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"Don't let her bully you into it." Kaye raised her voice so she was sure her mother could hear her. "Mom, stop bullying Corny into things.”
"Do I look bad?" Corny asked Kaye. "What I'm wearing—do I look bad?" There was something in the way he hesitated as he asked that gave the question weight.
Kaye gave him a sideways look and a grin. "You look like you.”
"What does that mean?”
Kaye gestured to the camo pants she'd pulled off the floor that morning and the T-shirt she'd slept in. Her boots were still unlaced. "Look at what I'm wearing. It doesn't matter.”
"You're saying I look terrible, aren't you?”
Kaye tilted her head and studied him. "No one in their right mind would choose a mullet as a hairdo unless they were trying to give the world the finger.”
Corny's hand traveled self-consciously to his head. He smirked.
"And you have a collection of wide-wing-collared polyester button-downs in colors like orange and brown.”
"My mom buys them at flea markets.”
Picking up her mother's makeup case off of a mound of clothes by the bed, Kaye pulled out a stick of glittery black liner. "And you wouldn't look like you without them.”
"Okay, okay. I get it—what if I didn't want to look like me anymore?”
Kaye paused for a moment, looking up from smudging her eyelid. She heard a longing in his voice that troubled her. She wondered what he would do with a power like hers, wondered if he wondered about it.
Ellen came out of the bathroom with a comb, scissors, a small set of clippers, and a water-stained paper box. "How about some hair dye? I found a box that Robert was going to use before he decided to bleach. Black. Would look cute on you.”
"Who's Robert?" Kaye asked.
Corny glanced at his reflection in the greasy door of the microwave. He turned his face to the side. "I guess I couldn't look any worse.”
Ellen blew out a thin stream of blue smoke, tapped off the ash, and set her cigarette firmly on her lip. "Okay, sit on the chair.”
Corny sat down awkwardly. Kaye pulled herself up onto the counter and finished off her mother's beer. Ellen handed her the cord for the clippers.
"Plug that in, sweetheart." Draping a bleach-stained towel around Corny's shoulders, Ellen began to buzz off the back of his hair. "Better already.”
"Hey, Mom," Kaye said. "Can I ask you something?”
"Must be bad," Ellen said.
"Why do you say that?”
"Well, you don't usually call me 'Mom.'" She abandoned the clippers, took a deep drag on her cigarette, and started chopping at the top of Corny's hair with manicuring scissors. "Go ahead. You can ask me anything, kiddo.”
The smoke burned Kaye's eyes. "Have you ever thought about me not being your daughter? Like if I was switched at birth." As the words came out of her mouth, her hand came up involuntarily, fingers curving as if she could snatch the words out of the air.
"Wow. Weird question.”
Kaye said nothing. She just waited. She wasn't sure she could bring herself to say anything else.
"It's funny. There was this one time." Running her fingers through Corny's hair, Ellen found stray pieces and cut them. "God, you were not even two, toddling around. I'd stacked up a bunch of books on a chair so you could sit at the table at your grandmother's house. It wasn't real safe, but I wasn't real smart, either. Anyway, I go out to the kitchen, and when I come back, you're on the floor and the pile of books is all over the place. I mean, clearly you fell and clearly I am a terrible mother. But you're not crying. Instead, you have one of the books open and you're reading out of it—clear as a bell. And I thought: My child is a genius. And then I thought: This is not my child.”
"Huh," Kaye said.
"And you were so honest—nothing like me as a kid. You'd bend the truth, sure, but you'd never outright lie.”
My life is a lie. It was such a relief not to say it. It was a relief to just let the moments slide by until the subject got changed and the awful galloping of her heart slowed again.
