I happened to look up and see Josh sitting in the living room staring over at us, his face way too interested. These guys were so nosey. I made sure his gaze met mine, and I gave him a wide-eyed look so that he wouldn’t be so obvious about eavesdropping.
“Your babies’ daddy, is he in the picture?” the older woman blatantly asked.
I told her the truth. “No.”
The “huh” that came out of her mouth was a little too suspicious, and I really didn’t feel like bringing up my brother since she already assumed Josh and Lou had ripped through my birth canal. “I’m just about done. Do you want to look at your hair in the mirror?”
One pale hand went up at her side. “There’s a little mirror in my bathroom. Will you bring it? It’ll take me half the day to get in there and back.”
I squeezed my lips together so that I wouldn’t smile. “Sure. Where’s your bathroom?”
Miss Pearl pointed at the hall connecting to the kitchen. “First door.”
I gently touched her shoulder as I walked around and headed down the hall. The walls were painted a pale, pale pink and were lined near the ceiling with a strip of flowered wallpaper. I caught a few pictures frames mounted to the wall, but I didn’t want to be nosey since I knew she could see me. I ducked into the doorway, finding a small full bathroom with an elevated toilet seat decked out with handles and a clean looking bathtub with a long metal bar bracketed to the wall. Sure enough, over the toilet with a shelf behind it was a fairly large handheld mirror like the one I had at work.
I was only slightly nervous when I handed her the mirror and let her take in the front of her haircut. She moved her chin from side to side and handed it back to me. “Half an inch too short, but you did better than the grumpy bat who’s been cutting my hair. That darn woman tried giving me a mullet,” she claimed.
“I think you dodged a bullet with the mullet,” I joked.
She let out a tiny snort. “You’re telling me. How much do I owe you?”
Like every time I dealt with someone much older than me, an image of my grandmother flashed through my head for a brief moment. I sighed and smiled, resigned. “You don’t owe me anything.” Chances were, she was probably on social security. There was no way she was getting very much money, and she was my neighbor. There was also no way her hair grew fast enough for it to be a burden on my schedule. There were only a certain number of people whose hair I cut that got it for free, and one more wouldn’t be the difference between arthritis and… not arthritis. “It’s a neighborly discount,” I let her know.
Her eyes narrowed in a way that was pretty creepy. “Don’t insult me. I can give you the twelve dollars I usually pay,” she argued.
Her offer only made me want to give her a hug. “Please don’t insult me,” I said gently, trying to sound playful. “I’m not going to charge you anything.”
She let out this exaggerated, long sigh that told me I’d won.
“Point me in the direction of your broom, please.”
She did, and five minutes later, I had managed to sweep up the hair and use her handheld vacuum to pick up the fine clippings left behind. Noticing that I was wrapping up the haircut, Josh and Louie were standing in the living room… staring at the old woman. And the old woman was staring back at them. I was 99 percent sure none of them blinked.
“I’m hungry,” Louie finally said, keeping that blue-eyed gaze on our neighbor.
Packing my shears back into their case, I picked up my keys and raised my eyebrows at him, but he still had his attention on the woman. “We can start on dinner in a minute.” I walked toward them and smiled at our neighbor, who had, at least, stopped staring back. “We should get going before you can start hearing their stomachs grumbling. Let me know if you need anything, okay, Miss Pearl?”
She nodded, her eyes meeting mine before shifting back to Louie for a moment. “I will. Thank you for the ‘do.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I have your number on my freezer,” she let me know as if I hadn’t seen it when I’d first gone into her kitchen. “Y’all ever need something, you let me know.”
“That’s really nice of you, thank you. Same goes for you.” I nudged Josh who had moved to stand next to me. Oh dear God, his mouth was cracked, his eyes narrowed as he took in the woman who was older than his grandparents. “It was nice seeing you.” I poked at Josh again.
“Bye, miss,” he kind of mumbled, still dazzled and lost in his trance.
I made my eyes go wide at Louie who had at least managed to catch on to us leaving. “Bye, lady,” he added, shyly.
Lady. God.
I smiled at Miss Pearl and waved the boys toward the door, trying to ask myself where I’d gone wrong with them. Staring. Calling our neighbor “lady.” My mom would be horrified. We filed out, and I made sure to lock the bottom lock on the door before closing it behind me. We made it to the street before Louie did it. “How old is she? A hundred?” he asked, completely curious, without the smallest hint of smart-ass in his tone.
If he hadn’t been holding my dominant hand, I would have smacked myself in the forehead. “Louie!”
“Don’t be dumb. She’s like ninety-five, right, Aunt Di?” Josh butted in.
Oh my God. “I don’t know. Probably, but you’re not supposed to ask that kind of stuff, guys. Jes—Sheesh.”