Fragile Read online

  FRAGILE

  FRAGILE

  CHRIS KATSAROPOULOS

  LUMINIS BOOKS

  Published by Luminis Books

  13245 Blacktern Way, Carmel, Indiana, 46033, U.S.A.

  Copyright © Chris Katsaropoulos, 2009

  PUBLISHER’S NOTICE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product

  of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design and composition for Fragile by Joanne Riske.

  ISBN-10: 1-935462-27-X

  ISBN-13: 978-1-935462-27-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  “Katsaropoulos does a wonderful job of developing the characters and intertwining their stories. The tale he creates is intriguing and attention-grabbing. Unlike anything you have read before … !”

  —Kam Aures, Rebeccasreads.com

  “Fragile is a beautifully-written novel … the writing is uniquely refreshing. After reading Fragile, I found myself feeling very contemplative. Readers will enjoy Fragile and will find meaning in it that applies to their own lives … Highly recommended.”

  —Paige Lovitt, Reader Views

  “When your own life is shattered, sometimes the pieces needed to repair them like in the broken lives of others. Fragile tells the story of three individuals who face their life-long celibacy, their loveless marriages, and their own self-loathing.”

  “An elderly virgin yearns for her lost lover, the lost lover faces the passionless life he chose, and a mother bottomed out on her luck wondering what drove her to try to end her own life. Poignant and thought-provoking, Fragile is a fine piece of fiction to add to any collection.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “In Fragile, his first novel, Katsaropoulos combines elements of his knowledge and experience and has written and experimental book that, like its title, is fragile. This is a book of fragments that, not unlike the encounters we all face in life—moments that seem coincidental and unimportant at the time but which later lead to insights and even behavior changes completely unexpected.”

  “There is an element of ‘higher meaning’ in this story that makes it fascinating to finish and to contemplate the experience of reading it. For lovers of experimental literature, this book is tasty.”

  —Grady Harp, Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

  “Fragile is a fine first novel by Chris Katsaropoulos. It takes getting used to the “broken story” technique as three people are introduced and then followed about in succeeding fragments. Bit by bit we come to know the main characters, Amelia, Tris, and Holly, and what happens to them through choices they make, and how they affect and are affected by others through a series of relationships that stop-start in present/past with inner monologues and outer dialogues.

  “The wonderment is how easily we are able to edge into this disjointed style, and how readily we become part of this shattered and shattering story. At the end it’s a “whew” and a “wow” because it was a pleasurably demanding experience.”

  “When we’re thrust into a different setting mid-sentence or mid-word, it seems natural because of the circumstances. These characters are not whole—pieces of their lives are missing. Why? Perhaps what we learn is the most fragile truth about ourselves—would we, could we be these people?”

  —Rita Kohn, Nuvo Newsweekly

  “Fragile is an experiential novel about what pulls us together and apart… Three very different people who are all struggling to feel love and be loved are all portrayed as vulnerable by Katsaropoulos… The stories are sad, but Katsaropoulos does a wonderful job of keeping the thread of hope alive in each of them, as though a happy ending is just around the corner. It’s a small story with a large impact.”

  —Christina Lockstein, Christy’s Book Blog

  On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.

  Robert Browning

  Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

  Ecclesiastes, 12:6–12:7

  INSTEAD OF SKIPPING out to lunch for half an hour, Holly has to take a walk-in who wants a full cut and color. Holly tries to slip past the front desk and down the stairs, but the insolent girl working the desk calls her over with a smirk and points to the old woman trying to situate herself in one of the sleek, coneshaped plastic chairs in the waiting area.

  “I would’ve given her to Trent,” the girl whispers slyly, “but he has a two o’clock coming.” Then she adds what amounts to a warning. “She wants a special.”

  Holly nods and wonders what she’s in for this time. Ever since she started running around with Rick Oester, the bartender at the Midtown Grill, Holly’s business has taken a nosedive. She leaves the kids with her mother and stays out late, drinking too much, smoking too much, waiting for Rick to close. Then, when it’s 2 a.m., maybe 3, they go out—or, more often, they end up at his place. The next morning, she feels like death warmed over, and the customers notice. She’s been late to her morning appointments and missed a few altogether. Now she has big one-hour, two-hour gaps in her book, and this is what she gets: Whatever leftovers wander in off the street.

  “How are you?” Holly says, trying to perk up her voice and hide the disappointment in her face. She extends her hand to the old woman, who has found herself trapped by the peculiar ergonomics of the tipped-up cone chair, more an offer of assistance than a greeting. The woman places her hand into Holly’s and latches on with a surprisingly forceful grip. The appendage Holly holds in her hand has a curious parchment-like feel to it, as if a small sack of bones has suddenly sprung to life and grasped the first thing that passed by. Holly’s initial reaction is to let go, but the old woman’s hand clutches at her as she tries to pull away. The cool skin of the hand is thin and papery, the round knobs of the knuckles bulging white as the woman yanks on Holly’s arm to hoist herself up.

  “My foot fell asleep,” she says, gasping from the effort of raising herself. “No circulation. These chairs send all the blood to your … “she gasps again audibly, as Holly gives her one last tug to get her on her feet, “to your backside.”

  “I guess they’re not built for—” and then she stops short, trying to come up with a kinder way to say old people. The only thing she can think of that doesn’t sound offensive is “senior citizens,” but the words feel awkward and mean as they come out of her mouth. The woman glances at Holly and lets go of her hand. “I’m Holly, by the way. We’re heading over here,” she says, striding towards the row of hair-washing sinks lined up beneath the tall picture windows on the far side of the shop. High above their heads, huge, four-spoked ceiling fans slowly churn the air. The heels of Holly’s beige pumps click with a solemn purpose on the hardwood floors, adding a staccato beat to the undulating whine of Trent’s blow drier as he waves it over the head of his one-thirty. The fronds of the large potted plants quiver from the currents of air circulating around the shop. Holly points to an open basin and watches the woman carefully lower her head into it, resting the base of her skull against the dip where the neck goes.

  Holly steps to the back of the basin, looking at the woman’s tired upside down face from a great height. From this vantage point, the normal geometry of the face is inverted, giving Holly precisely what she wants—the true picture of what she has to work with, the hair separate from the nose, the mouth, the eyes; an entity unto itself. She makes a quick assessment before the wash: faded blond tin
ged by gray, a respectable cut with layers feathering back over the ears, collar length—maybe a bit too long for a woman this old. How old is she really? Holly wonders. It’s not the kind of question she can ask directly, and that’s the problem with picking up these strays off the street. With her regulars, she can work with a known quantity, rejoin the conversation in mid-beat from the previous appointment—“How are the kids? Oh, a new dog? What kind? How sweet.” There’s more effort with a walk-in, finding out what they like and don’t like in their cut, making small talk about the weather. Long periods of silence such as this.

  “So,” Holly says, staring into the upside down eyes of the old woman, “what are we doing here today?”

  “My name’s Amelia,” the old lady says. “I had trouble finding this place, upstairs and all. One of my dear friends said you could help.”

  A referral—it’s been a while since she’s had one of those. As she’s been losing her stockpile of regulars, she’s also been losing the people they recommend her to. She reaches down and touches the woman’s hair lightly, getting a feel for it before she washes.

  “Really?” Holly says. “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Dolores,” the old woman says. “Dolores King.”

  Holly sifts through a list of names, faces, customers she has or once had, even friends of customers, and finds that the name means nothing to her. Then she realizes: Dolores King didn’t refer Amelia to Holly. The girl at the desk said she would have given her to Trent.

  “Dolores told me this place has the best beauticians in town.” Holly nearly laughs to hear her use such an old-fashioned word. “About a year ago, the lady who used to do my hair—did it for more than twenty years—passed away. Since then, I’ve tried a lot of places, but no one can get it right. The color is off somehow, the length of the bangs is never right. Then I tell them it’s wrong and they look at me like I’m some kind of crazy old coot.”

  Amelia glances up at Holly with a kind of stern defiance, as if to rebuke all the other haircutters who have given her poor cuts. Holly touches her hair again, gently lifting it away from the compartment of the sink and letting it fall strand by strand. She still has plenty to work with, not thinning like she sees in many women Amelia’s age. Lots of hair, but very fine, like the angel hair in the hollow center of the ornament they used to cautiously place on the top bough of the Christmas tree when she was a child. The light catches each filament as they fall away from her hand: silver, white, gray, gold. No roots, not a trace of auburn or black. Clearly, there’s been some coloring, but it’s hard to tell how much.

  “Oh, you’re not crazy,” Holly says. “You just want what you want.”

  “Can you help me? I’m looking for something … special. My fiftieth high school reunion is tomorrow night.”

  “And you want to look great. Let’s wash up here, and you can tell me all about it.”

  Holly starts the water from the jet nozzle at the end of the hose and adjusts the temperature to warm the water. Then she soaks Amelia’s hair, transforming it from a fine halo of golden gray into a limp solid mass that hangs from her head, dark and slick. She spurts a glob of fragrant shampoo into her palm and plies it onto Amelia’s glimmering head, massaging the scalp, working her fingers into the hair. In all the years she’s been cutting hair for a living, Holly has never tired of this part of the job. Weaving her fingers into the heavy, wet hair of her customer, she lowers her voice and murmurs a reassurance that everything will be okay, she will take care of her. She can feel the tension ease out of this woman as her eyes close and she slumps lower in the reclining black leather chair. Once again in this second-story shop high above ground, the inexorable force of gravity pulls Amelia’s body towards the earth. Holly’s fingertips press into the contours of Amelia’s skull, massaging the scalp, exploring the interlocking bones of the crown. She works her way around to the sides of the head, probing the soft areas around the temples. In the hidden pockets behind each ear, a knob of bone protrudes and there are paired clefts, indentations where the plastic earpieces of Amelia’s glasses have worn their way into the soft bone over the decades, two groovelike canyons. Our bodies are surprisingly pliant, conforming themselves to the forces that mold us day by day, year after year. Holly’s hand wends its way across the top of my head, pressing hard, now doing something with the water, squirting another glob of shampoo or maybe conditioner. This time it smells like cocoanuts, like a tropical drink with chemicals from a perm someone else is getting mixed in, tingling at the top of my head and down my back. It hurts where this hard sink presses into my neck. If she doesn’t stop soon, I will have to tell her, but it feels so good where she massages that I don’t want it to be over. I’d come back to this woman again just to have her wash my hair this way, but I doubt if she can cut it as well as Claire used to. No one else has been able to, why should she? Dolores says this shop is the best, so maybe this Holly will be as good as Claire was, but will you ever see me Tris? We could meet at the show, at the five o’clock show like we used to, or I could see you at the lunch counter at Haag’s and have a soda, you know there’s no point in avoiding me any longer. We could be together again, the way it was before. We could see each other every day, but you have to come now.

  They say they’re going to tear the Lyceum down, Tris. It’s not a big hotel and theater anymore, now a boarding house for old people like us. They say they’re going to knock it down with a big wrecking ball, crumbling to a pile of dust, the whole wonderful thing falling into itself, all the beautiful carpets and the walls inside, the pastel walls cracking into a pile of dust and rubble. They’re going to knock it all down and then the phone is ringing, playing a tune. Her hands went away, digging in her pocket. “Hang on a sec,” the phone is playing a tune.

  The fan twirls up by the ceiling, and it’s cold in here with my hair wet. The frond of the potted plant waves at me, “No Mom, I can’t tell him to forget it … That’s fine, if you insist on screwing up my life again, you’ve done it so many times before. Well, how can I ever repay you for that?… No, you go ahead. I’ll find someone else to watch them.” She clicks the phone shut and twirls around behind me, her face high up, her chin, and the dark holes of her nose release a heavy sigh. She stares ahead at the empty space above me not looking down, not doing anything, filled with rage. “What’s the matter?”

  she says, tilting her head back and peering up at Holly from the dark confines of the sink. Holly doesn’t want this old woman to be here, doesn’t want her prying into her problems, her battles with her mother. For an instant, the old woman in the sink has become her mother, the head that stares up at her is the same as the fearful, reprimanding head of her mother, a sink full of shoulds and do’s and don’ts calling up to her from somewhere in the depths of her soul, telling her what she must do and berating her when she doesn’t obey the commands. Though the voice that floats up to her is meant to be helpful, it fills her with dread, eats away at the thin membrane that protects the innermost part of her from the outside. Then, a wheel in her head turns a notch, and she knows she must answer the question.

  “Nothing really,” Holly says. “Babysitter problem.” She grabs a fistful of the woman’s hair and squeezes, ringing the water out.

  “You sound upset.” The whites of the old woman’s eyes rotate further back into their sockets. Trying to get a better look at Holly. “Is there any way I can help?”

  You could shut up and go away, Holly thinks. She squeezes the hair tighter and imagines herself starting to pull, yanking the head down. If you pulled on the wet rope of hair hard enough, you could easily snap a person’s neck against the fulcrum created by the smooth lip of the sink. The skin on Amelia’s face looks like parchment, like the high-resolution color x-ray pictures of a mummy she saw in a news magazine recently, layers of papery parchment the color of a grocery sack bronzed with great age. The reedy lips move almost imperceptibly, the tongue still remarkably pink behind yellowed teeth and flaring gums, blowing puffs
of stale breath, forming another set of words.

  “If you need a babysitter,” the old woman says, “perhaps I can help you. You have kids that need watching, and I’ve got nothing but time on my hands.”

  The words are so incongruous with the images flitting through Holly’s head that it takes a moment for Holly to process what she’s saying. She has never left her two girls with anyone but her mother. And as vexing as her mother can be, Holly feels confident that nothing bad will happen to the girls at her mother’s house. Plus, leaving them there frees her to stay out all night if she wants. Her implacable need for Rick injects itself into her thinking, races through the air above their heads like the swift shadow of a jet plane on its way to the point where it will meet with the jet itself on the runway when the plane touches down.

  “Well,” Holly says, calculating, getting down to business, “where do you live? I mean, I usually drop my girls off at my Mom’s house—instead of having someone come by.” The force of habit, the power of her need, frames her thinking: She wants to leave the girls at someone else’s house, as she normally does. In the instant before Amelia answers, she tries to picture where someone like Amelia would live, and the results are not good. She imagines linoleum floors and empty tins of cat food stacked on the kitchen counter. Flock wallpaper and mildewy shag carpet, tinged with the smell of mothballs. A trailer park or an old farmhouse in a cornfield outside of town.

  “I’m on the number 8 bus line. East Washington. I take the 8 downtown, and the 15 over here.” Then Amelia adds, in a voice lacking any hint of embarrassment. “I don’t drive, you see.”

  Amelia’s lips form themselves into a broad, unassuming smile, a pressed shallow arc that reminds Holly of pictures she has seen of FDR’s wife smiling in spite of hard times. Holly knows she must choose soon or the offer will be withdrawn, an idea whose sheer absurdity is revealed by gradual exposure to the light of day. The faces of her two girls loom before her, images that have been stylized in her mind’s eye from dozens of photographs she has hanging on the walls of her home and mounted in art frames on the table behind this sink in the salon: Jenny and Zoe standing next to a snowman they helped her build, their faces beaming with joy; their first family portrait together, the one with their father still in it; a Polaroid of Jenny from her fourth birthday party, the father no longer there, chocolate icing smeared across her chubby cheeks. And then the shadow of Rick’s need darting past, her own need racing to meet it. Holly says “What time can you take them?” as if they are a burden to be unloaded. She twists my hair again to wring the excess water from it. Don’t worry. Though I haven’t even seen them, they are just as precious to me. I have taken care of children before, and Tris and I were children once together. We played in the yard behind the house in Elmer’s garden, we ran behind the big swing, wrestled in the hammock.