The Chair on My Mother’s Sun Porch

The Ramp

We stood at the bottom of Dan’s ramp in the wind. Kendra had her arms wrapped around herself. She did not have a coat on, just the blazer.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I waited.

“I’m sorry about the rent. I’m sorry about Saturdays. I’m sorry I said that thing about a charity.” She looked at the ramp, not at me.

“I bought that shop for one hundred and ten thousand dollars on a note from the bank. Between the note and the heat and the insurance, it’s more than the chair rents bring in at Marlene’s rates. So I raised everybody. And my sister called every night about Kaylee needing a Saturday, and I just…”

She stopped.

“I just made it your problem,” she said. “Because you were the one who’d be fine.”

“I was fine,” I said. “I’m doing all right.”

“I know you are.” She laughed a little, not a happy laugh. “Forty-one clients. I heard the number at the post office.”

“Kaylee’s turned away nineteen perms,” Kendra said. “I’ve turned away I don’t know how many. Old ladies call for a perm or a set, and nobody at that shop knows how anymore. Now they come to your mother’s porch.”

“My station three’s been empty since October,” she said, rubbing her arms. “Nobody in this county wants to pay three hundred dollars for a chair.”

“No,” I said. “Nobody does.”

She almost smiled.

“What would it take,” she said, “to get you to come back?”

I thought about that. I looked up at the porch, at the windows, at my mother through the glass, bent over to say something to Gertie under the dryer.

“I’m not coming back full time,” I said. “The porch stays. Half my ladies can’t do your steps, Kendra. They can do Dan’s ramp.”

She nodded. She had seen the ramp.

“But I’ll rent station three on Saturdays,” I said. “Only Saturdays. And I’ll use the time to train Kaylee. Perms, sets, roller work, all of it. The old ways. By spring she’ll be doing it on her own, and she’ll have a book of ladies who’ll stay with her for thirty years.”

Kendra looked at me.

“What would you want for it?”

“The old rate,” I said. “Marlene’s rate. One seventy-five a week came to thirty-five dollars a day for five days. I’ll pay you thirty-five dollars for a Saturday.”

“That’s nothing,” she said.

“It’s thirty-five dollars more than an empty chair.”

She stood there in the wind for a long minute. Then she put out her hand. It was freezing.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, Shelly. Thank you.”

I shook it. And because my mother raised me right, I said it back.

“Thank you, Kendra.”