“What? I grow a third eyeball? Go on. There’s more when you’re done with that.” She shooed me away. That night I called Rosie, who was shouldering the bulk of the Thanksgiving meal prep at her house, and had the whole thing organized to within an inch of its life.
“I have an idea,” I said. “But it involves Renee. You up for that?”
“Sure, honey. She’s gonna be our sister-in-law. We’d best get used to her.”
“You are …” I stopped. Stating the obvious about how miserable four different people were at that moment, while being engaged to each other, seemed like a waste of my energy. “You’re pretty special, Rosalee. I hope my brother appreciates you.” I didn’t say which one of them I meant.
“I’ll ask her,” I said, when she stayed silent long enough for it to be awkward.
“Thanks. I’ll make sure there’s a spot in the kitchen for it.”
By the time Renee—former lowly hairdresser at her aunt’s home-based salon, now fancy spa owner—had done her work on Thanksgiving, every one of my brothers, plus Rosie’s boy, Jeffery, sported nearly bald heads. I helped Rosie finish the food and pack it up to take over to my brother’s garage. Antony, Aiden, and I had spent several hours spit-shining the place and getting rented tables set up. When I turned and spotted Renee putting her trimmers and scissors away, I said, “Wait. My turn.”
“No, Angel,” Rosie said. “You don’t have to.”
I pulled my ponytail out; letting my too-long, coal black hair flow halfway down my back. “It’s too long anyway,” I said, firmly, but getting a little nervous. “You’ll make me look all right, right?”
Renee smiled and pointed to the chair Rosie had set up in the corner of her kitchen. “Sugar, some ladies drive miles, wait weeks, and pay me a ton of money for what I’m about to do for you for free. Family discount.”
She snapped the scissors a few times. Rosie blew out a breath behind me. I bit my lip, then sat, trusting my future sister-in-law to give me the first short haircut I’d had since I was able to boycott haircuts as a toddler. I loved my long hair. Got plenty of compliments on it. But as she snipped and tugged, the sensation of solidarity with my mother and our hair vanity filled me, easing my stress. Until I saw the huge pile of black hair on the newspapers Rosie had put down for the clipping frenzy.
“I’ll donate this for you, hon,” Renee said, whipping the fabric cover from my neck and guiding me into Rosie’s small powder room. “Go on, open your eyes, silly girl.”
I peeked. I gasped. I clapped a hand over my mouth. I’d had no idea how huge my eyes were. I blinked. A much older-looking, sophisticated woman returned my stare. “Oh. Lord.” I touched my neck.
Renee leaned in. “Hang on a sec.” She did a fast something else with her scissors, then declared it “perfect,” and added that my Love family bone structure lent itself to this sort of a style.
I nodded, unable to look away from the strange woman gazing at me from the tiny mirror.
Rosie did a double take as she was packing up the last of the pies to cart over to the garage. “Oh, Angel,” she said, wiping her hands off on her apron. “You are more beautiful than ever.” She brushed my cheek with her lips. “Lordy, Antony is gonna shit bricks.”
I grinned and helped her finish loading up the food while Renee cleaned up the hair mess and tucked the nearly two feet of my hair into a large zip lock bag. When we arrived, she insisted that I wait and make an entrance with her. Which we did, to much hooting, hollering and catcalling. I let Rosie put one of her little bandanas on me so I matched my brothers and Jeffery, and we waited.
When my parents arrived, they were shocked, to say the least. Mama started crying straight off. But when she saw my hair, she tugged off her bandana, revealing the thin strands of auburn she had left, also cut short. Then she walked to me, brushed her fingers through my hair, and leaned her forehead to mine.
“I love you, Angel,” she said, hanging onto my shoulders and using the shorthand version of my name I’d never once, in my entire life, heard her say.
Chapter Twelve
That Christmas we had ourselves not one, but two weddings. And the couples that finally ended up tying the knot were not the same ones who’d started out together that bizarre summer.
The following summer, after I’d made it clear to my parents that I would not be returning to New York until maybe the next school year, we welcomed two babies into the fold. Amanda Love, Aiden and Rosalee’s daughter, was born about three hours before Joshua Love, son of Antony and, of all people, Margot, his therapist.
They were sweet kids, and the fact that my mother got to hold them and fawn all over them to her heart’s content made a lot of the past year of hell worth it. She and I hadn’t really changed much, despite the touching mother-daughter moment at Thanksgiving.
But between loving up her grandbabies and worrying about Kieran, whose wedding had been cancelled, then put back on the calendar, then cancelled again over the course of the year, plus the added bonus of falling and busting her hip on the laundry room floor, she had ample opportunity to ignore me. Which she did.
I had settled in, though, in a way that surprised me. I found myself enjoying the ebb and flow of my parents’ lives. I made breakfast, and after exclaiming over it the first week or so, Mama came to expect it. Even on the days I “slept over,” I would make sure I drove the second-hand beater car my brother had found for me home in time to have the coffee ready and the eggs perfect.
She was pretty formidable, my mother. That much I had come to accept. I’d always been of the opinion that my father was the head honcho, ruling the roost, making all the rules. But that first year I spent under her roof again, I got a completely different perspective.
Mama expended a lot of energy worrying about Kieran and Dom that year, once her oldest and her baby seemed settled in with their little families.
With good reason. Poor Kieran had not only fallen again for his old flame, Cara Cooper, he’d lost his job and fiancée—not that anyone really mourned her absence—but to top it off, he crashed his nice convertible into Antony’s pond, luckily only hurting his shoulder in the process.
Dominic was just himself, as always. Flighty when it came to women, laser-focused on his brewery work, and seeming to draw in on himself and away from the family in a way that made my parents and brothers fret about the medications he was supposed to be taking for his depression.
I’d taken to absenting myself in the evenings, sick of hearing about Kieran and Dom, getting antsy and planning how I might escape again and resume what shreds remained of the life I’d left behind in New York. I was moping around in late August when Mama sat next to me in a poolside chair. We’d had a knock-down drag-out—again—the night before, when I was heading out to meet old friends at a bar in Lexington. She’d been pretty nasty about my comings and goings, and how folks were talking about my freedom and how I used it.
I told her I didn’t give half a shit about what “folks” said, and she shouldn’t either.
She called me no better than a streetwalker, coming home at all hours, smelling of sex.
I told her to go to hell and take her hypocritical bullshit with her. Then I reminded her about Aiden’s book and how he’d represented my mother—as a fifties-generation, red-headed version of me, only with a different name and slightly altered set of circumstances.
She’d slapped me, hard.
It had been one of our more productive conversations.