The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [69]
The only other option was a home color treatment, but they made you look cheap, your hair all one color, uniformly. The way she had it done at the beauty parlor was strand by strand, highlights and lowlights. The result looked elegant. She examined her hair again. There was no question, it had to be done.
She went back down to the pharmacy. Standing outside it was a palo borracho tree covered with floppy pink blossoms. Since she’d been here earlier today, they’d started cutting it down. One man was up in the tree working with a chain saw, while the other directed from below. Already a number of branches, chopped up in large segments, were waiting on the sidewalk to be hauled away. Isolde entered the pharmacy, a condemned woman, she felt. She went to the aisle featuring hair products. She knew exactly where it was. The dyes were on the bottom. She had to squat down. Even the pictures on the outside of the boxes were horrible, the women’s hair looked tinny. Was there really no other way? She thought again of selling off her jewelry.
But she’d already tried this. She’d taken her jewelry to several jewelry stores in her neighborhood, the idea being to sell a piece or two. But apart from one place on Quintana that bought a pair of earrings, no one else had been interested. She next tried the antiques shops in San Telmo. The prices they offered were ridiculous, of no use. So she’d kept her jewels and come back home. What was she anyway without her jewelry and clothes?
She brought the hair dye up to the counter, hoping to realize the transaction as quickly as possible, so as not to be seen by anyone she knew. Then she hurried home.
In the meantime, Claudia had gone out. Isolde was now alone. She closed herself in the bathroom and took out the dye. For a moment, despite herself, her interest was piqued, as with any beauty treatment. She had an interest in the mechanics of beauty, originating, no doubt, in her particular case, with her own beauty, but going beyond it. She read the instructions, looked up again at her hair. The next time she looked she’d be a crass, tinny blonde. From that point onward, she pictured her downward slide. She’d receive fewer and fewer invitations and finally only be invited to second-rung parties. More and more people, rather than turning to her as she entered a room, like flowers to the sunlight, as it seemed they sometimes did, would see her and turn the opposite way. Fewer men would want her on their arms. She pictured herself walking the streets, no one having offered her a ride and no longer having money for a taxi home. Then, again, what seemed to be the culminating shame, the job in the beauty parlor, kneeling down picking over someone’s gnarly toes.
She shuddered. Surely it wouldn’t come to that. She’d much rather slink home to her parents’ house and wait it out there in her old bedroom. But an image crossed her mind of her crazy sister, doing just that. Then they’d really be a pair. Besides which, how could she ever afford the ticket home? Even that would be a problem. She’d have to work to buy a ticket so she could slink home.
Closed in the bathroom, the box of hair dye in her hand, she felt very afraid. In a moment, with a gesture, she would lose all her status. There was always the last option. Letting her hair grow out to its natural color. But that was impossible. The whole point was to be a blonde in this place. Everything depended on that. Again, like a torture, the image of herself working in a beauty parlor flashed into her head.