by Nicole Baart
Unfortunately, one of the inescapable side effects of being the only constant, the only steady and reliable member in a family of misfits and mavericks, was that everyone else assumed Dani would always be there for them. They didn’t have to be there for her. And, true to form, she didn’t blame them. Instead, she made excuses for them.
Even if Natalie, the eldest of the Vis clan, wanted to rise to the occasion and help, she was too busy finishing up her dissertation. It was the final hoop she had to jump through before she could claim those long-anticipated letters behind her name. Dani could already imagine her sister squeezing such necessary information into every introduction and casual conversation. “Hi, I’m Dr. Natalie Vis. Yes. I have my PhD in women’s studies.”
And Katrina, the middle child, was no more supportive or helpful. Kat was the daughter who had followed most closely in her mother’s footsteps, and Dani often worried that her sister’s weekend job of bartending at the only gentlemen’s club in a fifty-mile radius would soon entice her sister to step out from behind the bar and light up the seedy stage. If it hadn’t already happened. Sometimes when Kat crashed on Ell and Dani’s couch in the middle of the night, Dani woke to find her sister curled up under the afghan, a glimmer of sparkle makeup still clinging to her pale cheeks.
Kat was beautiful, and sleep made her look much younger than her twenty-eight years. There was something sinister, almost insidious about the purple eye shadow that creased her lids, the tiny line of stick-on rhinestones that arched in a half-moon from the corner of her eye to her cheekbone. But Dani didn’t ask. She didn’t want to know. Rather than probing, she made buttermilk waffles and woke her sister with a cup of French roast coffee. Strong and black.
Dani loved her sisters. But she didn’t trust them. They couldn’t come running for her. They wouldn’t.
Yet none of her family’s insufficiencies erased the fact that Dani simply couldn’t go to Alaska alone. Blair had assured her that she was welcome to continue the search on her own, that there were pilots who would happily charter her for weeks on end or even offer their services for free.
“It’s part of the community up here,” he explained. “Formal searches simply can’t go on forever. There are too many people who go missing, and too much ground to cover—especially when there’s no flight record to go by. But Alaskans are known for rising to the occasion. We gather around each other. Many downed flights are discovered by volunteer pilots.”
It was a ray of hope. A possibility. What choice did she have? Dani was terrified at the thought of finally being forced to face all her fears, but going to Alaska could be the only chance she had to find her husband.
In the end, there was really only one person she could ask.
Dani called Hazel the morning after she got Blair’s call. She was prepared to lay out her case meticulously, to beg if necessary, but Hazel answered the phone as if she had been expecting to hear Dani on the other end.
“So?” the older woman barked into the mouthpiece.
“Hazel?”
“Of course it’s me, Danica Greene. You called my number, didn’t you?”
Pulling the phone away from her ear for a moment, Dani squeezed her eyes shut and said a wingless prayer for patience. Her resolve dropped like a stone at her feet. “Most people say hello when they answer a phone,” she muttered into the mouthpiece.
“Most people aren’t me.” Hazel waited for the span of a quick heartbeat, then spat out a question before Dani could even consider forming her request. “Got news about Etsell?”
Dani sighed. Whether or not she cared deeply for Hazel, she knew that the older woman would be leveled by what she had to say. She tried to soften her tone, to be tender. “It’s not easy to hear, Hazel. They’ve called off the search.”
“Oh I already know that. Have you heard anything new today?”
Stunned and more than a little irritated at Hazel’s nonchalance, Dani gritted her teeth. “How do you already know that? I just spoke with someone from the Civil Air Patrol last night. Late.”
“Blair Knopf? I talked to him too. ’Round suppertime.”
Dani fought an urge to throw the telephone across the room. “Suppertime? He called you at suppertime?”
“I called him,” Hazel corrected. “Face it, honey, you’re in no position to receive that kind of news and process it properly. Someone with a level head needs to know what’s going on up there. I’ve been keeping tabs.”
It infuriated Dani to learn that Hazel had circumvented her to gain information about Etsell’s whereabouts. She’s not family, Dani fumed, feeling indignant and self-righteous. I’m his wife. She’s just his . . .
“I’m the closest thing he has to a parent,” Hazel cut in. It was as if she could read Dani’s mind, but for once the grizzled old lady was almost gentle in her reprimand. “I had to know what was happening.”
Something inside of Dani wanted to bare her teeth and fight, but it felt wrong to scuffle over Etsell like a piece of carrion. Whom did he belong to? To me, she thought, but her husband had always been his own man. Still, she couldn’t bless Hazel’s interference. She held her tongue.
“Why are you calling?” Hazel asked after a long silence. The raw transparency in her voice was uncharacteristic.
Dani thought about saying nothing. About telling the older woman that she merely called to update, to pass along the news that Etsell was little more than a breath on the wind, scattered to the four corners of the earth like so much dust. But even thinking those words was like staring over the edge of a black hole, a bottomless chasm of nothingness that threatened to suck her in and make her fall headlong forever. Forever without him.
She didn’t have a choice. “I have to go there,” Dani whispered eventually, suffocating beneath the press of the words, their terrifying implications.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Will you—”
“We’ll go together,” Hazel interrupted before Dani could stumble over her feeble request.
Together.
The term seemed stripped of meaning somehow, broken. Etsell had made so many promises, vows that were rendered powerful by bonds that linked them as one: us, together, forever. With his hands he had fashioned a life for Dani, a home where it felt safe to close her eyes because he had bound the two of them in name, in body, in soul. It was wrong to think of herself with anyone but him.
And yet there was some small comfort to be derived from Hazel’s assurance. Dani clung to a shard of hope like the yellow-painted remnant of mug that Benjamin had held in his hand. It was jagged, painful to hold.
“Together,” Dani finally agreed. And somewhere, along a seam in the depth of her heart, a fault line splintered and she began to slowly, steadily bleed.
Danica
Three years before Etsell left for Alaska and disappeared off the face of the earth, I bought an empty store on the cobblestoned main drag in Blackhawk and set up my own salon. It was a narrow little building that no one else wanted, almost exactly the same length and width as a one-car alley. I wondered, as I stood with the real estate agent in the dank interior of my new shop, if indeed the space had once been a grassy, graveled byway, the sort of place where the butcher from the deli next door would have leaned his bike up against the cool bricks on a warm summer day.
The thought that volunteer lily of the valley may once have graced the shadows where my future salon now stood cheered me considerably, and made me overlook the low-hung ceilings and water-stained hardwood floors. It helped that the afternoon sun was bathing the unused space in the kind of charmed light that seemed laced with fairy dust and magic. I stood in the middle of a patch of honeyed sun and took one slow turn to survey every square inch of the space I already knew would be mine.
The agent eagerly let me sign the purchase agreement on the spot, flourishing a pen from his lapel pocket and graciously tilting his back so I could use it as a makeshift desk while I put my signature on four different lines. And thou
gh he all but danced out the glass front door, I felt I was the one who ought to leave a trail of laughter in my wake.
It never occurred to me that I should have talked to Etsell first.
“You bought a building?” he spat out, choking on a warm grape tomato that he had popped whole into his mouth.
“It was cheap,” I told him for the second time. “Very cheap. It’s been on the market for years. Nobody wanted it.”
“There’s probably a reason for that.”
“It’s small,” I consented. “But it’s perfect for me. I don’t need a lot of space.”
Etsell sighed and gave his dinner plate a longing look. Then he set his fork down with a sigh and turned to confront me. “Look. I know you wanted your own salon, but I thought we had agreed that you would convert the spare bedroom. You know, try that for a few years before taking this sort of leap.”
“I don’t want a home salon.” My nose crinkled to show my disgust. “Besides, we need that room. And there’s no plumbing, no separate entrance, no—”
“Fine,” Etsell interrupted. “Fine. I get it. The spare room is not ideal. But you should have talked to me. . . .” He trailed off, thinking. “You didn’t sign anything, did you? This was just a verbal agreement, right?”
I shook my head warily.
“No, you didn’t sign anything or no, it wasn’t a verbal agreement?”
“I signed papers,” I mumbled, unable to look my husband in the eye. My own fork was still in my hand, and I carefully spun the tines around a few slender noodles of the angel hair pasta I had uncharacteristically slaved over for supper. It was a minimalist basil and olive oil toss with fresh tomatoes and fine chunks of parmesan that was supposed to keep Etsell’s mouth occupied and his mind open. But it didn’t work. Before I had a chance to utter another word, he pushed his chair back from the table and left the kitchen. A moment later I heard the front door slam.
Etsell pouted for a few days. He kept his lessons out longer than normal and joined some of his passengers for beers at the Brass Buckle after chartering a few business trips. Twice he missed supper and came home late without bothering to phone me or offer any sort of explanation.
I let him mope. If he expected me to play the part of the slighted, nagging wife, he was sorely disappointed. I knew from experience that a part of him wanted me to complain bitterly, to bitch and moan so that he could be justified in his anger. But instead of provoking him, I was sweet and demure. I waited out his storm with an almost bland disinterest. It worked. Before a week was up, Etsell was smiling again and it was almost as if nothing had ever happened.
In the first couple weeks after I bought the shop on Main Street, I spent my evenings at the kitchen table, poring over design magazines as I dreamed about my modest boutique. Soon Etsell tired of watching TV alone, and he joined my planning sessions, suggesting we move the counter from the east side of the building to the west and advocating that I should instruct the plumbers to install three styling stations in case I decided to hire an assistant or two.
“But this is my salon,” I reminded him, trying not to sound as petulant as I felt. The truth was, the plans we were drawing felt like the physical extension of my dreams: pencil-and-paper representations of my thoughts and hopes and longings. It was a reality close enough to touch. Mine. And I didn’t feel like sharing.
Etsell shrugged. “You might not want to be alone forever.”
In the end, we compromised. Two vanities with gilded mirrors and extra-deep shampoo bowls, one diva dryer chair in cherry-berry, and one pedicure spa chair with a dizzying array of massage options. That final purchase was a big splurge, one that we really couldn’t afford but that Etsell deemed necessary. “Girls like their toes pretty.” As if I didn’t know.
We did most of the renovation ourselves, working our regular jobs during daylight hours and happily allocating all our free time to the project that we had both grown to love. The shop had a certain intangible appeal, a feeling of tranquility that stole over us as we sanded floors and patched holes in the crumbling walls. A few hours of manual labor in my soon-to-be salon rendered even the most frustrating day little more than a faint aftertaste, a hint of something unpleasant that was slowly forgotten with each minute we spent unveiling unexpected beauty.
It was my idea to tear off the drywall and expose the brick-and-mortar walls beneath. They lent the perfect rustic charm to the sleek, glossy anchor of the floor that we refinished in a shade of burnt mahogany. And I advocated for a handmade counter, five thick planks of black walnut that we affixed to a heavy iron base. But it was Etsell who decided we should take out the drop ceiling and see what lay above the vinyl-coated panels and modern lines of stark, fluorescent lights.
We expected our exploration to be quick and easy, but it turned out to be a painstaking discovery. When we lifted the first square tile, the true ceiling of my gallerylike building was several feet beyond the ugly metal grid that the previous owners had installed. All we could see was darkness and cobwebs. Even shining a flashlight into the void didn’t work. The blackness swallowed the light and gave us only the faintest impression of a glow in the incalculable distance.
It probably would have been wise to abandon the idea, put the panel back, and simply paint the ceiling fawn as I had intended to do in the first place. But our curiosity was piqued. We peeled away moldy tiles one at a time until a quarter of the low ceiling was gone. Then half. It wasn’t until we were three-quarters of the way done that we could finally see what we had unearthed.
“Wow,” Etsell breathed.
I was so stunned I couldn’t reply.
The original ceiling of my shop was a gleaming patchwork of twenty-four-inch copper tiles. They were stamped with scrollwork and burnished green at the edges, stained by years of water damage that only made them all the more lovely for their age and wear. Best of all, the roof arched an extra six to eight feet above the standard walls that had made my narrow space seem uncommonly small.
“It’s gorgeous,” I finally managed.
“I think I’ve just named your salon,” Etsell said with a grin.
I spun on him, exultant in our revelation. “You did?”
“I’m not sure you have a choice.” He swept his arm at the blue-green ceiling, the soft shimmer of metal that was like a windswept sky swirled with crisscross trails of sepia smoke. “El Cielo,” he pronounced.
“The Sky?”
He nodded.
But I wasn’t about to name my grown-up daydream after his first love. “It doesn’t make any sense,” I countered, shaking my head. “Besides, I think I’ve known the name since the day I first stepped in this building.”
“Really.” He arched an eyebrow doubtfully, but I ignored his obvious skepticism.
“I’m going to call my shop Salon La Rue.”
It was perfect. For the alley it used to be, and for the long road, the journey ahead.
The day Etsell left for Alaska, Hazel came into La Rue for her routine appointment. She wasn’t the sort to fuss with her hair, but after I gave her a gift certificate years before, she just kept coming back. There wasn’t much I could do with her wiry mop but keep it neat and trimmed. She had a little natural wave, and her gray was not an altogether horrible color, but our monthly sessions greatly improved when she allowed me to do a regular deep-conditioning and high-gloss treatment. Hazel always left the salon smart and stylish, and came back six weeks later looking as if she had been flying with the cockpit door open.
“Same old?” I asked as she settled into the plush styling chair. I didn’t bother to wait for an answer. “We could go a little shorter today. Something cropped and elegant. Or, if you’re not in the mood for change, I have a new deep conditioner for dry hair and your normal gloss treatment with a slight violet-based tint.”
“Violet? You mean purple?”
“No,” I rushed to assure her. “It’s soft, very faint. It’s just to counteract any yellow tones—”
“Yellow? Yo
u mean blond? That’s a good thing if I’m looking blond. Back to my natural color.”
I paused with my fingers in the coarse nest of her hair. “I think it will look great,” I said carefully. Trust me, I thought, but I knew that Hazel didn’t.
“Just do what you’ve always done.” She coughed, not bothering to cover her mouth even though I hadn’t yet draped her in one of my black, embossed capes.
Determined not to roll my eyes, I caught her gaze in the mirror before us and gave a bright smile that I hoped came across as genuine. “Whatever you want, Hazel.”
She fixed me with a hard, unreadable look. “Don’t you be smart with me, Danica Greene. We’re going to need each other with Ell gone.”
My husband had left only hours before, and I was taking great solace in the everyday familiarity of my beauty shop. Not much had changed since Etsell and I redesigned it, but there was a well-worn path that lent the space a certain used, homey feel. The caramel-colored line of smoothed floorboards started at the front door and disappeared in the shadow of a display shelf where I kept bottles of glittering nail polish and shampoos that smelled of honeysuckle and coconut. Just walking into La Rue was a calming experience for me. From the jazz music that spilled softly out of Bose speakers to the way the pendant lights cast luminous swaths of gold around my meticulously arranged chairs, everything worked together to give me a sense of place. Of peace. And I wasn’t about to let Hazel ruin it.