The Night Singers (12 page)

Her mother finally entered the bathroom, carefully mixing the first Tonette solution in a bowl over newspapers, so as not to stain the tile. Sophie noticed Mom's worried face.

It didn't seem fair that Jimmy had the prettiest hair in the family, so thick, black and silky. Definitely the best nose, straight but with an impish lift at the end. His eyes were as large as hers and, if you liked brown, quite lovely. At dinner one night, she declared Jimmy was the prettiest of them all. He had socked her on the arm so hard it ached for days. Her father had glanced around sternly, saying, “Let's hope not.” Dan had snickered in a high schoolish way. Only Mom seemed to understand that she meant it as a true compliment. “Your sister is just saying you have striking features. She meant ‘handsomest.'”

No, she had meant “prettiest.” He was a very pretty boy. They were no prize-winning family, but she considered her little brother beautiful.

“Shouldn't we start?” Sophie asked her mother, who was cautiously studying the directions a third time.

“Hmmm,” Mom peered at the box. Lately she had started wearing reading glasses, but kept losing this foreign appendage all over the house. Twice on top of the oven, where each side had melted differently, and the twisted frames made her look like a crazed scientist.

Sophie practiced patience, reminding herself that Mom was a perfectly competent woman, might even be an accomplished person if her father let her get a job. Besides, all her school friends were getting Tonettes or Tonis or Bobbis.

In celebration of “girls' day”, they had bought Pepsi and pretzels. Sophie offered her mother a soothing Pepsi.

“Not just now,” she said, “I want to finish reading this. You go ahead, dear.”

Sophie didn't mind if she did. Now she loved her mother and knew everyone on the block found Mom the best of neighbours. Still there was so much the woman didn't understand—about music and parties and TV shows and clothes. But especially hair. She had styled hers in Betty Grable fashion since the 1940s, maybe before that. Every morning, she curled her hair back from her high forehead and twisted up the back and sides, but not too tightly because she had to hide her cauliflower left ear.

Sophie had nothing to conceal; her little ears and neck were perfect, according to Mom. Shamefully, she sometimes wanted to disown this mother in her dumpy clothes, centuries out of date compared to the jeans Kathy's mother wore. But it was that hair Sophie hated most, the vaseline holding it in place.

“OK,” Mom said finally. “I've got it down. Yes, thanks, I'll take that drink now.”

“You sure you wouldn't like a little rum in it?” Sophie winked.

Her mother smiled thinly, gulping a tall glass of soda in one go.

As Mom pasted the solution over her just-washed hair, Sophie began to feel better. Nostalgically, she recalled being a little girl: Mom would brush her hair every night—twenty-five strokes for a princess; fifty strokes for a queen; one hundred strokes for an angel. A couple of years ago, Sophie remembered with a pang, she decided the brushings were causing split ends. Mom hid her hurt feelings and Sophie discovered the split ends continued to appear. She sipped her Pepsi, sucked on a pretzel (too many pretzels were fattening) and thought how cute her hair would look with curly bangs and a flip on the bottom. She smiled at the image of Mom and herself in the mirror.

“I always wanted a little girl,” her mother mused, painting Sophie's hair, “and you've been everything I dreamed.”

The sober voice startled Sophie. Such seriousness was often followed by an unpleasant announcement—like that time she said they should be grateful for each day of their lives and then explained that Aunt Fay was just diagnosed with breast cancer.

Sophie joked, “You sound like you're leaving me. Are you running off to join the circus?”

“No,” her mother smiled wistfully. “Once when I was a wee girl in Kentucky, I fell in love with a Romanian trapese artist. Did I ever tell you that?”

“No,” her blue eyes widened.

“Well,” Mom paused momentarily, “another time. Meanwhile, there's something we should talk about while it's just us this afternoon.”

Sophie watched her mother's studious application of magic liquid to each section of her brown hair, then her nimble twisting of the strands around soft pink curlers. The pretzel sank like a tree trunk in her stomach. Breast cancer ran in families.

She took advantage of her daughter's silence. “I'm not leaving you, but one day you'll be leaving me.”

Sophie's face moved from relief to bafflement to annoyance. Not the old “study hard” lecture again.

“You'll be getting married, having children—and I hope one of them is a daughter.”

Where was she going with this?

“So it's probably time you learned more about your body, marriage, you know.”

Sophie could feel the blush creeping up her neck, around her ears, to her cheeks and saw the other face in the mirror acquire similar colouring.

“Oh, Mom, I know all about that stuff.”

“You do?” She looked reprieved and horrified. “Just what ‘stuff' do you know?”

“Periods and pads.” Sophie poured herself another soda. “The sisters did a special health afternoon. We all got ‘Personally Yours' packages with flowers on them—from Kotex.”

“Yes,” her mother mused, “I remember.” She took a handful of pretzels. “But did the nuns go beyond that?”

“Beyond?”

“To how babies are made?” She chewed a pretzel slowly.

“By God, within the Sacrament of Matrimony,” Sophie said sarcastically. Of course she was dying to hear more, but maybe not here and now.

Mom laughed.

“Could we stop the permanent?” Sophie said, suddenly unsure that a flip would suit her. Why not stick with the page boy—good for full faces, according to her best friend Kathy.

“No, no,” she put the firm fingers of her left hand on her daughter's shoulder. “We've gone too far to stop.”

“Well,” Sophie offered, “why don't I get that other bottle of Pepsi while this stuff is soaking in?”

“I don't want you dripping all over the motel's nice rug. I'll get it.” Turning back from the kitchen, she instructed. “Don't move, now.”

Sophie glared at the motel's nice rug, a weedy orange fabric that had survived several ice ages. But Mom was big on respect for other people's property, for other people.

Sophie studied herself in the mirror, a passably attractive Martian, face surrounded by damp pink curlers. But Mom was right, too late to turn back now, all her hair might fall out.

Mom poured them each a glass, clinked hers against Sophie's.

Sophie took a deep breath. “So give me the scoop.”

Mom raised her dark eyebrows over a tiny grin.

Sometimes the woman could get sentimental.

“Well, this is a very special moment between mother and daughter, a ‘rite of passage.'”

She mightn't have gone far in school, but she read constantly and was, as Sophie's father liked to say, “a well-spoken woman.” A labour leader, he knew these things. Sophie was so caught up in her mother's speaking style, that she almost missed the short, precise anatomical description about baby-making.

Sexual intercourse was not what she expected. Or wanted.

Mom seemed to be glowing as she inspected each roller for dry hair, then removed the pink antennae, one-by-one.

Sophie couldn't believe her mother's description. “But that's disgusting!”

Mom looked hurt, confused.

“Who thought this up?” Sophie asked desperately. “There must be a better way. I mean, it's all hairy down there and stuff.”

From the twitch in her mother's mouth, she knew she was trying hard not to laugh, or cry.

“When you're a little older,” she began, then catching Sophie's irritation, she digressed. “There are hormones, urges, when a woman gets close to her husband.”

Of course Sophie had had crushes. She liked to imagine Tommy Truax brushing against her as she closed her locker … Raul Garcia dancing close, kissing her neck, but … well, Sister told them it was dirty down there.

Wearing her bizarre glasses, she read more instructions. “Time for the neutraliser. First I'll raise a window, or two.”

Although Sophie was sorry her embarrassed mother had to run off opening windows, it gave her a moment to settle. Mom had never lied to her, yet details weren't her specialty. They'd be home next week and she would check the facts with Kathy.

The pungent neutraliser stung her nose and eyes. “Are you sure this is the right ingredient?” Sophie asked nervously.

“Of course,” she finally snapped at her daughter's squirming questions. “I've had dozens of permanents. Just sit still and grow up.”

In silence, the mother concentrating, the daughter sullen from reprimand, their morning ritual was completed.

Mom finally spoke through neutraliser tears. “Maybe this was the wrong time. Maybe you're not quite ready to learn about sex.”

Sophie fumed. “When this part is done, just leave me alone. OK? I mean, I'll wash out the neutraliser and set up the hairdryer by myself.”

“OK,” she was doubtful. “Don't get the dryer near water.”

“Mother, I know about electricity. I'm a big girl now.”

“Yes,” she smiled into the mirror, “I think you are.”

Sophie tried to forget their conversation as she sat alone under the hairdryer's pink balloon writing post cards to her friends at home. She had to finish these today or they'd arrive back in Denver before the cards. Mom had taught her this—stay in touch with your friends, ask about their lives, show your appreciation. So she wrote carefully distinct notes to Sara and Rhonda and Kathy about walking along the sandy Oregon beach, eating mountain blackberry ice cream (her father's favourite) at Ida's Parlour of Sweetness, beating both her brothers at miniature golf with a score Dan still disputed.

Zero hour. In the suspense of unpinning and brushing her hair, she had almost forgotten ‘the conversation.' Well … the bangs were a little tightly wound, but the rest was, yes, perfect! She picked up her mother's hand mirror and checked the back, grinning. Just like that cute actress, Shelley Fabres. Kathy would be
sooo
jealous.

A tentative knocking on the door.

“You still alive in there?”

“Oh, Mom, come and see.”

The handle rattled.

“Sorry,” she quickly unlocked the door, swivelling this way and that so the hairdresser could admire her craft.

“Lovely,” her mother said. “Curly!”

She could see tears remaining in Mom's eyes. That putrid neutraliser. Sophie kissed her mother's soft cheek, “Thank you. Thank you! It's just what I wanted. Sorry I got pouty at the end.”

“That's OK. I have my faults, too.”

Sophie shrugged. She preferred the competent, off-beat Mom to the weepy, uncertain one. Still, there was something about this new mother that allowed a funny kind of friendship. Arms around her hairdresser, she breathed in the scent of Vaseline, and said, “Thank you.”

They were clinking glasses with the last of the Pepsi as the males arrived, loud-voiced and carrying two enormous fish.

“Don't drip on the carpet!” Mom rushed forward, dropping sheets of newspaper under their feet.

“P-hew,” cried Jimmy, “what's that smell?”

Dan laughed, “That's what girls smell like when you leave them alone too long.”

His father shot him a sharp glance.

“It's the neutraliser,” Mom explained, rolling up the wet newspapers.

Sophie stood in the tiny motel kitchen appalled by the bloody entrails leaking from cold, dead fish. Unaccountably, she wanted to cry. Instead, she groaned, “P-hew, yourselves, talk about stink!”

Her brothers laughed.

Mom put an arm over Sophie's shoulder and addressed her husband and sons. “OK, remember the deal. You catch the fish—you clean them.”

Sophie was completely surprised by the next statement.

“We have some shopping to do,” she exchanged a knowing look with her husband, “to celebrate a young woman's new hairdo.”

Sophie hated that her father knew what they had been talking about and closed her mind to any thought of her parents' bedroom. She noticed for the first time in months, that Dan had grown even taller and more broad shouldered. He'd done a poor job shaving and she spotted a line of fur along his left jaw.

Mom insisted they dress up for dinner. She had bought candles, two more giant Pepsis and they stopped at Ida's for a tub of mountain blackberry. Her father and brothers looked better now that they had showered.

She spent an hour in the motel bedroom deciding which new blouse to wear. She could hardly believe her tightwad mother buying two blouses. She even got something for herself—off the sale rack—an odd paisley turtleneck, a little too busy for Sophie's taste, but now that they were becoming friends, one day, back in Denver, they'd have a long talk about fashion. Eventually, Sophie picked the blue blouse and just in time for as she emerged from the bedroom, Mom was putting supper on the table.

Her father sipped the last of his Scotch in short, swift sucks, as if he were inhaling oxygen. He raised an empty glass—“to two beautiful women in the family.” Mom beamed in her overbright turtleneck. Sophie smiled, playing with the back of her hair, surveying the baked potatoes and string beans and salad. It all looked fine except for that fleshy white fish. A long drink of Pepsi settled her stomach.

“Hey, sis,” Jimmy said sweetly, “you look really pretty with your curls, like someone on TV.”

Shelley Fabres? she was too cool to ask.

Dan chimed in. “Yeah, a completely new look. Very sexy.”

She wanted to crawl under the table or kick her big brother in the shins. Looking up, she found her mother watching her steadily, fondly, those tears in her eyes again.