Page 105 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
‘Indeed,’ Ingrid says as she sips her cappuccino. ‘You seem to like the salon now.’
‘I do.’ Anna smiles as she gazes across the road to the beach and remembers how good it was to sit and be tended to by Evie, chatting away about things, then having her head massaged during the shampoo … That’s possibly the best part. Why did her mother never mention the head massage? It makes Anna wonder if everyone knew about this and just kept it secret because they don’t want millions flocking to hairdressers. A head massage is surely one of the loveliest things one human can do for another, and addictive in its own way. Hence Anna happily booking an appointment each week at whatever time Evie can fit her in.
‘You’ve worked it out.’ Ingrid arches an eyebrow.
‘What?’
‘The value of the veneer.’
Anna laughs. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Our presentation to the world around us – it’s armour. There’s strength in it. And in turn it makes us feel better about ourselves. We are always putting our best foot forward.’ Another sip of coffee. ‘I learnt how important it was after your father became ill.’
Anna waits for her to go on.
‘If I put effort into my appearance, it was an energy – you know? I was doing something for myself. I was making a statement to myself and everyone else that what had happened was not going to defeat me. And if I did it every day, well … it gained its own momentum.’ She looks across to the ocean, smiling sadly. ‘I wouldn’t have survived without it,’ she says.
That jolts Anna – to think her mother felt like that.
‘I had no idea. Why didn’t you say anything?’ she asks.
‘Because I had my dignity to maintain. And that’s part of it too, you see – that act of presentation to the world, that’s about dignity. I had to hold myself together for you and your brothers. Getting up each day and doing my hair, my make-up, choosing clothes, it was allpositive. If I’d then talked to you about how I didn’t feel I was coping – that would have been negative. No.’ She shakes her head. ‘I needed to keep it all moving. But I do realise it took its toll on you, in particular.’
‘Your appearance?’ Anna is confused.
‘The whole situation. Your father effectively disappeared from your life even though he was physically present in the house. I see …’ She stops then gives a little shake of her head as if she’s clearing a thought.
‘What?’ Anna prompts.
‘Gary,’ Ingrid says. ‘He disappeared too.’
They sit in silence, staring at each other.
‘So?’ Anna says at last.
‘You couldn’t do anything to change the situation with your father. But you could with Gary. And you did.’
Ingrid’s face is impossible to read, so Anna doesn’t know if she approves of what happened or not, but she does not like the feeling of being judged.
‘Are you saying I shouldn’t have told him to leave because you put up with it and therefore I should have?’ Her voice rises along with her anger.
‘DidI say that?’
‘I don’t know!’ Anna glances around, convinced they can be overheard, but other patrons aren’t looking their way.
‘What I meant, my darling girl, is that you took action because you could after so many years of not being able to change what was, for all of us …’ Her mother breathes out and it sounds as if she is letting go of years of pain. ‘A very difficult time.’
A very difficult time. Such a simply worded phrase but it covers what was an aeon in the life of their family, and Anna couldn’t have put it any better.
In that moment she understands that her mother is right: Gary had disappeared and on some level it reminded her of the abandonment she had felt when her father had been there in front of her but not there, and – if she went further into her psyche – her mother being the same. Because Ingrid necessarily gave her life over to her husband, and her sons had each other, which left Anna on her own. And this time Anna was determined to change it.
When she examines her behaviour toward Gary in this context she understands she never really gave him a chance to un-disappear. She warned him that he needed to be home more but she didn’t ask why he felt so driven to work so much – because his absence was the beginning and end of it, as far as she was concerned.
For Gary, though, something else was going on. She thinks back to something he said to her at dinner, when she – yet again, and perhaps unfairly – raised the issue of his long hours.
‘I was trying to save money,’ he said, looking mystified. ‘For you.’
‘For me?’ She was confused. She’d never asked him to save money.
