Snow Day: a Novella

by Maurer, Dan

  When I started the job, the shop was owned by ol’ Luigi, who had cut hair there since before I was born, or so my mother told me. He was a little man with kind eyes, at least when he turned them on his customers, and he always wore a mustard yellow barber’s smock with red piping and short sleeves. He had slick, shiny hair combed straight back. His wire-framed glasses were set above a small nose and a tiny patch of facial hair above his upper lip, what Frank called a “Hitler mustache”, and a smile that showed off rows of perfectly straight teeth, or maybe they were dentures, I can’t say for sure. We never knew his real name; we just called him Luigi because he spoke with a thick Italian accent that most of us kids couldn’t make out. Looking back, he wasn’t even that old, not compared to my Pop-Pop, but I guess he was old to us so the name stuck – ol’ Luigi. So much for being politically correct; it was the ‘70s after all.

  Mr. Schneider was one of ol’ Luigi’s regulars, though most people couldn’t see why, because Mr. Schneider didn’t have much on his head. He had little more than a halo of wispy hair around a bald crown. It reminded me of the San Diego Padres team logo at the time, the one with the balding Friar swinging a Louisville Slugger from his toes. But Mr. Schneider came in like clockwork, every few weeks. Sometimes, and this started happening more often, he just came in for a hot shave. But he wasn’t really there for the grooming. After a while, I came to understand it was something else, something about the place, the atmosphere maybe.

  When Mr. Schneider came to visit, there was always a game on the radio and several customers in the long row of waiting chairs; they’d be reading the paper, or listening to Phil Rizzuto call a Yankee game. Often, men would come to Luigi’s place, but not for a shave or a cut. They would just look at Luigi who would nod to a door at the back of the shop. It led to a narrow hallway, a little office next to a tiny john, and a fire exit that led to a parking lot on the other side of the building. A nod from Luigi and those customers were through the back door never to re-emerge, presumably having left through the fire exit. I didn’t go back there much, except to get the broom, or the mop and bucket, or to wash the aprons and towels in the old second-hand washer and dryer units that sat just inside the fire exit. Mostly I just sat in the front of the shop and swept and cleaned the blades, or ran errands, especially at lunch time. An Italian hoagie from Al John’s around the corner was Luigi’s usual, with extra onions, hot peppers, oil and vinegar. Sometimes, I forgot the onions on purpose and blamed it on the kid at Al John’s.

  In the front of the shop, the muffled sound of ringing phones could be heard coming from the office. They rang often. Sometimes an old woman would come out from the back office, where she was tending those ringing phones. Sometimes she had slips of paper in her hand. When she did, Luigi would pause from cutting a customer’s hair and the kindness in his eyes would be gone. They would talk, often argue, always in Italian, which no one but they understood, until he finally chased her back into the office with a combination of emphatic words and gestures. I thought they might have been curse words, but I was never sure. Then Luigi would turn back to the mirror in front of his raised barber chair, where his customer sat patiently. He would nod and shrug at the customer and the smiling eyes would return as his shears resumed their work. Don’t mind the old woman in the back, his expression would say, she’s nothing.

  I never got to know the old woman, not her name nor who she was. For the most part, she just stayed back there answering the ringing phones. Whenever I’d go in the back to get something she would close the office door so I couldn’t see or hear what she was doing. The few times I saw her step out of the office she would always carefully lock the door behind her.

  From what I could tell, Mr. Schneider enjoyed his visits to the shop. He was always smiling and joking with the patrons, though none of them ever had much to say in return. Only Luigi really ever spoke to him, and he rarely deviated from his script.

  “Ah, my friend, Mr. Schneider. What I can do for you today? A shave? Maybe a little trim? The eyebrows, too?”

  Sometimes Mr. Schneider would ask for the works as Luigi snapped the apron out in front of him and let it float down over his smiling customer’s lap and torso, buttoning it around his neck, tucking a paper napkin between nape and collar. This went on for some time, until the day came that Mr. Schneider lost his smile.

  Mr. Schneider lay back in the barber chair in the middle of his shave. Ol’ Luigi had a nice ivory handled straight razor that would flip open with a snap of the wrist and then lock into place – snick. I used to think it was the coolest thing and loved playing with it while I cleaned the blades each week. Now, he carefully drew the gleaming straight razor across Mr. Schneider’s face. The razor made a shhhick, shhhick sound with each short stroke, reminding me of the Edge Shave Cream commercial where the announcer would drag a credit card across an actor’s freshly shaved face – shhhick, shhhick.

  Mr. Schneider was only halfway through his shave when one of the old men in a waiting chair looked up from his Sports Illustrated, the one featuring a helmeted Namath on the cover flashing his Broadway Joe grin.

  “Uh-oh, here comes Mean Joe Green,” the man said, and the other men snorted and chuckled.

  Luigi carefully lifted the razor away from Mr. Schneider’s throat and wiped it on the towel he had draped over his shoulder. The man with the shaving-creamed face looked around, bewildered at first, then he saw her. Through the large plate glass window that looked out on Summit Avenue and between the backward letters that read BARBERSHOP, everyone watched as Delilah Schneider, with Tommy in tow, worked her way through the anemic traffic to cross the street, heading in their direction.

  Delilah was sweaty and winded, having walked all the way from their apartment down on Broad Street. She had a steely look in her eyes. Tommy, wearing his usual filthy BLACKWATER P.A.L. t-shirt, was red-faced with embarrassment. His nose was running. He grabbed one of the short sleeves of his t-shirt and wiped the snot from his nose. In those days, Tommy always had a runny nose and his shirt was his favorite remedy.

  As she crossed Summit Avenue, careful to avoid the cars that lazily approached the Stop sign at the corner of Summit and East Glendale, Delilah dragged Tommy along by the collar of his t-shirt. She was moving with such steady determination that Tommy’s collar stretched and seemed to tear a bit, but she never broke her stride.

  Mr. Schneider leapt from the barber chair and headed for the door with cat-like reflexes. His reaction brought a chorus of chuckles and tongue clucks from the men in the shop. Startled, I stopped sweeping the clippings on the floor for a moment and watched Mr. Schneider throw the door open, rattling the shopkeeper’s bell above the lintel as he did, and dash out, stumbling over the small stoop and barely keeping his feet as he met his wife, and his wife’s wrath, on the sidewalk outside the shop. The door began to swing closed on its own, but before it idled shut, Delilah’s screeching voice was clear and biting.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here? I told you to – “

  Her words were cut off from the rest of the patrons when the shop door finally shut on its own. The bell above the lintel jangled with a sad finality when it closed, and I and the rest of the men in the shop were spectators to a silent movie. The Albert and Delilah Schneider show. But the old men didn’t watch for long. Luigi wasted no time and waved the next customer into his chair. The other men went back to Phil Rizzuto’s Money Store spots, their newspapers, their outdated issues of Sports Illustrated, their Racing Forms, and their whispered conversations.

  If you were kind, you could say they averted their gaze from the Schneiders out of respect, to give them some privacy, and perhaps, a bit out of embarrassment for Mr. Schneider. But that would be a lie. The fact is this: they had all seen this sideshow before and it was old hat, to use my mother’s expression. In truth, once the laugh was had, they just didn’t give a shit. But all this was new to me and I was fascinated. I just had to watch.

  As I resumed my sweeping, I casua
lly sidled up to the large window at the front of the shop, hoping no one would notice that I was staring. Once there, I swept imaginary hair clippings from the aged and cracked linoleum tiles at my feet and watched the Schneiders go at it on the sidewalk, just a few feet away. Mr. Schneider hadn’t removed the mustard colored barber’s apron, nor wiped away the shave cream that covered only half his face. He held his palms up toward his wife and waved them in a take it easy, calm down, gesture. Delilah’s lips sneered and chattered an unbroken stream of words as she poked a finger hard in Mr. Schneider’s chest.

  Tommy just stood there, hands in pockets. He looked down at his grimy Keds with the ink scribbles on the toes and then glanced down the street to look at nothing in particular. I’m sure he wanted to be anywhere but there, to disappear, become the invisible man. I was caught by surprise when he looked up. He saw me watching him, his parents, and the spectacle that was the Schneider family. He didn’t try to say anything, nor communicate with his eyes, nothing. He just stared at me, expressionless. Finally, I turned my eyes away, looking down at the linoleum square I had needlessly swept. But still, I listened.

  The Schneiders’ shouting grew louder, and though muffled by the shop’s plate glass window, I could still catch snippets of Delilah’s verbal blows like: You were supposed to watch the kid. And I told you to get a fucking job, not hang out with these losers! And Now we’ll have four mouths to feed! And her husband’s counters, proclamations like: I’m working on it, I have some irons in the fire and ...but these are my friends.

  Yes, that’s right. That’s what he said: These are my friends. Those were Mr. Schneider’s exact words. Men who barely spoke to him, most who didn’t know his name nor cared to, and got a good laugh when his fat harpy wife came around to eat his flesh; these were the men he considered his friends.

  That’s when I finally understood; I was only ten, but I got it. Mr. Schneider didn’t visit the Summit Avenue barbershop for the grooming. He came to escape. He came to escape unemployment, his odd, runny-nosed son, a dwindling bank account and his angry, I’m-pissed-off-at-the-world-and-you’re-the-guy-I’m-gonna-make-pay-for-it wife. And if a bunch of smelly, uncaring, disinterested old men was the best he could escape to, well, I guess it must have looked like heaven to him.

  I thought about this and looked up at Tommy again, only to see his back as he walked away. He was crossing Summit Avenue in the middle of the street, not looking back. His parents didn’t seem to notice or care that he was leaving. They argued on as Tommy turned the corner and headed down East Glendale toward Broad Street and home.

  I could tell, and Frank later confirmed, that Mr. Schneider was mostly a nice guy, but the man wasn’t very bright. He certainly didn’t know much about business, because despite being in a pretty bad scrape to begin with, somehow Tommy’s father, the guy who looked like the San Diego Padre’s mascot, found a way to dig himself into an even deeper hole. Irons in the fire, that’s what he’d told his wife. More like shovels in the grave, looking back on it now. I was just a kid, so at the time the details were beyond me, but I can put the pieces together well enough now, with a lifetime of my own mistakes behind me.

  With the last of his bank account, Mr. Schneider bought ol’ Luigi’s barbershop. I had overheard Luigi telling Mr. Schneider for months that he was planning to retire to Florida and could give him the shop for a song. The plan was simple, and yes, Mr. Schneider had a plan. Men like him always believe they have a plan. He would continue to display the retired Luigi’s barber’s license on the shelf in the shop, tucked neatly behind a tall blue jar of Barbicide disinfectant, which he carefully positioned to hide the name on the small certificate. This he would do only until he completed his night school courses to get his own license, I’m sure he told himself.

  Then, once the business was his, Mr. Schneider used it for collateral to buy the house next door to ours on East Glendale Avenue, just around the corner from the barbershop. Another steal, Tommy’s father no doubt thought. My mother told me that the old couple who owned the home before had fallen behind on their payments and the bank threatened to foreclose. Mr. Schneider, showing off the books from a profitable business, very likely convinced the bank to let him assume the mortgage. New business, new home, new life, or so he thought. It’s amazing, the lies we tell ourselves.

  That’s how Tommy came to be my neighbor. Before that, he lived with his parents in a basement apartment in Jimmy Barnes’s building, over on the corner of East Glendale and Broad Street, about a quarter mile down the road. The distance and circumstances put Tommy on the fringe of our lives back then, but we still knew who he was.

  So I was not only surprised, but chagrinned, when I found out Tommy would be my neighbor. It was Frank who broke the news to me that the mental case – that’s what Frank always called Tommy – was moving in next door. He said he heard the news from some old white-haired guy, probably the realtor, who was removing the For Sale sign next door and placing it in the trunk of his car.

  Anyway, it wasn’t long after moving his family into the house next door and putting a freshly minted “Under New Management” sign in the window of his barbershop that the carefully woven pieces of Mr. Schneider’s new life began to unravel. He discovered the business was heavily in debt to the landlord, something ol’ Luigi neglected to include in the business records, but by then Luigi and the old lady in the back office were gone and Schneider’s name was on the lease. To make matters worse, business dried up almost immediately. Most of the old men stopped coming, and what kind of living could the guy make giving a few neighborhood kids the same crew cut every few weeks? He couldn’t figure out how the old barber had made it all work until one of ol’ Luigi’s special customers, one of the men who visited the back office, paid a visit. When he asked if Mr. Schneider took bets too, it all made sense.

  In time, Mr. Schneider started making book to earn money. But I guess he didn’t have ol’ Luigi’s golden touch when it came to that kind of business. Soon, the frequency of my own meager pay envelope became erratic. And then, strangers began to visit the shop while I was working. They clearly weren’t there for a shave or a haircut. No, these men would take Mr. Schneider roughly by the elbow and lead him into the back office where they spoke to him privately, while I stayed in the front, usually reading an old copy of Boys’ Life and keeping an eye out for the customers who came less frequently.

  Finally, one day after school when I showed up for work at the usual time, I found the door locked. The shop was dark and the ever-twirling barber pole was dead still. There was no Mr. Schneider, and I was out of a job.

  The police even came to talk to Delilah. I guess she called them when Mr. Schneider didn’t come home. The police cruiser was double-parked in front of the Schneider house with the lights flashing. The windows were open and the radio crackled with casual, indecipherable chatter. Two disinterested police officers spoke to Delilah on her front porch, while I and the rest of the neighborhood kids looked on from the sidewalk. My mother, being the good neighbor, was there to help and console Delilah. Mom held Tommy’s little sister Claire while Delilah spoke to the police, crying and wiping away tears with the soiled handkerchief that she kept in the pocket of her house coat.

  When the neighborhood kids asked for my take on it, I said I thought maybe Mr. Schneider just decided he’d had enough, enough of the barbershop, enough of the money problems, enough of fat Delilah, Tommy, enough of everything, and just split. That’s what I told them, anyway. But if I had to confess; if the young and overzealous Father Booker from St. Mary’s locked me in a dark confessional, slid open the screen, and said “Spill it, kid”? Well, then I’d probably tell the truth, that I thought maybe those rough men who used to visit Mr. Schneider sometimes were the ones who’d had enough. I really did come to believe that one morning Mr. Schneider had arrived early to open the shop, only to be met by some of those men, who escorted him into a car and took him away.

  But I never found myself in the confessional wit
h Father Booker. The aging and half-senile Monsignor Lovell was always my choice for the cushy penance he handed out, so my version of the story hasn’t come to light until now. And over the years, my imagination has filled in the blanks. How could it not? You see, Schneider’s Barbershop was just down the street from our house and right off of Route 46. Make a quick left and it’s a short trip to the swampy Meadowlands.

  On that day, I saw only the still barber pole and the shadows that veiled the shop as I cupped my hand to peer through the glass door. But today, in my mind’s eye, I can picture it – two big men usher Mr. Schneider into the back seat of a black Lincoln Town Car with white-wall tires, a third man waiting behind the wheel. The two men sit on either side of Mr. Schneider in the back seat. One of them has his meaty fist clasped tightly around Mr. Schneider’s upper arm as he addresses the driver.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where to?” the driver asks.

  “It’s your choice. We get our shoes muddy either way.”

  I don’t know. Maybe it didn’t happen that way. Maybe Mr. Schneider did run off with a Marilyn Monroe look-alike and is living the good life in Miami with ol’ Luigi and the old woman. Sure, maybe that’s how it happened.

  Hell, I was just ten at the time and while I could make some guesses, all I really knew for sure was that our barber was gone and Tommy didn’t have a dad anymore, and now the big kids were pelting him with icy snowballs and laughing like it was a booth game at the annual St. Mary’s Carnival. And I was laughing right along with them, and I felt like shit about it.

  Still do.

  4

  DELILAH AND TOMMY WERE GONE. The sound of the slamming kitchen door faded from our ears and we just stood there in the deep snow, shivering, silent. Finally, after a minute or two, Bobby stood without a word and started walking west along Route 5, and I walked with him.