Why I Let My Hair Grow Out Read online

  as is so Often the case When you’re about to do something you probably shouldn’t be doing at all, the buddy system was in effect. The Billingsleys had each other (poor Billingsleys; why didn’t they take the brats to Euro Disney and be done with it?). Heidi and Johannes, the buff tvins, were zooming off ahead with their heads down and heinies in the air, Lance Armstrong-style.

  The mysterious newlywed couple still hadn’t shown up after their long exhausting night of hot honeymoon love, and that left me and my buddy, the recently widowed Lucy Faraday. Just my luck to end up riding with someone I actually had to be nice to.

  One advantage of having a sad buddy was that she was quiet, at least at first. And riding a bike, which I had hardly done in years, created its own kind of conversation substitute. Without any discussion we naturally started to pedal in the same rhythm, making long S-curves back and forth so we could check out the scenery on both sides of the road.

  I guess I should comment here on the Legendary Beauty of the Irish countryside. You can even get a DVD of it, if you want. There’s one called Irish Scenery or Irish Greenery or some crap like that—I’d seen it for sale in the airport. Crayola- green grass, gentle low hills, winding country lanes, ancient stone walls, blah blah blah. The nearest thing I could compare it to would be my dad’s favorite golf course in Danbury, only this was way better, with the occasional cow or sheep in the distance to add personality. There weren’t any strip malls or superhighways or Lucky Lou’s parking lots pocking up the landscape like architectural acne. Just green, rolling, timeless and mysterious beauty.

  It reminded me of the way Middle Earth looked in the Lord of the Rings movies, which Sarah and I had been obsessed with for a while before I started going out with Raph. Raph dismissed all three films as “wildly inferior to the books.” For that and other reasons, Sarah had to carry on with her Orlando Bloom fixation alone.

  Here in Ireland, though, the natives were normal sized—the ones I’d met so far, anyway—and I assumed they did not have hairy hobbit feet. Though who knew, really? I’d yet to see Colin kick off his shoes.

  to hook up With Colin, or not to hook up With Colin. That was the question. Actually the question was this: Why travel to foreign lands at all, if not to have impulsive, meaningless rebound flings with guys you’d never see again?

  He was a trip, that Colin, but cute enough for rebound work, and he certainly looked like all his parts were in good working order. All I had to do was keep him convinced I was eighteen, in case he wasn’t the type to take advantage of a sixteen-year-old girl who wasn’t thinking straight due to a recently stomped-on heart. Especially a girl who’d never managed to go all the way with her one and only serious ex-boyfriend. But Colin didn’t need to know that either.

  “Morgan?” Who the fek was talking to me? “Can we stop for a minute?”

  It was Lucy Faraday, my all-but-forgotten sad bike buddy.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she said. Her helmet cast a shadow on her face so I couldn’t really see, but it sounded like she might have been crying. “Sorry. I just need to stop.”

  So we stopped. I had to pee anyway.

  six

  Off i went to do my part for the green grass of ireland. I squatted behind a small mossy hill to be out of sight of Mrs. Faraday, and there was nobody else to watch me pee except a couple of animatronic-looking cows in the distance. Then I came back and sat on the ground next to Mrs. F. while she told me the story of her and the late Jack Faraday. There was no way out of it, but I hoped it would be quick.

  “We’d planned this trip for a year,” she began. Her helmet was off so I could see that, yes, she was weepy, but it wasn’t like sobby, drama-queen crying, just tears going down at quiet intervals while she talked. Every now and then she wiped them away. “Jack had lung cancer. He’d done surgery, radiation, chemo—he’d bounced back from all that but we knew it wasn’t a cure, just a reprieve.”

  “Uh huh,” I said. This was definitely one of those times when it sort of didn’t matter what I said, and I was glad. I just raked my fingers through the soft grass and nodded at intervals.

  “His grandparents were Irish, you know,” she said, stretching out her legs. Like there was any way I could have known that. “And he’d never been here. So we booked the tour, though I secretly wondered how he would manage so much bike riding! They’d taken out part of his lung.”

  Enormous willpower required not to make a gross-out face at that unasked-for piece of information.

  “It made him so happy, looking forward to this trip. He was in such good spirits I almost forgot how sick he was.” Mrs. Faraday did a brief eye wipe. “And it ran through my mind sometimes—what would we do when this was over? I think I convinced myself that he was keeping himself alive just for this. As if he really had that power.”

  Mrs. Faraday was probably my mom’s age or just a bit older. The Widow Faraday, I thought, like it was a name from a fairy tale. And they all lived happily ever—

  “Nobody wants to think about sad things,” I said. Deep, huh? I knew what it was like to try to put off the inevitable. You could try and try, but it always got you in the end. “When did he die?” I hate the “passed-away” thing. People die, deal with it.

  “A month ago,” she said. She half-smiled. “Four-and-a-half weeks, actually. Everyone thought I was nuts to come by myself. But I had to. I’m here for both of us.”

  “Uh huh,” I said. My mom actually pays big money for therapy, and look at me, saying all the right things for free.

  “And I’m not even Irish!” She laughed. “I was born in Pennsylvania, but my grandparents are from Italy. Lucia Palombo was my maiden name.”

  “That’s pretty,” I said. Lucia was unmistakably a girl’s name, which I liked. “Does anybody still call you that?”

  “Only my mother,” she said. “But you can if you like.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Lucia.” Score points for Lucia for talking to me like I was a real person, by the way, not some nasty punk Sinéad O’Connor wannabe, or whatever it was I looked like at the moment.

  Four-and-a-half weeks. I wanted to tell her that it was only a month ago—four-and-a-half weeks, exactly, actually—that I was a long-haired, grown-strangely-quiet girl whose friends had stopped calling because of my total devotion to a boyfriend who didn’t seem to like anything about me: My friends, my ass, my brain, my sense of humor, my “image,” my taste in movies. . . .

  I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t. Too hard. Talking about your dead husband is one thing, but talking about your ex-boyfriend who dumped you—never mind, even I could tell how stupid that line of reasoning was. Maybe I just wasn’t that good at talking about stuff.

  “Shall we go?”

  We stood up. Both of us had damp bottoms from sitting on the grass, which made me wish for a layer of padding between my sweatpants and my ass. The whole time we’d been talking not a single car had come down the road.

  “Do you believe in soul mates, Morgan?” Lucia asked, as she adjusted her helmet and latched it under her chin.

  I smiled, because Sarah always used to ask me questions like that. Sure, I believed in soul mates. At least I used to. Because I thought Raph and I were soul mates until it became clear that we were so totally not.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You should,” she said, getting back on her bike. “I found mine. And I can feel him here with me now, everywhere.”

  by the time We arrived at the designated ye Olde Adorable Pub for lunch, I was so hungry my hands were shaking.

  The full complement of Billingsleys had not made it the whole way on bikes, as darling Sophie had stopped partway and refused to ride any further. She and her mom arrived in the back of Colin’s van, while the father and son Billingsleys soldiered on. The male bonding must have had a positive effect, because Derek actually seemed cheerful and was letting Sophie chase him around the yard. Heidi and Johannes were doing stretches and calisthenics under a nearby tree.

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bsp; I wanted to eat, anything and lots of it, but lunch was being delayed. The Honeymoon Horrors had arrived. At the moment the new bride was pitching a fit, and Mrs. Patty Boob was trying to settle her down before leading us inside.

  “I’m quite sure I put down that I was a vegan on my reservation form,” the woman was saying. “And this is not a vegan restaurant. Look!” She waved the menu in Patty’s face. “Fish and chips! Angus steak! ‘Bangers’—I don’t even know what they are but they certainly sound like meat!”

  “Those would be the sorts of things you’d find in a pub lunch, more or less,” said Patty, with infinite patience. “But I’m sure they can make you something you’ll enjoy, dear. What do you eat, then? Chicken?”

  The woman looked like she might explode. “I need to speak to my husband. Excuse me,” she snarled, with that special stuck-up attitude that comes from being able to say “my husband” like it’s some kind of prize you just won.

  She was something, this pissy vegan woman. Extremely thin, but with ample-sized and highly antigravitational knockers (not a look that mother nature often creates, if you get my silicon drift). Elaborately blown-out and tinted hair, with all those streaks and chunks and highlights and lowlights you see on movie star hair in People magazine. Ultrableached teeth. Perfect French manicure. Teeny, tiny little Michael Jackson nose. This chick had pimped her own ride to the max; all she needed was a set of spinners.

  All the personal maintenance made her seem older, but she was young, maybe late twenties at the most. Young and immature. This became clear when she tried to enlist her husband for backup against the forces of carnivoredom and he shushed her like she was an interrupting child.

  “So we’ll reshoot the pilot,” he was saying into his BlackBerry. “We’ll recast. I’m telling you, this show is a fabulous, fabulous concept. Funny, contemporary, sexy. The next Friends. The next Will and Grace. The next Sex and the City. The next—right. Right. Right.” He rolled his eyes and looked at his wife, who was tapping her foot in impatience.

  “What,” he mouthed.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  He turned away. “If I’d known you were looking for suspense—Ted, we can add that. We can make it so suspense- ful you won’t know what hit you.”

  “It’s an emergency.” Her lower lip, perfectly outlined with lip pencil, was starting to quiver.

  “Hang on, Ted,” he said into the BlackBerry. “Back in a sec. What!” he snapped at his wife.

  “I’m hungry,” she said, pouty-faced.

  “Baby, please.” He covered the mouthpiece, or whatever you call the part of a BlackBerry you talk into. “You’re an animal. A man’s gotta rest sometime!”

  “I mean hungry,” she said. “For lunch. And all they have is meat.”

  He sighed. “Don’t they have any bread?”

  “I can’t eat bread,” she said, horrified. He threw up his hands and turned away from her again.

  “I’m back,” he said to the phone. “Okay. Okay. But I will not rest till this show gets picked up. You guys will thank me later, I promise. Okay. Right. Ciao.” He hung up and turned to his wife with an expression of grave concern.

  “Is it stupid to say, ‘Ciao,’ when I’m in Ireland?” he asked.

  “No stupider than to say it in LA,” she said. She sounded really unhappy.

  “Come on, everyone!” said Patty, holding open the door to the pub. “Let’s eat!”

  aside from getting some food into my stomach, my goal for lunch was to sit next to Colin and flirt. Lucia had gone quiet again (though now it was more of a satisfied, thoughtful kind of quiet than sad-quiet), so even though she was sticking pretty close to me, I didn’t expect her to interfere.

  The rest of my tour mates were another story. Heidi and Johannes’s goal was to chat with me relentlessly so they could practice their American teen idioms with a living specimen. The Billingsleys’ goal was to get their kids to eat something without provoking any acts of domestic violence or child abuse (I’m just guessing). And the LA couple’s goal was to suck every molecule of oxygen out of the room through the vortex of their gigantic newlywed egos, leaving the rest of us gasping and turning blue with admiration for their obvious superiority. It would be a challenge to fit my flirting plan on to the agenda of such an action-packed lunch, but I was determined to try.

  “Did everyone meet Carrie and Stuart Woodward?” asked Patty, as soon as we’d all done the musical chairs bit and found ourselves seats around the big circular table. Colin was on my right. (I’d practically hip-checked Heidi to make sure I got that chair because I had a zit on my left cheek, and who needed to see that?)

  “Pippin!” said Carrie, firmly. “My name’s Carrie Pippin. Even though Stuart and I are married now, I’m keeping my name, for professional reasons.” She stroked her pink-and-white nails down his cheek. It might have seemed sweet if he hadn’t been nattering into his phone and swatting her hand away like a fly while she did it.

  “What sort of work have ya had done, have ye done, do ya do?” Colin asked Carrie, straight-faced. I almost spit out my water but nobody else seemed to get what he’d said.

  Carrie tossed her Technicolor mane of hair. “I’m an actor,” she said.

  “Really?” said Colin, copying her tone. “I coulda sworn you were a female.” Derek giggled at this, and Colin shoved a breadstick in the boy’s mouth.

  Carrie smiled, very cool. “We say ‘actor’ now. Only porn stars call themselves actresses. Oh, pardon me! I forgot there were children here!”

  “I know what a porn star is,” said Derek.

  “That’s enough, son,” growled Mr. Billingsley.

  “I do too!” Sophie chimed in. “It’s when a lady takes off all her clothes and kisses and kisses and kisses! I saw it on Derek’s computer!”

  Mrs. Billingsley made a face and clutched her side.

  “Did I miss anything?” said Stuart, hanging up his phone. “What’d I miss?”

  “We were speaking about porn stars,” said Heidi, with perfect enunciation. Johannes nodded and smiled, proud of their new vocabulary word.

  “Porn stars! Damn, it’s like I never left LA,” said Stuart. Carrie laughed hysterically at her hubby’s brilliant wit.

  “Oh God, so funny, baby!” Carrie sputtered, through tears of mirth that seemed way too much for the occasion. “I keep telling him, one day they’ll ask him to host the Oscars!”

  What a bunch of nutcases. This was my chance to find out to what degree I already owned young Colin. I gently pressed my leg against his under the table, in a flirty “can you believe this” kind of way. He registered the pressure but he didn’t look at me or say anything. He just reached over and put a piece of bread on my bread dish without asking.

  Yesssss. Colin was mine.

  “This afternoon we’ll be riding through some truly lovely countryside,” said Patty, with an air of desperation. “But Ireland is much more than beautiful scenery. This is an ancient land, filled with stories and myths from long ago. The trails we ride have been traveled for thousands of years. In fact some people even believe these roads were first laid by the fae—”

  “Who requested the salad and baked potato?” Our waiter had arrived, a ruddy-faced man with snow-white hair, combed back in a neat, perfect wave.

  “That would be me,” said Carrie Pippin, flashing her camera-ready smile. “I’m a vegan.”

  “I’m from Ulster meself,” he said, pouring what looked and smelled exactly like beef gravy all over her potatoes. “I brought ’em mashed; hope ye don’t mind but it’s the way we make ’em here.” His eyebrows were as black as his hair was white. “The rest of ye are having shepherd’s pie. No complaints now; it’s the specialty of the house. If ye don’t fancy it there’s something wrong with ye and ye should see a doctor.”

  “May I have a look at the wine list?” asked Stuart.

  “Never mind that, Pop, we’ll wait to drink till we’re done riding for the day,” said Colin to the wait
er. Then he propped his elbow on the table and gave Stuart a wink. “But you and me, we’ll make up for it tonight, won’t we, Stu?”

  Stuart seemed completely perplexed at being shut down like this, but the waiter plopped a steaming plate of food in front of him and Patty barreled ahead with her speech.

  “Now that our lunch has arrived,” she said, “everybody tuck in, and Colin will tell us a bit about the Ireland of long ago.”

  “Aye,” said Colin. “Based on how the conversation has meandered so far, I think I’ll begin with the tale of Queen Maeve.”

  the story Was a bit confusing, but Queen maeve was like an ancient Irish porn star, is what I gleaned. She was married (to a king, duh) but she used to boast she needed thirty men a day to have sex with her, unless she was doing it with this particularly studly warrior dude named Fergus. Fergus was the only guy who could satisfy her without backup. One time Queen Maeve had to pee and Fergus held up his shield to hide her while she did it. She peed so much that three great lakes were formed.

  “And to this day the lakes are called Fual Maevea,” explained Colin, picking up his fork. We’d all been devouring our meals while he was spinning his yarn about horny old Maeve, so he hadn’t even started eating yet.

  “Fual Maevea. And what exactly does that mean?” asked Mrs. Billingsley, brightly. Moms are always looking for that educational angle, even in a story about a sex addict from 200 B.C.

  “Maeve’s urine,” Colin said, shoving a big forkful of shepherd’s pie into his mouth. “Dead on! This pie is bloody fantastic.”

  Everyone but Patty was staring at him, wide-eyed. Patty was looking down at her plate. I think she was trying not to laugh.

  Even the Pippin-Woodwards were silent, except for the insistent buzz of the BlackBerry’s vibrate mode. Stuart ignored it for once.

  “Fantastic,” Colin said again, through his food. “Sophie girl, if you’re not going to finish yours pass it over here, would you?”