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My father smiled back. He was a great guy to date, even a great guy to be divorced from. He just didn’t do so well in the space between the two. He let go of her hand and started snapping his fingers, and we all started dragging our chairs into a semicircle.

Sophia walked in front of me. I figured the sound of the dragging chairs, not to mention the commotion my father Summer Blowout

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always brought along with him, would mask our conversation. “Hey,” I said. “When you see Craig, tell him to call me, okay?”

There was a sudden dead silence in the room.

“About
what
?” Sophia asked.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but it’s about Lizzie.” I was pretty sure I saw a flash of jealousy, and I took a moment to savor it. “What about Lizzie?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Just tell him to call. Or not.” I turned my back on her just in time to see Precious running over to my father. She screeched to a halt in front of him, sat, and offered her paw. My father ignored her. Precious stood up again and jumped. Repeatedly. She was an amazingly good jumper and managed to get her tiny self up almost to eye level with my six-foot-tall father.

“Is that a dog in my salon?” my father asked.

“Nope,” I said.

“Good thing,” my father said, with just a hint of the half-smirk we all called his Mona Lisa smile. Precious put everything she had into her next leap, and this time he caught her just before she started heading back down. He held her away from him so he could read her karma’s a bitch T-shirt.

“No shit,” he said.

Precious tilted her head and looked at him. My father handed Precious over to me. “It’s about time you got some new companionship,” he said. “Much better looking than that hound dog you were married to, by the way.”

“Now, now, Lucky,” Sophia’s mother, Linda, said.

My father opened the breezeway door and picked up something covered with a sheet. He walked back to us. He waited to make sure we were all looking. Then he waited a little longer 92

C L A I R E C O O K

to heighten the drama. Finally, he whipped the sheet off with a flourish. The hand-carved sign he held up read the best little hairhouse in marshbury.

Everybody gasped. “Da-ad,” Angela said. “Put that back.

Right now.”

My father grinned. “Hey, what else could I do? It’s false advertising. Everybody knows we’re the best little hairhouse in this town.”

“Well, we’ve certainly got one hair working here, that’s for sure,” I mumbled, not quite under my breath.

“Speak for yourself,” Sophia said.

It got a little bit quiet after that. Mario jumped in to cover the silence and get us back on track. “Dad,” he said. “You can’t do that.”

“I just did, sonny boy. Good thing they didn’t have it nailed down yet.” My father touched his head lightly with one hand to make sure his hair was still in place. “Don’t worry, they’ll never miss it. I put a no parking sign in its place.” Todd was on his feet now. “Give me the sign, Lucky,” he said. “We don’t need a lawsuit here.”

“They’re the ones who’d better look out for a lawsuit,” my father said. “If they think they can bamboozle me into selling this salon, they’ve got another thing coming. I know who’s giving my name to all those real estate barracudas.”

“How much are they offering?” I asked.

“That’s enough out of you, Angela,” my father said.

“Bella,” I said.

“There’s not enough money in the world,” my father said.

Todd held out his hand. “Give me the sign, Lucky.” My father shrugged and handed him the sign, and Todd headed out the salon door with it.

“Okay, now settle down, everybody,” my father said, even Summer Blowout

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though he was the only one causing trouble, in my opinion.

“We’ve got some serious competition moving in across the street. You’re all going to have to start dressing a little spiffier around here. Especially the boys, if you catch my drift.” He did a few exaggerated steps in his leather pants, then executed a pretty convincing runway turn.

That did it. Mario was on his feet. “Dad,” he said. “The meeting’s over. This is an intervention.” Angela and I got my father into a chair and half hugged, half leaned on him to keep him there. Tulia went over to get her kids from the kiddie area.

“
Mamma mia!”
my father yelled.

“
Holy cannoli!”
he added when Todd came back in and locked the salon door.

“What the hell is going on here?” he finally said, having pretty much exhausted his Italian vocabulary.

“Dad,” Angela said. “We just want you to listen to us, okay?”

“You’re all fired,” my father said. Tulia’s kids looked up with wide eyes. All three of them were holding pieces of paper in their hands. “And the three young whipper-snappers over there are grounded,” my father said in their direction.

We had a script, so we all knew the little kids were going first to soften him up. “Nonno’s only kidding,” Tulia said. My father, of course, insisted that his grandchildren call him by the Italian word for grandpa. “Go ahead now.” Mack, Maggie, and Myles stepped forward. Only Mack could read so far, but the other two opened their papers, as if they could. “Nonno,” Mack said. “We love you very much. We think your hair looks very funny. Please cut it.” Maggie held up an unidentifiable crayon drawing. “Nonno,” she said. “This is you being handsome without fake hair.” 94

C L A I R E C O O K

Myles started giggling and toddled back to his mother with his paper.

Vicky, our favorite developmentally challenged young adult from Road to Responsibility, had stayed for the intervention, too. Her coach looked up from her magazine, but Vicky didn’t need her. “Just say it out loud,” Vicky said. “And speak up.” She opened up a crumpled piece of paper. “Haircuts don’t hurt one bit,” she said. “You don’t even need a Band-Aid.” Then she giggled and sat down.

Angela tightened her grip when I let go of my father. I reached into my pocket for my note. It had all seemed like a big joke to me, but now I was surprised to feel so much emo-tion. “In the second grade,” I began, “we started hiding your Cover Your Bald Spot Instantly spray. By junior high we’d moved on to trying to replace your shampoo with Nair. This didn’t mean we didn’t love you, or that we didn’t think you were handsome. It’s just that your hair is the first thing you see when you come into a room, and we think it’s time to let it go. Plus, think of all the time it’ll free up.”

“Easy for you to say,” my father said. “It’s no hair off your head. And that Samson fellow should be a lesson for all of us.

He was from Italy, you know.”

“No he wasn’t,” I said. “He was from Israel.” My father never tired of trying to make the whole world Italian. “Well, then the guy who painted him was.” A picture from my long-ago art history class appeared before my very eyes. “Wait,” I said. “You’re right. There was that great brown ink Guercino did. The one where Samson points to his bald spot.”

“I don’t have a bald spot once I cover it,” my father said.

“That’s the whole point.”

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“Can we try to stay on track here?” Todd said.

Mario already had his note out. “You know, Dad,” he began,

“when Mom suggested this intervention—”

“Sweet Italy,” my father said. “Why didn’t you tell me it was her idea?”

• 13 •

ONCE MY FATHER MADE THE DECISION, THERE WAS

no stopping him. He decided to go for the full Kojak look.

“Lollipops,” he said, while I removed his salmon sweater from his shoulders, and Todd draped a black cape over him.

“Somebody go find me some lollipops.” I wasn’t sure what Sinéad O’Connor’s method had been, but I knew Britney Spears had gone straight to the hair buzzer.

We’d already decided we’d take a bit more of a ceremonial approach.

Angela found
The Barber of Seville
on the salon’s
Best of Italian Opera
CD and pumped up the volume.

My father closed his eyes. “Ah, Rossini,” he said, as if this CD hadn’t been playing practically nonstop in the salon since the 1960s.

Tulia took the scissors first. “Careful,” we all said at once.

Things were going so smoothly, it would be a shame to have to stop for stitches.

“Love you, Dad,” she said as she made the first cut. She managed not even to nick him, which was an amazing feat for Tulia. Then she held her kids’ hands while they each took a careful snip.

“Love you, Nonno,” they said one by one.

“You can come to my birthday party,” Maggie added when it was her turn.

Vicky started sweeping as soon as the first lock of hair fell.

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“Don’t any of you dare throw my hair away,” my father said. “I want that buried with me. It’s how they do it in Italy.”

“I think you mean Egypt,” I said.

His eyes were scrunched closed, awaiting the next snip, but he turned his head to follow the sound. “That’ll be enough out of you, Little Miss Smarty-Pants. Who’s the ex-pert here?”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s how they do it in Egypt
and
Italy.” Once we’d all taken a turn with the scissors, Mario brought out the buzzer.

“Not so fast,” my father said. “Which one do you have there?”

Mario turned it over in his hand so he could read the label.

“Remington Titanium?”

“No way,” my father said. “I want the Andis T-Edger, or we quit right here.”

The new buzzer was brought in. Mario did the honors, and we all watched the rest of our father’s hair drop to the floor in long, spindly strips.

Then we brought him over to the sink, and Sophia scrubbed off the Cover Your Bald Spot Instantly. We had to use some Jolen Creme Bleach to get him back to his original scalp color, but it was worth the trouble.

Tulia removed the cape, and we all stepped back to survey our work.

Sophia’s mother, Linda, ran her hand across my father’s scalp. “Smooth as a baby’s bottom,” she said. “You sure do clean up nice, Larry Shaughnessy.” She was practically drooling, even though she was married to some other guy now.

“Very handsome,” Todd said. “And I think you look even more Italian, Lucky, if that’s humanly possible.”

“Kiss-up,” Mario said.

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C L A I R E C O O K

I handed my father a mirror, and he moved it around so he could see all the angles. “
Abbondanza!”
he said. He really did look handsome. His bone structure seemed more defined, and his crinkly hazel eyes really stood out now, too.

His head had a nice shape to it, too. He was a perfect MAC

NW25 from the back of his neck up to the top of his head and right on down the other side. Of course, all of my family and most of the Irish Riviera could be covered in that same pale beige.

We all reached in to rub his head for good luck, and I picked up Precious so she could get a paw in there, too. “Yay, team,” Angela said. She’d clearly been driving to too many sporting events, but we went along with her anyway, since we were already in the huddle.

“
T
-
E
-
A
-
M
,” we yelled, and then we threw our hands up in the air over Lucky Larry Shaughnessy’s shiny new bald head.

There was a knock on the salon door. “Somebody get that,” my father said. “It’s either the pizza or the paparazzi.”

“ARRIVEDERCI,” MY FATHER YELLED
when everybody finally headed out to their cars. I stayed behind to wrap up the leftover pizza in plastic wrap. Since my father and I were the two single ones, I thought I’d divide it up, and that way we could each get another meal out of it.

My father walked into the kitchen, with Precious hard on his heels. “Ciao, Bella,” he said. He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

I rubbed his head again for good luck. I could certainly use it. “It really looks great, Dad,” I said.

“I should have thought of it years ago,” my father said. I Summer Blowout

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could tell the story was already morphing in his mind. Before long, he’d really believe the whole thing had been his idea.

My father reached past me to open the refrigerator. “Come, Bella. Sit for a minute and share a
digestivo
with your
babbo
.”