in0 by Unknown Page A

mature.”

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    “Low lights ,” Sophia’s mother, Linda, said, pronouncing it carefully, as if she were teaching the stylist a new language.
    Mario, Angela, and I used to imitate just this sort of thing when we were younger. “Low lights ” I could imagine us mouthing behind her back. We’d never understood what my father had seen in her. Tulia’s flaky mother, Didi, had been a lot easier to take when she came along a few years earlier. She didn’t try to teach us a thing. She ignored us and hung out with our father, which was just fine with us.
    My father had been single again for years. Life went on, and both Tulia’s and Sophia’s moms were remarried and back working for us. I didn’t think much of it until I’d gone off to college and was sitting around with some new friends, describing our families. Wow , they all said, and I thought my family was screwed up .
    “Every family has something,” my social worker mother said when I mentioned it to her at fall break. “And, believe you me, most of my clients would trade places with you in a heart-beat.”
    It’s hard to mess up a haircut on thick, wavy hair, but Tulia was managing it. Her daughter Maggie’s hair was now shoulder length on one side only. Tulia had the dark hair and pale skin of the rest of the Shaughnessy clan, but she sure hadn’t inherited the hand-eye coordination. As soon as she finished trimming Maggie’s hair, Angela took her niece by the hand to another chair to even it out.
    Tulia moved on to her oldest child, Mack. After just a few snips, one of his ears was half covered with hair, and the other one was completely visible. His bangs tilted downhill from left to right.
    Mario walked over and casually took the scissors out of Tulia’s hands.

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    “What?” Tulia said.
    Mario just shook his head and started doing damage control. Mack looked so much like Mario had at that age. Whenever I saw them together, I felt like I was watching one of those split-screen computer projections showing what a child will look like when he grows up. I hoped Mack turned out to be as good a big brother to Maggie as Mario was to me.
    My father made his grand entrance through the breezeway door. His black, black hair was moussed and stretched evenly over his scalp. His Cover Your Bald Spot Instantly was living up to its promise. My father, who prided himself on having a new look at each meeting, was wearing black leather pants, a black T-shirt, and a salmon cotton sweater tied around his shoulders.
    “Are you sure he’s not gay?” Todd whispered to Mario.
    “Focus,” I whispered. We’d all worked hard on our notes, and we were ready for our hair intervention. The plan was to let him start the meeting and then jump in when he asked if we had anything else to bring up.
    My father walked right over to Sophia’s mother, Linda. He reached for her hand and bowed from the waist to kiss it.
    “ Carissima ,” he said, still holding her hand. “You get more beautiful every time I see you.”
    She smiled up at him. “Oh, you,” she said.
    My father smiled back. He was a great guy to date, even a great guy to be divorced from. He just didn’t do so well in the space between the two. He let go of her hand and started snapping his fingers, and we all started dragging our chairs into a semicircle.
    Sophia walked in front of me. I figured the sound of the dragging chairs, not to mention the commotion my father Summer Blowout
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    always brought along with him, would mask our conversation. “Hey,” I said. “When you see Craig, tell him to call me, okay?”
    There was a sudden dead silence in the room.
    “About what ?” Sophia asked.
    “Not that it’s any of your business, but it’s about Lizzie.” I was pretty sure I saw a flash of jealousy, and I took a moment to savor it. “What about Lizzie?” she asked.
    I shrugged. “Just tell him to call. Or not.” I turned my back on her just in time to see Precious