In Alice’s world, a perm is a must. She subjects herself to one about every six weeks. As a result of this and probably of old age, her white hair is thinning in back and on top.
Her weekly, sometimes bi-weekly, appointments with Marveen, the hairdresser at The Place, are meant to keep her hair-do looking perky, but despite these efforts, the curls dwindle and flatten. A wig, she decided, was the answer.
I’d called all the wig stores in Portland. As it happened, the one in the most distant spot was the one most likely to have what she wanted.
“Now how far is this going to be?”she asked as soon as she got into the car.
“Far. Get comfortable.”
She slipped her extra-large sunglasses over her regular glasses, removed the earbud for the PocketTalker from her ear, and leaned back to endure the journey. ”Comfortable! Ha!”
On the way, Mount Hood loomed momentarily into view.
Since Alice rarely gets to see it, I couldn’t resist nudging her. “See the mountain?”
She leaned toward me. “What bouncing?”
“Mountain,” I said louder. “Can you see the mountain?”
“Can I see the monster?” she asked hopefully.
The road began to curve toward the north. I knew we’d lose sight of Hood in a minute. I pointed toward the giant ice cream sundae in the distance as it began to edge out of view. “The mountain!”
“Martian!” she said, certain she had it this time.
I held up the PockeTalker and she put the earbud in, understood the word “mountain,” and gazed around. By this time there was nothing other than a freeway and a fence on view.
“It’s gone now,” I said.
“I didn’t know mountains could come and go so fast.” This idea amused her. Mountains coming and going. She laughed as she removed the earbud again and closed her eyes. “That’s amazing.”
At the small wig store we were greeted by Elaine, a petite, pretty woman in her forties who wore a blonde wig. Would I have known it was a wig if I’d met up with her some place else? I wasn’t sure. She approached Alice and used a high-pitched voice probably reserved for old ladies, not realizing that the higher the pitch, the less likely the words are to be within hearing range.
The voice was so far out of Alice’s range, in fact, that she didn’t even know she was being spoken to. The PockeTalker, of course, was in her pocket.
PockeTalker with earbuds.
She scanned rows of wigs for white, short, appropriately styled hair.
When Elaine started on the options, I explained that my mother is quite deaf and hearing aids don’t really help. Elaine then turned to me, but she kept one hand lightly on Alice’s arm. She’d been pleasant enough, despite the pitch, but this little gesture made me like her. The touch indicated she was still including Alice while reaching out to me as interpreter and guide. She lowered her pitch to normal.
They had two wigs that might be right, Elaine explained, both of them short and curly and white. “Like her hair,” she said. “She probably doesn’t want to change that look.”
Alice had said exactly this before leaving The Place. I relaxed. We were with a pro. She urged Alice toward the back of the room where a black chair sat in front of a gilded mirror.
Alice tried on the first wig Elaine brought to her.
“I look like the mother in ‘Golden Girls,’ ” she said.
“You do not,” we both assured her.
Even so, she didn’t like this wig. It wasn’t quite the right color, she said, nor long enough around the ears. She asked my opinion. I said I liked it. “No,” she said. “You don’t.”
Cute but not quite right.
She reached eagerly for the next wig Elaine offered — more hair, more curls, and whiter than the first. “But my hair isn’t that white,” she protested, turning to Elaine and me.
We two agreed it was exactly the same color. Elaine readjusted the little stocking cap she’d put on Alice and slowly pulled the wig over it, adjusting it on both sides and giving a gentle tug in the back. 
She pulled a few of Alice’s own white curls out from under the wig and arranged them around the ears. In the first wig, this wouldn’t have worked, but with this one the natural hair matched perfectly and added the length on the sides Alice wanted.
Alice’s own curls at the ears.
By this time, Alice’s black sweater was covered with wig hair, but she seemed not to notice. She swiveled the chair this way and that and then back around toward the mirror. It was a glass slipper moment. She liked what she saw. She liked it a lot. Once again she had a full head of hair. No bald spots. No thin patches.
The perfect head of hair.
All of us imagine we’re going to grow old with the hair we have, forgetting that menopause takes the first swipe at bringing in the sheaves, an increase in medications the second, and decades of using hair products, i.e., chemicals, the third.
But this wig was making up for lost hair almost too eagerly. Way too much hair. Elaine confidently announced she could thin, trim, and shape it, and, with Alice’s permission, she set about doing just that. Snippety snip snip.
Elaine cuts and brushes and shapes.
By this time, Elaine had turned playful with Alice and spoke to her slowly and in a normal tone of voice. She leaned down so that Alice could read her lips. I could have marched away and tried on every wig in the store and neither of them would have noticed, so comfortable were they with one another.
Alice chatted about recent “goings-on” as she calls life at The Place, describing how pleased she is with her new table mate, Nadine, talking about placemats and white-blossomed trees and closet doors that keep coming off their railings and other odds and ends, including how far we’d had to drive to get to this perfect wig, this happy wig, how we’d passed a moving mountain, and so forth.
When Elaine finished trimming, the wig looked less like a head of hair worn by a Saks Fifth Avenue mannequin and more fitting for Alice, age 97, resident at The Place where there happen to be quite a lot of things going on.
“Oh but if I get this,” Alice said, “can you imagine what those ladies in the dining room will say? They’ll say Here comes Alice. Is she wearing a wig? Or,” she lowered her voice, “Look at Alice. She’s wearing a wig! Or: I bet that’s a wig on Alice.“
“What will the men say?” Elaine asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Alice shrugged. “They won’t notice anything.”
After this spell in a wig store, I decided I would not have known Elaine was wearing a wig if I’d only passed her on the street. Some people, especially those familiar with wigs, would probably guess Alice was wearing one. But what did it matter? Wigs came along in the days of ancient Egypt when, aside from chemicals, people had the same problems with hair that they do now. A wig in a time of stress can make some women feel happy and relieved. It might itch at times, and it might feel odd having a weight on the head that is not a hat, but maybe in some cases it’s worth it. Alice had worn wigs before, when she was younger. She knew what she was in for.
We purchased wig shampoo, wig conditioner, a wig comb and a styrofoam head to put the wig on, plus a suction cup to hold the fake head in place while the wig’s hair is being combed. There were a couple of rows of things for sale.
Alice tried to talk me into a hat because she likes to see me in hats and thinks (the mysterious workings of a mother’s mind) that they make me look like Diane Keaton, one of her favorite famous people.
But I watched the numbers adding up for wig gear and declined a hat. I’d just have to go around looking like myself.
Back in the car, Alice was exhausted. She buckled in and closed her eyes. “Home please,” she said.
She woke up when we came off the freeway and onto a ramp a few miles from The Place. We’d been sitting more or less still in rush hour freeway traffic and I decided to try side streets instead.
“How many more miles?” Alice asked.
“A few more,” I said.
Once again the earbud for the PockeTalker was not in her ear. “A couple,” she said, firmly.
“No,” I said over the roar of traffic. “A few. Maybe four more miles.”
She still hadn’t heard me. “A couple,” she insisted.
I knew she wouldn’t want me to shout, so I let it rest at “a couple,” but soon she grew impatient with the busy side streets and by the time we pulled up to the The Place she was steaming with weariness. “That was not a couple more miles! Why did you say it was?”
I never have any idea how or if to defend myself at such moments, so I told her we ought to go inside and she could try on her wig and I would take a picture. She must have forgotten about the photographs I’d already taken because this thought brightened her up immediately.
And here is the photo of a tired Alice in her new wig:
I emailed her the photograph later and she wrote back to say she likes the wig, but her nose looks too big. “There’s something wrong with your camera. My nose is not that large!”
She asked if, next time I take her picture, would I mind tweaking her nose a little?
There are moments when I do want to tweak her nose, but I won’t be doing it, either in life or in photographs.
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Note: I never use real names in these posts, except for family names.
