What about your parents?'
'That's why I'm calling. What do you need?'
'Five checks are missing from the checkbook. I've asked your father what he did with them. He says he doesn't know.'
'Is it possible that you wrote checks and forgot to write them down?'
Louella Walker's response was as predictable as it was arch.
'Certainly not! I don't forget to write down checks.
You know me better than that.'
'Maybe you should take my advice and close that account.'
Brandon and his mother had had several heated arguments about his parents' joint checking account since the previous month, when it had been seriously overdrawn by several checks. Without consulting anyone else, Toby Walker had made a number of wild purchases, including an even dozen Radio Flyer wagons and two new couches and chairs. Sending back the couches and chairs had been easy. Returning wagons to a mail-order house had been far more difficult.
.'You know I can't do that,' Louella countered. 'I couldn't possibly do such a thing to your father.'
Then you're going to have to suffer the consequences, Brandon felt like saying. Sometimes his mother seemed like a willful child-both his parents did-and he was losing patience.
'Write down the missing numbers,' he said. 'We'll call the bank in the morning and put a stop-payment on them.'
'But that'll cost too much money.'
'Not as much as sending back another set of wagons.'
'All right,' she agreed reluctantly. 'When will you be home?'
'I don't know,' he answered. 'Late probably.'
'Should I leave your dinner out on the counter?'
'No,' he told her. By the time he got home, Brandon Walker didn't think he'd be hungry.
Andrew Carlisle waited until he thought his mother was asleep. Then, clad in Jake Spaulding's red flannel robe, he tiptoed back down the short hallway to the cluttered bathroom. He rummaged through a drawer until he found what he needed-a pair of scissors as well as a razor and a new package of blades.
One careful handful at a time, he began cutting off his hair, shearing it off as close to his scalp as he could. He didn't hear or see his mother come up to the open doorway.
The option of leaving even a bathroom door open behind him was still a sensation worth savoring.
'Andrew,' Myrna Louise said with a frown. 'What in the world are you doing?'
'Cutting my hair.'
'I can see that, but it's terrible. It's all clumpy.'
This is just the top layer. When I finish with the scissors, I'm going to shave the rest of it off with a razor.'
'Why?'
'Because I want to be Yule Brynner when I grow up.
Don't all women think Yule Brynner is sexy?'
'I don't. I don't like bald men.'
'But you'll still like me, won't you, Mama?'
'I suppose,' she sighed.
He returned to the haircut while she continued to watch.
'You know, I still have it,' she said musingly, almost dreamily.
'Have what?'
She hesitated before answering. 'Your baby curl. From your very first haircut. I've kept it in my music box all these years. No matter where I've lived, I've always kept that curl with me.'
This revelation surprised Andrew Carlisle. 'No shit,' he said. 'Why, Andrew!' Myrna Louise exclaimed indignantly.
'You know better than to speak to your mother that way.'
'Sorry,' he returned. 'After a while, you get used to not having a mother around.'
He hadn't deliberately set out to hurt her feelings, but instantly her eyes filled with tears.
'You know I would have come to see you if I could have. Florence is so far away from here, and you know how I hate to ride buses. Besides, tickets cost so much.'
She was crying now, leaning against the doorjamb and sobbin brokenly.
Andrew went to her and took her in his arms. 'It's all right, Mama. I didn't expect you to show up there. It was a terrible place. It would have given you nightmares.'
