The Strangers' Gallery (24 page)

“But it's going right through Pippy Park,” I said.

“Most of that is not park, Michael. It's just woods…and a great big friggin' hill. The rest is bogland…swamp. People got to get back and forth to work. Cars have to be able to move. If they get jammed up, they burn a lot of gas. It's bad for the environment.”

“Maybe people should get out of their cars,” I said, repeating Anton's mantra.

“They don't want to get out of their cars, Michael. It's too friggin' cold. This is iceland, without the name. You don't mind walking around in the ice and snow, but most people do. That's another reason we're thinking of leaving Mount Pearl. It's too bloody high and windy out there, and we get twice as much snow as anyone else. Nothing so far this winter, though. Haven't even pressed my Winter Button yet. You see this button here? One touch and I'm ready for winter. Now that's technology for you. Don't know exactly what it does, but after it's pressed the car grips the road like a tractor.”

“What about carpooling, buses, public transportation?” I persisted.

“That's communism, Michael. Haven't you heard? That world is dead and gone. People want their own cars, they want cellphones, laptops, home theatre, big-screen TVs. The playoffs are on for three months now. You get bleary-eyed watching a piddly little TV.”

Not having seen a hockey game in all of thirty years, I'd forgotten that Hubert used to be a hockey player, and a good one at that, a defenceman in the St. John's senior league who'd been on many Boyle Trophy–winning teams. He used to mesmerize opposing forwards with unexpected pirouettes in the corners. Though he was not a goal scorer, he was always the best skater on the team.

“Besides,” he added, “we got television ten years later than everyone else. That's why we watch more than the rest of the country. We're just trying to catch up. And how come you're so friggin'
concerned
all of a sudden? You've had your head buried in books all your life. Soon you'll be up on the Ring Road with a placard. Is it that Dutchman who's got you all stirred up?”

“Well, I think he's right about a lot of things that—”

“Jesus, Michael, who's got the fuckin' time? Michael, Michael, Michael…where have you been? I know you're up in an ivory tower but…take a look at the view. This is the Third World, for Chrissake. Tell him that, will you. Tell him this is the fuckin' Third World. Now that we got a drop of oil on the go, and we might get unemployment down to 10 percent, are we s'posed to leave it in the ground—in the seabed—just because his country is gettin' wet, is goin' back under the ocean where it came from in the first place?
Reclaimed
, wasn't it? Well, the ocean's claiming it back. It's just a natural cycle, the water cycle. Whoa!”

He stepped on the brake and we skidded sideways. We were on the Parkway and a car had skipped into our lane without warning.

“It's startin' to get a bit greasy,” he said nonchalantly. “Maybe I'll press that Winter Button right now.” He let out a big laugh, a
har-har-har
.

“Okay…watch this…here we go. There…you feel that? Like we were sort of floating before, and now we're more…like…hugging the road.”

“Hmmfff,” I sniffed.

“Ah, what odds, Michael. As the old man used to say, you're not mechanically inclined. But, hey, you were only four or five at the time. Is it okay if I drop you off right here?”

“Actually, I think I'm going to do some work at home. But this is fine, I can walk from here.”

“Yeah, good for the environment. Moochin', eh?”

“What about you?”

He let out his hearty
har-har
again.

“Ah, Michael, we're livin' off the fat o' the land, the fat o' the land, my son,
the fat of the land
. Who cares, anyway. It's Christmas.”

“It's still November,” I said, “and I thought you didn't celebrate Christmas.”

“Well, I'm still a back-pew Christian, I suppose. We all need an ace-in-the-hole…and it gives me some time off. You have to love the whole fairy-tale idea of it, don't you? Better than anything dreamed up by the Grimms. Putting all our hope in an innocent little babe come to redeem us. But we're fucking unredeemable, Michael. Even you know that.”

I was holding open the car door. “I guess the kids will be home for Christmas?” I said.

“They will, they will, and they'd love to see you. Come out and I'll show you Santa's workshop. I'll turn you out a bowl or two.”

“I'll give you a call,” I said. “Say hello to Gert for me.”

“I will,” he said, and he raised his hand and was gone.

13.
THE BONES OF THE SNOWMAN

Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?

—Book of Job

I
was surprised to
find myself thinking about half-sister Raylene quite a bit over the next few days, and the thought that came to me most often, procrastinator that I am, was that if I didn't contact her very soon I would never bother to contact her at all.
It would be permanently put off, like the summer house by the sea that
I'd always wanted to buy but had never bought, or the countless other things that I'd planned to do but had never done
,
faded flags or weathered windsocks
in memory's vacuum now, at half-mast and limp with regret; but perhaps they had always hung over this airless, landlocked realm of hesitation and indecision—my own private emotional domain—the cause of which it was hard to say.

Not that I really wanted to meet Raylene—I leaned more toward Raymond's immediate instinctive response—but I
was
curious
.
I was beginning to understand Anton's reluctance to go in search of his father, to put it off for as long as possible, perhaps put it off for good. To have lived thirty, forty, or fifty years without someone, even ten or twenty years—and not even someone you'd once known and loved but someone you'd never met, family ties, bonds of blood, notwithstanding—well, as Raymond had succinctly put it: what's the point? What's the point of meeting this
someone
, this anyone, this stranger, be it brother, son, father, half-sister, or birth mother?
No point, or not much point, as far as I could see.
A darkive of absence and silence—and what emotional deposits had been left in there?

But Raylene, of course, was way out on the emotional perimeter, had been totally unaware of my existence, as I had been of hers. I was not the lost father, the birth mother, or the abandoned child. So my curiosity was not fraught with any kind of anxiety. Still, it felt strange to share a father with a stranger, even a father who had been a complete stranger to me. I considered various approaches, from the straightforward—simply phoning her up and introducing myself and asking her to join me for a coffee in the Square some day after work—to the complicated and devious.

I considered just having a look at her, anonymously,
to see what, or who, she looked like, going into New Wave His and Hers Hairstyling Salon for a haircut and taking whatever opportunity presented itself to size up the hairstylists working there to see if either one of them looked familiar, like the old man, perhaps. His face was unclear in my memory, however, and I would have to dig out the old family photo album that Mother had given me many years ago and size
him
up. Or she might look like Raymond, Hubert, or me.
New Wave was a big open space with large front windows,
and you could see the hairstylists working away even as you walked by on the sidewalk.
The bolder and more courageous plan, of course, was to make an actual appointment with Raylene and then surprise her with an introduction as I was sitting in the chair having my hair cut. Or have my hair cut without revealing myself at all.

I decided to take the middle ground, my comfortable home territory: make an appointment with Raylene, but keep the surprise revelation in reserve. I called New Wave at lunchtime on a Friday, spoke to a hairstylist who may have called herself New Wave Barb—“New Wave Barb speaking”—and asked if I could make an appointment for the afternoon, hoping to ride my unusual decisiveness to the finish line that very day. I said I was a new customer, that my own hairstylist had retired, and that Raylene had been highly recommended by a friend.

“That's nice,” Barb said sweetly, but added, with a hint of a barb, “we have some room for new
clients.
”

Luckily, however, she didn't ask any personal questions, such as: Who is this friend? A
regular client
of ours, perhaps? Who was your hairstylist? Where did she work? The truth was, I didn't have one. I had never been to a hairstyling salon, a hair-design studio, or a hairdressing solarium and spa (hair-tanning, too, perhaps?), though along with New Wave, the Hairitage Traditional Styling Salon, Hair Today, Hair Force, and Hair for You were all at my service in this part of town. I had never had my hair styled, dressed, tanned, or designed, only cut, or barbered, at Bill's Barber Shop downtown, once or twice a year. When it reached the point where I needed to put it in a ponytail, I would reluctantly traipse downtown to have the job done.

“
Raylene has a cancellation,” Barb said. “There's an opening tomorrow at two o'clock?”

“That'll be good,” I said confidently.

“Your name?” she asked,
and my heart jumped
.
I hadn't given any thought to that, or to any of the other questions she might have asked.

“Michael…Rowe,” I said, after not too long a pause, I hoped. Row, row, row your boat…into the tangled web, I thought, my metaphors as mixed as my feelings.

“It's nice to get
new clients,” Barb said. “We'll see you tomorrow.”

Clients
. Of course. Not customers. I was showing my prejudices. Only shoppers were customers these days. Even students, in some quarters, were being referred to as clients, part of the corporate animus that had invaded academe. Librarians had patrons, doctors had patients, priests and ministers had…what? Pastoral care, care of the soul, was somewhat like medical care, I suppose, so perhaps they had patients as well. Spiritual patients, penitents. But if lawyers, architects, accountants, undertakers, and other professional groups had clients, then why not hairstylists?

All the false information I had conveyed would no doubt be passed on to Raylene. “You have a new client, Ray. His hairstylist has retired—might be Mary Lou. You were recommended by a friend—maybe a client of yours.” And then the questions would be directed at me. I could already see the self-styled salon corner I was backing myself into. You'd better rethink all this, I advised Mr. Rowe, on Friday evening. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…I decided to arrive for my appointment ten minutes early, in order to be relaxed and coherent, ready with some ambiguous answers.

The New Wave His and Hers Hairstyling Salon was parted into two sections: men on the left, women on the right, a low, mirrored wall right down the middle. At the front was a podium-size reception desk, where I stood waiting to be received. A stylist left her female client and greeted me. She introduced herself (Barb again), confirmed the appointment for one Michael Rowe, and asked me to take a seat among the waiting clients in the row of metal chairs along the windows on each side of the front door. An array of fashion magazines was displayed for my perusal on low glass tables in front of the chairs, but I was perusing the hairstylists' faces, not all of whom were visible from where I was seated. Finally, a strangely familiar face appeared from behind the reception desk and asked for Mr. Rowe, and for a moment I expected someone else to respond.

In wondering beforehand if I might recognize her, if she would look familiar, and who she might look like, there was one person I had completely overlooked: my mother. The woman who stood before me—Raylene, I assumed—looked like my mother, from which I concluded that she looked like her mother, who looked like my mother, which was why the old man had been attracted to her. Raylene herself was slim, tallish, and dark, a very young forty, her hair done up in an unusual configuration of curls and waves and mini-braids, like a sort of floppy beret, wreath, or nest on top of her head. She shared no specific physical trait with my mother; it was just the expression on her face—a sort of bereft openness, though perhaps the characteristic expression only of my mother's later years. She looked like a very old-fashioned girl; not beautiful, not even the kind of girl some men think of as pretty, as the old song goes, but very appealing nonetheless. I would have been about seven when she was born, I thought, so she may have been born after her father, our father, died.

“Hi, I'm Raylene, your hairstylist today. Would you like the full treatment, Mr. Rowe?” she asked, as I came forward and just stood there staring foolishly into her face. “A shampoo?” she added, waiting for my reply.

“Sure,” I said, and she led me to a reclining chair and a small black sink at the back. I sat in the chair, removed my glasses, and laid them on the table beside it. Raylene covered me up with a plastic cape-length bib, which she tied snugly behind my neck, then slowly reclined the chair and, with one hand on my forehead and the other behind my head, gently positioned my hair over the empty sink.

“I'll just remove this elastic,” she said.

I'd forgotten about the ponytail. Not long yet, but getting there, and I used the elastic when taking a shower, which I'd waited to do until after lunch today. She soaked my hair with a spray hose, and after she had applied the shampoo and swirled it around my head with one hand, she began to rub it into my scalp with both hands, as if she were massaging my head instead of washing it. I couldn't recall anyone washing my hair since my mother had done it when I was a child, and now here was a woman who reminded me of my mother doing it again. She was an amazingly gentle masseuse, at that, and just as gentle in wringing my hair out after she had rinsed it, and then, very briefly, towelling it dry. In spite of the situation I had contrived to get myself into, and the anxiety I had felt on my way here, I was so relaxed after my shampoo-massage that I just stayed there in the reclining chair with my hands folded prayer-like and my eyes closed.

“We'll go to the styling chair now, Mr. Rowe,” prompted Raylene, and with my body-length bib still hanging from my neck, she led me to her station in the middle of a long line of other stylists, male and female, and their clients, all male. All the other styling chairs were filled, and all the waiting room chairs as well. Saturday was probably their busiest day.

I was very anxious, as I said, on my way here, wondering how this contrived meeting would turn out. I felt like a character in a novel, being controlled by an author. I had no idea what I was going to say, or how I was going to say it—indeed, if I was going to say anything at all. The shampoo
prelude, though very relaxing, had filled my head with distracting sounds and had not been conducive to conversation, so I hadn't felt any pressure to have any.
Here in the styling area, however, in spite of the fact that the room was crowded and commercial AM radio was intruding, clients and stylists were cheerfully chattering, and I did feel a certain pressure to talk. But Raylene, as it turned out, was a true professional, deserving of
clients
. She
let them direct the conversation, or remain silent if they wished, and concentrated on the task at hand.

“How would you like your cut, Mr. Rowe?” she inquired. “We have plenty of hair to work with. We could do anything you want.”

This sounded most intriguing to Mr. Rowe—not something barber Bill had ever proposed—with intimations of intimacy, though obviously unintended; mutual investment, if only esthetic; and stylistic adventure, though hopefully not the hair-raising kind. I imagined myself in the boudoir of a lady of the night instead of in a hairstyling salon. I wondered if all hairstylists, once you were inside their domain, assumed a mutual esthetic investment in your hair, an impersonal adventurous intimacy with it. Or was this just a personal idiosyncrasy of Raylene's?

Standing behind my chair, she was now raising and appraising my hair at the back and sides with both hands, and then reaching around and running her hands through my hair at the front, illustrating perhaps the amount of raw material this adventurous stylist had to work with. I could feel her breasts against my back as she did this, and as I looked at her fine dark features in the mirror, she seemed a lot more alluring than she had at first. If, as I'd heard it said, sons were attracted to women who looked like their mothers, and daughters were drawn to men who looked like their fathers, how many half-brothers and sisters were wandering around out there, I wondered, who'd had, or were in danger of having, accidental incestuous relationships? I certainly felt the spark of one when I looked at Raylene.

“I think just a regular cut,” Mr. Rowe said, unadventurously, “parted on the right.” Perhaps my political part, I thought, my place in the polity, was also on the right now, on the side of conservation, tradition, safety, security, and routine. The regular cut for the regular guy—he who, in what seemed like a former life now, had been a long-haired, left-wing demonstrator, part of a radical student crowd who had thrown rocks at the American Consulate in St. John's during a passionate protest against the Vietnam War, risking arrest, incarceration, a criminal record. A few of them had been taken away and charged. But what other attitude and approach would you expect, what other choice could there be for a dedicated Keeper of the Archive but conservation and preservation, rather than destruction, safety and security for the documents in my care, law and order—order, at least
, respect des fonds
.