More than a few clock winds past the onset of widowhood, M., a retired nurse, made a declaration that she would only date men who were completely bald.
She made the decision shortly after breaking up with a man who had worn a cumbersome toupée.
On their final date, she had been obliged to look discreetly away while, in an effort to retrieve his fallen napkin, her dinner partner’s hairpiece fell to the floor. Being half under the table and half out, he was confident that he had aptly adjusted the piece back to the top of his head with no discovery or undue kerfuffle. But in this awkward position, he had accidentally placed one of the sideburns smack-dab in the middle of his forehead. In between the next few bites, he touched and retouched his forehead, as though he couldn’t quite get past station one of an Orthodox crossing of himself.
In an effort not to be unkind, M. excused herself to the lady’s room, hoping he would do the same in her absence and discover his misalignment. But when she returned, she found him in the same state of twitching and twiddling.
Had it only been the toupée, M. might have engaged in a heart-to-heart discussion, and the two of them might have sorted through the clumsiness of the piece, and moved forward with a rewarding relationship. But the hairpiece came to symbolize the man’s superficial nature and tendency to brag when no boasting was warranted. As she grew more and more impatient with the toupee, she also realized he appeared to have all the accoutrements of a delayed mid-life crisis.
She had grown tired of squatting towards the ground to deliver her bum into the seat of his shiny red Corvette and she concluded that she could no longer listen to the wearisome drone of his supposed stock market successes.
She longed desperately for someone who was comfortable being precisely who-he-was-and-no-more. She longed for plainness, and with it, she came to believe that she, too, could then be herself.
So, when M.’s girlfriends spotted the bald gentleman having dinner alone at the bar, they were abuzz. As soon as M. walked through the door, they alerted her to their discovery. She had barely started the untying of her headscarf when the group began encouraging her to walk right up and introduce herself. They all talked at once, to each other, to the group, and to the air. They were gobsmacked by the good fortune of finding for their friend, a man dining alone beneath a scalp that was as shiny and smooth as the top of a peeled boiled egg.
He magnificently exceeded the no-hair guideline. In fact, his plainness so exceeded her expectations that her bravery grew as she anticipated her encounter.
“There he is, M., exactly as you said you would want your next man to be,” they clucked as they shooed her forward.
“What do I say? How do I introduce myself?”
They all concluded that she should tell him he looked like someone she knew.
Taking their advice, she approached him and told him exactly that.
Barely a breath was taken before he replied.
“Well, I can be.”
With two successful icebreakers between them, they had dinner that night, together at the bar.
It would take a month and a day before she gently rolled her palm over his smooth naked dome. But when she did, she realized she felt calm and safe again, not aspiring for anything more than being herself.
M. had been a nurse on a Pullman car. Everything about her was exact. A single strand of hair had never strayed from its spot without intention, nor had an errant button ever accidentally been undone.
She spoke with the precision of a metronome, never once hurrying past a Southern- laced syllable or letter. She still proudly tipped the scales at her twenty-something weight.
I wagered she woke every morning looking as tidy as a perfectly made-up bed.
It was several years later, that my husband, Bothwell, met M. and C., at a community trivia night.
I’d been out of town for a board meeting, so I missed the gathering. When I arrived home, Bothwell was excited to tell me about the lively couple and their evening together.
It wasn’t long before the four of us had dinner.
Bothwell had not told me about C.’s slick dome. It could have doubled as a flesh-colored pool hall ball still in the cellophane package. I next noticed his smile. I’d never noticed a smile so wide. When C. smiled, he had a way of locking his back teeth together. The gesture produced a wide horizontal grin that put me at ease.
C. bought old houses, fixed then up, and then sold or rented them. He also knew engines and loved them.
“I can usually tell what’s wrong with an engine by holding my hand to it and listening.” As he said it, his palm was flat on the table, his eyes closed, and his head steady-straight in a trancelike pose.
That natural affinity for mechanical parts put him on the VIP contact list of many Palm Beach yacht owners.
M. and C. weren’t married to each other and they didn’t bother with long explanations as to why they weren’t.
In a Florida retirement community, it never takes long to begin the discussion of exes or deceased spouses. C.’s late wife, E., attended Julliard in New York City, before launching a hairdressing business. By the time C. met her, she owned a hair salon on Long Island that employed fifteen stylists.
Not long after their meeting, they married. But the tale he chose to tell about his marriage was also the birth story of his bald head.
It wasn’t long after his late wife had triumphed over breast cancer that a new ovarian malignancy arrived. She was told she would lose her hair as a result of the chemo treatments.
She decided to forego the gradual loss of hair, and leapfrog to complete baldness, by shaving her head.
On the appointed day, her fifteen hairdresser employees gathered around her. C. stood off to the side, staunch in his support, but not mixing too much in the tears of the feminine circle.
Suddenly, C. jumped in the middle of the sad circle and asked if he could borrow the shears.
Cutters in hand he mowed through a row of his own thick hair, and then through another and another until he was completely bald.
All sixteen mouths dropped open in stunned wide zeroes. A shocked hush hung for a minute, but only until someone giggled.
The small snicker swelled into laughter, applause and finally into boisterous cheering. In the midst of the spontaneous celebration C. handed the clippers back to his wife and made his declaration.
“Now, we will both be the same.”
Ten years later at our dinner table he still proudly displayed his naked crown. With a nostalgic nod he rubbed it with his palm. I imagined that he was reliving that first naked swipe in his late wife’s salon.
An attentive M. had taken in the story as though it was her first time hearing it, but I could tell she had heard it many times over. I have often noticed when love and admiration travel together, monotony can rarely hitch a ride. To myself I queried if it might have even been the story-link that cinched the pair together.
And quietness struck our foursome like a first gong of the morning.
For goodness, decency, and generosity, all wrapped into one, are rare company to keep. And when we meet them and see them and feel them, we long to never let go.
For goodness, decency, and generosity, all wrapped into one, are rare company to keep.
We search again and again to be in their presence. As though by contagion the same grace will be ours.
The virtues themselves are housed by our chosen friends, so we bask in the shadow of the few whom we find.
One day I asked one of those special rare friends if she thought she would write her memoir soon.
Because she has much to relay, I encouraged her greatly. She’d risen with ease and speed before her retirement to several different and successful CEO posts. Her colleagues and friends believed she deserved her success; so beloved accolades always accompanied her triumphs.
Her reply to my query was unique in its kindness:
“I have not the time. I go golfing with my husband most every day.”
I told her I didn’t know she golfed.
“Oh, I don’t,” she replied. “I walk with him, alongside the cart.”
“To be with him,” she added.
It’s hard to look squarely into the center of that kind of love.
To be in its presence made me love the world more.
All of them, love and decency and goodness, catch on like a movement, but they start with a story, often no bigger than a minute of time.
How very beautiful, Lynne ! The story touches deeply my heart. I could just keep rereading it again and again. ❤️
“For goodness, decency, and generosity, all wrapped into one, are rare company to keep…”. Indeed!