Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Sarah
The drive home is thirty minutes to go three miles in city traffic, an hour and twenty minutes of the turnpike at seventy-two miles an hour, and then a lurching series of backroads through the Berkshires that make my ears pop three times before I pull into the familiar side road.
That's right.
Tail between my legs, I'm coming home for the weekend, to think through what an asshole I am.
Time’s a’wasting. I have to make a decision. Stress doesn’t help me to find mental clarity.
A slower life back home might.
I’m desperate enough to try it.
Case’s text from last night haunts me. The second one he sent does, too.
And now, this morning, a third:
I know you don’t want to talk to me. I’m sorry for the way we fought. I’d like to clear the air and join forces against Prakash. He’s hurting too many people. Please reply.
This new text is a doozy.
For the last day, I’ve been fielding more reports from people about Prakash, messages from my editor begging me for the financial corruption story, and then the text from Case.
Which made me bawl like a baby.
In a way, I feel young again. Too young. In way over my head, and that’s not a normal feeling for me. In many ways, I grew up early. Mom always called me her best little friend, and told me from a small age that it was us against the world. With my dad long gone before I was potty-trained, and growing up in a town where people’s faces went slack, then tight at the mention of his name, I always knew my mom had it tough.
And I needed to be her best little friend. Or, rather, she needed me to play that role.
Being more grown up than you are is an identity, one you shrug your arms into, like a too-big costume in a school play that you have to wear, like it or not. Everyone pretends the outfit isn’t hanging off you, because just wearing the costume transforms you into being that new person, right?
Right?
I was a latch key kid by eight. Could jump start a car by eleven. Knew how to open online bank accounts and set up recurring bill pay for my mom, who just sighed as she smiled and shook her head.
“You’re something else, Sarah,” she always said.
I sailed through school. Worked at the salon and later, writing news stories for a local paper. Once I learned online backend systems for web pages, I began publishing on internet newspaper sites and keyword article places, generating a few hundred dollars a month.
Which was a lot as a teen.
Leaving home for New York City wasn’t just culture shock. It was culture earthquake . Becket, Massachusetts is so small that if you blink, you miss one of the nine sugar shacks dotting the country roads. Everyone has heard of Tanglewood and that’s how I describe where I’m from.
At Columbia, people were so charmed.
“Oh! We have a vacation home in Great Barrington!” they’d say. “Yours was in Becket?”
The first time someone said something along those lines, I corrected them and explained it was my one and only home. Their reaction made sure I never corrected a similar comment again.
When I left for college, I felt so mature. Wise. Cultivated and cultured, so above my unrefined classmates back home.
And then I realized that in New York, I was the rube. Who knew there was a difference between Eritrean and Ethiopian food? Or Panamanian empanadas vs. Peruvian empanadas?
Other people did – in detail. I knew nothing – nothing – compared to my classmates, but even then, I didn’t feel young.
I felt stupid.
Now, as I turn left at the fire station, the small little strip of stores comes into view.
Hair Haven.
Home.
Mom’s truck is parked in the same spot it’s always in, the red paint a little more faded, a nasty new crease in the back right bumper going a little rusty inside the fold. Since 1999, my mother will proudly inform you, she has driven a Ford F-150.
The same Ford F-150.
She bought it brand new with my dad the year I was born, and as she often says, “Other than you, it’s the only decent thing he ever gave me.”
And it was paid off.
The American flag waves in the limp breeze, six flowerpots hanging from hooks along the gutters. Geranium, white impatiens, blue pansies, geranium, white impatiens, blue pansies. If I ever come home and see any flowers other than those, I will fall over in a faint and know that I’ve entered an AI simulation.
Mom doesn’t like change.
To my surprise, I well up as I reach for my car door handle, the tight feeling in my throat a bit acrid. Uncertain what to say when I walk into the salon, I realize this is new.
This is a change.
I’m turning to her for emotional comfort.
And now I physically feel like a little girl.
As I move my leg to climb out of the car, it seems shorter. My lungs can’t hold as much air. My mind is muddled, but muscle memory is strong, so as I walk to the main porch and reach for the doorknob, even though it feels big in the palm of my hand, my body knows what to do.
The jingle of the bell above the door makes me smile.
“SARAH!” Mom squeals, just like she always does when I come back.
My phone buzzes in my pocket as she reaches around me, hands extended because she’s holding scissors and a comb.
“Hiya, Sarah,” says Bixby Duggins. He’s about ten years older than me and works for the department of transportation, which is a fancy way of saying he plows in the winter and works heavy mowing machinery in the summer.
Mom is giving him a high and tight.
That’s right. It’s Saturday. And it’s Guard week. All the National Guard guys have filled Mom’s salon over the last few days, I’m sure. Bixby’s probably her twentieth cut today, though he’s late. On Guard weekends, Mom opens at four a.m. to help out the guys who have that “oh, shit!” moment and need a last-minute cut.
My eyes jump to her tip jar.
Yep. Filled to the brim with ones, two fives, and I see a ten in there.
Someone is sucking up.
“Bixby. Looking good.”
He snorts, patting an ample belly. “You’re a nice one for saying that, but you’re wicked off. I tried to cut my own hair this morning. Butchered it. Jackie’s fixed it nice here. Plus, I got two months to drop twenty of these for my PT test.”
“Just don’t drink twenty beers,” Mom jokes, pulling out a little powder and a brush for his neck. Five seconds later, she’s done, pulling off his cape. “Problem solved.”
“You solve problems the same way as my wife.”
Wife . Right. I think of Bixby as the older football player on the field while I ran around eating popcorn and candied apples at football games as a child.
Suddenly, I can taste caramel and butter.
“Sometimes you can solve problems by not drinking the beer,” Mom joshes him.
“I think you and Marciela need to stop hanging out at the farmer’s market,” he says with a grumble that makes Mom laugh even harder.
“What do you think, honey?” she asks me, nodding at him.
“I think you look exactly like every other soldier who has a duty weekend.”
Mom and Bixby grin. “Job well done, then,” he says to her, pulling out his wallet and grabbing three ones, only to change his mind, then throw a five in her tip jar.
Conformity trumps all back home.
An unreal thought intrudes, fast as a flash and completely out of my control. Case in the chair, my mother working on his ’do, his strong English accent a record scratch against the very all-American feel of good old Hair Haven. A Luke Bryan song comes on the radio, and Bixby gives me a nod goodbye as Mom looks at the door.
“Perfect timing. He was my last one. You’re late.”
“Traffic on the Pike. You know.”
Her nose crinkles as she smiles at me. “Honey, the only time I go on the Pike is to visit you in Boston or to go into Northampton to hit Deals & Steals. And by the way, I have an entire case of the soybean pasta stuff you like. They had it on clearance for twenty cents a box!”
She’s so thoughtful.
I burst into sobs. Not tears – sobs .
Mom is in the middle of locking the main door and turning the sign from Open to Closed, so she finishes up before rushing over to envelop me in an embrace. Her scent is the same – cotton, Tide, and Obsession by Calvin Klein – and it makes me feel small again. Smaller, even.
Younger than I’ve felt in decades.
“Honey! Don’t mind Bixby. We were just being silly.”
“I’m not – n-n-n – not crying because of him!”
“Then you’re – oh, Sarah! Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?” The way her voice drops and cracks on the word hurt makes me realize why I want my mother on my Zombie Island.
She sounds like she’s about to go on a calculated murder rampage with Liam Neeson as her sidekick.
“No! No. Not – not like that. Just – ” My body wracks with sobs I can’t control, chest heaving, heart and breath out of sync.
“Then what?” Leading me to a clean chair right next to where she just had Bixby, she makes my butt plunk in the cushion, steadying my feet. “You sit down. Head between your legs.”
“I’m not faint, Mom.”
“You keep breathing like that, you will be. Something bad has happened. Did you get fired?”
“No.”
“Did something happen to Luna or Adriana?”
“They’re fine.”
She gasps, hand on her heart. “Not little Jerry?”
“The dog is fine, Mom.” I look up when I hear weird clinking sounds, and find my mother with a flask, pouring something amber into shot glasses.
“Mom!”
She chugs a shot. “What? It isn’t every day my only kid shows up sobbing. Here.” She thrusts another shot at me. “You drink that and we’ll settle in.”
Cold air feels like ice as I sniffle. “Okay.” I sniff it.
Rum.
I make a face.
“Shit, honey, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.” Suddenly, she snatches it out of my hand.
“Done what?”
“Given you alcohol! Are you pregnant? Is that what this is about?”
“NO!”
“Oh.” Hold on. Is she disappointed? “Then go ahead.”
“I don’t want to drink. In fact, that’s what got me into this mess.”
“Drinking? Honey, do you have a problem? A drinking problem? Because we can get you into a program. AA can help, too.”
“Mom.”
Bzzz
My phone goes off, two texts in a row. I sigh and take a look.
Dori and Barbi.
“Sarah,” Mom says firmly, hands on her hips. “You tell me right now what’s going on.”
“I –” Sniff . “It’s about a guy.”
“A guy?”
“A guy I’ve been writing about.”
“Oh. So, a source?”
“Not exactly. More like the subject.”
“Okay, then. See? I listen. Subject. Source.”
Ah, God, this is turning into a Journalism 101 quiz.
“I slept with him.”
Mom’s eyes go weird, brow down, orbs widening. She grabs the second shot and slams it.
Good thing she can walk home from here.
“Okay… isn’t that – that’s a bold thing to do for a story.”
“I didn’t sleep with him to get the story! I slept with him by accident.”
A laugh I’ve never heard from my mother comes pouring out. “It’s not like you slipped and fell on his dick, honey. No one ‘accidentally’ sleeps with anyone.”
“I didn’t know it was him when I slept with him.”
“Back it up a bit and explain.”
“I met Case in a bar.”
“Case. Okay. Right.”
“And I had a third glass of wine.”
“Go, girl. Get yourself some.”
“MOM!”
The loose laugh makes something in me seize up. “You’re too wound up, Sarah. I’m glad you’re partying in the big city. You slept with Case and didn’t realize until later he’s your story subject?”
“YES!”
A skeptical look – and was she being judgmental? - covers my mom’s face. “You never told him, huh? That you knew who he was.”
“It’s complicated.”
“‘Hi, Mr. Fuckbuddy. I’m writing a story about you’ isn’t hard to say.”
“MOM! I can’t believe you’d say that!”
“Say what? The fuckbuddy part or the rest?”
“Any of it! I feel like you’re judging me.”
“Nah. I’ve just been in a salon for nearly forty years. I can smell a lie of omission from a thousand bobby pins away.”
“I didn’t lie – oh, hell, yes I did. I didn’t tell him I knew who he was when I should have. But he lied, too!”
“Married, huh? The bastard.”
“What? No! Case isn’t married.”
“Then what did he lie about?”
“Knowing that I was writing an exposé about Chakroga123.”
“Chicago who?”
“Cha-kro-gah.”
“What’s that?”
“A yoga studio. A bunch of them. I joined one of their studios to get an insider’s view. Do research. Investigate from within. And the morning after I woke up with Case gone from my apartment, I went to my yoga class.”
“Ooo, fun! You’d look adorable in those capri yoga pants.”
“Mom.”
“What? You can add some fashion flair to your serious journalism, honey. Nothing says you have to look like a frump while doing undercover work.”
This is why I don’t talk about anything with her.
“Sorry, sorry,” she says, waving her hands like she’s clearing the air of a fart. “What did this Case guy lie about?”
“It turns out he knew who I was when we met at the bar.”
“The night you…”
“Right.”
“So you met in a bar. He hit on you. He knew you were writing about him, but you didn’t know he was your subject?”
“Yes.”
“And then once you realized he was your subject, you didn’t tell him that you were writing about him?”
“Umm hmm.”
“It was a one-night stand. Why does this matter?”
“Because it’s not a one-night stand.”
“Oh! You dated?”
“He took me out on the best date ever .”
“He took you to a Taylor Swift concert?” Mom squeals.
“No! We went to MoMoTaste. And had wine and donuts for dessert.”
“I don’t know what moh-moh-tah-stay is. Sounds like a fancy art exhibit.”
“It’s a restaurant.”
“And is wine and donuts a euphemism for a sex act?”
“No.”
“You didn’t have sex after this date?”
“No – we did.”
“Then he sounds like a winner, honey. Fancy Boston dinner. Wine and donuts – yum! Good sex. I assume it was good?”
I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. Then I cry even harder.
"OH NO! Bad sex? Is that why you escaped?"
I cannot stop sobbing long enough to answer.
“Or... it was so good you're in pain right now because it's gone?"
I nod.
"Oh, honey. Then why did you dump him?”
This entire conversation already makes my sinuses ache. Explaining all the details is going to be rough.
Bzzz
More texts on my phone. I look and read one from Luna:
We need to talk. Now.
Great.
Another one from Adriana:
Are you okay? This must be gutting you.
I love that they care so much about me.
Bzzz
Everyone is very confused, Sarah. Why aren’t you answering?
That’s from Barbi. I frown at my phone and power it off. Being here with Mom is supposed to be my break from everything. Not a place to be bombarded with the life I’m escaping from.
Even if it’s just for a few nights.
“Did you just turn your phone off? Is the world ending?” Mom teases as she tilts her head and gives me a kind look. “Keep talking about this Case guy. I need to sweep.” She picks up a broom and dustpan and starts tidying.
“Why? It’s over.”
“You’ve never talked about a boyfriend before.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Sounds like he was more than just a one-night fling.”
“He was. But he’s not now.”
“Because you both lied to each other.”
“Because it turns out we want two completely different things that are at cross-purposes.”
Halting mid-sweep, she looks at me. “What does that mean?”
“Remember how I can get my big new job if I publish a certain freelance article?”
“Yes.”
“Case is selling his yoga studios. The sale goes through in a couple weeks. If my article publishes, it ruins his deal.”
“Ouch. Honey. That’s savage.”
“Where did you learn the word ‘savage’?”
“You’re going to ruin his life over an article?”
My temper starts to rise. Why am I bothering?
“There’s a lot more than that.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that the owner and founder of Chakroga123 is committing financial fraud and sexually harassing a ton of employees.”
Mom goes still, blinking.
“You know this because of the investigation you were doing on Case?”
“Yes.”
“He’s sexually harassing women and you’re dating that sleazeball? I see why you dumped him!”
“ Case isn’t harassing anyone! Case is a good guy. He’s actually trying to help a bunch of people who were victimized.”
“Oh. Good. Because I don’t want to have to sic Bixby and the other guys at the fire station on Case the Creep.”
“Don’t call him that!”
“Did the owner ever harass you ?”
There’s that tone again. I swear, after Mom dies, I’m going to find a list of all the bodies she helped bury on the edge of Otis Reservoir.
“No. Prakash Shanti has never even talked to me. Trust me. I tried.”
“You tried to be alone with a sexual harasser?”
“To interview him, yes. He refused to take my calls.”
Mom’s breathing picks up, the sound of her rapid inhales disturbing. “Good. No way any motherfucker gets to touch my baby like that.”
“Mom – Mom? Are you okay?”
“I need to sit down.”
Roles reversed, I’m suddenly comforting her, and I don’t know why.
“Mom?”
“You have proof on that bastard? This Chakroga guy?”
My rueful laugh feels ancient. “I have about six women and one nonbinary person texting me constantly. What started out as a financial fraud case turned into a massive sexual harassment story.”
“Seven people? Pfft . There’ll be more.” Something in her tone makes me pause and grab her hand.
“Mom. What’s going on?”
“You write that story!” she says fiercely, eyes red, voice tight. She makes a sad sound. “So much for hanging out with my girlie and having fun. Sorry to be so glum.”
“You’re not glum. Something’s wrong. Tell me.”
She shrugs. “Let’s just say I’m no different than any of those people. We all have a story to tell.”
It takes a moment for the meaning behind her words to sink in. “You mean you’ve been sexually harassed?”
“Yep. And the bastard never had to deal with anything. He’s still the principal at the high school.”
“Mr. Muquatid?”
She nods.
“He’s so slimy!”
“Yeah. And he was when I was eighteen, too. Back when I worked at the cider press.” The Muquatid family has owned an old orchard for generations, some of the kids staying to work the farm, others spread out working different jobs.
“Eww.”
“He’d wait until we were eighteen. No one talked to each other back then. It took until I was in my mid-twenties to learn he’d done it to a bunch of other girls.”
“Done...what?”
“More than enough.”
“He didn’t rap e you.”
Now my voice sounds like I’m ready to grab some bags of concrete, a shovel, and some flesh-eating insects before heading on over to the cider press.
“No. Nothing like that. But I spent more than six months being cornered in supply rooms and coolers, having him rub up against me, threatening to hold my diploma from him if I didn’t ‘play along.’”
“He’s ancient!”
“Yeah, he is, but thirty years ago, he wasn’t. He was vice principal back then. In charge of discipline. And he hurt a lot of us.”
“He left me alone.” I take in a deep breath, mind racing. “Is that why you told me I never had to go to the principal’s office if they ever called me down? That I was always to contact you and you’d come to school?”
“Mm hmm. You were such a goody two-shoes I never had to. If he’d tried that shit with you, Sarah, I’d have cut off his balls with the same straight edge I use to shave the police chief.”
The visual makes my stomach twist.
“We went to the superintendent,” she says, eyes going unfocused, looking out at a car pulling into a spot for the convenience store. “Seven of us, all across a bunch of years. He said there was no proof. It was all our word against Paul’s.”
“Is he still doing it?”
“No.” Mom’s face turns hard, the lines at the corners of her mouth deepening. “He finally touched the wrong girl.”
“Who?”
Just as Mom’s about to tell me, there’s a tapping sound on the wall, the rap so strong we both let out a small shriek.
“We’re closed!” Mom hollers at the glass door, wiping under her eyes with the pads of her fingers, protecting what little eyeliner and mascara is left.
“Excuse me,” says a pleasant, formal voice.
A voice I know too well.
A voice that does not belong in Becket, Massachusetts.
“Excuse me,” Case Willingham says, from the other side of Hair Haven’s locked glass door, cupping his hands around the edges of his eyes and peering in. “Do you think you might make an exception for me?”