Chapter Five Beverly
Chapter Five
Beverly
The day after the Pan Am letter comes ( Congratulations, it read. You’ve been accepted ... ), my mother invites me to join her at the hairdresser’s. It is one of my favorite things we do together, and one of the few places we never run into anyone we know. The day always follows the same course. She has our driver drop us off on 36th near Herald Square and we eat lunch at Keens Steakhouse. Though it’s been over fifty years since actress Lillie Langtry waltzed through these doors in her feather boa and sued the gentleman-only establishment to allow for her entry, my mother feels like it’s an act of rebellion to eat there.
It’s like she’s a different woman on these days. When she steps away from her role as the perfectly put-together society woman of Park Avenue, she can actually be a bit of fun.
Dare I say, she can seem—maybe just a bit— happy ?
I’ve even known her to jump onto a chalk-drawn hopscotch game and wave goodbye to the children as she leaves it behind. It was just the one time, but still.
After our filets mignons, mine medium rare and hers charred to a crisp—what a waste, in my opinion—we walk a few blocks to the cathedral-like marbled halls of Penn Station. Very soon, we’ll have to plan a new route, as it was just announced that the once-magnificent train station has fallen victim to modernization and a desire for a flashy new sports arena. Train travel has given way to the jet age, and although I am wholly enthusiastic about getting up in the air, I cannot help but be saddened by the impending loss to the city’s glorious past.
I’m feeling rather nostalgic today. It’s not the norm for me. But then, that’s the point.
By the time the train station is gone, I will have leveled my own history as well.
I will be many miles away, rebuilding myself.
I dare not glance at my mother. She will ask why my eyes are glossy. I’ve waited until the last minute to tell her, fearing that Mr. Wall Street will make that call to Mr. Trippe and my offer will be rescinded. Perhaps it’s paranoia, but I can’t take any chances.
We take the C train to Spring Street and then a shortcut through an alley to Sami’s Salon in SoHo. It smells of flowers and hair spray, a concoction that formulates one of my fondest and earliest childhood memories. I asked my mother years ago why we come here and why we take such a circuitous route rather than having the driver bring us directly to the door front. She replied that Sami cuts hair better than anyone on Park Avenue and that she doesn’t want to appear showy in front of the ladies who work there by arriving by chauffeur. It also explains why she leaves her jewelry at home and insists that I wear my simplest dress.
As usual, my mother has called ahead for an appointment, and Sami has a steaming plate of lumpia ready for us. Thin, crispy egg rolls that taste like I imagine heaven would. The texture of the flaky exterior and the softness of the ground beef and rice noodles.
She also has rambutan-flavored hard candies for me, as always. My favorite.
“What is a rambutan?” I once asked her when I was around nine years old. She showed me a photograph. It was a red, spiky fruit the size of a golf ball. When cut open, the top pops off like a hat and an egg-shaped jelly is revealed.
“May I have a real one?” I’d said, using my manners. I usually got anything I wanted if I asked politely and flashed a smile.
“No, no,” Sami had said. “You won’t find rambutans in New York. They come from the Philippines, where my family lives. My auntie sends me the candies to remind me of home.”
I never asked her why she lives here and her family lives across the world because it didn’t seem like something she wanted to talk about. But I did go home and look up the Philippines on the globe in my father’s office.
So far away. Across the Pacific.
Today, my mother kisses Sami on the cheek, which I’d never seen her do to anyone on the Upper East Side. Sami has been an old woman for my whole life, and she could be sixty as easily as eighty. She is just shy of five feet tall and cuts hair standing on a rusted metal stool.
“Anything new? Or just a trim?”
My mother pulls a magazine cutout of Elizabeth Taylor from her purse, the movie star’s hair full and alluring, but she sets it down and sighs.
“Just the usual,” she says in resignation. And I know that she’ll have her beautiful brown hair cut conservatively and close to her face. Just like always. Mrs. Wall Street isn’t supposed to look like a bombshell. She’s supposed to look respectable. To blend into the background in quiet elegance along with the brocade curtains and crystal sconces.
She hands me the picture. “Maybe for you, Beverly. This would look quite attractive with your high cheekbones.”
I hold it up to the mirror and imagine Elizabeth Taylor’s hair on my head, agreeing that it would suit me. And I am tempted to say yes. But I don’t yet know what Pan Am will require. They hired me with this hairstyle—straight down my back to the halfway point, bangs straight across my forehead. Neat. Easy to pin up. Or easily changed if they so choose.
“No, thank you. Just a trim for me. Two inches.”
I wonder again why we always come down here to SoHo for such humdrum choices, but I’m not complaining. The afternoons at Sami’s with my mother every two months is nearly the only chance I get to fly outside the gilded cage we live in. A glimpse at that different that I so desperately crave.
Today, Mother takes a seat on the burgundy vinyl salon chair, not seeming to mind the tufts of cotton poking through the rips in its seams. This from the woman who goes berserk if an errant speck of dust dares to reveal itself on one of the fireplace mantels.
I wait to speak until Sami has begun work on my mother’s hair. I already feel myself losing the courage. But I have to say what I have to say, and this may be my best chance. Even though I wish I could just disappear into the night and not have to tell my mother I’ve left New York. Left the life she’s built for me.
I owe her this face-to-face confession.
At least here, I’ll have Sami as a buffer. Instinctively, I know that Mother will not cause a scene in front of her.
“I can’t make it to Mrs. Bahr’s tea next week,” I say, testing the waters.
My mother doesn’t move, even as she speaks. Sami’s scissors hover at the nape of her neck.
“Why ever not? She called me yesterday and asked if you were available on that date specifically. She wants you to meet some of her friends.”
“I’m not engaged to Frederick, and everyone acts like I am.”
Her head remains as still as one of the antique marble busts in our parlor while Sami works her magic. But her eyes search for mine in the mirror.
“Not yet ,” she says as she finds them.
I shudder. I need to get myself out of this entanglement.
“Not ever ,” I announce. I turn away. I can’t meet her gaze.
Even Sami stops. She lowers her elbows to her hips. I get the sense that she knows more than she’s letting on. My mother turns her chair to face me, and I finally look up. I’m not sure how to read her expression. Her jaw is firm, like she’s upset. But her eyes are— understanding?
I have never seen this expression on her.
Mother doesn’t like to have family conversations in front of the help , but she’s not even trying to delay this until we’re behind closed doors.
And then she says something I never, ever expected her to say.
“I’m so glad to hear it.”
I jump out of my chair as if I’ve had an electric shock.
“What?”
So much for those classes in deportment. They didn’t prepare me for this .
My mother’s jaw spreads into a thin smile. “I’m so glad to hear it. Frederick is a nice enough boy, but he’s not the one for you.”
I plop back down, the puffy sound of the vinyl seat sighing out, and my skin tingles as confusion courses through my body.
She continues. “You got the job at Pan American, didn’t you?”
“How—how did you know about that?”
Pulse. Pulse. Pulse. It feels like drums. My heart zipping to fight or flight.
Her smile widens, but her voice is sad. “Bernice knows who signs her paychecks.”
I don’t even have to ask how Bernice knows. There is nothing that gets past her. The Central Intelligence Agency would do well to steal her away from us.
“You’re not angry?”
Sami gives up trying to work in this situation and rests her rail-thin body in the third salon chair. I don’t blame her. This is going to be a conversation worth watching. Better than any show up on Broadway. And this one with a front-row seat.
My mother shakes her head, and little wisps of already-trimmed hair flutter to the ground. “Angry? No. Perhaps a little hurt. I wish you had confided in me.”
Yes, this is why I love these days at Sami’s. My mother becomes unrecognizable from the buttoned-up grande dame I otherwise know her to be.
“I wasn’t sure if you or M—” I almost slip and say Mr. Wall Street , but I know she doesn’t like that moniker, and I need her on my side. “I wasn’t sure if you and Daddy would even notice.”
She reaches across to my chair and takes my hands in hers. The warmth of the maternal gesture overwhelms me. It is not the norm for us, and I’m taken aback even as I’m starved for it. “I always thought there would be more time. But there’s not. Whether you marry Frederick or fly to every corner of the globe, you’re not mine anymore. And I’m not sure you ever have been, despite my efforts to the contrary.”
I see Sami dab a tissue to her eyes.
“I’ll always be yours,” I begin. But the words feel like dialogue on a movie screen. She’s playing the role of the caring mother, and I’m playing the role of the devoted daughter. Not that we aren’t speaking with sincerity—but these sentiments are not a regular part of our vernacular. What if we have felt these things all along but just never said them aloud?
Could we have been wasting time all these years giving the performances that we were expected to? The roles we were cast to play? This is the seed of my doubt—that I’ve missed something that was right under my nose. Just as I’m about to leave it behind.
She leans back in her chair, and the vinyl again makes a sound like a sigh. Like it’s expressing the emotion we’re all feeling. “I got everything I ever wanted when I married your father. Stability, security, social standing.”
I notice that she doesn’t say love .
She continues. “And maybe it’s a luxury to say this now that I have them. But they don’t satisfy. Not really. They only feed one kind of hunger. But they suppress a truer one—the hunger of your heart.”
I hold my breath. That’s exactly what I’d been thinking this morning. How did she know? Or are we more alike than I’d ever considered? A hint of regret sinks into my heart as the loss of time is imminent. And more apparent than ever.
“Then why—” I start.
And I realize that maybe my mother knows me better than I thought she did. Because she finishes my sentence for me. “Then why did I raise you to think that all of that is important?”
I nod. The debutante festivities. The elite schools. The positioning to get into the best parties.
The things that suffocated the woman I ached to be.
Her shoulders fold in, and in that gesture, she looks as small as Sami. “Because security is a siren. Once you have it, it takes a particular kind of courage to detach from its golden leash. And I’m afraid that I haven’t been courageous enough for myself. Or for you.”
She stands and walks over to my chair, turning it toward the mirror. She picks up a comb and works the end of my hair, just like she used to do when I was a little girl. But this time it’s gentle. Not perfunctory. We’re not in a hurry to be anywhere.
I have her eyes—dark and intense, flecked with green, as if embedded with shards of emeralds. I have my father’s facial features, though—strong and determined. Stubborn.
“Anak na babae,” she says in words that I have never heard and which come with no explanation.
“What will I say to Daddy?”
Her chest swells, and she holds a breath. “I will handle him.”
“But he said—”
“I will handle him,” she repeats.
Sami rises and walks over to us, and as the three of us stand, we are reflected in the mirror like a portrait. I look between them and at myself and am stunned to see something I’d never noticed.
Sami’s eyes, too, are dark. Intense. Flecked with emerald tones.
We all have the same eyes.