Page 36 of The Sound Of Us

Now, sitting on my boulder of shame, I gather my hair into a bun at the top of my head to keep it off my face while I read with a flashlight in the dark. I rebel at the idea of cutting it.

You see, for someone who’s been through the horrors of chemotherapy, your hair becomes a sort of measuring stick. It isn’t even about the aesthetic appeal of having thick, healthy long hair. It’s simply the fact that you have hair at all and that having all this healthy hair meant that maybe I wasn’t going to die soon. I don’t want to cut it off because I don’t know how long I’ll get to keep it next time.

Next time… next time is like a monster waiting for you around every corner. When will the cancer come back? When will next time be the last time? How many lucky breaks do I get before all this hair falls off and never grows back?

And as for that fucking wall phone, it’s driving me crazy. Some days I’m home way earlier than expected and I get Frank’s call easily. Other days, if I get distracted with the books at work, I barely made it through the door and the phone would be ringing.

My eyes drift across the black water, snaking its way to some distant destination.

Perhaps life is like that, too. No matter what, you just keep moving. Sometimes you trickle along, sometimes you flow with ease. Other times, you gush forward with the momentum of a storm.

Like the pull of the river to the ocean is inevitable, I guess our pull toward death is the same. We think we don’t want it. We think we want to remain an endless flow of nothingness, but the truth is, we’re all looking for that end, where we can reconcile with some greater part of us. Streams and oceans. Life and death. One is intrinsically a part of the other. And the lesser is always pulled toward the greater.

You might think it’s extremely melancholic that I’d be sitting here on my boulder of shame, thinking about all these things. You can call it a benefit to having an illness like cancer. With death walking alongside you daily, it isn’t hard to contemplate life in this way.

In any case, I don’t want to cut my hair. The last time I refused, three years ago, Frank sat me down and cut it himself. I did so well, hiding my tears, until Frank started sweeping the discarded locks into a dirt tray. Something in me snapped when I watched my hair get thrown away like that.

I got embarrassingly dramatic after that. When Frank went outside for a smoke and a beer with Mrs. Dalton’s husband, I dug through the trash, looking for my hair.

Can you imagine trying to pick up hair strands from the trash? It’s not easy, firstly, if the strands came apart once it was dumped. Secondly, if the previous night’s dinner was spaghetti, which Frank dumped in the trash can because it was too saucy, try extracting strands of hair from spaghetti sauce.

Crying like a baby, I finally gave up and lived with my soldier style.

A crunch sounds behind me.

Eli’s lights have been off all evening and well into the night. I’d read almost two hundred pages and didn’t detect a single movement from there. I wanted to go over there a hundred times and Pepper has been whining about it since we got here.

But the truth is that I don’t know how to face him after last Friday. I don’t think I would have actually jumped into the lake, but it had been No Lube Friday again and after all the time I’d been spending with Eli, the thought of being with Frank had become unbearable, worsened even more still by that one tiny moment when I thought Eli was going to kiss me and how much I’d wanted it.

I turn at the second footfall.

I can’t get past this man’s striking beauty. In the light of day, like at the bookstore, he’s beautiful, like an angel. But now, with nothing but the moon to show me his beauty, he is absolutely breathtaking.

The silver light from the moon glitters in his eyes. His lips, so pink and full, open slightly to release air.

He lifts his hand in a wave. I reflect the hand movement, but something has me frozen in that position. He comes closer and with each step, he steals the breath from my body. I have never laid my eyes on a man as captivating as him.

He points to himself, and then to the boulder, where there is ample space next to me. I nod.

I press my thumb to my ring finger, feeling for my wedding band. Because the depth and height of my elation at Eli being here feels dangerous.

My heart shouldn’t jump like this. My stomach shouldn’t twist like this. My instant desire to learn his language so I could talk to him shouldn’t feel this urgent. But I know now what it is to be held in this man’s arms and I don’t know how to exist without it.

He sits. The boulder is big enough to provide a decent space between us. He takes out his phone, types and turns the screen to me.

You don’t want to play today?

I chew on my bottom lip. His eyes drop to where I’m playing with my lip. “Maybe later,” I say. Because I’m afraid of myself when I'm alone with him inside his home.

What are you reading?

I’d already finished the novel and had started with the new book before he arrived. I hand the new book over to him, uncertainty laced in my movement. I’m struggling to look at him without staring. He pages through the book and then hands it back to me. He doesn’t look impressed. How can a person not be impressed by poetry?

“You don’t like it?” I ask, making sure the flashlight provides enough light to my lips.

He shakes his head.

“Why not?”

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