Ruby ran her fingers through Olivia’s hair, untangling, smoothing.
“Something very Cheryl Tiegs. Very late sixties. To here, maybe,” she said, sweeping Olivia’s collarbone with her fingertips. “You want to flip it up, like Mario Thomas’s hair in That Girl. Bangs are good. Long bangs.” She looked at the women. “Don’t you guys read You!?”
She took the scissors from Pam, then smiled broadly at them all in the mirror.
“I’m the neighbor’s wayward kid,” Ruby announced. “Knocked up and kicked out. Can’t go home until the baby’s been adopted and I’m skinny again. Olivia’s baby-sitting me.”
“Ruby’s moving to San Francisco,” Olivia said, staring in the mirror right at Ruby. “She’s got a future working at the Gap.”
“Their stocks are doing great,” Jill said, shrugging. “Maybe it’s a good place to go.”
“Do you guys all have kids?” Ruby asked. She kept running her fingers through Olivia’s hair. Even though they all nodded, she didn’t really pay attention. “I mean, once you’ve done this, had a baby inside you, moving around and stuff, you’re a changed person. You can’t even go back to your old self. You try to imagine your life the way it used to be before the baby. You were like a hundred pounds lighter and you got stoned all the time and stayed up all night and didn’t think about things, except in a kind of vague way, you know? Well, you can’t be that way anymore, so you imagine what your life will be like with a baby. Maybe you’ll live someplace different. Maybe you’ll get a cool job at the Gap. And your kid will wear funky hats and learn how to surf and not have to go to school or anything. But then you wonder if you can be a person like that. Or do you have to just reinvent yourself? Maybe you can’t go back to your old self and maybe you can’t keep the kid alone, so you have to become a person who had a baby and gave it away. Maybe you don’t know who to trust.” Ruby sighed. “Maybe you spent your whole life wanting a family and then when it was your turn to make one, you blew it. You acted cavalier.”
They all watched her as she talked and played with Olivia’s hair. It was as if they were all holding their breath, waiting to see where she would end up.
Ruby took a breath, then said, “I am so good at this. Cutting hair. I used to always cut my friend Betsy’s hair. Once I shaved both our heads. Bald. And my mother got so pissed off. She’s like, ‘There are women who have lost their hair from chemotherapy and you are mocking them.’ But we weren’t. It was just cool, you know?”
She started cutting, holding the ends out toward Olivia’s chin like a professional, the way Robert did at the Madison Avenue salon where Olivia paid over a hundred dollars for a haircut.
“The other thing I’m really good at is piercing,” Ruby said. “I used to, like, sit on the phone and just put needles through my ears.” She stopped long enough to show her array of earrings. “I didn’t do my nose myself, though. I had that done. And after I have the baby, I’m getting my navel pierced. My friend Betsy got hers done and it got all infected and stuff, so I figured maybe that wasn’t good for the baby, you know, so I waited. But in another month or so, I’ll be able to get my navel pierced and dye my hair some good color, maybe like platinum blond.”
Ruby stopped cutting long enough to meet their shocked stares. She smiled and started cutting again.
“Hair dye can make your baby like stupid or deformed or something, because, I mean, it goes right in your brain, through your scalp, your follicles, and all those chemicals are so toxic.”
Ruby looked right at Olivia.
“No one would adopt it then, right? If it was stupid or deformed?” she said.
“But your baby is perfect,” Olivia said. “Don’t worry.”
“So even if its mother acted stupid and like got all carried away with some fantasy about making a family when really she knew she couldn’t, she didn’t have the skills or the maturity or whatever, someone would still adopt the baby? Someone who had all those things, the skills and like, the desire and the love and stuff, maybe? Like they wouldn’t worry about stupid genes or anything?”
Olivia had won. She closed her eyes and let the pieces of her hair fall around her, let this girl cut and shape it for her.
“They wouldn’t worry about any of that,” Olivia said. “Someone will adopt your baby.”
chapter eight
Babies and Mariachi
OLIVIA WAITED IN the offices of Kurz and Beekman to see Ellen, the lawyer. The cool air-conditioned air felt so good that Olivia regretted not having brought Ruby. The girl had wanted to come, but Olivia thought she should do this herself, get her own information and ask her own questions.
An office door opened, and a man called Olivia’s name, pronouncing the Bertolucci perfectly.