Fast-forward to late August.
“Daniel,” Dad yells again without noticing I’m right behind him. When he’s this focused, it must be something serious. He’s usually patient, an advocate of letting things happen naturally. He believes he has all the time in the world. Because his job is editing textbooks, he can do it anywhere. Lucky for us, with the floating house.
“Yeah, Dad. What’s up?” When he reaches out to ruffle my hair, I duck. “Dad.”
“Listen, your mother needs to do some grocery shopping and she thought you might want to go into town with her and get a haircut before school starts next week.”
“You said I could grow it as long as I wanted.”
“For the summer. You don’t want the high-school teachers to think you’re lazy, do you? Shaggy won’t cut it.” He laughs at the pun.
I groan. “Mom said she didn’t want me at the school anymore. You know, with all the germs.”
“We’re still talking about it.”
“You had long hair in high school.”
He looks surprised.
“Your yearbook,” I explain.
“Well, right, but there was a war going on. It was a statement.”
“Rwanda’s not a war?”
He hesitates long enough that we both know I’ve got him. Finally he reverts to standard parenting fare. “You won’t get into college if you don’t impress your high-school teachers.”
“You did fine without college.”
“I did night school. It’s the hardest way there is to get a degree.”
“I thought this was your dream life. You and Mom are always saying how lucky you are not to be in the rat race like Leonard’s dad or Mr. Hanaday.”
“Mr. Hanaday’s the president of a bank. No one wants to be Mr. Hanaday. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about being a bank president.”
Mom’s voice whips around from the front deck. “Stieg, you promised.”
“Promised what?” I ask, little stabs of pain starting to pulse behind my right eyebrow. If she’s using his real name, it’s important. His nickname is Red. For his hair, not his temper. And, if he were being one hundred percent honest, for his politics.
Dad kneels to straighten the mooring line. He stutters something about my math skills and ends the conversation before I can add the ultimate barb. Why do I need a haircut ever again? I’m not going to live long enough for college.
About now you’re probably wondering what I look like. People always do that with books, try to figure out whether someone has curly hair or who’ll play who in the movie. I sure as hell can’t play myself. (It’s okay, you can laugh. Sicko.)
Without giving too much away, I look like my mother. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not. Dad says it is. She’s blonde like the models you see in travel ads for Sweden. I’m one of the few people who know that her hair is dyed. I’ve seen her—after we’re supposed to be asleep—when she squeezes the tube of dye and sits under that blue plastic cap with the stiff bow at her chin. It’s a concession to the establishment she hates to admit.
Even without that gunk, though, she’s not old enough yet to be all gray. I don’t think the hair coloring is because she’s vain; she’s just not brave enough to accept that time is passing in a way she can’t control. It’s funny to think of your mother not being brave. In storybooks mothers are always the Mama Bears protecting their young.
Both sets of my grandparents are dead, but they were all real blondes, Scandinavians, double vowels in their mostly unpronounceable names. Joe says we’re lucky that Mom had her own ideas about names. We could have had weird names like Dad’s or military names like Helmut with double dots over the vowels. I figure Mom’s insistence on blonde hair is one last little throwback to that heritage. It would fit with all her reincarnation mumbo jumbo. She wears her own hair long and usually loose like Mama Cass on the cover of the Mamas and Papas record in their collection. A favorite of theirs. You can tell from the squashed corners and the white splotches where the print has worn off from handling. Of course, the fact that they know all the words when those songs come on the radio is another dead giveaway.
While I’m talking to Dad about the haircut, Mom comes around from the back deck. In her bathing suit—from behind where you can’t see all the worry lines on her face—she could be twenty-something. Once, when I was about thirteen, I had a friend who kept on making cryptic comments about how hot my mom was, until I beat him about the head and neck with my backpack one day. You can’t have kids mixing up things like that with adults. It’s too weird. It’s not right. After my father broke up the fight, neither of us would tell him what it was about.
Don’t get the idea I’m a violent person. I’m not. Even if I wanted to be, I couldn’t be violent with peaceniks for parents.
“Daniel, sweetie.” Mom spreads her words out like honey dripping off a spoon. She has that Southern accent that stops strangers dead in their tracks. People are expecting a dumb blonde and then it shocks them when they realize how smart she is. “Don’t argue with your father. We’ve been through all this. School is your work. And as long as you’re in school, they can’t draft you.”
“Jeez, Sylvie, they don’t draft fifteen-year-olds. Certainly not in peacetime when they’re not even running a draft. We’re talking about a haircut. Not a new world order.”
After Mom parks the Subaru Wagon on Main Street, she gives me a ten-dollar bill. “Don’t forget the change, but give the barber a dollar tip, please. At those rates they can’t be making a living wage.” She’s like that, always worried about someone else when her own clothes are from Goodwill and she reads her favorite magazines at the library.
She riffles through papers on the front seat, obviously fixated on what else she has on her list because she’s left the motor running. A real no-no with pollution and global warming. “Listen, Danny.”
Mom is the only one who gets away with calling me Danny. I get out and bend down to the window.
“I’ll be an hour or so. Last stop is the library. If you get through sooner, you can wait in the car. Or come in and find me… no, that’s not a good idea. Just wait in the car.”
Like hell. Lately I hardly ever have free time in town. The list of places I want to go, to see what’s happening and to be seen, grows longer every day. Even without The Disease, summer vacation’s a killer when you live on a houseboat.
Mack is luckier. His house is two blocks from the barbershop, two blocks from all the places kids our age hang out in Essex County. The Laundromat, Parr’s parking lot, the elementary school playground, the fishing pier, the library. Last week a family with twin girls moved in next door to Mack, the subject of several late-night phone calls between him and me. Though I have yet to meet the twins, Mack and I have been working through a plan to convince my mother to let us take them to the band concert. The weekly band concert at the community college in Warsaw is a favorite of my parents. Music events are an exception when it comes to organized events. As Mom would say, Closest thing to culture in this godforsaken wasteland of the Northern Neck.
After the haircut I should have enough time to cut across the motel parking lot to Mack’s. Plenty of time for a good look at the twins. He’s already told me they’re easy on the eyes. This may be my last chance to meet them face-to-face before September. Before the rest of the high school scarfs them up, and Mack and I won’t be able to get close enough to even talk.
When I come into the barbershop, the bell over the door jingles. It surprises me every time. And every time I jump. The chairs are full. The usual old geezers, each with three hairs to cut. It’s a good thing, because their hearts probably can’t take much more excitement. A mother with a baby in her lap and two little boys. They’re fighting over the chair with the torn vinyl seat. I’ve seen kids put half-eaten Life Savers down that hole. They can have that chair.