I should have guessed that I wouldn’t be able to hide my identity for five minutes in here, especially with clients from the surrounding area, but I didn’t think I’d be addressing the elephant in my life this quickly.
“I … uh …” I’m stuttering and most definitely blushing.
Ginny reaches out to pat my hand. “I didn’t mean to be blunt, or embarrass you. I’ve just stood in your shoes. It gets better. That sounds so damn cliché, but it really does. So, let’s get started! I want you to shampoo me, show me your technique so we can talk about the products and method we use here at Siesta.”
She blows over the awkwardness so easily that I feel like I have whiplash, but I’m happy she doesn’t want to dissect my life. If anything, I feel a little comfort in knowing that I stand in the room with a fellow victim. I haven’t met many, mostly because who wants to talk about this? But the fact that Ginny extended me this job because of what I’m going through and who I’m married to, instead of denying me altogether because of it, speaks volumes to her character.
Trust doesn’t come easy for me these days, but a small part of me gives that trust to Ginny as she walks me over to the sinks.
After pointing out the new line of products they’re using, she sits in one of the seats and leans back, while I turn the water on and test it. As I watch the stream of water and smell the bottles of products, I’m transported right back to something I’ve always loved. This is like riding a bike, as I dig my hands gently into Ginny’s hair, massaging her scalp, lathering and rinsing. I take a chance and select some of the products I think might work well with her hair texture and color, and she guides me with a willowy-soft voice as she goes over protocol and training.
“You could have easily put me to sleep there.” She sits up and stretches as I wrap a dry towel around her neck.
“Now I feel like bringing you over to a chair. I’ve missed this,” I admit, laughing at myself.
“I’m all for a test blow-dry if it means I don’t have to use the curling iron on myself. You up for it?” Her eyes challenge me.
“Of course.” It’s the first time I feel truly confident about something in a very long time.
We walk over to what I assume is Ginny’s station, and she sits. Lining the antique wood table below her gilded mirror is a frame with her license, and then another frame containing shots of her and a burly man locked in each other’s embrace in front of the Eiffel Tower.
“That’s my Joey.” She smiles dreamily at me in the mirror.
I nod, trying to look happy for her, but the expression comes off as a weird half-sneer.
“You’ll find it again, you know. Not that you need to for a long time. But love, the real and true kind, will come,” she says sagely.
I shrug, and in a moment of vulnerability, my mouth opens. “I’m not even sure I want that.”
Ginny nods understandingly. “You don’t have to talk about it. Hell, it took me years.”
She leaves it at that, and I’m grateful. One, to be in the presence of someone who understands. And two, to be understood enough that I don’t have to talk it out. I don’t even know how to talk this out, or where to start unraveling my thought process.
I’m also grateful that she wants me to style her hair, because it’s kind of therapeutic and the whir of the blow-dryer while I use the round brush drowns out any conversation we could have. So, my thoughts drift to what’s been happening the last week.
Shane’s statement to the media still sticks in my mind, concrete and unable to be removed like a piece of hardened gum on the bottom of your shoe. I wade through it, the emotions swamping me in disgusting, stringy forms. The first time I saw it, sent to me via text message by my mother with a bunch of cursing emojis, my jaw almost dropped onto the floor.
Those words he said, written in to a news station rather than addressing directly to me or his family, were pure manipulation. He had private ways of getting a message to me, through the lawyers or even my sister after picking the girls up from a visit. But he chose a public sports news broadcast, because that’s how narcissistic he is. He put me in the hospital, and I still haven’t gotten a direct apology. And instead of focusing on the most important things to repair, he also begged for his career back.
Each word in that statement is like one more punch, or another pound of flesh added to the scales of justice tipping against him.
Divorce is on my mind more often than anything else, even the domestic violence trial. With each passing day, I feel my resolve strengthen more, that I can really do this on my own if I had to. Now I have Dahlia here for the foreseeable future, and I have a job. Colleen won’t have to help me with the house forever, and there is one thing Walker is right about; I’m pretty sure since we’ve been together before he signed his big contract, and the fact that the girls are half his, Shane would have to give me a pretty big monetary settlement. That alone could help us get on our feet, though it makes me feel a whole heck of a lot of shame.
The look on Walker’s face plays in my mind more often than not, when I told him I hadn’t filed yet. He looked so disappointed and confused at my words, and now I kind of understand why. What kind of woman stays with a man who hurt her? What kind of woman stays with a man so focused on his own agenda in this public scandal, that he’d put out a bogus apology like that but deprive his children of the budget they needed to live?
As my hands curl around the brush, teasing and styling Ginny’s hair into a smooth masterpiece, I chew over the thought of divorce, tasting it in my mouth and testing it as my new label; Hannah Giraldi, divorcée.
The salon opens an hour later, to at least a dozen people, half hairdressers and half clients, filling the space. My anxiety is through the roof, being in a space so public, but I seem to just fade into the background.
I’m the shampoo girl, the apprentice sweeping and taking coffee orders. Most everyone is cordial, nice even, but I’m not paid a lot of attention. And I get to focus on work.
It’s the first time in a month, probably even years, that I feel useful and productive.
And that makes a small flower of hope begin to bloom in my chest.
8
Walker
Most people might think I’m crazy, but I drive with my windows down as late as January.
Being from a small town in Northern Pennsylvania, that means I’m cruising around in my truck while air sinking below thirty degrees circulates through the cab. It’s frigid, even now, a week before Thanksgiving, and my teeth are nearly chattering as I whip through Packton.
But there is something about the clarity this winter air gives me. I’ve always been a homebody in a way, never straying far from the town I grew up in. A lot of people want to travel the world, see new places, or move into completely unknown cities and explore. While I suppose baseball has provided that for me, since I travel so much for games, I’ve never truly wanted to be anywhere else but here.
I love the community of Packton, the way your neighbors know your name, and you can bump into a dozen friends at the grocery store. I loved the homecoming parade in high school, and the summer carnival thrown every August. When I was little, my parents would take me to the Christmas nativity set up on the only Catholic church in town’s lawn, and then we’d go drink hot chocolate at the stand that popped up on the corner of Central Street every December.