Home > The Smallest Part(5)

The Smallest Part(5)
Author: Amy Harmon

“If we cut Gia’s hair short, it will grow in better—no long pieces and bald spots. I told Cora a hundred times, but she wouldn’t let me do it. She couldn’t bear to cut it.” Mercedes stopped talking abruptly, Cora’s name dripping from the shears she held in her hands. With a deep breath, she began snipping, and Cora’s wishes fell to the floor with Gia’s baby hair.

When she was done, Gia’s hair was an inch long on the sides and maybe two inches long on top. Mercedes wetted it down and parted it neatly like Gia was going to the office. All she needed was a tiny suit and tie.

“She looks like a businessman.,” Noah murmured.

Mercedes rolled her eyes. “Like you can talk. The way you had her hair slicked back, she looked like Gordon Gekko from Wall Street.”

It was true, and Noah laughed. Mercedes’s head shot up like she’d missed the sound, and she flashed him a grin. A jolt of misery and guilt lanced his heart, and his smile fell away. Mercedes pretended not to notice.

“She looks chic. Like Twiggy,” Mercedes huffed. “We’ll pierce her ears if you want to make her look a little more girly.”

“And what was Cora’s opinion on that?” Noah asked.

Mercedes didn’t answer, though he guessed she knew. She swept up the wisps of blond hair from the tile and handed Gia her sippy cup and a teething biscuit, ignoring his question. Knowing Cora, earrings were a thumbs-down. Cora cried when Gia got her shots—every time—and Noah couldn’t imagine her wanting to poke holes in her baby’s ears unless it was absolutely necessary.

“Your turn, cave man,” Mercedes changed the subject. “That beard is only attractive if you can’t hide small, woodland creatures in it.”

He closed his eyes and let her have her way. She trimmed and snipped the hair on his head and the growth on his face, talking about this and that, about a new line of hair color she was selling in the shop, about the rising temperatures—finally—in Salt Lake City, and he just listened, letting her voice fill the quiet, answering only when necessary, growing drowsy in the safety of her hands.

“I’ve put you both to sleep,” she murmured. Noah opened his eyes and peered at Gia. Her head was drooping. Mercedes set her scissors down and tucked a stack of dish towels between Gia’s left cheek and the tray on her high chair, easing her to a more comfortable position. Mercedes resumed her ministrations, and his eyes grew heavy again.

“I’m leaving on Thursday, Noah. I’m taking that course I told you about—all the new innovations in beauty care, products, services, stuff like that. It’s in LA . . . remember? I get to work with industry experts—Hollywood hair and makeup artists—and I will be working on the set of that period movie. I hate to leave you and Gia right now, just when you’re going back to work. But I’ve been preparing for this for a year. I’ve got to go.”

Noah was suddenly alert. He stared at her blankly.

“How long will you be gone?” he asked.

“It’s a two-week course and another four weeks on set.”

Noah had no memory whatsoever of Mercedes planning to be in Los Angeles for six weeks. Panic bubbled in his healing chest. Cora had been gone for six weeks. Six weeks was a millennium.

“Who’s running the salon while you’re gone?” he asked. What he wanted to ask was, “Who will run my life?”

“Keegan,” she said, drawing his name out, as if trying to stimulate Noah’s memory.

“Who’s Keegan?” An image of a too-pretty, male stylist with white teeth and perfect hair flickered through his muddled brain. He didn’t like Keegan. But Mer seemed to get along with him well enough. She and Keegan were chummy. Keegan wanted to be more than just chums. It was obvious. So far, Noah didn’t think Mer had taken him up on it, but Cora had been convinced Mercedes would give in eventually. Noah hoped she wouldn’t. She deserved better than a pretty face and a hollow head.

“Noah!” Mercedes lowered her brow and pursed her lips, not sure if he was teasing. He was too morose, and his comedic timing was shot to hell. “You know Keegan Tate. He’s been a stylist at Maven for three years. I started training him to help me manage six months ago.”

“Sure. Yeah. Keegan Tate.”

“I’ll call. Heather will be here, and you know you can call Mami if you need anything too.”

Noah nodded woodenly. Mercedes had been training Keegan to help her manage the salon, but no one had had trained Noah to manage without Cora.

“I’m proud of you,” Mercedes whispered.

“Why?” he whispered back.

“You’re so strong. You’re such a good daddy, and you never complain.”

“What choice do I have?” he said. He sounded bitter, and he reached out a hand to his daughter’s freshly-shorn head and touched her hair in silent apology.

When Cora told him she was pregnant, he took a two-day furlough and got drunk. He wasn’t happy. He wasn’t excited. He was scared and angry. They’d talked about kids, sure, but it had always been something a long way down the road. He’d earned his associate’s degree when he was still in high school. It was cheaper that way. Four years after he graduated high school, he got his Bachelor’s degree in psychology. It would have been only two years, but he joined the Air Force reserves. Between Basic Training, Tech School, and a year in Kuwait, he lost a little ground. Marrying Cora at twenty-two had been a luxury he really hadn’t been able to afford. She’d just graduated and had her first teaching job, and between school, one weekend a month at Hill Air Force Base, a part-time psych tech job at the Montlake Psychiatric Clinic, and medical transcription jobs at all hours of the night, he’d had no time to do anything but breathe. He’d married her anyway.

Two years into his doctorate program in psychology, he’d picked up his Master’s degree. Two and a half years after that—at twenty-seven—he became Dr. Andelin. He’d worked his ass off to get there. Cora had worked her ass off to get him there. For seven years, he’d gone non-stop.

Then 9/11 happened. Noah had just finished his post-doctorate internship at Hill Air Force Base—a condition of his enlistment and his doctoral program—when he was deployed. A nine-month tour in Afghanistan at the National Military Hospital in Kabul.

One month after arriving in Kabul, he found out he was going to be a father. An email from Cora—Surprise!—had triggered a meltdown. He would miss Cora’s entire pregnancy. He would miss his child’s birth. Of all the things he’d expected during his deployment, Cora telling him she was pregnant was not one of them. He’d thought she was going to leave him. He’d braced himself for it. The deployment couldn’t have come at a worse—or better—time for their marriage. He figured the time apart would make or break them.

“Remember when you left for boot camp?” Mercedes asked, shaking him out of his private thoughts. She stepped back to view her handiwork, and something flickered in her eyes when she met his gaze. They both swiftly looked away.

“I remember.”

“Well, this course is boot camp for me. I’m not looking forward to it, but I’m committed. Thankfully, it’s only six weeks instead of nine, and there will be no running and weapons involved. I will also be able to call you every day—no letters required—okay?”

Noah saluted her, and she scooped pomade into her hands, rubbed them together, and styled his hair with the confidence and comfort of long companionship. Funny, he hadn’t thought about boot camp—or the day he left—in forever.

He and Mercedes had never talked about that kiss. It was the only time he’d ever kissed her, the only time she’d acted like she wanted him to kiss her, the only time she gave him hope. It was the kiss that came before Cora. Before he’d made a choice. Before Mercedes made the choice for him.

Mercedes wrote to him at boot camp, like she promised she would. But she didn’t ever mention the way they said goodbye, and how right that kiss felt. How good it was. How perfect. Mer, in her letters, was the same girl he knew at ten. The girl he knew at twelve and fourteen and sixteen. The girl who was as much a part of him as the palms of his hands or the heart in his chest. Something changed between them that night, no doubt about it. But Mer had hesitated. She’d turned back. She stepped away from the edge, and Noah didn’t want to fall in love by himself. So he climbed, hand over hand, back to the way things were before, and joined her on familiar ground.

Cora wrote to him too, long, lovely letters about philosophical things, and Noah discovered that he adored Cora on paper. He’d never been able to talk to Cora like he talked to Mercedes, but when she wrote, another woman emerged, and he saw her in a whole new light. Cora was a chameleon—colorful and quiet—becoming the girl she needed to be when the curtain rose. She wasn’t false; to say so would have been an injustice. She was adaptable and amenable. Sweet. Smart. And she wrote beautiful letters. She was convinced she loved him. He saw it in the curling words and the flowing phrases that filled her pages, and he began to feel things he hadn’t felt before.

He fell in love with Cora when they were apart.

Oddly enough, when he was deployed to Afghanistan ten years later, after six years of marriage, the phenomenon did not repeat itself. Mercedes was as constant as always. She sent chatty letters that made him laugh and packages filled with treats and silly gifts to pass the time—a joke book with the stupidest jokes ever written, boxes of trivia questions, a yo-yo, card games, and fake dog poop. He hadn’t had a yo-yo in years, but Mer reminded him that he’d been playing with one the day they met. Her letters were light and unchanging. The same Mer. His buddy. His pal.

Cora rarely wrote, and when she did, Noah didn’t recognize his wife. They weren’t letters from the girl who’d once captured him with her words.

Special arrangements were made for them to Skype right after Gia was born. Mer and Heather were there with Cora, who smiled weakly and asked Mer to hold Gia up to the camera so he could get a better look at his tiny, newborn daughter with her pink skin, downy fuzz, and fat cheeks. Gia’s cheeks were bigger than her whole head, and he’d laughed and cried, feeling the awe and the responsibility that fatherhood brings. He told Cora he loved her, and he’d meant it, convinced Gia would be the new start they needed. She said she loved him too, but he could tell something was wrong, and he felt it, even half a world away. He blamed it on distance and the trials of giving birth alone during a long deployment. They weren’t the first couple to go through it. They wouldn’t be the last.

He was home again two months after Gia was born, but Cora was struggling, and he didn’t know how to help her. She cried often and slept rarely. Her milk was plentiful, and Gia was content, but his wife was troubled. He asked a colleague—Dr. June from Montlake—to see her, thinking it would be easier for Cora to take advice and receive care from someone other than him, and Dr. June prescribed a mild anti-depressant. Cora was convinced it would be bad for Gia and refused to take it. Noah suggested a mother’s health was key to a child’s health, and that breast milk was important, but formula would do just fine if it meant Cora felt better.

   
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