Halloween week in senior living

We read Shirley Jackson’s “The Possibility of Evil” for our short story group on Monday afternoon.¹

Paul said afterwards, “I don’t think it’s the possibility of evil. I think she’s evil!” This got a good laugh.

I put Bell, Book and Candle on the movie schedule for Saturday night, but while I was driving residents downtown to the Black Panther Party Museum I passed an old revue house that’s playing the ‘31 Frankenstein and could have kicked myself for not putting Young Frankenstein on the list for this week.

I’ll probably put it on the calendar in November anyhow, even if it is a little late.

I went to Target to pick up some last-minute supplies for the residents’ Halloween party and ended up getting suckered into buying some impulse toys for our son Rocco. He likes fire trucks, mostly because we read a lot of Richard Scarry to him, and Richard Scarry puts fire trucks in everything. I like him so much, our son Rocco.

I got a haircut. Every time I get my hair cut I seem to attract hairstylists who are going through some sort of personal or professional crisis. I like that a lot. This time I got my hair cut at Supercuts. Right away I know it was going to be a weird experience, which made me very happy.

The Supercuts near me has only two employees who don’t like each other very much. As soon as I walked in the door, the one who wasn’t cutting hair at the time told me, “Don’t check in on the machine. Just write down your name.” So I did. A few minutes later the other employee finished cutting someone else’s hair and made ready to cut mine.

As soon as I sat down, the two employees started arguing with each other over the previous haircut. The previous haircut had just departed the salon without paying because she was (I think) upset about the temperature of the hair dryer. They started arguing about it using my head as a sort of template. They kept touching my head to describe how the previous haircut had looked.

“Do you think this hair dryer is hot enough?” one of them asked me. She turned the hair dryer on me. It felt pretty hot.

“Yeah, it feels pretty hot,” I said.

“Then why would she say it wasn’t hot enough to dry her hair?”

She blow dried me again. It was still pretty hot.

“That’s really strange,” I said. “I don’t know. It definitely feels hot to me.” I love being asked to confirm someone else’s oddities. You and I are normal, and you and I are together.

The argument between the two of them continued, and started veering on the personal. The employee cutting my hair nicked my ear once or twice with the clippers while they were fighting over which of them should take her lunch first. I jumped a little when she nicked me.

“Now he’s nervous,” she said to her colleague. “Don’t talk to me anymore. You’re making him nervous. Look at him, he’s nervous.”

I wanted to tell her that their conversation wasn’t making me nervous, she had just nicked my ear a little, but I felt she’d been criticized enough for one day already, and besides she had finished with the part of my hair near my ears.

“I’m taking my lunch,” said the other one. She started slicing up an avocado and microwaving a bowl.

“No, I’m taking it! As soon as I’m done with him, I’m taking my lunch! Don’t you take your lunch now!”

But the other one had an obvious head start, and she took it. My employee lost, and started telling me about how she’s worried the owner is maybe going to sell the building, because he doesn’t want to hire more than two employees and you can’t really run a hair salon that way. She pointed out the window to the guy who owns the barbershop down the street. I never go to him. He’s got one of those old-fashioned pictures in the window of various haircuts: the normal, the Ivy League, et cetera, and sometimes will ask guys walking down the street if they want their hair cut. I hate being put on the spot like that.

The haircut turned out great. I really liked the way she cut my hair.

I drove Martha to the doctor. She told me that she’s outlived all her family back in Mississippi, but that she and her two sisters used to take all kinds of trips together. She used to pay for her own cruises by teaching bridge onboard. I guess that pays pretty well.

I told her my sister and I once took a trip to Iceland. Rented a car and drove all around the island. Our first night there we saw the Northern Lights. Just a little, but we did see them. It was very faint, green, hard to make out, pulsing like a jellyfish. Martha said she and her sisters used to talk on the phone once a week.

I mostly have my phone switched off at work these days. So I don’t listen to music or podcasts or look at the internet or anything. After I dropped Martha off, I cried to think of my sister, and how much we used to like to go places together, and how we never will go places together again. I liked her; she was my good friend once. I knew her before I knew anybody else, practically. She has sons, and I have a son, and it would have been nice to go places together with them, too.

When we were both small she cut most of my hair off in order to give to birds to make nests with. My mother saved a huge chunk of it and taped it into a photo album. I wish I’d known in advance what was coming; I would have taken a photo album or two with me so I could look at them sometimes. The craziest things happen to me when I get my hair cut.

1. I’ve been trying to get Frank back to the group since the spring. He loved Barthelme’s “Some Of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby” but said the stories were getting too long, and didn’t leave enough time for discussion afterwards, which was a fair complaint. I’ve secured his promise to return next week for Denis Johnson’s “Car Crash While Hitchhiking,” which runs around a thousand words, I think.