Lilac Avenue Read Free

haircutting chair.
    When Claire removed the towel she had wrapped around Mamie’s head, the cool air gave her a chill, and she shuddered.
    “Are you cold?” Claire asked her.
    “I’m always cold,” Mamie said.
    Claire went to the back room and returned with two large towels, which must have been tumbling in the dryer, they were so warm. Claire wrapped one around Mamie’s upper body and one around her legs.
    “There,” Claire said. “That should help.”
    The warmth was so delicious and the gesture so kind that Mamie felt tears come to her eyes. She removed her glasses and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief she kept stuffed up one sleeve.
    ‘I’m getting soft,’ Mamie thought. ‘I should chide her for her impertinence.’
    Instead, for once, she said nothing.
    Claire swirled the nylon cape around Mamie’s shoulders and fastened it at her neck. She combed her hair and snipped away at it, then blew it dry and curled it with a curling iron.
    All the while, Mamie inhaled Claire’s perfume and let it take her back to the days her grandmother had visited. Her loud, vivacious grandmother (“peasant stock” Mamie’s mother had sneered) had been so kind, so generous, and so lively. She had charmed every servant, every worker at the factory, in fact, everyone but Mamie’s mother. After she left, the house seemed both larger and colder.
    “ What do you think?” Claire asked her, and Mamie snapped back to the present.
    Mamie squinted through her glasses at her visage in the mirror, but she could only make out the fuzzy shape of their forms against sunlight from the nearby window.
    “Well, it’s not the worst I’ve ever had,” Mamie said.
    “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Claire said.
    “It’s the only kind you’re likely to get,” Mamie said.
    Claire removed the cape and towels. She let the hydraulic chair down so that Mamie’s feet could touch the ground. Mamie had become so warm and cozy that she was loath to leave the place.
    “Do you mind if I j ust sit here a minute?” she asked.
    “Not at all,” Claire said. “Stay as long as you like.”
    “Thank you, dear,” Mamie said, before she could remind herself it was best to be impersonal with servants.
    Mamie sat there for a few minutes, just looking at the sunshine coming through the window, and resting. She was so tired, so deathly tired. She wondered how on earth she would be able to walk all the way home, up Pine Mountain Road to Morning Glory Circle. That hill seemed insurmountable today.
    With a heavy sigh, she used her cane and the arm of the chair to stand. She tested her weight on her left leg and it held. She walked over to the counter, picked up one of her tote bags and removed a bill. The thought of lifting and carrying all those heavy bags all the way up the hill made her feel so weary, but she must. Everything she cared about most was held inside them.
    “Don’t forget your change,” Claire said.
    She almost told Claire to keep the change.
    Almost.
     
     
    When Mamie finally got home she set down her tote bags, locked the front door behind her, and sat down to rest on the boot bench in the front hallway. She was short of breath and her heart pounded in her chest. Pretty soon she wouldn’t be able to walk up the hill, nor up her own front stairs. What then? If she sold everything she owned she might be able to afford to live in one of those homes where they put old people. Bad smells, crazy roommates, rude servants, and there she’d be, trapped like a rat in a cage, until she died.
    ‘I’d rather die now,’ she thought.
    She felt weary down into her bones. It took all of her strength to take off her shoes and put on her slippers. It was cold in the house. So cold. She leaned back against the staircase and felt time slip away.
    A knock on the door roused her from her nap. Gingerly she got to her feet, testing her left leg before she put weight on it. She leaned heavily on her cane as she slowly shuffled to the door. She