“What on earth have you done to yourself?” she demanded.
“What?” Liz said with bogus innocence. “I learned how to tease it.” She grinned. “Don’t you like it, Dimma?”
“It’s not appropriate for a girl your age, and we are going straight to Garfinckel’s to have it repaired before your mother gets here. If it can be repaired.” Dimma ran her fingers over Liz’s head, smoothing the hanks that spiked up randomly. “What did you do—use an entire can of Aqua Net?”
“Mama won’t care—she teases hers.” My mother wore a short pompadour, clipped on the sides and high on top like the Everly Brothers’, except that she dyed it platinum. At least it had still been that color when I last saw her.
I knew the truth about Liz’s hair—that she had been brushing only the top of her long mane at camp, not underneath, and a tangled mass like an orange Brillo pad had developed, at which point she’d had to cut it all off. This had happened before, and I’d been the one to chop out the matted mess and smooth the remaining hair over the damage. Somehow this had gone undetected. “You look like Clarabell,” I said.
“At least I don’t have scabs on my head,” she said, eyeing my ringworm. “I heard that enemas cure scabby heads.”
This alarmed me because my grandmother believed enemas were good for everything. She often threatened me with them to scare me into better hygiene or behavior, but enemas had been administered a couple times. Dimma said, “That’s enough, you two. His head is clearing up.” It wasn’t; it still itched viciously.
Dimma called Garfinckel’s salon and told Liz to go take a shower, not a bath, and to wash her hair thoroughly with the Breck. Liz stomped upstairs to her room with her suitcase and slammed the door. In a minute, “A Big Hunk o’ Love” was blaring. I followed Dimma into the kitchen. “She shaved her legs, too,” I mentioned casually.
“Damn it.” Dimma lit a Chesterfield. “She’s headed straight for Florence Crittenton.” Florence Crittenton was a place where girls had to go to have babies if they didn’t have a husband, which I was a little confused about. Dimma went to ladies’ lunches to help them. She said, “She’ll end up like…God in heaven.” She shook her head but didn’t finish the sentence and began rinsing out ashtrays at the sink. Dimma used a lot of expressions with religious words in them, but we didn’t go to church. I supposed that was why she said them—to make up for it. I wondered if she was saying that Liz would end up like God in heaven, but that made no sense, and in my opinion Liz was not destined for heaven.
Dimma and Liz returned later, Liz sporting a sleek pixie cut à la Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, another of Elena’s favorite films, and a red nose from crying.
“Now you look like Bozo,” I said, running out of striking range. I was a little bit glad to have Liz home but didn’t have any idea of how to show it. I felt like Max, who secretly liked Beatriz but tried to act as if he didn’t. And I wished I could have my mother all to myself.
Liz yelled after me, “Why don’t you go drink some Clorox with your dopey friends?” I’d once accidentally drunk some bleach that had been in a 7 Up bottle, and had to have my stomach pumped.
“Dear Lord, deliver us,” Dimma said, shaking her head. “Can you two, for the sake of your mother, please try to get along?”
Brickie had already driven down to St. Elizabeths, my mother’s hospital, which was just off Alabama Avenue in Southeast Washington. I badly wanted to go, especially since Brickie was taking Dimma’s gleaming cream-colored Cadillac, but he said it wasn’t a good idea. I thought he was worried, maybe, that I’d get TB or something, but couldn’t I also get it from my mother? Another thing that made no sense to me, but I didn’t press it.
They returned late that afternoon. For a second I didn’t recognize my mother—I just saw a pretty, well-dressed lady being helped out of the car by Brickie. She was so thin and pale, practically the color of Brickie’s tawny roses blooming in a bed next to the driveway, and normally in summer she was gorgeously tan. An inch or two of black roots showed bizarrely in her ice-colored hair. Then I noticed she was wearing a navy-blue shirtwaist that I liked, and her lipstick was her usual color, Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow, so I felt better. Brickie, carrying her suitcase, announced happily, “Here’s our girl!” Dimma rushed out the screen door to hug her, then held her at arm’s length, telling her how wonderful she looked. At a loss for words, I ran to her, too, squeezing between my mother and Dimma, and wrapped myself around her.
“My baby!” she said, letting loose of Dimma and folding herself over me. “Oh, I missed you so much!” When we separated I saw tears in her gray eyes. “You look wonderful! Did you miss me?”
“No,” I said, suddenly a little angry.
Dimma said, “John.”
Mama just smiled. She hugged me again, planting little smooches all over my face, which I hoped would leave Cherries in the Snow smudges. I felt my anger melt away, and tears coming on, but I wasn’t going to cry. “I’m much better now,” she told me. “I’ll be coming home for good soon, I promise.”
Dimma said cheerfully, “Of course you will be, darling.”
But I wanted her home for good right now. My mother ran into the house and up the stairs, calling my sister’s name. I couldn’t help myself and yelled after her, “Liz cut her hair! She has an ugly orange pinhead now!”
Brickie was in a great mood, for a change. He had always doted on my mother, his baby girl. I helped him clean the spider junk off the screened porch and we sat down to a long-awaited family dinner. Estelle had made her spectacular crab cakes—jumbo lumps of meat, one egg, a little mayo, a sleeve of crushed saltines, a pinch of Old Bay—along with corn fritters, green beans, and deviled eggs. The adults had cocktails and beer, and Liz and I were allowed to have a little beer served in Dimma’s champagne coupes. Even my sister seemed happy, and my mother said she loved her hair, and that they would do their nails together tomorrow, and that Liz could help her touch up her roots. To me she promised a trip to Rock Creek Park to find some crayfish, and she wanted to see all my new spiders, and we could all go to the Moon Palace, my favorite Chinese restaurant, for dinner. Everything was so nice, heartwarming, actually, like we were on Father Knows Best. I was sad for a second, thinking about fathers knowing best, and mine being gone, but I’d see him soon enough for our annual beach trip, and I wasn’t going to let that ruin the lovely moment. We ate and drank, engaging in pleasant small talk.
I told her about our plans for the Fiesta. “Please can you stay for it, Mama? It’s going to be right here at our house!”
Liz smiled slyly at Dimma. “How’d that happen?”
“It’s for a good cause,” Dimma replied. “And I hope it might keep some people occupied, and out of trouble for a while. It’s important to encourage children to have good causes—doesn’t everybody think?”
“I think it sounds like a wonderful idea, John!” my mother said. “I’d love to come, but…” She patted her heart softly, or maybe she was indicating her lungs. “Dr. Overholser doesn’t think I’m well enough to come home just yet.” My own heart sank, even though I’d known better than to get my hopes up.
“You boys can always plan another Fiesta next summer,” Brickie said. “If this party goes well,” he added, a little pointedly.