Standing outside Mar-nee’s salon, I feel suddenly sick with nerves. Susan’s phone has been turned off since I got here and I know why. She knows I want to talk to her. David said rather nervously this morning that she had gone into the salon with Mar-nee. Work experience and painting the odd set of nails is all well and good, but no way is she leaving school to work there full-time.
The salon is off South Frederick Street, on a corner. It’s painted bubblegum pink and the name Mar-nee’s hangs in small lettering in a pretty daisy-type font above the door. It’s much more subtle than I’d imagined. The slat blinds are all down, so I can’t see in. Breathing deeply, I fix my bag up on my shoulder, tighten the bobble in my high ponytail and I push open the pink door.
A bell tings. I have to push through a load of pink and white strings now, and when I resurface it’s like I’m in paradise. Dipped lighting. Whale music plays lowly and candles burn brightly. Jo Malone. Everywhere. Grapefruit and mango and nectarine filling my nostrils. Pink flamingos and deep-blue waterfalls adorn the walls. I hate to say it, but it’s like walking into another world. A very pink world. Picture frames with price lists and special offers are ballet-slipper pink and scattered all over the four walls. Fuchsia lampshades protect low-watt bulbs; cushions are salmon pink. On the floor, a spongy rosewood-pink carpet dissolves under my feet.
“Can I help you?” a young girl asks from behind the desk.
Walking over to her, I ask politely, “Is . . . is Susan here, please?”
“Sure, she’s just in back with a client. Please take a seat and I’ll tell her you are here. Can I have your name, please?” The pretty girl’s name is embroidered across her pink uniform, but it is crumpled because she’s sitting down so I can’t read it properly. Could be Tara? Tanya, maybe? Tinkerbell? I don’t know. I refocus on what she’s just said to me.
“No . . . Susan Downey, she doesn’t work here. She’s a kid . . . She – she lives with Mar-nee?” I stutter a bit. The pain is still physical in my stomach every time I say those words. The girl looks at me as her phone rings out, and she gestures with orange-traffic-cone nails for me to take a seat.
“Good morning, Mar-nee’s salon, Tabitha speaking, how can I assist?” she singsongs into the receiver as she frantically types on a hidden keyboard. I’m reminded of airports in old movies when check-in workers typed into the system for any available flights. Sitting into a huge white leather massage chair, it automatically kicks in. I groan as it kneads the tight knots in my back.
“Welcome to Mar-nee’s! Here you go: takes the edge off.” An older lady also in a pink uniform hands me a pink bubbly drink. “Don’t worry, it’s all fruit juices, dear.” She winks dramatically at me. A long, slow, make-no-mistake-about-it-I-am-winking-at-you wink. “Now then, let’s fix you up. Saturday mornings were invented to get those feet up after a long, hard week. Especially for us women. We are the hardest-working species in the world, right, dear?” That wink again, and she holds her finger on a button. The bottom of the chair slides out and she lifts my feet up. I’m horizontal. Vera is her name, I see now. She pops a pink straw into my drink and pats me softly on the head. Taking a sip, I admit that it tastes wonderful and I close my eyes as the whale music washes over me in the massage chair.
“Mom?”
Back to reality. I try to sit up.
“Mom? What are you doing?” I hear the blind panic in Susan’s voice. She leans across me and shuts off the chair. At least I think its Susan, because she called me Mom in Susan’s voice. My daughter’s dark hair is scraped back into a tight bun on top of her head, she is wearing the pink Mar-nee’s uniform with her name in the daisy lettering across it, and on her feet are simple white plimsolls. She looks just like one of Mar-nee’s employees, but it’s her face. I narrow my eyes. She’s so completely plastered in make-up and lengthy false eyelashes that I honestly barely recognise her.
“What are you doing?” I struggle to find a surface to rest the drink on and she takes it out of my hand.
“Keep your voice down please,” she tells me as she turns and puts the drink in a holder. “I’m at work, Mom. Why are you here? When did you get back?” She takes my arm and moves me to the edge of the salon.
“What do you mean you’re at work? Why are you dressed like an employee? I thought you were doing some work experience, that’s all. You can’t actually work here full-time!” I can’t stop staring at her.
“I’ve been working here since I turned sixteen, Mom. I earn my own money, and I’ve saved nearly five hundred euros. I’m saving for hair extensions and a limited-edition pink GHD.” She looks down to her feet.
“You have amazing hair,” I say, for some bizarre reason. She doesn’t answer me. “Why didn’t you tell me you worked here?” is all I can say.
“Because we knew how you would react. But now I’m sixteen I’m legally allowed to have a job. I love what I do, Mom.”
I know my face isn’t exactly supportive or proud, and it’s not the fact she’s working that upsets me: it’s the lies they all spin me. I feel cheated, and a fool. I deserve the truth at the very least. David should have told me.
“How do you work with those eyelashes?” I say before my mouth gets approval from my brain. She’s like a child of the sixties. A Mary Quant poster. Her eyes roll.
“I’m really busy, Mom. I’m in the middle of a Brazilian.”
“You wax now? I thought you could only do nails?” I’m astounded.
“No. Mar-nee taught me how to wax. And if you don’t mind, my client is in a compromising position and he’s got a wedding to get to—”
“He?” I interrupt her with an unexpected shout and I know my eyes are all but popping out of my head.
“Shush!” Both Tabitha the receptionist and Susan hiss at me at the same time.
“Yes, Mom, he . . . Men do get waxed too, you know.” She rolls her heavily made-up eyes at me.
My mouth hangs open. I am appalled and mad as hell. “You are only sixteen!” I grit my teeth as Mar-nee appears.
“Do we have a problem here, Courtney?” She’s wearing blue surgical gloves, as though she’s just delivered a baby cow. “Perhaps we can take this into my office. Tabitha, can you bring Mrs Nicola Pawley a Buck’s Fizz and tell her I’ll be ten minutes. I’ve some cooling gel on her now. This way, please.”
I follow her out the back into a small office. It’s stuffed with supplies of all sorts and a pink laptop sits in the corner. There are two seats. Susan sits, as does Mar-nee. I stand.
“I . . . I don’t think it’s appropriate for my sixteen-year-old daughter to wax the penis of a man!” I say.
“Is that so,” Mar-nee says.
“That is so!” I reiterate, clenching my teeth together.
“Well actually, Courtney, the penis doesn’t grow hairs so much. It’s the surrounding area.”
“Shut up, Mar-nee, you know what I mean!” I spit at her.
“Oh, Mom, you are so embarrassing . . . please go.” Susan shuts her eyes tight.
“I’m calling your father right now!” I grab in my bag for my phone.
“How very sexist you are, Courtney.” Mar-nee tut-tuts.
“This has got nothing to do with being sexist, Mar-nee, this is to do with being totally inappropriate,” I hiss again.
“Human bodies are nature, chicken, it’s all natural. Why make it out to be something sexual when it’s not?”
“Because it’s inappropriate!” I shout now.
“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, but we don’t. And could you please respect our place of work and keep your voice down?” Mar-nee asks me quietly.
“I can’t believe you, Mar-nee. Why can’t you let her be a child? Why are you assisting in her trying to grow up way too fast? It’s wrong of you . . . very wrong.” I open the office door. “I’m calling David.” I hit his number on speed dial and it rings. “David!”
I turn my back on them as Mar-nee puts her hand firmly on the small of my back and moves me outside.
“David, did you know Susan is actually working in Mar-nee’s, and not only that: she is waxing men’s private parts!” I say, walking away from her through the strings and out the main door. Mar-nee shuts the door behind me, and I’m sure I hear her turn the lock.
“I did. They are all just bodies, Courtney, no need to sexualise the treatment . . . Just chillax,” he tells me.
“That’s not what I’m doing . . .” Then I stop and turn. Mar-nee has raised the slat blinds and is looking out at me. I raise my middle finger to her and keep walking, heart thumping in my chest. I swallow hard.
“David, I can’t believe that you truly think it’s okay for Susan to be doing this job,” I pant.
“Well, I do,” he says.
“How could you?” I have to stop and catch my breath, so I lean against a pillar.
“Just because you seem to think everything to do with the male body is grotesque, doesn’t mean other people do!” He raises his voice now.
“That’s not true!” I protest. I certainly don’t think Tony Becker’s body is grotesque. I shiver.
“Well, that’s how you made me feel about my body. For years. Look, I’ve a leaky boiler here and an old-age pensioner who is literally standing over my every move. Susan’s saving money. We are teaching her the value of working for your own money – we don’t give her pocket money. Mar-nee went to work when she was fifteen, and look what she built up for herself! Her own successful business. Mar-nee is a businesswoman, Courtney, whether you like to admit that or not. Personally, as Susan’s father, I truly believe we are setting good moral practices for her. Courtney, we are teaching her how to survive in the real world. We are teaching her how to be independent.”
“It’s not the fact she has a job . . . Don’t do this to me, and don’t make me feel like I’m totally overreacting!” I squeeze my fist tightly around the phone.
“Well, you are. You really just need to chillax,” he tells me quietly.
“David, if you tell me to chillax one more bloody time, I swear to God I will pull every blade of my hair out!” I pinch my cheek. It’s childish, I know, but my temper is up.
“Courtney, why don’t you want me to be happy? Why are you always causing trouble? It’s two zero one seven. We co-parent. It’s always going to be tougher. We were brave enough to avoid the courts and Susan more or less rolled with the new way her life was going. Mar-nee loves her. Mar-nee is truly a good person, but you just won’t give her a chance,” he tells me.
“She makes you look like an idiot, David!” It’s all coming out now as I lean against my supportive lamp post on a warm Saturday afternoon. “Mar-nee knows what she’s doing with Susan: she’s stealing my daughter because she doesn’t have one of her own! I’m betting being pregnant wouldn’t have suited her, with a growing belly and stretch marks and the occasional unintended wee!” Oh, what am I saying? I grimace at my own words.
David says nothing for a few moments, and just when I’m sure he’s hung up, he speaks so quietly that I have to press the phone hard into my ear and put my index finger in the other to hear him properly.
“If you must know, Mar-nee had cervical cancer when she was twenty-five years old and had to have a full hysterectomy. Just like you at that age, she desperately wanted children of her own. But she had to just pick herself up and get on with it. You never wanted me, but she does, and I think that’s where you hold the biggest grudge!” David’s voice rises at the end of the sentence. He is very annoyed now.
“I’m sorry . . .”
“Oh please, what do you care?”
“I do care about people’s lives and feelings, David, you know that . . . And let’s not pretend we never had any good times. We did,” I remind him.
“From the day you fell pregnant with Susan, you pushed me out. You didn’t want to know any more. I don’t really remember any good times, I just remember fighting to keep my place in that family. I remember feeling lonely and isolated and constantly petrified that I’d wake up one morning and you would ask me to leave, or that you would just take my daughter and go. That’s what I remember.”
“I’d never have left you,” I tell him. But I’m not sure that it’s true.
“Maybe, maybe not . . . but I am where I am now, so why can’t you just do your own thing and leave us alone?”
“Because you are Susan’s father. You need to think about that when you’re swanning around Aldi in your three-sizes-too-small jeans!” I’m honest with him now.
“Susan loves me for who I am,” he preaches.
“People are laughing at you, David, do you realise that?” I hear how mean I sound, but I’m speaking the truth: they are.
“Who cares? I am who I am,” he tells me.
“But that isn’t you! That’s my whole point! Mar-nee changed you! Can you not see that?” I’m exasperated.
“No, Courtney, maybe Mar-nee accepted me,” he says slowly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, confused.
“You wanted a suitable husband and father for your baby, you never wanted me . . . In fact, it was you who changed me. You always criticised my clothes in the early days, so much so that I just ended up wearing black all the time so you would shut up. Don’t you remember the day we met? At that event you were working at when I was bidding on a pro-golf lesson – which, by the way, you pretended to love. I was wearing my skintight lime-green jeans and black skinny-rib polo neck!”
Flashback. So he was. I just thought it was a golf look. I really don’t remember telling him I didn’t like it.
“I’d always been flamboyant and carefree, but you knocked it all out of me. I was so miserable in our marriage, and not because you are a bad person . . . but because you never loved me,” he tells me with a strong voice. Stronger than I’ve ever known him to be.
“I . . . I thought I did.”
“You didn’t, and I should have gone years ago. It was Mar-nee who told me to talk to you . . . to tell you all this . . . but I never seemed to be able to do it to you.”
“So you just both decided to start an affair.” I might as well say it, if he’s making himself out to be Mr Hard-Done-By.
“It really was love at first sight, Courtney. It was like we’d known each other all our lives . . . But no, you are right: I should have talked to you first and moved out before I started anything with Mar-nee. But you see . . . deep down, I knew you didn’t really care.”
And he was right. I didn’t really care. How selfish of me. I look up at the big yellow double-decker bus passing me by. “I’m sorry, David,” I say when the thunderous sound from the engine dies away. In its trail is a long rod of smoke and the smell of sulphur.
“Look, it’s fine. I have moved on. I’m completely happy. I don’t want you to think that Susan living with us is in any way malicious, because I swear on her life it isn’t. She’s growing up. She’s changing. You want her to stay a child for ever,” he says.
What’s the point? I think now. I can shout and scream till I’m blue in the face, but at the end of the day he’s right. I push myself off the lamp post and walk wearily towards my car.
“I’m not back here just to talk to Susan, David. I came to tell her about an opportunity that’s come my way. I’d better tell you too. I’ve been offered a chef job in a restaurant in St Ives. Claire’s investing in it.”
“Oh, Courtney, that’s fantastic!” He exudes happiness for me. Good for him. I have to let go.
“If things work out, I want to stay there after the summer. You’re right: Susan has her own life right now. She can come and live with me whenever she wants, but right now, I’m doing this for me.” I unlock my car, which is parked on the roadside, and sit into the driver’s seat.
“I’m proud of you,” he says now in an Oprah-type voice. I find it condescending, though I really don’t want to. What is wrong with me? He’s being so nice. I start the engine and the phone switches over to the hands-free. Indicating, I pull out into the busy Saturday Dawson Street traffic.
“This couldn’t have worked out any better,” my ex-husband continues.
“Well, it could have really, David . . . My daughter might have wanted to come with me.” I stab my foot on the brake as someone cuts in front of me on a speeding, noise-polluting motorbike.
“She doesn’t want to leave Dublin. It’s not personal, you must see that?”
“I think it is – I think Mar-nee’s turned her against me,” I reply.
“Oh chillax, don’t be a numpty!”
“It’s what I think. So I’ll talk to Susan myself, if you don’t mind, but I wanted to tell you myself. I’ll be in touch, obviously.”
Tears pierce my eyes as I drive towards Dun Laoghaire. I know he’s right, of course. Yes, I have to let go of my old life. Susan will always remain the one true love of my life, but like I told Claire, she needs me to be a role model now. When I talk to her, I want to make it clear that I will always be there for her.
Driving home, I recall the last sixteen years. It all. From the thrilling blue line on the pregnancy test to the overwhelming love and joy in the delivery ward to the first day of primary school. Scenarios play out in my head: the two of us cooking in the kitchen and laughing, all the way up to this present day of her standing, staring at me in her work uniform at Mar-nee’s. Then something occurs to me. It strikes me hard and I expend a long, slow breath. Not for one second in those last sixteen years of memories did I see David. He wasn’t there. Yet he had been there. I’d ignored him.
I find his number in recently dialled and I call him again.
“Yes, Courtney?” he answers, sounding somewhat despondent that it’s me again.
“David, I’m so sorry. For everything. Forgive me. I really am happy that you have found love. You won’t get any more hassle from me, I promise you that. You’re a good guy, David, and an amazing father. Susan is a very lucky girl.” It feels good to say it.
“Thank you. That’s so nice,” he says.
“I mean it,” I say.
“Mar-nee tells me you gave her the finger.” There is a light tone to his voice.
“I shall apologise,” I say.
“Oh, no need. Mar-nee thought it was hilarious! She said you two have crossed the line and she’s not afraid of you any more. You flipping the bird humanised you in her head.” He laughs.
“Afraid of me?” I ask. Why on earth would Mar-nee be afraid of me?
“Oh yeah, Mar-nee was terrified of you. You were always so cold and she thinks you look down on her intellectually, but she just told me anyone who gives the finger like that is a legend! She’s so funny, Mar-nee.” He laughs harder now.
“I’m no intellectual, David, you know that!” I tell him as I turn into the driveway. “Oh!” I shout.
“What?” he asks.
“Oh . . . It’s Susan. She’s sitting on the wall of the house,” I say, amazed.
“Be calm with her!” His anxiety rises, and I smile.
“It’s fine, don’t worry . . . You really need to chillax, David.” I laugh as I cut the call and kill the engine. I’m so ready for this moment.