Page 45 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
‘You meanyouforgot,’ is the shorthand way she chooses to express all the resentment and loneliness that has been bubbling away inside her for years.
‘No, I … it was …’ He closes his eyes for a few seconds. ‘Yes,’ he says when he opens them again. ‘I forgot.’
He puts both his hands on the table this time and yet again she thinks he wants to take hers, but she keeps them in her lap, where they’re twisting her serviette.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ he says, his brown eyes bright.
Anna weighs up her next move. She could keep drilling on this subject but there’s no more oil in this well, really, because he’s just admitted responsibility and to want more would be churlish. The option that would ensure they both have a pleasant evening would be for her to move on. But she doesn’t want him to get the idea that he might be in with a chance with her, so she has to consider her words carefully.
‘We often don’t mean to do things, Gary,’ she says, and she keeps her voice as soft as she can, so it doesn’t sound like censure. ‘But we do them and they have consequences.’
She feels herself becoming upset, and that surprises her, because she hasn’t been upset about him. Anger probably counts as upset, true, but there hasn’t been sadness. She hasn’t felt sad about him not being at home, likely because that started happening so long ago, in increments.
Perhaps she was sad then, when she first realised he preferred his job to her. That may be what is now rising within her, pushing itself into her chest and her throat, pricking at the backs of her eyes.
Yes, she was sad then. She remembers it now. She would sit on the couch and cry because her husband didn’t seem to want her any more.
Those memories – those experiences, for they now feel ongoing, in her body, in the turbulence of her mind – obviously still matter. Not that she wants him to know. This is her business, this sadness, and she has to work out what to do with it alone.
‘That’s in the past, though, isn’t it,’ she goes on, not believing a word of it yet seeing the relief on his face that she’s given him a pass. ‘So let’s enjoy dinner, shall we?’
He reaches further across the table with one hand but she ignores it and holds up her menu again. By the time she lowers it he’s focused on his and she doesn’t know how long he left his hand there, waiting for hers, before he withdrew it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Whenever one of her clients complains about how her daughter won’t get out of her hair, how she’s always calling and asking for advice, or calling to complain about her own children, Trudy wants to tell that client to count herself lucky to have a child who stays in touch. And it’s always the daughters they complain about, never the sons. Trudy used to think it was because they all thought their sons were amazing, and she felt sorry for the daughters as a result. Now she knows it’s because they only ever hear from their daughters. The sons are like hers: not given to communicating.
It was wonderful to see Dylan and Annemarie and the girls at lunch in Hornsby but she hasn’t heard from her son since. Yes, it’s only been a couple of weeks but she’s living on her own now and she’s still grieving – wouldn’t it occur to him that she may need someone to actuallycare?
True, some of her clients care. Evie cares. Now she knows Trudy needs caring for.
‘Just tell me the next time you need a lift somewhere,’ Evie said when she dropped Trudy home from the station after the Sydney jaunt.
‘I don’t want to be a bother.’
Evie guffawed. ‘Do you really think I’d offer if you were a bother? Besides, Billy loves a car trip, don’t you, Billybub?’
Billy had looked up from the book he was reading in the back seat – how he did that without becoming sick, Trudy didn’t know – and smiled and nodded.
There’s been no need for the taxi service since then but it’s nice to know it’s available.
The outing to Sydney served another purpose: it made her realise she actually likes going out and doing things. When she came home that night she felt energised, in a way she hadn’t since Laurie became sick. It made her think, it really did, about the nature of her grieving and how maybe it has become this loop she’s got herself stuck in, familiar and comforting despite itself.
She just needed a jolt. So she’s continued to give herself one. Or two. She’s going to the club more, and she’s taken up walking with Gina, one of her regulars. Some of her regulars have become friends, and it’s never felt awkward that they keep being clients because they all tell her she makes them feel like a million bucks and they’d never want to go to another salon.
It’s Gina who’s in the chair this morning, flipping through theThe Australian Women’s Weeklywhile Trudy gives her a trim.
‘I don’t know about that Joan Collins,’ Gina says as she holds up a spread featuring ‘the ladies ofDynasty’. ‘Whaddyareckon she’d be like in real life?’
Trudy shrugs. She hasn’t given it much thought. ‘She’s an actress, pet,’ she says as she makes the smallest of snips. Gina’s standing instruction is for only the very ends of the ends to be snipped off. She’s been ‘trying to grow my hair long’ for decades now and although Trudy has told her that some curly hair doesn’t grow that long and even if it does it can still look short, thanks to the bounce-up, Gina persists.
‘What’s your point, Trude?’
‘That Alexis person is a character. I’m sure she’s not like that in real life.’
Tiny snip, tiny snip.
‘You’re not cutting too much, are you?’ Gina’s tone is terse. She asks this every single time.
