The new moon rode high over the modest golden fields and bruised skyline. It is too hot for sleep. Tangled in sheets and sweating, I left the bed frustrated, wanting for sleep but unable to find it. I have decided to take a long walk. The space I create cutting through the thick air is cooling, and when I am far enough from James I can breathe again.
Since he proposed marriage, my hair has been falling out. All around the house I see it, like small golden chains, littering the floor. No matter how much I sweep I cannot clear them away. The strands seem to multiply each day. They are little lightning bolts made of my dead skin that mock me and remind me there's a reason that actresses wear wigs. I wonder if a bald bride is still a beautiful one.
My mother died last year, bald. I believe that we were very much alike, but due to our sameness, could never relate. But we understood each other, silently. I miss her much. I think now that she was faced with this same decision. She chose to marry my father.
I wonder if it cost her her life; the cancer sprouting everywhere it could, seeping into her bones, punishing her for lying. If she were still here and not underground, I do think I would ask her what to do. I am not the type to stand at her grave and ask advice. It is ridiculous to believe a dead person can hear you when their ears have long rotted off their face. She wouldn’t tell me anyway.
When I was a small child she would leave for hours at a time to visit with friends that I knew did not exist. There was Mary her friend from church, who never attended when I did, forever busy with ‘Obligations!’ as my mother would say. There was her doctor Mr. Green, whose office I tried to look up in the phonebook when I was fifteen to no avail. And there was Mrs. Merriweather, the sick old widow that mother would bring dinner every Saturday night, to an address that did not exist anywhere in Texas.
I don't think my father knew she was lying. He was not a monster like she was, and could not smell the dishonesty. But I am her kind, born with a keen nose, always aware of her indiscretions.
I now lie to James. I tell him I am seeing a psychiatrist when really I cannot think of anything more pitiful. For three hours every week I drive as far away as I can before I have to turn back, giving my face a break from it's metaled mask.
I walk home through such blackness that I cannot see two paces in front of me. I dread each step closer to the cabin knowing I will not sleep tonight. There is no extra blanket for my wooden mattress.
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