Island Girl Read Free

grilled cheese, and for dinner she likes chicken or beef with potatoes and any vegetable that isn’t brussels sprouts. She only likes surprises at dessert, so I try to make sure she doesn’t have to deal with them at any other time. But Mary Anne had been a surprise even to me this morning, and I was lucky things had gone so smoothly with Grace.
    “She likes her perms tight,” I reminded her.
    “And her tea with milk and sugar. I remember.”
    I glanced over at Mary Anne. Her tea was still untouched. I had served it clear. Damn.
    Grace slipped bread into the toaster, then carried milk and sugar over to Mary Anne and lifted a few strands of that salt-and-pepper hair. “You need conditioning.”
    Mary Anne nodded and poured milk into her cup while Grace went back to her eggs. They were settled and happy. I could leave, confident things would go well. Grace loves Mary Anne and she was born to do hair. When she was little, she was always with me at my shop in the city, Chez Ruby on Queen, playing with dolls in the waiting room, coloring pictures by the shampoo sinks. Unlike Liz, she loved being at Chez Ruby and she loved being with me.
    Some people think I was wrong to start training her when she was only thirteen, but the girl was going to need a trade and time to learn it. Why pretend? Why put off the inevitable? And look at her now. She’s a good hairdresser and the clients love her, especially the seniors.
    I always thought Grace and I would work together at Chez Ruby on Queen forever. But after that trouble with Liz a few years back, I moved the shop here instead, bringing the barber’s chair and some of the other equipment with me. I lost a handful of customers at first. But when I lowered the prices to reflect the savings in overhead, more and more of them started coming across the bay in all but the very worst weather to join us at Chez Ruby on the Island. As I say to Grace all the time, that’s what comes of good service.
    The horn blast from the dock reminded me that I had five minutes before the ferry left. Grabbing my notebook, I read Find Liz again, then stashed the book in my purse. “I’m off,” I said, giving Grace a hug on my way out the door.
    The morning was already hot, the air close. In the garden, the lilac still needed pruning, the rich purple faded to brown weeks ago and waiting patiently for me to get busy with a different kind of shears. My grandmother planted that lilac bush in 1943, the year she built our home. It’s now fifteen feet tall and the pride of a property that has been nurtured by Donaldson women ever since. On any other morning, I’d pause to inspect the daylilies, the climbing roses, the pots of geraniums. Taking time to breathe in the perfume that is unique to this garden, this Island. But not today. Today I have to find Liz.
    Kicking back the stand on my bike, I gave Grace a quick wave as I pulled away, still grateful to see her at the window, to have my girl home again.
    I pedaled carefully along the narrow lanes, dodging cats and kids, giving way to the bikes moving faster than mine. With the exception of emergency crews and park staff, motorized vehicles are prohibited on the Island. No cars, no Vespas. Definitely no golf cars. Bicycles get us where we need to go, with carts on the back and baskets on the front to help us carry groceries, liquor, tired kids, and anything else we need from the city because there are also no stores on the Island. Life can be hard in the winter when the wind cuts your face and heavy snow makes the going impossible on two wheels. But Islanders have always been a different breed. Urban misfits the lot of us, happy to sacrifice a few comforts for a life apart from the push and shove of the city.
    There used to be five thousand of us here, with houses and businesses spreading from Hanlan’s Point to Ward’s Island. Everything from hotels to corner stores and a milkman who came to our doors every morning. Life was good until the late fifties