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“Alright, Evie,” Helen said. She smiled, crooked. “We’re ready for ya.”
The young woman on the couch blinked at her. She had been Evie, back when Helen had first met her—Evie, the redheaded and round-cheeked friend of her baby sister, the one with the mischievous dimples. Half of what she said in those days had grown-ups hiding their laughter or else reaching for a bar of soap.
She hadn’t been Evie for some time now.
Still, Eva stood up, allowing herself to be directed to the high-backed wooden chair Helen had set up on the tiles beside the fireplace. She wore an old t-shirt that had belonged to Helen and Katie’s big brother. The dark blue cotton, line-dry stiff, overstretched her narrow shoulders. Dark hair settled down her back. From the window, shutter slashes of sun brought out auburn highlights. An overgrown curtain fringe nearly fell into her eyes.
Standing behind her, Helen combed through the fringe, gently. Her fingertips brushed her forehead.
Eva shifted and let out a breath.
“You have beautiful hair,” Helen remarked.
“Yeah,” Eva said, resigned. She smiled in a quick, forced way that showed no dimples. “Yeah, no, I’m very lucky.”
Helen laid a gloved hand on her back. “I’d best be sure not to fuck it up, then.”
Eva huffed.
“You’d better not,” Katie said, from her spectator position on the arm of the couch.
“Shut it, you,” Helen tossed back, but she and Katie shared an almost conspiratorial smile over Eva’s head. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and put some music on?”
“How– Sorry, how long do you think this will take?” Eva bit her lip. “It’s just– I left Grace with the kids, and they’ve been having a row so they’re a handful.”
“Well, I can’t flick a switch,” said Helen, wry, as Katie flicked the switch for the radio. “It won’t be too long, though, I promise.”
“This is some time for just you,” put in Katie. “They can survive a minute without you.”
The tension in Eva’s shoulders didn’t ease.
“So, can I ask—what inspired the change?” Helen took the mixture of developer and bleach and began to apply it.
“Honestly?”
“’Course.”
“If one more person told me how much I looked like my mother, I was going to go full Sylvia Plath and find myself the nearest oven.”
Helen barked out a laugh. Kathleen Garvey had been a young mother, with hair as dark as Eva’s had turned out. “Sounds like a fucking brilliant reason to me.”
Surprised, Eva tried to shift to look at Helen’s face.
Helen stabilized her head at the base of the neck. “No, no moving. I’ve no plans to send you back with a stripe of bleach across your face. The things it would do to my reputation.”
Katie scoffed. Eva said, “Sorry.”
“You’re alright.”
For a minute or so, the only sounds were the murmuring radio, the lick of the brush, and the crinkle of tin foil.
“I used to look like my dad, you know. All him. People picked me out of a lineup at parties.”
“Yeah, we remember.”
Eva colored. “Right. Right.”
“Go on,” Helen encouraged, when she got quiet. “You were saying. Parties.”
“Wha– Oh, nothing. Just, I looked so much like him. Then I looked so much like her. Funny.”
“Mm.”
Eva fretted at a bracelet. “Grace– Grace wishes she looked more like her, I think. Sometimes.”
“She does, though,” Katie considered. “In the face, somehow.”
“Yeah. And I tell her that, too. But… I don’t know.”
“Well, she could always go brunette,” Helen said. “Send her over any time.”
Eva snorted. “Imagine. We swap.”
“I’d get a kick out of it.”
“Yeah. So would Becka. And then she’d be wanting hers done….”
“We’d have the whole motley crew in here before long.”
“Not Bibi. I have a hard enough time getting her to take a brush to hers, most days. Besides, she wouldn’t–” Eva cut herself off. She sobered.
Helen waited. After it went too long for Eva to be planning on continuing, she took a breath and a risk. “You better not be feeling guilty about this, you hear?”
The muscles of Eva’s neck tightened. “Guilty? I….” She let out an awkward half laugh, a puff of disbelieving air. Then her brow creased. Her gaze fell to the iron twists of the poker, toppled on the floor.
“You loved them,” Helen said slowly, purposefully. “And they loved you. And they’re gone, and you’re raising their children. Can’t imagine that’s easy.”
“It’s fine. We’re fine.”
Helen pinched off a glove by the heel of her palm and rested the bare hand on her shoulder. She was aware, behind her, of Katie holding still. “That’s not what I said.”
Eva looked away.
“If it were to be hard, then. And if, on top of all that, you couldn’t look in the mirror, or talk to Maree Madden from down the street, without being reminded of who wasn’t there and who you’re not? Well. I’d tell you not to find one shred of guilt in what we’re doing here.”
Eva’s nostrils flared.
“There’s things that matter, and there’s a bit of bleach.”
Eva made a strangled sound, somewhere between a scoff and a whimper. She brought her hand to her mouth. Her jaw worked. Finally, she said: “I just need everybody to stop fucking cooing at me.”
“Yeah.”
She did look up at Helen, now, chin juddering, and Helen didn’t stop her. “That’s it, I just– I just–”
“You’re your own person, Evie. If God won’t give you peace, you’ve damn well got to carve out what little you can for yourself.”
Eva pressed her hands over her eyes. For long moments, all they could hear were her shaky breaths as she tried to keep from crying.
“She’s right,” Katie said. “Ugh. Can’t wait to never say that again.”
Eva let out a wet laugh. She swiped at her cheeks.
Helen gave her another minute to reassemble herself. Then she asked, “Alright?”
Eva nodded.
“There’s a good girl.” She pulled the glove back on.
“I’ll probably still wear a hair shirt about it.” The joke was croaky, but brave. “At least the hair shirt’ll be blonde, though.”
Katie grinned. “There we are.”
“But seriously,” Eva cleared her throat, tone dropping and words clipping back into a semblance of composure, “do you think it’ll look okay? The color, I mean?”
“Oh, definitely,” Katie said. “It looks good on Gracie and Urs, after all.”
“Yeah, but they’re….” Eva paused and swallowed what she was going to say. “No, you’re right.”
“Besides,” Helen said. She leaned into Eva’s field of view. “Can’t be worse than the oven.”
“So, what do you think?”
Bibi glanced up from her book. She wrinkled her nose. “Looks bad.”
“Wow. Thanks, Bibi.”
“What? It’s just blonde.” Of all of them, Bibi was the only one to have been brunette since the day she was born. “You were fine before.”
“Let me touch.” Becka reached up on her tippy toes.
Eva eyed her undoubtedly sticky hand. She was saved by Grace hurrying into the room in a flour-streaked, too-long apron.
“Oh, Eva, it looks amazing,” she gushed. “It really suits you, you know?”
Bibi rolled her eyes.
“Thanks, honey.” Eva hugged Grace from the side and made a face at Bibi over her shoulder. She wondered—not for the first time—if as a responsible guardian she should be refraining from making faces at ten-year-olds. Oh, well.
“These two even made up while you were away,” Grace said, stepping back. She looked back at Bibi and smiled, adding a devilish crinkle of her nose.
“Is that right?” Eva asked. She snaked her hands down to Becka’s waist, who was watching, thumb in her mouth, swaying side to side, as she waited to be noticed again, and hoisted her up by the middle. Becka squealed and squirmed. Eva bounced her once before setting her back down.
Stumbling back, Becka nodded, giggling.
Bibi made a face of her own and went back to her book.
They left Bibi and Becka in the living room, where Becka’s half-finished drawings still lay scattered across the floor. In the hallway, Eva caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wall. She paused.
Grace joined her in the reflection. She leaned her head on Eva’s shoulder. “Would you look at us. We match.”
“Yeah.” Eva’s lips twisted, bittersweet. She leaned her fair head on top of Grace’s and smelled rising apricot scones. An ache twisted in her chest. “We do.”
