The Bookseller(30)
Walking into Beauty on Broadway, I am as nervous as if I’m on a first date. The decor is mauve, with dark purple accents. The shop is large; I count eight hairdressing stations. Women are seated at most of the stations. There is a bank of hair dryers along the back wall, nearly all of them humming happily. A manicurist carefully applies polish to the nails of one of the hair-drying women; others under the dryers busy themselves with fashion magazines or the entertainment section from the newspaper.
The receptionist takes my name, leads me to an empty station, and walks away silently. I wait, looking at my reflection. The lights on either side of the mirror emphasize my pale skin. I pinch my cheeks, trying to bring some color to them. I should have put on more lipstick.
While I am agonizing over this, a middle-aged, brown-haired woman appears in the mirror, approaching me from behind. I put my heel down and spin the chair slightly so we are facing each other. She takes my hand. “I’m Linnea Hershall,” she says, a slight lilt in her voice—the remnants, no doubt, of her girlhood Swedish accent. “You’re Kitty, is that right?”
I nod, gulping and speechless. Up close, her resemblance to Lars is remarkable. She has the same striking blue eyes, the same wry smile, the same rounded nose. Tears spring to my eyes at the sight of her. I cannot believe that I am looking at a real flesh-and-blood relative of my dream man.
Seeing my distress, Linnea softens. “Let me guess,” she says. “First time with a new hairdresser in entirely too many years.” Her eyebrows rise, then lower. “Am I right?”
Despite myself, I smile. “Ummm . . . yes. That’s right.”
“Well, relax.” She turns my chair so I am facing the mirror, and then lightly runs her fingers through my crazy cowlicked hair. “It’s easy to get in what I call a ‘hair rut.’ And when you’re in one, it’s hard to make a change. It can be upsetting.” She tilts her head, looking thoughtfully at my reflection. “My guess, however, is that you’d like a way to tame this unruly look and give it a bit more elegance.”
I nod. “Please,” I say. “That is exactly what I want.”
And so I take a deep breath, trying to calm down and enjoy the experience for what it is. Even Linnea’s hands remind me of Lars’s: strong, capable, like you could put your whole life in them and nothing bad would ever come of it. I am halfway in love with her before she finishes my shampoo.
Back at her station, she pensively runs a comb through my hair, then rummages in a side cart for rollers. Eyeing my head critically, she tries first one size, and then another, finding just the right small curlers for some areas, the larger pink rollers for big waves on top. She dunks her fingers into a large vat of green Dippity-Do, smooths it into my hair, then expertly rolls each curler and pins it into place.
Once she appears at ease with her work, I open my mouth and venture a comment. “Linnea,” I say hesitantly. “That’s a pretty name. And unusual.”
She looks up and smiles at me in the mirror. “It’s Swedish,” she explains. “I emigrated here from a small town not far from Bor?s, which itself is not so big; most Americans have not heard of it. I came here as a girl.”
I clasp my hands together tightly to keep them from trembling. “That’s a long way to move,” I say finally. “Your family . . . they moved here with you?”
She nods, arranging a small blue curler around a wisp of my hair and attaching it with a roller clip. “My parents and my brother.” She bites her lip. “They’ve all passed, however.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I can feel myself shaking. “How sad for you. Were they . . . ill?”
Linnea nods again. “My parents did not do well here,” she says. “We started out in Iowa, where we had distant relatives. But it was the Depression, the work that was available was hard, and my mother’s heart . . . well, her heart could not withstand it.” She looks away, and then back at my hair. “More or less the same could be said of my father, I suppose.”
It is hard for me to fathom. I cannot in my wildest imagination envision losing my parents. Perhaps it is because they are so young—my mother is not even sixty yet—but it’s hard to picture my life without them. Even this two-month period in which they are so far away is proving much more difficult than I anticipated. The whole idea of them being thousands of miles from home is starting to wear on me. I think about the postcard I received from Mother this morning.
Kitty, my dear,
We are so far from home. Yesterday, I asked May how far it is from Honolulu to Denver, and she said over 3,000 miles. Think about that. The earth is about 25,000 miles around; so we are almost 1/8 of the earth’s circumference from home.
Some mornings, I get up with the sun, face east, and think about you. By the time I do this, you are halfway through your morning, probably having coffee with Frieda in your lovely little bookshop.
Do you know how proud I am of you, darling Kitty?
Love,
Mother
Reading those words at home this morning, I had an almost uncontrollable urge to pick up the telephone and call, different time zones and overseas charges be damned. I just wanted to hear my mother’s voice. I actually lifted the receiver and started to dial—but, knowing that it was several hours earlier there and they would still be asleep, I forced myself to hang up before I could complete the call.