Real Life & Liars (8 page)

KATYA STOMPS THROUGH THE HOUSE, SEARCHING FOR HER MOTHER.
Her cell phone buzzes—thank God Irina knows about this crap, it’s finally just a buzz—and she flips it open, still striding down the hall. “Kat’s Cradle Design.”

“Kat Peterson? This is Angelica from the caterer. Just confirming your guest list of two hundred twenty people—”

Kat stops in midstride and growls into the phone. “One hundred twenty. Not two hundred twenty.”

“Hmm, right here in my notes it says—”

“Well, that’s why they have these confirmation calls. We have confirmation for one hundred twenty only.”

“What am I going to do with shrimp cocktail for an extra hundred people?”

“Not my problem.” Kat snaps the phone shut and bellows through the house. “Mom! Come on! We’re late for your hair appointment!”

Mira shows up, nearly floating out of her study, a goofy smile plastered across her face. If she didn’t know better, Kat would think she’d gotten laid.

“Let’s go, Mom, those people are waiting for us. Oh God, what’s that smell?” Katya sneezes at the scent of something woodsy and musky assaulting her nostrils.

“It’s just a little patchouli oil. I think it smells nice.”

“Whatever, let’s go. Are you wearing that?”

Mira looks down at her raggedy patterned skirt with the hem falling down, Birkenstock sandals, and threadbare white button-up shirt. “What of it?”

“Nothing, I guess it doesn’t matter right now.”

On the way to the driveway, the cell phone buzzes again. “Kat’s Cradle.”

“Hi, Mrs. Peterson, we’re just confirming delivery of the flowers to…” Kat barely listens as she strides ahead, glancing back to make sure Mira hasn’t gotten distracted by something. In doing so, she comes down the porch steps and nearly has a head-on collision with Patty, her mother’s next-door neighbor.

“Oh!” she gasps, and the voice on the phone says “What?” at the same time as Patty says, “Holy shit!”

“I’m sorry, I almost crashed into someone. You. I’m sorry I almost crashed into you,” she says.

“Oh, Patty McFadyen, my darling!” Mira sings out, skipping down the steps.

The two women launch into an animated discussion on either side of Katya, who can no longer hear what the florist is saying. “Yes, thank you, that’s fine,” she says, hanging up. She looks longingly at the harbor and imagines flinging her phone into it. Or herself.

Patty climbs into the backseat of Van’s VW, which they’re borrowing because Charles still has the Escalade at the hotel. Patty shoves papers and files out of her way as she goes. “What are you doing?” Katya asks, more sharply than she means to.

Mira says, just before closing the front passenger door, “Oh, I asked her to come along. No harm in that, right?”

Katya sighs. “Of course not. Let’s just go, please.”

The car maneuvers slowly through the streets like a ship at sea, trying to avoid the tourists and locals out for their morning walks, or trinket-shopping trips. Banks of petunias line the streets in candy pink, white, and rich purple. Baskets spill over with petunias hanging from business awnings and lightposts. It’s the local garden club’s contribution to keeping the town motto ringing true: Charlevoix the Beautiful. Nice enough. But surely, a lot of trouble to keep the weeds pulled.

At the Diamonique Salon, Mira immediately embarrasses Katya by refusing to get her hair washed. “I washed it this morning, and it’s not gotten dirty in the last hour. Just do something with it to make my daughter happy, so I can get on with my day.”

“But ma’am, it’s really no trouble…”

“Do I look like I haven’t bathed? Honestly. My hair is clean, I promise.”

The salon girls trade looks over the top of her mother’s head, arching their almost nonexistent eyebrows. Katya had chosen the most expensive-sounding salon in Charlevoix, based on the name and their refusal to list prices on their Web site. She didn’t want some cut-rate beauty-school ninny working on their hair, and she knew Mira would have just run a brush through it and called it good enough.

“I can vouch that she’s a regular bather,” pipes up Patty from the waiting area, where she’s leafing through
People
magazine. “Her bathroom window faces my kitchen.”

The salon girls now titter and shrug. “Whatever you say, ma’am.” The taller of the two ushers her mother toward a chair. “And what can we do for you today?”

Mira smiles, but Katya recognizes the tightness in it. She’s barely tolerating this experience. “Why don’t you and my daugh
ter discuss it? I’m hopeless with hairstyles, as you might have guessed.”

Katya steps forward. “It’s her thirty-fifth wedding anniversary today, and she’ll be wearing an ivory sleeveless dress with a fitted jacket. It’s really gorgeous.”

The taller girl—Katya sees her name tag, she’s Fatima, of all things—taps her comb into her palm. “Hmmm, I’m thinking a chignon would be very nice. Unless you want some of it left loose.”

“No,” Katya interjects. “I think having it up would be gorgeous.”

“Sounds nice.” Mira smiles into the mirror at herself, and Katya’s just glad she’s not complaining. “And how about that pedicure?”

Katya stops rummaging in her purse for her phone to gape. “Well, sure! That sounds great.” Katya suddenly feels generous. “Patty? You game for that?”

“If these young gals can stand my gnarly old feet, I’m game.”

Fatima and her partner give each looks of studied passivity. “That will be fine,” Fatima says, patting Mira on the shoulder as she pumps with her foot to move her chair up.

Katya accepts the hair wash, and in no time at all, her own rusty brown hair is pulled up into a bun that’s designed to look loose and careless, but takes more than a dozen hairpins and enough hair spray to shellac a sailboat. She accepts three phone calls from various vendors associated with the party, two from clients, and one from her middle son, whining about his father making him eat breakfast.

“But
you
never make me eggs! Why do I have to eat eggs? Why aren’t you here?”

That last sentence sounds so like her own voice that she almost drops the phone. She casts a glance at Mira in case she can hear both sides of the conversation. The other salon girl keeps pulling Katya’s head up straight so she can futz with the locks of hair left loose from the bun.

Katya ignores Taylor’s accusatory question. “Your father’s in
charge, so do what he says. I’ll see you at lunchtime at Grandma’s house.”

She cuts off his next whine by hanging up.

Katya looks sideways over at Mira, who chats with Patty via her reflection in the mirror. Patty has taken up residence in one of the empty salon seats. The two are into high-volume reminiscing about other neighbors, and kids growing up. Patty’s white hair is teased up like a cloud of cotton candy over her face, with its sharp little nose and eyes that look tiny until she pulls her glasses up onto her face from their chain around her neck. Then those eyes get huge and always seem to be following you.

In Katya’s memory, those two were peas in a pod, their unconventional attitudes sometimes rankling their staid neighborhood with its grand houses and lake views afforded by the well-to-do. Patty was a truck-stop waitress who inherited the house, free and clear, from her late husband. Legend has it they met in the box seats of Tiger Stadium, right behind home plate, when she sneaked down from the bleachers in the fifth inning to get a better view. She got a better view, all right.

“Isn’t that right, Katya?” asks Patty now, with that cackly laugh that betrays her age.

“Sure enough,” Katya responds, the same way she always does when caught lost in herself. She catches Mira’s look, before Fatima firmly puts Mira’s face back toward the mirror. Her silvery locks are being wound up and fastened in a complicated array of swirls. Too much hair to be swept all together at once.

Katya knows that if her mother heard Taylor whining through the phone, she’ll think of the same incident that came to her own mind.

Why aren’t you here,
Taylor had said.

Because when Katya was twelve, and Mira was with her father on a research trip to Paris and Nana Zielinski was staying with them, she’d said those very same words.

The phone buzzes, and Katya groans, feeling like Pavlov’s dog as her hand snatches it up almost before she registers the noise.

She sends an apologetic look up to the salon girl, who stops spritzing and rolls her eyes.

“Kat Peterson.”

“Katya? Is that you?”

This time she does drop the phone, and it crashes against the chair before hitting the tile floor with a loud thwack. She stares in horror, and everyone in the salon can hear a baritone voice saying, “Hello? Katya? Are you there?”

“
WELL, MRS. ZIELINSKI? WHAT DO YOU THINK
?”

My hair is all wrapped, bound, pulled, and sprayed away behind me. There’s a little height at the crown, but really, all I’d need is a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses and a Peter Pan collar, and I could be anyone’s librarian.

A chorus of platitudes zips through my head, like,
Goodness, you really worked hard on that, didn’t you?
But, I go instead for the outright lie.

“I love it. Really, thanks so much.”

My neck feels like it’s full of marbles, it’s so stiff. In the mirror, I can see Katya, pacing the sidewalk outside with her phone. I know that’s not her husband on the phone, so I can only assume it’s Tom, who called the house the other day. Interesting that he has her cell phone number. I know I didn’t give it to him.

“It’ll be a short wait for your pedicures, ladies,” says this Fatima girl, nudging me out of the chair.

“How short is short?”

“Ummm…”

“We got time for a drink down the street?”

“Sure, you do,” says Fatima, brightening. Maybe she’s hoping we’ll never come back.

“Come on, Peppermint Patty.” I pull her up by her hands, acting playful, but knowing that these days she really needs the assistance in standing. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

“It’s the morning, isn’t it?”

“It’s happy hour somewhere.”

As we approach the door, I see that Katya has stopped pacing and is staring at me quizzically. I arch an eyebrow right back at her. She murmurs into the phone and stops to look at me.

“I’m taking Patty down the street. They’re not ready for the pedicure yet. If you don’t want to wait, drive home without us, and we’ll walk back.”

The sun on the back of my neck feels strange and oppressive, like the hand of a teacher pushing me toward the principal’s office. The weight of my hair all yanked up on my head pulls on my scalp. I scratch just above my right ear, and already a lock of hair has come loose. Jiminy Christmas, I can’t even touch my own head without messing this up.

I have to slow down my step when I notice Patty has dropped behind me. We swing into a pizza joint, and she walks away from a booth to a table with chairs, which must be easier on her hips. I’m thinking that I hate to see my friend showing her age, and it hits me with a
thunk
to my chest that I may not see her that much longer.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks after we plop down, dispense with small talk, and give the young waiter our order for a draft beer each.

“What do you mean?” I trace the knot in the wooden tabletop with a long, wrinkly finger. The first part of me that’s looking like an old crone’s.

“What are you not telling me?”

“You can keep a secret, right, Pat?”

She squints those milky blue eyes at me, bunches up her little nose, and says, “You know it.”

Now the moment comes. I’m going to speak this aloud to someone outside the family. Our beers arrive, which delays the moment, and I fortify myself with a swig.

I press my voice into a low whisper, because this town is small and ears are everywhere. “Cancer.”

“Oh, Lord in heaven, not you, Mirabelle.”

“Like it should be someone else?”

“I just mean…Shit, it isn’t supposed to be fun people that get sick.”

“Oh, you’re a sweetie.” I haven’t looked her in the eye yet.

“Well, they’ll cut it out, right? Where is it? Not in your brain or something, I hope.”

My whisper is even lower, such that I have to repeat myself when Patty squints at me. “Breast cancer.”

Damned if she doesn’t light up when I say that. “Oh, babe! Hell, I’ve had three cousins and an aunt get that. They can just cut it right out, or even lop off a tit or two. You’ll be right as rain.”

I can’t answer her. Nor can I look at her. I have another decision to make about how much to tell.

“Mira? Honey?”

That weight rests on my chest again, it’s like something pressing down, a vice, pushing, pushing. I put my hand over my heart to remind myself it’s still beating. “It’s worse than that,” I finally choke out.

“No.” Patty grabs my hand across the table. “How much worse?”

I put my forehead in my other hand. It’s so much harder to say this out loud than it is to smile and ignore it. I’m so right not to have told my children yet. Patty takes this gesture as her answer. “How could that be, in just a year?”

“A year?” I finally pick my head up, and pull my hand back from hers. I need both hands to steady my beer for another drink.

“Since your last mammogram.” Realization grows in Patty’s face, and her countenance darkens. Her eyebrows droop, and everything about her slumps a little lower. “You hate going to the doctor. Bet you haven’t gotten one of those things in years.”

As with most best friends, I don’t have to speak. She can read my answer in my face, just like she knew already that I was sick though I’m putting on a pretty good act where everyone else is concerned. Though I’ve known her for more than twenty years, I’m not sure whether she’ll be angry, or crying, when I meet her eyes again.

I look up, and I see neither. Her face is soft, expression mild. She’s a vision of compassion and openness, ready for whatever comes next.

I put my head down on the table and weep, much to the horror of the college student waiter, who has come by with lunch menus. I don’t deserve such friendship.