Sally Gets A Haircut

It was three o'clock on Tuesday when they came for Sally. She was seated at her desk, hunched over a stack of manila insurance files. Her thick wheat-colored braid trailed across the liability report she was reading. Out of the corner of her eye, Sally saw a bright light. She looked up, confronted with a large television camera and a crowd of people.

"Sally, guess what? You won!" Her friend Judy galloped up over and pulled Sally out of her chair. Sally didn't know what she had won but Judy seemed happy about it.

"We're going to New York City. You're getting a makeover." Judy bounced up and down on her white patent leather shoes.

"Oh, that's great," Sally said with more enthusiasm than she felt. She didn't recall asking for a makeover, nor was she sure what a makeover entailed.

An alarmingly thin woman in a navy blue suit walked up to Sally. "Hello, I'm Barbara Potter, I'm an assistant producer on the show. I'll be coordinating your segment. If you wouldn't mind undoing your braid, we'd like to take a few photographs of your hair."

"My hair?"

"Of course. Your friend Judy sent in a letter for our upcoming show on outdated hairstyles. We'll be cutting your hair as part of your makeover."

Sally reached up and grabbed her braid and took out the elastic. Her hair fell in long waves, tapering down past her back and ending at her knees. She cast a confused glance at Judy who came up behind her and shook her hair loose.

"See how long it is," Judy said to Barbara, who took a tape measure and jotted down the length of Sally's hair. Sally felt a tugging as Judy and Barbara picked up pieces of Judy's hair and clucked over the status of her split ends.

That night, over dinner Sally broke the news to her family. The kids were nonplussed. Billy wanted a Mets cap from New York City. Sandy was jealous that she couldn't go and meet celebrities, too. Bill, Sr. just sat at the head of the table and said nothing. It was the particular sort of nothing that let Sally know he was displeased.

Later, when they were snuggled into bed, Bill put his hand on her shoulder and gathered up a thick mass of her hair in his hand. "Do you have to cut it?"

"It'll be fun to go to New York. Judy is really looking forward to it."

"I love your hair."

"It's awfully long. You know how it gets caught in car doors and it gives me headaches when I wear it up."

Bill reached his other hand into her hair and kissed her long, slow and deep. They assumed their regular rhythm of making love. She let the tempo carry her into a place where she felt loved and certain. After they were finished and Bill drifted off to sleep, she pulled her hair out from beneath their bodies and spread it out on the pillow next to her. "It's just hair," she whispered to the darkness.

Sally woke at dawn. Other people with hair as long as hers might only wash it once a week, but Sally couldn't bear the idea of having her dirty hair draped over her shoulders day after day. Each morning, she dragged herself into the shower before anyone else was awake. This morning, all the rituals that had become so routine were imbued with great significance. She poured out the sweet, pearly shampoo and worked in the lather. As if for the first time, she felt her long wet hair lash against her back.

Later, she sat at her dressing table and brushed her slowly drying hair. She could hear the children in the kitchen arguing over cereal choices. Bill came up from behind and rubbed her shoulders.

"I miss you, already."

"I'll be back before you know it," Sally leaned into his arms.

"But you'll be different."

Sally turned to face Bill. She wrapped a lock of her hair around his wrist four times. She took the scissors and cut the hair so that Bill was left with a hair bracelet. He kissed her goodbye and went off to work wearing the hair bracelet tucked under his shirt cuff.

On the flight with Judy, Sally reached up to the nape of her neck and felt the shorn nub where she had cut earlier. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would feel like if all her hair were gone. She felt a lurch in her stomach, which she ascribed to airplane turbulence. Judy sat next to her, buzzing with excitement. She kept looking out her window and then peering across the aisle so she could get the view from the other side. There wasn't much to see, only flat squares of farmed earth broken up by occasional spiky-looking towns.

"You're a real trooper for going along with this, Sal." Judy looked over at Sally, who was reading the in-flight magazine.

"Did I have a choice?" Sally smiled as she said this, so Judy would know she was teasing.

"You'll love it. It's going to be so great." Judy gave a little shiver of pleasure and then put on her headphones and tuned out.

Sally wasn't so sure about that. But she felt that on some level she owed Judy this. They had been best friends for years, through Sally's two marriages, the birth of her children, and all the many changes of Sally's life. Meanwhile not much happened to Judy. They never talked about it, about the fact that Judy had never married, never even had a serious boyfriend, nor about the fact that Sally had risen to Assistant Regional Manager of Humphrey Insurance Management while Judy had stayed an executive assistant for eight years.

Sally didn't understand why these things were true. She snuck a glance over at Judy. Judy wasn't particularly ugly or stupid or objectionable in any way. She was just sort of there. She had attached herself to Sally years ago as friend, helpmate, and babysitter. There were times Sally felt guilty about that. Judy always laughed it off, refused to take payment for babysitting, saying that she had nothing else to do. Which, Sally knew, was true. Judy still lived with her mom, who did most of the household chores, so it wasn't like Judy had a domestic life to pull her away.

Bill didn't like Judy. He tolerated her well enough at cookouts and school plays, he was grateful that she would take the kids for a weekend so he and Sally could get away, but if Sally ever left him alone in the room with Judy, he would come scooting out into the kitchen after her. "She makes me uncomfortable," he would say, although he was never quite specific on why that was so. And Bill wasn't the only person who had this reaction. Sally had tried to get Judy promoted on various occasions but her superiors always blocked her. They never gave any specific reasons but Sally didn't push it since Judy seemed content in her current state of employment.

Sally flipped through all the reading material in the seat pouch and then having procrastinated long enough, she brought out some files from the office to read over. Next to her, Judy was clearly enjoying the in-flight movie, making snickery noises, quiet at first then turning into larger guffaws and snorts. Sally smiled first indulgently and then with embarrassment as Judy's utterances began to disturb the other passengers. Such was life with Judy.

New York was slightly disquieting to Sally. The tall, stark, grayness of it and the availability of every single thing on every street corner made her feel dizzy and tired. Even Judy seemed more cowed than elated. Once in the hotel room, Sally and Judy lay on their matched beds and drank Diet Cokes from the honor bar, comforting themselves with the knowledge that some things at least were the same here. Beds were beds, Diet Coke still tasted sharp and sweet, cable television, though consisting of different channels, was the same hodge-podge of high-speed nonsense.

That night, they ate in the hotel restaurant and across the room Sally could see other longhaired women in the company of spouses and family. Were they here for the same thing? They gazed at her with a mixture of sympathy and commiseration.

The next morning, Sally and Judy put on their best outfits and waited downstairs for the taxi to take them to the studio. Sally liked to think that she looked fairly urban. She had chosen a long black skirt and a pale blue twin set, not cashmere but of fine enough wool to fool most people. Judy, on the other hand, had gone in an entirely different direction. She was wearing a long dress, in a floral print. Sally has seen this dress countless times. "She looks like Aunt Millie's couch," Sally's boss, John Harper, had said when Judy wore the dress to a staff outing, "I don't see why you can't teach that girl some fashion sense."

But Sally knew there was no talking to Judy so she didn't say a word this morning. She just stood next to Judy feeling twice as out of place and nervous. Judy, for her part, seemed to be gaining confidence with every moment. She smiled at the other people waiting for the limo and swished her long skirt back and forth with one fluttering hand.

"This is so fantastic," Judy exclaimed.

Sally nodded. She could feel her morning coffee churning in her stomach.

The taxi pulled up and they got inside. Judy sat on Sally's long braid. When Sally cried out Judy shifted her body and Sally pulled the braid to safety. "I guess you won't have to worry about that anymore," said Judy with a wolfish grin.

At the studio, a bevy of assistants fluttered around Sally and Judy. They were powdered, preened and quizzed. Sally watched Judy talking animatedly, with a production assistant. Sally didn't feel comfortable speaking to all these glossy strangers. She ran her braid through her fingers, tickling her palm with its brushy tip.

Up on stage, the lights were incredibly hot. Sally wasn't prepared for that or for the amount of people it took to put together one show. When the hostess called her out, Judy was already on stage. Sally came out to wild applause. Her hair was unfurled to the general amazement of the audience. Then came the moment of truth. The first cut had to be made on stage; the production people had prepared her for that. A well-groomed man came out brandishing large steel scissors, which he proffered to Judy, handle side first, with a flourish. Judy took the scissors and stood behind Sally while the man bound up Sally's hair in an elastic band. He directed Judy to make the cut beneath the elastic. Sally stood frozen. It's only hair. She remembered how she wore it up for her second wedding, how she could quiet her children when they were small by sweeping the ends of her hair over their faces, all the times some stranger had come up to her and told her how beautiful her hair was. Sally was ready to call a stop to all this nonsense when she felt Judy make the first sawing cut and the audience applauded. She closed her eyes, willing herself not to cry, even though she knew it was expected of her. Judy finished her work and held up the long swath of Sally's hair. Sally opened her eyes and touched the ragged ends. Before she could comment, the hairdresser swept her offstage to complete the makeover.

In the chair, Sally felt a little better. The hairdresser and the make-up artists couldn't believe she was in her mid-forties. "You have such great skin," they all exclaimed, "this haircut is going to look fantastic on you."

When it was completed, Sally scrutinized her new look. The haircut fell perfectly to her jaw line in highlighted strands. She wasn't quite sure if she looked better, but she didn't think she looked much worse. She went back onstage and everyone told her how much younger, how much prettier, she was now. Judy didn't seem too thrilled by the transformation. The talk show hostess gave Sally a big hug and told her how brave she thought she was and how her shorn hair was going to be donated to make wigs for cancer victims.

In the limo back to the hotel, Judy was silent. "That wasn't nearly as bad as I thought," said Sally.

"You're never going to be able to keep it like that."

"No, I probably will start growing it when we get back. My life is too hectic for New York hair."

Judy didn't reply and the silence between them got long and uncomfortable. That night at dinner, Judy played with her food as if it were poisoned. Sally figured maybe Judy was overwhelmed or let down but she didn't want to ask for fear that Judy might actually tell her.

At home, her new hairstyle had little impact. The kids barely noticed at all, although Sandy said she liked having a mom who looked a little more normal. Bill seemed to hardly miss her old hair. "It's like sleeping with a new woman," he told her with a shy smile one night. But when Sally rested her head on the pillow at night she missed her long scented hair, soft against her face.

Back at the office, Sally resumed her old routine. Her colleagues exclaimed about her new look for a couple of days but then they forgot about it. Nobody said much of anything to Judy who seemed to drift even further into the office background. Judy straggled to her desk later and later each morning and her usually passable work was filled with twice as many typos and misspellings as usual. Sally hoped Judy would straighten out before her new attitude attracted the attention of their boss.

Files began disappearing from Sally's office. She stopped asking Judy for help, dreading the long sighing that followed any request she made. A week after the show, Judy came into Sally's office and stood in front of her desk.

"Why didn't it work?"

Sally looked up from her files and waited for Judy to explain but Judy just stood still, slump-shouldered and staring.

"It looks like shit," Judy finally said, gesturing at Sally's untidy bob. "Why aren't you upset?"

"It's just hair, Judy, were you expecting me to be miserable?" Sally meant the question to be rhetorical but Judy's face was red with barely controlled rage.

"You hate me," said Sally, pausing to let Judy refute her. Instead, Judy walked out of the room and Sally shut the door behind her. Her heart was pounding, adrenaline coursing through her system as if Judy had physically assaulted her. All this time, she'd been feeling sorry for her and Judy had hated her. If she'd known that she'd never have gone to New York. Sally touched the ends of her hair and her hands quivered with anger. How dare she? Dumpy little Judy, whom she had taken care of all these years. It was a stab in the back plain and simple. She contemplated having Judy fired. It would be simple; John Harper had wanted to get rid of her for years. Sally straightened her shoulders and decided to go see John. She opened her door and started down the hall, sailing past Judy's desk. Judy was seated, typing on her computer, her neck bent as if awaiting a blow.

Sally walked briskly until she was out of Judy's range of sight. Instead of turning left to go toward John's office, Sally headed right, toward the bathroom. In the restroom, she looked at her hair in the mirror. She almost liked it. Her morning routine was so much shorter; she could stay in bed with Bill for nearly an hour longer. Judy couldn't hate her, not really. She would have known. They had been friends for so long.

"Can I take you to lunch?" Sally stood in front of Judy's desk. Judy looked up startled.

"Lunch?"

"Sure, it's almost noon, let's go to lunch and talk this out."

"It doesn't make it any better, you being all nicey like this," Judy stared up at Sally resentfully.

Later Sally would describe it to Bill as a switch. Like something inside her had flipped over. "Listen, Judy, all these years, I've watched your back and stood up for you." Sally lowered her voice into a tight hiss as she leaned over the desk. "I don't give a damn if you are jealous of me or if you hate me. We don't have to be friends, either. But if you don't straighten up and fly right around the office, I will get you fired faster than you cut my hair. Snip." She made a cutting motion in the air in front of Judy's shocked face. "Now, I'm going to lunch, I'll be back in an hour." Sally turned and walked out of the office.

Outside the midday sun was blinding. Sally slid on her sunglasses as she headed toward her car. The sunlight warmed the nape of her neck, and she reached her hand backward, protectively cupping the exposed skin.

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