The Yellow Braid by Karen Coccioli

She’d
learned from the best. Caro was an expert at blindly moving forward
through family preoccupations and obstacles, and she would have
relied on those same psychological tools again to ease through this
conflict with Abby.
    The discovery of Zach’s affair with Marcie,
still surreal even several days later, showed her that keeping her
distance with Abby didn’t accomplish anything in their relationship
and hurt just as much.
    She’d already left a voice-mail for her
daughter suggesting another call. In addition, she purchased her
airline tickets for Abby’s birthday, compromising with herself by
staying away only five days instead of the original plan of two
weeks, so as not to be separated from Livia for too long.
    Caro looked upon her affection for Livia,
and the girl’s reciprocity, as a blessed gift amid the grief of
loss and betrayal over the last months. She seemed to touch
something in Caro that was like soothing salve over a bruise. That
morning, Caro came across a letter the poet Rilke wrote to his
student, which she intended to share with Livia.
    In it, Rilke counseled the young man about
the great gift of sadness being a collection of solitary moments
when everything within withdraws, and out of which arises something
new, a new sense of direction, a new self. And no matter how much
you want to believe nothing has changed, he wrote, disbelief is an
impossibility. A great deal inside has been transformed.
    The message of transformation motivated Caro
to telephone Nina to go shopping for Phyllis’s party. And then
there was her appointment with Tommy. On Saturday night she would
appear a newly fashioned woman.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
     
    Some day you will be old enough
to start reading fairy tales again . ~C.S. Lewis
     
     
     
    Tommy held up a color chart to Caro’s head
and sorted through the hair swatches for an attractive match. “I
don’t think we should go as light as your natural color. What do
you think of adding an auburn tint? Add luminance to your pale eyes
and complexion while giving you some definition around the
face.”
    “You’re not talking red. I’ve had that
before and hated it,” Caro said.
    “Heavens no. Red would be dreadful. Like I
said, the auburn will act only as a highlight. As for the style …”
He combed through her hair with his fingers from the nape up,
“…there’s not much to work with. I’d say since it’s so chopped
already, the best thing is to take it super short in a style that
makes a statement.”
    Caro offered him a weak nod. Her commitment
to being a “new woman” was draining quickly now that she was
actually involved in the process. She’d forgotten what it was like
to have stylists and aestheticians pucker their brows when
confronted with her thin hair and washed-out complexion. She
groaned inwardly and stiffened.
    Tommy squeezed her shoulders. “You’re going
to be fine. Now off with Lily here for your facial.”
    Caro rose obediently and allowed herself
to be taken through the earth-colored doors overhung with
hand-painted vines and the legend Serenity in italicized script. Once inside, she was
pleasantly surprised. The heady scent of herbs accompanied by the
liquid strains of nature music made her feel weightless. She
breathed without tension, long slow intakes of the perfumed
air.
    At the completion of her treatments, she
regretted having to re-enter the ammonia-scented world of the salon
with its walls of steel and glass and the ring of mirrors in which
Caro saw herself in duplicate and triplicate.
    Tommy applied the dye to her hair and
eyebrows and sat her under a heating element that looked vaguely
like the planet Saturn. In the harsh light that emanated from the
encircling bulb Caro was struck by how the dye created a freakish
halo around her face resembling car engine oil. Her eyebrows leaked
at the edges. The mawkish color accentuated the worry lines between
her eyes that had gutted deep in the last few years, a family
legacy on her