Who says I have a fear of confrontation?
He totally tried to get out of it, going, “What do you mean? Mia, I think you look beautiful. Don’t listen to your mother, what does she know? I like your hair. It’s so . . . short.”
Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because his mother met Lars and me in the lobby as soon as we’d turned the car over to the valet, and just pointed at the door. Just pointed at the door again, and said, “On y va,” which in English means “Let’s go.”
“Let’s go where?” I asked, all innocently (this was this morning, remember, back when I was still innocent).
“Chez Paolo,” Grandm่re said. Chez Paolo means “Paul’s house.” So I thought we were going to meet one of her friends, maybe for brunch or something, and I thought, huh, cool, field trip. Maybe these princess lessons won’t be so bad.
But then we got there, and I saw Chez Paolo wasn’t a house at all. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. It looked a little like a really fancy hospital—it was all frosted glass and these Japanese-looking trees. And then we got inside; all of these skinny young people were floating around, dressed all in black. They were all excited to see my grandmother, and took us to this little room where there were these couches and all these magazines. So then I figured Grandm่re maybe had some plastic surgery scheduled, and while I am sort of against plastic surgery—unless you’re like Leola Mae and you need lips—I was like, Well, at least she’ll be off my back for a while.
Boy, was I ever wrong! Paolo isn’t a doctor. I doubt he’s ever even been to college! Paolo is a stylist! Worse, he styles people! I’m serious. He takes unfashionable, frumpy people like me, and he makes them stylish—for a living. And Grandm่re sicced him on me! Me!! Like it’s bad enough I don’t have breasts. She has to tell some guy named Paolo that?
What kind of name is Paolo, anyway? I mean, this is America, for Pete’s sake! YOUR NAME IS PAUL!!!
That’s what I wanted to scream at him. But, of course, I couldn’t. I mean, it wasn’t Paolo’s fault my grandmother dragged me there. And as he pointed out to me, he only made time for me in his incredibly busy schedule because Grandm่re told him it was this big emergency.
God, how embarrassing. I’m a fashion emergency.
Anyway, I was plenty peeved at Grandm่re, but I couldn’t start yelling at her right there in front of Paolo. She totally knew it, too. She just sat there on this velvet couch, petting Rommel, who was sitting on her lap with his legs crossed—she’s even taught her dog to sit ladylike, and he’s a boy—sipping a Sidecar she got somebody to make for her and reading W.
Meanwhile, Paolo was picking up chunks of my hair and making this face and going, all sadly, “It must go. It must all go.”
And it went. All of it. Well, almost all of it. I still have some like bangs and a little fringe in back.
Did I mention that I’m no longer a dishwater blond? No. I’m just a plain old blond now.
And Paolo didn’t stop there. Oh, no. I now have fingernails. I am not kidding. For the first time in my life, I have fingernails. They’re completely fake, but I have them. And it looks like I’ll have them for a while: I already tried to pull one off, and it HURT. What kind of secret astronaut glue did that manicurist use, anyway?
You might be wondering why, if I didn’t want to have all my hair cut off and fake fingernails glued over my real, stumpy fingernails, I let them do all that.
I’m sort of wondering that myself. I mean, I know I have a fear of confrontation. So it wasn’t like I was going to throw down my glass of lemonade and say, “Okay, stop making a fuss over me, right now!” I mean, they gave me lemonade! Can you imagine that? At the International House of Hair, which is where my mom and I usually go, over on Sixth Avenue, they sure don’t give you lemonade, but it does only cost $9.99 for a cut and blow dry.
And it is sort of hard when all these beautiful, fashionable people are telling you how good you’d look in this and how much that would bring out your cheekbones, to remember you’re a feminist and an environmentalist, and don’t believe in using makeup or chemicals that might be harmful to the earth. I mean, I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, or cause a scene, or anything like that.
And I kept telling myself, She’s only doing this because she loves you. My grandmother, I mean. I know she probably wasn’t doing it for that reason—I don’t think Grandm่re loves me any more than I love her—but I told myself that, anyway.
I told myself that after we left Paolo’s and went to Bergdorf Goodman, where Grandm่re bought me four pairs of shoes that cost almost as much as the removal of that sock from Fat Louie’s small intestines. I told myself that after she bought me a bunch of clothes I will never wear. I did tell her I would never wear these clothes, but she just waved at me. Like, Go on, go on. You tell such amusing stories.
Well, I for one will not stand for it. There isn’t a single inch of me that hasn’t been pinched, cut, filed, painted, sloughed, blown dry, or moisturized. I even have fingernails.
But I am not happy. I am not a bit happy. Grandm่re’s happy. Grandm่re’s head over heels happy about how I look. Because I don’t look a thing like Mia Thermopolis. Mia Thermopolis never had fingernails. Mia Thermopolis never had blond highlights. Mia Thermopolis never wore makeup or Gucci shoes or Chanel skirts or Christian Dior bras, which, by the way, don’t even come in 32A, which is my size. I don’t even know who I am anymore. It certainly isn’t Mia Thermopolis.