Second You Sin by Scott Sherman

mother owned the, in my opinion, tastelessly named Sophie’s Choice Tresses, one of Long Island’s premier beauty parlors for women of a certain age who wanted hairstyles that have been out of favor for at least thirty years. Her Mile High special was an impossibly tal beehive that she was able to coax from even half-bald clients like Mrs.
    Shingles, my third grade teacher, who once said to me, “Your mother makes me feel like I’m ten feet tal !”
    No, I wanted to tel her, that’s just your hair.
    The idea that someone like Yvonne would even want one of my mother’s towering creations seemed preposterous. The only people who wore their hair like that were eighty-year-old women and drag queens. Either Yvonne was a lot older than she looked, or she had a cock. More likely, the selection had been made by a producer who hated her.
    “That’s great,” I said. “You must be excited.”
    “You have to come to the taping,” my mother said.
    “Promise me. I wanted Kara there, but she told me she’d bring the boys, and there’s no way I’m having my TV debut ruined by those three little monsters.” I loved them to death, but my sister’s triplets were infamously wild.
    “When is it?” I asked.
    “Tuesday! They’re coming to the shop at eight in the morning to set up and Yvonne ”—my mother whispered the name as if addressing a deity—“is coming around noon. Can you believe it! In just two days, I’m going to be a star!”
    I expected that my mother had an exaggerated sense of what one appearance on That’s Yvonne was going to do for her career, but she was never one to let reality distort her view of the world.
    “That’s seems like it came together pretty fast,” I said.
    “ I know, ” my mother squealed. “The producer I spoke to told me they had another stylist cancel on them and needed to make arrangements right away!”
    My mother wouldn’t normal y settle for being anyone’s second choice, but I guessed Yvonne was special.
    “Dad must be excited,” I said.
    “Your father.” My mother’s voice was flat. “Your father.” She paused and took a deep breath, as if gathering the strength to tel me some long-held secret that threatened to tear our family apart.
    “Your father,” she final y hissed, “didn’t even know who Yvonne is. When I tried to explain that this could be my big break, he told me, ‘Sophie, you’re an old lady. The only big break you’re going to get at this point is, God forbid, your hip.’”
    I let a little laugh escape before clamping my hand over my mouth.
    “Oh sure,” my mother responded, “very funny. But you wait and see—Yvonne is probably going to ask me to be her personal stylist before the day is over.”
    “I bet she wil .”
    “Oh,” my mother added. “I almost forgot to tel you.
    That producer who cal ed me? He said he knows you.”
    I didn’t think I knew anyone who worked for America’s third-rated talk show, but I asked his name.
    “I wrote it down, hold on. Wait, here it is—Andrew Mil er. Ring a bel ?”
    The bel s were silent. “Nope.”
    “Nothing?” my mother asked.
    I thought for a moment. “No, sorry.”

    “Could he have been someone you, oh, how do I put this delicately?” She hummed to herself in consideration. “Maybe one night, at a bar or a park .
    . .”
    “Mom!”
    “Or maybe the beach? On the subway? Wel , not on the subway,” she continued, as she couldn’t see my pained expression, “but someone you met on the subway. Or in a men’s room, like that Republican senator . . .”
    “I’m going to hang up,” I shouted. I had to speak up as I was holding the phone at arm’s length from my ear.
    “Al right, al right,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re so sensitive about, though. I’m a hairdresser, darling. I know what you people do.”
    “What ‘you people’? I’m your son; I’m not from Mars.”
    “The gays, darling. I went to that PFLAG meeting once. I know the score.”
    “Listen,”