The Summer House

by Lauren K. Denton

  She stopped when Mr. Pender propped his elbows on the desk. With one hand he took off his glasses, and with the other he pinched the bridge of his nose. Sweat pricked at Lily’s hairline and under her arms as realization dawned on her.

  “Mrs. Bishop—”

  “Please stop calling me Mrs. Bishop.” The words came out sharper than she intended. “That’s my mother-in-law,” she said, softer now. “I’m Lily. And the house is yours, isn’t it?”

  He sighed. “Lily, your home belongs to Pender Properties. It was a corporate lease, month-to-month, with the agreement that if Worth did not fulfill his job duties for whatever reason, the lease would be terminated. Unfortunately, that’s the situation we’re now in.”

  She thought back to the evening Worth signed the papers at their carved cherry dining table in their stately Tudor home in Atlanta. He’d even bought a small cake and stuck a candle in it, his attempt to make the move six hours south seem celebratory and exciting. Signing papers on a house! Starting a new job! At the beach! It was going to be great.

  She knew the house was temporary, but she’d known nothing about a company lease with strings attached. She wracked her brain trying to remember his words, what that piece of paper looked like, but as usual he’d taken care of it all and she’d gone along with it. Why hadn’t she asked more questions?

  Lily stood abruptly. Mr. Pender looked up in expectation. His face was so hopeful, as if waiting for her to say something to take away his guilt at being the one chasing her out of her house. But she had nothing to say. He wasn’t the guilty party, and she had no attachment to their house anyway. It would be easy to leave.

  “Thank you, Mr. Pender.” Lily stuck out her hand and waited for him to take it. They shook as if closing a deal, which, when she looked back on it, they kind of were.

  He stood and rested his fingertips on the desk. “So . . .” He shoved his hands in his pockets, then pulled them out again.

  “If you can give me a few days to make arrangements, I’ll be out as soon as I can.” She turned and moved toward the door.

  Before she opened it, he spoke again. “I don’t mean to pry, but I just want to make sure you’re going to be okay. I assume you’ll go back to Atlanta? I know Mertha will want to help.” His eyes were softer now. “If you need any assistance with the move, you just let Debbie know and she’ll make arrangements for you.”

  Lily nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

  Outside the air was warm and thick against the unusual chill on her skin. She turned the corner, and when she was sure she couldn’t be seen by anyone who might have been watching her through the office windows, she paused and inhaled, then blew the air out slowly.

  In the week and a half since Worth had been gone, she’d made phone calls, taken pointless drives in the car, and paced back and forth, front door to window, expecting to see his car drive up.

  Expecting it and fearing it at the same time.

  She’d stayed up late into the nights, considering the unanswerable questions swelling up within her. Where was he? Would he change his mind? Did she want him to? What would she do now? His note was at the very back of the drawer in her bedside table, and she’d pulled it out and read it so many times its edges were becoming soft.

  I can’t do this anymore.

  Thank you, Worth. Neither can I.

  Standing on the sidewalk in front of Worth’s office—his former office—with a closed door behind her and a hazy, unrecognizable path in front of her, Lily closed her eyes and thought of her mother.

  You be brave now, her mother had whispered to her toward the end, her grip still strong and sure. She wished she could talk to her mom again, wished she could hear her soothing words and soak up her wisdom like dry desert sand.

  Instead, she opened her eyes and found her car, climbed inside. She lifted her hands to the steering wheel. Through the windshield, she noticed a V of seagulls soaring overhead. A bird at the back of the V trailed off the end, separated from the bunch. As she watched, the gap between the lone bird and the group widened until the bird was alone in the sky, his wings flapping lazily, seemingly unconcerned by his solitude.

  Lily tightened her fingers around the steering wheel as truths solidified in her tired mind, one by one.

  She was not going back to Georgia. She had three days, at most, to find a new place to live. And she needed a job.

  Three

  When she walked into Rouses Market, the aisles of the tiny store were jammed with ladies sporting faintly purple hairdos and clip-on earrings. Everywhere she looked, small clusters of folks were comparing coupons and newspaper circulars. Near the front door, two women peered at a display of Pyrex dishes.

  Lily eyed her quickly scrawled grocery list and started down the first aisle. A few minutes later her cart held buttermilk, flour, eggs, butter, and a package of bacon as she pulled into the produce section to grab some fresh fruit. She added a handful of kiwis to her cart, but as she turned toward the front of the store, she bumped into someone kneeling on the ground. Before she realized what had happened, lemons tumbled around her feet and clear across the tile floor. Lily peered around her cart and saw a broad woman dressed in a starched white apron staring back at her. The woman wore a hairnet pulled firmly over tight black curls.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lily said as she bent down to grab the runaway lemons. Just as she reached for one that had skittered under the apple display, a pair of purple tennis shoes with silver Velcro across the top paused in her field of vision.

  “Don’t you worry a thing about it,” said the woman attached to the purple shoes.

  Lily straightened. This woman was petite and wearing a jogging suit as purple as her shoes. In her ears were tiny silver earrings in the shape of airplanes. “Roberta’s just in a hurry, and she gets clumsy when she goes too fast.”

  The large woman in the hairnet, who Lily assumed was Roberta, was shoving lemons in her cloth bag, her back to them. “I beg your pardon, Tiny,” she said. “I am not clumsy. It’s hard to hold on to a dozen lemons when someone rams you from behind.”

  Lily opened her mouth to apologize again, but Tiny shook her head. “You didn’t ram,” she whispered. “Gentle nudge.” Then in her regular voice, “Looks like you have the makings of a darn good breakfast. Let me guess—waffles.”

  “Close. Pancakes. My mom’s recipe.”

  The woman nodded. “I have a knack for these things. Oh, and you have kiwis. Did you know kiwifruit is named for a bird?”

  “I did not know that.” Lily couldn’t keep the smile from her face.

  “They are! These fuzzy things look so similar to a little brown bird in New Zealand that they named the fruit after the birds. Kiwis!”

  Behind Tiny, Roberta let out a deep, throaty laugh. “Tiny Collins, is there anything you don’t know?”

  Tiny threw a look back at Roberta. “I know nothing about cooking. Not a smidgeon. That’s why I show up at your café seven days a week.” Turning back to Lily, she smiled. “Kiwi birds. Look it up when you get home. I’m sure you have the Google. Do you travel, hon?”

  “Not really. Before I got married, I’d hardly left my hometown.”

  “And where was that?”

  “North Georgia. A little town called Fox Hill.”

  Tiny paused, pondering. “Nope, never heard of it. But no matter. You’re young. Plenty of time for New Zealand later. Did you know the Europeans used to ship their criminals off to New Zealand?”

  “That was Australia.” Roberta shook her head and dropped her bag of lemons into the cart. The bag was practical canvas with sturdy handles. It had a picture of a broken egg with an orange sun popping out of the eggshell. Cheery red letters across the top spelled out Sunrise Café.

  Tiny noticed Lily eyeing the bag. “Have you ever been to the Sunrise?”

  Lily shook her head. “I just moved here. Is it close by?”

  “Oh no,” Tiny said. “It might as well be in another country. You take a right at the airport, d
own West Boulevard, over the bridge, and around the bend. You can’t miss the sign—it has this same sun, just like the bag. It’s in Safe Harbor Village, where we live.” When Lily didn’t speak, Tiny continued. “It’s a community for . . . well, I guess for old folks like us.” She gestured to herself and Roberta. “It’s right on the tip of Safe Harbor Island, looking out over Bon Secour Bay. It’s a beautiful place, though I’m a little biased because it’s home.”

  Behind her, Roberta rubbed her forehead. “Remind me not to take you shopping with me again. She could be an ax murderer and you’ve just told her where we sleep at night.”

  Tiny smiled, the apples of her cheeks as pink as a baby’s. “She doesn’t look much like an ax murderer.”

  “They never do.” Roberta pulled on Tiny’s elbow and directed her toward the cash registers at the front of the store.

  As they passed a rack of sunscreen and aloe gel, Tiny called out, “You should stop by sometime. We can continue our chat. You can tell me more about Fox Hill.”

  After stopping for a carton of milk, Lily paid for the groceries and walked toward the door. Along the front wall, a bulletin board held several layers of flyers and notes, all thumbtacked and flapping gently in the breeze that whooshed in every time the glass doors opened. She passed the board without a thought, then paused and took a step back. One flyer at the bottom corner might as well have jumped off the wall and pinched her.

  “Help wanted,” it read. “Hairstylist at Safe Harbor Village. Experience necessary.”

  The image came back to her in a rush, a great flood of memory. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift back to that frozen flash of time—the steamy heat, the clean scent of washed hair mixed with the chemical tang of dye and permanent solution. The headiness of women’s camaraderie. Lives lived out in animated conversation, laughter, and tears. Oh, how she missed it. How she missed being a part of that whirlwind of life and love.

  A moment later a cash register dinged. Lily opened her eyes and she was back in the grocery store, the glass door sliding open and closed, carts wheeling past her.

  Outside, she put her hand up to her forehead to block the sun pouring through the high clouds. There, along the edge of the parking lot, Roberta was loading bags into the back seat of a blue Subaru. Tiny sat in the passenger seat checking her hair in the pull-down mirror. Lily hurried across the lot toward them.

  “Excuse me. You said you live at Safe Harbor Village, right?”

  Roberta looked up at the sound of Lily’s voice and sighed. “I did not say that. Tiny did. Please tell me you’re not going to kill us in our sleep.”

  “No, I just . . . I saw a note on the bulletin board.” She gestured back toward the building. “About a hairstylist position?”

  “That’s right.” Roberta’s eyes narrowed.

  “Is the position still available?”

  Roberta pointed at her hairnet. “Does it look like I know anything about a hair salon?”

  Lily tilted her head and shrugged. “Actually, with those curls, I’d guess you’ve spent a fair amount of time in a hairdresser’s chair.”

  Roberta put a hand to her curls and patted them softly. “Well, maybe.” She grabbed the last bag and shoved it in the car, then slammed the door. “What? You looking for a job?” Her eyes swooped over Lily, head to toe.

  Lily fought the urge to beeline out to her own car. Instead, she squared her shoulders and sucked in her breath. “Maybe I am.”

  Roberta’s eyebrows lifted, just a millimeter. She opened the driver’s door and stepped one foot inside. “Stop by and talk to Rose,” she said just before sitting down and pulling the door closed behind her. She cranked the engine, then pressed a button to roll down the window. “But watch out. She’s got thorns.”

  Roberta backed up as Tiny waved from the front seat. Lily remained rooted where she was, her thoughts racing until a horn honked close by, startling her and making her jump back. She realized she was standing in the middle of the row, blocking a string of sedans trying to exit the parking lot. She waved an apology and walked across the lot to her own car.

  On the drive back to the house, questions hovered around her like a fog she could almost see. Doubt and possibility slipped through her mind. Fear and hope mingled together.

  Could she really look for a job here? In this unfamiliar beach town where she knew no one? She couldn’t go back to Fox Hill; she’d ended that part of her life when she closed the door to Lillian’s Place for the last time and handed the keys to the small house over to the new owners. There was always the option of going back to Atlanta, though it had been her home for only a short time. If she moved back there, she’d be closer to Mertha, closer to the people who would no doubt think Lily had done something to run Worth off. Looking at it that way, Alabama was preferable. Could she try to make a fresh start here? Wasn’t that what she wanted?

  Hunger grumbled in her stomach, reminding her of her mother’s pancakes, which was the whole reason she’d gone to the store in the first place. With all the packing and unpacking over the last several weeks, she hoped she could locate the recipe.

  * * *

  The courtyard behind their rental house was comprised of two squares—one of concrete supporting the rusty wrought iron table and two plastic chairs, and the other of thick St. Augustine grass in need of a good mow. Lily had been in charge of cutting the grass at the house she shared with her mom back in Fox Hill, but in Atlanta, she and Worth had employed a landscaping service that took care of all their lawn needs. Not only did they not own a lawn mower, but Worth had never learned to operate one. Needless to say, no lawn mower had made the trek to the rental house in Foley, but their patch of grass was so small Lily could have cut it with a pair of kitchen shears. Not that it mattered now. In three days she’d be gone. She just didn’t yet know where.

  After dinner she sat in one of the plastic chairs and pulled her knees up to her chin. The air around her was tepid, like bathwater that had cooled just enough to make you want to get out and grab a towel. Above her she could barely make out the Little Dipper in the dark sky splotched with gray clouds.

  Lily closed her eyes and ran her thumb across the paper resting in her lap. Help wanted. A flash lit up around her, and a moment later thunder rolled in the distance. The man who’d rung up her groceries at the store that afternoon had mentioned rain coming in. “After this, the heat will crank up. You just wait.” More thunder, louder this time, then a breeze as soft as a baby’s exhale lifted strands of hair around her face.

  She lowered her knees and leaned forward on her elbows, staring at the piece of paper. She hadn’t given a real haircut in well over a year. Trimming her own floppy auburn waves didn’t count, and Worth always preferred to go to a ritzy gentlemen’s barber shop, one that offered steamy towels and a shave with a straight-edge razor.

  Lily’s father had died when she was twelve, leaving her mother to try to make ends meet. As a house painter, her father had never made much money, definitely not enough to put any into savings, and after paying for the modest funeral, Lillian had to do something to keep the lights on. She started her salon with only a few female clients, offering trims and styles at their home in Fox Hill, a small mountain town fifty miles north of Atlanta.

  Fox Hill was full of scrappy women who worked hard, mostly blue-collar jobs. Many of Lillian’s customers were waitresses, some drove buses, some worked at apple orchards or in nearby towns touted as “great family getaways.” Those women worked long shifts, then came home tired and bedraggled, and often found their way to Lillian’s salon for a haircut or just for the camaraderie. These were women who would rather go years without a cut than set a toe in one of the fancier places, those downtown salons offering ninety-dollar trims and a side of Botox.

  Lillian made a place for these women. A place that felt comfortable, where they belonged. Her mother had a way with hair, drawing something out of a woman that had been hidden before. Something about the way she angled her scissors, br
ushed out a lock of hair, or added a curl or wave made her customers sit up straighter and lift their chins. They lost the hard edges around their mouths, their lips curving upward in a shy smile. Lily had seen it so many times, her mother’s magic.

  As word of Lillian’s Place spread, more and more women came to the salon Lily’s mom had set up in the back room off the kitchen. The space was small but it had a big, light-filled window that overlooked the vegetable garden and the chicken house. As she was able, Lillian added a second chair, then a sink and a second dryer. What had started as nothing more than a way to make money turned into a respite, a bright spot in women’s otherwise hardworking days. The clean scent of shampoo and wet hair and baby powder against the simple dresses and worn shoes. The sharp snip-snip of her mother’s silver scissors, her prized possession. How she blew the lock of curls out of her eyes as she cut and pinned and combed.

  Lily helped out after school and on weekends. She started with sweeping the floors, washing hair, and checking ladies sitting under the hooded dryers, but she was always watching her mother’s hands. As she learned the cuts and angles, the strokes and techniques, her mother let her do more and more, and when she was sixteen, she started cutting hair too. She even had some ladies request her when calling to make an appointment. Lillian was so proud. Every woman needs a gift, Lily, she said one day above the roar of a hair dryer. This is yours.

  Thunder rolled, yanking Lily back to the present. A fine mist had begun falling from the sky, but still she sat. She wondered about the skill—the gift—her mother had been so proud for her to have. Would her mom still be proud knowing Lily had let that gift lie dormant for a year and a half? When she mentioned to Worth in the first year of their marriage that she was considering looking into renting a chair at a salon downtown, he’d been confused. “Rent a chair? And do what? Be a barber?”

  “A barber is for men,” she’d said with a smile. “Women go to hairstylists. Salon Nouveau is a nice place. It’s where your mother gets her hair cut.”