My recently estranged wife’s sister is cutting my hair. Her little sister, the youngest. The top sheet she’s covered me with has superhero puppies on it. It belongs to one of her kids.
Snip, snip. Snip, snip.
The intervals she cuts with are rhythmic, slightly meditative. Her face has a look of artful discernment when she bends to study me straight on.
Outside, on the deck of her house, everyone in the family except my wife is sitting around in the hot summer sun drinking beer. I don’t even want one. I have a job interview up in Cincinnati on Tuesday afternoon – they’re flying me up for a second interview – but I’m not sick to my stomach as long as I don’t think too far ahead. I have a small phobia of flying, have only taken four plane trips in my life. What’s more, I never imagined anyone would fly me anywhere for work, much less an interview.
My son, five years old, sticks his head in through the sliding glass door from the outside. He sees me, giggles. I am clean-shaven after growing a beard for some months. Also, he’s never seen me get a haircut. Usually, I just take the clippers to it when it gets too long.
Snip, snip.
Snip.
My sister-in-law used to cut hair professionally. She’s also been a lounge singer and a fry cook. She’s the only person I ever met who drinks box wine in moderation. She has nice legs, but there’s some things you just don’t let yourself think about. I like her and my latest brother-in-law quite a bit. Her third husband. I liked all my sisters-in-law and their husbands, their children too. My mother was a drug addict, I was in foster care from the time I was four. I never knew my dad. I put myself through college with the help of federal loans. In short, this is the only family I ever had.
On Tuesday, my father-in-law, thirty years sober, drives me to the airport in his white Hyundai. It’s early, and I could’ve taken myself and parked, but I really didn’t want to. I wanted to focus on keeping my hands from shaking.
I got laid off six months ago. I read somewhere a while back that the vast majority of people out of work for a year or longer never go back. Jobs are hard to find. Myself, I’d never been without work this long. Even in college, I worked waiting tables, at a place in Dunwoody owned by my best friend’s dad.
You’re doing the right thing, my father-in-law says. Then, to clarify, he adds: the best thing you can do is take the first thing that comes along.
Even in Cincinnati? I ask.
Even in Cincinnati. It’s easier to find a job when you have one.
I am partly hoping I don’t get it. I would have to leave my kids, my son and two year old daughter, with my sister-in-law, at least a week out of every month to go up there – not to mention some other regional travel – but I know this will be it. I interview well, once I get through my nerves, and why else would they fly me up there for a second interview if it wasn’t likely they will hire me.
Look, he says – my father-in-law does. You get it, I’ll buy the first round when you get back.
I smile. You never have more than one.
All the same.
A few nights ago, my wife called to check on the kids. She was drunk – or something else, possibly. Tearful. She was somewhere out in California, outside Bakersfield or someplace, a town I’d never heard of. There were the voices of a man and a woman in the background, laughing.
Carolina, I said to her, as she sobbed into the phone.
But I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never been to California. I’d always wanted to make the drive out there, had passed up flying out to visit a friend twice. Carolina and I had planned on going together.
At the airport, my father-in-law pulls in between a couple SUVs, one maroon, one navy blue, turns on his hazards. Traffic is fairly light this early, for Hartsfield anyway. He gets out with me, leaving his cane in the backseat. He insists on getting my bag out of the trunk, handing it to me.
He shakes my hand, then, thinking better, gives me a hug.
This is America now, he says. It’s not like when I was a kid.
He pats me on the shoulder, and I nod.
You have to take what you can get, he says.
And I do.
