‘It is not a question of “perfect” …’
‘What do you think – a man to come home to his wife with no food because the job was not perfect. You think it was ever perfect for any of us? You think it is perfect for your father, right now?’
Sarkis Alaverdian left for work at ten past eight next morning. He could not bring himself to arrive at Catchprice Motors at the hour Benny had instructed him to. He walked up Frieda Crescent, Mortimer Street, Cathleen Drive. It was not until half-past ten that he finally carried the blue umbrella across the gravel car yard towards Benny Catchprice.
Even as he walked towards him he was not certain of what he would do. The smallest trace of triumph on Benny’s pretty face would probably have set him off, but there was none. In fact, when Benny put out his hand to shake he seemed shy. His hand was delicate, something you could snap with thumb and finger.
‘Hey,’ the blond boy said, ‘relax.’
Sarkis could only nod.
There was a young apprentice fitting a car radio to a Bedford van. He was squatting on the wet gravel, frowning over the instruction sheet. Benny and Sarkis stood side by side and stared at him.
Then Benny said, ‘You were a hairdresser.’
Sarkis thought: he saw me on television.
‘My Gran says you were a hairdresser,’ Benny said.
‘You got a problem with that?’
‘No,’ Benny said, ‘no problem.’ He took a few steps towards the fire escape and then turned back. ‘You coming or what?’
‘Depends where it is.’ When he saw how Benny’s gaze slid away from his, Sarkis wondered if he might actually be ashamed of what he’d done.
‘Look,’ Benny said, ‘all that stuff is over. It’s O.K.’ He nodded to the fire escape. ‘It’s my Gran’s apartment.’
‘I’m not cutting your hair,’ Sarkis said, ‘if that’s what you think.’
‘No, no,’ Benny said. ‘My Gran wants to see you, that’s all. O.K.?’
‘O.K.’ Sarkis put his hand into his jacket pocket and clasped the Swiss army knife and transferred it, hidden in his fist, to his trouser pocket.
48
The first thing Sarkis saw was the dolls lined up in a way you might expect, in an Australian house, to find the sporting trophies. They occupied the entire back wall of the apartment, in a deep windowless dining alcove. They were lit like in a shop.
Only when Benny turned the neon light on, did Sarkis notice Mrs Catchprice sitting, rather formally, in the dining chair in front of them. She looked like an old woman ready for bed or for the asylum. Her long grey hair was undone and spread across the shoulders of a rather severe and slightly old-fashioned black suit. An ornate silver brooch was pinned to her artificial bosom. The skirt was a little too big for her. Her slip showed.
Sarkis clasped his knife in his fist. The air was close.
‘You like my dolls?’ she said.
He smiled politely.
‘I never cared for them,’ she said. ‘Someone gives you one because they do not know you. Someone else gives you a second one because you have the first. It’s so like life, don’t you think?’
‘I hope not.’
‘I do too,’ she said, and winked at him. ‘That’s why I like to have young people working for me.’
‘It’s Granny needs a hair-do,’ Benny said.
Sarkis tightened his jaw.
‘Not me,’ Benny said. ‘I said it wasn’t me.’
When Sarkis lived in Chatswood, his mother’s friends would sit around beneath the picture of Mesrop Mushdotz and pat their hair a certain way and curl their fringe around their fingers. When they asked outright, he said to them what he now said to Mrs Catchprice.
‘I don’t have my scissors.’
‘She’s got to have a hair-do,’ Benny said. ‘It’s an occasion.’
‘All my gear’s at home,’ Sarkis said. ‘You should go to a salon. They have the basins and sprays and all the treatments.’
‘But you’re a hairdresser,’ Mrs Catchprice said, ‘and you work for me.’
‘I thought I was going to be a salesman.’
‘You will be,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘When you’ve cut my hair.’
No one offered to drive him – Sarkis walked, first to his home for his plastic case, then to Franklin Mall to buy the Redken Hot Oil Treatment. The air was hot and heavy, and the low grey clouds gave the low red-brick houses a closed, depressed look.
When he returned to Catchprice Motors he washed the disgusting dishes in Mrs Catchprice’s kitchen sink and scrubbed the draining board and set up basins and saucepans for the water. He could see Benny Catchprice in the car yard below him. Benny stood in the front of the exact centre of the yard and he never shifted his position from the time Sarkis began to wash Mrs Catchprice’s hair until he’d done the eye-shadow.
There were people, old people particularly, so hungry for touch they would press their head into the washer’s fingers like a cat will rub past your legs. Mrs Catchprice revealed herself to be one of them. You could feel her loneliness in another way too, in her concentration as you ran the comb through her wet hair, her intense stillness while you cut.
Sarkis stripped the yellow colour from her grey hair with L’Oreal Spontanee 832. When he applied the Hot Oil and wrapped her in a towel she made a little moan of pleasure, a private noise she seemed unaware of having made, one he was embarrassed to have heard.
He did not ask her how she wanted her hair done. He styled it with a part and a french bun set a little to one side. It did nothing to soften the set of her jaw or the effects of age, but it gave her, in this refusal to hide or apologize, a look of pride and confidence. It was the same approach as you might take with a kid with ear-rings in her nose – you gave her a close shave up one side of her head, declared her ugly ears, did nothing to soften the features, and therefore made her sexy on the street.
He softened Mrs Catchprice a little with her make-up – some very pale blue eye-shadow and, from among all the grubby, ground-down Cutex reds she brought him, one Petal Pink.
‘How’s that?’ he asked, but only because he had finished and she had said nothing.
‘I look like a tough old bird,’ she said.
He was offended.
‘It’s just what the doctor ordered,’ she said. She opened her handbag and uncrumpled a $20 bill which she pushed into his hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said, although it was not enough to cover the cost of the Redken and the Spontanee 832. He brushed off her shoulders and swept up the floor and swept her hair on to a sheet of newspaper and put it in the rubbish. He folded the sheet he had used for a cape and placed it on top of the yellow newspapers on top of the washing machine. Then he let the dog out of the bathroom.
He came back into the living-room with the dog skeltering and slipping around his feet and found a pregnant woman with a briefcase, Benny Catchprice and Cathy McPherson all pushing their way into the living-room.
‘It is true?’ Cathy’s voice was tremulous. ‘Just tell me?’
Haircuts can alter people and this one seemed to have altered Mrs Catchprice. She led the way to the dining- room table and sat with her back to the row of brightly illuminated dolls. She looked almost presidential.
‘What are you dressed up for?’ Cathy asked.
The pregnant woman with the briefcase sat next to Mrs Catchprice. Benny sat opposite the pregnant woman.
Cathy took the big chair facing the dolls’ case, but would not sit in it. She grasped its back.
‘What are you dressed up for? Is it true?’ she asked her mother. ‘Because if it is, you really should tell
