Page 6

“Hold still.” Tressa Fay put her hand on the top of her dad’s head and directed her clippers at his neck, careful to keep the line sharp.

“You about done, then?”

She pulled her fan brush out of her denim apron, swept it over the back of his neck, and removed the strip of cotton she’d tucked into the collar of the drape. “Done.”

“And you didn’t do anything weird.” He touched the sides of his head.

“I’ve been giving you this same haircut every four weeks for almost fifteen years. I could do this haircut if someone propped up my corpse.” She pulled the drape off her dad, and he stood and headed immediately to the coffeepot in his kitchen.

As he poured his coffee, he watched her fold up the drape and move his step stool chair back into the corner. She grabbed his kitchen broom to clean up. “Business good?” he asked.

“It is.” It was better than good, but her dad would never be able to believe that a hair salon owned by a woman could generate the kind of income Tressa Fay’s did. She’d tried to tell him, but it just wasn’t possible in his worldview, which had been handed to him, she assumed, on a stone tablet as soon as he was born and assigned male at the Catholic hospital in Green Bay, Wisconsin, fifty-six years ago.

Her dad got down a second mug, breaking with his routine. “You have time for a cup of coffee?”

Tressa Fay stopped sweeping.

Her dad never invited her to have a cup of coffee with him after she cut his hair. She cleaned up, they made an agreement to meet at the diner downtown for their Wednesday lunch as though they might choose some other place to eat—though they never had before, not once—and then she went on her way. “Sure. Let me finish up here.”

She tipped out her dad’s hair into the bin and put everything away. He handed her the Snoopy mug that had been in his kitchen cabinet as long as Tressa Fay had been alive. “I don’t have anything fancy to put in it, so you’ll have to drink it the way God intended.”

She took her coffee black, as he well knew. She wondered if he would ever concede that despite her sexual identity, her choice of profession, and her politics, she was a lot more like him than he obviously found comfortable. “Thanks.”

“So.” He put his hand in the pocket of his canvas pants. He worked as a foreman at Green Bay Box and Corrugation, which manufactured packaging, and he had for the last thirty-odd years. Since she was five years old, she had known about his plan to retire at sixty-five, fully vested, and buy a boat and an ice fishing shack. She couldn’t imagine what he had to talk to her about that might affect these plans in any way. The man’s wife had died when he was twenty-eight, and Tressa Fay assumed he’d decided this would be the last unexpected thing to ever happen to him.

“What’s on your mind, Dad?”

“I’m getting married.”

Tressa Fay’s very hot, very black coffee came shooting out of her nose. It took a full minute for her to stop coughing and for her eyes to stop watering from the searing shock of coffee in her sinuses and her dad’s news. “Warn a girl, huh?”

“I’m sure you’re surprised.” Her dad had only sipped at his coffee while she fought for her life after inhaling Folgers. “But I thought you might want to know.”

“I didn’t even know you were dating . You didn’t think I might want to know something about this before you’re sending out save-the-dates?”

“Why do you need to know about it? A man’s social life is his own business. No reason to talk about it until it’s settled. No need for people to get riled up and stick their noses in where they don’t belong.”

Tressa Fay widened her eyes. “What people? Your daughter?”

He didn’t respond.

She let out a slow exhale. “What do you want from me here?”

“Jen wants to meet you.”

“Jen.”

“That’s her name. Jen Sluslarski. She’s coming with me to the diner on Wednesday, if you still want to meet at the diner.”

There were so many things Tressa Fay could say or ask, but none of them would get her any further than simply agreeing to meet her dad and Jen at the diner on Wednesday. “If she hadn’t wanted to meet me, would I have just showed up someday to cut your hair and found Jen here making the coffee?”

He rolled his eyes but didn’t respond. This meant he thought she was being contrary , which was her dad’s priest’s term, as far as Tressa Fay could tell, for women generally.

“All right, then.” She picked up her bag. “I’m gonna bolt.”

“See you Wednesday. Watch the mailbox on your way out.”

One time. When she was sixteen years old, one time , she’d grazed the mailbox pulling out of the driveway, and this meant she had to hear this reminder every single time she left her dad’s house forever.

“Yep.”

She got in her car, and because she knew that her dad had moved to the living room to watch her out the front window and make sure she didn’t hit the mailbox, she left, drove around the corner, and parked.

She pulled her phone out.

Ordinarily, this situation would land itself immediately in her group chat with Guy, Linds, and Mary, who would be truly prepared, after years of dealing with Phillip Robeson, for how extraordinarily landmark the news was.

But she didn’t put the news on her group chat with Guy and Linds and Mary like she normally would have. She also didn’t put it on the new group chat that included Gayle and James and Michael, which she had been dutifully keeping up to date.

It hadn’t even been two days since everyone left her apartment, but there was only one person Tressa Fay really wanted to talk to, to text, to think about, and to imagine in a dozen different scenarios that involved sustained eye contact and burning-hot incidental touching followed by extremely not-incidental touching.

That night, the night they’d found out, after she’d spent several minutes responding to Meryl’s long string of texts with flirting and jokes that didn’t entirely, authentically, express how freaked she was, Tressa Fay had realized she was avoiding talking about all the universe stuff, the time stuff, the impossible stuff— and maybe Meryl was, too. Maybe she was flattened by what Gayle had told her, but it sounded to Tressa Fay like Meryl had focused on making Gayle feel better. Meryl’s response hadn’t been about herself .

It seemed to Tressa Fay that Meryl deserved to be asked how she felt, considering she was the one who had disappeared. Would disappear.

And so Tressa Fay had opened her Notes app, just like she used to when she was young and fighting with a girl over text, so she could make everything perfect before dropping a hard message like a fat folded letter through the slits of someone’s locker.

Give me a sec , Meryl had written back almost immediately.

Tressa Fay had fretted until she saw Meryl’s three little dots, and then she held her breath.

Sorry!

My neighbor has this thing about where the trash and recycling bins are placed by the curb, and when your message came and I was halfway through reading, he knocked on my back door. No matter how many times I tell that man that I work for the city and it is FINE if I put the bins on the apron of my driveway, he moves them onto the easement and then has to tell me about it like he donated a kidney to my mother.

Tressa Fay had laughed then, relieved. but are you okay, for real? you can tell me because I’m new.

Yes. The thing is, I wasn’t entirely surprised. I noticed the date stamps on your texts the night at Canyon when you said it was cold and windy, and I had already been idly thinking that this was either a very elaborate invitation to a LARP or a parallel universe problem.

oh my god

A little bit, Meryl had been joking. But also, it was true. She did believe Tressa Fay, at least as much as Tressa Fay believed what she had seen and felt, which was completely, but also not at all.

Then she and Meryl had texted until they were falling asleep, waking up to the other’s texts until they finally said good night. And that was all they’d been doing since. So far—gloriously—it didn’t seem to matter about the particulars of this long-distance relationship.

my dad’s getting married , she typed, turning up the heat in her car. She’d bought an external charger for her phone just in case her phone’s being charged, ready, on, always , was what kept Meryl with her.

Tell me everything , Meryl wrote back. So Tressa Fay did.

She told Meryl about her dad.

She told her about how she’d known Linds even longer than she’d known Guy, because their mothers met each other while pregnant, at the doctor’s office for prenatal appointments. When Tressa Fay’s mom, Shelly, died when Tressa Fay was three, it had taken her dad several years to really get it together. Linds’s mom, Carla, had stepped in to help. What Tressa Fay mostly remembered from that time was giggling in the back seat with Linds on the way to school, her dad lifting her sleeping body from Carla’s sofa when he finished second shift and arrived to take her home, and how her dad would let Linds and Tressa Fay play video games for hours and hours on a Saturday and put candy in microwave popcorn for lunch.

Good things. But also things that gave Tressa Fay the ability to gauge, now, the depth of her father’s grief.

She told Meryl so much, in several blurting texts, trying to synthesize what it was like to be that man’s daughter, always, forever, and still be herself.

And still try to feel like herself could ever possibly be good enough.

As Tressa Fay talked about her dad with Meryl, she was glad that she and Meryl weren’t avoiding anything anymore. They had been experimenting instead. First, they’d done a series of experiments so that Meryl could observe the situation for herself. Meryl was an engineer. That meant she didn’t rule anything out, but she certainly didn’t rule anything in until she was certain it was correct.

Tressa Fay found this behavior extremely attractive.

The Instagram Experiment, as Tressa Fay called it in her head, consisted of Meryl with her long pinky-red strawflower-colored hair in braids, wearing turquoise cat-eye glasses and a pale blue tank, striking a pose that suggested Meryl was only wearing the tank, due to the glowing curve of thigh uninterrupted by even a single bow on a pair of panties.

Meryl’s hypothesis was she never, ever would have posted it if she didn’t know Tressa Fay, which meant that her posting it and having it appear in her feed in May was a way of confirming the reality of her connection to Tressa Fay. And Meryl’s hypothesis was confirmed when Meryl’s followers started populating the comments with a lot of big eyes and exploding-brain emojis.

But that experiment got less fun when Tressa Fay noticed, beneath Meryl’s friends’ comments, the notation in small gray text. 21w.

Twenty-one weeks ago. That was when the comments had appeared. The comments that Tressa Fay could see rolling in, in real time.

You’re remarkable , Meryl wrote back to her blurt about her dad. Look at you.

but you can’t. not actually, actually

Hmm.

hmm?

I have an idea for an experiment.

you know what? I’ve said this already, but I feel like you’re taking all of this super well

I like to feel powerful. And look! I have all the power. I’m the only one, in all of this, who can know everything. I know myself, I know my sister and James, and I know what they did and what they’re doing now. I know what’s coming for me, or at least that it’s tenacious and not moved by a simple change of venue, which gives me a lot of information. I’m starting to know you. Where I am, and where you are.

Tressa Fay shivered. There was something big and centering about Meryl claiming so much power.

what’s your idea? for the experiment?

Book me.

what do you mean?

I mean, look back in May, preferably soon because I’m impatient, and book me into your salon.

Tressa Fay took a moment to breathe, her mind and heart racing. I couldn’t, really, you’d have to be a walk-in

Pick a day that you’d take me as a walk-in.

She put her hand over her chest. I wouldn’t know you!

No. But I would know you. And then we could see each other, and then October Tressa Fay would remember me. Maybe.

Oh. Oh. Tressa Fay took a deep breath, her stomach flipping over, flipping over again. Now she was warm.

if I cut your hair the way I cut hair, then we might mess with Gayle and James’s past. maybe more people’s. my cuts have a signature, are usually dramatic. I don’t know

Then give me a trim. I’ll ask for a trim.

is this an experiment, or is this…something else?

It’s something else. And an experiment.

Tressa Fay touched that text. She took a deep breath. you’ll know me then and now , she wrote.

I won’t know anything, while I’m cutting your hair, but the present moment. if it works like it did before, you’ll walk out of my salon and I’ll only have memories of trimming your hair. I won’t know who you are to me

She remembered Michael in her apartment asking questions about how much their minds could handle, talking about how they had to try to avoid doing harm. But she wanted to have the memory of meeting Meryl. To know how she looked in person. How her voice sounded.

We’re both here , Meryl wrote. My guess is we’ve already done this, and it turned out okay.

god. you…

I know. But I want to see you. Already, it’s been almost impossible not to go and see you. I nearly left work to drive to your salon.

I don’t know how to say no to this idea, anyway. I don’t. I can’t

maybe that’s weird, that it’s barely been a week and it’s just texting, but the idea of not giving you something you want if I *can* feels more impossible than doing THIS

It’s a bad idea for us to do this, but now that I’ve thought of it, there’s no way I won’t unless you don’t want us to. Because it’s the only way we can meet in person—and because, what if it means we can keep talking to each other and figure out how to really be together…even if?

I hate hate that “even if”

I hate it too, but it’s hard to resist this now that I’ve thought of it. BECAUSE it will change everything, and that’s what we want. Because we can know each other.

They could know each other.

They could have this.

In the hush of her car on this overcast street, knowing Meryl felt like the only thing Tressa Fay wanted. But she had to consider, minimally, what Michael or Guy or Gayle or Mary would say to this plan if she told them about it.

you would think that we would use these experiments to figure out how to keep you safe in September

I don’t feel like I’m in danger. I don’t feel anything like that. How could I? Right this minute, all this time so far, I want to use these experiments so that I never stand you up again.

She wanted to argue with Meryl, who was in danger. Her future was uncertain. What was Tressa Fay going to do, come February, if Meryl disappeared in her own September… really disappeared? Off her phone? Out of her own life?

I think your sister is going to want to know that you’re applying the full nancy drew treatment to your life right now

Yes. But the number I misdialed was yours. So I’m taking you with me.

Tressa Fay squeezed the phone. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out her day planner and flipped back to May. She tried to fill herself with Meryl’s confidence. She studied the calendar, because it wasn’t enough to simply find a cancellation or the rare unbooked appointment. She wanted to know how she was that day. She pulled up her Instagram, too.

But it turned out to be simple. May 6. That afternoon, she had been alone, because Mary had gone to an appointment to get a tattoo. She confirmed this on Mary’s Insta. Yes. May 6, in the evening, Mary posted her raw tattoo, covered in film, on her hip. The salon had been quiet from three o’clock on, and Tressa Fay had a lot of no-shows.

Why? She didn’t have a May 6 post on her Instagram, so she looked at her camera roll.

Oh, right. It had been a beautiful day. She sometimes had no-shows on beautiful days. Wisconsinites so rarely got beautiful days that they never failed to take full advantage. Her photos were of the street outside her salon, a group of people walking in tiny summer clothes, a panting dog tied up outside the deli next door.

come at three. Tressa Fay was shaking. tomorrow. your tomorrow.

Yes! Yes. Yes.

go easy on me, I’m incredibly nervous. I feel a little sorry for my may self, taking pictures outside on a warm day and polishing my tools and listening to music. she doesn’t know what’s coming

More than that, it was hard not to wonder if she had the right to consent to this experiment on behalf of May 6 Tressa Fay. But that wasn’t the kind of question she could get an answer to.

Still. Maybe they should let that Tressa Fay be. She’d already navigated that day, and she remembered it, even now, as a bit of a golden day.

Of course, that Tressa Fay would always exist, wouldn’t she? She had already folded into the whole big mess that was time. What Meryl was proposing was something that hadn’t, exactly, happened to Tressa Fay yet. It would happen to a different Tressa Fay. When she knew about it, it would make her a different Tressa Fay, now. God.

Meryl was proving to be a force of nature, even through this strange chain of notes they passed back and forth. Tressa Fay was inclined to believe that Meryl was right, that she did have a lot of power, and she could use it to experiment, and she could deploy it to stop what was coming for her in September and also find her way to Tressa Fay.

I will be kind in every way. And I’ll do my best to protect you and the people I love without setting off red flags for you. I think the only risk is that…well. No matter what, I think we’ll be friends.

Also! This is an adventure, right? I’m working on an idea. On another kind of experiment. When I have thought about it more, we should talk.

Tressa Fay turned the dial up on the heat.

She was Phillip Robeson’s daughter, truly. She loved her apartment. She loved her routines in it, making it just so. She loved her job, making it what she needed. She’d known the two most important people in her life since before she could remember.

But obviously there were things about her dad she didn’t know and hadn’t guessed. She should probably give herself the same scope of imagination. She had never wanted nights out or a bar or a dating app or anything like that to get her out of…she didn’t want to say her rut , because that was unkind, but her habits. Her comforts.

Right now, she had a perspective on her life that she’d never had before, the kind of perspective that poets thought about. Untraveled roads. What ifs. She was a very unlikely hero in this kind of an adventure, that was for sure. But she was the person Meryl’s misdirected text had gone to, and Tressa Fay couldn’t pretend it meant nothing that she was more interested in talking to a woman—more willing to shake off her habits, her routines, and her comforts for this particular woman—than she’d been in forever.

this is an adventure , Tressa Fay wrote. I will repeat that to myself until it feels like one.

Three dots came up and disappeared more than once. It made her nerves feel drawn out, fragile, and like too many signals were running up and down them.

What she held in her hand right now was the only thing she and her people had of Meryl, and it couldn’t be more tenuous. She’d had dreams of the chat going silent, going gray, being scrambled, of hearing staticky snippets of Meryl’s voice.

But the next message arrived, just like the other ones had.

I’m scared, too. I wanted to say that. And I don’t want to push you, and I’m taking seriously what my sister and friends and family are dealing with up ahead. I don’t want anything to happen to me, of course. I like my life. I love my life. I’m happy. The idea of anything bad happening to me seems so remote, but I’m taking it seriously. I’m thinking so much about how to use everyone we can to help without hurting anyone in the process. It’s all the thinking that’s keeping me steady. Also, you. You. Your humor and how easy you are to talk to and how beautiful. How much I *like* you. It’s making this situation way, way more easy, if not to accept, then to live in.

Tressa Fay looked up from Meryl’s long text, out the windshield at the gray October day. Somewhere out there, in the time she was experiencing and moving forward in right now, was Meryl. But this Meryl wasn’t using her bank accounts. She wasn’t reaching out to anyone.

Tressa Fay hadn’t let herself really think about it, because how could she? How could she take in the reality that Meryl Whit wasn’t here anymore in a way that was utter and final and meant her loved ones were already grieving?

And how could she pass up a chance to meet Meryl, however she could, whenever it was possible?

I’m all in , Tressa Fay typed. maybe you SHOULDN’T make it so easy on me tomorrow .

To be honest, I might be all talk. Who knows what will happen when you’re *right there.* You don’t happen to remember what you were wearing that day, do you? For example, there’s a picture of you from a couple of years ago cutting hair in a leotard. I might not be able to speak if that’s what I run into.

They flirted for long enough that Mary had to call her and tell her to get her ass back to the salon.

For long enough that Tressa Fay forgot to be worried, and she was just a girl teasing her girl about their first date.