A Story of Now

It’s as if they’re caught in a bizarre staring triangle. Claire wants to laugh, but she’s pretty sure now is not the time.

Her mother stands behind her chair, staring at Leo with her hands on her hips, nostrils flaring. Leo, however, focuses on Claire. Well, Claire’s hair to be exact. He picks up the brittle strands, runs them between his fingers, and then drops them again. Claire simply leans back in the seat, arms folded across her chest. She stares at both of them via the mirror and waits.

“So, can you do something?” her mother asks as she taps her boot against the floor. Claire fights the urge to roll her eyes. Why does her mother have to be such a drama queen?

Leo doesn’t answer straight away. He examines her hair closely, his lips pursed and his brow furrowed.

Claire watches him as a way to avoid looking at her hair. She’d never admit it to her mother, but it looks awful. Really awful. Yesterday, she had her regular hair, the long light-brown, almost-but-not-quite-blonde hair, hanging down past her shoulders the way it has since she was a small girl. Today, she has a hot mess of bleach-damaged blonde pretending to be hair. And it’s not a consistent blonde either. It runs a rainbow of shades, from white to straw yellow. There are even some parts where the bleach missed and her old hair shows through. Not to mention, it’s taken on a strange new frizziness. It’s not pretty.

“Why, Claire? Why?” her mother asks wearily for the eighteenth time this afternoon.

“I don’t know.” Claire shrugs for the eighteenth time this afternoon and stares mutinously at the mirror. “Because blondes have more fun?” she suggests because she knows it will irritate her mother.

It does. Christine lets out a huff and turns sideways. She closes her eyes for a moment as if she can’t even bear to look at her.

Actually, Claire did it because Nina was dying her streaks at the apartment yesterday and asked if she could experiment with Claire’s hair. And Claire was bored and hungover and pre-menstrually frustrated enough with the epic sameness that is her life to say yes on a whim. Annoying her mother is a pleasant, surprise side effect.

Christine doesn’t like the new look one bit. Exactly ten minutes passed between her laying eyes on Claire’s newly bleached tresses and making an appointment with her own hairdresser to fix the “appalling, cheap mess.” Two hours later, Claire was at the salon being presented to Leo, a middle-aged, rounded man with perfect, bleached hair.

“Leo,” Christine asks again, eyes still closed. “What can you do? It’s a mess, isn’t it?”

Leo continues to inspect Claire’s hair. “We have options here,” he tells her through the mirror. “The problem is how much the bleach damaged it. We can cut it back, dye it, and start again. Maybe a new pixie do or something?”

Claire looks at him wide-eyed and shakes her head. She does not want to lose all her hair for this dumb mistake. “Or?” she asks.

“We dye it properly, treat the hell out of it, try to get it back to some semblance of healthy looking, and give it less of a cut.”

“I don’t really care, just make her look like a child I raised,” Christine says impatiently. “Whatever it costs.”

Leo turns to her mother and takes her arm. “Christine, hon, don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. I’ve always taken care of you, haven’t I?”

“Yes, but then I’ve never done anything like that…that atrocity.” Christine jabs a maroon fingernail in Claire’s direction.

Claire shakes her head. Someone would think she shaved a swear word into her head or something the way her mother is acting.

“No, of course you haven’t.” Leo soothes as he places a hand on her shoulder. “But I’m sure you did something foolish when you were young. We all did. Listen, this is going to take a couple of hours. Why don’t you go run some errands or go get a relaxing massage? We’ll call you when it’s done. No point you being made to hang around here.”

Claire stares hopefully at her mother’s reflection as she considers this option. Eventually, Christine turns to her and wags her finger again. “I’m going to do some shopping. Call me when you’re done. And you do as Leo advises, okay? We know what happens when you make decisions about your appearance.” She gives Leo a wave and heads for the door.

He waves back, smiling widely as she stalks out of the salon, and then turns back to Claire. He rolls his eyes and lets out a sigh.

Claire’s eyes widen. She wasn’t expecting that. She thought Leo was her mum’s obedient hair lapdog, especially after the way he has been tut-tutting over her hair.

“Sorry.” He places his hands on her shoulders. “I couldn’t think straight with her breathing down my neck.”

“Welcome to my life.”

“Okay.” He places one hand on his hip. “So what do you want, Claire?”

She sucks in a deep breath and lets out a voluptuous sigh. “Not to have done this to my hair?”

“Well, that’s a given. But you know, Oprah or someone said a crisis can be an opportunity in disguise. So, if you’ve been feeling like a change, now is your moment to go big. With supervision this time, of course,” he adds hurriedly.

Claire chews on her lip. Of course she feels like a change. That’s what got her in this mess in the first place. She just doesn’t know what she wants to change to.

“And if you’re not sure where to go, I have an idea for you.”

“What?”

He trots over to the coffee table at the front of the salon and hunts through the pile of magazines in the centre until he finds the one he’s looking for. He flicks through the pages as he walks back. “Here.” He holds the open magazine in front of her. “This would be fantastic on you.”

It’s a picture of a model with a longish bob that falls halfway between her jaw and her shoulders. Her hair is dyed a deep reddish brown, and her fringe is cut in a straight line over her eyebrows. Claire likes the fierce look instantly.

“You could definitely carry that dark colour—but no darker, probably.” Leo scrutinises her via the mirror again, still holding the magazine in front of her. “And that warm colour would be fabulous with those blue eyes of yours.”

She stares at it longer, even though she has already pretty much decided. She wants to look like that—sleek and dramatic.

“My mum is probably not going to like it,” she says warily.

Leo gives her a conspiratorial grin. “Show me a haircut that woman has liked, sweetheart, and I’ll show you the unicorn eating grass in our backyard. It’s your hair. Will you like it?”

She stares at the image. “I’ll like it.”

“Are you game?”

Claire nods. Why the hell not? “I’m game.”