What If It's Too Late?

Big day on Saturday.  I got to take a walk.  I got beautified. I was out of the house for hours.  Blonding me alone took over three hours.  The drive there and back took just under an hour.  The walk and the shower took an hour, too.  Then, after getting beautified, I stopped for a cup of coffee as my out of town friend said she was getting her hair done at noon, too, and maybe we could meet up for a minute after.  So, yea, Saturday.  

My beautician has become a talker.  Sitting in her home with her baby all day has left her with a need.  I know the feeling.  Out of my own isolation, I have found myself talking, too.  Sometimes I catch myself, but usually too late.  I realize I've overshared or just said too much.  I am, by nature, a listener.  At least I was when I lived in more normal times.  

Yesterday, though. . . I was in the listener's role again.  

When I got to her home studio, there was a woman there, another client who she coifed before me.  It turns out that the woman was something of a self-proclaimed psychic or something.  She had read my hairdresser's cards, I was told later, and the woman had given her all sorts of bad news.  

"Why would she do that?" my beautician asked.  "If I read someone's cards and there were bad things, I certainly wouldn't tell them."

Now this sort of talk flabbergasts me.  I love palm reading materials and Tarot cards and tea leaves and throwing the bones--all of it!

In movies.  

But that anyone believes in that stuff is difficult for me to understand.  It is not "beyond" me, and I think that humanity, en masse, is dumb enough for mysticism, but when I know someone personally, it is another story entirely.  

"I got fascinated with Tarot cards after college," I told her.  "I had a very beautiful deck and read several books on how to use them.  I liked it.  It was like writing a short story from a set of situations you were handed, sort of like writing a romance novel.  When I was in grad school, everyone wanted to write a Harlequin novel.  They were the most sold book series in history and you got paid good money.  They would give you a set of characters and a simple plot and you were left to write the novel.  That is sort of how I saw Tarot.  The cards gave you situations and characters that you strung together and interpreted to make a narrative.  I thought I was good enough at it that I could do card readings in bars for drinks, but I never did.  That was just another romantic conceit on my part.  I wouldn't put too much stock in anyone's reading.  You could throw the same cards with someone else and get a different reading.  It's all bullshit."

Logic be damned, however, if logic it was.  

"But why would she tell me bad things?"

"Maybe because she is unhappy."

"She used to be, but she got better.  She just spent $80,000 to go to one of those rich people clinics to get well.  They got her off Xanax.  She had a real problem.  Now she's 100% better."

You can easily imagine my reaction.  I bit my tongue hard.  

"Well. . . ."

"I had her throw some cards here today, and they all were good."

I could only stare, mouth a bit agape but silent.  Then. . . "it's all bullshit."

Yea, I know. . . a real winning argument. I was using the old noggin.  But how do you argue with hoodoo and pentagrams and magic potions?  How do you argue with the blood of a rooster on somebody's grave at midnight?  

"So. . . um. . . how's the baby?"

It was after noon when her son came outside to dribble a basketball.  He was practicing his between the legs crossover dribble.  

My beautician stepped outside, and I heard her say, "Good.  You are up."

"He's got that crossover dribble working," I said.  

"I'm taking him to an AAU basketball tryout tomorrow," she said.  "He won't make the team, but it is good to take him.  He's getting private lessons."

She's a short Jew.  The baby daddy isn't tall.  

"You know how tall he's going to be, right?"

"I know." 

Three hours and a little more.  When she was done, I was blond again.  Blonde.  

Oh. . . I forgot the first part of this, but I'm in no mood to go back and rewrite it all to fit it in where it should be, so I'll just stick it here.  The first thing she said when she saw me was, "You've lost weight."  I hadn't seen her for seven weeks and I'd been on dry January since the day after Christmas, so that is what I told her.  

"I liked you better before," she said.  WTF?  That really should have gone at the front of the story, just before the part when she wonders why someone would tell you bad news!  I looked in the mirror and began to worry.  Maybe I wasn't losing weight from Dry January.  What if it was too late?  Maybe I had some condition.  Maybe I was dying.  I still had a big old belly.  What if?

Yea, man, she really fucked me up.  

So when I got in the car, I looked in the mirror.  I could see my cheekbones.  I looked at my arms.  They seemed skinny.  Fuck yea. . . I was dying.  

Before I started the car, I texted my friend.

"I'm done.  You?"

I didn't get a text back, so I stopped at the cafe and got a con leche to wait.  While I waited, I took a selfie to see how I looked.  It could be true.  It might not be the no drinking thing.  I finished my coffee and still had not heard from my friend.  I needed to get back to my mother's, so I sent her the selfie and said I had to go.  Then the phone rang.  It was her.  No mention of meeting, just general catching up.  We will meet for coffee on Monday.  

I was not going to cook.  I was cooked out, so I asked my mother what takeout she would prefer.  There was a newish bbq place that opened just up the road.  Pulled pork sandwiches.  I had Mac and Cheese that my midwest friend had sent in the care package.  I decided to throw in a small order of ribs.  

It was not a good meal.  It was less than that.  

"Now's when I would like a big scotch," I told my mother.  It was true.  

I had tried to get my mother to watch "American Primeval" the night before, but she was not interested.  I decided that night I would subscribe to Paramount so I could watch "Land Man."  Maybe she'd like that.  

She didn't.  She left the room halfway through the first episode.  I confess it angered me a bit, but her being in the room did as well.  When I watch something, I watch it.  Everything is still.  Not my mother.  She opens bottles, looks for things. . . she is frenetic the entire time.  She is used to watching the same shows over and over, I guess, so she needn't pay attention.  Something new just isn't her thing.  So I was glad she took her distraction elsewhere, but kind of pissed she couldn't watch the show, too.  When the episode was over I got up and went to where she sat.  

"You didn't like the show?"

"There's too much cussing."

"It's the new language," I said.

"It's just constant."  

She wasn't feeling well.  She doesn't feel well most of the time now.  She hurts.  I told her to take a Tramadol.  She did and went to bed.  I watched another episode in peace.  

This morning.  

"How'd you sleep, ma?"

Dragging her feet down the hallway, she mumbled, "I didn't.  It was a horrible night.  I hurt all over."

She now makes little moaning sounds with every other breath.  What to do is beyond me.  I have no real way to help her.  The anxiety of it is beginning to eat me up.  There is little joy here now.  There is only pain and waiting.  My music, new shows. . . it doesn't help.  The food I cook, maybe.  

Tennessee and his wife have invited me to meet them for lunch today at noon.  I might go.  I feel bad about it, though.  How can I go have fun and leave my mother alone in pain and misery?  This is the question haunting me.  

"You've got to take care of yourself, too," people tell me.  I guess so.  

But Jesus Christ. . . maybe it's too late.  I can see my cheekbones.  Who the fuck knows?