sorted their mail into little piles on the counter: bills, junk, personal/miscellaneous. Dave never got any regular mail himself, save for last year’s college recruiting packets. Aside from that, he was convinced that ninety percent of the mail in the world was credit-card offers. He came across a postcard mailed from Mexico, the handwriting familiar and addressed to Julia.
“Postcard for you,” Dave said, holding it out to her. Her bare feet pitter-pattered against the kitchen tiles and she snatched it from his hand.
Julia read quickly, almost breathing the words out loud. Then she laughed and said, “She sends her love,” to Tom and Ethan. The postcards didn’t come often, so when they did, Dave knew, Julia read them over and over again, as if they were poetry. Then she’d put them up in her room connected by strings to pushpins on a map indicating where they’d been sent from. Ecuador, China, Australia, Belgium, Chile, Mexico. Julia traced her mom’s journeys around the world and used the few details she knew to imagine the days when she would be able to travel as well. Without question, the best night in Dave’s life was the night he and Julia sat staring at the map, splitting a bottle of wine stolen from the garage and planning travels the two of them would go on together.
“Is she still in Mexico City?” Tom asked, dipping a spoon into one of the sauces simmering on the stove to take a taste. “More ginger?” he said to Chef Mike, who shook his head.
“Yup,” Julia said. “Working at an art gallery and part-time at a bar-slash-restaurant-slash-art-house movie theater.”
“That sounds about right,” Tom said with a smile. “That’s gotta be the longest she’s spent in one place since you were born.”
“She says it might be her favorite place she’s lived in. Although I’m sure she says that about everywhere she’s been, because she only picks amazing places.” She slipped the postcard into her shirt pocket. “We’re gonna go upstairs to dye our hair. Call us when some of this amazing-smelling food is ready.”
“That’s funny, I thought I heard you say you were dying your hair,” Ethan said, looking up from his notebook. Julia nodded with a smirk and Ethan looked over at Dave.
“I’m going with green,” Dave said with a nod.
“Don’t you have to ask permission from us to do something like this?” Tom said.
“I’m a college acceptee,” Julia said. “That pretty much grants me freedom to do whatever I want, except for felonies.”
“How’d you get talked into this?” Tom asked Dave.
“Your daughter has a talent for corrupting the youth.”
“Don’t I know it,” Tom said. He crossed his muscular arms in front of his chest and appraised the two of them. “I don’t think I’m ready to let go of my iron fist of authority in this household.”
“Don’t worry,” Julia said, grabbing the CVS bag with the hair dye off the counter and kissing him on the cheek. “You can still tell Dad what to do all the time.”
“Hey,” Ethan called halfheartedly, his attention slipping back into his work, “I resemble that remark.”
“Resemble? What, are you having a stroke, old man? Don’t you mean resent?”
“It’s a Three Stooges reference,” Dave explained.
“There is hope yet,” Ethan said, giving Dave a smile as Julia dragged him out of the kitchen by the arm. “Don’t make a mess,” he called out after them.
“We are definitely making a mess,” Julia whispered to Dave as they went up the stairs toward her room.
“Which of us is going first?” Dave said, reading the tiny print on the side of the box.
“Let’s do yours first. Your hair’s darker, so we should probably let the bleach sink in longer for you.”
They grabbed some old towels from the linen closet and spread them around the bathroom in Julia’s room. Julia snapped on the gloves that came in the box, and Dave sat on a stool in front of the sink, watching Julia go over the instructions again. She had the most hilariously exaggerated reactions to every step of the process, and Dave sat back and watched, relishing each expression. Just as she was about to dab a bit of the dye on Dave’s arm to test for skin allergies, Debbie the cat jumped onto Dave’s lap, getting a green streak down her back.
“Oops. Dad’s not going to be a fan of that.”
As the bleach began to do its thing, whatever it was bleach actually did to lighten hair, they swapped spots. Dave draped a towel over Julia’s shoulders and she undid her ponytail, her hair a light brown cascade that brushed against his fingers. “Have we sufficiently researched this process?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘sufficiently.’”
“Um.”
“It might not look like a professional dye job but I won’t get us killed.”
“I guess that’s reassuring?” Dave said, making sure the question mark was understood. After the bleach had magically transformed them into blondes—Julia pulling off the look much better than Dave ever could, though he admitted he was biased—Dave took a seat in the chair and watched a slightly different version of his best friend pour out the dye into a little container provided in the kit.
“This stuff smells great,” Dave said.
“Don’t you dare get high off the fumes. Sit still,” she said, straightening his head and focusing on the dye job.
It didn’t take her long to finish, since Dave didn’t have all that much hair. The instructions said to let it sit for at least twenty-five minutes, though the Internet suggested much longer, so while they waited for his hair to really grab hold of the green, they changed spots again. He tested the dye against her arm, then mixed the two liquids together as she had. He shook the bottle, careful not to spill. When he took his finger off the top, though, a single pink drop that clung to his gloved hand dripped off and landed right in the middle of Debbie’s forehead.
“That’s what she gets for being so in love with you,” Julia said, looking down at her cat rubbing her side against Dave’s leg, unaware of the splotchy dye job she was receiving.
Dave squeezed out the dye onto his fingers, and for the next twenty minutes he became lost in the task. He worked slowly, not because he wanted to stretch out the time, but because it was Julia’s hair, and everything to do with Julia he did with care. When he was done, he decided to wait with Julia, so that they would rinse the dye off at the same time. They tried to wipe Debbie clean, but she kept moving around and the drops of pink and green she’d absorbed spread across her fur.
“She looks like a tie-dyed shirt gone wrong,” Julia said.
“That doesn’t bode well for our hair.”
Julia sat on the counter and looked at herself in the mirror, leaning in to examine the pink stains by her hairline. “The genius in this is that if it turns out shitty it’s even more of a cliché.”
“That’ll be a comfort when everyone’s laughing at us.”
“Look at you worrying
