Minus Me Read online

  Despite the instructions she’s composed for Sam, she has no rules for the rest of her life. Maybe some thrill seekers might choose to climb Machu Picchu or opt for Paris, but she’s a home-grown girl. What is her bucket list? Eat all the sundaes she wants? Sow the wild oats she hardly sowed? Turn platinum blond?

  Such endgame shenanigans might help her detach from Sam, make her less appealing so it won’t be so hard for him when she’s gone. Or so hard for her to accept that she’s leaving him. This will be tough, pushing away, for Sam’s sake, the very comfort and love she will need to sustain her … she bangs her forehead against the steering wheel … when things start to fall apart.

  Yesterday afternoon, she folded the manual into thirds, struggling to tamp down the anguish its contents were causing her. She buried it in her underwear drawer. Unlike Ursula’s flimsy silk nothings, her underwear is sturdy, 100 percent cotton, bought in multiples at the outlet on Route 15. She’d scooped up a label-designated “hipster brief.” It looked neither hipster nor brief, more like what a peasant grandmother would wear beneath voluminous skirts.

  What is wrong with her? Besides the obvious, that is. She wants a sexy silk black bikini to turn Sam on; she wants a beige cotton hipster brief to fend him off. She wants her hair to remain the way it is. She wants her hair to change. She can neither stay the same nor simply stay.

  She shuts off the ignition, gets out of the car, and slouches through the entrance of Cutting Edge. “I don’t have an appointment,” she apologizes to a woman chic enough to be the daughter Annie’s mother would have preferred.

  “No problem.” The woman points her fingernails, glitter-glued versions of the French flag, in the direction of a group of zebra-striped chairs.

  “Hey, Annie,” she hears. She spins around. There, under a matching zebra robe, the top of his head dipped into a basin, a tower of suds dripping onto his forehead, sits—or rather, leans—Ralphie Michaud.

  Her mouth opens. He is so out of context that she’s knocked speechless. What is Ralphie Michaud doing here? Tattooed, leather-jacketed, a Marlboro still dangling from his lips even in this tsk-tsk-no-smoking interior, he belongs in a Hells Angels gang revving up a badass Harley. It’s hard to believe that Ralphie Michaud would choose the his-and-hers over the single-sex his.

  “What a surprise to see you here,” he says.

  “Not as much of a surprise as seeing you.”

  Streaming rivulets, he lifts his head from the basin and is immediately turbaned in pink terry cloth by a flamingo-smocked teenager. “I mean,” he goes on, “your hair …”

  What does he mean? That her hair never changes? That her sole upkeep is a once-every-eight-weeks trim at a place catering to the blue-haired crowd? That she (next to Ralphie himself) is the last person on earth anyone would imagine turning up at a unisex salon called Cutting Edge?

  All true. Alas.

  “… your hair always looks great. Ever since high school,” he finishes.

  Before she can change her mind, she’s led to a chair by a woman with red curls, kohl-lined cat’s eyes, and the perkiest breasts this side of Barbie. “Dee Dee,” she introduces herself, then nods toward the reception desk. “Mimi’s my sister.” She helps Annie into a robe. She loops a bib around her neck. “The older one,” she clarifies.

  Two chairs away, Ralphie now sits, riveted by his reflection—arching an eyebrow, testing out a grin. The teenager aims a hair dryer at his sideburns. Dee Dee points. “My daughter, Tallulah.”

  “I never would have guessed.”

  She laughs. “I was a child bride.”

  Annie regards her draped, drab self in the mirror, brown parched earth eclipsed by Dee Dee’s radiant sun. “What brought you to Passamaquoddy?” she asks.

  “The usual.”

  “Meaning?”

  “A man.”

  “Did it work out?”

  “No. Story of my life. But by the time I discovered what an asshole he was, we’d already moved and rented the shop. Maine’s quite the change from New Jersey.”

  “Do you like it here?”

  “The verdict’s still out. I miss the malls. But the people are real friendly. They don’t have, you know, attitude.” She grabs a fistful of Annie’s hair and analyzes it. “The raw material is good—thick, shiny, healthy,” she says. She pushes it to the side. “So, what shall we do with this?”

  Annie likes the we, the collaborative effort it implies, the comfort of not having to make a decision all alone. “What do you suggest?”

  “How do you feel about taking a walk on the wild side?”

  “Just how wild?”

  “On a scale of one to ten …? Maybe a nine and a half?”

  Annie smells a piña colada. From the corner of her eye, she can just make out Ralphie, dried and coiffed, a dust cloud of aerosol haze circling his head. “Would I have to be sprayed in coconut?”

  “We’ve got lemon. And an incredible fig-ginger combo. You know”—Dee Dee stands back and appraises her—“you have a pretty face, but it’s lost under that mop of yours. You are not making the best of your assets. What I have in mind will accent your bone structure and allow your eyes to pop.” She adjusts Annie’s bib. “We could also add a few highlights for extra pizzazz.”

  “Perhaps a little risky?”

  “Trust me.”

  “What do I have to lose?”

  “You go, girl. It’s only hair, right? It’s not like it’s a matter of life and death.”

  Dee Dee gets busy. “I had this one client in Jersey, back in my old salon, who said my haircut made all the difference. She met a guy. Got a new job. Lost forty pounds. She was so grateful she sent me six bras. Not your usual box of Godiva.”

  In the mirror, Annie studies Dee Dee’s breasts. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did she know your size?”

  “She worked in a bra factory. She had the eye. One look and bingo! Those were the best-fitting bras I ever wore.” She wheels a cart stuffed with supplies next to Annie’s chair. “I gave them to my sister when I had my boobs done.”

  Now, with surgical precision, Dee Dee lays out her instruments. Scissors—large and small—two combs, one round brush, one flat brush, one paintbrush, a squeeze bottle, a stack of foil squares, a box of clips.

  Annie coughs.

  “It won’t hurt, I swear. I haven’t lost a customer yet.”

  “It’s not that. Just nervous, I guess.”

  “I get it. Some people don’t like change. I’ve been seeing a lot of that since I moved here, people stuck in their ways. Afraid of doing something new. Me, now, I can switch my hair color once a week. Put on a different outfit and become a whole other person. You should see my house. Every day I move something around, change the decor. I’ve lived in eight cities. Couldn’t even begin to count the number of apartments and houses, not to mention”—she picks up a comb—“all the guys I’ve been with. You know what they say …”

  “Not really.”

  “If you don’t keep moving forward, you die.”

  Annie closes her eyes as Dee Dee swirls around her, pulling, cutting, snipping. She tries to zone out. She struggles to imagine sun and sand and an endless horizon stretching into infinity. But all she can conjure is a fast-approaching tsunami, its colossal waves sweeping her away. She shudders.

  “Sit still,” Dee Dee orders, “or you’ll be missing the top of your ear.”

  Annie squints down at the floor, where there seems to be more hair scattered across the hexagonal white tiles than there is left on her head.

  A whiff of coconut signals the arrival of Ralphie Michaud. His just-styled mane is impressively retro, poufed into a semi-pompadour on top and clipped close at the sides. Is the color lighter or just an artifact of the overhead fluorescent bulbs?

  “Later,” he says. “Dad’s due for a root canal and needs me at the store.”

  “Nice seeing you.”

  “The same.” He flashes his bad-boy grin. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Stop by on the
way home. I want to check out the big reveal.”

  “I’m afraid I have to …”

  “Come on. You gonna make me leave the game before the last inning?”

  Surprising herself, Annie agrees.

  “That guy has a major crush,” Dee Dee remarks as soon as he leaves. “Major,” she repeats.

  “No way,” Annie protests, pleased by the observation. “Besides, I’m married.”

  Dee Dee grins. “So?”

  * * *

  She is done. Dee Dee holds a hand mirror up to the back and the sides.

  Annie barely recognizes herself. Her hair is short, extremely short. Her head is so light she feels as if she’s lost ten pounds. And her eyes look bigger, more defined, almost almond-shaped. She smiles. “I think I like it,” she says. “It’ll just take a while …”

  “… to get used to it,” Dee Dee supplies. “Cross my heart, pretty soon that like will turn to love.”

  Without complaint, Annie forks over four times more than she’s ever paid at her regular hairdresser’s, even ignoring the discount earned for loyalty.

  Since it is now midafternoon and she’s missed lunch, she decides to swing by Miller’s Drug before the promised visit to Ralphie Michaud. Eat dessert first, people on their deathbeds advise. It’s her day for walking on the wild side.

  At the counter, she orders a sundae with the works. “And a double scoop,” she tells Mr. Miller. “Vanilla and strawberry.”

  “Is that you, Annie?” he asks, his bushy eyebrows knit into question marks. “I barely recognized you. What have you done to your hair?”

  “The new unisex salon over on Main.”

  He tsks. “I heard about that. A couple of fancy-schmancy sisters from New York.”

  “New Jersey.”

  “Same dif. Unisex! What a world.”

  “So, you don’t approve?” she asks.

  He sponges up the spilled chocolate sauce overflowing her bowl and shakes his head. “Has Sam taken a gander at this new look of yours yet?”

  * * *

  In front of Michaud’s Quik-Basket, she hesitates. Maybe instead she should go home and tackle the laundry, straighten up the living room. Did she even make the bed this morning? But Ralphie’s expecting her. It would be rude if she didn’t show up. Not to mention snobby. Besides, why not test Mr. Miller’s disdain with a more open-minded, younger-generation assessment?

  The instant the ancient rusted-out bell over Michaud’s door clangs her presence, Ralphie rushes to greet her. “Annie!” he whoops. “Rock star!” he exclaims. He slaps her five. She smells the sickly-sweet coconut of his saturated hair.

  As well as something else. Of course. She identifies it right away. From the stand of pines behind the high school. From campus hideouts, college parties, concerts in the back of bars, everybody’s BYOB first-apartment open house.

  He takes her hand. “You look so amazing. Really out there.” He moves closer.

  She inches back.

  “I can’t get over it. The meta, meta …”

  “… morphosis,” she supplies.

  He turns to the front door and flips the OPEN sign to CLOSED. “Follow me. I’ve got some A-one weed.”

  He leads her into the back room. She takes in a sagging sofa, a rabbit-eared TV, a bridge table with a centerpiece of empty beer bottles, piles of Car and Driver magazines, a grimy half-refrigerator. A moth-eaten PASSAMAQUODDY HIGH SCHOOL banner hangs on the wall next to a calendar of snowmobiles, stuck on September of two years ago. A torn poster for last summer’s La Kermesse Franco-American festival in Biddeford droops beside a photo of a vocalist in full S&M attire whose hair is even wilder, more out there, more cutting edge than her own. What is she doing here?

  Ralphie indicates a place on the sofa, brushing it off and raising a cloud of dust. Talk about a men-without-women world! She fast-forwards to her future, post-Annie kitchen, heaped with unwashed dishes, empty bottles, old pizza crusts, back issues of the Passamaquoddy Daily Telegram. She watches dust kitties roll around like tumbleweed. She imagines Sam asleep in front of ESPN.

  “Earth to Annie …” Ralphie says now.

  “Sorry. Daydreaming.”

  She tries to remember the last and only time she smoked pot. She and Rachel and Sam were at a classmate’s off-campus apartment. She felt nothing. Where was the buzz? The music of the spheres? Sam complained of a headache and burning throat. “So, we’ve tried it; now we don’t have to do it again,” he said. Rachel flirted and giggled and gobbled down all the crackers and cheese. She skipped in circles on the back porch. “You two are so out of it,” she accused.

  Annie is now certain of one thing: at this minute, she does not want to be out of it. Out of it is what happens when you become a couple as soon as you enter your teens, when you’re Old Marrieds even before the wedding bells. Out of it is when you have a yard, designated bedrooms, a separate shower—privileges that most of your community can only dream of. She touches the spiky layers above her ears.

  Ralphie pulls a Zippo from his shirt pocket, ignites the joint, inhales. He holds the smoke in, mouth shut, nostrils pinched. At last, he exhales with an orgasmic whoosh. He takes another toke and passes it to her. She is meant to share this—the twisted end he licked, the rolling paper he smacked his lips around. She hopes—shades of Sam—she doesn’t catch something. Let’s face it, Ralphie’s hygiene might not be CDC approved. Wait. It hardly matters, considering the top-of-the-line, number-one whammy she’s already caught.

  She grabs the joint. She inhales. She concentrates on letting no smoke escape, but it scalds her throat; she can’t stop coughing. A whole new croaky refrain starts to amplify her recent hoarseness. Does this rasping signal an amateur pothead or the end stages of lung disease?

  Ralphie thumps her on the back. “You’re out of practice,” he consoles. “Try again.”

  This time she succeeds. When she releases the smoke, she can only admire the long thin plume and its coil of total elegance. She giggles. Isn’t life funny, she giggles again.

  She and Ralphie pass the joint back and forth until all that remains is a torn paper remnant and a drift of dregs.

  “Go figure,” he muses. “In my wildest dreams, who’d believe that cute, classy little Annie Stevens would one day be sitting on my sofa smoking weed with big, bad Ralphie Michaud?”

  “Life is full of surprises.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Me, I have plenty of ideas.” He pats her knee. “Hungry?” he asks.

  Though she scarfed down a double sundae minutes ago—or was it hours?—she is starved.

  “Wait here,” Ralphie orders.

  “Not going anywhere,” she chuckles, in awe of her own witty riposte.

  He returns from the front of the store, arms laden with snack packs of Doritos, Cheetos, Cheez-Its, Twizzlers, and nacho chips. He spreads the treats out on the table.

  Like hawks, they swoop. They pounce. They claw the bags open and ravage the contents. “How great to live behind a grocery store,” Annie marvels.

  “With a dad who spends so much time at the dentist,” adds Ralphie, “I get a shitload of personal space.”

  Annie is sure that if they continue this way, she’ll need root canals too. Tooth-wise, though, there’s an upside to dying: no more dentists and no reason to floss.

  Soon enough, the carcass is picked clean, leaving only scraps. Ralphie bends toward her. The coconut, this close, is revolting. She thinks of Sam, his Sam smell of fresh-cut grass and onions and warm manly flesh. She pictures the bottles of fancy French cologne, Pour Monsieur, presents from Ursula, unopened on a shelf and ready for regifting. She remembers Charles’s signature bay rum. “How about it?” Ralphie asks.

  “How about what?”

  “Let’s check out what we missed way back when …”

  “I don’t think … I mean …”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “You asked to see my haircut.”
>
  “What planet are you from, anyway? Give me a break.” Ralphie leans closer.

  She flinches.

  “What a wuss.” He smashes his lips against hers. He reeks of the salty, greasy snacks they have just eaten. And the pot.

  Her stomach lurches. She pulls away. “No!” she shouts.

  He grabs her shoulders. She shakes herself free. “No,” she repeats. “Stop it!” She squeezes into the corner of the sofa. She piles empty beer bottles and a bag of Doritos as a barrier between them. How could she have been so stupid, so naïve, to accept Ralphie’s invitation? Is she hoping to rewrite the good-girl history of her high school years? Perhaps she’s using Ralphie to distance herself from Sam, thus easing the pain of the inevitable distance. Not that she isn’t out of her mind, incapacitated by the joint she’s smoked and doctor’s appointments and grief.

  Is this her first #me too moment, however late blooming?

  “You are a wuss,” Ralphie states now.

  “A married wuss.”

  He lifts his hands in I-surrender formation. “Big deal. I just knew you’d chicken out.” He shakes his head. “You’re lucky I’m a gentleman.”

  “If you say so …” she manages.

  He goes on. “Maybe your hair is great and all. And you look okay for your age …”

  “Which is your age too, by the way.”

  “Like I don’t realize this? Though it’s a fact: as guys get older, they just get sexier. Take Clint Eastwood.”

  “I hate Clint Eastwood,” she says.

  “No surprise there. But the point is, Annie, even though I tried, for old time’s sake, and because I didn’t want you to think I was rejecting you after you showed up and all, I’m not feeling it.”

  “You’re not feeling it?” she exclaims, oddly insulted.

  “You figure you’re so out of my league.”