May 2019
As the godmother of her friend Anna's first child, Connor or "Lil Con" for short, Jean, who also served as Anna's bridesmaid, enjoyed the honor of being the first of her friends to meet the new arrival. When Terry, Anna's husband and Lil Con's dad, answered the door, Jean still did a double takeâeven though Terry lost all his hair 9 months ago. As she followed the perfectly round parabola of the back of Terry's head, which practically glowed in the dim corridor, bobbing like a pale balloon down the hall to the master bedroom, Jean speculated as to why she still found his chrome dome so jarring.
Obviously, his baldness contrasted sharply with his otherwise youthful appearance. In fact, when Jean first met Terry, shortly after he and Anna began dating, Jean considered his thick brown mane one of his most attractive features. With that gone, he looked homely, she admitted to herself. He lacked the tough guy bravado to pull off the skinhead look. Between his tonsure and bookish demeanor, the hairless Terry gave off a monkish, ascetic vibe at odds with the viral young man her friend married.
Beyond the way his hairlessness spoiled his previous good looks, Jean also puzzled as to why his hair disappeared. Neither he nor Anna gave her a satisfactory explanation. When Jean asked Terry, he grinned sheepishly and said, "It's something I have to do." Expecting a better explanation from her friend, Jean quizzed Anna, who shrugged, and said, "It's a long story. I'll explain it later." Jean still waited for later to arrive, but the sight of her friend and godchild in bed pushed aside all other thoughts.
After the required greetings and exclamations over Lil Con, who slept through all the adoration and present opening, Terry left the room to mow the lawn and, incidentally, give the two women a chance for some "girl talk."
"Wow, Anna," Jean exclaimed after he left. "You and Terry didn't wait very long to get started. If I didn't know better, I'd say Lil Con's a honeymoon baby."
Anna blushed at this. "Oh, no, Jean," she laughed. "Lil Con was conceived somewhere else entirely different."
"Really?" Jean asked, "Do tell." Still sitting on the edge of the bed, she scooted up closer to Anna, who reclined, Lil Con in the crook of her arm.
"All right," Anna agreed, a conspiratorial grin playing across her lips. "But don't let Terry know I told you. What goes on between us is supposed to be secret."
"Mum's the word," agreed Jean.
At the risk of jostling Lil Con, Anna leaned as far forward as she dared and dropped her voice. "The short version is I backed it up to the fence."
Jean scowled. "What on Earth does that mean?"
"That requires the long version." Anna leaned back again, relaxing into her story.
September 2018
When his wife's face suddenly floated into view on the other side of the glass, Terry struggledâbut utterly failedâto make himself meet her eyes. With his hair completely shaved off, wearing prison stripes, his wrist handcuffed to the desk, keeping him in his place, he no longer resembled even a pale shadow of the man she'd once known, let alone the handsome groom in the tux that she gave herself to so enthusiastically such a short time ago.
He felt thoroughly, utterly degraded, the consequences of his sinful past fully exposed to her view. His ears flamed with humiliation. He recognized the silliness and futility of his embarrassment. None of this surprised her. After all, the authorities no doubt duly informed Anna of her husband's arrest, trial, conviction on all counts, and his sentence to do time in prison, which also started his first term of baldness of the head for life.
Still, he doubted that that theoretical knowledge prepared her to actually
see
him in this sorry state, sunk to the deepest depths: shorn, shamed, and publicly exposed as a criminal and convict. When he did chance a glance up, he saw his worst fears confirmed. His wife avoided his gaze, looking pained and uncomfortable as she fidgeted in the chair on the other side of the glass. When the phone by his left hand rang, he picked up the receiver with a gulp.
"Hello?" he said.
Anna swallowed then replied, "Hello, dear."
Terry cringed at that last word, normally a term of endearment, doubting she meant it that way at all. He tried to fill the awkward silence that followed with mundane chatter. "How are you? I'm glad to see you."
"I'm happy to see you," Anna sighed. "But just not this way."
"Yes, I know," he said, looking down at the desk. "These aren't the best of circumstances."
"That's not what I mean," she snapped. "I mean I don't like seeing you this way. Your hair was so beautiful. Now, with your head shaved, you look so ugly."
"I'm sorry," he shrugged helplessly. "It's not my fault."
"What do you mean it's not your fault?" she nearly spat. "You chose this."
"No, I didn't," he replied defensively, though in his heart he admitted she spoke truth. "The judge ordered this."
"Forget the judge," she scolded. "You knew when you did those things, committed those âacts, you knew you might end up like this, and did them anyway."
"I accept responsibility for my actions and will pay my debt to society," he replied, reciting the speech he'd repeated to everyoneâguard, barber, nurseâever since his incarceration. "I will reform my lifeâyou'll see."
"Well, what am
I
supposed to do until then all by myself?" Anna leaned forward toward the glass to emphasize her point. "
I
didn't do anything, and yet I have to deal with a bald ugly husband who is behind bars while I sit out here all alone."
"It's no picnic in here, you know," he said, but his words rang hollow even in his own ears. After all, notwithstanding his expectation of enforced celibacy in prison, he'd hardly lacked for sexual contactâif not outright sexâso far in his brief incarceration. Even when the women with power over him refused to touch him, such as the nurse, they insisted he touch himselfâeither alone or in their presence.