Helen touched her hair, expecting it to feel different. But it didn’t.
“You can leave your check in the mailbox at the end of the path,” Ashley said. “I don’t like to handle money so soon after I do someone’s hair.”
Helen felt let down somehow. “You don’t have a . . . mirror?” she asked, though that wasn’t what was really bothering her.
“In the back there’s a pond with a fine reflection,” Ashley said.
For a moment Helen thought she meant for her to go back there.
“But,” Ashley continued, “I find no need to look at myself. At least, not my outer self.”
“Right,” Helen said.
On her way back, she imagined her hair was like a flower box cradling her head. That was what terra-cotta made her think of. Or Mexican pottery. Her hair was like a large jug. She tried to pull a piece in front of her so she could get a look, but it wasn’t quite long enough.
Before she’d come up here, she’d gone for a haircut. Everyone in her salon back home knew what had happened—it had been the lead story on the six o’clock news the night of the accident—and acted strangely toward her, so strangely that Helen had felt frivolous for going in the first place, even though she’d worn a black turtleneck and asked for something “simple.” As a result, she had a kind of shag that reminded her of a helmet.
The cocktail party was ending when she got back. Through the window, Helen saw people finding seats for the slide show, guzzling final glasses of wine before it was whisked away, settling in. She saw Joanne, with her head bent intimately toward the sculptor who worked in wire. Helen slipped in the back door and took a seat in the last row. Joanne was flirting with that man. Hadn’t they both giggled at his phrase “worked in wire” ? It sounded painful, they’d laughed. Now Joanne was—stroking his thigh! During the day, the artists supposedly went into their little private studios and worked. Lunch was delivered silently, anonymously, on their doorsteps in solemn brown bags. When did Joanne have time to get to the point where she would stroke this guy’s inner thigh?
“Rocks,” a woman’s voice said.
The slide showed dozens of rocks, all flat and smooth.
“They do not betray us,” the voice continued.
The slide changed.
A black rock with white writing appeared on the wall. MURDERER.
Next slide.
BIRTH.
Then the lights went on.
Joanne and the wire man were gone! Helen looked around the room frantically. They had slipped out. They were in his cabin, Helen realized, fucking. She was trembling. A woman came up to her, took a rock from a pail, and handed it to her with a piece of colored chalk. Pink.
“On one side,” the voice said, “write the word that describes the best side of you. On the other side, the worst.”
Some people began to scribble right away. Others thought first, then wrote more carefully. But Helen just stared at her blank rock. She remembered how as a child she would collect rocks on the beach, glue them together, and paint the words ROCK CONCERT on them. She gave them as Christmas presents.
“You went,” Danielle said. Her rock had bright blue writing on it.
Helen nodded.
“Did it help?” Danielle said.
She looked so hopeful that Helen smiled and nodded.
Helen wished she could read what Danielle had written on her rock. She wished she could read all the rocks. But she supposed that was like reading someone else’s mail. Unethical.
Danielle was bending down to be closer to Helen. She said, “This guy I went to high school with? Jerry? He got shot in a hunting accident and they had to cut off his leg.”
Helen pulled away. Was this what she had become? Someone to tell horrible stories to?
But Danielle moved closer again. “And this guy, Jerry, said that at night his leg would itch. The leg that wasn’t there! It would itch! Or cramp!”
Helen had heard of this phenomenon before. She’d heard that women who’d lost their babies still heard them cry at night.
“A phantom limb,” Helen said.
“What I wonder is if you still feel your spleen,” Danielle said.
“Oh,” Helen said, relaxing, “well, no. I mean, I never really felt it in the first place, when it was there.”
Danielle considered that. “Wow,” she said at last.
IN THE CABIN, Helen finally saw her hair. It did not look very different, though she examined it closely. She separated large pieces of it, let them fall slowly back into place. She made a cat’s cradle of hair with her fingers, searching for the change, the claylike color. It seemed shinier, perhaps. It felt softer. She smelled, vaguely, salad smells coming from it. She wished Joanne would come back so she could get a second opinion. But Joanne was with the wire man, fondling him. Being fondled.