Free Lady Parts by Andrea Martin Page B

child does,
You’re perfect just the way you are.
But for my dad, perfection got you nowhere. Imperfection is what pushed you to success. It’s what made you who you were.
    I handed Pascal a page I had ripped out of a magazine showing a twenty-five-year-old model with platinum blonde hair.
    “Do you like this, Pascal?” I asked. “I don’t like my hair. I want to do something different.” Two weeks earlier I had turned sixty-five.
    Pascal glanced at the photo.
    “
Mais oui,
every haircut looks better blonde. It will not look good on you. Now go get changed. I’m going to fix your hair. I’m going to make you younger. I’m going to make the colour right for you. Trust me and forget about everything. You are going to feel much better after my work. It is your birthday is why you feel that way. Is why everything bothers you. Every time you get a birthday, you feel fat and ugly. Everybody does.”
    “Do you think I’m crazy to fly to Atlanta to get my hair cut, Pascal?
    “
Mais non.
You’re lovely and we take care of you. And it’s an investment on your beauty.”
    “Why do you think women come from all over the world to see you, Pascal?”
    “Because I do something with love and passion that nobody else does.”
    “You certainly do, my darling. There’s no one like you.”
    “And I adore women,” he continued.
    After Pascal cut and coloured my hair, he held up a mirror for me to peruse his handiwork.
    “It looks beautiful,” I said.
    “
You
look beautiful,” he replied as he gently and erotically brushed the little pieces of hair off my neck and back.
    “Oh, Pascal,” I said coyly. “You are bad. You are such a flirt. See you in eight weeks.”
    “Oui, ma chérie. Au revoir.”
    As I was boarding the flight to New York that night I called a friend and asked if she wanted to have dinner when I got back to the city.
    “Where are you?” she asked.
    “I’m in Atlanta,” I said unapologetically. “I just got my hair done and it looks fabulous.”
    “Atlanta?” she asked, surprised.
    “Yup, Atlanta. Flew here this morning. I know it’s crazy.” I was laughing now. “But that’s the way it is. That’s who I am. I fly to Atlanta to get my hair cut.”
    “Well, I can’t wait to see the new you.”
    “Fabulous,” I said. “And I can’t wait to show you.”

Mommy
    Christmas Eve, 1959
    “‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas, Let your heart be light …’”
    Mommy is singing. She is getting dressed for a party she is about to throw for twenty guests. We are in her bedroom. She wears only pantyhose and high heels as she wiggles around her room. I am lying on her bed, watching her. I’m twelve.
    “Andrea, pass me my bra, sweetheart.”
    She continues singing.
    “‘From now on, our troubles will be out of sight …’”
    Mommy studies herself in the full-length mirror.
    “My breasts look great,” she says. “They are definitely my best feature.”
    I feel shy. Something about watching my mother parade around topless feels inappropriate, and yet I can’t keep myeyes off her body. I ask my mom a question, but she doesn’t respond. She’s busy looking at herself. She turns sideways and holds in her stomach.
    “Sybil Martin,” she says out loud, “you are one classy lady.”
    “Mommy, can I ask you something? Mommy, are you listening?”
    “Honey, go fix me another drink, and we’ll talk about anything you want. V.O. Manhattan in a snifter, shaken not stirred. Oh, what am I saying, you know how to make it. Hurry, the party starts at seven.”
    My mother would have been eighty-five years old today if she had lived past her seventieth birthday. My mother died from a very painful lung cancer in January 1993. I’m not sure to this day that I mourned her death properly. I have an idea of how children should behave when one of their parents dies. And my behaviour was nowhere near what my expectations were. I have learned since my mom’s death that everyone mourns differently,