23. Monroes Hair
Chapter twenty-three
Monroe's Hair
Lila Monroe had known this was coming.
Not the specific Tuesday afternoon in November, not the whim of it, the two of them appearing in her doorway without an appointment with the particular energy of people who had been laughing about something on the way over and had not quite finished laughing when they came through the door.
She had not known that part. But she had known since August, since the wedding, since she had sat next to Julie Anderson in the fourth row on the groom's side and watched Julie not look at Ethan Walker with the focused determination of a woman who was absolutely looking at Ethan Walker, that this was coming.
She had known since Halloween when Sam Peterson told his mother who told Danny Marsh who told Ellen who mentioned it to Lila in passing on a Sunday after church that Julie Anderson had answered her door in a ghost costume and Ethan Walker had been on her porch in a Ghostbusters jumpsuit handing out candy like he lived there, which he did not but which, Lila had thought, was a direction things might be heading.
She had known since Main Street on Friday evening when she had seen them walking to Rachel's holding hands and had stood on the sidewalk with Carol Hendricks from the library and they had looked at each other and said nothing because nothing needed to be said.
She had known for a long time.
What she had not known, or had known and not examined too closely, was what she was going to feel when it actually happened.
When Julie Anderson walked through the door of Monroe's Hair on a Tuesday afternoon in November with Ethan Walker behind her and the particular light in her eyes that Lila had not seen there in a very long time, if ever, and Lila felt it the way she always felt things about Julie, somewhere specific and inconvenient that she had learned a long time ago to keep to herself.
She kept it to herself now.
"We don't have appointments," Julie said. She was unwinding her scarf and looking around the shop with the comfortable familiarity of someone who had been coming here for years, which she had. "Is that all right?"
"It's a Tuesday afternoon," Lila said. "I have nothing but time. Sit down."
Ethan Walker looked around Monroe's Hair with the expression of a man who had not been in a hair salon in some time and was taking stock of the situation.
He was taller than she remembered from when they were young, or maybe she had just not been paying that kind of attention to Ethan Walker when they were young because there had been no reason to.
He had been Julie's, which had put him in a category that Lila did not examine, and then he had left and she had filed him away accordingly.
He was not in that file drawer anymore. He was standing in her salon on a Tuesday afternoon looking at Julie with the expression of a man who was exactly where he wanted to be, and Lila felt something about that which she kept to herself.
"Ladies first," he said, and gestured at the chair.
Julie sat and Lila put the cape around her shoulders and met her eyes in the mirror. Julie was looking back at her with the expression of a woman who was happy and was not quite used to it yet and was not going to make a big deal about it but was also not going to pretend it was not there.
Lila had waited a long time to see that expression on Julie Anderson's face.
She kept that to herself too.
"How much?" she said.
"Three inches," Julie said. "Just clean it up."
"You've been saying just clean it up for fifteen years," Lila said, running her fingers through Julie's hair and assessing it with the professional attention she brought to everything. "One of these days I'm going to talk you into something dramatic."
"Not today," Julie said.
"Not today," Lila agreed, and reached for her scissors.
Ethan had found the waiting chair by the window and sat in it with the easy patience of a man who was comfortable waiting, and Lila worked and watched him in the mirror the way she watched everything in this shop, peripherally and with complete attention, because Monroe's Hair was the place where Pine Hollow came to talk and she had learned a long time ago that the watching was as important as the listening.
He was watching Julie.
Not in the way men sometimes watched women in ways that required management, nothing like that.
He was watching her the way you watched something you had been looking for for a long time and had found and were not going to stop being aware of just because you had found it.
Lila had cut hair in Pine Hollow for ten years and she had seen a lot of people in this mirror and she knew what that look meant.
She kept her opinion about it to herself.
"So," she said, which in Monroe's Hair was the universal signal that conversation was beginning. "How are you finding Pine Hollow, Ethan? After all this time."
He looked at her in the mirror. "Smaller than I remembered," he said. "And bigger."
"That's what they all say," Lila said. "The ones who come back."
"Do many come back?"
"Some," she said. "The ones who left for the right reasons usually do eventually. The ones who left for the wrong reasons take longer." She kept her scissors moving and did not look at him directly, just at his reflection. "Pine Hollow has a long memory."
"I know," he said with a bit of sadness clouding his expression briefly.
"It also has a generous heart," she said.
"When it decides to." She glanced at Julie in the mirror and Julie was looking at her own reflection with the slight smile of someone who was following a conversation that was about more than what it appeared to be about and was choosing not to comment. "Three inches," Lila said. "You sure?"
"Three inches," Julie said.
Lila cut.
The shop was quiet for a while in the comfortable way it got quiet when the conversation had said what it needed to say and everyone was content to let the silence do its work.
Outside the November street went about its business and inside Monroe's Hair smelled like it always smelled, something warm and clean and familiar.
Lila worked and the scissors made their small precise sound and Julie's hair fell in careful increments to the cape and to the floor.
"Kali used to come in every six weeks," Lila said.
She had not planned to say it. It came out the way things came out sometimes in this shop, the space between people creating room for things that needed to be said.
"Without fail. Six weeks exactly. She said a woman who didn't take care of her hair was a woman who had given up and she had not given up. "
Julie was quiet for a moment. "That sounds exactly like her."
"It was exactly her." Lila kept her eyes on her work. "She talked about you. In this chair. She said you needed someone to fuss over you." She paused. "She was very pleased about the muffins."
Julie made a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite not one.
"She was right," Ethan said from the window chair.
Both women looked at him in the mirror.
He looked back at them without apology. "About the fussing," he said. "Julie needs someone to fuss over her. She won't do it herself."
"I fuss over myself," Julie said.
"When?" he asked.
She opened her mouth and closed it and Lila turned away so neither of them could see her expression and made a small adjustment to the left side that did not strictly need making.
"He's not wrong," Lila said, when she trusted her face again.
"You're supposed to be on my side," Julie said.
"I am on your side," Lila said. "That's why I'm agreeing with him."
Julie looked at herself in the mirror with the expression of a woman who was outnumbered and knew it and was not entirely displeased about it. Lila finished the cut and reached for the blow dryer and the shop filled with the warm noise of it.
When she was done she turned Julie toward the mirror and Julie looked at herself and something in her expression went soft in a way that Lila had not seen before, a simple uncomplicated pleasure in her own reflection that was new.
Lila thought that was Ethan Walker's doing whether Julie would say so or not and felt about that what she felt about it and kept it where she kept things.
"Beautiful," Lila said.
"Thank you," Julie said, and meant it for more than the hair.
Ethan's trim took twelve minutes. He sat in the chair and looked at himself in the mirror with the straightforward lack of vanity of a man who was not particularly interested in his own reflection and trusted the person with the scissors.
Lila worked and they talked about the Herald and Adam's farm and November in Pine Hollow and how long the snow would stay, It was easy conversation, the kind that filled a room without demanding anything of it.
When she was done he looked at himself and said that's great and meant it. That was the whole of his relationship with his own hair, and Lila took the cape off and he stood and reached for his wallet.
"What do I owe you?" he said.
"Whatever Julie usually pays plus twelve dollars," Lila said.
He paid without looking at the amount and Lila unfolded the bills and put them in the register.
When she looked up they were standing together near the door.
Julie was unwinding her scarf and Ethan was holding her coat while she put her arms into it the way you put your arms into a coat someone was holding for you, which was one of the smallest possible gestures and also not small at all.
"Thank you, Lila," Julie said.
"Come back in six weeks," Lila said. "Both of you."
They went out into the November afternoon and Lila watched them through the window, Julie pulling her scarf tighter and Ethan saying something that made her look up at him and laugh, the real laugh.
They walked down the sidewalk together hand in hand and Lila watched them go and felt what she felt and kept it where she kept it and went to sweep up the hair from the floor.
She had known this was coming.
She was glad it had.
Both of those things were true and she was practiced enough at holding two true things at the same time that she did it without difficulty, the way she did most things in her life, quietly and completely and without making anyone else responsible for it.
She swept the floor and turned the sign to closed and went to make herself a cup of tea. Outside the November afternoon went on without her and Pine Hollow kept its long and generous memory and Lila Monroe kept hers.