Second Chances in Lavender Bay (The Lavender Bay Chronicles #3)

21. Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

T he loss of her hair bothered Angie more than she thought it would, and she looked forward to going to support group Wednesday night if only to be with other people who understood what it felt like. There was also the bonus of being entertained by Nena and Floyd.

Tuesday night, she was parked on her sofa sipping flat 7UP, hoping her stomach would settle. The draft on her bare scalp made her feel chilly, so she’d donned a knit cap. She heard her side door open.

“Angie?” her mother called out.

Angie stood and made her way to the kitchen. “Mom, what are you doing here?”

Her mother had carried in a cardboard box, which she set down on the kitchen table.

“Were you sleeping?” Louise asked.

“No, only watching television.”

Louise pulled off her jacket and hat and laid them on a chair. She hugged her daughter and said, “Maureen called me last night and told me about your hair.”

Angie nodded, unable to speak as the mention of her hair loss choked her up.

When they pulled apart, Angie told her mother, “I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but it does. And then I think I must be vain and shallow.”

Her mother waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t think like that. You’re entitled to how you feel. And women and their hair are a thing.”

Angie tilted her head slightly and considered what her mother said.

“Our hair and how we wear it are a part of our identity,” Louise continued. “And a woman’s hair is part of her feminine aspect. Those are my thoughts on the subject. It’s okay to grieve for your hair. But remember, it’s temporary. It will grow back.”

Impressed, Angie said, “Gee, Mom, that’s pretty good.”

Louise smiled. “I know, right? Not bad for a high school graduate. Women and their hair is something I’ve thought a lot about, with my mom losing hers in that accident before I was born.” She looked around the place, hands on her hips. “Where are your Christmas decorations?”

“Still in the basement.” She only had a few. As she was hardly ever home, her decorations would best be described as sparse.

“It’s December!”

“I know what month it is,” Angie said defensively.

“All right, never mind.”

“Mom, do you want tea or coffee?”

“I’ll make it, honey. Do you want anything?”

Angie shook her head. “No. I’ve got a glass of 7UP that I’m working on.” Someone at the café had told her that if she boiled it, it would flatten faster, and she could sip it once it cooled down.

“Nausea?” Her mother’s expression was one of concern.

“Not too bad today,” she lied.

Louise filled the kettle from the tap and returned it to the stove and turned on the burner. While she waited for the kettle to whistle, she opened the flaps of the cardboard box.

“I took a look through my cedar chest today and look what I came across.” She pulled out a pile of headscarves and turbans that had once belonged to her mother.

Angie smiled, picking one up. “I haven’t seen these in years. I didn’t know you’d kept Grammie’s headgear.”

Louise shrugged. “Of course. I’d never throw these out. You’ll always want to save something that belonged to someone you love.”

“I suppose so.”

Angie went through them, smiling as memories came back to her. She lifted them to her nose to smell them to see if she could get the scent of her grandmother off them. But they smelled of laundry detergent.

“Sorry, I had to wash them, they smelled like cedar,” Louise said.

Angie lifted one turban, which was a sapphire blue. “I remember this one. Grammie always wore it to weddings and events.” She turned it around. The rhinestone brooch was still there, front and center. She used to think it made her grandmother look like an exotic princess. Laughing, she held up a pink scarf that had the characters from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast on it. “Remember when DeeDee was obsessed with this movie? And Grammie made this for herself to wear while she watched it with DeeDee, and then DeeDee wanted her own?”

“I do. I don’t know what happened to DeeDee’s,” her mother said.

“Grammie sure was accommodating.”

“She loved you all very much.”

“I know. She showed us every day.”

“I sure do miss her,” Louise said.

“We all do. I can’t believe she’s been gone this long.”

“Sometimes it feels like yesterday and then other days, it feels like she’s been gone a lifetime.”

Angie’s thoughts turned dark, wondering if she’d be seeing her grandmother sooner rather than later, and before everyone else. Although she missed Grammie, she was in no hurry to reunite with her.

The kettle’s whistle was shrill, and Louise turned off the stove and made herself a cup of tea.

She carried her steaming mug over to the table as Angie sifted through the rest of the box. It was full of scarves of various fabrics and colors and prints. Digging a little further, she pulled out a small bag that contained more scarves, individually wrapped in tissue paper.

“How come these ones are wrapped so carefully?” Angie asked.

Louise blew across her mug of tea. “The loose ones were her everyday scarves, but these ones had special meaning.”

Angie set the box aside for a moment and carefully unwrapped the tissue paper holding a navy-and-white floral silk scarf. She could see why it had been packaged with such care. It was beautiful. The print reminded her of a watercolor painting.

“That was the scarf Mom wore the day she married Dad,” Louise said.

“It’s beautiful,” Angie said. She folded it up carefully and wrapped it back up in the tissue paper.

The next scarf she unwrapped was cream-colored with the word “Victory” printed all over it in blue and red.

“That’s her scarf from before the accident. She used to wear that to the aviation plant where she worked during the war.”

“How old was Grammie when she went to work at the plant?”

Louise thought for a moment. “Twenty, twenty-one. She was only there a year when the accident happened.”

The next thing she unwrapped had Angie frowning. “What is this, a bathing cap?” It was a pink rubber cap with a chin strap. The design was made to look like flower petals.

“Mom loved the beach, and she took us every chance she had. Everyone used to wear swim caps back then, and that was her favorite. She wore it all the time until the chin strap broke.”

After she went through all the scarves wrapped in tissue paper, Angie carefully tucked them away into the box, thinking about how Gram had marked the important events in her life with a headscarf. She liked it.

“I thought you’d like them. I mean, you don’t have to wear them, but maybe they’ll bring you some comfort,” Louise said, sipping her tea.

“I am going to wear them.” Angie rifled through the pile and found a Christmas one: a white headscarf with a pattern of holly, ivy, and berries. “And we’ll start with this one.”

She whipped off her knit hat, exposing her head. Immediately, her mother’s eyes widened at seeing the state of her daughter’s head for the first time: bald.

With deftness, Angie fixed the headscarf and tied it together. “Now, Mom, it’s okay. It’s only hair. It’ll grow back. Isn’t that what you just said?” Her mother nodded, her eyes wet. “How do I look?”

Louise’s eyes welled up. “You look like Grammie.”

Angie gave her mother a reassuring smile. “Perfect.”

She stood and retrieved her glass from the living room and sat at the table with her mother, sipping the flat 7UP.

“How did Grammie cope with her hair loss?” Growing up, they’d been used to Grammie and her variety of headscarves.

There was a pained expression on Louise’s face. “In the beginning, not well at all. Wouldn’t get out of bed. Thought life wasn’t worth living. Typical things you might see with someone who’s suffered a major trauma.”

“I didn’t know that,” Angie said. “Grammie always seemed so happy.”

“With the help of her mother and her friends, she managed to get through the aftermath and create a life for herself,” Louise said.

Angie continued to sift through the box. “It’s amazing, really. I, mean, I know how I feel without my hair, but I remind myself every day that it’s only temporary, whereas for Gram, it was permanent. Boy, that must have been tough.”

“It was.”

Angie realized she knew almost nothing about her grandmother’s early life, especially those years right after the accident. “How did she do it?” she asked.

Louise had a faraway look in her eyes. “It wasn’t always easy. But let me tell you what I know.”