Damn it. I slid a look to the side window, suddenly feeling guilty that I still hadn’t even started looking for a new baseball team for him. Once upon a time, I would have lied to him and said that I had but that wasn’t the kind of relationship I wanted to have with the boys. So I told him the truth. “No, but I will.”
I didn’t have to turn around to sense the accusation in his gaze, but he didn’t make me feel bad over it. “Okay.”
None of us said anything else as I pulled up to the curb at the school and put the car into park. Both boys sat there, looking at me expectantly, making me feel like a shepherd to my sheep.
A shepherd who didn’t always know the right direction to go.
I could only try my best and hope it was good enough. Then again, wasn’t that the story to everyone’s lives? “Everything is going to be okay. I promise.”
*
“Miss Lopez!”
I shut the car door with my hip later that day, with what felt like fifty pounds of grocery bags hanging off my wrists. Louie was already at the front door of our house, the two smallest bags from our shopping trip in each of his hands. While I usually tried to avoid taking them to the grocery store, the trip had been inevitable. The salon wasn’t scheduled to open until the next day, and I was partially thankful that I’d been able to pick them up their first day of school. Considering that even Louie hadn’t looked like school had been everything he might have hoped it would be, grocery shopping had gone well; I’d only had to threaten the boys twice. Josh paused halfway to his brother with full hands too, a frown growing on his face as he looked around.
“Miss Lopez!” the frail voice called out again, barely heard, from somewhere close but not that close. I didn’t think anything of it as I stepped toward them, watching as Josh’s gaze narrowed in on something behind me.
“I think she’s talking to you,” he suggested, his eyes staying locked on whatever it was he was looking at.
Me? Miss Lopez? It was my turn to frown. I glanced over my shoulder to find why he would assume that. The instant I spotted the faded pink housedress at the edge of the porch of the pretty yellow house across the street, I forced myself to suppress a groan.
Was the old woman calling me Miss Lopez?
She waved a frail hand, confirming my worst guess.
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.