Mrs. Coleman untied the silk scarf with slow, careful fingers, as if she were unwrapping a gift, and drew it from her head. Her scalp was smooth and pale and perfectly bare. A small breath went around the pavilion, a hush like wind in leaves. She folded the scarf into a square and laid it on the picnic table beside her plate. “I was diagnosed in March,” she said, in her low, unhurried voice. “Breast cancer. I lost my hair in April. I am a woman who has always been particular about her appearance, Mr. Ellender, and I have to tell you that I was not prepared for how it would feel. I stopped looking in mirrors. I stopped going to meetings. I stopped being myself.”
The pavilion was so quiet that I could hear the lake lapping at the shore below the picnic area. Darren stood by the head of the table with his beer in his hand, his face stiff and bewildered. His wife, Janine, had turned in her chair to stare at the visitor. Mrs. Coleman glanced at my daughter. “On a Monday in May, I was sitting in the infusion room at the cancer center in Paducah, feeling sorry for myself, and a young woman came in with a folding chair and a case of clippers. She asked me if I would like to feel pretty. I said that I had no hair. She said, that is not what pretty is made of.”
Kayla was standing beside me with her hands folded in front of her, looking at the floor. I put my arm around her waist. She was trembling. “She sat me in front of a mirror, and she shaped my eyebrows,” Mrs. Coleman went on. “She found a scarf in a color that matched my eyes. She told me about her own grandmother, who had fought the same fight. She did not charge me a cent. I wept like a child. Darren, I have closed a hundred deals in my life, and I have never been so well served as I was by that girl, for nothing, on a folding chair.” She picked up her sunglasses from the table. “I have been waiting since March to say so.”
A silk scarf lifted at a family reunion showed the developer who Darren was about to impress what a hairdresser did on her Mondays.
Darren put down his beer. His jaw moved, but no words came. He is a big, florid man with a heavy gold watch, and in thirty years I had never seen him without a ready line. “Mrs. Coleman,” he finally said, “I had no idea. I swear to you. If I had known, I never would have made that remark.” “That is exactly the trouble,” said Mrs. Coleman, evenly. “You made it because you assumed there was nothing to know. I came here to see whether the man I was about to do business with was the man I had been told about. I have my answer.” She replaced her scarf, deftly, in three motions, and sat up very straight. “Our meeting on Friday is cancelled.”
Janine made a strangled sound. Six million dollars was the whole of their year. She half rose from her seat, stammering, but her husband was already shaking his head. For a moment I almost felt sorry for him. His shoulders had dropped, and he looked suddenly like a boy who has been told that the circus has left town. “Mrs. Coleman,” he said, hoarsely, “let me apologize to Kayla. Let me, at least, do that.” Mrs. Coleman inclined her head. “That is the only thing I came for,” she said. “Not the deal. The apology. You owe it to her, not to me.”
He crossed the pavilion floor like a man crossing a field of broken glass. Kayla had stepped forward from my side, with her chin up and her hands at her sides. Darren stopped in front of her. “Kayla,” he said, “I mocked your work in front of the whole family. I called it nothing. It was the most generous work in this pavilion, and I was too small to see it.” His voice cracked. “I am deeply sorry.” For a moment, my daughter did not speak. Then she said, “Thank you, Darren. I accept.” That was all. She did not hug him, and she did not forgive too quickly, and I have never been prouder.
Mrs. Coleman did not leave. She stayed for the cake, and she let the children touch her bare head, which they did with wide eyes, and she told them it felt like a peach. She asked Kayla about her Monday route, her clients, her supplies. By the time the sun began to sink over Kentucky Lake, the two of them were sitting side by side on the bench by the water, deep in conversation, with the tall silver haired woman and the small red haired girl leaning toward each other like old friends.
The following Monday, a letter arrived at our house, on thick cream paper. Mrs. Coleman had established, through her family foundation, a small salon inside the Paducah cancer center, with three styling chairs, two shampoo basins, and a wall of mirrors. It would be named Kayla Chair. It would be stocked, staffed, and insured, and Kayla would be its director, at a salary of sixty two thousand dollars a year, with benefits. The letter was only half a page long. The last line said, Sit up straight. You have earned it. Kayla read it standing in the kitchen. Then she sat down on the floor and cried.
The salon opened in October. On the first day, the chairs were full by nine. A woman in her thirties came in with a plastic bag of her own hair, and Kayla took her hand and led her to the mirror. By evening, Kayla was exhausted and flushed, and happier than I had ever seen her. She walked out into the parking lot under a pink sunset, kicked off her shoes, and danced. I watched from the car.
At the next Ellender reunion, in June, Darren did not take the microphone. He arrived early, set up the tables himself, and stood at the grill all afternoon in an apron, flipping chicken. When someone offered him a beer, he waved it away. At the end of the day, he walked over to Kayla and handed her a small envelope. Inside was a check, made out to the cancer center, for ten thousand dollars. On the memo line he had written, For the chairs. Kayla looked at it. She looked at him. She said, “Thank you, cousin,” and gave him a haircut right there, in the shade, with a bedsheet around his shoulders.