I poured some kibble into Manny’s bowl and offered a squeaky toy to occupy him. And then she and I moved into the bathroom. I ran my fingers through my red locks, red like fire, red like blood, ignoring the strands in my hands as I went.
“Funny,” I muttered to Sally. “I feel like I have no idea who I’ll be when we’re done with this.”
I saw a perplexed look wash across her face in the mirror. “What do you mean? You’ll be Natalie. Just without hair.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “Nat, nothing’s changing.”
“No, what I mean is, it’s funny how much of our identity is wrapped up in our hair. I mean, think about it: Remember that haircut you got right out of college? The one that was sort of lopsided, and shorter in the back than in the front?” Sally groaned and stuck out her tongue. “Right, so what I’m saying is, it’s funny how your hair can make you feel uglier than Chewbacca.” I paused. “God, I remember when I showed up at the salon with a picture of ‘The Rachel.’ And, even though Paul cut my hair to perfection, I still wasn’t as glamorous or as skinny or as whatever as Jennifer Aniston.” I laughed at the irony. “But I thought the perfect haircut might somehow lead to the perfect life.”
“And sister, you definitely weren’t dating Brad Pitt.” Sally smiled.
“True that.” I sighed. “Anyway, all I’m trying to say is that I wonder who I’ll be once this is all gone.”
Sally thought for a minute and then plugged the razor into the outlet by the sink. “I guess you can be anyone you want to be.” Then she laughed. “I think I wrote something similar for Cosmo last year. Change Your Hair! Change Your Life!” She snorted. I knew that Sally loved her job as a writer, but these days, she was increasingly bored by it all. Last week, she vented that she wanted to cover something that mattered—hard news—she said, but I told her not to underestimate the powers of Cosmo on the masses. She sighed and said that there’s only so many times you can write about the anatomy of an orgasm without wondering if you’re faking it yourself.
In my bathroom, I poked my head through a garbage bag and stared myself down in the mirror. As a kid, my hair was always flying in my face. My mother would push it away or clip it back with barrettes. “You look so unkempt,” she would say, over and over again, as if tangled hair led to vagabond ways, but within minutes, it was in my eyes again, offering a safe layer between me and the world. Now, I wondered, what was left to protect me?
I took a deep breath and told Sally that I was ready. She started in the back, where I couldn’t see the damage. I felt the vibration of the razor and heard the hum of its motor, but for those first few minutes, it didn’t seem so bad. And once you’ve shaved the back of your head, you really don’t have much of a choice but to continue. Even if you wanted to stop, which I did when I saw the horsetail-like chunks falling to the ground, you realize that you’ll look too much like a freak to not press on. I mean, you simply can’t get by with a half-shaved head. Even in New York, where trust me, just about anything goes, including a man who wears only skintight polka-dotted spandex and bright green Converse high-tops just about every day of the year. I walk past him most mornings, and no one even turns to notice.
Sally moved on to the sides, and we both agreed that if I’d sported said mohawk while Ned was still around, he wouldn’t have had the balls to leave. I considered stopping there—I’d never have had the guts to pull off a mohawk in my former life, and I reveled in the fact that I looked like an ultimate badass—but I knew that the look was only temporary. Within weeks, those strands, too, would be clogging the drain, serving as a reminder of how much I’d already lost. So I told her to keep going, and not ten minutes later, it was gone.
Sally and I sat silently for five minutes and just stared into the mirror. And then she wrapped her arms around me and held me until I stopped crying.
“I think you’re very brave, you know,” she said.
“I don’t feel like I am. I’d like to be, but I don’t feel that way at all.”
“You are. Without even knowing it.”
I thought about what she said long after she left. Manny curled up in bed with me, and I watched his breathing grow heavy and his eyes flicker from his deep doggie sleep. I’d read once that brave men aren’t those who never sense fear. The brave men are the ones who sense fear and keep walking toward it. I wondered if it counted if you didn’t have a choice in the first place.
A WEEK LATER, on an overcast Saturday that had me staring out the window watching the planes soar past on their way to JFK, Dr. Zach called. I’d been contemplating how to move forward when the only place I felt like moving was into a burrowed hole in the ground. So when he offered to help me run errands or come over to keep me company, I declined, sticking my feet on top of the radiator and wiggling my toes. The solitude of myself would be just fine for today, thanks very much.
But when Manny went to the door and whined, I realized that an errand boy might come in handy. Look for small gifts, I heard Janice’s voice in my ear. Zach was at my place in fifteen minutes.
“Are you planning on leaving the apartment at all today?” he asked, as he latched Manny’s leash to his collar.
“Not if I can help it.” I pulled my red chenille blanket over my chest and reached for the remote. “You know, moping and all. Good for the soul. Everyone needs a good mope now and then.” I curled my legs under me on the couch. “Besides, I have studies to read.” I waved to the pile of papers on my desk. “We’re working on a stem cell push for next year.”
“Sounds important,” he said, then paused. “Actually, I believe the saying is that fresh air is good for the soul.” He got a puzzled look on his face. “Or something like that. So why don’t you take off your slippers, put on your shoes, brush your teeth, and join us.” He paused and smiled. “I like your new ’do.” Then his face fell. “Are you okay with it?”
I shrugged and steadied my voice, trying not to betray the enormity of the loss I felt. “I didn’t have much of a choice.”
“Well then.” He clapped his hands together. “Hop to it. Let’s get this show on the road.”
I sighed and gingerly lowered my feet to the floor. “Christ, if I’d wanted a drill sergeant, I would have asked my mother to come over. Fine. Give me a minute.” I went into the bedroom and self-consciously ran my hand over the rose-colored silk scarf on my head. I pulled on my now too-baggy jeans, a ratty Dartmouth sweatshirt, and my sheepskin winter boots. Then I reached for the babushka-like hat that Lila had bought for me on her recent work trip to Prague—as a consultant, she spent half of her life around the world—and surveyed myself in the mirror. With the hat, you could barely tell that I was bald, which I supposed was the sole perk of shaving your head in the winter. I grabbed my North Face jacket and a ball for Manny and rejoined Zach in the living room, where he was crouched over Manny, tousling the hair behind his ears.
“Let’s do this. Get this show on the road,” I said unenthusiastically.
“With that kind of attitude, I think maybe Manny and I could make do without you.”
“Is that a promise or a threat?” I said, opening the door and locked up, trudging through my overly lit apartment hall to the elevator.
“What’s with the dreariness?” Zach asked, as we stepped in and I pressed the lobby button.
“What’s not with it? I think I’m entitled to a little self-pity.” I caught myself. “I know, I know, statistically, a positive attitude helps beat cancer. I swear, if Sally tells me that one more time, I’m going to punch her lights out.”
“Well, that certainly wouldn’t be constructive. Though perhaps therapeutic.” He laughed. “I’m not telling you that you can’t feel sorry for yourself. You’ll never hear me say that. It’s just…” He paused and looked at me. “It’s just when your face is clouded over like that, it disguises how beautiful you really are.”
Before I could reply, the elevator opened, and Manny hurled himself out the door to the waiting street, pulling Zach in his wake. I stoo
d behind them and watched them go, astonished, confused, and a little bit flattered. Not that I thought that I was beautiful. Because right now, I assuredly wasn’t. But the way that Zach said it—the look on his face when he took me in and I saw him consider whether or not to put it out there—well, I knew that whether or not I believed that I was beautiful, he most definitely did.
I caught up to them outside, and we walked the five blocks to the dog run in silence, the tension-filled bubble floating between us. Finally, because I felt weird and then felt weird about feeling weird, I broke the silence with some small talk, misconstrued as it might have been.
“Lila asked about you the other night.” I regretted it as soon as I blurted it out, since this seemed to be perhaps the only thing I could have said to exacerbate the already blooming awkwardness.
“Oh. Okay. Should I ask what she said? Or just leave it at that?” Zach kicked at the gravel.
“Just passing it along.” I shrugged and got up off the bench to throw Manny the ball. But Lila had asked about him when she called to check in on me. She’d been single since they’d broken up, and I think she was starting to see that the greener grass—you know, the perfect open field that you think exists in your neighbor’s backyard—turned out to already be in her own backyard. She’d also made a passing reference of her rediscovered lust to Sally, who told her to stop waxing nostalgic, that nothing good ever comes from going back to a broken relationship, but Lila didn’t seem to listen. She was too busy looking back at Zach with rose-colored glasses.
“I think I’ll just tuck that away into my folder called ‘useless information,’ and let it go at that,” Zach replied when I sat back down. “Besides, I’m not a big fan of revisiting the past. There’s too much else to look forward to.”
Dear Diary,
Well, I’m back at it! Finally, right? I know, I know, I’ve veered wildly off course with this diary-writing exercise, but this time, I’m not writing to bitch and moan or otherwise philosophize. No, the reason I’m writing is because I tracked down Brandon. He was a little harder to find than Colin. Yahoo didn’t work, and Google gave me hundreds of matches—I guess that there’s a Brandon Fletcher who also plays for the Florida Marlins—but I diligently searched through each one as if I were conducting background research for the senator until I found him. Turns out that he’s landed in San Francisco and is running the trading floor for a private equity fund. That sort of suits him. He was always looking to trade up anyway.
It was weird. He picked up the phone, and it was almost as if ten years hadn’t passed. He voice was so etched into me that even if I hadn’t known whom I was calling, I’d have known it was him. He, of course, had heard about my diagnosis, so he apologized for not being in touch. He should have been, he said. He just didn’t know what to say.
I asked him about Darcy, and he cleared his throat and told me that they were divorcing, and because he had said the right thing about him not calling me, I said the right thing about his divorce. I said that I was sorry. But, of course, dear Diary, as you must know, I wasn’t really sorry. I was vindicated. You see, I knew that I’d win!
I told him that I was calling with some odd questions, and if he didn’t mind, he should try to give me as honest answers as possible. He said he’d try, and so I opened with the only one that I could think of, perhaps because it was the only one that mattered. I asked him why he cheated on me.
Oh, Diary, before I go any further, I suppose that you need some background. Brandon and I met our freshman year at Dartmouth. I saw him on the lacrosse field one afternoon while I was running on the track, and he literally took my breath away. I mean it; I had to stop and remind myself to inhale. We circled each other until sophomore year just before the Christmas holidays. We were in the basement of his fraternity house, dancing to the pulsing music of Marky Mark, and suddenly were both too drunk to keep up the farce. He pushed me back into the wall and kissed me. I slept with him that same night. The first and only time I’d done that. I hated the loss of control, but I gave into it anyway. With Brandon, the air of intoxication just sucked me in. It was like that from the first night and all the nights after.
What I didn’t realize and actually wouldn’t realize until we broke for summer vacation was that Brandon was still promised to his girlfriend back home. She was happily tucked away at Michigan State, doing things like knitting him freaking socks and naming their firstborn, and when he went home that summer, it was as if I never existed. He only mentioned her in passing, as we kissed good-bye in the van to the airport. “I might be sort of busy this summer,” he said. “In case you call. There’s, uh, someone back home who I need to sort things out with.” The first time it happened, I literally had no clue. Our flights were being called, and he offered a halfhearted explanation, and then we split up toward our respective gates.
But this pattern replayed itself each passing year. Each fall or each return after Christmas break, I’d pretend that Brandon hadn’t returned home to Darcy and he’d pretend that he didn’t love her. Until my senior year. I was sick of it, so I told him to choose. And because he was there in the moment with me, I won. He chose me. But what he really did was tell me that he chose me while he kept on talking to her. And because these things do eventually find their way to the surface, I ended it. But only after I felt humiliated.
Of course, this didn’t stop me from sleeping with him again for the last few weeks of our senior spring. We hadn’t spoken since.
So a decade later, when I asked him why he’d cheated on me, I honestly didn’t think that he’d come clean, be straight with me. Being straight wasn’t exactly his thing, which I probably don’t need to point out at this moment but feel compelled to do so anyway. When I asked him, he cleared his throat and said he’d call me back. Said he’d never really thought about it, but that he wanted to do the right thing and give me a real answer. He said that he thought he owed me that, but he needed a little time to sort it through. I passed him my number and figured it was a dead end. Manny and I were twenty-five minutes deep into a Press Your Luck rerun on the Game Show Network when the phone rang.
“It’s because you let me,” he said.
Before I could launch a series of protests, all of which would suggest that his misogynistic reasoning pointed the finger firmly at me when he was the one who refused to be pinned down, he elaborated. “You didn’t give me permission, that’s not what I mean. But I never got the sense that you’d fight for me, that you loved me enough to go to the mats. Darcy did, so I was too scared to let her go and risk that I’d gambled it all for someone who was in it to win it.” When I pointed out that I had, actually, laid down the ultimatum, he made an excellent point. “That was just because you didn’t want me to be with her, not because you necessarily wanted me to be with you.”
When I replay his words, Diary, they sound shallower than they were. Because the truth of the matter is, he was probably right. I only raised the stakes because someone else threatened to steal the pot.
Before Brandon and I said good-bye and swapped e-mail addresses he said, “You know, Natalie, I read about you in the papers, I’ve followed your career. And if you’d fought for me the way that you do for so much else in your life, I think I would have married you.” I smiled and told him that, despite the cancer, it’s blessings like these that make me believe in God.
NINE
The next weekend, Sally, Lila, and I set off for bridesmaid dress fittings. I was feeling moderately decent, so when Sally asked if I felt strong enough to join them, I managed a glass of milk and an apple, and slowly made my way to the subway.
The 1/3 train cruised us down to the meatpacking district, and we were buzzed up to the too-chic boutique where Sally had commissioned our dresses. I’d ordered mine in August, back in my halcyon days before the current pulled me out like a tidal wave. The boutique’s size charts were beyond skewed to begin with. As anyone who has ever been a bridesmaid surely knows (and that includes just about every unfortunat
e woman on the planet), bridesmaid dresses fall into the Twilight Zone of sizing. If you order a four, the dress will actually fit someone who is the equivalent of a size ten, except perhaps in the breast area, where it will actually fit someone who is concave or prepubescent. Should you actually be a size ten, you will most definitely be handed a dress that will have the specifications to fit a five-year-old. It’s as if there is a conspiracy against bridesmaids—maybe the tailors are in on it, too, because by the time you’re done, you’ve shelled out the equivalent of the price of the damn dress just to get it to somewhat adhere to your proportions, much less not humiliate you as you saunter down the aisle with a groomsman whom you may or may not be making out with at some point in the future.
Tess, the perfectly blond, perfectly perfect designer who ran the salon, offered us tea and did a double take at the beaded navy scarf wrapped around my head. I saw her trying not to look, her smile freezing one second too long as we locked eyes, and she attempted to determine whether I was or was not bald, and if so, why that might be.
“It’s okay,” I said to her. “Breast cancer.”
Her face flushed. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
I waved her off. “Don’t worry. Everyone wonders.” She nodded as she disappeared into the back, and Sally moved over to hug me.
“Here we are,” Tess said, as she emerged toting our light-blue, tea-length dresses. I held mine up: I didn’t even need to try it on to see that what I had guesstimated would fit me three months back would now drape over me like a curtain after a dip in the ocean.
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