TheBanyanTree: If only

[Monique Colver]

If only I had a tape recorder, though no one has tape recorders anymore, do
they? when I go to get my hair cut. By the time I'm done I can't remember
most of what Vanessa said, though I swear, I was listening, I certainly was.

Her words swoop around my head while I sit, eyes closed, listening to the
music and her voice, my right eye throbbing just a bit because, up above my
brow, there's a swelling. I noticed it at 3 am when Ash insisted on getting
up. While he was out in the backyard relieving himself, or chasing
nighttime birds, or amusing himself in some other way, I went into the
little bathroom downstairs and relieved myself, as long as I was up, and I
looked in the mirror at my aging face, which is not holding up as well as I
might hope. But what does? That's when I noticed the swelling above my
right eye, just a greyish sort of thing, barely noticeable, but when I
touched it I winced, not expecting it to hurt.

Must be a sinus thing. It's better today, and unnoticeable, but I can feel
some discomfort there, and around my eye.

Vanessa is not shy. Her hair, which is irrelevant, is in streaks of dark
brown and white, and she has a perky chipmunk voice, and she must be all of
23. She tells me about her mother, her sister who's getting married and
wanted Vanessa to be the maid of honor but when Vanessa realized she was
the only attendant she became scared of all the responsibility, there's so
much she has to do, and so she gave her sister an out, it's not like
they've always been close, only recently have they grown close, but her
sister wants her as her maid of honor, and as Vanessa talks I don't know if
the wedding is in the future or in the past, and I don't really care.

She tells me about her mom, who's moving to Salem, or not, and the
grandmother who's buying her mom a mobile home, or not, and how her mom has
issues, mental issues, physical issues, and she says, "We're mirror images,
except for appearance," and I let that slide, like I let all her words
slide by.

Her husband is just nothing like her brother-in-law (soon to be?), except
for how they are, or else her husband is just like her brother-in-law,
except for how they aren't alike at all, and her mom was taking her
boyfriend's oxycontin, which we know is bad, she's already on so many meds,
and her sister and she and her mom went to Taco Time, and ordered bean
burritos, or meat burritos, but the clown at the window (yes, I know it's
not Jack In The Box) couldn't get it straight, so Vanessa ended up yelling
that her mom wanted a cow burrito and she wanted a pinto burrito, and her
sister was laughing so hard she ordered nothing, and so afterwards they
were going to Dairy Queen where Vanessa used to work, but it's closed now,
but temporarily, for renovations, and Vanessa was going to go back through
Taco Time to get her sister a burrito also.

I don't know if her sister ever got a burrito or not.

There was a pan on the stove, a story about a pan, but it was woven in with
her mother, her sister, something, or other. It's all woven into a kind of
tapestry of Vanessa's Experience Since I Saw Her Last, which would make a
good name for a grunge band, if it weren't so long.

I smile while she works and talks, my eyes closed, and every so often I
agree with her, or acknowledge her words, but I never nod my head because
she has sharp scissors and she's cutting as effortlessly as she's talking,
and right in the middle of a family story she says, "How about if we do
this here?" and it takes me a few seconds to realize that wasn't part of
the story, that's a question to me, so I rush to say, "Sure, go ahead,"
because my trick to working with Vanessa is to let her do her thing. She's
the expert, after all. I'm just a head of hair. With ears.

When she's done she shows me my hair, and I say it's good, even though I'm
no judge of hair. I'm barely a judge of . . . well, anything at all, though
I do have my moments. I take a book out of my bag and start to sign it, a
gift to Vanessa, who is surrounded by varying degrees of mental issues,
both within her own head and in her family, and the older stocky lady at
the counter says, "What did you write? Can I see it?" and she looks at the
book and says something nice about it, and Vanessa comes out from behind
the counter and gives me a hug, and she's so small and frail, but then
again, a lot of people are compared to me, and she thanks me, for the
business, for the book, and I thank her, for all her words, even if I can't
remember them all.

Monique