All I Need
Greta
THE DOOR TO the salon opened and Lou called out, “Greta is not talking about Sheriff Hixon Drake!”
I sighed and looked from the sink, where I was doing a rinse, to the door to see my next client, Shari, hurrying through, her gaze on me, eyes huge.
She was twenty minutes early.
She was usually ten minutes late.
“So it’s true!” she cried.
Wonderful.
This was what it had been like all day.
To say I was relieved that the salon hadn’t been firebombed after word got out the Princess of Glossop’s ex-husband had slept with its resident easy-trick hairdresser-slash-lounge singer (that being me) might be a high-drama understatement, but it was true.
To say that relief was tempered by the fact I’d learned Hixon Drake was a good guy, he just was never going to be the guy for me, was just an understatement, but a sad one.
“Greta has enough to worry about without every female walking in that door asking her for the lowdown about our sheriff,” Lou declared.
Shari kept her eyes on me. “I know. I’ve heard. I think Hope Drake activated the PTA phone tree to rally the girls to come to your house tonight, drag you out and tar and feather you.”
Wonderful.
“Stupid woman does that,” Joyce, sitting in Lou’s chair with Lou’s shears working at her head, chimed in. “I’ll get Jim’s shotgun, sit on Greta’s porch and offer the medical professionals opportunity to explore the concept of finally extricating her head out of her behind by aiming some buckshot at it.”
“Me too!” Mrs. Swanson, who had her head back in the sink, shouted out.
Mrs. Swanson was eighty-two and sadly had such bad arthritis, her weekly wash and set wasn’t a luxury. It was a necessity since she couldn’t do her own hair.
She certainly couldn’t pull the trigger on a shotgun.
She might not even have the strength to hold one.
Though Joyce did and she was also ornery enough to do exactly what she said.
“We’re not talking about Hope Drake,” Lou announced. “Greta’s got problems comin’ out the ying-yang, starting not with Hope but with the fact her momma threw down.”
Shari’s still-huge eyes turned to me and she pushed out a long, “No.”
I nodded to her then turned back to finish up Mrs. Swanson.
“Oh my gosh!” I heard Shari exclaim. “I hope she comes today. I want it to be a day I have an appointment. I don’t want to miss out on Greta’s mom making a scene, cursing and blinding. All this town’s been talking about is Hix and Hope Drake for months. It’s getting boring. We need something new to talk about.”
We really did not.
Especially if it was about me and my mother.
“She really say the F-word out loud and in public?” Mrs. Young called out from under the dryer.
I hadn’t only told Lou about my mom. You did hair, you chatted. So my regulars knew too.
So did Lou’s.
I grabbed a pink towel off the shelves behind the sinks, shook it out of the precise roll Lou and I folded them in and started to wrap Mrs. Swanson’s head in it, saying, “The F-word, B-word, H-word, D-word, and she’ll probably sprinkle in the P-word and even the C-word.”
Mrs. Young, rightly, looked horrified.
“That’s it,” Joyce stated. “She strolls in here and does any of that, it’s gonna be me goin’ to your momma’s house and dragging her out to take her to one of Pastor Keller’s revivals. He’ll dip her in the river and hold her down until she sees Jesus. And if she doesn’t, he’ll hold her down until she sees Jesus.”
I helped Mrs. Swanson to sit up with my gaze on Lou, both of us visibly trying not to bust a gut laughing.
“I know we’re talkin’ about your momma now, Greta, but just to ask, are people cancelling because of Hope?” Shari queried worriedly from where she’d sat herself in one of the dryer chairs with its bonnet turned up.
“Hope cancelled her and the girls’ appointments with Lou. And Julie Baker cancelled her appointment with me next week,” I answered, walking Mrs. Swanson to my chair. “But other than that . . .” I shook my head.
“Well, that’s good,” Shari mumbled.
“Julie Baker would tear her own fingernails out by the roots before she’d miss a chance to do something mean,” Joyce shared. “But she’ll haul her behind to Styles and Smiles all of once before she puts her tail between her legs and comes back to you girls.”
“Yup, I’m not bothered,” Lou declared nonchalantly, running her fingers through Joyce’s painfully short hair to distribute the product that only Lou put in to make it look cute since Joyce was a wash-and-go type of woman. “I lay witness to no less than five terror attacks on hair that came to me from Styles and Smiles. Francine never mastered the art of foils to the point it’s nearly criminal she keeps on trying.”
This was true.
I’d had two women come to me after their hair had come off with the foils put in at Styles and Smiles.
This made me think I never should have worried about Lou and her House of Beauty. Some women budgeted not only for the style, but for the gas that would take them across the county to see Lou or me. They’d take a floozy sleeping with their sheriff and having a foul-mouthed momma working there in order to get good hair, no sweat.
And I’d met Francine. She was a nice lady. But unless you wanted a straight-up dye, bleach, set or cut from the era of Shirley Jones to Dorothy Hamill to her most contemporary look, the Rachel from Friends circa the first season, your best bet was to go to Lou’s House of Beauty or the Cutting Edge, which was miles away in Morsprings.
We weren’t only the only shop in town. We were one of the only choices in the county.
While Lou whisked off Joyce’s drape, Mrs. Young’s dryer binged and she pulled up the bonnet, doing this talking.
“Hix’ll bring his girls back to you, Lou. Hope might not be levelheaded enough to understand her girls’ll lose their minds, they go somewhere and get bad hair. But Hix adores his daughters and he might be a man, but he’s also the father of two girls, so he’ll understand it. Not to mention, he won’t be too fond of wastin’ the gas money to get them to Yucca to see Francine.”
“I hope so,” Lou replied, taking cash from Joyce for her cut and style. “They’re good girls and they’ve got great hair. I’ll miss having my hands in that.”
“And anyway,” Shari put in, “he won’t dis the salon where his girlfriend works.”
I felt a heavy weight hit my chest as my eyes shifted from combing out Mrs. Swanson’s hair to Shari.
I felt Lou’s attention on me and I had a feeling she was about to say something.
But I beat her to it.
“I’m not his girlfriend, Shari.”
“But I heard—” she began.
“We met and we . . .” I slid my glance to Lou then back to Shari. “It’s too soon for him. He’s a nice guy and I’m glad I met him, but it was a one-time thing.”
“Has he lost his marbles like his ex?” Joyce asked incredulously and my attention shifted to her.
“It’s too soon for him.”
“Too soon, shmoo-soon,” Joyce snapped at me. “Hixon Drake never struck me as stupid. In fact, the opposite. And everybody knows, good drops itself in your lap you don’t shove it off and say, ‘Now’s not the right time. I’m dealin’ with the fact my addled wife didn’t see the good thing resting his head on the pillow beside hers.’ No. You snatch up that good and hold it close and process all that dealin’ while life reminds you, you survive the bad, good always comes slidin’ back in right after it.”
“That’s a nice thing to say, Joyce,” I told her quietly.
“I’m not bein’ nice,” she retorted. “What do the kids call it today?” She didn’t pause for an answer. While hefting her tall, strong, sturdy, farmer’s wife body out of Lou’s chair, she declared, “I’m bein’ real.”
That was when I looked right at Lou.
Lou didn’t need me to look at her.
She was already ordering, “Okay, let’s stop talking about this.”
Joyce walked up to Mrs. Swanson and me at my chair.
“Have a mind to stroll right into the Sheriff’s Department and share some of it with Hix,” she informed me.
Mrs. Swanson made a frightened peep, likely because Joyce wasn’t only a wash-and-go type of woman. She was no-nonsense, ballsy and known not to care if you had a problem with her speaking her mind, in which she had a lot of opinions she felt the need to let out.
I whispered, “Please don’t do that.”
“I won’t, girl,” Joyce stated. “Have a mind to do it but I like you too much to meddle. He’s got his head planted in his keister like his ex-wife, he has to sort himself out. And if he misses out on a good thing doin’ it, that’s his problem.” She leaned into me. “But just to say, don’t you worry about Hope. Known her since she was a little thing. She can get up to some antics, but the minute she realizes it’s makin’ her look bad, she’ll back down. Everybody in this town knows that, and most everybody in this town knows you, so you won’t have any problems. Not a good girl like you. Just ride it out, Greta. It’ll be over before you know it.”
“Thanks, Joyce,” I replied on a smile.
“Whatever,” she muttered and turned to Lou. “Six weeks, Lou.”
“You’re in my schedule, Joyce,” Lou returned.
On that, Joyce walked out.
“I hope he changes his mind about it being too soon,” Shari said, and I looked from rolling a thin rod in Mrs. Swanson’s hair to her. “Even my Rich says something’s wrong in the cosmos, you don’t have a man. I always told him I wasn’t sure there was a man that was man enough to be good enough for you.”
At that, my chest warmed.
“Wow, Shari, that’s so sweet,” I told her.
“Maybe, it’s also true,” she replied. “I heard about you and Hix, I thought, there it was. I shoulda thought of that the minute I heard Hope’d kicked him out.”
That didn’t make my chest warm.
It made it feel heavy again.
“My great-nephew, Owen, just moved back into town, Greta,” Mrs. Swanson said to me from her chair, and I looked down at her. “He’s a good boy. His dad’s gettin’ on and needed help with things. His wife had her head in her bottom too. But she messed things up at least three years ago. It won’t be too soon for him.”
“I’m not looking for a fixup, Mrs. Swanson,” I said gently. “But it’s nice of you to think of that.”
Her eyes turned to the mirror as I used the pointed end of my teasing comb to separate another bit of hair to roll, “Well, you just say the word when you’re ready, sweetie. Be my pleasure to introduce you two.”
I again looked to Lou to see she was unravelling Mrs. Young’s curlers but doing it watching me.
We had a hectic day seeing as we always had hectic days. Because of that, I hadn’t had the opportunity to share the fullness of what happened with Hixon in the back room with her.
Lou and I had met years ago when she had to come out to Denver for her cousin’s wedding and the salon I’d worked at had sent stylists out to do the bride and her bridesmaids’ hair. Lou had sat in to keep an eye on things, we got to talking, and I knew she was my kind of people within minutes of meeting her.
She didn’t hide she felt the same.
We kept connected through email, texts and occasional phone calls, and not long after Keith ended things with me, she told me about Sunnydown, and the fact her stylist was moving to Omaha because the man she met online was there and things were getting serious.
I’d then taken vacation out in Glossop, stayed with Lou and her family, looked into Sunnydown for Andy and found it was cleaner, nicer, the people were great, and it cost a whole lot less than where he was at in Denver.
So I’d moved, and as his guardian, I took Andy with me.
And Lou, with her long history of living in Glossop (she’d moved there from Yucca when she’d married Bill sixteen years ago) and all her connections through her work, had settled me right into that town like I’d been there since birth.
So we hadn’t known each other since forever, but we worked together every day, she’d looked out for me from afar, and she meant the world to me.
In return, I gave great hair at her joint, treated her daughters like they were my own, and didn’t point out Bill was an asshole when she was at my place, drinking whiskey and telling me all the reasons Bill was an asshole.
In other words, we were tight.
And looking at her right then, I knew she was worried.
Worried that word had gotten out about Hixon and me. Worried that my mom had thrown down. Worried that Hope Drake had declared war. And worried that Hixon had walked into the salon and talked to me in the back room about things I hadn’t yet had a chance to process through with my best bud.
So I set Mrs. Swanson’s hair and put in Shari’s foils while Mrs. Swanson was under the bonnet. I then finished with them both while Lou took care of her clients that wandered in, got their hair done, had their say about Hope, Hixon, my momma and me.
And when we had a lull with one of Lou’s appointments flipping through a magazine waiting for her dye to set, and I had a break to go out and get us a late lunch, she cornered me in the back room while I was getting the stuff I was going to need for my next client.
“One-time thing?” she asked.
I turned to her. “Lou—”
“Got three calls last night about what happened at the Dew, you know that, told you when you got here. Not ten minutes after, Hix strolls right in like he comes to visit you every morning before you start work. Then he leaves and smiles at you like he smiled at you. And it’s a one-time thing?”
I stared at her. “How did he smile at me?”
“Girlfriend, he aimed it right at you. How’d you miss it?”
What was she talking about?
“I . . . he . . . we . . .”
How did he smile at me?
I shook that question out of my head and spit out what I needed to say to Lou.
“It’s his idea that it’s a one-time thing. He just came this morning to share that Hope was on the warpath. I . . . he . . . we . . .” On that, I just shook my head then whispered, “He was just being nice because what happened with us . . .” I sucked in a big breath and finished softly, “It was good, Lou.”
She leaned back and threw out both hands. “Of course it was good. God can be a jokester but He wouldn’t play a joke so cruel as to make a man that fine and not give him the talents to see that concept all the way through.”
God had definitely done that.
“How did he smile at me?” I repeated.
“Like he didn’t want to walk out that door, leaving you behind, but instead he wanted to drag you out right along with him.”
I started breathing hard.
She was right.
How did I miss that?
“Always liked Hix and Hope together,” she announced, and I again stared at her. “They looked good together. Both of ’em love their kids like crazy. Both of ’em loved each other like crazy. She can be a spoiled brat, and he’s a man, no escaping any man having his moments of being totally clueless, not even a man like Hix. But he loved her. Way he looked at her stated plain he didn’t care everyone knowing just how much. Thought it was a shame, them going through that rough patch.”
As much as I never really liked Hope, and I hadn’t known Hixon at all, I’d felt the same.
“Until I got my first call about what happened at the Dew,” she went on. “And then he walked out of my place and smiled that smile at you. Then I thought, God works in mysterious ways. He looked at his wife the way he did for years and now it’s been proved she didn’t deserve it. But one night with you has proved he has it goin’ on, seein’ as he realized what he’d found with the way he looked and smiled at you.”
I again shook my head. “He was . . . what happened . . . it was just a mistake. Not a mistake, exactly, but bad timing. Nothing’s happening. He just divorced her a few weeks ago.”
“I don’t care if he divorced her yesterday,” she retorted. “He may be in denial, Greta, too much coming at him too soon. Got no idea what it takes to rebuild your life after a marriage of near on two decades falls apart. Don’t wanna know. But even a good guy like Sheriff Drake doesn’t hear his ex is on the warpath and then walk his ass to the local salon to warn his one-night stand to batten down the hatches. He gets on with things and lets the sisterhood work out their issues and the chips fall as they may. At best, he sends his deputy, who’s one of your clients, to give you the warning. What he doesn’t do is take his time to have a private moment with you in the back room of your place of business, then walk out after sharing with you it was what it was and now he’s moving on by looking at you and smiling at you the way he did.”
“I can’t believe that,” I told her.
“I can since I saw it with my own two eyes. And just sayin’, I wasn’t the only one.”
I couldn’t think on that.
She had to get me.
And I had to get me too or I might do something dangerous.
Something I never did.
Hope.
“No, you don’t understand what I’m saying. I can’t believe that in the sense I won’t.”
She shut up.
I piped up.
“Listen, Lou, he made things clear, now twice, that it was what it was and it’s done. You may be reading it a certain way because you love me and you like him and you like the idea of him with me. But what you saw wasn’t what you saw. Even if it was and he’s got things screwing with his head, I can’t believe it was what you saw because I’ve got enough on my plate, and I can’t take on all of that and how it might play out.”
“Greta, girlfriend—”
I stepped closer to her and gave her a small, not-happy smile.
“He’s a good guy and that’s the reason he came himself. And there was another reason, that being him explaining where he’s at. And I appreciate that, Lou. Because there was something between us and it was good. I felt it and I think he did too. But at this time in his life, he goes there, taking me with him, with Hope being the way she is and him being put through the wringer by her, he’s trying to save me from being put through that wringer too with things up in the air with how that’d play out. He’s protecting me from that. And we only had one night, I don’t know him all that well, but that says a lot about him.”
“I know how it’d play out,” she declared.
“No you don’t. And I don’t. And he doesn’t either,” I replied. “You said yourself, and I saw it too, how he feels about her. It’s too fresh and they’d been together a long time, they have three kids, they live in a small town, anything could happen.”
“Are you saying you think they’ll patch things up?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
Her brows knitted. “Are you saying he told you he wants that?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. She didn’t seem like his favorite person.”
“Well you know what?”
Oh boy.
I knew some whats.
I also knew sometimes I didn’t want to hear Lou’s variety of what.
She was worse than Joyce.
“Lou—” I tried to waylay her.
“Hope Drake is gonna be a lot less than his favorite person when someone stops keepin’ their mouth shut, waiting to see how it’ll play out between them, now that those papers have been filed. Someone is gonna share that the reason she put him through that wringer is because she wanted him to use the inheritance he got from that uncle of his to buy her a twenty-five thousand dollar twentieth anniversary ring instead of what he wanted to do with his inheritance.”
I tried again. “Lou—”
And failed.
“That being save it in case of emergencies. But if those didn’t come around, use it to put his girl through law school and maybe have a little extra to help his other girl with whatever she wanted to be in this life, and use what they’d saved for both of those things to give his daughters the best weddings they could dream up.”
Yeah.
I had a feeling Hixon wasn’t going to be too happy with his ex-wife when that someone got around to sharing just that about Hope.
Lou kept on.
“Probably the person in this town who was most freaked Hixon signed his name to those papers was Hope. She thought he’d cave. He didn’t cave. And now she’s scrambling. She screwed the pooch, and huge. And she’s not as stupid as she seems. She needs to get him back before Hix is the wiser to her bullshit. If they’re back together, no one will say a word. He finds someone worth his time in the meanwhile, she hasn’t just screwed the pooch. She’s plain old screwed.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with me,” I pointed out.
“Honey, you’re wrong. I don’t know what happened at the Dew, or after it, I just know he walked in somehow knowing the time you were on today and arriving at that time so he was the first person you saw, besides me. And he did all that with one thing on his mind.” She leaned into me again. “You. That doesn’t say one-night stand. That says protect your woman.”
Protect your woman.
Your woman.
His woman.
“Please stop,” I begged.
She leaned back.
“It isn’t that,” I reiterated.
She looked at me for a second then advised, “Greta, sometimes to carve some good in your life, you gotta work for it and even fight for it.”
She might be right.
She was still wrong.
“It isn’t that,” I said yet again.
Her voice got gentle. “Love you, honey. You know it. Never doubt it. But you let life happen to you and sometimes it’s a good thing to fight back.”
“You’re right. Definitely. You’re right about that. But this isn’t the time for that.”
“I think—”
“Keith was it for me.”
She closed her mouth.
I felt my eyes sting but pushed through it. “He was my everything.”
“Greta, girlfriend—”
“He was a good guy. He treated me . . . he was with me . . .” I couldn’t finish that. I just said, “And I lost him.”
“Did you fight?”
I couldn’t go there.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “I lost him. Now this man . . . he’s a good man, Lou, you know it. Everyone does. What happens to me if I go for it and I don’t win?”
“What happens if you do?”
I couldn’t go there either.
“That doesn’t happen for me a lot.”
“Maybe it would if you fought.”
“And maybe it would just leave me that much more beaten.”
“I gotta admit, you’ve endured more than most,” she muttered.
“You think?” I asked, trying to be funny.
She didn’t laugh.
She suggested, “Maybe you’re in for a change.”
Okay.
I had to end this.
For both of us.
“You know, I was fourteen when Mom had Andy, and then completely forgot she’d had a kid.”
“Honey,” Lou whispered, her tone quieting, her face gentling.
She knew.
“So it was me who changed his diapers and fed him his bottles and got up when he was crying. And it was me, when he got big enough, who made him his breakfast and got him to school and made him do his homework. And it was me, even after I’d moved out, that got up early to go there every morning to do the same. It was also me who never missed any of his football games and attended his parent-teacher conferences.”
Her eyes started getting misty, but I had to nip her hopes and dreams for me in the bud before I got talked into letting her sweep me along right with them.
I’d become a mother at fourteen to a child I didn’t carry, and I didn’t mind because I’d fallen in love with Andy the minute I laid eyes on him. He was something to love and I’d never had that, not in all my short life, and I gave him all the love I had bottled up and all the love he had coming.
Which was a lot.
But even before that, with the mother I’d been given and no father to speak of, I’d never had any dreams and I’d never hoped for anything, except to spend the rest of my life with Keith from the minute he’d kissed me after our first date.
I couldn’t start now.
“But it was her who was driving when Andy’s body got crushed and his skull got fractured right along with it. And the only thing good that came out of that was that she was incarcerated for eight months for drunk driving and I could get myself declared his guardian. So I know what life is like. I know what’s worth fighting for. And I know from what I’ve learned that I should just take the good of a nice guy looking after me when I get caught up in his life drama at the same time he offers me the best thing he can right now. Keeping me out of that drama.”
I lifted a hand and touched her arm before dropping it.
“I love that you want good for me, Lou,” I said softly. “What you need to get is that I’ve got the only brand of that I’m ever gonna get, and after all that’s gone before, I’m good with that.”
“Maybe you should meet Mrs. Swanson’s Owen,” she muttered.
I grinned at her. “How about I just keep hold on what I’ve got. My mom and whatever this is with Hix and Hope Drake notwithstanding, I like it. A great job. A great house.” I gave her a big smile. “Good friends. It’s awesome here. A quiet town. Good people in it. Peaceful. Nice. Folks look after folks. Things are simple. This Hope thing will blow over and those two will move on however they’re gonna move on. And I’ve already decided I’m done with Mom. She may be more stubborn than I expect, but I figure, the Greta Money Bank dries up, she’ll slither out just like she slithered in.” I lifted my shoulders in another shrug. “And then it’ll all be just peaceful, quiet, nice. Simple.”
“Want more for you, babe.”
At that, I laughed a little bit and kept smiling at her after I was done.
“I wasn’t being funny,” she told me.
“I know, sweetheart,” I replied. “The thing is, what I have is more. It’s the best I’ve ever had. Yes, even better than when I was with Keith because that was always shadowed by what he wanted that I couldn’t give him, all he was giving me that I couldn’t give back and me terrified when he’d figure out that I wasn’t worth it. I’m happy. So you don’t have to want more for me, Lou. I’ve got all I need.”
“I still want more for you.”
“Of course you do, you’re my friend. That’s your job,” I returned. “But right now, I want chicken tenders from the Harlequin, and if I don’t get them soon, they’ll get cold while I’m doing hair. They’re good cold, but they’re better hot.”
Lou, being Lou—that was a really good friend—let it go because she got that I needed her to.
“That’s my order too. And curly fries.”
“Like you have to say that,” I muttered, turning back to the shelves.
Lou turned to the door.
As I grabbed what I needed, she called my name.
I looked over my shoulder at her.
“I know you won’t like hearing it, but the life you’re willing to settle for being so much less than you deserve, it breaks my heart, Greta.”
My heart thumped hearing her say that.
Then she walked through the door and it closed behind her.
At seven thirty that night, I rolled my black, boxy, traveling beauty case with its steel edges up Mrs. Whitney’s front walk.
As always, she had the door open and was standing in it, waiting for me before I had to heft the case up the five cement steps that sat halfway up the path and led to the short walk to her door.
“You always have the prettiest outfits,” she told me when I got close. “You even make a shirt and jeans look like it’s walkin’ down a New York City sidewalk.”
“And you always have the sweetest things to say,” I replied.
Her eyes dropped to my feet. “But I have no idea how you wear those heels, standin’ on your feet all day.”
“Practice,” I shared.
“Come in, darlin’,” she invited, moving out of my way as I pulled open her screen door. “You had dinner?”
And she always asked if I’d had dinner.
So I gave her the answer I always gave her.
“I’ll get something when I get home.”
“Got chops and mash,” she said. “They’re still warm.”
“Thanks, Mrs. W, but I eat heavy at lunch and light at dinner.”
“All right, Greta, come in, come in.” She scooted me in through her foyer but stopped us right there. “Just gonna go look in on the mister.” Her faded blue eyes caught mine. “And I’ll have to do it again after the set, darlin’.”
“I know, Mrs. W. It’s all good. I’ll go in and get set up.”
She gave me a small smile and headed up the stairs.
I headed into the kitchen.
She came in and I washed her hair while she leaned over her kitchen sink then I sat her in a chair at the table and started my work.
“So, what’s happening in Glossop that I need to know about?” she asked.
She was probably the only woman in town who didn’t know just what that was.
This was because “the mister,” her husband, was upstairs on life support and had been since he’d had a heart attack three years ago that stopped oxygen from going to his brain.
They’d revived his body.
They couldn’t revive the rest of him.
And she didn’t have the heart to pull the plug or the insurance to keep him in a hospital bed.
She also loved him so much, she refused to leave him, terrified he’d slip away when she wasn’t around. She went to the grocery store once a week. And Pastor Keller came to her on Sunday afternoons to pray with her.
And every two weeks, I did a wash and set.
She had other friends who visited here and there.
And she had a sleeping husband who would never wake and she’d never stop taking care of him in a bed upstairs.
It was beautifully sweet. It was tremendously sad.
It was life.
I gave her the lowdown on what I knew, including my mother, not including Hixon and Hope Drake.
“I sure hope your momma doesn’t bring her trash into the House of Beauty,” she murmured when I was done.
“She will, Mrs. W. But I’m learning that’s her way and it doesn’t have to change the way I do things.”
“She did what she did to my brother that she did to yours, darlin’,” she started quietly, “don’t think I’d be givin’ her money all these years.”
I thought about the man I’d never seen upstairs and whispered, “Yes, you would.”
She thought on that a second and whispered back, “Reckon you’re right.”
I felt the need for a subject change, for both of us.
“You want, week after next, I’ll get you an appointment with Lou at the salon. You can go on in and I’ll clear my schedule to be here for the mister,” I offered, not for the first time.
“Oh, child, that’s sweet. But maybe it ain’t right to leave Burt with a stranger. I’m sure he’ll like the look a’ you, say he wakes up. But once he gets over that, he’ll still be wondering where I am.”
He wouldn’t wake up, couldn’t. His brain was more gone than Andy’s.
Yet more evidence it was futile to hope.
Even so, for the first time, I pushed, “Maybe Pastor Keller will come sit with him.”
“I don’t think so, Greta. But you’re a good girl and it sure is nice you’d offer.”
I shut up about that like I always did.
When she was walking to the bonnet dryer she’d set up herself in her kitchen after it all happened, I asked, “While you’re cooking, you want a polish change?”
Her eyes came to me and lit. “You bring your polish, darlin’?”
I smiled at her. “Don’t I always?”
She smiled back. “You sure do. And I’d love to get some of that pearly peach you had last spring. I know we’re headin’ into fall, but I’m not a fall. I’m a spring. Had my colors all done up professional-like when ladies were seein’ to that kind of thing. But I figure, spring color in fall, that’ll still be like havin’ pearly pumpkins on my fingernails.”
“Sounds perfect,” I told her, heading to my case to pull out another compartment.
I changed her polish. I set her hair. And I gave her a hug before I left, when she always stuffed a twenty in whatever pocket I had available to her, this on top of paying me and the tip she handed me, face to face.
Lou had a family to look after so she couldn’t swing an evening home appointment. Her old stylist was young and had a life after work so she’d declined doing it. Which left Mrs. Whitney with Francine hauling herself from Yucca, and charging her double to make up the gas money.
I’d said yes the first time Lou asked me.
Mrs. Whitney didn’t get much company and went out even less.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t want her hair looking nice.
She appreciated me taking the time to come to her place, which meant I got home late after a very long day.
Appreciated it enough to want to give me an extra twenty dollars.
I never said a word about it.
It wasn’t necessary.
She needed to do it.
So I let her do it.
After that, I drove home, and as I drove home, I called Andy.
The staff got him on the phone for me and I listened to him chatter away while I drove, and then while I made myself a spinach salad with diced hard-boiled eggs, sliced red onion, dried cranberry, slivered almonds and some sprinkles of cheese.
He had to go so I let him go before I ate it.
I cleaned up after myself and made some tea.
Then I walked out to my porch and sat in my wicker chair.
There was a bit of a nip in the air sharing summer was saying its farewells. Soon, when I sat on my porch, I’d have to wear a sweater like I had to last fall.
But right then, I didn’t need one.
I just sat cross-legged in my chair and picked up the book I’d left out there.
I balanced it, closed, on my lap and lifted my tea to my lips and my eyes to the street.
And I let the peace and quiet of Glossop sink into me.
It had been quite a day and a long one to boot.
But the thing I liked most about living there was, no matter I’d met a man who I knew, in another life or with the right timing, might be able to wring miracles and balance my world, a world that had always been unsteady, at the same time making me happy. No matter his ex-wife was undoubtedly going to shake things up in a number of unpleasant ways for the foreseeable future. No matter what my mother would dream up to torture me to get what she wanted out of me.
No matter what anything.
I always had that spot right there on my porch in Glossop to remind me I’d made it to the exact right place I needed to be.
I might never have had any hopes and dreams.
But with the life I’d led, I’d always craved just what I was right then experiencing.
Calm. Peace. Simplicity.
For me.
And for Andy.
So I could take the bad and take the good.
And end every day’s rollercoaster having everything I needed.
Serenity.
In other words . . .
Glossop.