Lila Blue

by Annie Katz

Kim and Les, two women about my mom's age, owned The Salty Dog. When I told Lila I wanted to send a bag of taffy to Shelly, she said Kim and Les would ship it for me.

  "Come across the highway to my place when you're done here, Cassandra," Lila said as she headed out. "I need to give Herbert a break. Looks like a busy day at the shop."

  After Lila left, Kim said, "Your grandmother is the most amazing person. We love her. Tell me," she said. "What do you think of our little beach town so far?"

  I told her about Lila's house and about my mom in Sacramento and about Shelly in Wisconsin. Kim was so easy to talk to, I babbled on and on. She reminded me of my first grade teacher. She was small, dark haired, soft spoken and very sweet. What a perfect person to make candy!

  Les, who was more my size and coloring, was working in the taffy machine area, so she simply called out "Welcome to The Salty Dog" and waved and smiled. She waved at the people lined up outside the shop, too. There was an outside viewing ledge along the front by the sidewalk, where little kids could stand up high enough to see everything that was going on in the shop. A couple of families were watching the candy making process from out there.

  The taffy machines were straight out of Willy Wonka. Thick ropes of pink taffy were looped around metal arms that twisted and pulled at the candy ropes until they were the right consistency to be mechanically snipped off onto individual waxed papers. A machine wrapped each piece and twisted its endpapers, and the final wrapped candies fell down a chute into a big deep tray.

  While Kim was listening to my entire life story, she'd replace the full tray with an empty one then dump the candies from the first tray into a big white bin. Identical bins lined three sides of the sales area, and each had its own calligraphy sign naming the flavor of the taffy it held.

  There must have been forty or fifty different flavors, all with exotic names like Root Beer Float, Lavender Blush, Fantasy Fudge, Miners' Mint, Ugly Undertow, Pumpkin Pie, Tickle Me Pink, Sea Foam, Blueberry Kiss, Midnight Brandy, Captain Black, Chocolate Riptide, and Mermaid's Tears. Just reading the names filled me up.

  I twirled around wondering how in the world I was going to choose what to send to Shelly, or even what to try for myself. Kim was used to first timers, though, and she talked me through it.

  "Most of our business is mail order," she told me as she pointed to the three most popular sizes of shipping boxes.

  I had my backpack with all my money, so I decided it would be fun to send Shelly and her gaggle of cousins the biggest size. She was always buying me things, and I never knew what to get for her. Saltwater taffy would be perfect.

  "Good choice," Kim said when I chose the largest size. She set up the box on a square shopping cart that could be rolled around at bin level, then lined the box with a clear plastic bag. Handing me a scoop, she said, "Here you go, Cassandra. Have fun!"

  By then, several other people had come into the shop. They all seemed as fascinated as I was by the taffy machines and the array of choices.

  Choosing the candies was fun. At first I scooped only three or four from each bin, being sure to include some of every flavor, but after I'd been to every bin, the bottom of the box was barely covered. Then I loosened up and started adding full scoops of the flavors I thought Shelly would love best, mainly ones with chocolate or mint or berries. Shelly practically worshipped raspberries, so I included three full scoops of Raspberry Rapture. I topped the box off with scoops of Vanilla Bean, Brown Sugar, Peanut Delight, Bubble Gum, Honey Bear, and Lucky Lemon, for the people who might not be crazy about chocolate.

  Before she sealed the box, Kim put in several copies of a glossy Salty Dog flyer that listed all the flavor names. I could imagine Shelly checking off each one to make sure I had sent her a complete assortment.

  After I filled out the address label and paid for everything, Kim gave me a small white sack and said, "Take some Maple Syrup ones to Lila and Captain Black for Herbert, and whatever you want for yourself. On the house."

  I thanked her, filled up the little bag, including a few of each kind that caught my attention while I was filling Shelly's box, and said goodbye. As I was going out the door, Les called to me from the back of the work area, "Come work for us. Long hours, low pay, and all the taffy you can eat." She grinned and waved goodbye.

  One hour in town and I already had a job offer. Wow.

  Attached to the wall outside the front door of Lila Blue's Family Barbershop was an old-fashioned revolving red, white, and blue glass barber pole. It was shiny clean and welcoming.

  When I walked inside the shop, the first things I noticed were the two giant barber chairs. They were dark green leather and had polished silver bases and foot pedals to raise and lower the seats. They each faced big oval mirrors mounted on the wall. Below the mirrors were sturdy worktables with drawers to hold implements and hooks to hang electric clippers and hair dryers. In between those two worktables was a wall-mounted sink with its own reclining shampoo chair.

  The floor was like a checkerboard set on the diagonal made of large black and white tiles. Everything was sparkling clean and well lit. The shop smelled like spicy wood. It was a warm relaxed place, and I'm sure it was a haven on stormy days.

  Across from the haircut area was the waiting area, equipped with four comfortable chairs, each with its own small side table. A round kid-sized table with two chairs sat in the corner by the shop's front windows. The kids' table had comic books and picture books and a tub of Lincoln Logs for building cabins. In a big basket in the corner behind the table were stuffed animals and hand puppets.

  Two little boys were playing on the floor with puppets, making the puppets snarl and bite each other. They had nice fresh haircuts, and every once in a while they'd glance over at the man and woman in the barber chairs, their parents, I guess.

  The man in Lila's chair had his eyes closed and seemed to be falling asleep. Lila worked on him silently, a satisfied smile on her face. She looked relaxed and confident. I wondered if I'd ever have a job I enjoyed that much.

  The other barber, Herbert, was trimming the mother's bangs, and she was telling him about how difficult it was to adjust to the boys being out of school. He concentrated on making sure each hair was perfect, and it was clear he didn't care about a word she was saying.

  Lila had smiled and greeted me by name when I came in, and the other adults in the room all smiled my way, too. I felt like a celebrity. Maybe it was normal small town behavior. I was used to being mostly invisible. At home you kind of knew everyone in your building and in your regular shops, but here it seemed that everyone belonged to one another.

  I sat in the waiting chair closest to the front door and got out my book so I could observe everything without being too obviously curious. Not that anyone would have minded. A barbershop is a public place after all, even if it belongs to your grandma.

  After checking out the details of the shop and the people, I opened my book and drifted into a world of flying dragons. Soon I was pulled back to the barbershop world by the commotion of the mom paying for the haircuts and the dad wrestling the puppets away from the boys so they could all leave.

  The family left, and Lila called me over to meet Herbert. I said hi and he said hi, but he didn't look me in the eyes. He was the shyest grownup person I'd ever seen. His gaze slid away from my face until he was looking at the floor, but it wasn't content to stay there. Instead his eyes jumped back to my hair, and then they'd slide down and then back to my hair. I could feel his fingers itching to grab some scissors or electric clippers and tackle my orange lion's mane.

  Herbert was so easy to read, it was funny. No wonder he was so shy. He had no guile, no protection from the world. What a strange person! Like a hermit crab without a shell.

  He turned away from me and busied himself cleaning his workstation and sweeping the floor around both the cutting chairs. When all was tidy, he disappeared into another room at the back of the shop.

  "How was the taffy adventure?" Lila asked me.


  "Fun," I said. "I sent a giant box to Shelly. She'll be so surprised."

  "And what's this?" she asked, as I handed her the white bag full of taffy.

  "Compliments of The Salty Dog."

  Lila took the sack and scrabbled around in it until she'd retrieved all the Maple Syrups. "These are my favorite," she said. "Did you try one?" She offered one to me, but I declined.

  "I tried enough," I said. "So far, Vanilla Bean is my favorite. Lucky Lemon is a close second, though."

  "Maybe I should branch out," she said. "Never good to run too deep a groove for yourself." She exchanged some of her Maple Syrups for some of the others in the bag. "And licorice for Herbert," she said, making a pile of the gray candies on a clean paper towel in the middle of his freshly scrubbed counter.

  New customers came in, and after watching haircut after haircut, I felt sleepy, so I said goodbye to Lila and Herbert and walked back to the beach house through a chilly damp wind under cloudy skies.

  There was no rain, though, and as I stood on the porch ready to use my key, an enormous full triple rainbow appeared over the ocean. It was so close, so sudden, and so beautiful that I gasped.

  While I stood entranced, staring at the dense bands of light that seemed heavy and solid, tears came to my eyes and ran down my face. My heart ached with happiness, and something deep in my belly expanded until I was as big as a dragon. For the very first time in my life, I felt grateful to be alive.

  After that, everything was easy for a while. Lila and I walked on the beach most mornings, even when it poured rain. We ate breakfast together some days, and other times we took care of ourselves, rule number three.

  Lila kept her retirement work schedule, unless Herbert called to say it was slow on one of her half days. Slow days were usually sunny days, because everyone flocked to the beach when it stopped raining in Rainbow Village. Those extra afternoons Lila spent more time on her newspaper columns or corresponded with friends.

  In the evenings, we did cooking lessons, then we read or played backgammon or she played the piano and sang. She encouraged me to sing along, and sometimes I did. She said I had a beautiful voice, but I think she was being kind.

  On the days she worked, when I felt like being around humans, I'd walk to her shop or visit the others in Rainbow Village. I liked all the shops, and it was fun to describe them later to Shelly in my letters.

  The Bakery Boys next door to Lila's barbershop belonged to Paul, the dad, and his two sons, Ronny and Donny. Paul and Ronny did most of the baking. Donny, the younger brother, was the runner. He ran everywhere. They all looked alike, except Donny was about three-fourths the size of his older brother and dad. Donny could not stand still. When he wasn't actually covering ground, he ran in place.

  My first time there, we passed him when we entered the bakery, and after a quick hello and smile to me, he raced across the highway in between traffic and ran down the side of the road toward the south end of town. He was carrying a blue zipper bag.

  "Is Donny off to the bank?" Lila asked Paul, who came out from behind the counter to greet us.

  He laughed. "Any excuse to run out of here."

  I found out later the bank was three miles away.

  "Donny has running in his blood," Paul said, and you could tell he was proud.

  Paul seemed to really like Lila. He gazed at her the way you'd look at a movie star.

  Ronny, the older brother, loved baking. He barely glanced at me while he shaped bread dough into long skinny loaves and put them on huge baking sheets. You could tell he'd made thousands of loaves by the way his hands and body moved so effortlessly. The smell of living yeast and flour was very comforting.

  Along the front of their store was a glass display case full of fresh scones, donuts, giant cookies, and all shapes and sizes of bread and rolls.

  On the top of the counter was a loaf of bread that looked like a life-sized bunny rabbit. It was crouched down with its ears resting against its back, and its eyes were plump raisins.

  Paul gave us a tour of the oven room and storage area in the back, and then he handed me a paper bag full of bread and cookies, on the house.

  The same thing had happened when Lila had introduced me to Franny, the flower and gift shop lady, the day before. Franny wouldn't let us leave until she'd given Lila fresh red carnations for her hair and a bouquet of orange lilies for me, on the house.

  Back in Lila's shop, I said, "Don't people use money here?"

  Lila laughed. "I cut everyone's hair, so we have a casual barter economy. It's more fun than money." Lila and all the Rainbow Village people did seem to enjoy each other and their work.

  Lila's village was like a fairy tale compared to the way my mom worked. Janice was always exhausted and stressed about her job, and her coworkers were always lying or stealing or fighting over tips or having accidents. Lila worked in heaven and Janice worked in hell.

  Some days, instead of going to the shops, I stayed at the beach house with Chloe and Zoe, who turned out to be great companions when I wanted to talk to someone about what I was reading. And reading was mostly what I did through the next week.

  I gathered interesting titles from the top shelf of the Crow's Nest library first. Lila had science fiction and fantasy up there. Mysteries, biographies, and some westerns and historical novels were on the second shelf. Next came psychology, physics, biology, environmental science, geography, natural history, archeology, and other college stuff.

  The weird thing was, Lila hadn't even gone to college, except barber college in Portland. When I asked her about it, she said she'd tried a few college classes, but she decided books were her best teachers. She said sometimes college teachers had limited life experience and that lack warped their judgment.

  I agreed with her there. Of all my teachers so far, only two seemed as smart as I am, so what does that say about the profession?

  When I shared my observation with Lila, she laughed and said, "Maybe it says something about you."

  On the bottom shelf of the bookcase, resting on the built in drawers below it, were the books about philosophy, religion, and art, which Lila said were the foundation of civilization. She had several versions of the bible and copies of other scriptures she'd mentioned to me, like The Bagavad Gita, The Tao te Ching, The Koran, The Teachings of Confucius, and The Buddha's Four Nobel Truths. She also had books by Plato, Socrates, Rumi, Wendell Holmes, Florence Scovil Shinn, Louise Hay, and Benjamin Franklin. A thin paperback called The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment caught my eye as well.

  The art books were heavy glossy coffee table books with gorgeous pictures of great art and commentaries in small print about the artists' life and times. The art books made me wish Janice liked to read, because I thought she would really enjoy them. One time I heard her tell a boyfriend if she were rich she'd have a huge house filled with modern art.

  I didn't know how long I was going to stay with Lila, so I concentrated on the top and bottom shelves of her library. I was beginning to wish summer vacation would last forever.

  I talked with Shelly nearly every day on the phone. Salty Dog taffy was a hit at the lake house in Wisconsin. Soon after they got it, Shelly sent me money and a shopping list of which flavors to send, so I returned to The Salty Dog. When I walked in, Les told me the job offer was still on. I smiled and told her no thanks. To myself I thought, I already have a job wearing a nice little groove in Lila's beach house.

  Shelly was getting tired of waterskiing and of trying to keep boys from pestering her to death. Two of her tall blond cousins, both in high school, appointed themselves bodyguards, solving the boy problem for a few days. Then they both transformed into slobbering idiots and competed for her attention, so she was doomed. I was relieved to be tall and big-footed and gangly, and I felt a deep gratitude for my insane orange hair. Being invisible to boys was a blessing.

  My description of Lila's library intrigued Shelly. Every time we talked, she'd send me on a scavenger hunt.

  "Find out ho
w long humans have been on the planet," she said one day. "I'm trying to predict how long it will take for boys to evolve beyond chimpanzees."

  When I gave her the answer the next day, she said, "Okay, what did Gauguin's family think of his naked lady paintings?"

  Necessity had forced Shelly and me to progress to something more fun than game shows. I felt closer to her than ever, even though we were a thousand miles apart.

  I worried enough about the phone bills though to talk to Lila about them. Rule number four, Communicate clearly and completely. One morning while we walked barefoot on the beach, winding along right where the water kissed the shore, I said, "My mom gave me some money. I'll pay the phone bills." I hoped I had enough to cover the calls I'd made so far.

  "It's very considerate of you to offer, Cassandra, but no thank you. It's such a joy having you here. I want to pay for all our expenses.”

  "I'm glad you and Shelly are close," she said. "Sometimes long distance friendship can be the sweetest, the most intimate. Something about all the miles in between cuts to the heart of things."

  "But long calls three times a week?" I asked, wondering if I should try to cut back. Shelly's parents were rich, and they traveled all over the world, so she always had plenty of money for anything.

  "More often if you like," Lila said. "Don't think about money, Cassandra. I have plenty. It's an honor to share with my only granddaughter."

  I nodded. A thought was sneaking around in my head just beyond consciousness. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what it was. Lila seemed lost in her thoughts, too, so we walked along in silence a while, letting the water lick our toes.

  Just then a huge wave knocked us both down and rolled us up the beach, where it left us drenched and covered in sand. I couldn't believe it. The waves weren't even big that day, just medium sized and well behaved. Where had this monster come from?

  I looked over to see if my grandma was okay, and she was laughing so hard she couldn't get up off the foamy debris-littered beach. She looked like a cartoon sea monster, complete with a rope of brown kelp across her arm. My hair was plastered to my head with foamy sand, so I must have looked pretty funny myself, because she took one look at me and laughed so hard she had a coughing fit. She had to roll over and pound on the sand until she could gather herself together enough to stand up.