Regulars

This one isn’t funny. I’ll be honest with you up front, because we have a rapport by now and you’d know anyway.

Mr. Albert came in every three weeks.

Every three weeks, for a trim. And here is the thing about a man in his eighties booking a trim every three weeks: there’s no trim. Hair slows down at a certain age. What I took off Mr. Albert’s head in any given appointment could have been collected in a thimble with room left over. If it were about the hair, he could have come in twice a year and nobody, including his hair, would have noticed.

It was never about the hair.

His wife had passed four years before he started coming to me. His kids were spread out — one in Denver, one further. He had a routine, the way men of that generation build routines like load-bearing walls: coffee at the same place, errands on the same days. And every third Thursday, at ten in the morning, my chair.

Here is what a haircut is, if you’ve never thought about it, and you’ve probably never had to. It is twenty-five minutes where someone touches your shoulders. Asks about your week and listens to the answer. Notices you — the actual physical fact of you, your cowlick, the way your part wants to fall. For twenty-five minutes you are looked after by name.

For some people, that’s a haircut.

For some people, it’s the only appointment of its kind on the calendar.

I never let on that I knew. That was the whole job, honestly — the trim was five minutes and the not-letting-on was the other twenty. We talked about the weather, which he took seriously the way farmers’ sons do. We talked about his tomatoes. I heard about Denver. I asked the questions and combed through what there was to comb and took my thimbleful, and every third Thursday he left my chair a little straighter through the shoulders than he came in.

You want to know what he gave me, since I’ve been going on about what the chair gave him.

Everything I know about growing tomatoes, for one thing. And I mean everything — the man ran a masterclass in installments, three weeks at a time, whether I wanted one or not. Plant them deep, all the way up the stem. Water the roots and never the leaves. Pinch the suckers, and don’t feel bad about it.

And once, near the end of a quiet appointment in the fall, apropos of nothing: “You do more good in this chair than you know.”

I didn’t say anything. I just kept combing. Some things you can’t respond to head-on without breaking them.

My tomatoes, for the record, are excellent now. Deep roots. I don’t feel bad about the suckers.

Every third Thursday, at ten in the morning, I still think of him.