Haircut Stories

Excerpt : I undressed in front of the window without thinking and tied the gown on backwards so that it opened in the front. My husband was driving home to finish packing a bag. He would call his mother to ask for Blowpops and Chapstick. I’d said those were necessities. It was snowing. All over town, cars slid on black ice. I wore ballet slippers in the hospital bed, removed them during delivery, slipped them on again to and from the bathroom. I knew our baby’s cry down the hallway. I knew the night nurse had let me sleep when I’d asked her not to. Now we live in a different state. My husband talks about how our friends have it easy, how he wishes he’d become a paratrooper instead. Now our son is on his third haircut. And I work in a plain building, floors and floors above the city. Sometimes plastic shopping bags float by my window, sometimes balloons. I boil water for tea, and read and read and watch my bosses come in and out of the room. My hands are gray with carbon copy. My skin is always thirsty. Now my husband takes the night’s last train. He eats the dinner I left without reheating, turns pages of a magazine on the couch. When he comes to bed, he nuzzles my neck, but we sleep back to back.