NOTES ON A NAIL SALON | July 10th 2008

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From the outside, New York's many pokey nail salons seem like nothing special. But Enid Stubin becomes aggrieved when her local sanctuary shuts down. She describes a grand world of modest pleasures ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

There's a special providence in the fall of a nail salon. The other night, I walked past the familiar storefront to see that, all unexpectedly, Cleo Nails had closed. Unthinkable! Rushing down the block to its smarter sister store, Cleo II Spa-Zone, I learned that a developer had bought a parcel of buildings and would be throwing up a high-rise with commercial opportunities on the ground floor. My clubhouse was gone.

Understand that I'm not despairing over the state of my cuticles. In a downtown neighbourhood once known for its wealth of Szechuan restaurants and Irish pubs, we still have our fair complement of salons. And I wasn't much of a customer, dropping by for a special pedicure only every six weeks or so. But having been introduced to the place by a friend, in town from Las Vegas, who exulted over the service, ambience, management ("Karma bosses everybody around," she noted admiringly) and the value ("You can't imagine what a bargain this is!"), I decided to write a play about it. Working title: "People Touching You."

In the manner of Josefina Lopez's "Real Women Have Curves" and Annie Weisman's "Hold Please", my project would investigate the class and cultural divide between Cleo and its customers. I began showing up every month or so, dithering happily over polish colours, the names of which reveal more wit and social analysis than does most contemporary fiction. I fully intended to interview and collect details: How long was a shift? Who ordered the supplies? Why was it that two brands, Essie and OPI, had a monopoly on the polish? Who matched up customers and manicurists, and are we correct in presuming that staff chuckle over the miserable state of our feet in languages we don't understand? I even met the formidable Cleo, who accepted my praise of her staff with a regal air and referred me to the swankier outpost one block south.

I came to care for the young women, most of whom were from Nepal: the shy Paru, bumptious Coco, impish Lama, stolid Llamo, no-nonsense Maya, kind-hearted Sima, poised Sophia, serene Jennifer and, as promised, Karma bossing everybody around. Each merits more than a Homeric epithet. A two-act play would hardly do these ladies justice.

They commuted from Queens, worked ten-hour shifts, and managed to make 700 square feet feel like a haven. Besides the usual clientele of spoiled 20-somethings organising their bachelorette parties over their mobiles from the comfort of the new pedicure chairs (Platino Crystal Clear-Pipe Free), there were also women who paged through Harper's Bazaar or Lucky magazine in a contained fury, clearly revising mental letters to the editor, or deciding whether to file charges or give the husband a shove. Some were undergoing chemo or dialysis, and on a quiet mid-week morning you could see them close their eyes and give themselves up to pleasure as Rita or Monica or Lily shaped their nails or massaged their hands. At such moments the salon was revealed not so much as a utilitarian outpost for a quick French manicure but as a tranquil respite from the quotidian. But could I transmute what I saw into drama? As much as I derided Wendy Wasserstein, playwriting wasn't as easy as it looked.

 

*****

I began chronicling this little universe almost a decade ago, after visiting my cousin Monia in her new digs: an assisted-living complex in South Orange, to which her worried kids had consigned her. She was a perpetually pissed-off 87-year-old. Arranging bialys on a platter and mourning her lost independence, she manoeuvred deftly around the tiny kitchen, muttering darkly about the cramped quarters and the alte kockers with whom she ate four nights a week in the communal dining room. And the floors--she hated the floors.

Looking down at the vinyl tile, I tried to empathise. I glanced over at her plastic wedges and sheer taupe knee-highs and noticed something unprecedented: "Moninke, did you get a pedicure?" I'd have been less astounded had she revealed a tattoo. Confession followed: her daughter Renee had taken her to a posh salon in nearby Ridgewood and introduced Monia to Magdalena ("I forgot more Polish than she ever knew"). The description that followed took on the seductive Orientalism of a seraglio: the invigorating whirlpool, the scented salts and lotions and potions, the padded chair ("Like a throne," she intoned, equal measures of horror and wonder in her voice). Even when Magdalena had nicked her with the nippers, it hadn't really hurt. And at the end, those toenails gleaming in Ballet Slippers.

She was already paying a HIP podiatrist a hefty co-payment. Couldn't she give herself this treat, say, once a month? "Are you off your mind?" Monia demanded. "Izzy is lying in the ground, and I should pay $30 for a pedicure?" I was all too aware of the inextricable connection between death, renunciation and guilt; how every luxury seemed to mock images of her family murdered in Poland--I hadn't been Monia's boon companion for nothing. She died within the year.

Months after the funeral, when her daughter suggested that we spend the day together, I knew exactly what we should do. Magdalena was charming ("Oh, so you're the cousin!"), every bit the sorceress, remembering Monia's peppery bon mots with admiration as she buffed away at my calluses. Having consulted Allure in preparation, I asked for Fed Up--what better tribute to Monia?--but had to make do with Pure Chiffon. Gazing down at my glimmering feet, I asked, "How long does it last?" Around a month, Renee explained, laughing at my hick wonderment, her own toes lacquered in fetching Cherry Bomb. Magdalena liked my parting line: "Once every 42 years, whether I need it or not."

So although I was forced to relinquish the notion of writing a play (discovering I had no aptitude for stagecraft), Cleo became a touchstone: the unassuming neighbourhood retreat where, for seven bucks, you could avail yourself of a half-hour of sybaritic pampering, take in the scents of green tea and citrus (along with the more volatile toluene and formaldehyde), and enjoy the 1970s songs on the background radio. The soft susurrations of Nepalese women, the dog-eared magazines, the peace and comfort and escape. You could see the services as a necessity, an errand, or simply as maintenance.

I thought of the place as a most luxurious sanctuary, and said so to Sophia, who looked at me levelly: "Enid, you are the only one who say such thing." I'd buy a gift certificate to treat someone after surgery or trauma or loss and think, along with Yeats, that body was not bruised to pleasure soul. And I adored the young women who worked there. Despite their own worries, they modelled a kindness and grace that wrapped one in a mantle of well-being, a benediction. And even as I went about errands on Third Avenue, I took pleasure in seeing them through the storefront window, working or, more rarely, huddled together matily, debating someone's discount-store purchase or admiring a cell-phone photo of family back home. Of course the job they were all so skilful at--of pampering and polishing--was hardly ideal for them. But I wonder what will become of them now.

There's a sisterhood of sorts gathered around these rites; transcending class and age, the salon invites the working poor and professional, the louche teenager and the executive, mommy and grandma. You wait for a light and notice someone wearing flip-flops on a blustery day: Vanity Fairest or Sugar Daddy or Coney Island Cotton Candy? Ruby Slippers or Swing Velvet or I'm Not Really a Waitress? Is it Eliot's objective correlative?

Nah, it's people touching you.

Photo credit: Yodel Anecdotal/flickr

(Enid Stubin is assistant professor of English at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, and writes a New York diary for The Reader magazine. Her last piece for more Intelligent Life was about a grim singles mixer at New York's Metropolitan Opera House.)