“MO!”
Mrs. Petrone, power-walking past, paused to unhook the earbuds of her iPod. She was always testing new beauty products on herself, and today her hair was gelled up into a sort of picket fence. In the heat, her round face was shiny and pink as her track pants.
“Isn’t it about time for a visit to my shop?” The way she eyed Mo’s hair, Mo knew it wasn’t really a question.
The next thing Mo knew, she was in Mrs. Petrone’s kitchen, which smelled like strong coffee and coconut shampoo, not to mention was delectably air-conditioned. For as long as Mo could remember, Mrs. Petrone had cut her hair. Her cheery kitchen had shelves full of cookbooks and a special album of cards and letters from the grateful families of people whose hair and makeup she’d styled at the House of Wills. “You made Grandma resemble an angel,” one letter said. “We hardly recognized Uncle George, and that is a total compliment,” read another.
“Business is slow,” she told Mo, lining up her bottles and combs and scissors. “People don’t die in the summer if they can help it. Winter, that’s a different story.”
When she washed your hair, Mrs. P was more or less a hypnotist. You never had to be nervous she’d dig into your scalp, or tug too hard, or do anything but massage firmly yet gently, so before you knew it, she’d thrown you into a sort of trance.
“Bella, bella,” crooned Mrs. Petrone. “You’ve got the best hair on the street-don’t tell anyone I said so.”
She didn’t ask Mo how she wanted her hair cut. She knew-not too short, not too long, just right. Mo’s eyes drifted shut. The chair cupped her like a big, warm hand. Mrs. Petrone talked and talked, her voice a lullaby. Murmuring how when she was a young girl, her hair was so long she could sit on it, how every night her mother brushed it one hundred strokes, how those were some of the happiest moments of her life.
“That was a lifetime ago, but I remember it like it happened yesterday,” she said. “But oh, don’t ask me where I put my keys!”
She set down her scissors and pulled the lid off a big red tin on the counter. A plate of golden pizzelles, dusted with sugar, appeared on the table in front of Mo. The cookies were thin and crisp, fragrant with vanilla. All at once, Mo felt sick.
“Go on-I remember how you like them.”
But here Mrs. Petrone remembered all wrong. Mo could no more eat a pizzelle than a fried worm. Just the sight of one filled her ears with the terrible wrenching wail of sirens.
Sirens! They blared on Paradise all the time. Mo had hardly noticed them that summer afternoon. She’d been too happy, thinking of ice cream, imagining her mother’s smile when she saw the rocks Mo had collected.
That was almost the worst part. It was too terrible to think that she’d heard those sirens and never guessed. Heard them and ignored them, blissful and ignorant as a baby. That afternoon, someone drew a cruel line down the center of the world and left Mo on the wrong side.
Now she gripped the arms of her chair.
“Dottie’s the one who loves pizzelles,” she managed to say.
“Dottie looks more like your mother every day. That head of hair, wild and red as a little fox!”
Mo couldn’t remember how she and Dottie had wound up at Mrs. Petrone’s that afternoon-had their father brought them here, after the hospital called? Had Mrs. Petrone come and fetched them, squashing Dottie to her big, cushiony chest? Sometimes Mo thought that, if only he’d brought them to Da’s instead, things would have turned out differently. Da would have warded It off, she’d never have allowed It to cross her threshold.
But Da’s husband had died. Her daughter had gone away and not come back. Four of her toes had wound up in the hospital incinerator. Maybe even Da couldn’t have protected them.
“You bring that little sister over, and between the two of us we’ll hold her down and give her a nice cut.”
Dottie hadn’t understood. She’d watched cartoons till her eyes fell out and eaten one pizzelle after another, scattering sugary golden crumbs everywhere. Mo had sat frozen on Mrs. Petrone’s scratchy living-room couch, the pockets of her shorts heavy with stones.
Because Mo and her mother were going to paint those stones Mo had collected, turn them into bugs and flowers and tiny people. They were going to do it in the backyard, beneath the plum tree. Afterward they were going to sit at the wooden table in the kitchen, the one printed with the secret language of all their dinners together, and eat the ice cream her mother had gone to buy.
That day Mo had sat perfectly still on the Petrone couch, eyes on the door, certain Mr. Wren would burst in any minute to fetch them home. Maybe their mother would have a big Band-Aid on her head. Or her arm in a sling. That’s what I get for my daydreaming! She’d laugh and they’d hug, but carefully, in case she was still sore.
Mo had sat on the couch and waited. Her foot fell asleep. Her nose itched, her empty belly ached, Dottie tipped over sideways, sound asleep and drooling on her shoulder. But Mo forced herself to stay still. Still as a stone herself. Because if she froze her own self, she could make the rest of the world stand still, too. If things couldn’t go forward, nothing bad could happen.
When at last her father had come, Mo jumped up from the couch, but she’d forgotten about her rock-heavy pockets and lost her balance, tipping over backward. It was exactly like some invisible bully, big and stupid as a furniture truck, had plowed into her.
She should have held still. Still as a stone!
Now Mrs. Petrone was pouring Mo a glass of milk.
“You’re too pale. You need to eat! My mother always made her pizzelles with anise. You know anise, it’s like licorice? I never could stomach it. Chin up, please. I remember…”
Their father had put his arms around her and Dottie and lifted them, one in each arm, as if they were made of feathers. How strong he was! Even then, never more than then. Back home he took them both into the big bed, where they slept burrowed against him.
“…though that I’d just as soon forget!” Mrs. Petrone tossed her head and gave her hearty laugh. What had she just said? Mo had lost track. “But what can you do? Some memories you cherish and some break your heart. We don’t get to choose. Our memories choose us.”
With that she whisked the beauty cape from Mo’s shoulders and handed her the mirror.
“Look what a beauty you are!” she exulted. “Your father’s eyes, dark as midnight! Ah, I remember how your mother wept when I gave you your first haircut! You kept patting her arm, saying, ‘I don’t hurt, Mama!’” She crushed Mo, mirror and all, against her embarrassing chest. “Let me wrap some pizzelles for you to take home.”
Before she knew it, Mo found herself back out on the sidewalk, her clipped hair lifting in the breeze. The foil of the wrapped-up cookies glinted in the sunlight.
She’d never heard the story of her first haircut before.
Fox Street. Here was where all the memories lived. Up on Da’s porch. In Mrs. Petrone’s kitchen.
Most of all in the Wren house. They snuggled in every corner, rode the air itself. They hovered, just out of sight but near, watching over you with wise, almond-shaped eyes.
Not a single car or person was in sight in this stifling heat, yet Mo looked both ways before she crossed the street. Walking up her driveway, she heard Mrs. Steinbott’s radio, but in place of the angry voices that usually raged twenty-four seven, music spilled out. Mo stopped, astonished, to listen. A woman’s voice, smooth as cream, sang about long-lost love. A skinny, hopeful voice warbled along.