Chapter Twenty-six
Once school is out for the summer, there is no reason for me to study and no more Mom-sanctioned trips to Jenna’s. My mother remains almost as cold toward me as she was the day she walked in on the kiss. Thankfully, Gretchen comes home, and Mom’s focus shifts to her more pleasing, golden daughter.
Whatever.
After spending the three weeks after she finished classes at the university with Justin’s family at their vacation home in—get this—Hawaii, Gretchen’s tan makes her look even more like a movie star than usual.
Her arrival and the serious nature of her relationship with Justin, the High Prince of Successful Awesomeness, thaw Mom a bit.
Justin is interning at a firm in Iowa City this summer, but he spends a lot of Sunday afternoons at our house, which Mom, of course, loves.
It gnaws at my gut, how her affection for Gretchen’s boyfriend is based on such superficial things.
How can she not notice what a fake he is?
Or how easily Justin dismisses Gretchen’s brains—her personhood, even—but he obviously appreciates her as his personal arm candy. Ugh. It makes me sick.
I take a summer job working in my grandmother’s beauty salon, which gets me out from under Mom’s suffocating, watchful eye.
It’s easy work. From the front desk of the Kanton Korner Salon, I set appointments, field phone calls, stock product, and keep the tanning booths clean.
But it’s a small town, and Grandma’s is not the only salon in town.
There’s a fair bit of sitting around doing nothing, too.
Unlike some stylists, who can’t seem to talk and work at the same time, Grandma Maddie has over forty years of experience doing just that.
Her combs slide and her scissors snip through her customers’ hair, but she never misses a beat in conversation.
My grandma is not the sort of person who can sit still for long.
One particularly slow day, she decides I need a trim.
I don’t, really, but it makes her happy, so . . . to the shampoo station I go.
“I hear Gretchen has gotten pretty serious with that fancy lawyer boyfriend of hers.”
“Justin. Yeah. But he’s not a lawyer yet. He still has another year of law school.”
“You don’t like him.” Grandma is very good at hearing the words people don’t say.
“Not especially, but my opinion hardly matters. The way my mom fawns over him, you’d think Justin was running for President or something.” I breathe in the sweet fruity-floral scent as the woman whose first name I share—on paper, at least—begins lathering shampoo into my hair.
“Gretchen brought him by the house last week. I thought he was nice enough. Why don’t you like him?”
“I don’t know. He seems kinda fake to me.” A bubble floats up from the sink and pops right over my eye. “It’s not gonna last. Gretchen doesn’t look at Justin the way a girl should look at a guy she’s supposed to be in love with.”
“Hmm. And how is that?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
But I do know. And it does matter. I shake my head to force the thought away.
“Hold still.”
“Sorry.”
“How about you, Madeleine Faith? Any new boys in your life? Or are you still mooning over that boy your mother dislikes so much.”
“How do you know about that?”
“A woman my age doesn’t keep doing hair because she likes being on her feet all day, sweetie.” She chuckles. “Everybody knows the Kanton Korner Salon has the best gossip in town. “Also,” she adds, leaning into my line of sight to give me a wink, “Gretchen may have mentioned it.”
Interesting. Then again, Grandma Maddie could pry dirt out of a nun’s freshly starched habit, so getting Gretchen to talk about a little family drama is hardly a challenge for her.
“His name is Noah Spencer.” I close my eyes to avoid getting water spray and stray suds in them. “And Mom can’t honestly claim to actually dislike him as long as she refuses to have a conversation with him.”
“Your father said they had words.”
“Yeah.” I snort. “Basically, she ordered him out of our house. That was about the extent of it.”
“That sounds pretty harsh, even for Janet. And nobody does harsh like Janet Prescott, C.P.A.”
“You’ve got that right.”
“Oh, bother. Forget I said that. She’s your mother, and I shouldn’t talk about her like that in front of you.
In fact,” Grandma Maddie says, chuckling as she massages my scalp, “I shouldn’t be talking about her at all if I want to keep my blood pressure down.
But since she’s married to my little boy, the only child of a poor old widow, I can’t be expected to be unbiased. ”
I’m a little disappointed when my scalp massage ends. That’s always my favorite part of a haircut.
“Janet is Janet,” Grandma Maddie continues as she rinses my hair. “And I’m old and set in my ways. But you, my dear Madeleine Faith, are loved by us both. I must be a better grandma and just shut up about your mother. Is that warm enough? Too hot?”
“It’s just right.” The spray of warm water tingles through the lather on my head. “I don’t know why you even ask. You always pick the right temperature.”
I open my eyes just long enough to see my grandmother’s smile. “I do my best. So . . . what are we doing today? Just a trim? Or are you feeling adventurous?”
“Just the ends. I like it long.”
She drapes a towel over my head and helps me sit up. “Where does your young man get his hair cut?”
“I don’t know. Probably nowhere fancy. Noah’s pretty frugal. He’s saving up to study theatre in England.”
“I see.”
Grandma Maddie guides me to one of the hydraulic chairs in the middle of the salon. The three other stylists are reading magazines in their otherwise-unoccupied chairs.
“I suppose that begs the question if you are now thinking of studying drama in England?”
“Nope.” My voice vibrates as Grandma Maddie roughly towel-dries my hair. “I’m still going to apply stateside. Besides, by the time I start college, Noah will only have one more year left.”
“Always the practical one, my Madeleine Faith.”
“Not according to my mother,” I grumble. “She thinks I’m a flake.”
“A flake?” Grandma Maddie spins the chair around. Planting both hands on the armrests, she leans over to be eye level with me. “Did she say that to you?”
“No.” I always feel a little guilty, a little disloyal, when I talk to Grandma about Mom. “But she did compare me to Aunt Becca.”
“Hah.” Grandma straightens and puts her hands on her hips. “You’re no more like Becca than your mother is. I’ve only met your aunt a few times, but oh my. Total opposites, those two. And neither one—never mind.”
She spins the chair back around. “Forgive me, sweetie. Your mother means well. Most of the time. And don’t worry about what she says.
You are nothing, and I mean nothing, like your Aunt Becca.
Yes, she can sing, but my goodness! That girl is a certifiable dingbat.
Becca’s put so much junk into her body that if she rubbed two of her brain cells together for an hour I don’t think you’d even get a spark. ”
Wow. Grandma’s on a roll today!
I decide to change the subject to one that doesn’t make me feel quite so uncomfortable, even though this one is fairly entertaining. “Hey, I heard you say something to one of the clients that somebody new is going to start working here. Did somebody quit?”
“No. I’m expanding. Moving with the times. Do you know Lissa Reynolds?”
“Sure. She was on the dance team with me. She graduated last year.”
“And she’s just graduated again. Lissa is a certified esthetician.”
“A what?”
“She does facials, skincare, makeup, that sort of stuff. Sure would have liked to have had her during prom season.” Grandma Maddie clicks her tongue.
“Oh well, there’s always next year. Anywho, Lissa’s going to be starting here as soon as I get another sink installed.
The guy’s supposed to come on Thursday, but we’ll see. ”
She pulls a comb through the back of my hair. “You know, my hair used to be this color when I was young. Back before I went through my ‘frosting’ phase in the eighties.” She sighs. “The eighties fried a lot of follicles in this town, let me tell you. My hair never came back to its former glory.”
“I like your hair. The color you have now is really pretty.”
“Thank you, sweetie. It’s called 186B, officially, but I’ve christened it Walnut Sunrise.”
I laugh. Of course she did. “The name fits.”
“It’s a new shade we just got in. But you, my sweet Madeleine Faith, don’t you color your hair until you have to.” She lifts up the back of my hair to put a fresh, dry towel around my neck. “Don’t tell my other clients I said this, but you can’t get anything this pretty out of a bottle.”
“Noah calls my hair ‘cinnamon.’”
“Cinnamon. Hmm. I like him already.” Grandma nods, smiling. “About a quarter of an inch off, you think?”
“Sure.” She’s the expert.
“Any boy who compares the color of your hair to an exotic spice sounds like a keeper to me.”
“Cinnamon is about as exotic as white flour, Grandma. But you’re right. He’s a keeper.”
“So, is he a trouble maker, this boy?”
“No! Just the opposite!”
“Hold still, Madeleine.”
I freeze all but my mouth. “He’s polite, sweet, caring, and extremely . . . well, good. He has strong morals. The problem is,” I say, pursing my lips, but careful not to jerk my head, “Mom and Dad think he’s too religious and too old for me.”
In the mirror, her face scrunches up. “How old is he, forty? Good grief! I wasn’t even out of high school when I married your grandpa.” She laughs. “Of course, there might have been a metaphorical shotgun in my daddy’s hand.”
Yes, I know the story. And it certainly doesn’t help my case. My father was born only four months after that hurried wedding.
“Noah’s nineteen.”
“Nineteen? Pah. My Charlie was seven years older than me, and we got along just fine. So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t see a problem. Mom and Dad do. Technically, Noah’s almost twenty. His birthday is in September. I won’t be seventeen until—”
“October sixth. My much-belated twin.”
“They don’t trust me.”
“Ahh. A universal problem for teenage girls, I think. They love you, honey. They do. I know it probably doesn’t feel that way sometimes, but just hang in there.” Grandma Maddie puts a small mirror in my hand and spins the chair around. “Now, how does that look.”
“Great. Thanks.”
Just as Grandma unfastens the cape around my shoulders, the bell rings, announcing a walk-in.
“And just in time, too. Am I good, or what? Hey, before you leave tonight,” she says as she reaches for the broom, “dig out a coupon for that young fella of yours. I believe I’d like to meet him.
And if he’s as frugal as you say he is, he won’t be able to turn down a free haircut now, will he? ”