"Woman in the Shampoo Chair", a Short Story

The shop was alive with the sounds of the holidays. The mood was festive. Christmas decorations filled every vacant spot on every wall. The receptionist wore a bright red hat of shiny material on her head. It had a fuzzy white ball on the top of it which tinkled every time she moved.

There were four hairdressers, two men and two women, who worked to the right of her desk. On the far wall to the left of the receptionist’s desk, three women were chattering as one received a pedicure by the one who looked Italian. They were all young and attractive.

My hairdresser walked by without seeing me, cigarette in one hand, Coke in the other. I was in no hurry to be served, so said nothing as he passed through the door to go outside for a quick break. I continued to leaf through the large book portraying various hairstyles for those over twenty, thirty, forty and fifty. I smiled to myself. Why none for over sixty or seventy?

I was a month and a half from seventy, although there were always the comments, even when I had not mentioned my age. “You know, you don’t look a day over fifty.” “Why, my mother is younger than you but she acts twice your age.”

If you’re an active senior, you’ve heard the platitudes from those younger than you. They’re such tiresome statements but those saying them don’t say them to berate you. They’re trying to be kind, as though it were necessary to try to make you feel better than they think you must feel, being so old. Maybe they even believe them. Maybe they equate sixty or seventy as looking like ninety or one hundred. Who knows? I just know I wince every time I’m required to reveal my age and someone exclaims, “Oh my God, no way can you be that old!”

I smiled when I read something on the internet a few weeks ago and just had to get on the phone to call my good friend, Callie, in Lake Worth. Without preamble, I stated, “Did you know we’re not elderly, after all?”

“What on earth are you smoking, Patsy?”

“You know I don’t smoke. I was just reading a new report on the internet. It said we’re now classified as middle-aged until we’re eighty. So, old girl, we’ve got another ten years to go. Well, at least, I have. You’ve another fourteen.”

She laughed. “Are you serious? Did it really say that?”

“Honest to God, Cal; it did. I kinda like it, myself. I don’t feel old, anyway. Well, at least not if I don’t look too closely at store windows and avoid dressing room mirrors.”

That was a few weeks ago. Now, I sat in the beauty shop as my hairdresser, Jerome, talked on his cell phone and smoked his cigarette outside in the breezy patio of the restaurant next door to the shop tucked in the middle of the mini-mall off Simonton Street. All the conversations in the shop were muted and mingling with the chorus of Winter Wonderland.

The afternoon was a bit cool for Key West but we weren’t in for anything resembling a winter wonderland. Even so, the air had a festive holiday feeling and I was drawn into it as were most other people around the island this last week before the holiday.

“Patsy?” Jerome had to call twice to get my attention as I was thinking of another gift I wanted to get my youngest granddaughter. “I’m ready for you now. Come on back,” he said with a smile.

Jerome is about five, eight, slender with black short wavy hair and dark brown eyes. He doesn’t laugh much but has an easy smile. For some reason, he reminds me of some of the photographs I’ve seen in travel magazines of young Hawaiian surfers, despite the lack of a more muscular physique. He is also one of Key West’s best female impersonators.

He led the way through the crowded shop to his station and had me sit before his cheval mirror. He had just seen me two nights before when we were in the club across the street from my little house on Petronia. That’s usually the only time I go over because I adore the impersonator who sings on Sundays. She has been dubbed The Girl of a Thousand Voices and although I never counted them all, she can sure sound like any female singer I ever heard. Her Etta James is my favorite but her specialty is Janis Joplin and she does entire shows around Janis in the northeast.

Jerome and I had discussed in detail what he was going to do with my short grey and white hair, while the singer took her break, so he already knew how I wanted it without asking. But, I suppose so he wouldn’t make a mistake since we females are known to change our minds at the drop of a hat, he asked me again how I wanted him to trim it. Or perhaps he’d had one too many drinks Sunday night to remember. It didn’t matter. I explained again. Then, he took me over to the shampoo chair and took his time giving me a relaxing shampoo and rinse.

Afterwards, as he was trimming my hair, another woman walked in and was directed by Roberto, the other male hairdresser, to sit in the nearest shampoo chair. She sat there for fifteen minutes while he finished his other client. Like me, the woman was around seventy, had white hair and there were bags under her light blue eyes. She was pale and looked tired. Her mouth was drawn downward by marionette lines and the area from her cheeks to her jaws was puckered with wrinkles. Just like mine.

Since my chair faced hers, I smiled at her when she glanced up. She gave me a quick half-smile and looked away. She seemed almost embarrassed to acknowledge me. I understood. Just as that cheval mirror reminded me, looking at me reminded her of that elusive youth we once owned and never dreamed would disappear one day.

The hairdresser working on the young lady to the front and left of the woman in the shampoo chair was not much older than twenty-five, if that. She was petite with the sculptured shape of one who, if she were in her forties, would work out regularly to keep it. As young as she was, she probably did not have to work out to look so fit but like most intelligent young people today, she probably did exercise on a regular basis. I admired them for that. Maybe it will result in a generation without the weight gain and un-toned muscles of many in my own generation and I’m sorry to say, although I am not obese by any means, I am one of them. The young lady’s hair was jet black and worn in the pixie style the two of us first saw on Audrey Hepburn in the ’50s. Her face was slender and perfect. As was her client’s, whose own hair was a lovely light brown and flowed from either side of her forehead to below her shoulders.

The scene was the same at each of the other stations. Even Jerome and Roberto were between their twenties and thirties. Handsome young gay men, both were serious about their work. Neither talked as they attended to clients. Unlike many other women, I didn’t mind that at all. In fact, I preferred it. I did not need conversation while my hair was being cut, especially after a memorable negative experience.

On that occasion many years ago in another small city, I was getting a haircut in a new shop while the chatty hairdresser held her phone between her ear and her hunched-up shoulder as she carried on a conversation with her daughter. This was before the advent of the cell or portable phone. She was oblivious to the phone cord dangling in front of my face. The conversation became heated when her daughter insisted she was going to have her boyfriend come over before her mother came home from work. As the hairdresser’s voice rose in anger, I watched in horror as her scissors slashed through my bangs, making them shorter on one side than the other. When I gasped, her eyes widened and she told her daughter she had to hang up. By necessity, I ended up with a spiky look long before it became popular with young women. And, needless to say, despite her apology, it was the first and last time I was in her shop.

Until Roberto started shampooing her hair, the woman in the shampoo chair gave me furtive glances, as though to look too long, too direct, might mirror her own flaws. We were in the same boat. Neither of us felt a need to camouflage our obvious lack of youth, yet there was always that strange feeling as we sat in the stark light of a hairdressers’ shop. That feeling of being out of place in a world of youthful perfection. The feeling of wanting to look anywhere except in a tall cheval mirror or at another face lined with years of living.

Later in the evening, I was shopping for a few groceries in Fausto’s on Fleming when a woman came around the corner too quickly and we nearly collided. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s what I get for having my mind on Christmas shopping for my grandbaby while I’m supposed to be picking up something for dinner.”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was the woman from the shampoo chair. Her eyes were bright and she was laughing. There were patches of pink in her cheeks. There was no sign of embarrassment as she caught my eye. I laughed with her and we stood there in aisle three talking about Christmas hams and the best brand of wine to serve with them, of daughters and granddaughters who were coming next week to share the holidays.

“By the way, I like the way Jerome cut your hair today. I think I might have Roberto try that on mine the next time I’m in the shop. It looks easier than the way I wear it now.”

“It is easy,” I admitted, “especially when you’re riding a trike all over town most of the day. It’s tossed every which way by the wind, so I figured I might as well give in and have a tousled look all the time.”

She smiled and despite the lines and puckering, it was an enchanting smile. “You too, eh? I ride mine instead of driving the car, too, and it does wreak havoc on the hair. I never thought of getting it cut into short layers so it wouldn’t matter which way the wind tossed it during my bike rides. Yeah, I think I’ll talk with Roberto about it next time.”

On safe ground now, she was comfortable acknowledging me and our island mode of transportation. Even though there were young people all around us in the grocery store, we never noticed they were different from us. We were not sitting across from each other or looking into a beautician’s tall mirror, with the harsh light beaming down upon us, emphasizing our every flaw while it enhanced the features of those young people sitting or working around us.

I understood her so well. Some might think it was vanity that caused her to shrivel into herself in that crowded beauty shop. From experience, I knew better. It was that long silent moment of being forced to focus upon the flawless beauty she once was and never would be again this side of a surgeon’s knife. And for that long moment in time, she could not get beyond the sadness of her own lost youth.

“My name’s Lila Collins,” she said all of a sudden. “Would you like to go out for dinner this evening after we’ve taken our groceries home?”

“What a nice idea. Yes, I think I would like that very much. I’m Patsy Heath, by the way. It’s so nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too. Do you like the Westin? I know it’s probably packed with tourists this week, but I enjoy sitting out along the water there in this crisp cool air. And the food’s always good.”

“That sounds like a great idea. I usually just grab a bite at Square One if I go out for dinner, at all. Since I live off Truman and Elizabeth, I never think of going to that part of the island, even for sunset, which I usually spend at White Street Pier. Yes, let’s meet there.”

We were at the check-out counter now and the cashier was finished with her, so she said, “Wonderful. I’ll see you there then. I should be home and finished putting these things away by six-thirty. Is seven too early?”

“Seven is fine, thank you. I’ll see you there.”

“Yes you will. I’m looking forward to it. Thank you, Patsy. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone to talk with during dinner. I know we’ll have a great time. ‘Bye now.”

“I’m sure we will. Thank you for inviting me. I’ll see you soon.”

With a smile, she waved after she unlocked her trike, with her two bags of groceries in the baskets and started up the street. That gloomy moment spent over lost youth was tucked well into the past, where it would stay until the next time she is seated in the shampoo chair under harsh revealing light.

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Peggy Butler is a former Key West resident and author of the novel, Starfish published under the pen name Peg Gregory.