Weekly Poem: 'Beauty Parlor'

**By Andrea Hollander Budy** One of the regulars had cancer in those days before chemo, and even after the beautician lowered the hair dryer canister over the woman's head, she talked nonstop about the intense heat of cobalt treatments, the way her body burned in places she'd rather not name, how her skin there felt more like leather. When she paused, the beauty parlor grew strangely quiet: only the hum of the dryers, the occasional whoosh of water at the sinks. Until she spoke again, no one looked at her. Then she droned on, but this time about her son, who'd stopped coming by now he had a wife who had him wound around her little finger. I didn't understand yet it wasn't his wife that kept the son away. I was seventeen and only a guest in this world where my mother was a regular on Wednesdays. That day she sat up front among the women's magazines. After I was done, we'd go to lunch. And in a few days she'd tell me her own bad news. She'd say she didn't want to spoil my senior prom. But that afternoon as the woman carried on and on and on, she already knew what she knew.   "Andrea Hollander Budy":http://www.andreahollanderbudy.com/index.htm is the author of three poetry collections: "Woman in the Painting," "The Other Life" and "House Without a Dreamer," which won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Other honors include the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize for prose memoir, the Runes Poetry Award and poetry fellowships the National Endowment for the Arts. She is also the editor of "When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women."