The Chocolate Money (2 page)

The paintings may not be that interesting to look at, but they make me feel less lonely. My family is bigger than just me and Babs. If Babs ever says she has had it with me once and for all, maybe Lucas could be my backup plan. I don’t really know how I would get from Chicago to New York, but it’s a start.

Babs’s imagination may call the shots on the twenty-ninth floor, but I’m only an elevator ride from the real world.

Babs believes she’s as accomplished as Lucas. There
are
three things she’s really good at: giving parties, making scrapbooks, and, of course, doing the Card. Her scrapbooks are original in that they have almost no pictures in them. Just receipts from restaurants she has gone to and for shoes she has bought, cocktail napkins from parties she has been to. She keeps the scrapbooks in the back of her fur closet, organized by year. She has told me never to look at them; they are none of my business. But I can’t help myself. I look for parts of her she does not share with me. They are the closest thing she has to a diary.

But the Card, I know all about. I look forward to it all year since it means we will spend the whole day together, posing in various outfits, trying different locations for shots. Since we have the Card tomorrow, part of me relaxes. I decide to do as I’m told and force myself to make the most of the playroom. I hang upside down on the jungle gym for five minutes, fall off the death horse twice and hurt my arm, and look at Lucas’s paintings for as long as I can.

I venture into the living room. I’m not supposed to go in there by myself, but it’s the best room in the aparthouse, with the most to do. It is two stories high and takes up one whole half of the aparthouse. Standing in it is like being in a Lucite box that’s suspended in the sky. Instead of a solid wall, there is a huge pane of glass that goes floor to ceiling and allows for an amazing view of Lake Michigan. You can watch the cars on Lake Shore Drive go right up to North Avenue. In the summer, you can even see those women who don’t have country-club memberships sitting on Oak Street Beach, slathering themselves with cheap suntan lotion and probably reading Danielle Steel.

Babs bought the aparthouse after her parents died. Before, she lived in Grass Woods, a suburb of Chicago, on a big estate called Tea House. I’m glad Babs moved to the city and bought the aparthouse. Besides being really big, it has cool things, like the spiral staircase that winds up to her bedroom. The steps are big chunks of creamy veined marble, and the railing is a long silver tube that curves like a Krazy Straw. Straight silver bars connect the railing to the steps, and I love to stick my head through them.

I decide to risk a trip to the top of the stairs so I can saunter back down them just like Babs does when she makes an entrance into her parties. But my beginning is clumsy. I’m so busy looking up that I almost knock over a majolica cup filled with Babs’s cigarettes and nearly step on her scrapbook scissors.

I love these scissors; the blades are long and silver like swords. The handles are gold and encrusted with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. They are bumpy and smooth at the same time, like a seashell sticky with sand. Sometimes I put them in my mouth and suck on them. They have a metallic taste that is surprisingly sweet.

I pick them up and press them against my cheek. The longer I hold on to them, the harder it is to let them go. I spread the blades wide like legs and position them on my right cheek. They slide a little deeper into their splits, and I press them down slightly.

A piece of hair falls to my mouth and sticks to my lips. I blow it back, still holding the scissors. I pause and imagine Babs whispering in my ear,
You are such a fucking chicken.

The words sound so real I flinch. When Babs insults me, I never answer back. I just sit there and take it, with wet eyes and trembly lips. Like someone spilled my Shirley Temple.

But since Babs is not in the room with me, I have the courage to defy her. I give a large fistful of my hair a good yank. The pain makes me feel alert. Exhilarated. I open the scissors as wide as they will go, and then bring them together with all my force. Cut. My hair is baby-fine so there is no resistance. A butcher knife slicing a birthday cake.

After about one short moment of triumph, I spiral into a complete panic. My hair’s all over the blades, which are supposed to be used only to cut paper for scrapbooks. Nothing else. I bundle the amputated strands into something like a bird’s nest and stuff them under the corner of the rug. This is the moment where, were I old enough, I would pause, reach for a cigarette, and have a good, deep smoke. But I am only ten, and there is no time to waste.

I wipe the scissors carefully on the hem of my dress, hold them up to the bright sunlight coming through the living room window. They look clean. I return them to the steps. I want to prove things are back to normal, so I go back to the kitchen to find Babs.

She and Andie have finished their food and are no longer talking. Andie looks nervous. She’s not ready to leave and finish up her day alone. There’s a lull between them, and Babs does not tolerate a lull. It’s as if they are just waiting for me to walk in.

Babs looks at me and says, “What the fuck have you done to your hair?”

Babs says
fuck
all the time. It is not always a mean word, but today it is.

“Nothing,” I say. I’m really surprised she can tell what I have done. I thought I had fixed the problem. But Babs can always tell everything about me.

“Bettina, lying isn’t going to fly, babe.” She calmly turns to the sink, runs water over her burning cigarette. Throws it in the trash.

Andie turns to me with her arms folded and acts concerned. She squints her eyes, like this development is deeply troubling to her. But thanks to me, she’s suddenly in the same league as Babs. Andie would never be stupid enough to cut her own hair.

“It’s not fucking
nothing,
” Babs says flatly. “Your hair looks like shit. I could care less, really, but we have the Card tomorrow.”

Babs is calm, and this is a really bad sign. She almost never yells when I do something wrong. The madder she gets, the more she pulls away from the situation.

Will she leave me out of the Card? This would be the worst punishment ever. Everyone knows you include your kids in your Christmas card. Unless they are dead or locked up somewhere.

Babs turns her back on me and rinses Andie’s yolky plate. She normally doesn’t do dishes, but it is the weekend, and there is no staff to do it for her. She hates when traces of food linger.

She starts to laugh. I know this isn’t her good laugh but the laugh that means something bad is going to happen. If I try to laugh along, my voice doesn’t mix with hers; it just bounces back at me. Andie acts like she is in on the joke, goes ahead and laughs too.

“Go find your fucking shoes, Bettina,” Babs says.

I hear Babs on the phone when I come back.

“Geoff, we have a crisis. The kid has done a number on her hair playing home salon and we’ve got the Card tomorrow. There’s not much to work with, but could you possibly give it your best?”

Babs flexes her toes and I hear the bones crack. She is barefoot, as usual. Her toenails are painted a tangerine orange. She always wears some cool color. She gets pedicures, manicures, and waxing twice as often as normal women. A tiny Asian girl inexplicably named Manuela comes one morning a week and uses tools that are for Babs alone.

I stand and watch as Babs waits out Geoff’s half of the conversation.

“Whenever you can,” Babs says. “Love you too. And you have such an incredibly perfect ass. Even better than mine.”

This is Babs’s way of expressing gratitude. She never says thank you.

Babs loves
fags,
as she calls them. She told me once that fags are men who have sex with other men. Each gets a turn to
put his penis in the other’s ass,
was how she explained it. I had a lot of questions about how this worked. Can they get each other pregnant? And what about all the shit stuck up there? Do they have special tools to remove it beforehand? But Babs wasn’t really in the mood to give more details. She just said,
Fags are the best.
They actually want you to be beautiful,
and left it at that.

Babs calls Stacey on the intercom, even though her room is just off the kitchen. She drags herself into the kitchen wearing purple terry-cloth shorts and a purple T-shirt with bubble hearts. She has on her Dr. Scholl’s and holds a pink can of Tab. She has brown hair that feathers off her face and huge blue eyes, like a Disney character’s. Her nose is way too big though, so this ruins everything. Her last job was working at Dairy Queen.

“Yes, Mrs. Ballentyne,” Stacey says, in a nice can-I-help-you voice she never uses with me.

“Stace, we have a tedious and untimely emergency.”

“Really?” says Stacey, excited to be part of the drama.

“Really,” Babs says flatly. She continues. “Bettina clearly cannot be trusted with a moment of unsupervised time without totally fucking up everyone’s day. I know this is your day off, but you’re going to have to take her to Zodiac to see if Geoff can do something about this mess.”

Zodiac is on Oak Street next to the Esquire movie theater, and it takes up two floors. The outside is all glass and you can see people getting their hair cut when you walk by.

When we cross Michigan Avenue, Stacey walks very quickly and yanks my arm, like I am a dawdling toddler. Once we have made it to the sidewalk on the other side of traffic, she launches into me.

“You think your mother would have noticed my split ends,” she whispers harshly in my ear.

“Do you know my last haircut cost eight dollars? And that was at Sheer Genius, where they shampoo your hair twice!”

Just before we arrive, Stacey scrunches up her hair with her fingers and pulls it down in front of her face. I know she thinks that if she makes her hair look bad enough, Geoff will insist on doing her too.

I know that our trip to Zodiac isn’t going to be any fun; it’s just triage at the beauty ER.

The salon has a black ceiling, black walls, and black leather chairs. The ceiling has clusters of gold stars painted on it, and low-hanging disco balls. The names of the twelve astrological signs lasso the constellations in gold script.

Geoff is busy cutting an older woman’s hair and he laughs as he works. He is tall with broad shoulders and shaggy blond hair. His assistant Nikki directs us to a couch in the far corner. She tells us it will be a while.

Stacey grabs a stack of magazines and lights up a Virginia Slims menthol. I just sit there. Wait.

After two hours with no acknowledgment from Geoff, I get so bored that I finally look in the mirror to the side of the black leather couch and check out my hair. I’m surprised to see it’s not such a disaster. I’m just lopsided. It’s not really that ugly; it just looks kind of weird. If I wore a headband or barrette, no one would notice.

The light changes in the salon, and as we wait, I can feel the afternoon ending. Stacey’s visibly upset. She pulls out two Tabs from her enormous purse and some Ballentyne chocolate: Gold Coast Chews. She rattles the box, trying to unstick the chocolate caramels from the sides, but this elicits only a few dirty looks. Even I know you don’t eat candy at a hair salon. It’s not a movie theater.

Stylists are packing up their stations. They put combs away and twist black cords around the necks of blow dryers; they spray their mirrors with Windex and wipe them clear of the day.

Finally, Geoff looks over at us and nods that he is ready. He checks his fingernails while I climb into the chair, like they’re really interesting. Says nothing to me while I get settled. Maybe I have to start up the conversation myself? But I’ve never talked to a fag one-on-one. I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to say. Don’t want to offend him.

He snaps a dirty cape covered with another woman’s hair around my neck. He sprays my head damp with a water bottle. The shampoo woman has gone home.

“Do you have any suggestions for
my
hair?” Stacey says, moving in toward him. I had forgotten about her. She never gives up.

“Brush it,” Geoff says drily.

Stacey backs off.

Geoff starts cutting or, more accurately, hacking at my head. I shut my eyes as he works. I wonder why I didn’t just slice up my cheek and spare myself this nightmare.

Geoff finally stops and turns on the dryer. He does not use a brush to style my hair like he did with everyone else. He just runs the hot air over my scalp in a careless sweeping pattern like he is blowing leaves off a lawn. I open my eyes.

I try to look pleased, but this is impossible. My hair is almost all gone.

It’s on the floor, mixed in with the rest of Geoff’s clients’ hair. Maybe if he gave me some extra time, I could sort mine out, take it home, and reattach it somehow.

Stacey looks up from the next station, where she has been busy ignoring Geoff. Straight out laughs at me. I want to throw a full can of Tab at her head.

Babs calls Geoff the minute we get home to tell him how brilliant it is. Despite the fact that the salon is now closed, he picks up. He must be waiting for her reaction.

“Very gamine,” Babs says. “Jean Seberg in
A bout de souffle.
You’ve outdone yourself, baby.”

I have no idea who Jean Seberg is, but I don’t want her hair.

Babs ruffles my hair. Rubs her thumbs over my forehead as she finishes her conversation.

“Bravo, kiddo,” she says when she hangs up. “The Card is going to be spectacular. Fuck
The Turning Point.
We’ll think of something else. The cut is just so damn chic!”

I want to enjoy the compliment, but part of me wonders if I have her attention only because it interests her to see me so thoroughly maimed.

A
ND THEN COMES MACK
.

Babs has dated many men, but Mack is the first one who lasts more than a month. I think this must be because he’s really good-looking, but Babs later explains to me what a
fucking genius
he is in bed.