Let Down Your Hair (5 page)

Ryan and the round green table blurred as tears poured down my cheeks into the bowl of pasta.

“Sage? My God, are you OK?”

“I’m fine,” I said, but the tears kept on coming, like beads from a broken necklace.

Ryan snatched a handful of napkins and passed them to me. I took off my glasses and clamped the napkins against my eyelids.

“Shit, I’m so sorry.” He sounded panicked and guilty, as though he was to blame. “Do you want to go somewhere? Or do you want to be alone? I can go, if you want.”

I swallowed and shook my head, the sodden napkins turning to pulp in my fingers. Part of me was aghast to be crying in front of a man, like some cliché of a damsel in distress. Yet there was another, smothered part of me, deeper down, that definitely didn’t want him to go.

He gave my hand a comforting squeeze. “I’ll just be a minute.”

When I looked up, I saw him standing at the cash register and realized he was paying the bill. I froze, horrified. I was an independent woman with the means to buy my own food. If I let Ryan pay, I might as well chuck in my career and wear an apron. Besides, what would he expect in return?
It’s not lunch he’s buying
, Andrea would thunder,
it’s a sense of entitlement to your body
.

I almost broke the drawstring on my backpack in my haste to find my wallet. Just as I unearthed it, Ryan returned with another handful of napkins.

I opened my wallet. “How much—”

“Let’s just get out of here.”

I started to protest and realized that half the cafe was staring at my tear-stained face. Vowing I’d pay my share later, I got up and ducked past Ryan, as he swept aside the curtain of hanging beads.

Outside, the clouds had retreated, flooding the street with light. Squinting my puffy eyes against the sun, I walked with Ryan down the street to a large, landscaped park. He sat on the grass by a tree and spread his jacket out beside him, giving it a pat. “Sit down.”

I hesitated. Andrea would have called this “chauvinism dressed up as chivalry”. Weakened by my outpouring of emotion, I decided to call it “comfortable” and sat. The lining of the jacket felt smooth and warm against my skin.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“A bit.”

I hadn’t cried this much about my mother since I was a child of five or six. Mothers were everywhere then, waggling fingers, wiping noses, making children eat their broccoli. Other children talked about their mothers all the time, and whenever I heard them, something grated inside me. Not a sharp pain, like a knife wound, but a slow, constant grating, like a stone wearing a raw spot into the wall of my stomach that could never completely heal.

 “Do you want to talk about it?” Ryan’s voice was wary, but gentle. “We don’t have to. If you want, we can change the subject to something safer. Like terrorism, or global warming.”

He half-smiled at me, and I half-smiled back. I’d never talked to anyone about my mother. A week ago, I would have been appalled at the thought of discussing my mother with someone I barely knew. With a
man
I barely knew. Now, though, sitting on Ryan’s jacket, the worried grip of his fingers still warm on my hand, I looked into his earnest, bright-eyed face and realized I wanted to.

“I can talk about it,” I said. “If you’re interested.”

“I’m interested. If you’re comfortable.”

“I’m comfortable.”

I leaned back against the tree, hugged my knees to my chest, and began.

When I was about three, I noticed I was different from other children. They called the lady that looked after them “Mommy”, whereas mine answered only to “Andrea”. I tried calling Andrea “Mommy”, but she went strange and stiff, and said I couldn’t do that, because she was my grandmother, not my mother. At first I accepted this, as little children do. It wasn’t until my friend Lauren’s fifth birthday party that I started asking questions in earnest.

Lauren’s house was full of boisterous little girls in ponytails and pink dresses. I felt shy and out of place with my short hair and overalls, so I retreated to the kitchen, where the food was. There, among the plastic bowls of chips and candy, was the most magnificent cake I’d ever seen. It was shaped life a frog and covered in green frosting, with googly eyes and a stripe of five pink candles along its back.

When Lauren walked in with a gift wrapped in ballerina paper, she found me there, still staring.

“I like your frog cake,” I said.

“My mom made it for me,” she said, stashing the present under the table. “It’s cool, isn’t it?”

I nodded, wide-eyed with awe.

“When’s your birthday? Get your mom to make you one.”

The swell of joy from the cake deflated. “I can’t. I don’t know where my mom is.”

Lauren looked astonished. “Doesn’t she live with you?”

I shook my head. “I live with Andrea.”

“Who’s Andrea?”

“My grandmother,” I said in a small voice.

“Then you shouldn’t call her Andrea,” Lauren said sternly. “You should call her Grandma. Or Nan.”

She grabbed a handful of chips and walked back into the living room full of girls in pink dresses. Girls who lived with their mothers and called them “Mom”.

That evening, when Andrea was putting me to bed, I said “Goodnight, Grandma,” for the first time. Andrea’s lips pressed together, and she shook her head.

“I don’t want you to call me Grandma, Sage,” she said, tucking me in. “My name’s Andrea.”

Much later, when I was a teenager, she explained that “Grandma” defined her solely in terms of her relationship to me. She’d wanted to make clear she was a person in her own right, with a life and achievements of her own. But that night I was five, and all I understood was that I’d never have someone to call “Grandma”. Or “Mom”.

I burst into tears and asked question after question.
Why can’t I call you Grandma? Why do I live with you and not my mom? Where’s my mom now? Why doesn’t she want to live with us?
Andrea tried to comfort me and respond as best she could, and over the next ten or fifteen years I pieced together the story.

My grandfather left Andrea when my mother, Emmeline, was three. After a nasty court battle, Andrea won the house and custody of her daughter, but found herself close to bankrupt. After four years off work she couldn’t find a job in journalism, where she’d trained, so she took work as a typist, and put Emmeline into full-time care. In those days this was rare, and she was condemned by her neighbors, colleagues and family. To make matters worse, her manager began bullying and groping her at work. At the time there were no sexual harassment laws, and she needed the money too desperately to resign. Finally, after three demoralizing years, she stumbled on a feminist article in defense of day care in the newspaper.

Inspired and reassured, Andrea enrolled in a Graduate Diploma in Women’s Studies at night school. After topping the class, she enrolled in a Master’s degree, and was awarded a prestigious scholarship to progress to a PhD. She began lecturing, volunteered at a women’s refuge, fought for lesbians’ rights to IVF treatment, and made a name for herself as a hard-hitting court support worker for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. When she finished her thesis to rave reviews, the Department of Humanities promoted her to senior lecturer of Women’s Studies, then to professor only a few years later.

Around this time, the problems with my mother became too serious to ignore. At fifteen, Emmeline was so embarrassed by Andrea she refused to bring her friends home from school. Her grades were in freefall, and the teachers who’d once called her “lazy but bright” started calling her “disruptive and rebellious”. Worst of all, this didn’t bother her. What mattered was looking pretty and being popular with boys, and at these things she excelled.

Andrea tried to interest her in feminism, but Emmeline sneered and laughed. Suspicious of her daughter’s ever-growing wardrobe, Andrea tracked her discreetly and discovered she was cutting school to work. In the months of almighty battles that followed, it emerged that Emmeline had also fallen pregnant, to a married man she’d met through her job.

Andrea wanted to charge him with statutory rape, but Emmeline insisted that she was in love and wanted to have his baby. But she was only sixteen, and the pressures of a baby were too much. Six months after I was born, my mother walked out, leaving me in the sole care of Andrea.

I didn’t look at Ryan while I told my story. I bowed my head and told it to my shoes. When I’d finished, there was a pause of several minutes before I dared to look up.

Ryan’s normally animated face was still. “Have you seen your mother since she left?”

I shook my head.

“But she calls you, doesn’t she? Or … or emails, or something?”

Tears welled again. “Andrea says she lives in the city somewhere, so they must be in touch, but I’ve never heard from her. I wouldn’t even recognize her now. I’ve only seen photos of her as a teenager.”

My eyes overflowed, and I hugged my knees to my face. Something touched my hair. I reached up to brush off what I thought was an insect or leaf, and my hand found Ryan’s. Shock crackled through me. I snatched my hand away as if his were electrified, but I didn’t push him off. I just sat, my scalp tingling under his touch as his hand moved in long, soothing strokes down my hair. When the strokes lightened, as if he was about to stop, I unfolded my knees and shifted a little closer. He smelled of curry, and freshly laundered T-shirt tinged with tears.

After what seemed like a long time, Ryan spoke again, his hand coming to rest on my shoulder. “I can’t imagine growing up without my mom. Let alone having her … leave.”

My eyes filled again at the kindness in his voice.

“Are you going to be OK?”

I lifted my face from his shoulder and nodded, blotting the tears with the back of my hand. “Sorry about all the crying,” I added, with a watery smile.

Ryan shook his head. “Don’t be.” He pulled out his phone. “What’s your cell number?”

“I don’t have a cell phone.”

“You don’t have a
cell phone?
” He looked aghast.

“I’ve never had one.”

Jess had been as shocked as Ryan to learn I didn’t have a cell phone. During our friendship, I’d asked Andrea if I could get one. Emitting disapproval like static, Andrea told me I was an adult, and could make my own choices if I funded them myself. Before I’d come up with a way to earn the money, my friendship with Jess had ended.

“Geez.” Ryan ran a hand through his hair. “OK, well, I’ve got a modeling gig in the mountains to get to, so we’ll have to arrange things now.”

“Things?”

“That lesson in popular culture I promised you. When are you free?”

I discarded the idea of the weekend, when Andrea would ask where I was going. “Do you have any afternoons off during the week?”

“How about Thursday afternoon?”

Andrea was attending a training program that day. “Thursday suits me.”

“Outside the Humanities building at two?”

Where Andrea’s staff and students might see me meeting a man?
“How about on the Library lawns instead?” The Library lawns were behind Fine Arts, invisible even from the top floors of the Humanities building.

“Done.”

We stood up, and Ryan stuffed the jacket into his bag. A few strands of my hair had come loose, so I redid my bun.

“See you next Thursday, Sage,” said Ryan.

Without warning, he leaned forward and touched his lips lightly to my forehead. Then, with the same jaunty movement I’d seen in the studio, he slung his bag over his shoulder and dashed off, flourishing one hand over his head in farewell.

I floated back to the office, as disconnected as a runaway balloon. I’d gone on a date. I’d cried in a crowded cafe. I’d told a man my life story, and he’d kissed me. This morning, I wouldn’t have believed such things could happen, and yet here I was, just on the other side of them. I fumbled for my keys, and they felt strange to the touch, like something from another dimension.

The office door swung open.

“Sage,” said Andrea, and I knew at once that she was displeased. “Hilda called.”

Hilda?
Then I remembered the meeting. The one Andrea had set up for me at two o’clock. It was now a quarter to three. The balloon burst and plummeted to earth. “When did she call?”

“At 2:02.”

Other staff would have waited until 2:15, but not Hilda. As far as she was concerned, you weren’t on time for a meeting unless you arrived five minutes before it started. “To live in this country is to be frustrated,” she would say. “Everyone arrives two, five, ten minutes late, and by the end of the day you have lost
half an hour!
It is a disgrace. In Germany we have more respect for people’s time.”

Horror drained through me. Being late for a meeting with Hilda was a serious offense. Forgetting one altogether was dire. “I’m really sorry. I was … I was doing research in the library and lost track of time.”

“Why are you telling
me
this, Sage?”

I blanched. “Sorry. I’ll ring Hilda.” I slunk to my desk chair and turned on my computer.

“Now would be a good time,” Andrea said pointedly.

“Yes, I know, I was just …”
Just hoping I could make the call when you’re not in the room
.

Andrea gave an exasperated sigh. “How old are you, Sage?”

She knew exactly how old I was. “Twenty-two.”

“Then act like it and call Hilda.
Now.
” She dumped the phone on my desk.

I dialed the number with a cowering finger.

“Hilda Ziehler speaking.”

“Um, hi, Professor Ziehler, it’s Sage Rampion here. I’m just ringing to—”

“To waste more of my time? No. Already I put aside one hour for you this afternoon.”

“I’m so sorry, I was—”

“You still want me to consider you, you email an excellent proposal by this time next week.”

Hilda hung up. Avoiding Andrea’s eye, I replaced the phone on her desk, and crept back to mine. When she left ten minutes later, I wheeled my chair to the window and sat looking at the skylight, touching the place where Ryan’s lips had met my forehead.

The Library lawns were lined with bushy, gnarled trees that created lots of nooks for benches. Ryan was waiting on one of these, the leaves above him dappling his hair with shade.

“So,” he said as I approached, “are you ready to begin your education in popular culture?”

I adjusted my glasses in a scholarly fashion and produced a ten-year-old black notebook with “Social Studies” written down the spine.

Ryan grinned. “Good. I can see you’re taking this seriously. Now, before we start the lesson, what do we comment on first?”

“Your T-shirt of the day?”

“Excellent! Gold star for the lady with the notebook.”

Today his T-shirt was black, and featured a photograph of a man in a flowered fedora. He was holding a guitar with a circular body and a neck that ended in an arrow, and an odd cross-piece shaped like a J where the body joined the neck. Both man and guitar were orangey-gold.

“Should I know who he is?” I asked.

“Definitely. You don’t, though, do you?”

“Not a clue. Something to do with princes?”

“This man,” said Ryan, plucking importantly at his T-shirt, “
is
Prince. Spiritual son of James Brown, King of Funk. As a boy, I hated people singing his songs at me. As a man, I’ve come round.”

I opened my notebook. “Why’s his guitar that shape?”

“That’s the symbol he changed his name to in the nineties.”

With this bizarre pronouncement, Ryan led me to the shopping strip that ran from the college to the skyscrapered realm of the city. Near campus, the windows wore gay-friendly rainbow stickers and the smell of Fairtrade coffee leaked from doorways. As we approached town, the rainbows gave way to boutique restaurants, beige and silver homewares, and a huge, glossy megastore selling books and music, where Ryan stopped.

“Welcome to your new School of Popular Culture!” he said, ushering me in with a grandiose sweep of his arms.

Inside, all was bright lights and towering shelves filled with diet manuals and lurid-looking blockbusters. Ryan swept among these like an animated whirlwind, gathering an armload of books.

He pressed one into my hand. “The
Chronicles of Narnia
, printed as one volume.” Inside the cover was a hand-drawn map of a forested coast, with a sailing ship and compass just offshore.

“Everyone but
everyone
reads this as a kid,” said Ryan. “They’ve made some of them into movies.” He held up a book with a photo on the cover of a woman’s hands cupping an apple. “And
this
,” he went on, placing it on top of Narnia, “is
Twilight
. Vampire romance. Massive with teenage girls a few years ago.”

I skimmed the blurb, and picked up my pen. As I started to write notes, Ryan slapped
Lord of the Rings
on top of
Twilight
. “Now this, even
you
must have heard of. It’s—”

“Ryan,” I interrupted.

“Mm?”

“I’m not taking much in here.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I need time to read at least the blurbs.”

“Oh.” He contemplated his armload of books. “Would it help if I summarized the plots?”

“Yes, but that that would take forever.”

“Hmmm.” He looked wistfully up the escalator. “And I haven’t even
started
on movies and music yet.”

“We need to rethink this,” I said firmly. “Do you own some of these books?”

“Some of them. Most are at Mom’s, but I’ve got a few at my place.”

“How about lending me a couple a week? As a sort of homework assignment?”

His face lit up. “Brilliant! My place it is. If we run, we might even catch the three-fifteen.”

Before I could explain I hadn’t meant
now
, Ryan leaped up and charged toward the exit. Not knowing what else to do, I ran after him, and we pelted to catch the train, flopping onto our seats seconds before it pulled away. Only then did I register the momentous nature of what I was doing. Ryan was taking me back to his place.
His place
.

I eyed him, only half-listening to his animated summary of the Harry Potter series. Why had he lured me to his house? Was I putting myself at risk? I searched for signs of his agenda, but I didn’t know what to look for.

Three stops and a short walk later, I walked through a peeling, creaky gate into the front garden of Ryan’s house.