tessie, who planned on spending most of the day waiting for the night.
“Tell you what. I have a lunch date, but I’ll meet you back here at one. We can have a cup of coffee.”
“Sure,” Tessie said, surprised by Victoria’s offer. She had too much on her mind already to worry what the women would talk about. She watched Jésus, his dark long fingers floating over Victoria’s hair, pulling a strand here, patting another one in place there.
He’ll find me so plain after her, thought Tessie. But her anxiety dissolved once she sat in his chair.
Jésus rubbed Tessie’s shoulders in a way that no one, not even Jerry, had. “Mrs. Lockhart,” said Jésus. “I’m sure that everyone has told you of your resemblance to the actress Joanne Woodward.”
“Not everyone.” Tessie blushed. Jésus ran his hands through her hair with respect. “You have fine silky hair. We should open up your face, let the world see your radiant eyes. Have you ever worn bangs before?”
Tessie shook her head yes. “But that was years ago.”
“There is so much to work with here,” he squeezed her shoulders. “Sonia will wash you first.”
The young girl from the pool: Tessie recognized her immediately. Sonia watched her silently as she washed her hair and gently massaged her head with a towel. As she led her back to Jésus’s chair, she said to Jésus, “Sir, I go to lunch now.”
Of course, thought Tessie. She has a lunch date too.
“Your friend Mrs. Landy is an extraordinary woman,” said Jésus. “She has, like you, very fine hair yet she has managed to do so much with it.”
“Yes,” Tessie agreed, “Mrs. Landy is a very versatile woman.”
By the time Jésus had finished with her, Tessie had a short bob with bangs. “You look like the daughter of the woman who walked in here an hour ago,” said Jésus, pleased with his own creation.
Tessie stared in the mirror. It was as if she were looking at a face she hadn’t seen in nearly four years.
“Thank you, Mr. Baldy,” she said, unable to take her eyes off herself. “This is amazing. Thank you so much.”
Jésus noticed how Tessie’s hands were red and dry, and how her nails were jagged as if hastily clipped. Normally, he would have suggested a manicure, but something about her unabated gratitude made him hold back.
“I hope I will see you again,” he said.
“The next time you have one of those coupons in the paper, I’ll be first in line,” said Tessie, trying to make light of it.
Jésus was moved by her honesty. He knew what it was like to be poor and proud.
“It gives me such pleasure to cut your hair, Mrs. Lockhart, I’ll tell you what. Anytime you come here, I will give you twenty percent off. It would be my honor.”
“Oh I couldn’t do that,” said Tessie. “Besides, you do such a good business, why do you need me?”
“It’s the women like you that make my work such a satisfaction,” he said graciously. “We will keep it just between us.”
Maybe Jerry brought her here to remind her that there was kindness in the world if you knew how to see it.
TEN
Well if that isn’t the sweetest little hairdo,” said Victoria, rubbing her hands together with satisfaction. She was seated across from Tessie in a yellow vinyl booth with red trim at Harmon’s Luncheonette. Harmon’s was right across the street from Baldy’s and the ladies of town would meet there for a BLT or tuna melt before their appointments or for one of Harmon’s famous sticky buns after. “I swear, you look twenty years younger,” Victoria went on.
It might be construed that by using the words “sweet little hairdo” or implying how old Tessie had looked before, Victoria was talking down to her. But seeing as Tessie had never conversed with any of the women in town, much less sat face-to-face with one here at Harmon’s, she chose to think that Victoria was being kindly in a Southern sort of way.
“Have you ever tried one of the sticky buns?” Victoria continued. “It’s just the best thing I’ve ever had. You’re such a petite little thing, you could eat a room full of sticky buns and never gain an ounce. Me? I take one look at those things and my thighs turn to mud. Go ahead, try one.”
The twenty dollars she’d spent at Baldy’s that morning, plus the two-dollar tip she’d left, had already put Tessie in the hole for next week’s spending. Another thirty-five cents for coffee and fifty cents for the bun would leave her with not enough money for groceries that week. But she didn’t want Victoria Landy to know how carefully she had to count her money.
“I can’t pass that up, can I?” said Tessie, trying to sound casual.
When the bun came, warm and smelling like something baked on a snowy winter afternoon, Tessie slowly pulled it apart. The white icing oozed into the swirl of cinnamon. Had Tessie been alone, she would have licked the sugary stuff off the plate. But with Victoria’s eyes on her, she simply swallowed and took a gulp of coffee.
“Bet they don’t bake like that in Ohio,” said Victoria.
“Illinois,” said Tessie. “Carbondale, Illinois.”
“Jiminy! Idaho, Ohio, Illinois. I never can keep those vowel states separat
e,” said Victoria.
Tessie smiled broadly, revealing a brown fleck of cinnamon stuck in a back tooth. “I know what you mean. Like Okefenokee Swamp or Lake Okeechobee.”
Victoria’s eyes narrowed with the knowledge that in some way, she’d just been put in her place.
“Seeing as our daughters have become inseparable, I thought it best we get to know each other,” said Victoria, her voice lowered by an octave.
“How nice,” said Tessie sincerely. “Dinah’s father died four years ago. Since then, she’s been so awfully sad and lonely. Her friendship with Crystal has brought her back to life. I am so grateful for that.”
“And what about you? Are you lonely too?”
Tessie placed both hands over her heart. “You have no idea.” Her voice choked. “Sometimes I can’t believe I’m still alive. If it weren’t for Dinah, I don’t know . . .”
Victoria had planned to spin the conversation right along and ask about Barone. She thought she’d make it clear that she knew about him, and she’d enjoy Tessie’s discomfort with the knowledge that she also knew he was married. Maybe it was the way Tessie’s voice went all tight when she talked about her dead husband, or how she was so naked in her gratitude toward Crystal, or maybe it was how pathetic she looked with the brown crumb stuck in her tooth. Victoria wasn’t sure what it was, but she had lost her taste for cornering her.
Tessie’s eyes filled with tears. “We moved to Gainesville to get away from the memories. We were in such terrible terrible shape, me and Dinah. Jerry—that was my husband’s name—and I had honeymooned in St. Augustine. We thought it was the most beautiful place in the world, so I decided . . .”
It occurred to Victoria that this feeling of tenderness, curbing her impulse to lash out, was what Charlie meant when he talked about having compassion for other people. She could do this. She could have compassion for another person. What was so hard about that?
Tessie stopped herself midsentence, as if she hadn’t been aware that she was talking. “I’m so sorry. You have better things to do than listen to me go on like this.”
Awash in righteousness and gripped by the desire that Tessie Lockhart view her as a kind person, a compassionate person, Victoria reached across the table and took Tessie’s hand in hers. “Don’t you go worrying about me, honey, I have all the time in the world. My heart goes out to you, for all you’ve suffered,” she said, biting back the urge to tell her that Nivea Creme would do wonders for her dry hands. “You and that poor little girl of yours.”
Tessie finished her sticky bun in silence, under the mournful gaze of her new friend. After a moment, Victoria’s eyes brightened. “Oh my word, I have just been struck with the most brilliant idea. Crystal is going off to Camp Osceola in two weeks. There’s another of those vowel places, isn’t that a scream? Dinah should go with her.”
“Oh, no,” said Tessie, “I could never afford that. It must cost hundreds of dollars.”
“Doesn’t either,” said Victoria. “Crystal is going to be a counselor in training; Charlie’s going to be a counselor. They both go for free. Maynard and I have known the people who run the camp for years: the Frankels, Audrey and Ralph. They’re Jewish, but very nice. I’m sure we could get Dinah a position. It would do her a world of good.”
“It’s worried me, about the summer and what Dinah would do,” said Tessie. “With me working and Crystal being away and all . . .”
“Then it’s decided! I’ll call Audrey as soon as I get home,” said Victoria triumphantly. “Oh, and this is on me. Now that you’ve had a sticky bun at Harmon’s, you’re an official citizen of Gainesville, Florida.” Virtue coursed through her veins.
“DO YOU THINK they put strange things in the water down here?” Tessie asked Dinah as she told her about lunch with Victoria. “Honestly, she was like night and day.”
“Crystal says when God gave out brains, her mother was off shopping” said Dinah, slightly distracted. “Can I really go to Camp Osceola?” Dinah hadn’t even noticed Tessie’s haircut. Tessie might have been annoyed about her daughter’s self-absorption if she hadn’t been lost in her own daydreams about seeing Barone alone in the summer.
That night, Dinah had a sleepover at Crystal’s. She sat with Crystal on her pink chenille bedspread, poring over the Camp Osceola brochure. “That’s the lake,” said Crystal, pointing to a picture of a lake with a raft in the center. Dinah kept staring at the photo as if in her staring, something more would reveal itself to her. On shore, upside-down canoes were stored like wine bottles on a rack. There was another rack with row boats. The setting sun illuminated the water the way it does when lightning strikes in the night. Crystal moved on. “This is the tennis court. Oh, and there’s the main dining hall.”
The two girls looked at the pictures slowly, turning the thick glossy pages of the brochure as if they were Dead Sea scrolls. “Could we go back to the picture of the lake?” asked Dinah. She stared at the photo, trying to put herself in that scene, in that water. “The bottom is rocky, so you’ll have to bring a pair of water shoes,” said Crystal.
Water shoes, sneakers, nametags, tennis racquet, duffel bag, soap dish, poncho: there were so many things she’d need for camp, and Dinah didn’t have any of them. When she asked her mother how they were going to afford everything, she shrugged her shoulders and held out her hands. “Beats me,” she said. “We’ll figure out something.” It sounded to Dinah like no big deal. Little did she know that later in the afternoon, Tessie wrote an agonized note to her Jerry:
God help me, but I’m going to ask the Glenns to borrow some money. It’s not how I choose to live, but it seems worth it for this camp business. You would be surprised at some of the things I’m doing these days. I had coffee and a sticky bun with Victoria Landy today. I’ve changed my hairdo. Who would have ever dreamed I could go on like this without you?
It wasn’t rational, being so coy, but Tessie preferred not to talk to Jerry about Barone. Of course, if he could understand her notes and entreaties, how could he not be aware of what else was going on? She chose not to ask herself this question. That night, before Barone came over, she found a five-dollar bill in the back pocket of a pair of dungarees she hadn’t worn in years. Five dollars was a heck of a lot of money: a message from Jerry loud and clear.
CRYSTAL AND DINAH were still looking at the Camp Osce-ola brochure when Charlie came home that night. Dinah hadn’t seen him since the Eddie Fingers episode, and she worried what would happen when she did. She liked him. He probably thought she was a real loser. He better get used to her, she thought, as they were about to see each other every day for the next two months.
“Charlie, guess what? Dinah’s coming to Camp Osceola with us!” said Crystal when he came into her room.
“Have you taught her the songs?” asked Charlie.
As if on cue, Crystal leaped from the bed and stood next to Charlie. They both narrowed their eyes and pursed their lips together in mock seriousness. Then they began to sing in thundering voices:
The blue and gold we’ll e’er remember
Though we are far apart
And friendships made during camping days,
We will cherish in our hearts.
To thee we raise our banners, pledging our allegiance.
And we, your loyal sons and daughters all be true.
We’ll keep the memories of each golden day of summer,
Till someday we return Osceola, back to you.
They finished their song and took a bow. Dinah stared at them.
“Was that English?” she asked.
Charlie and Crystal laughed.
“No, I’m not kidding,” said Dinah, “was that really English?”
Crystal looked at Charlie. “That was color war English,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Color war English. You’ll get the hang of it when you’re there.”
“Color war, what’s that?” asked Dinah.
“That’s the highlight of camp,” said Crystal.
“Toward the end of the summer the whole camp gets divided into two teams: the blue and the gold. Everything is a competition. How you make your bed, baseball games, the songs you write. At the end of color war, the team with the most points wins. It’s so neat.”
“It sounds really stupid,” said Dinah.
“Not when you’re in it,” said Charlie.
“Wait, somewhere I have last year’s songs. I can show you,” said Crystal. As she stepped into her closet to look for the old song sheets, Charlie nudged Dinah with his elbow. “You doing okay?” he mouthed.
“Okay,” she nodded.
“I’m glad.”
The way he smiled and looked right at her when he said “I’m glad” made Dinah feel safe, as if they’d known each other always. It wasn’t unlike the feeling she got from Eddie Fingers. Ever since the funeral, when Eddie Fingers sent her that last signal, the numbers and the need to count didn’t matter so much anymore. The dread that used to add up, the desperation to be in her bed, they were gone now. Lately, she’d stopped counting and measuring her life. It made her wonder if, after Eddie Fingers, her father had been in touch with Charlie Landy as well.
ON THURSDAY, TESSIE got another note from Barone.
I look forward to resting in peace with you on Saturday. That was a bad joke, maybe, but you know what I mean. I am assuming that you have pots and pans, and that your stove works. I’ll bring the music and the food. Wait until you taste my cooking. I hope it will knock you right off your feet and into my arms.
Underneath that sentence he had drawn a sketch of a woman biting down on what looked like a lamb shank, and swooning into the arms of a man wearing an apron who was a cartoon version of Barone. As she fell into his embrace, lamb shank and all, the following words were coming out of her mouth: “I knew you were tall, dark, and handsome. But this, too?”
