“My fear is simple. It’s my hair.”
“Your hair?” Mary put down her coffee mug to concentrate. She leaned across the little table, squinting. “You fear your hair?”
Val said, “I said it was simple. I mean, in one way.”
Mary sat back and studied her friend. “I’m looking at your hair. Hair! Good god.” Then she laughed. “What? It’s attacking you? What?”
“I was prepared for this—this mockery.” Val stood up. “Do you want more coffee?”
“Actually, I do. It’s rather good coffee.” She swiveled around, watching Mary’s back.
“Your hair looks fine from the back. From the front, too. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
At the refrigerator where she was getting more milk, too, Val said, “I said you’d laugh.”
“I haven’t laughed.”
“Incredulity is a kind of laughter.”
“Be serious, Val.”
“I am serious. I fear taking a shower, the horrid feel of it; I fear what I will do when I get out of the shower—it doesn’t go in any direction at all. I fear looking at myself in a mirror and thinking Who the hell is that. I fear seeing pictures of me from a year ago—let alone several years ago—with that shiny smooth hair and then I gasp at this. This!” She ran her fingers through her thin bangs, holding the strands up, for emphasis. “They’re not even bangs, just hair. Not even coming in gray but yellow or . . . whatever the hell.”
“You look fine.” Mary’s lips were tight.
“You think I’m losing it, right? ‘Losing it.’ There’s a term of irony. In fact, I had lost it, I had bald spots after the steroid shots, hair coming out and all over the towel, all over the floor. I bought wigs. I dreaded getting up in the morning to witness the next installment.”
“You don’t have bald spots.”
“No. The doctor—the doctor at the time—I have a new PCP—that’s a mess, too—prescribed minoxidil and the hair grew back. But it’s not my hair! It’s some hair. Not mine, not even wig hair.”
Mary leaned closer. “You don’t have bald spots.”
Val laughed. “Thanks. I’d noticed that, too. Okay, but what do I have? What next? Not a big fear, I said. A simple fear.” She stared a bit at Mary’s hair. She said nothing. Not much to go on there, either.