Mom’s Friday Chair at the Beauty College

What Dwight did

I did not learn until later what happened in their kitchen that afternoon, and Dwight has only ever told me a little of it.

His foreman gave him the afternoon, so he left Colby the minute we hung up and drove the three hours home. He got in about four, tired and sore, after three weeks on the lines.

Trina had the picture from the paper on the counter. She had cut it out.

He told me he did not yell. Dwight has never yelled in his life. He said he sat down at the table and asked her if it was true, and she said it was.

He asked her why.

She told him about the rent, and the two ladies who had passed, and the three who had moved to Salina, and the woman by the highway who would pay forty dollars for that hour. She cried. She said she was ashamed of what she had said about the two dollars the minute it came out of her mouth, and she had been too proud to call.

Dwight said, “Trina. Who gave you your first Friday?”

She did not answer him.

“Who sat in your chair when your hands shook so bad you dropped the comb?”

“Your mother,” she said.

“Who told me to go into that shop and ask you to the Fourth of July dance?”

“Your mother.”

He told me he did not say anything else. He did not have to. He said, “Mom goes at ten on Friday. I’ll drive.”

The second Friday

The second Friday in March was just as bright as the first. The wind was up again, though, and Mom had her scarf on when I picked her up, but this time it was only for the wind.

She had something in her coat pocket that she kept touching. I asked her what it was and she said, “Never you mind.”

We got to the beauty college at five till ten. Rochelle met us at the door. She had a funny look on her face.

“Your brother called me Thursday afternoon,” she said quietly while Mom went to hang up her coat. “He asked if it would be all right. I told him it would be more than all right.” She squeezed my arm. “Trina was in my class. Did you know that? She was one of the best I ever had with a roller.”

I had not known Rochelle had been Trina’s teacher. I should have guessed. There are not that many beauty colleges in central Kansas.

Mom sat down in the window chair. The tall girl with the braid had the pink cape around her before she had even set her purse in her lap. The other five gathered around, and they were all chattering at once, telling Mom about her picture and about their grandmothers who had seen it.

Rochelle was laying out the rollers on the tray, the same old plastic ones, pink and white and gray, Mom had been set in her whole life.

At five after ten, the front door opened.