The Seven Steps to Closure (5 page)

My phone gave the little chime it does whenever I receive a text message. I could tell straight away by the terrible spelling and misused words it was from Mum. She hasn’t quite mastered the art of predictive texting.

High Lara. Will bee round tonight with knew pet for you. Do you want to do diner? Love Nun.

I snorted with laughter and showed Dinah.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘at least your Mum has a mobile phone.’

I responded, resisting the urge to use horrible spelling.

Sure Mum. See you when I get home.

* * *

Mum had let herself in, and was having a glass of wine on the balcony by the time I got home. There was a kitty litter by the balcony door and a bag of cat food on the kitchen bench. Perched on her lap was the prettiest little cat I’d ever seen. It was white with a black patch over the right eye and ear. The front left and back right legs were also black. It had blue, blue eyes and a pink little nose.

‘For me?’ I asked.

Mum nodded. ‘This is Princess. Princess, meet Tara, your new Mum.’

As if on cue Princess stretched, jumped off Mum’s lap, and wandered over to me. She wound herself around my legs purring.

‘She likes me.’ I picked her up and then poured myself a glass of wine before joining Mum on the balcony. Princess turned around and around on my lap before settling down to sleep.

‘Did you want to stay the night?’ I asked.

‘Sure love. I told your father I probably would. I brought down some beef stroganoff for us to eat.’

‘Thanks Mum. I’ve got nothing in the fridge.’

‘Yes, I noticed that,’ she said in a disapproving tone. ‘I took the liberty of getting you some groceries.’

‘Jeez Mum, you didn’t have to.’

‘Think of it as an apology.’

‘What on earth for?’ I asked mystified.

‘For yesterday, I should never have let Esme come to your birthday lunch.’

I sighed. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s about time I get over them anyway.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked kindly.

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘All I’ve done for the last twelve months is talk about them and think about them. To tell you the truth I’m sick of hearing myself go on about it.’

She looked at me for a long moment before nodding her head.

‘So,’ I asked, ‘what’s Princess in for?’

‘To be honest I’m not sure. I think maybe she just got lost.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said unconvinced, ‘we’ll see.’

After dinner Mum and I slumped on the couch chatting. She picked up
Breaking Dawn
, the last Stephanie Meyer’s book in the
Twilight
series, which was lying on my coffee table.

‘Oooohhhh,’ she said, ‘is it good?’

‘Oh my God, Mum. You have no idea.’

I had been so keen to get the book I had queued – feeling idiotic – at seven in the morning, with the swarms of schoolgirls, the day of its release. Participating in the stampede when the shop had finally opened, I had returned home triumphantly with my copy – taken the phone off the hook – and read all day and night until I had finished. I was currently reading it for the third time.

‘Hey you know that the movie is coming out in November? Do you want to go and see it?’

She nodded her head eagerly, her gaze still fixed on my copy of
Breaking Dawn.

‘Take it with you.’ I nodded at the book.

‘Oh no.’ She indicated the bookmark half way through. ‘I couldn’t. You finish it first.’

‘Mum, I’ve already read it two times.’

Faster than the eye could see Mum whipped up the book, greedily clutching it to her chest as she pretended to look at her watch.

‘Oh dear, look at the time.’ She stretched and yawned dramatically. ‘Night Love.’ And with that she was gone, off to the spare bedroom and no doubt several hours of uninterrupted reading.

My mother is – if it’s possible – an even bigger
Twilight
fan than me.

* * *

The next morning I was in my office doing the wages when Susan – the receptionist – brought in an envelope.

‘This one’s addressed to you,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders. ‘I didn’t want to open it in case it was personal.’

‘Thanks,’ I said smiling at her. ‘I’m sure it’s just marketing brochures.’

God, I’m so stupid I didn’t see it coming.

Ripping open the top of the A4 envelope, I slid the contents onto my desk and found myself staring at a letter from the law firm Jake worked at.

‘What is it?’ Susan asked.

I was having trouble reading it, the letters swimming in front of my eyes. ‘Oh,’ I finally said breezily, hoping the words wouldn’t get stuck in my throat, ‘just divorce papers.’ My smile now frozen on my face, I stood up and brushed past poor Susan – who was looking mortified – and into the tearoom, where I put on the jug, and got the cake boxes out of the fridge.

‘What are you having?’ asked Dinah when she entered several minutes later.

I hopped up, my mouth too full to talk, and poured her a coffee. Finally I managed to swallow. ‘Well, I started with the crumble, which you know I can never resist, then I had some tea cake and now I’m onto the bee sting.’

‘Wow,’ said Dinah, ‘did I miss something?’

‘Oh, nothing much,’ I said nonchalantly. ‘Just got divorce papers in the mail.’ I nodded at the document, which had some custard smudged on the cover sheet.

‘Have you told Nat yet?’

‘No. I’m going to need a lawyer aren’t I?’

Dinah nodded.

I guess it’s normal when faced with an ending, to find yourself considering the beginning.

It was a perfect sunny day the morning of our wedding. I shared a champagne breakfast with my bridesmaids, sitting in the courtyard at Natalie’s house. Part of me was excited, but the other part, exhausted from the wedding preparations, just wanted to go and lie down somewhere really, really quiet.

(We had had huge dramas the day before when Jess – Jake’s twin brother who lives in India – had rung to say he wasn’t coming. Jake’s Mum – Juliette – had gone into hysterics and then insisted on totally rearranging the table seatings. In the process Mum and Dad had been sentenced to the far corner of the room. I had finally managed to right the wrong and unruffle the ruffled feathers, but it had left me drained and devoid of all emotion.)

As the morning progressed and the champagne flowed, the part of me that was excited gained dominance and brought along with it his old friend Mr Nerves. I was feeling positively ill by 11am when the hairdresser and make-up artist arrived. I was distracted for a while by Tash complaining that she didn’t want her make-up done first or it would be ruined by 3pm, when the wedding began. Then I remembered that it was my wedding, so I told her to stop whingeing and get on with it. Of course Tash being Tash, went into a sulk until Dinah said she’d go first. I could see Nat – who was having a manicure – making rude gestures behind Tash’s back -which made me laugh, and then everything was all right again.

We were in the cars and practically pulling up at the front of the church when we realised we had left the flowers at home. ‘Keep going,’ I screeched at the driver who sped up and whizzed right on by, with the other two cars following in confusion. Everyone’s phones started ringing at once. Nat was trying to ring Dad to let him know what was happening, but he was trying to ring me. I had answered mine to explain to Tash why we had turned around, while Dinah was trying to ring Mum, because we couldn’t get onto Dad. And then my phone rang, and it was Jake wanting to know if he’d been left at the altar. I was so uptight all I could do was laugh – which pissed him off, so Nat grabbed the phone and explained that we had forgotten the flowers. Finally Dinah’s phone rang and it was Mum in tears assuming I’d changed my mind, and wanting to talk to me about my pre-wedding jitters. Dinah explained that we had forgotten the flowers, and Mum said, ‘But we have them in the car with us.’ So all the cars did a U-turn, and headed back to the church.

Everyone from the church had crowded onto the pavement and when we got back they broke into a round of applause. Dinah jumped out first and was bowing to the audience and laughing. Then she helped me out of the car and there were oooohs and aaaaahs, before everyone realised that they were meant to be in the church when I arrived. There was a mass stampede back inside, during which, I am pleased to say, none of the children or elderly were trampled to death.

Mum and Dad handed out the bouquets and then, it was time. I could hear the organist start up and suddenly we were walking down the aisle. Light was streaming through the stained glass windows, cascading over the congregation and the masses of flowers. It was breathtaking.

Between the camera flashes I could see faces peering at me. As we moved slowly down the aisle I was looking for familiar ones when suddenly I saw Jake up the front in his tuxedo. He looked so handsome I felt like someone had put their hand around my heart and squeezed. We stared into each other’s eyes, and from then on I saw no-one but him.

The rest of the ceremony is a bit of a blur, but all of a sudden we were being pronounced man and wife and he was lifting my veil and kissing me so passionately that my belly did a couple of laps around the rest of my body and my knees went weak. The next half an hour was spent greeting everyone at the church; all the time watching each other across the room disbelieving we were married.

Finally the photographer took over and it was off for copious amounts of photos. I hadn’t wanted professional photos, but Jake had assured me we would be glad to have them later. (I am planning to turn mine into a dart board, so I guess he was right.) By the end my face ached and my head hurt from all the smiling. I found myself thinking longingly of a quiet room and a big bed.

Then we had dinner and the speeches, which we kept short. I had once been to a wedding where the speeches went for four hours – the only entertaining part of the evening was when one of the Aunts fell asleep with her head on the table and dribbled all over the tablecloth.

There was a bit of excitement after dinner. One of Jake’s mates had brought his sister along as a date. She was a very attractive girl, with a voice a bit like a foghorn. I could see all the other girls at the table getting disgruntled as she flirted wildly with all the men. Eventually she focused on one and started playing footsies under the table with him. Not very subtly either, as she was staring quite provocatively at him and, I heard later, running her tongue around her lips. They progressed to the dance floor where they started smooching. I lost track of them for a while after that, but apparently he persuaded her to accompany him to the cloakroom, where the real action began. Poor old Aunt Agnes got quite a shock when she went to retrieve her fur coat, only to find it being used as a mattress by the ardent couple.

He must have said something at that point that indicated he had no intention of taking their relationship any further than the cloakroom. She was devastated – probably already imagining them having breakfast in bed the next morning while they planned their week together – and rushed off to the ladies where she proceeded to spend the next two hours crying.

Meanwhile, we cut the cake and did the bridal waltz. Dad and I had a bit of a spin around the floor. I was surprised at how proficient he was. Mum giggled when I mentioned it, confiding that Dad had been quite a stallion in his day; a good athlete and deft on the dance floor, even competing in some ballroom dancing competitions. Apparently all the other young ladies had been heartbroken when she’d snapped him up. She giggled again and fluttered her eyelids at him. I saw him blush and get a shy smile on his face, and I had a feeling that the cloakroom couple would not be the only ones seeing a bit of action that night. I must admit it made me feel a little nauseous.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ said Dinah, disturbing my memory.

‘Just thinking about the wedding, and what a waste of time and money it was.’

Dinah nodded sympathetically.

‘Who would have guessed it would come to this?’ I asked, pointing at the divorce papers.

I noticed Dinah had a look of distaste on her face that spoke volumes. She had never really liked Jake, and I’m guessing she had always been pretty sure it would come to this. ‘He’s an asshole Tara. Always was and always will be.’

For once I didn’t even try to defend him.

‘Even the way he left you. That says a lot about a person.’

‘Remember when we packed up my stuff at the house?’ I asked.

‘Uhuh. Do you think he ever found his Rolex?’

‘Only if he’s had the fish pond drained. Well,’ I said, putting down my spoon and changing the subject, ‘I’m looking forward to getting my new hairdo this Saturday. Do you want to go out for dinner afterwards to celebrate?’

‘So you’re really going to do this?’

‘What have I got to lose?’

‘True,’ said Dinah, nodding her head, ‘very, very true.’

I was sitting in the hairdressers, resembling a large wet rat and feeling no closer to obtaining closure. To make things worse, a huge billboard of Jake had been erected straight across the street from Funk Hair – which was Elaine’s brother Tristan’s hairdressing salon.

‘Yummy,’ Tristan had commented, rubbing his hands together when I pointed out the billboard to him and Elaine.

Elaine had kindly responded by sliding one of the pot plants into the window, and positioning me with my back to the board. But if I bent down a little and peered into the mirror I could still see the side of his face, one of his legs and the words Jake Well….. yor. It was a little disturbing.

Tristan is – of course – gay. He is much shorter than Elaine, and doesn’t look anything like her – probably due to the fact that they have different biological fathers. Elaine’s Dad died when she was quite young. She doesn’t remember him and considers Tristan’s Dad – a tidy looking Italian man – to be her father. Tristan has taken his father’s dark looks and combined them with their mother’s good looks and the results are quite stunning. A lot of the women who come to get their hair done at Funk Hair come to enjoy the scenery. Tristan hires a bevy of gay men and women, all of them desirable. He also won the ‘Australian Hairdresser of the Year’ award two years running, so the patrons are never disappointed when they leave the salon. It normally takes weeks to get an appointment at Funk Hair and months if you want to see Tristan. I was very lucky to be one of Elaine’s best friends.

‘Hmmmmmm,’ said Tristan thoughtfully, as he lifted my hair from my shoulders and held it around my face at different lengths.

‘Ahhhhhhhhh,’ said Tristan contemplatively, as he pulled my hair back behind my head and played with my fringe.

‘Uh huh,’ said Tristan decisively, as he looked at a colour chart and held different swatches of pigmented hair around my face.

‘I didn’t say anything about a colour change,’ I whispered urgently to Elaine, who was flipping through a magazine with Benny asleep on her lap.

She held it up for me to see. ‘See this Tara?’ She pointed to the date. ‘A current magazine – you and Dinah should try it some time.’

I stuck my tongue out at her.

Meanwhile Tristan had stopped work and was staring at me in the mirror with one eyebrow raised.

Uh oh.

‘Did you not ask Elaine to fix this appointment for you?’ he asked imperiously. (Have I mentioned that not only is Tristan gorgeous, but he is also a huge drama queen?) ‘Did you not beg her to get you in with me as fast as possible?’

‘Well actually,’ I said.

‘Shhhh,’ he responded, holding one finger up in the air. ‘You beg and you plead and now you insult the master.’

‘Oh no, no,’ I gushed, ‘no, it’s just that I’ve never coloured my hair before.’

‘Never?’ He held the back of one hand to his beautiful forehead as if about to swoon. When he had recovered he snapped, ‘Sebastian, Veronica, major hair emergency. I need you here now.’ And then he started pointing at the colour chart and very rapidly giving orders. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, and I was trying really, really hard because I was starting to feel a little panicked. What if I looked awful when he’d finished? What if he gave me a hairdo that, while nice on someone else – someone hip and chic and eighteen years old – did nothing for me at all? And then I would have to smile into the mirror, and I mean really smile. Smile so that it made it right to my eyes while I gushed about my hair – when all I really wanted to do was go home and spend hours staring at myself in the mirror willing myself to like it. Oh and worse, I would have to pretend to Elaine that I loved it. I would never be able to get rid of it. Christ what had I done?

I was just contemplating ripping off the hairdressing sheet and legging it onto the street, when Elaine – obviously noting the look of sheer terror in my eyes – intervened.

‘Tara, look at me,’ she commanded. I met her green eyes in the mirror. ‘Good. Now breathe in and breathe out.’

‘Okey dokey, breathe.’ I breathed in and out while maintaining eye contact with her. Then I felt my eyes start to slide sideways, measuring the distance between my chair and the door.

‘LOOK AT ME!’ she commanded in a truly scary voice. ‘Right,’ she continued when she had my attention, ‘Repeat after me. It’s just a new hairdo, not a life sentence in jail.’

‘It’s just a new hairdo, not a life sentence in jail,’ I repeated robotically.

She made me repeat it a few more times until the words penetrated my thick skull and I started to relax.

‘Veronica,’ she called out, ‘we’re going to need some of the bubbly stuff over here.’

‘Ohhh goody, bubbly stuff. I really like bubbly stuff,’ I heard myself garble. ‘Ughh Elaine, by bubbly stuff you mean champers, and not shampoo right?’ (I had once had my mouth washed out with shampoo for swearing at Lily – an experience I would prefer never to repeat.)

Veronica answered my question by arriving with two flutes of champagne. At that precise moment Dinah and Nat both entered the studio.

‘Two more?’ asked Veronica, looking at them.

They both nodded and sat down with Elaine who said, ‘Oh good, backup. I thought I was going to have to restrain her a few seconds ago.’

Nat, her blonde hair pulled back in a French roll, looked stunning in a little navy dress. She waved at me in the mirror. I gave her a sickly smile in return. And then Tristan was back.

‘Do I need to blindfold you?’ he asked. I shook my head. ‘Good.’ He lifted his hands – which now held scissors – and began to cut my hair.

I had a vision of Edward Scissorhands and, shutting my eyes, started to pray.

About twenty minutes later the cutting stopped. I opened my right eye a teeny, weeny bit and saw Sebastian arrive with a few little bowls containing coloured paste. I peeped into the mirror for a couple of seconds before slamming my eye shut in horror. My hair was really short. Shit, I was going to look like a little boy, not the sexy minx of a woman I had been imagining in my closure scene with Jake.

(I hadn’t quite worked out the fine details of the closure scene, but I had gone through a few different scenarios and come up with one I liked a lot. I varied the little things – like where we were and what I was wearing – but they pretty much all ended with him getting down on his hands and knees and grovelling, while I contemplated the condition of my nails. In one I had changed the ending by having a gorgeous guy ride up on a motorcycle and screech to a halt in front of me. He managed – of course – to slide right through a strategically placed puddle of water which splashed all over Jake. I donned a helmet and jumped on the back of the bike, and as we rode off into the sunset I yelled, ‘So long sucker,’ over my shoulder. That version was currently my favourite.)

I tried to concentrate on my closure scene but my haircut kept interrupting me just when I got to the really vindictive part.

‘No, not that one, the other one,’ Tristan barked. I could feel alfoil being applied in layers and realised I was getting foils. He finally finished and said almost kindly, ‘You can open your eyes now Tara.’ I opened them to see him twist a little egg timer before departing for another patron; Sebastian and Veronica riding in his wake.

‘How long?’ I asked.

‘Thirty minutes,’ said Dinah, peering at the timer. ‘Ooooh I can’t wait to see.’

‘Maybe we should get her eyebrows and eyelashes tinted while we’re at it?’ suggested Nat.

Elaine nodded – handed Benny to Nat – and swept off to have it organised.

Thirty minutes later when the timer went off, I was admiring my eyebrows and eyelashes in the mirror.

Ahh shit,
I thought,
the moment of truth.

I enjoyed the shampoo and head massage, but jammed my eyes shut again when I got back to the mirror. I just couldn’t make myself look. Tristan reappeared and began the blow drying and styling process. I couldn’t hear much over the dryer. He was telling Elaine about some new guy he was seeing, and I could hear a few remarks about how nice the colour was, but it wasn’t enough to make me open my eyes. Then Tristan was trimming again – this time around my fringe – and I had an urge to ask him to leave me with some hair, but thought better of it. He was pretty close to my eyes with those sharp scissors – I really didn’t want to piss him off.

And then the feel of the soft brush on my face and neck, and the sheet being removed; I could feel them all staring at me, but nothing was being said. Oh no, did I look that ugly? Slowly, I peeled open my eyes and examined their faces in the mirror. Nat and Dinah had excited looks on their faces. Hmmm, that was promising.

Elaine hopped up and kissed Tristan on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ I heard her murmur.

But it wasn’t until I heard someone else in the salon ask if they could have their hair done like that, that I had the courage to look at myself.

‘Oh my,’ I said.

The person staring back at me in the mirror was someone I’d never met before. She was cute and classy. I raised my hand to the short layers around my face, and felt the soft silkiness of my hair. The caramel colours that Tristan had chosen set of the golden glow of my skin, and enriched the darkness of my eyes.

I had a pixie cut. Short at the nape of my neck, longer on top. My fringe was cut to curve over my right eyebrow, but the edges were chipped. I loved it.

‘I’ve got to hand it to you Tristan. You are the Master.’

‘Yehhh,’ he squealed, jumping up and down and clapping his hands together, ‘she likes it.’

‘I love it Tristan. I really, really love it.’

* * *

Back home I gave Princess a cuddle and fed her dinner before rushing to get ready for my night out with the girls. I kept getting distracted by my reflection in the mirror and took a long time with my make-up. I wore a dress I hadn’t donned for a while. A beautiful, chocolate clinging number I loved because it emphasised my arms and collar bones and not my ass. I hadn’t felt this good in ages and was looking forward to the night out.

I wasn’t the last one to the restaurant, which was good as I already felt guilty that they had given up their Saturday afternoon watching me get my hair done. Elaine – looking amazing in a bright red dress – and Dinah – wearing her customary tailored pants and blouse – were deep in discussion when I arrived. They stopped to eye me approvingly. I did a little twirl on the spot and Dinah wolf whistled.

‘What’s up?’ I directed my question at Dinah as I sat down.

‘I got home today and there was a message on my answering machine from Doug.’

‘Dr Doug?’ I asked.

‘The very one.’

‘He’s got a nerve.’

Doug Stanson, (Dr Doug, as we called him in front of Dinah, because that’s how he always introduced himself. Behind her back, we called him Creepy Doug), was an endodontist that Dinah had been dating for a while. (An endodontist is a dentist who has specialised in root canal therapy. Dinah once told me she’d rather blow her brains out than do root canals all day. I would rather blow my brains out than have sex with Creepy Doug.) Dr Doug was arrogant and boorish. She hadn’t seen him for a while, which was great because when she was with him she was an emotional wreck – swaying between euphoria that he wanted to be with her, and misery from the way he treated her. When asked if she loved him she would just shrug her shoulders miserably, and comment that she wasn’t even sure if she liked him.

One of the psychobabble self-help books I had read during the last year had talked about how our relationships with our fathers sets us up for our relationships with all men. I didn’t get it for myself. I mean my Dad was wonderful. He had never raised his voice or hand against me. (Okay not entirely true, I had – as previously mentioned – once had my mouth washed out with shampoo, but it was Mum whom performed the foul deed so that didn’t count. But I was once smacked by Dad when I was a little girl for locking our pet cat in a cupboard. In fairness to me I wasn’t trying to be cruel. I had taken all this time to dress the meowing, complaining, wiggling cat up in my Baby Alives’ outfit – having gotten bored with a supposedly alive doll that did nothing, and then had to go to kindergarten for the day. I hadn’t wanted Milly – the poor cat – to get the clothes dirty before I had time to play with her, so had stuffed her into the laundry cupboard to keep her safe. I had put a lot of thought into where to keep her. The laundry cupboard was full of soft towels and sheets – I thought she’d be very comfortable there for the day. You can imagine poor Mum’s surprise when she’d opened the cupboard to put away the towels, only to have a shrieking cat – dressed in an all-in-one lemon jumpsuit, hat and booties – propel itself from amongst the sheets to land on her head.) Anyway you get my drift – my relationship with my Dad was something I cherished.

Dinah however – well her Dad had been a different story entirely. He had finally drunk himself to death a few years ago. She had spent a lot of time at mine and Nat’s houses growing up, avoiding him and his foul temper. She once said that she thought of our fathers as her Dads. Dad had pretended he’d gotten a bug in his eye when I told him that, but I knew he was actually a little teary.

‘So what did he want?’ I asked, annoyance evident in my voice.

‘Oh just wanted to know if I was going to the dental meeting on Monday night.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yeah. I rang him back and said I was. He said he was looking forward to seeing me and asked if I wanted a lift.’ She held a hand up to stop the angry outburst that was obviously threatening to exit my mouth. ‘I told him I would make my own way there.’

I rearranged my ruffled feathers. ‘And that’s that?’

‘Well I may talk to him at the meeting, but that’s that.’

‘Promise?’

‘Cross my heart.’

‘Hope to die?’

‘Stick a needle in your eye?’ Elaine finished for me.

‘Stick a needle in my eye.’

At that moment Natalie turned up. ‘Sorry, sorry got caught up at work with a client.’

‘What between the hairdressers and now you had to see a client?’ asked Elaine suspiciously.