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I scanned the appointment book. Sure enough, Lorelei Christy was supposed to be my four o’clock. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. According to Bernice’s system, that meant she was a “low maintenance.” Which meant that Mrs. Kirkwood, my last appointment for the day…wasn’t.
“All right.” Lorelei slipped off her lavender cardigan and draped it across the back of a chair. “I’m sure if Bernice hired you, we’ll get along just fine. Right, dear?”
As far as I was concerned, Lorelei Christy was the dear.
“What would you like me to do today, Mrs. Christy?”
“Just a shampoo and set. The yellow rollers work the best. And I like the shampoo that smells like coconut. It reminds me of the cruise Edward and I took for our fiftieth wedding anniversary.”
By the time I was finished, I wanted to adopt Mrs. Christy and add her to my grandparent collection. She’d told me all about her family, recited her recipe for rhubarb pie, quizzed me afterward, and filled me in on her plans for the summer—which involved knitting slippers for the upcoming preschool class.
“Oh, I almost forgot your tip.” Mrs. Christy turned back to the counter and reached into her purse. “Here you go.” She handed me a neatly folded dishcloth.
If I shook it, would a five-dollar bill fall out?
“I crochet them myself. If you don’t like pink I have a green one in here somewhere—”
“No. Pink is fine. I love pink.”
“You’re a sweet girl. I’ll see you next week. Four o’clock.”
That wasn’t so bad. One down, four to go.
Five minutes after Mrs. Christy left, a harried-looking mom pulled four-year-old twin girls into the salon. I checked the appointment book. Natalie and Nicole. Adorable. They were even dressed alike. This was one of the times I got that wistful I-wish-I-had-a-sister feeling.
They each picked out a chair by the window but their sweet, identical smiles disappeared as soon as their mother announced she needed to run to the grocery store for a gallon of milk. Because she’d only be gone for a few minutes and the girls would be fine without her.
“Who’s first?” I patted the back of the chair.
The girls linked arms in a show of defiant solidarity. A scene from Lady and the Tramp—the one with the Siamese cats—came to mind. No one at cosmetology school had coached me through this scenario.
“One at a time.” Come on, Heather. Don’t let them get the best of you.
Natalie scowled at me. “Where’s the elephant chair?”
“I want the elephant chair, too,” Nicole whined.
Could four-year-olds smell fear?
“Can I have a sucker now?”
Aha. Leverage. “No suckers until after you get your hair cut.”
“Bernice lets us.”
I knew this was a big fat fib. Bernice would never let kids get sticky until they were about to go home. “I’ll get the elephant chair while you two decide who’s going to be first.” There you go, Heather. Pleasant but assertive. Fortunately, I’d paged through a few of Mom’s parenting books over the years!
While my back was turned, I heard their low, candy-sweet voices planning their next move.
Think fast, Heather.
“You girls are lucky today—you get the ten-o’clock special,” I said, pretending I didn’t see Nicole stick her tongue out at me as I turned around.
“What’s that?” Natalie tilted her head and Nicole elbowed her in the side.
“A manicure—and you even get to pick out the nail stickers.” I stared at the clock. “Oh, oh. Only ten minutes left…I don’t know if I’ll have time…”
“I’ll go first!” Natalie bounded over to the elephant chair while her sister crossed her arms and pouted.
Yes! Divide and conquer.
By the time their mother strolled in forty-five minutes later, holding a cup of coffee from Sally’s Café, I was just finishing up Nicole’s manicure. There’d been a tense moment when the girls had tried to talk me into letting them each take home an extra set of stickers but after I’d gently pointed out that other little girls might want them, too, they hadn’t pushed the issue.
I was going to be a wonderful mother someday, I just knew it….
“Look, Mommy! She painted my fingernails. And I have pony stickers.” Nicole spread out her fingers for her mom to admire.
Mom frowned.
“No charge,” I said quickly, and winked at the girls. “The ten-o’clock special.”
“My stickers are better,” Natalie announced. “Mine are kitties.”
“Purple kitties.” Nicole tossed her head. “Kitties aren’t really purple, so mine are better.”
Wait. What was happening here? My brilliant idea was being hijacked by a pair of three-foot-tall divas.
“You didn’t give them the same stickers?” Mom turned accusing eyes on me.
“Ah, I let them pick out the ones they wanted.” What kind of pre-parenting mistake had I just made? I was an only child. Was this something I was supposed to know?
The look she gave me was both pitying and resigned.
“How long do the stickers usually last?”
“About a week.”
She nodded. And sighed.
“You have a pink pony.” The war waged on around us. “There aren’t pink ponies, either!
“Duh! On the merry-go-round.”
“Girls!” In the time it took for Mom to put her cup down, Natalie had launched herself at her sister and they were locked in battle. In the elephant chair. Which began to teeter.
In slow motion, I saw the chair begin its downward descent and I managed to catch Nicole as she pitched out of it. Fortunately Mom must have been working out because she practically vaulted over the counter. It was her oversize purse—which I’d thought looked a bit outdated when I first saw it—that broke Natalie’s fall.
The elephant chair wasn’t as lucky. His trunk snapped off.
“You killed him!” Nicole shrieked.
Natalie burst into tears.
“Here. You can each have another set of stickers. How’s that?” The second the words were out of my mouth, the tears stopped and they politely opened their little palms.
After they left, I slumped in the chair and closed my eyes. I was so ready for lunch. Except I had a broken elephant and another little girl coming in for a first haircut…. But wait, I had a handyman right upstairs, didn’t I?
I collected elephant parts, locked the door and dashed up the back stairs.
“Dex?” I burst in, expecting to find him wrench-deep in home improvement.
He was asleep on the sofa. With Snap wrapped around his neck like a shawl. Was he hungover? And did I have the authority to fire Alex’s un-handyman?
“Rise and shine, you two.”
Dex opened his eyes—he was still wearing his glasses—and stared at me like he’d never seen me before.
“Come on. Wake up. Time to scale the reality wall,” I told him. I only had half an hour to eat lunch and get my elephant fixed and his nap was wasting precious seconds.
“I fell asleep.” He peeled Snap off his neck and sat up.
“Really?” I rolled my eyes. On the inside. I’d been well trained not to do it on the outside. It wasn’t polite. And it had been grounds for an hour of detention at His Light Christian Academy. “Do you think you can fix this?”
“What was it?”
“It is Bernice’s elephant chair. A booster for preschool kids.” I spread the pieces out on the coffee table to give him an idea how they fit together. “And I need it back by one o’clock. If you’re not too busy.”
I couldn’t prevent the tiny bit of sarcasm that oozed into my question. Sorry, Lord!
“Did you try it out or something?” He knelt down to examine the damage and I glowered down at him. Only a guy totally unaware of the statistics on eating disorders would make a comment like that!
“It will go down in history as the place where Nicole and Natalie fought a battle over nail stickers a few minutes ago.”
“You didn’t give both of them a set of stickers?” He picked up the elephant’s trunk and studied it. I couldn’t help but notice that almost every one of his fingers was wrapped in a colorful Band-Aid, like graffiti on an overpass.
“I did give them each a set of stickers but one of them said her ponies were better than kitties because the kitties were purple and everyone knows kitties aren’t really purple….”
Dex tilted his head. He had the same expression on his face that the girls’ mom had had. “You didn’t give them the same stickers?”
“One wanted ponies, the other wanted kitties. I thought I was being nice.”
“You thought you were being nice. What you really were being was deluded. Any bank teller at the drive-up window will tell you that you give a green sucker to every kid in the minivan. It’s known as the same game.” Dex picked up the hammer he must have dropped when he fell asleep and tapped in a loose nail.
I felt the need to defend myself. “How was I supposed to know that?”
His eyebrows disappeared as they dipped behind his glasses. “Brothers and sisters?”
“I’m an only child.”
“Didn’t you babysit to pad your 401(k)?”
He looked serious. I tried not to smile. “No.”
“Can you get me the wood glue in the bucket over there?” Dex rocked back on his heels. “So how did the nail-sticker war end?”
At last I could redeem myself. “I gave them each another set.”
“No kidding.” Dex pushed a nail between his lips, but it looked like he was trying not to laugh.
“What?”
“That was probably their scheme all along.”
“There was no scheme.” I rolled my eyes again. This time on the outside. “They’re four years old! They were upset. Natalie thought she killed the elephant. I wanted them to stop crying. Case closed.” It suddenly occurred to me that those tears had stopped awfully fast when I’d handed them another set of stickers. The stickers they’d wanted earlier but I’d told them they couldn’t have.
Dex nodded the second I became enlightened. “Uhhuh.”
“They set me up.” I’d been scammed. Conned. Taken advantage of.
“I need some more nails.”
Dex had a courtside seat to view my humiliation and it was clear he was hanging out at the concession stand. This was the upside of conversing with someone who lived in an alternate universe.
While Dex pounded on the chair, I worked my way through half a box of crackers and the three pieces of string cheese I’d found in the fridge.
“You’re eating my lunch.” Dex flicked a glance at me as I inched closer to check his progress. I had less than five minutes to get back to the salon.
“I’m sorry.” I shoved the last hunk of string cheese toward him. “Here.”
“It’s all yours.” He leaned away from me and jumped to his feet.
As good as new. Except for the extra fifty nails that formed an uneven line across the back. But I wasn’t going to be picky.
“Thanks.” I wrapped my arms around the elephant and hauled it toward the door. “You saved my life.”
He shrugged. “It’s your first day. Cut yourself some slack.”
“Yeah, you, too.” I couldn’t resist.
He lifted his hands and studied the Band-Aids. “That obvious, huh?”
I mimicked him and shrugged. Then I waited for him to apologize for falling asleep on my couch and beg me to let him keep his job.
“I better get back to work. I didn’t get much done this morning.” That’s all he said.
“You probably should take it easy fighting those kickboxing kangaroos all night,” I muttered.
“Video games?” Dex’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “I never play them.”
