The Chair on My Mother’s Sun Porch

What Was Happening on Main Street

I did not go by the salon or ask about it. But a town of three thousand does not let you not know things.

The first thing I heard was that Kaylee was having a hard time. Two of my old ladies had tried her on a Saturday, out of loyalty to the salon, and one of them had gone home and cried. Not because Kaylee was mean. Because Kaylee did not know how to do what she wanted.

What she wanted was a perm.

Beauty schools these days teach perms once, as a curiosity. Kaylee had done one in school, on a mannequin head with nylon hair, the month before her state boards.

Nobody had taught her to wrap a real ninety-year-old head of fine white hair that breaks if you look at it wrong, or how much solution to use on hair permed every eight weeks since 1965.

And half the old ladies in our town wanted a perm.

The second thing I heard was from Dan. He had been at the co-op shop in the morning, and one of the guys whose wife knew Kendra’s sister said Kendra was in trouble.

“Trouble how?” I asked.

“Money trouble,” Dan said, not looking up from his roast. “Bought the business on a note from the bank in Watertown. Between the note and the building, she’s paying out more than the chairs bring in. She’s not getting rich off you, Shell. She’s trying not to drown.”

I put my fork down.

“Then why give my Saturdays away?”

“Her sister,” he said. “Kaylee’s mom. Leaned on her hard to give the girl hours. That’s what Gary at the shop says, anyway.”

I thought about Kendra’s face at the counter, the bags under her eyes, and the way she had looked at me when I said thank you, like nobody had said it to her in a while.

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“Nobody did,” Dan said. “That’s the thing about drowning.”