Annette Appollo

Posted By Annette on December 1, 2009

It was maybe twenty years ago. I was dallying in San Francisco, caught up with yet another handsome and stupid man with a silver Porsche and the intelligence of wallpaper.

But he was pretty. And he had excellent table manners. Looked wonderful in a tux, and really was very presentable if you didn’t notice that nothing ever went past the veneer level.

He knew a lot about architecture, which, in San Francisco, made him a genius.

Anyway, one day, lolling in bed, he had a brainstorm. This often happened, but it always ended in confusion because of his failure to foresee consequences. As I said, he was pretty, but stupid.

We would drive up north, past Point Reyes Station, and he would show me this wonderful oyster farm. We’d bring some good chilled white wine, and get some oysters, and picnic in the mustard fields that proliferate around there.

There was one thing about Pretty But Stupid, and that was that he was annoyed that, no matter where we went, I ended up running into someone I knew. It just drove him nuts, but this has always been part of my life. There was just always someone around, someone I knew from somewhere, sometime else, someone who was someone’s brother, sister, cousin, ex-wife, friend.

We stopped in a place – Mike’s Diner – in Point Reyes Station, and while we were waiting for our coffee and pie, I remembered that Kate Gatov had ended up there, in that little town. So I asked the waitress about Kate, and, sure enough, she knew her. Told me about Kate’s activities in the local community theater, and what a great baker she’d become.

That led me to asking about Laura, who had married Wilson, had the baby Jason, and then left them both. Didn’t Laura live here, too?

Yes, the waitress said, Laura taught at the local high school, and had remarried, had had another baby. (A few years later, Kate would be dead and Laura would have left Husband Number Two and Child Number Two.)

Pretty But Stupid just sat there, stirring his coffee, staring at me. No, I’d never been there before. As I said, it drove him nuts.

We drove off to the oyster ranch. Guess what covered the driveways and every path? Crushed oyster shells. Made for interesting walking.

It was a cloudy, overcast day. A fat old man sat in a chair outside the entrance to the store. The smell was briny and refreshing. I wanted oysters, as many as there were in the world. Pretty But Stupid was wandering around, more interested in the places where the oysters were being handled than in anything else. He did all right on his own, as well-trained as he was.

The fat old man, as I approached the store, and him in his small chair, a cane propped straight up between his widely-spread knees, watched me, and then he said, “Don’t you ever dye your hair.”

I was twenty years younger, and the silver in my dark brown hair was coming in in the best, most beautiful streaks. Not gray – silver. Shiny and startling, my hair was beginning to become a topic of other people’s conversations (in Los Angeles ladies’ rooms, I’d grown used to answering “God” when I was asked who my colorist was), and this old man chose it for his opening line.

“Don’t plan to,” I told him. “It sounds like work, and I’m too lazy.”

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “Don’t you ever do anything to it.”

That’s when I realized he didn’t have strange grey eyes – he had the worst cataracts I’d ever seen. How could he have seen me?

He must have sensed what I had just figured out, and he said, “I can’t see. I’m pretty blind. But I have some peripheral vision, and I saw you that way. If I look right at you like this,” he turned his face towards me, towards the sound of my voice, my noisy, crushing oyster shell footsteps, “I can’t see you.”

“But,” he continued, turning his gaze away from me, “I can see you here, and you’re beautiful. Just don’t ever do anything to your hair.”

I promised him I wouldn’t, and I broke that promise, yes, of course I did, playing around with lowlights, and dark streaks, and some really beautiful things that were done by talented women, but that didn’t last long, and then I just let it grow as it is. It is silver, and shiny, and it is beautiful.

In the car, Pretty But Stupid asked me what the old man and I had been talking about, that he was the owner, that he’d been in the oyster business from childhood, inheriting it from his father.

“Hair,” I said, and Pretty But Stupid said that we had to stop and get some flowers for the dinner table that night. I agreed.

Something beautiful to go with our wonderful oysters – we’d decided to skip lunch in the mustard fields, the weather not being good enough – and our icy wine. We’d need to get some good bread, too, for sopping up the oyster liquor.

But, yes, we definitely needed flowers. Amazing flowers. Remarkable flowers.

Flowers as beautiful as my silver-streaked dark brown hair that made the fat old blind man happy that day.

Category: This Is What Happened
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