Page 54 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

It seems to Anna that days can be slow but weeks pass quickly, and she is not sure how that happens.

Her children were babies just a moment ago.

Soon they will be teenagers. She won’t notice any of it happening if she doesn’t pay attention.

Housework, mother work, sewing work, just existing, just trying to be here , can feel too much and never enough at the same time. It’s not how she wants her life to be.

Yet she wonders – worries – that she’s made some decisions out of that sense of it all being too much and never enough.

She wonders – worries – if one of those decisions was telling Gary to leave.

In the midst of everything that was too much and never enough, did she blame him for how she was feeling?

Was he just a convenient target? Did she blame someone else – anything else – but herself?

Certainly she knows she has been changing her mind about all sorts of things of late. Where she used to slightly dread seeing her mother, now she looks forward to it because she has realised Ingrid is wise and possibly funny, although she keeps such a straight face it can be hard to tell.

That means she cheerfully takes her to the salon now. They chat more freely. The whole experience is more pleasant. And really all that’s changed is Anna’s outlook.

The same goes for the Seaside Salon, where they’ve just visited. Now they’re at their usual cafe in Terrigal, taking their time with their hot beverages, enjoying the sea air.

‘It feels nice getting that blow-dry done,’ Anna says, touching her hair. ‘Nice to have someone else doing it for me.

‘Indeed,’ Ingrid says as she sips her cappuccino. ‘You seem to like the salon now.’

‘I do.’ Anna smiles as she gazes across the road to the beach and remembers how good it was to sit and be tended to by Evie, chatting away about things, then having her head massaged during the shampoo …

That’s possibly the best part. Why did her mother never mention the head massage?

It makes Anna wonder if everyone knew about this and just kept it secret because they don’t want millions flocking to hairdressers.

A head massage is surely one of the loveliest things one human can do for another, and addictive in its own way.

Hence Anna happily booking an appointment each week at whatever time Evie can fit her in.

‘You’ve worked it out.’ Ingrid arches an eyebrow.

‘What?’

‘The value of the veneer.’

Anna laughs. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Our presentation to the world around us – it’s armour. There’s strength in it. And in turn it makes us feel better about ourselves. We are always putting our best foot forward.’ Another sip of coffee. ‘I learnt how important it was after your father became ill.’

Anna waits for her to go on.

‘If I put effort into my appearance, it was an energy – you know? I was doing something for myself. I was making a statement to myself and everyone else that what had happened was not going to defeat me. And if I did it every day, well … it gained its own momentum.’ She looks across to the ocean, smiling sadly.

‘I wouldn’t have survived without it,’ she says.

That jolts Anna – to think her mother felt like that.

‘I had no idea. Why didn’t you say anything?’ she asks.

‘Because I had my dignity to maintain. And that’s part of it too, you see – that act of presentation to the world, that’s about dignity.

I had to hold myself together for you and your brothers.

Getting up each day and doing my hair, my make-up, choosing clothes, it was all positive .

If I’d then talked to you about how I didn’t feel I was coping – that would have been negative.

No.’ She shakes her head. ‘I needed to keep it all moving. But I do realise it took its toll on you, in particular.’

‘Your appearance?’ Anna is confused.

‘The whole situation. Your father effectively disappeared from your life even though he was physically present in the house. I see …’ She stops then gives a little shake of her head as if she’s clearing a thought.

‘What?’ Anna prompts.

‘Gary,’ Ingrid says. ‘He disappeared too.’

They sit in silence, staring at each other.

‘So?’ Anna says at last.

‘You couldn’t do anything to change the situation with your father. But you could with Gary. And you did.’

Ingrid’s face is impossible to read, so Anna doesn’t know if she approves of what happened or not, but she does not like the feeling of being judged.

‘Are you saying I shouldn’t have told him to leave because you put up with it and therefore I should have?’ Her voice rises along with her anger.

‘ Did I say that?’

‘I don’t know!’ Anna glances around, convinced they can be overheard, but other patrons aren’t looking their way.

‘What I meant, my darling girl, is that you took action because you could after so many years of not being able to change what was, for all of us …’ Her mother breathes out and it sounds as if she is letting go of years of pain. ‘A very difficult time.’

A very difficult time. Such a simply worded phrase but it covers what was an aeon in the life of their family, and Anna couldn’t have put it any better.

In that moment she understands that her mother is right: Gary had disappeared and on some level it reminded her of the abandonment she had felt when her father had been there in front of her but not there, and – if she went further into her psyche – her mother being the same.

Because Ingrid necessarily gave her life over to her husband, and her sons had each other, which left Anna on her own.

And this time Anna was determined to change it.

When she examines her behaviour toward Gary in this context she understands she never really gave him a chance to un-disappear.

She warned him that he needed to be home more but she didn’t ask why he felt so driven to work so much – because his absence was the beginning and end of it, as far as she was concerned.

For Gary, though, something else was going on. She thinks back to something he said to her at dinner, when she – yet again, and perhaps unfairly – raised the issue of his long hours.

‘I was trying to save money,’ he said, looking mystified. ‘For you.’

‘For me?’ She was confused. She’d never asked him to save money.

‘For a house.’

‘We have a house.’

‘A bigger house.’

‘But I never said I wanted one.’

‘I wanted to give you one. To show you …’ He sighed. ‘How much I love you.’

Then she was even more confused, because she didn’t know what a bigger house had to do with love.

‘You didn’t think that being at home more would show me that? Show us that?’

‘It wasn’t meant to be forever. Just long enough to …’

His voice caught.

‘You could have told me,’ she said.

‘I wanted it to be a surprise. A present.’

Sitting at that table, she had been cross more than anything: that he had decided this was what she wanted, without asking her. She didn’t see that he’d been working to create something for his family, and that he thought she understood.

If either one of them had just said what they meant out loud to each other, they would never have reached the point they did.

It’s not too late, though, to say those things. To mean more to each other. For Anna to stop feeling abandoned.

‘What would you do,’ Anna says to her mother, holding her gaze, ‘if you were me?’

Ingrid’s eyes widen. Probably because Anna doesn’t usually ask her for advice.

‘I would apologise,’ her mother says.

‘What?’ That is not the advice Anna wanted to hear. Except that’s not really the nature of advice – you can’t dictate what someone else wants to tell you.

‘There is power in an apology, my darling.’

Anna frowns. ‘Says the woman who never says sorry.’

Ingrid makes a face. ‘Point taken. But I could say that it’s due to the fact that I have rarely felt powerful enough to apologise.

’ She pauses. ‘To say sorry to someone who has caused you pain, for the express purpose of moving past that pain and forging the relationship anew, is to take on the responsibility of healing what has gone before and offering the opportunity of shared happiness in the future.’

She sighs, and Anna thinks she sees a faltering. But Ingrid’s veneer is practised, and whatever faltering there is does not last.

‘It is only for the brave,’ Ingrid says. ‘It is only for someone who is so sure of themselves they are prepared to risk that things may not turn out the way they hope, knowing that they will be all right, whatever comes.’

Anna thinks about what her mother has said.

About where and how Ingrid learnt that. Because although she’s not big on apologies as far as Anna knows, maybe she has been in other parts of her life.

In the time before Anna. Or maybe it came from her grandmother or her great-grandmother.

Maybe they were all strong enough to take those risks and that’s why she is here now. That’s why she exists at all.

‘I’m sorry,’ Anna says.

Ingrid’s mouth opens slightly. ‘For what?’

‘For not trying harder to understand you,’ Anna explains. ‘I just focused on what I was going through. When Dad …’

She shakes off the memories. They’re too hard, too dark, too much for this sunny cafe and this sparkling place.

She sees people on talk shows on television saying they need to tell people everything that pains them, but Anna has never thought that what’s in the dark needs to be dragged into the light.

If it’s dark, leave it there. Bringing it to the light doesn’t make it light – it just brings a shadow to a place that used to be glorious.

There is much in her life that is light. Her children. Her home. Her mother – she can say that now. This little track she’s on, with the salon, the school, the sewing, making friends, going places … It’s not a big, flashy life but it is light . She has made it so. And she wants to share it.

‘My darling,’ Ingrid says, ‘it was not your job to understand me. It was my job to raise you and I did that. Now, if we decide to be friends, that is another matter.’ She smiles mischievously.

‘I’d like that,’ Anna says, then she reaches across and squeezes her mother’s hand.

‘Good.’ Ingrid inspects her daughter’s fingers. ‘Now let’s talk about those nails.’