Very in Pieces

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  “Nothing,” she says.

  “I can see that.”

  He spins a chair around for her and I help her step up into it. Her body relaxes as she sits.

  He turns to me. “Veronica, Veronica, let me see who’s free for you.”

  “Oh, I don’t need a haircut,” I tell him.

  He raises his eyebrows but says nothing.

  I take the empty seat next to Carl’s chair and spin it around to look out the window so I can watch the people in the parking lot. It’s funny how many I don’t know. In a town this small, you’d think I’d know all of them. Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe Ramona is right and I stay cloistered away in my own small world.

  Carl holds Nonnie by the arm. I can see just how thin her hair has become: downy like a baby’s.

  “Actually,” I say. “Actually I’ve changed my mind. I do need a cut.”

  Carl grins and beckons over a woman with purple hair and a tattoo of Mary Poppins on her bicep. She looks at my long, limp hair as if she feels sorry for it.

  “Cut it all off.”

  “How short?” She put her fingertips on my head and turns it from side to side.

  “All of it.”

  She put her hands at my shoulders.

  I shake my head. “I want it short-short.”

  “A pixie cut?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. It’s time for a change.”

  “Well, there’s change and then there’s change. And let me tell you that I am one hundred percent on board with this because this length”—she flicks the ends of my hair—“is doing nothing for you. But I’ve got to be sure because I can’t tell you how many women come in here, maybe after a breakup?” She hesitates to give me time to fill her in, but I don’t. “So I do what they say and then I’ve got this woman crying in my chair because she loved her hair and it’s the guy she hates. And then she hates me.”

  “Do it,” I say.

  Nonnie says, “Really, Veronica?”

  “Solidarity, Nonnie. Who knows, if you end up losing all your hair again, maybe I’ll shave my head, too.”

  “Ghastly thought,” she says, but she’s smiling.

  The Mary Poppins girl works quickly. She braids my hair, chops it off for Locks of Love, and then comes at me not with scissors but with an electric razor.

  When we’re done, we sit side by side and look at ourselves in the mirror. Nonnie looks younger: like a baby chick. I look older, and I fear it’s in a soccer-mom sort of a way. The bruise is still there, a yellow echo of itself.

  I reach up and feel the short hairs at the nape of my neck.

  “I was about your age when I cut my hair,” Nonnie says. “Right before I moved to New York I went and got my hair cut just like this. I wanted to look like Jean Seberg, the girl in Breathless.”

  She’s told me this before: another sign of her dwindling mind, this repeating of stories. I still haven’t looked up the actress.

  “You look more like her than I ever did, Very,” she says. “Though you’re much taller, of course.”

  When we step outside, it’s like my entire head is more alive. It’s not just that I can feel more, though that is true, but I can hear more. I run my hand along the back of my prickly neck and get a chill. I feel more powerful, like the hair was weighing me down and now I am free to fly anywhere I choose. So where do I go?

  v.

  “We could go to the beach,” Nonnie says, her hand trailing out the window.

  My eyes shift to the clock. It’s six thirty already.

  “I remember going to the beach with my mother. We’d go once a summer. We’d drive to Maryland and stay one night in a motel. All my friends thought it was quite posh. We’d spend all day at the beach and we’d eat sandwiches that Mama had packed the day before so they were squished and soggy. I remember lying on my back in the sun. I had a blue bathing suit with white polka dots. Mama would get me a lollipop and I’d stare at the sky while I sucked, trying to see how long I could keep my eyes open against the bright sky.” She’s looking out the window at her hand, twisting her wrist.

  “It’s getting kind of late, Nonnie. I don’t know if we have time for the beach today.”

  She murmurs something, but it’s lost to the wind. Then she pulls her hand back inside and folds it with the other one on her lap.

  “You never talk about Mom when she was a kid.”

  “What’s to say? She was a fat baby who grew into a beautiful girl. She had friends. She had admirers. She hated me when I moved her here.”

  “Did you ever take her to the beach and have lollipops?”

  She glances at me. “You know, I don’t think we ever did.”

  We reach a fork that would lead us to our road, but instead I go left and ease onto the highway, jarring and shaking through third and fourth gear before hitting a steady pace in fifth. My eyes flit from the tachometer to the road to my hand on the gear shift. Dad taught me how to drive standard last summer, in his old Volvo. We went to one of the parking lots on campus, and he sat with his feet out the window, aviator sunglasses covering his eyes. “It’s important that you can drive a stick, Very. It’s important for every girl. You never want to get stuck someplace because you can’t drive the escape vehicle.” And so we lurched through the parking lot while Dad hummed “Casey Jones” by the Grateful Dead and occasionally offered advice, all of which could be boiled down to ease up. Ease up on the clutch. Ease up on the gas. Ease up on yourself. When I finally got the hang of it, I drove us out of the parking lot to the ice-cream place in the old train station.

  Nonnie says, “Remember when we tried to go to Canada?”

  “I do!” Finally someone else shares my memories. “We stayed in that awful motel.”

  “That’s the type of place Mama and I used to stay.”

  My cheeks get hot, but Nonnie doesn’t seem put off by my comment. Instead she says, “Your mother wanted to go anyway. Just leave us there and get on the ferry.”

  I glance at her and back at the road. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense. What would she have done in Nova Scotia on her own?”

  Nonnie looks at me as if she can’t quite believe what I’ve asked. “I suppose you’ve never known the joy of traveling alone, of just setting out to see where you land. Talking to strangers. Never sure where you’ll spend the night.”

  It sounds, as Nonnie herself would say, ghastly.

  With a deep breath, I head into the traffic circle. And stall. I push the clutch in and out and I’m trying to move the gearshift, but it just won’t seem to go. My body begins to sweat with humiliation.

  The car behind me honks, and Nonnie turns around and actually shakes her fist in the air at the driver, which, for some reason, makes me laugh hysterically. Nonnie says, “Just ease it out.”

  Ease up.

  I do, and soon we’re rolling again, off of the highway and onto the long, twisting road that leads out toward the ocean. The speed limit is only thirty-five, so I keep it in third gear, even if the RPMs are up a little high. We bounce over the wooden bridge that crosses the salt marsh, and then the ocean is in view: dark and roiling under the pale blue sky. The scent of the sea comes in through our windows and we each take a deep, full breath.

  I park in the lot with just a few other cars. The sun is starting to head down, but it’s still bright and warm. Nonnie tucks her sweater around her more tightly, though, as we make our way to the concrete wall that separates the lot from the ocean.

  I’m heading for the stairs down to the beach, but Nonnie stops and leans forward against the wall.

  The wind is cool against my neck and I find myself touching my skin again, the hint of hair that remains.

  Nonnie says, “The first time I saw the ocean, I was afraid. It looked like a live thing to me as a child. A monster. The way it churned and rolled and frothed.” She holds one hand out in front of her as if reaching for the cold water. “People who know the water say you can never real
ly trust it. Fishermen don’t even bother to learn to swim. They know there’s no use. Not out there.”

  I run my palms against the rough concrete. “Well, couldn’t they hold themselves afloat at least until their friends could come back and get them?”

  “Not with all their heavy gear on. In Ireland the wives knit a pattern into the sweater so they can be identified when they wash up onto the shore. I put that into a poem once. All about the knitting. I even learned to knit for it, though I was never any good, always getting my yarn tangled and dropping stitches.”

  Out at the edge of the water a man is throwing a tennis ball into the waves for his dog. The dog races out and brings it back, shaking and panting with excitement. Nothing could make that dog happier than to run into the freezing water and get the ball, drop it at his master’s feet, and do it all over and over again.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she tells me.

  I look down at the concrete. Names are etched into the paint. Roz and Billy 4eva, Aimee wuz here, Charlie, SBJ, Tokyo! They wrote it to assert their thereness, to prove their existence. I was here. I was here. I was here. It won’t take long for the sun, wind, and sea spray to wash them away, if there’s not a fresh coat of paint put on first.

  “When I’m gone, you’re going to be okay.”

  “Nonnie—”

  “It’s not a question, Very. Not a hypothetical, someday down the road. You are going to be okay. That makes me feel better. Ramona and your mother . . .” She shakes her head.

  “Ramona,” I say, letting her name slip out between my lips like a curse.

  “She’s not like you,” Nonnie says.

  I roll my eyes. “I know. She’s the creative one.”

  Nonnie puts her hand on top of mine. “I mean that she can’t look at a problem head-on and just take it as it comes. Like those waves. She can’t dive right into them like you do. She has to come at things sideways.”

  “You mean she’s avoiding the whole situation.”

  “The pain . . . that is, if she looked at it straight—” Nonnie begins, but then seems to reconsider it. “Just give her a little time. A little space.”

  I turn to look at her and she’s staring right at me with the most open expression I’ve ever seen on her face. Her eyes are begging me. I look away. “We should get you home.”

  I steal glances at her as I drive. Her eyes close. A few miles more and her mouth is open a touch. Her breath comes in wheezes that sound like a kitten just learning to breathe.

  seven

  i.

  EVERY YEAR MY MOM hosts a cocktail party for the visiting artist, and every year Ramona and I are conscripted into service. This year it’s no surprise that Ramona is nowhere to be found when we are preparing for the party. On my own I empty six cans of juice into a punch bowl and add peach slices and rum. I arrange a cheese platter. I place piles of cocktail napkins around the lower level of the house, each pile spun into a fan. I am Cinderella, except instead of being banished to the ashes from which I long to escape, I’ll be expected to make small talk with my mom’s colleagues. First, they will ask me what my college plans are. They’ve been asking me this since I started high school, and this should finally be the year that I have an answer for them. But I have none. MIT with Professor Singh. That would make Mr. Tompkins happy, and I’d be relatively close for Nonnie. Minnesota with Christian. Stanford is still pulling me. Then there’s that school with the funny name in Southern California. Of course I could tell the people any one of these things and they would coo and tell me that I’m so lucky, a smart girl with the whole world in front of me, and I’ll have to smile and say, “Gee, thanks.”

  Or they will ask me what I thought about the art, and I’ll wish to be back on the college conversation.

  All in all, Cinderella didn’t realize how good she had it.

  But this year I’m not sticking around. I’ve got my own party to attend. One without crudités. Or napkins.

  My phone buzzes. It’s Christian. Want to go see a movie or something?

  My fingers hover above the screen of my phone, and then I type: My mom’s party is tonight. Remember?

  It’s not a lie, exactly. It’s the same excuse I used with Britta and Grace.

  Mom is stretched out on the sofa with an empty glass resting on her stomach when I come into the sunken living room to check the levels of booze in the bar cart. She has a washcloth across her eyes.

  “It’s getting late,” I say softly.

  “Mmm.”

  “I think I’ve got it all set,” I tell her. “Just checking the liquor in here.”

  “Mmm,” she repeats. Then she blinks her eyes. “Nice haircut.” She closes them again.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” I ask.

  Finally she pulls the washcloth off of her eyes. “I’m just puffy, is all. Puffy and congested. This house . . .” She shakes her head as her voice trails off.

  “You look fine,” I say, though in fact, she does look a bit puffy.

  “I do wish Nonnie had let me take the bottle caps and the rest of that mess off the garage.”

  “She likes them. What’s the harm?”

  She looks at me and it’s like she’s too exhausted to even try to explain. “Fix me a drink?”

  I look at her disheveled hair and the wet ring mark the glass left on her dress. “You need to get dressed, Mom. Why don’t you wait for your guests? I’ll have that punch you like ready by then.”

  She sits up and runs her fingers through her hair. Her lips are pursed, like when Ramona and I got in trouble when we were little and she was deciding what our punishment ought to be. “Okay.” She stands, and is heading toward her stairs, but looks back over her shoulder. “Dallas is going to be late.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Something came up at work. An article he needs to write. Or read. I can’t remember. And then there’s some advisee in crisis.”

  “Well, I’ll help as much as I can before I have to go. I haven’t seen Ramona, but—”

  “Where are you going again?”

  “Just a party thing.”

  “With Christian?”

  “It’s not really a go-with-someone kind of a party.”

  As if she’s scented something, she straightens. “Will that boy be there? The butcher boy?”

  “Dominic? Oh, probably.”

  “Is that why you cut your hair off?”

  “No.”

  “Well then,” is all she says. But a moment later she calls down the stairs in a singsongy voice: “The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.”

  ii.

  The first guest to arrive is Olivia Knotts. She’s always the first to arrive. It’s like she’s still trying to prove herself. “Veronica! Your hair looks stunning!” she exclaims, and puts one hand on each of my shoulders, then stares right at my face.

  “Hello, Olivia.”

  She rearranges the features on her face into a slight frown. “I’m so sorry to hear about your grandmother.”

  So the word has spread out from the English department through the rest of the college. “Thank you,” I reply.

  She finally lets her hands drop from my shoulders. “She was such a talented woman.”

  “She still is.”

  Olivia Knotts, though, will not be put off from her speech. “As a female artist myself, I found such inspiration in her very being.”

  In her very being. I’ll have to remember that and tell Nonnie.

  The door is wide-open and I can see more cars driving up.

  “Now, how are your college applications coming along?”

  “I’m still working things out. I’ve been thinking about MIT, maybe. Or Stanford. Or I hear there are some good schools in Minnesota.”

  “Minnesota!” she declares. “But don’t overlook good old Essex College. We have some amazing programs, you know. But then, I remember being seventeen, ready to see the world, to soar up and free like an eagle from its cage.” She s
tares at our ceiling, and I can’t help but look over my shoulder to see if perhaps there really is an eagle there. All I see is a dusty cobweb.

  From the next car I see Melora Wilkins with the dean of the college. Everyone knows they are together, though the arrangement—intellectual, merely physical, emotional, some combination thereof—has never been entirely clear. Nonnie always insists that he has a wife and family back in Iowa, where he used to teach.

  Melora has the calm demeanor and soothing voice of a massage therapist. Still, I like her. She and the dean are walking straight toward us when she suddenly stops, cocking her head. It only takes me a second to realize what they are looking at.

  Mom floats down the final three stairs from her wing. “Why hello, Olivia, how are you?”

  “Wonderful,” Olivia replies. “This morning I was working in my studio and it was like the clay just flowed from my fingers.”

  Mom, though, is looking past Olivia, through the open door, to Melora and the dean, who stare at our garage. “Crap. I knew I should have gotten that cleaned up.”

  “Excuse me?” Olivia asks.

  “It’s nothing, Olivia. I just need to step outside for a moment.”

  She sidesteps Olivia and heads for the door. Given a choice between discussing the work of visiting artist Marcus Schmidt with Olivia Knotts and going outside to see how my mom handles the whole sculpture-on-the-garage thing, I choose outside with my mom.

  “Fascinating,” I hear Melora say as we walk up. Most of the side of the garage is covered now with bottle caps, aluminum cans, and pieces of broken glass that seem to undulate in the early-evening light. There is a slight gradation in color, darker at the bottom, and lighter at the top, like looking at a sunset, only the colors are all wrong. The copper poles sway slightly in the breeze, clacking their flowers together. “This is really different work for you, Annaliese.”

  “Oh, I didn’t do this.” Mom can’t bury the hint of disgust in her voice.

  “Really? Who is the artist, then? Did you have it commissioned?”

  “Commissioned? No, I—” She looks from them to me.