Island Girl

by Lynda Simmons

  “Are you sure?” Mark asked. “Those tools are worth a lot of money.”

  “Which is exactly the point.”

  “And I can just take them?” Jocelyn asked. My mom nodded and Jocelyn narrowed her eyes. “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch. I’ll just be happy to see them gone.” She rose and picked up the ant bag. “You don’t have a lot going on today, Grace, so have some fun.” She kissed my cheek on her way to the door. “And don’t worry about the peroxide. We’ll be fine.”

  Jocelyn waited until they were gone, then turned to me. “That was weird. Nice but weird.” She skipped over to the toaster and popped in two slices of bread. “Will you help me take the tools over?”

  “As soon as I’m finished working.” I took a sip of the tea and put the cup right down again. It was stone cold. She hadn’t waited for the kettle to boil.

  “I’ll need a wagon or something.” She opened the fridge door and stuck her head inside. “Do you have any of that good jam?”

  “Not till they get back. It’s on the shopping list.”

  “Shoot.” She closed the door and went to the cupboard for peanut butter. “And what was that about peroxide?”

  “We’re almost out, but she won’t order any more.” I carried my cup to the sink and plugged in the kettle. “And I don’t know why because we can’t do any kind of color without it.”

  “Then order it yourself.” The toast popped. She grabbed the slices and juggled them over to a plate. “Do you want one of these?”

  “No, thanks. And I can’t order anything. That’s my mom’s job. She handles the business side of things. I just do the hair.”

  “Well, if your mom’s being stupid, it’s your duty as a responsible partner to order the peroxide.”

  “I’m not a partner. I only work here.” It didn’t matter that I was right, that we were going to be in trouble by Saturday. What she said was what we did. Always and forever, amen.

  So I focused on setting up the shop for the day instead—something I could definitely do on my own. Pulling the kitchen chairs out of the way and shoving the table back against the wall, making room for Chez Ruby while Jocelyn hummed and spread peanut butter on her toast.

  “Are your friends coming today?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Who knows. They never make plans till the last minute. It used to be okay when I was in the city, but now it makes me crazy. Speaking of crazy …” She grinned at me over her shoulder. “I believe this is the day I get my iPod back.”

  I’d been hoping she’d forget and I’d have another day or two of music on my morning bike ride. I was getting really good at loading songs, and I had a whole section just for myself now. But she was right, today was the day.

  “How much are these things anyway?” I asked as I handed it back.

  “About sixty bucks.”

  Sixty bucks. Did I have that much in tips? Maybe by the end of today.

  Her phone jingled with another text message. She flipped it open, grunted at the screen, and closed it up again.

  “Are they coming?”

  “They’re still deciding.”

  “You’re allowed to ride the ferry alone now. Why not go across and surprise them?”

  She stood at the counter, eating her toast. “Not a good idea. I could get there and be really surprised to find out they’ve planned something great and didn’t invite me.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because they can be mean.”

  “Then why are you friends with them?”

  She shrugged and picked up the juice my mother had poured for her. “Because I’ve known them all my life. We’ve been friends forever, and it’s hard to make new ones.”

  I smiled. “Not when you’ve got power tools.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re such a goof.”

  I laughed and went into my room for my workstation. Jocelyn came in behind me and sat down at the computer. Touched the spacebar and a picture of daisies came up. “Are you ever going to let me load a desktop that isn’t so lame?”

  I rolled the workstation to the door. “Go ahead, just don’t pick something that will give my mother a heart attack.”

  “Is she still snooping in your computer?”

  “She was in there this morning.” I knew because I had this detection system. It was just a bit of plastic thread on the side of the keyboard drawer, but if it wasn’t there when I came back, I knew she’d pulled it out. I knew she’d been looking. It was almost funny. Almost like a game she didn’t know we were playing.

  I positioned the workstation beside the table, locked the wheels, and went back into the bedroom for my styling chair. Jocelyn was still at the computer, moving the mouse around, and tapping the keyboard, searching for a desktop that wasn’t so lame, whatever that might be.

  “It would make me crazy if my dad was looking around in my computer,” she said as I went past with my chair. “I can put a really good password on here if you want. One she’ll never figure out. All you have to do is say the word.”

  I shook my head. “It’ll just make her mad and I think she’s sick again.”

  “It doesn’t matter if she’s sick. She shouldn’t be nosing around in your stuff.” She went back to tapping the keys. “Besides, if you’re not supposed to know she’s doing it, what’s she going to say if she suddenly can’t get in? I was dusting your computer and I notice you have a new password?”

  “She doesn’t dust my computer. And I already said no. Just do the desktop.”

  I rolled the chair in front of my station, locked down the wheels, and was on my way to the laundry room for the roller cart when Jocelyn appeared again. “You now have a great desktop. Your mom will love it.” She spun my chair once, sat down in it, and turned in a slow circle to the right. “So how long will it be before you can help me with the power tools?”

  “You don’t have to wait for me. Just borrow Mary Anne’s cart and take them over.”

  “It’s okay, I’ll wait.” She spun the chair again. “So how long will you be?”

  I smiled and lifted the cover on the full-length mirror. “I have three regulars on Wednesdays. Mrs. Charlton, who likes nice soft waves, at nine. Mrs. Walker, who likes tight, tight curls, at eleven. And Mrs. Rose, who likes her hair cut so short it’s almost buzzed, at one.”

  Jocelyn grunted as she spun. “I don’t know how you stand it. Every day the same thing.”

  I flipped up the wings on my workstation and spread a hand towel on the top. “It’s not the same all the time. Even if it was, I wouldn’t mind. I like my clients and my job.”

  “You like tight, tight curls?”

  I laughed and headed to the laundry room for towels. “I like Mrs. Walker. And she feels pretty when she leaves, and that makes me happy.”

  I came back with an armload of folded towels to find her rinsing her toast plate and putting it back in the cupboard. She’d finally learned that this wasn’t a house during business hours. It was a salon, and dirty dishes could not sit in the sink. “Okay, so what’s the best part of the job?” she asked. “What would you do more of if you could?”

  “I like mixing colors. Getting the right shade for each customer.” I laid the towels on the counter beside the sink, large ones on the left, smaller ones on the right, nice and handy when I’d need them. “And foil streaks. I really like those too.” Pulling open the drawer on my station, I took out my kit and laid it on the towel. Undid the string and unrolled it slowly, revealing my scissors, my brushes, my combs. “I think I’d like to do manicures and pedicures one day too. And facials and waxing. I think we’d get more customers that way.”

  She sat in my mother’s barber chair this time. “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “That’s what I told my mom.” I opened the cupboard on my station. Reached way into the back, past the blow-dryer and the curling iron and the box of customer files. Put my fingers on the manila envelope my mom told me to throw out a long time ago, and pulled it
out carefully.

  “I even looked up the equipment and training,” I told Jocelyn. “It’s expensive, but I think we can make more money if we offer more services.” I handed her the envelope. “It’s all in there. Everything I found. My mom could have signed up for the courses and then she could have taught me how to do it and—”

  “Hold on. Why would she take the courses? Why wouldn’t you take them?”

  I took out the dryer, the curling iron, the box of files. “Because she learns faster and she can teach me better. My mom’s always been my teacher, for high school, hair dressing, everything. But she won’t take the courses because she doesn’t think we need to add services to our list. ‘You can’t be all things to all people,’ she always says. Just like a pizza place doesn’t serve barbequed chicken. They specialize, and so do we.”

  “Except most pizza places also serve wings and pasta now because people want more choices.”

  I shrugged and finished setting up my station, getting ready for Mrs. Charlton at nine. “I told her that too, but she said I don’t understand business. And we don’t talk about it anymore.”

  “You and your mom don’t talk a lot, do you?”

  “We talk all the time.”

  “Just not about anything important.”

  I ran my fingers across the neat line of combs and brushes. “We talk about what she thinks is important.”

  “Well, this is important.” Jocelyn held up one of the pages. “You’re smart enough to learn how to paint nails and yank out hair. And you’d be good at it too, because you like it.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and opened the box of files. Flipped through the As and the Bs, until I came to the Cs. C for Mrs. Charlton.

  “Grace, listen to me. All you have to do is sign up for an online course, order a nail kit, and hang out a new shingle. Grace’s Aesthetics at Chez Ruby.”

  I liked the sound of that. Grace’s Aesthetics at Chez Ruby. But as my mom would say, That’s not an idea whose time has come, Grace. I laid Mrs. Charlton’s card on the towel, next to the dryer. “It’s a nice thought, but I can’t do it.”

  She walked with me to the sink. “If it’s about money, I’m sure my dad will help.”

  I took out the shampoo and conditioner. Set them on the shelf and bent down to get the hose and the special attachment that lets the customer lean back without hurting her neck. “You don’t understand. I can’t just order equipment and supplies. Not without my mom’s permission.”

  Jocelyn raised her arms. “Why the hell not?”

  “Because it’s her house. I can’t just say, ‘I hate the kitchen,’ and order a new one because it’s her house. The only place I can change things is in my room. And even there, she still has control of everything that matters.”

  Jocelyn lowered the pages and took a step back. “That sucks.”

  “It doesn’t suck.” I picked up the hose again. Attached it to the tap. “It’s called respect.”

  “It’s called nuts.” She went back to the chair and slipped the pages into the envelope. “I don’t even know why you stay.”

  “I don’t have a lot of choice. And I have work to do.”

  She dropped the envelope on my station and herself in front of the television. She didn’t turn it on, just sat there with her arms crossed, glaring at the blank screen, reminding me so much of Liz it made me smile. No wonder she couldn’t understand why I stayed. Some days, I didn’t either.

  Leaving her to decide just how crazy I really was, I secured the neck rest to the sink and checked the clock. Nine fifteen. I went to the window, certain I’d see Mrs. Charlton at the gate, but there was no sign of her there, or on the street.

  I checked the clock again. Nine sixteen. She should definitely be here by now, unless she changed the time. I pulled the appointment book across the table and flipped it open. Her name had been crossed off. As had Mrs. Rose’s. The only one coming was Mrs. Walker at eleven. The rest of the day was blank and my mom had written, Surprise! Extra time off. Enjoy it!

  Extra time off? Why would I want extra time off? Tomorrow was Thursday, and that meant Liz would come and we’d take Jocelyn to the nude beach, and we’d lie on the blanket and have KFC and try not to let Jocelyn get sunburned eyeballs again. But not today. Today was a workday. Only now it wasn’t. Now it was extra time off.

  Jocelyn came over to the table. “What’s wrong?”

  I showed her the page. “Mrs. Walker is the only one coming.”

  “You have the afternoon free?” She bumped me with her shoulder. “Bonus. Can we take those tools over now?”

  “But this isn’t my day off.” My body felt numb, but I saw my hand reach out, saw my fingers lift the corner of the page. Turn it over to Thursday, my official day off.

  All of my mom’s appointments were canceled there too. Every name crossed off the list. The page turned again. Friday. Only two left. One for her. One for me. I slammed the book shut, afraid to look at Saturday. I backed away from the table. What was going on? What was happening?

  “Grace, are you okay?”

  I looked over at her. “They’re all canceled. Everything. Canceled.”

  “Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe they all decided to take holidays at the same time.”

  I shook my head, pointed at the book. “This is why I don’t like surprises. This is why.”

  Jocelyn came toward me. “I don’t understand. Why can’t you just enjoy a day off?”

  “Because if it doesn’t stop, there will only be days off, don’t you see?” I went to my station, picked up Mrs. Charlton’s card, tried to read her phone number, but everything was a jumble, nothing made sense. I closed my eyes, and tried again. This time the numbers made sense and I took the card with me to the phone, punched all of those numbers, and waited while the line rang once. Twice. On the third one, Mrs. Charlton answered. I recognized her voice.

  “This is Grace,” I said. “From Chez Ruby.”

  “Grace, how are you?”

  Shaky, confused. “You canceled today,” I said.

  “You didn’t know?” I didn’t answer and she said, “Oh my goodness, Grace. Your mother called yesterday. Said she wasn’t feeling well and she’s starting to wind down the business.”

  Wind down the business. Wind down. Wind down.

  “I just assumed you knew.”

  No. Of course not. Who ever tells me anything?

  “I didn’t,” I said, my voice no more than a stupid whisper. “I didn’t know. I have to go.”

  I put the phone down. Turned to Jocelyn. “She’s sick again. I knew she had to be sick. Otherwise she would have ordered the peroxide.”

  Jocelyn stood beside me. “She didn’t tell you?”

  “Like you said, we never talk about anything important.”

  I walked to the door. Pushed it open and went outside. Saw the lady mockingbird, half in, half out of the cage. Mr. Mockingbird flying down from the tree, flying back to the tree. Down and back. Down and back. Trying to make her follow, make her fly.

  “Grace, talk to me,” Jocelyn said, joining me on the step, her hand on my arm.

  “What’s the point?” I asked, and went down the stairs and across the lawn. Stopped at the rose garden and sat down in the grass. Tried to feel it tickle my legs, my fingers. Tried to feel anything all. But the numbness was still there and it was all I could do to breathe.

  “It’s always been this way,” I said when she sat down beside me. “My mother never tells me anything important, and we never talk about anything unpleasant like men who leave or babies who die. The whole time we were growing up, Liz and I were never allowed to talk about our dads, never allowed to ask where they came from or what they looked like. The bits we know came from Liz eavesdropping or tempting Great-Grandma Lucy with scotch. But there are no pictures of them anywhere, no letters, no special things. ‘What’s done is done,’ as my mother likes to say. ‘No point in dredging up the past, poking old wounds. Better to move forward, always forward.�
�� Of course, the same went for William. ‘There can be no pictures, no booties, no locks of hair preserved in paper. There is to be a clean slate, Grace. A fresh start.’ Even if that start came with house arrest and an ankle bracelet that kept me within a hundred yards of this front lawn for a solid year.”

  Jocelyn shook her head. “Wait a second. Go back. Why were you under house arrest?”

  “Because I killed my son.” Funny how I could say that now without choking. Say it matter-of-factly, I killed my son, as if it was true. As if I could ever have done anything to hurt my baby.

  “Did you really?” she asked me straight out, the way kids always did.

  “No,” I said just as simply, and turned back to the roses. The red and white climbers. The pink and yellow hybrids. The pair of little stone angels at their feet, and the shower of petals on the ground around them. The same kind of shower that I now knew would be covering William’s ashes on the other side of the bay.

  “Then why did you say that?” she asked, and just like on the swan, I found myself looking over my shoulder, searching for my mother. Half-expecting her to come flying out the door, shaking her head and telling me no. Making me keep the story to myself long enough that the faces all faded and the details got fuzzy, and even I didn’t care anymore.

  But she wasn’t there, and even after two years, I hadn’t forgotten any of it. Not a night in that prison, or a moment with my son, or a word of the speech the prosecution made when he sat me down and offered me a plea. All of it was right there, waiting for me to start dredging.

  I turned away from the roses, turned back to Jocelyn, hoped she’d be able to pull me out if I dug too deep. “They think I did it because I confessed. Because I said his death was my fault.”

  Her mouth drooped. “Why would you do that?”

  “The prosecutor said I’d do less time if I took responsibility.”

  “But if you didn’t kill him, you shouldn’t have done any time.”

  “That’s what Liz said too. She said she would convince the jury that my baby was dead when I picked him up. That the most I was guilty of was sitting in a chair and rocking him because it was too late to save him. But the police didn’t see it that way. They said the least I was guilty of was criminal negligence because I didn’t call 911. I wasn’t a doctor or a nurse or anyone else in a position to say whether he was dead or not when I picked him up. I was just a mother who sat in a chair and did nothing to save her son.”