Creative Writing Class

Three Things

Lena was afraid of three things. She was afraid of losing her hair, of being seen naked, and of Paul dying.

Paul died. He died in the spring. He died of cancer. It was sudden.

They were on an autumn backpacking trip in the Shenandoah Valley, and Paul had felt sick the whole weekend. Usually at the end of their hikes, they stopped for pizza at some out-of-the-way mom-and-pop shop and then drove home just before sunset. Their routine had become a favorite tradition. But this year Paul was so nauseated when they reached their car, they drove straight to the ER. They thought maybe he’d picked up some bacteria or parasite on the trail. Perhaps they hadn’t purified their water properly.

A week of tests, a diagnosis, a prediction of six months. Six months. Six months had always seemed to Lena like such a long time to wait for anything. Six months to Christmas, six months to graduation, six months to the wedding. Why hadn’t she ever realized how short six months is?

Paul left his job, Lena took a leave of absence from the college, and in six months, they crammed in all their favorite things. In November, they walked to the coffee shop and around the lake every day. In December, they cut down an enormous Christmas tree, decorated it with a thousand white lights, and gave gifts to every single person on Lena’s Christmas list.

 It wasn’t too cold in January so they went out to the museums and ate at their favorite restaurants while discussing their favorite books. They talked about the Beatific Vision, the beauty of nature, and the human experience.

February brought lots of snow so they stayed in and Lena cooked their favorite Indian food. As Paul’s energy waned, Lena stopped cooking to help Paul more, and she ordered carryout. They watched Gladiator four times and all six seasons of LOST.

Warm weather accompanied daylight saving time that March, and so Lena opened the windows to the birds chatting on the telephone wire outside their bedroom, and she lay in bed with Paul while they exulted in the long days, the smell of boxwood, and the sight of big clouds in a perfectly blue sky. March passed gratifyingly slowly.

April was short. Unimaginable things happened. In two weeks, Paul lost the ability to speak, to see, to move; he died. They buried him; friends sent cards and flowers and stuff. And Lena went home alone.

Lena didn’t know what to do. She waited. She wanted people to notice that she was different. That something awful had happened to her. But when she went to the bank, no one seemed to notice that half of her was missing. At the drugstore, why didn’t anyone notice that she was bleeding to death? Lena thought it must be obvious to the cashier at the grocery store that she was dying. Couldn’t she tell? But the woman just handed her the receipt and began ringing up the next customer’s items.

Alone, Lena went home. She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. She looked at her long brown hair—hair that Paul had loved to run his fingers through; hair that other women envied; hair that she’d always secretly worried would thin. Like the woman she’d stood behind last year at the Dave Matthews concert. How could anyone go out in public with such thin hair? Why didn’t she wear a hat or a wig? How could she be happy? Lena couldn’t imagine being happy without such a fundamental part of her.

Lena looked at herself in the mirror. She felt so different since Paul died. But she couldn’t tell if she looked different. She opened the cabinet and took out the scissors and began to cut off her hair. With one big snip she cut off one whole side as high as her cheekbone. Her heart thumped and she paused as she thought, “I look different.” Then she grabbed big clumps of it and hacked off the rest as short as she could. She stared in the mirror. She opened the cabinet again and took out Paul’s clippers and buzzed off the rest of her hair like a GI. Then she reached into the shower for her razor and shaved her head clean. She leaned her head into the tub and rinsed it off. She dried it and looked in the mirror at her gleaming scalp.

Lena walked into the bedroom. She looked around for something to change into. But she couldn’t remember which piles of clothes were clean and which were dirty. It had only been two weeks since she’d done laundry, but it seemed like a lifetime ago. Lena looked in the closet; Paul’s clothes were there, next to hers. She couldn’t decide; she closed the closet door.

Lena walked past the big mirror that hung over her dresser, and at first she didn’t recognize herself because of the shiny bald head. When she remembered what she had done, she felt pleased. She stopped in front of the mirror, and faced it. First she took off her blouse and her jeans. She hesitated a moment. After she had unfastened her bra and let it fall to the floor, she stepped out of her underwear, and stood and contemplated her nakedness. Her baldness. Her self without Paul.

Lena left the bedroom. She walked downstairs and opened the front door. She stepped out onto the sidewalk and stood there, exposed. She breathed in and out, deeply. She felt different. She was different.

Lena walked away down the block, unafraid.