Crazy for You Read online

  “Oh, God, Quinn, I’m sorry.” Ben’s voice rumbled again, and Zoë said, “I told you, there’s nothing wrong. Your mother-in-law’s a dyke, that’s all. Go away.”

  Quinn heard Ben’s laugh over the phone, and then Zoë saying, “I’m not kidding, but I’ll never get the details if you don’t let me talk.” Then Zoë’s voice came back clear. “You know, you have to hand it to Mom, she’s not real focused, but she does tend to get what she wants.”

  “Yes, and wouldn’t it have been an excellent idea for her to bring us up the same way?” Quinn started to pace, stretching the phone cord.

  “You sound a little annoyed,” Zoë said. “I’m still not sure how I feel about this except that it’s a little weird to find out Mom has a sex life besides Dad, but then I imagine it was a little weird for her, too, after all these years. So when did she finally figure this out?”

  “You don’t get it.” Quinn sat down on one of the counter stools, and Katie curled up at her feet, convinced Quinn wasn’t going to do anything rash for a while. “She says she’s wanted this for years.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” Quinn said, feeling vindicated by Zoë’s outrage. “Yeah, all that time she was shoving us down the straight and narrow and fetching and carrying for Dad, she had Aunt Edie on the side.”

  “Do you know how many times she told me sex wasn’t necessary and I should stop chasing boys?” Zoë’s voice went edgy with betrayal. “And all this time I thought she was practicing what she preached, poor boring Mom.”

  “Probably as many times as she told me I was smart for not having sex,” Quinn said. “I told her losing my virginity had been awful, and all she said was, ‘Well, that’s sex for you.’ She told me it was boring and you told me it was overrated, and between the two of you I’ve been settling because I thought that was all there was, and now I’m mad.”

  “Shut up,” she heard Zoë say, and then she said, “Not you, my husband, the comic. He says she was probably hoping we’d chase girls. I told you sex was overrated?”

  “Several times. I couldn’t figure out why you kept going back for more, and I finally decided it was to drive Mom crazy.”

  “It probably was,” Zoë said. “I didn’t really get the hang of it until I was almost thirty.” Ben said something in the background, and she said, “No, not you, but you’re good, too. Will you go away so I can have this conversation?”

  “It was bad with Nick?” Quinn felt guilty for asking but she had to know.

  “Not bad, just not that good,” Zoë said. “I was nineteen, what did I know? And God knows, Mom was no help.”

  “Well, didn’t he know? I always had these huge fantasies about what great sex you were having on the couch.”

  “Nick was nineteen, too,” Zoë said. “Most of what he knew, he’d figured out with me. The Quick and the Clueless, that was us. And all that time, Mom—”

  “So great,” Quinn said. “So just great. You end up divorced, and I end up with one boring guy after another, and Mom gets a lifelong relationship with Dad and with Edie. I’m annoyed with her.”

  “Imagine how Dad feels.”

  “Right now, he’s chalking it up to menopause.”

  “Oh, hell. Do you want me to come home?”

  “And do what? Show Dad the closet Mom just peeked out of? He’d only look for a cable hookup.”

  “You don’t sound so good.”

  “I’m having a rough night.” Your ex-husband just said no to me again. “People are thwarting me.”

  “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,” Zoë said. “Go get whatever you want, Q. I did, finally, with Ben, and evidently Mom has, too. So can you.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Quinn said. “Now tell everybody else to give it to me.”

  Quinn walked into the Upper Cut the next morning on her planning period looking for Darla. Debbie waved hello across four stations and three women wrapped in scarlet plastic aprons.

  “Hey, honey,” she called, looking weirdly like the late Princess Diana under her new blonde haircut. “Heard about your new house.”

  Two of the women turned to see who had a new house while the third went on describing her argument with somebody. “And then she said—”

  “Darla here?” Quinn asked as she made her way back to Darla’s station.

  “Any minute.” Debbie sprayed the confection of champagne blonde hair she’d just raised to new heights in front of her. “How’s that, Corrie?”

  Corrie Gerber’s wizened little face peered out from under a pile of frozen curls, looking like a mouse caught under a Baked Alaska. “Perfect, Debbie, just like always.”

  “We try to please.” Debbie whipped the plastic apron off Corrie, brushing little bits of hair from her shoulders. “There you go, honey. You be careful on the way out. The floor gets slippery here.”

  Corrie eased herself out of the chair and stood, not even five foot tall, checking the top of her head in the mirror. Over her shoulder, she caught sight of Quinn, who’d been trying hard not to stare at her, and said, “Heard about you. Went and dumped the coach and now you’re living in that old house out on Apple. What’s wrong with you, girl?”

  “I’m a feminist,” Quinn said. “We get irrational urges.”

  Darla blew in behind her, in such a tense hurry she was almost on top of Quinn before she said, “Whoa, what are you doing here? Hey, Corrie, looking good. Is my eleven-thirty here, Deb?”

  “No,” Debbie said. “But then it’s Nella, so no big surprise. What’s with you? You’re wound today.”

  “Work me in,” Quinn said to Darla. “I want a haircut.”

  “Sure, what the hell. You could use a trim.” Darla waved her toward the chair, brittle as hell, and Quinn said, “You okay?”

  “Later,” Darla said. “Trim, coming right up.”

  “No,” Quinn said. “A cut. Cut it all off.”

  All three of them turned to her.

  “Honey, no, not that beautiful hair,” Debbie said.

  “You turning into one of them lesbos?” Corrie said.

  “Are you sure about this?” Darla asked.

  “Yes,” Quinn said to all of them. “Lop it off.” She sat in Darla’s chair and skinned her hair back from her face. She looked like hell but she looked different.

  “Well, not like that.” Darla smacked Quinn’s hand until she let go, and then fluffed her hair a little around her temples.

  “Shave it off,” Quinn said.

  “Something I should know about here?” Darla said.

  Quinn looked in the mirror at Debbie and Corrie, listening avidly. “Later.”

  Darla turned to them. “Anything else we can do for you, ladies?”

  “Just lost her mind,” Corrie said and went tottering off to pay for her hair.

  “I’ll just clean up my station,” Debbie said. “Won’t be in your way at all.”

  “Yes, you will,” Darla said. “Give us ten minutes. Go get a Coke.”

  Debbie got the same look on her face she used to get when Darla wouldn’t let her play with the big girls, and Quinn would have bet she was going to whine, “That’s not fair,” just as she had a thousand times while they were growing up. Instead, she sniffed and flounced off to the break room.

  Darla pulled open her drawer and got out her scissors case. “Now give or I don’t cut.”

  “Nick kissed me last night. A lot,” Quinn said and saw Darla smile behind her in the mirror, relaxing a little for the first time since she’d hit the shop.

  “Excellent. Now explain the cut.”

  “Then my father came in, and he used it as an excuse to just stop.” She clenched her teeth just thinking about it. “He just stopped.” Quinn met Darla’s eyes in the mirror. “I said, ‘Listen, I’ve changed,’ and he said, ‘You look the same,’ and when he was gone I looked in the mirror and I do. I wore my hair like this in high school. It was a little longer but just like this, parted in the middle. I want to be new and this will be one w