The Saturday Grandma Got Her Curls Back

Joel helped me load the car in the morning. Two stacks of white towels. My shampoo cape, the black one with the snaps. Shampoo and conditioner from the shop, the good ones. Setting lotion. A box of double prong clips. Wide-tooth comb, fine comb, paddle brush, my hand mirror.

And my old soft-bonnet dryer, the portable kind with a hose and a plastic hood, that my aunt gave me when I went to beauty school. I had not used it in years. I plugged it in on the porch to make sure it still ran.

I also brought a folding chair, thinking I would set her up at the sink in it. Joel carried that out last and bumped it on the door frame.

At eleven his phone went. Freezing drizzle up north of town, and they wanted the sand trucks out on the county roads before dark.

“Go,” I said. “I’ve got it.”

“You’ll call me after?”

“I’ll call you after.”

He kissed my forehead and went. I changed into my work clothes, a gray long-sleeve shirt and my black salon smock with the pockets, and put my hair up in a low bun so it would stay out of the way. I wanted to look like I was going to work, because I was.

Darla opened the front door at five to two in a red sweatshirt. Her short frosted hair was a little flat on one side, like she had been lying down, and she had a dish towel over her shoulder.

She looked at the towels, the bag, the dryer, the folding chair.

“What is all this?”

“Grandma’s appointment,” I said. “Two o’clock.”

“She didn’t tell me anything about an appointment.”

“She’s ninety-one, Darla. She doesn’t have to tell anybody about her appointments.”

That came out sharper than I meant it to. I saw Darla’s jaw set, and I made myself breathe. I had not come there to win anything.

“I’ll need the kitchen sink for about an hour,” I said, softer. “The double one. I’ll leave it cleaner than I found it.”

Darla stepped back from the door without answering, and I took that as a yes.

Her kitchen is the old part of the house, oak cabinets from when Ron’s folks built it in the seventies, a big double steel sink by the window, and a long counter. I set my things on the counter. I dropped the black cape there too, in a heap, with the towels stacked beside it.

Then I went to the back bedroom and knocked.

“Come in,” Grandma said.

She was dressed. She had put on her lavender cardigan, the good one with the pearl buttons, and a little lipstick. She was sitting very straight in the recliner with her walker in front of her.

“You’re early,” she said.

“Four minutes,” I said.

“Hm,” she said. But she was already reaching for the walker.

We went down the hall slowly. Grandma does not like to be helped with the walker, so I walked behind her with my hands in my smock pockets, ready and not touching.

In the kitchen she stopped and looked at the folding chair I had set by the sink.

“Is that for me?” she said. “Well, it’s no beauty shop, but it’ll do. Put a towel on the seat.”

I folded a towel on the seat and backed the chair up against the sink cabinet, and she lowered herself into it with one hand on the counter.

“Towel,” Grandma said.