The Comeback by Ella Berman

Author:Ella Berman [Ella Berman]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-02T18:30:00+00:00

* * *

• • •

Margot has a shaved bleached head and a tiny white tattoo of a shell in between her clavicles, right in the tender part that I will barely let anyone touch, let alone tattoo.

“What are you going to do to my hair?” I ask her as Emilia rushes around my house, pulling up a chair for me to sit on next to the kitchen sink and propping the dirty mirror from the bedroom in front of us, just in case I want to stare at my own puffy face for two hours.

“Oh, I forgot you’re really British! Are you from London?” Margot asks as she runs her fingers through my hair. It’s the most intimate I’ve been with anyone for a while, and it’s making me feel embarrassingly turned on.

“North London. Have you been?” I ask, shifting in my seat as she clips the top half of my hair up.

“I was a member of the Auxiliary Ambulance Service there in the Second World War. During the Blitz,” Margot says seriously, saying the Blitz in an English accent.

I’m working out how to respond when Emilia turns around, and our eyes catch in the mirror. We’re both trying not to laugh, and for a moment it feels like we’re old friends. My face heats up and I realize that this is something else I never learned, how friendship alone can make you feel safe.

“Right. Okay,” I say eventually. “That would be in another lifetime, I assume?”

“Of course. Another lifetime, another vessel.”

I make a noise that I hope sounds like I’m agreeing with her, thinking that if there’s any truth to what she’s saying, I better come back as a man next time, one who believes he can do anything, regardless of whether it’s true or not. I stop asking her questions, though, because while I can see how believing in some higher power or grand plan could be comforting, it still makes me feel sorry for her and for all of us for needing it.

“So, talk to me. What were you going for with this?” Margot says, holding up a chunk of my hair. The reddish root nearly reaches the tops of my ears now, followed by about five inches of yellow blond, ending just above my shoulders.

“Where was I going?”

“What was the desired result? You must have been trying to say something.”

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” I say, noticing how greasy the roots are again.

“It’s less a hairstyle than a cry for help,” Margot says, and Emilia, who has been keeping busy arranging a bunch of flowers that have miraculously appeared from somewhere, does laugh this time. “Do you trust me to fix it?”

“I don’t think I care enough to have to trust you,” I say honestly, because I’m not sure I could ever trust anyone who has a tattoo in the most vulnerable part of their body, or who believes that maybe we were once all just mosquitoes, a thousand lives ago.

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