Is she feeling a deep connection with me under her touch, or is she staring idly into space like her colleague, the blonde beauty, her tenth shampoo of the day, thinking about what to cook for dinner, or the birthday present she needs to buy and wrap for Charlotte’s friend’s upcoming birthday party. I do not want this moment to end, my mother’s hands on me like this, it’s bliss. But unfortunately the water is turned off.
Now she says, loudly and brightly, shattering the silence and peace. My eyes fly open, a hairdryer goes on for another customer and the spell has been broken, but it’s not over yet. She wraps a fresh towel around my shoulders, a towel around my head and leads me to a chair facing a mirror. I feel nervous again to be face to face where she can scrutinise me more. Pops used to dry my hair messily, roughly with a towel. I’d sometimes feel as if my head would pop off. He could never figure out how to wrap it around as my mother has done now in a turban style. Like I’d ask him to do, like I’d seen in the movies. And then the blow-dry, what a palaver. He hated drying my hair, it was so thick and so long, it took too much time. And so because of that we didn’t wash it regularly, not enough anyway. No, hair was not his thing, but he was so good at so many other things. She is so good with hair and was so bad on everything else. But the positives, let’s focus on them.
You have magic hands, I say to her and she grins, aha, as though she’s heard it a thousand times and knows it already. She combs my wet hair so that it’s perfectly straight.
How much would you like off. I think to here, yes. Get rid of the split ends. It’s two inches.
Yes, whatever, I don’t care, whatever takes the longest amount of time. Keep touching me, fussing over me, make it last forever. I don’t know why I didn’t do this months ago. I could have been having this contact with her for the past six months. I nod in response to her.
When did you last have it cut.
Almost seven months ago. I think back. Marion did it in her kitchen, the week before I. Before the home salon, before the goosebump baby that’s probably now the size of an apple. My mother can’t believe it’s been such a long time. How often should I get it done, I ask her, and listen to her again about the weather, and the seasons and what signs to look out for and again I take it all in. Maybe I’ll begin a Mother book, documentation of all the things she’s ever said directly to me, like a scrapbook, so by the end of my life it will be full and rich and proof of a relationship over time and motherly advice. Tips from my mother to pass on to my daughter. From the grandmother she’d never met, or did meet when I brought her to the salon with me, in a buggy, or had her first haircut, all by a mother and grandmother who never knew. And why did you never tell her, my daughter will ask, and I’ll smile, a secret kind of smile and say, I never told her, but she knew, pet, she knew.
She’s quiet now, concentrating as she gets the ends even. Pulling them down and checking the levels. I study her face, now that she’s not watching me. Every gesture. Now and then her stomach or her boobs press against the back of my head and I think, I was in there. Her fingers brush against my skin and I think: Those hands held me, those fingers touched me, at least once. This part I don’t know, maybe they lifted me out of the room straight away, but wouldn’t the midwife have placed me on to her naked chest, skin to skin, not for her benefit but for mine. The midwives would have cared, wouldn’t they. I look at her chest in her low-cut wrap dress, shiny moisturised, great skin, a necklace with a heart that is trapped in her cleavage. I wonder if Fergal gave it to her.
I would ask Pauline these things about the hospital but she wouldn’t know. My mother gave birth alone. Driven to Tralee maternity hospital by my mad cousin Dara who wouldn’t tell me much more. Pops was there, of course, in a waiting room or downstairs at reception, or wherever he was allowed to be, but no one was with her, no one but the midwife. I don’t know how moving or cold our first and final moments were together. Not final, I remind myself, for look at us now. Reunited.
She’s happy with the length, she can talk again.
You have the day off today, she says.
Yes.
What do you do.
And it was going so well. Perhaps it is our final moment, Carmencita, I think to myself. I take a moment then turn to her, even though I can see her in the mirror. I need to connect to her in real life, not make the stupid mistake with her that I made before. We’ve actually met before I say in a gentle polite voice, in a not so pleasant way that I’d like to apologise for.