The Other P-Word Read online

  I squatted next to Dillon and waited for him to instruct me.

  “Put them in alphabetical order,” he said. You didn’t mess with Dillon’s process unless invited.

  I held up an erotic novel in my hand. “Marley’s going to have to do some editing.”

  Dillon sighed, taking the book from me. “Not that those two need any more stimulation.”

  “I know.”

  “They all love each other so much,” Dillon whispered, as we watched the last of the very prolonged goodbyes taking place.

  “It sucks.”

  “I thought it would inspire you,” Dillon said, making his third stack.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Dills. I’m happy they’re happy, but it’s all a little too…”

  “Like living in a love story.”

  “Yep, that’s it, right there.” Dillon understood me. We had bonded over our ‘leave Miley Cyrus alone’ campaign.

  “So, anything else up today?” Dillon asked, curling one of his perfect shiny locks around his fingers.

  “I have my hair appointment with Christoff.”

  Dillon huffed, adding a dramatic eye roll that went on far too long not to ignore.

  “What?”

  “His real name is Christopher and he’s a nutjob.”

  “Well, maybe he’s eccentric, but he is the most well-known stylist outside of New York or Los Angles. I’ve waited six months for this appointment.”

  Marley and Stevie joined us. “You got a Pat Monahan fetish, Little Bird?” Marley asked me.

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve been listening to this song all week.”

  “It’s just been in my head lately.”

  “Have you picked your outfit for tonight?” Stevie asked.

  “I think I’ll wear my black mini dress with the halter straps. It’s classy but sexy.”

  “That’s a good choice.”

  “What’s tonight, sweetheart?” Mom asked as she joined us. The four boys were playing a miniature golf game a few feet away from us. It was funny how much they emulated their fathers.

  “Preston is taking me to the new French fusion restaurant downtown.”

  “Fancy,” Stevie said.

  “I think he’s going to ask me to move in with him.”

  “Billie, you should stay here longer and save up some more. You can live with us as long as you want. Rick and I both love having you,” Marley said with such force that it seemed more of a plea than a suggestion.

  “Thanks, Marley, but it’s not just that I want to get out. I think we’re ready for the next step. You know?”

  “Are you sure about this?” Mom asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Like, sure sure?” Stevie prodded.

  “I know you guys don’t like Preston.”

  “We never said that,” Marley said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Stevie mumbled.

  Dillon put a hand on my shoulder. “He’s kind of stiff…but not in a good way.”

  I crossed my arms and leaned my back against the shelf. “Don’t be coy with me.”

  “You can accuse us of many things, but being coy is not one,” Stevie said.

  “I get what’s going on. Preston doesn’t fit in with the boy’s club around here.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Stevie asked.

  “Simple—Rick, Damien and Adam are best buddies. Dillon fits in too, but they never gave Preston a chance—and neither did you guys.”

  “That’s not true,” Stevie said. “They’ve tried. This isn’t about him fitting our family.”

  “Then what?”

  “It’s about him fitting you, Little Bird,” Marley said. “Sometimes you see things that aren’t there.”

  “Like I’m crazy?”

  “No, babe, you’re a true romantic. It’s part and parcel,” Dillon said, shoulder bumping me.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Jimmy Graves,” Stevie whispered. “You said you were going to marry him, remember?”

  “I was eight.”

  “Exactly my point. The boy gave you a chocolate cupcake and he became your kryptonite.”

  “We lived in a vegan household. Chocolate was my kryptonite.”

  “You know what we mean,” Stevie and Marley chimed in unison between their laughter.

  “Girls, that’s enough,” Mom said. “This is Billie’s life. She’s an adult and capable of making her own decisions.” And that could have been the end of it, except she turned to me with that mom look—the one that said ‘I’m about to throw a special nugget of wisdom and you’d better be ready to catch it’. “You’ll know when it’s true and right.”

  “How?”

  “Because your craving for chocolate will be a fleeting memory compared to your craving for him.”

  Chapter Three

  I waited at the café table for Corinne, who had surpassed fashionably late by half an hour. Corinne Van Sickle owned Midwest Woman, a magazine made solely for women of the Midwest with their goals and dreams in mind. At least that’s what our mission statement touted. Somehow, those goals and dreams always involved losing twenty pounds or finding the perfect eye makeup. My suggestion to broaden our scope by featuring women with unique stories was finally being heard. Last week, I’d turned in an interview with the first female CEO of a major auto manufacturer.

  Corinne finally arrived, her shiny black hair pulled back in a severe knot. “Billie,” Corinne said, carefully setting her fake Louis Vuitton purse in the vacant chair between us. Then she bent toward me, giving me an awkward air kiss. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  Corinne fancied herself the Midwest version of the boss from The Devil Wears Prada. The fact that she made no secret she wanted to emulate the character spoke volumes about her personality. The truth of the matter was that she fell miserably short of her goal, as she had neither the talent, the ambition nor the footwear for any such endeavor.

  “Don’t worry about it, Corinne. Although I am nervous why you wanted to meet me on a Saturday.” The waiter came by but she waved him away.

  “Aren’t we eating?”

  “This will only take a minute. Billie. I meant to do this on Friday, but I forgot. I was having a blonde moment.” Then her eyes rolled over me in a slow, judgmental sweep. “I’m sure you understand.” She laughed at her joke, and I did my best not to grimace. She was my boss, after all.

  “Is this about my article?”

  She sighed. “We’re not going with it.”

  The disappointment jabbed at me. Yet another rejection to add to my long list. “I thought you liked it.”

  “Woman doesn’t need the word man in it? That article?”

  I nodded, swallowing down my anxiety.

  “Sweetheart, we don’t run that kind of stuff for a reason. Women don’t care about other women’s accomplishments. They don’t look for inspiration in the boardroom or the classroom. They’re busy looking for it in the bedroom or the bathroom mirror. That’s where we come in.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I know, which is exactly why I’m firing you.”

  “You’re…you’re firing me?”

  She let out a deep breath. “Thank goodness that unpleasant business is over. I should go, dear. I have lots to do today and can’t afford any more blonde moments.”

  I swallowed down my hurt and anxiety, keeping my expression focused. “I need more of an explanation.”

  She sighed, picking at her high-gloss polished nails. “It didn’t work out. I would say it’s not you, it’s us, but the truth is…it is you.”

  “Excuse me, but I’m having a complete bitch moment…I’m sure you’d understand. You complimented my work.”

  Her eyes widened slightly before her lips formed a sneer. I had never spoken to her this way, but the shock was too great. I’d always thought I was a good employee, one who met every deadline and completed all tasks with integrity and optimism, despite how bitchy my boss was.

 
“I hired you because you’re a pretty girl, who matched the look of the magazine.”

  “You didn’t hire me because I have a degree from Columbia, won the Heartland Association Award for young writers and have several glowing recommendations from professors?”

  She waved her perfectly manicured fingers through the air. “That’s just a nice byline we can add under your photo—window dressing. I figured you’d write the kind of pieces we were looking for, not these articles about empowering yourself. Certainly not the sob stories about Female Gendercide and climate shift.”

  “Those were popular features.”

  “Perhaps, but it certainly doesn’t fit our theme. Our magazine is a guilty pleasure. You seem to have forgotten the pleasure part. I wanted to mold you into something great, but the truth is, you’re just not a go-getter. Do you know what the opposite of go-getter is, Billie?”

  “A stay-releaser?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me so fast I saw a crack in her foundation. “Go ahead and make a joke about it. The most popular article we did last year was Ten Signs He’s Cheating on You and the second one was How to Keep Your Man Happy. That’s what our readers want. Because in the end, woman does need the word man in it.”

  I came up with twenty witty comebacks. Too bad they all happened twenty minutes after she’d left.

  * * * *

  An hour later, still reeling from my conversation with Corrine, I opened the etched glass doors of the fancy hair salon. I’d thought about cancelling my appointment with Christoff, but if there was any day that I needed a feel-good moment, it was this one.

  I understood what Corinne was telling me, even if she’d steeped the message in a healthy dose of malice. Truthfully, I’d never really fit in at my job. I didn’t consider myself a vain person, but I, as much as the next girl, was interested at playing up my best features and losing a few pounds. Yet I could never understand why we wrote the pieces in such a way that they made women feel inferior about themselves.

  I took a deep breath, trying to focus on where I was. I’d lost my job. That happens every day. Sure, no one in my family had ever been fired, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Right?

  The hair salon looked like a gallery with pristine marble floors, pale blue walls and glass chandeliers. Each frame that hung on its walls featured a stunning black and white photograph of a woman with an elegant cut. I’d interviewed Christoff for the magazine last year, and he’d suggested I make an appointment. On a whim I had, shocked that he couldn’t fit me in for six months. I’d forgotten about it until his receptionist had called last week with a reminder. Dillon was right. He was nutty, but in the most gorgeous, flamboyant kind of way. He wore a leather vest with no shirt beneath it and hot pink pants with embroidered flowers. A mane of brilliant auburn hair spilled out from beneath a sparkly white cowboy hat.

  “So, my little darling, what are we going to do with these fine golden locks? You have the kind of hair that makes men’s fingers twitch,” Christoff said as his shampoo artist—yes, that was his name for her—lathered up my hair. “You look like a young Grace Kelly.”

  “Thank you.” I had to admit I was blessed with good hair. “I was thinking a trim?”

  “Just a trim? I’m an artist. Asking me to do a trim is like asking Picasso to paint the molding in your bedroom.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “My mind is a dangerous place, mia cara. If I take you there, you’ll need to give me artistic control.” He wrapped the towel around my head and led me to the softest, most comfortable leather chair my ass had ever had the pleasure of occupying. “Do you dare to be my muse?”

  Wow, what the hell did that mean?

  “Are you going to make me look like one of them?” I gestured to photos of the stylish sophisticated women hanging on his wall.

  “Is that what you want? To be another frame on my wall?”

  “No, but they are stunning.”

  “And you will be too when I finish. It’s settled then.” He took my hand in his. His nails, shiny and long, each one with a perfect half-moon pink tip, wiggled as he spoke. “Let me take you on a journey and show you how you were meant to look. You are a classic girl and you deserve a style that embodies that.”

  Yeah, that sounded good. Maybe it was the strong herbal tea they served or my crazy meeting with Corinne, but either way I was ready for something different in my life. I nodded slowly. He clapped his hands and squealed.

  “Excellent,” he said, flipping my chair away from the mirror.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t want you to question me. You are safe in my hands.” His confidence, more flashy than his outfit, drew me in.

  I sat in the chair, trying to reconcile the morning’s events and put them out of mind at the same time. Christoff took his time, cutting a strand here and standing back to assess his work. Sometimes he held up his hands in a picture-frame shape. The rhythmic pattern of snipping scissors and soft music sounded like a lullaby.

  Finally, he stood back one last time, fanning himself with the cowboy hat, his low whistle echoing through the room. “Welcome to the new you.”

  He dramatically flipped the chair around with such speed that I had to tighten my grip on the armrests and use my feet to stop. I stared at the large mirror, blinking rapidly at the image staring back at me. My icy blonde locks were cropped on top, feathered on the sides, and straight at the back.

  What the fuck?

  A mullet…the man had given me a mullet.

  “Don’t you just love it?”

  “Thanks, Picasso,” I mumbled to myself. And now that I thought about it, Picasso was an amazing painter, but his images of women were less than flattering. “Um, it’s not what I expected.”

  “It’s original and classic like you, mia bella.”

  He’d said I looked like a young Grace Kelly, so why had he made me look like an old Rod Stewart?

  Shit.

  I had a boy’s name, and now I had a haircut to match.

  * * * *

  I traveled back to the house in Edison Park, lamenting the great number of bad hair days that would follow me. I could already hear Dillon’s resounding ‘I told you so’ as I approached the house.

  Our neighbor, Mrs. Garcia, was strolling the sidewalk. I waved at her and would have left it at that, except she kept heading toward the busy street.

  “Mrs. Garcia, we should get you home,” I said, taking her hand.

  “I have to get to the restaurant. Max is waiting for me.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her husband had died five years ago. She knew that somewhere, but at ninety years old, you were allowed to be in that space where your anguish guided your imagination. She always tried to sneak away from her family, to get to a restaurant that no longer existed and a husband who wasn’t there. I wondered what it meant to have a love like that—one where you’d constantly be looking for your lost half, and feeling their absence in everything you did. There was a romantic beauty in that grief—one I couldn’t even imagine.

  “Why don’t we go home for now, Mrs. Garcia? I can walk you.”

  It was only a few feet, but her steps came slow and jagged. I put my arm around her for support.

  “Did you cut your hair, Marley?” she asked.

  “I’m Billie. Marley is my sister.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember now. That husband of yours is a looker. He reminds me of my Max, handsome as the devil but the manners of a saint.”

  “I’ve heard many good things about Mr. Garcia,” I said, deciding it was best not to correct her. She would forget soon enough and being reminded of all the things she forgot had to be a burden at some level.

  She pointed to my head. “You know, my son had a haircut like that a long time ago. It’s a very interesting choice.”

  Yeah, that she remembers.

  “Mom, there you are,” her daughter, Doris, said swinging the door open. “I’ve been looking for you.”
r />   Doris turned to me, a grateful smile on her face. “Thank you, Billie.” Then her mouth fell open as she took me in. Was this the reaction I was going to get from now on? I should have asked to borrower Christoff’s cowboy hat. He owed me that much.

  “Anytime. I should get going.”

  Then I turned and walked away before she closed her gaping mouth.

  “How did it go, Little Bird?” Marley asked, walking out of the kitchen. She stopped in her tracks and let out a small shriek. “Who did this to you?”

  “Christoff,” I answered. “It’s horrible, isn’t it?” I knew the answer, but I’d figured maybe I’d been overreacting at the salon. Maybe it would look better with some distance. Now I knew the truth. There wasn’t enough distance in the cosmos for this haircut to look good.

  “It’s different,” she said.

  “I lost my job.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, honey.”

  She hugged me, and I tried to control the sobs I’d held in so bravely, but they escaped.

  It didn’t take long for Stevie, Mom and Dillon to show up. Marley had sent them some kind of SOS text. I had showered, hoping that blow-drying my hair in a different way would fix it. It didn’t. I sat on the couch with my locks secured under Marley’s old Chicago Bears baseball cap.

  “Sweetheart, you’ll get another job,” Mom said. “You know, I could talk to Damien.”

  “No. I’ll find another job on my own.”

  My stepfather, Damien, was an incredibly wealthy man. When my mom married him, my siblings and I had made a pact never to ask him for money or favors. Those things ruined relationships. I wanted to make it on my own…to be the architect of my success.

  “Let’s see your hair, kid,” Dillon said.

  I shook my head. “It’s bad.”

  “I’m sure it can be fixed,” he insisted.

  I sighed, taking off the cap. Their slack jaws and wide-eyed reactions didn’t match their comforting words.

  “It’s not so bad,” Marley said.

  “Your hair is still beautiful,” Stevie added.

  “It’ll all work out, honey,” Mom followed.

  “I’m proud of you, Billie,” Dillon said.