Wake (105 page)
—annoying as hell—and he got mad. Let him. I don’t care.
Her fling with what’s-his-nuts ended after less than a month. Elise wasn’t too fussed about it; she was getting bored of the whole thing anyway. She sent me a long and detailed letter about how she was swearing off guys until at least the end of the year and replacing them with dedication to schoolwork, the social planning committee, and debate team. That resolution lasted about a week before she sent me:
OMG!!! WE KISSED!!!
in giant, emphatic handwriting that fill ed the page with three words. I didn’t have to guess who had merited this eloquent note, but just for useless clarification Elise wrote
(him)
in the corner in tiny letters.
“You know that guy you’re sister’s into?” I asked Jem. He gave me a suspicious look.
“What do you know about him?”
“They’re sucking face now.” The news precipitated a brief, joint tantrum between Jem and Eric, consisting of the repeated statement, “She’s way too young!” and several creative death threats.
“What were you doing when you were her age?” I asked. That shut them up, but they weren’t happy about it.
At the moment, Jem can barely refrain from banging his head against the wall while Elise and Kipp share a drawn-out-goodbye, with kissy sounds. Elise hangs up the phone with a happy sigh and Jem groans, “Final y.”
“You didn’t have to listen.”
“You’re sitting in the middle of the freaking kitchen!”
Elise just rolls her eyes and turns to me, deliberately ignoring her brother. “Kipp’s driving back to school tomorrow, but tonight we’re going out after dinner and maybe—”
“You just saw him yesterday!” Jem snaps.
“Who asked you, Jemma?”
No good can come of staying in the kitchen, so I wrap an arm around Jem and ‘suggest’ that we go upstairs for a while. “Let your sister be a lovesick dork.”
“I’m not a dork,” she whines.
I wink at her over Jem’s shoulder and ask, “still got that box of condoms I gave you?”
Jem’s jaw drops. “You gave her
what
?”
*
I try to talk him out of it, but I might as well be talking to a wall. Jem isn’t satisfied until he’s gone through Elise’s nightstand drawer to find the aforementioned box of condoms. It’s still unopened.
“Thank Christ.”
“You shouldn’t be going through her stuff.”
Jem gives me a serious look and points a finger at me. “Corrupt your own younger siblings next time.
Eric and I have already damaged this one enough.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Tough shit.” Jem wants to take the box of rubbers away from Elise, but the argument for letting her keep them is a strong one. Better she have them if she needs them, if the alternative is getting pregnant at her age. Jem puts the box back in the drawer and walks away muttering, “She’s going to become a nun. She’s going to become a nun…”
I follow him down the hall , trying not to chuckle at his quiet rant about a life of religious devotion and chastity.
“What are you going to do when she gets married and starts having kids?”
Jem makes a strangled sound of frustration. “Can you please let me just live in denial and pretend that no one ever touches her below the neck?”
I have to laugh at him, because this is just too cute. “Sure, whatever you want.”
“Thank you.”
Jem flops down on his bed and stares at the ceiling. “Tell me.”
“Your sister isn’t remotely interested in boys and never will be.”
Jem sits up. “You think her relationship with that guy will last? It’s just some teenage thing, right?”
I shrug. “They’ve lasted long distance for this long, so…”
Jem narrows his eyes. “Can we go back to that thing where you lie to me for my own sanity?”
“How about we try that thing where you act mature about this?”
“Nah, fuck that thing.”
I sit down next to him on the bed and wrap my arm around his shoulders. “Change isn’t always a bad thing, you know. You’ve got to let her grow up. If you don’t…well , she might not want you to be involved in that process.”
Jem makes a face. He gets that look whenever he knows I’m right but doesn’t want to admit it. “I don’t have to be nice to this guy, do I?”
“Take it day by day.”
Jem gets off the bed with a long-suffering sigh. “This guy’s a bad influence anyway. He’s turning her into a mouthy little shit. She needs an attitude adjustment.”
“You’d be the expert on that, right?”
“Oh har har.”
“If it really bothers you that much, tell her not to call you Jemma anymore. She’ll probably listen.”
Jem opens the closet door and looks at himself in the mirror. He plays with the ends of his hair, tugging them straight and measuring the length against his neck.
“I want you to cut my hair,” he says.
“You’re joking.”
“No, I’m serious,” he insists. I tell him that it doesn’t matter to me how long his hair is, and that teasing from one’s siblings is never to be taken seriously.
“It’s been a year,” he says, gesturing to his hair. “I think I’ve made my point.” That makes me laugh. He grew his hair long for him, for a sense of security, not because he needed to prove to anyone that he could.
I shake my head. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“Think about it for a few days. This shouldn’t be an impulsive decision.”
“It
needs
to be,” Jem says, and heads for the bathroom. “Come on, before I lose my nerve.”
I get up and follow Jem to the bathroom. It seems best to humor him, so I go along with it. But I take my time setting things up, giving him a chance to think about this and if he really wants to do it. He produces a stool from the kitchen and I locate a pair of sharp scissors. There’s a kit with an electric shaver under the bathroom sink, but the mere mention of it makes Jem choke, so I let it go. He sheds his shirt and I wrap a towel around his shoulders like a barber’s drape.
“You’re sure about this?”
“Yeah.” Jem shows me how short to cut it. The ends of the strands will touch his jaw instead of his shoulders. I comb a little water through it and prepare to make the first cut. This has gone a little farther than just humoring him.
“Positive?”
Jem answers yes, but he’s wincing. I cut just a small chunk of hair, barely enough to pinch, and let it hang there next to his face.
“That’s not so bad, is it?” But from the look on his face, it really is that bad.
“I need a minute.” Jem sits back from the counter and puts his head between his knees. From anyone else, a panic attack over a haircut would be downright silly, but coming from Jem it’s sort of heartbreaking.
“C’mere, love.” I hug him and he rests his forehead against my chest, breathing deeply. I pet his head and rub his back, waiting for his moment of insecurity to pass.
“Will you miss running your hands through it?” he asks.
“If you’re looking for an excuse not to cut it, then yes, I’ll miss running my hands through your hair.”
Jem sits up. “I wasn’t looking for an excuse.”
I tuck the hair around his face behind his ears. “How did you wear it before chemo?” Maybe I can reason him through this.
It takes Jem a few minutes to find an old photo. He used to wear it fairly short around the sides and back, and a little longer on top. Short hair makes his cowlicks more obvious.
“You don’t want it cut like that again, do you?” I want him to admit that he doesn’t want this, that it isn’t the right time to make such a drastic change to his appearance.
He sits down heavily on the stool and sighs. “Maybe.” Jem looks to me like I have the answer. “Think you could like that guy?”
I kiss his temple. “We’ve had this conversation before. You’re never going to
be
that guy again. This is about a haircut. And it’s about what
you
want, not me.”
“Would it be okay if I didn’t do this?”
“Of course, love.” I wrap my arms around his neck and rest my cheek against his head.
“I’m sorry.” He tosses the photo on the counter and buries his head in his hands. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You knew I was going to back out, didn’t you?”
Jem looks up and I smile at him in the mirror. “Yeah. I know you. If and when you cut your hair, it’ll be for you, not because Eric called you a girl.”
“Don’t forget Elise.” He has a point; Elise doesn’t usually join in the ‘Jemma’ taunt.
“well you teased her first, you bugger.”
“She deserved it,” he protests.
I hold my hand to my cheek like a phone and mimic his sister. “Ohmigod I’m going to miss you
so
much. I can’t believe I have to wait
all day
to see you again.”
Jem smiles. I continue the one-sided mushy conversation, kissing his ears and pinching the apples of his cheeks when he gives up and laughs.
“Enough.” He grabs my arms around his neck and holds me close. “Cut my hair.”
“No, silly.”
“The longer I put it off the scarier it’s going to get.” Jem cups my cheek, drawing my face close against his temple. “I want you to do it.”
“You don’t really want a haircut.”
“I want to do this with you.”
I pick up the scissors and hand them to Jem. “Okay, but you have to make one cut. See that it’s no big deal.”
I comb out another piece of hair and hold it while Jem closes the blades around it. The hair falls to the floor, vibrant copper against the white tile.
“See?”
Jem looks at the cut hairs with a strange expression. He snorts self-deprecatingly and says, “Last year it was falling out in clumps on this floor.”
So much for easing the pain. We’ve got a long way to go.
*
The process of cutting Jem’s hair falls somewhere between making love and delivering a ten-pound baby. Halting, painful, emotional, intimate. I have to turn him away from the mirror to get the job done, because watching it happen is too difficult for him. His hands reach up for mine half a dozen times, narrowly missing the scissors each time, and he asks me to stop or slow down. He panics occasionally, and we have to stop so he can breathe through it. I need to kiss him. He needs to hear that he’s loved and that’s okay to feel unsettled by this change. Sometimes we just need to hold each other and breathe for a few minutes. By the time I have the basic shape of the haircut fleshed out, we’re both sweating and nerves are raw.
“We can stop here,” I tell him. I smooth the short hairs over his temples. I’m hoping he’ll say yes so I don’t have to watch him suffer anymore.
Jem runs his hands through his hair, feeling the shape and length. I’ve left it a little longer than it was in the photo. It seemed best—or as good as can be managed under the screwed up circumstances.
“Finish it,” he whispers.
“You sure?”
He nods.
“Okay, just give me a minute.” I’ve sweated through my shirt in the last hour, so I take mine off and borrow one of Jem’s t-shirts. Tessa’s urn ends up hanging outside the col ar, dangling from my neck when I lean in front of Jem to level his hairline. He reaches out and grips it in his sweating fingers.
“Did she give you this much shit about shaving her head?” he says. He says it with a lighthearted tone, like he’s trying to joke, but he’s on edge and his voice trembles.
“She cried,” I admit. “Loudly, for a long time. I cried too.”
Jem smiles a little bit, knowing that he’s not alone with this strange weakness. I take Tessa off and loop the chain around his neck. “Hang on to her for a while, okay?”
Sometimes that bul et-sized urn is far heavier than it looks. Other times, it can provide buoyancy unparalleled by anything else. Much like Tessa herself.
*
Ivy calls the family to dinner just as Jem is stepping out of the shower. We’re the last two to get to the table, and I’ve never heard a room go silent so quickly. Jem acts like he doesn’t notice a thing, but his ears are as red as tomatoes. His ears are actually
visible
for the first time in months.
“Holy shit,” Eric finally says, mouth full of mashed potatoes. That breaks the silence and Elise practically launches herself at Jem. “Can I play with it?” She’s already running her hands through the longer strands on top, trying to create a tidy part amid the cowlicks.
Jem pushes her back to her seat with a smile. “Eat your dinner, okay?”
Ivy laughs nervously, like she doesn’t know what to make of the haircut, and that gets everybody else going. Suddenly everyone is leaning over the table to pet his head, like they have to touch it before they believe the haircut is real. Even Celeste touches him, and all Jem can do is laugh helplessly and put up with it.
Dr. Harper raises his glass. “To rebirth—spiritual, physical, communal…” We drink to that, and finally settle into a comfortable, happy dinner. Together.
Acknowledgments
I owe thanks to the wonderful people who supported me throughout the writing and editing of this book, especially Dan and Kim. Thank you also to the people who gave me a wonderful education in letters and psychology. You have all given me so much more than I could have ever asked for.
My thanks and appreciation to the artists and bands whose songs I have mentioned in these pages for providing me with inspiration and for being the medium through which so many real people have been able to communicate the things for which there are no easy words.
About the Author
Abria Mattina is a graduate of the University of Ottawa. She holds a degree in English Literature and a certificate in Publishing from New York University. She currently resides in Ottawa, Ontario.
Visit her online at www.abriamattina.com.
Table of Contents
Table of ContentsEpilogue, **Easter, One Year Later**
