Page 32 of Maybe in Another Life

“Hi, guys,” I say. “How are you?”

“How are we?” my dad says. “How arewe?” He turns to my mom. “Would you listen to this kid? She gets in a car accident, and when she can talk, the first thing she asks us is howweare.” He comes to me and gives me a gentle hug. I’m getting called out on this by everyone lately, butHow are you?is a perfectly reasonable question to ask another human being as a greeting.

“Incredible,” my mom says. She comes around my other side.

“Sarah will be up in a minute,” my dad says.

“She gets frustrated trying to parallel park,” my mom whispers. “She learned how to drive where you park on the left side of the road.”

“You can’t park in the garage here?” I ask.

My dad laughs. “Clearly, you have never visited someone in the hospital. The rates are maddening.”

Good old Mom and Dad. Sarah comes in the door.

“You got it?” my mom asks.

“It’s fine,” Sarah says. She breathes. “Hi,” she says to me. “How are you?”

“I’m OK,” I say.

“You look like you feel better than yesterday,” my dad says. “You’ve got some color in your face.”

“And your voice sounds good,” my mom adds.

Sarah steps closer to me. “I cannot tell you how good it feels to look at you and know you’re OK. To hear your voice.” She can see that my mom is getting teary. “But the bad news is that your bun is really screwed up,” she says. “Here.” She takes my head in her hands and pulls my hair out of the elastic.

“Easy now,” I say to her. “There’s a person attached to that hair.”

“You’re fine,” she says. “Wait.” She stops herself. “You are fine, right? Gabby said the damage is all on your lower half.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “Go ahead.”

She drops my hair and walks toward her purse. “You need your hair brushed. Is no one brushing your hair around here?”

She pulls a brush from her purse and starts running it through my hair. It feels nice, except for the moments when she finds deep-rooted tangles at the base of my scalp. I wince as she picks at them, trying to work them free.

“Do you remember when you were little,” my mom says as she sits down, “and you used to get those huge knots in your hair from when you would try to braid it yourself?”

“Not really,” I say. “But if it felt anything like Sarah yanking at my scalp, I can understand why I blocked it out.”

It’s not audible, and her face is behind me, but I know for a fact that Sarah is rolling her eyes at me.

“Yeah, you hated it then, too, and I told you to stop playing with your hair if you didn’t want me to sit there and detangle it. You told me you wanted to cut it all off. And I told you no.

“Obviously,” Sarah says as she puts the brush down and pulls my hair into a high bun.

“Can you do it higher?” I ask. “I don’t like it when I can feel it hit the bed.” She lets my hair down and tries again.

“OK, well, long story short,” my mom says.

“It’s a little late for that,” my dad jokes. She gives him a look. The look wives and mothers have been giving to husbands and fathers for centuries.

“Anyway,” she says pointedly, “you went into the kitchen when I wasn’t looking and chopped off your own hair.”

“Oh, right,” I say, vaguely remembering seeing pictures of my hair cropped. “I think you told me this story before.”

“It was so short. Above your ears!” she says. “And I ran into the kitchen and saw what you did, and I said, ‘Why did you do that?’ and you said, ‘I don’t know, I felt like it.’ ”

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