The woman in the headscarf held out her hand and the whole room leaned forward to look. Her name was Elena, and she was fifty one years old, the younger sister of Veronica, whom no one in the family had seen in nearly six years. She stood in the middle of the dining room at the shower, a slight woman in a blue scarf and a gray dress, and turned her hand over in the light so we could see her fingers. Each tip was a perfect oval of pale rose, with a tiny silver flower at the tip, like a stroke of frost.
She said, “Veronica, I did not come to cause a scene. I came because my niece told me you would be here, and I thought I had run out of time.” Her voice was soft, with a slight tremor. Tía Veronica, in her white dress and her mimosa, had turned the color of the tablecloth. She said, “Elena. I thought you were in Houston.” Elena said, “I was. I was in the cancer center. Eleven months. I had a cancer in my breast, and then in my lungs.” She paused. “I did not call you.”
I looked at my daughter. Gabby was standing by the gift table with her hands pressed together. She was very pale. She said, in a whisper, “Mama, I did not know she was the sister of Tía. I swear.” Elena heard it. She smiled. She turned to Gabby and said, “Mija, I know. You have no idea who I am. But I know who you are.” Elena looked back at Veronica. “She did my hands. Every month, in the infusion room, on Friday afternoons. I never told her my last name. I only told her I was lonely.”
There is always something to paint, and there is always someone in the chair who needs to be told so.
Veronica sat down. She sat down hard on a folding chair, with her mimosa tilting in her hand, and the glass hit the floor and did not break. Elena went on. “The chemotherapy ruined my fingertips. They went black and flaked away, and I could not bear to look at my own hands. I cried every day. I felt like I was disappearing. Then, one Friday, a young woman with a little rolling cart came to my chair and said, Would you like me to paint them? I said, there is nothing to paint. She said, There is always something to paint.”
She had painted them over the stubs, with a soft false tip, in the pale pink. And every month she came back and did it again. She had talked about her mother and about the family restaurant. She had made Elena laugh. She had never taken a cent. Once, when Elena asked why she did it, Gabby had said, quietly, “Because everyone should get to feel pretty on a bad day.” Elena stopped. She had to take a breath before she could go on. “Veronica, I want you to know that your niece saved my life.”
The room was so quiet I could hear the clock in the hallway. Veronica was staring at her sister. Her face was crumpled, her mascara beginning to run. She whispered, “Why did you not tell me?” Elena said, “Because the last time we spoke, you told me I was a failure for marrying a mechanic. And I was proud.” She put her hand on her heart. “I have been so proud. I did not know how to be anything else.” Veronica put both hands over her face. A sound came out of her that I will not forget.
I will say this for my sister in law: she is capable of an astonishing speed. She got to her feet and crossed the room in her heels and threw her arms around the thin shoulders of her sister. They held on. Veronica said, “Lena, I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.” Elena said, “Hush.” She was crying too. The mom to be, my niece, put down her gift and came over and put an arm around both of them. The whole room was in tears. My daughter stood in the corner, swaying slightly, and I went to her.
I held her. I could feel her heart going fast. She said, “Mama, I never wanted anyone to know.” I said that I knew. I said that the best kind of kindness never wants an audience, and that sometimes the world arranges for it to have one anyway. She leaned her head against my shoulder. Across the room, Veronica was wiping the cheeks of her sister with a napkin, and Elena was laughing at something, her silver flowers flashing as she waved her hand. It was a beautiful sight.
Veronica came to the salon the next morning, early, before it opened. She stood in the doorway, without makeup, in jeans. She asked Gabby if she could do something for her, anything. Gabby said there was nothing. Veronica said, “I would like to buy the building.” My daughter laughed, thinking it a joke. It was not. By the end of the month, Veronica had purchased the whole strip mall, and she signed over the lease of the salon to Gabby, for a dollar a year, forever. She also set up a fund at the cancer center for the free manicure program.
The program has grown. It runs five days a week now, with six technicians, and a waiting list of volunteers. Elena is in remission. She comes by the cancer center on the first Friday of every month, in a scarf of her own design, and sits in the chair by the window. Gabby does her hands. They talk. Sometimes Veronica comes too, and sits on the stool with a magazine, pretending to read, and never says a word. At the end, Elena holds up her fingers, rose pink, glittering, and the three of them look at them together.
