Chapter 3 #2
She was. She really, really was.
“Who’s Miss Lopez?” Louie asked.
I blew a raspberry, torn between being irritated at being called just about the most Latino last name possible and wanting to be a good neighbor, even though I had no clue what she could possibly wanted.
“I guess I am, buddy,” I said, lifting up the hand that had the least amount of groceries on it and waving at the old woman.
She gestured with that bone-thin hand to come over.
The problem with trying to teach two small humans how to be a good person was that you had to set a good example for them.
All. The. Time. They ate everything up. Learned every word and body language that you taught them.
I’d learned the hard way over the years just how sponge-like their minds were.
When Josh was a baby, he’d picked up on “shit” like a duck to water; he’d used it all the time for any reason.
He’d knock over a toy: “Shit.” He’d trip: “Shit.” Rodrigo and I had thought it was hilarious. Everyone else? Not so much.
So, trying to teach them good manners required me to rise above the instincts to want to groan when something frustrated or annoyed me. Instead, I winked at the boys before looking back at our new neighbor and yelling, “One minute!”
She waved her hand in response.
“Come on, guys, lets put up the groceries and go see what the”—I almost said old lady and just barely caught the words before they came out—“neighbor needs.”
Louie shrugged with that signature bright smile on his face and Josh groaned. “Do I have to?”
I nudged him with my elbow as I walked by him. “Yes.”
Out of the corner of my eye, his head lolled back. “I can’t wait? I won’t open the door for anybody.”
He was already starting with not wanting to go places with me.
It made my heart hurt. But I told him over my shoulder, even as I unlock the door, “Nope.” Once I got him started on staying home alone, there would be no going back.
I knew it, and I was going to cling to him being a little boy as long as possible, damn it.
He groaned, loud, and I caught Louie’s gaze. I winked at him and he winked back… with both eyes.
“I need my bodyguards, Joshy Poo,” I said, pushing the door open and waving my youngest one inside the house.
Said “Joshy Poo” blew out his own raspberry as he passed by me into the house, only slightly stomping his feet.
He didn’t say anything else as we unpacked the things that needed to go into the refrigerator and left everything else on the counter for later.
We crossed the street, with Josh dragging his feet behind him and Louie holding my hand, and found the door to the yellow house closed.
I tipped my head toward it. “Goo, knock.”
Louie didn’t need to be told twice. He did it and then took two steps over to stand by me.
Josh was almost directly behind us. It took a minute, but the door swung slowly open, a poof of white hair appearing in the crack for a moment before it went wide.
“You came,” the woman said, her milky blue eyes going from the boys to me and back again.
I smiled at her, my hand going to pet the dark blond head at my hip almost distractedly. “What can we help you with, ma’am?”
The woman took a step into the house, letting me get a good look at the pale pink dress she had on with snap buttons going down the middle. Those thin, very white hands seemed to shake at her sides, a tale of her age. Her lined mouth pulled up at the corners just a little. “You cut hair?”
I forgot I had given her my business card. “I do.”
“Would ya mind givin’ me a little snip? I was supposed to have an appointment, but my grandson has been too busy to take me,” she explained, swallowing, bringing attention to the wrinkled, loose skin at her throat. “I’m startin’ to look like a hippy.”
I usually got pretty annoyed with people when they first found out I was a hair stylist and wanted preferential treatment: a free haircut, some kind of at-home service, a discount—or worse, when they expected me to drop everything to take care of them.
You didn’t ask a doctor to give you a free check-up.
Why would someone think that my time wasn’t as valuable as anyone else’s?
But…
I didn’t need to look at the trembling, heavily veined hands at Miss Pearl’s sides or her cloud of thin white hair to know there was no way I could possibly tell this woman I wouldn’t do what she was asking of me, much less charge her.
Not just because she was my neighbor, but because she was old and her grandkid was supposed to take her to get a haircut and hadn’t.
I had loved the hell out of my grandparents when I was a kid, especially my grandmother.
I had a soft spot for all of my older clients; I charged them less than I did everyone else.
Ginny had long ago stopped asking why I gave them discounts, but I’m sure she understood. Sure, it was unfair to give some people a discount, but the way I looked at it, life wasn’t fair sometimes, and if you were going to cry about an elderly person paying less than you, you needed to get a life.
And this elderly, judgmental lady… I gave Louie’s shoulder a squeeze. “Okay. I have time right now if you’d like me to do it.”
Josh muttered something behind me.
The old woman’s smile was so bright that I felt bad for groaning when I had realized she wanted me to cross the street to go talk to her. “I wouldn’t be putting you out?”
“No. It’s no problem. I have shears at home. Let me go grab them and come back,” I said.
* * *
“ D on’t cut too much .”
“That’s too much.”
“Could you go a little shorter?”
“My beautician doesn’t usually do it like that. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
I should have known after her first comment that the haircut wasn’t going to go as easily as I would have liked.
There were two different types of customers in my profession: the kind that let you do whatever the hell you wanted, and the kind that nitpicked every single strand of hair.
I used up all of my patience on the boys most of the time, so I loved the customers that genuinely didn’t care.
I felt like I had a good idea with what worked best for people’s faces, and I would never give someone a haircut that needed a lot of maintenance if they didn’t have time for it, unless they begged.
But I kept my mouth shut and a smile on my face as I listened to my elderly neighbor and tried to cut her hair the way she wanted.
“Where do you usually get your hair done?” I asked as I worked my way around her, being extra careful around her paper-thin skin with the super-sharp edges of the shears. The last thing I wanted or needed was to accidentally cut her.
“Molly’s,” she replied.
On the floor a few feet away, Louie was lying on his belly with a notebook he was drawing in while Miss Pearl’s ancient cat sniffed his shoes, and Josh had a handheld game system in front of his face.
He’d asked me again if he could stay home, and I’d told him the same thing I had originally.
I wasn’t sure why he was in such a grumpy mood today, but I wasn’t going to worry about it too much.
He had his days. I couldn’t blame him; I did too.
“Do you know where that’s at?” Miss Pearl asked after she rattled off side streets that weren’t familiar.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Oh? You’re not from here?”
My chest ached for a moment. An image of Rodrigo filled my head briefly, and I swallowed. “No. I’m from El Paso. I lived in Fort Worth for a few years and San Antonio for a little bit before moving here.”
“Divorced?” she blatantly asked.
And that was why I loved old people. They didn’t give a single shit about how their questions could make you feel. She had already asked if I had a husband last time; now she went in for clarification. “No.”
The “oh” out of her mouth was just about the most disapproving thing I’d ever heard, and it took me a minute to realize how she was going to take it.
But I didn’t care about what she was assuming. There was nothing wrong with being a single, unmarried mom. Or in my case, a single, unmarried aunt.
I wasn’t imagining the sneer that came over the elderly woman’s face.
I also didn’t miss the apprehensive expression that Louie shot our way.
That kid was the most emotionally intuitive person I’d ever met and always had been.
Where Josh understood my moods like he had some kind of emo-location, it was only with me. Lou was something else.
“Well,” she hummed. “Me and my George were together for fifty-eight years before he kicked the bucket—”
I coughed.
“My sons knew what they were doin’, too.
They married good girls. Their kids…” She literally went “harrumph” and rolled her eyes as she thought about her grandkids.
“But my girls, neither one of them had a man for longer than a few years atta time. Not that I blame them. My girls are pains in the you-know-what. All I’m tryin’ to say is that you’re better off not having a man than having a lousy one.
You got your own house with your boys, so you can’t be doin’ too bad. ”
And just like that, I went back to snipping away. Maybe this lady wasn’t so bad after all. “You’re right. You are better off being alone than with someone who doesn’t make you happy.” I’d learned that shit the hard way.
“You got a pretty face. I’m sure you’ll find somebody someday that doesn’t mind you havin’ kids.”
And I retracted my statement on how she wasn’t so bad for a second or two.