The Hair of Harold Roux (32 page)

Aaron has just frightened himself badly. On loose gravel he approached a turn and found that he was not going to make it. First he moved into his lean with dreamy assurance, the machine sliding out, drifting out under the illusion of control, but then it went too far and he knew all at once, his mind calculating forces and vectors and coming to the bad conclusion that this was all real and final. He is now lying in a ditch, a tarnished beer can beneath his shoulder, another between his legs, taking stock of his wounds. His left knee will be
heard from later. He nearly vomits from pain and shock, then slowly organizes his legs and arms. He has plenty of time, so he moves slowly, taking stock of synapses, the roots of muscles, the articulations of bones. He has just missed a small white maple, which would have been the end of him. Someday, he knows very well, the small maple in whatever final form it takes will not be avoidable, but as for now he has again missed the immovable object and must continue. He gets up, his knee causing some nausea still, and examines his Honda.

Gasoline is leaking from the tank, but he turns off the ignition and somehow manages to drag the machine around to a more vertical position and the gas stops leaking. The clutch cable is broken, torn out probably by the rock that kissed his knee, but since all the gears are synchromesh that doesn’t matter too much, and he won’t be stranded out here in the country somewhere north of town, on this gravel road among grown-up fields and woods. He limps up and down for a while, speaking to his knee and to his wrist in familiar terms, gruffly but with the familiarity one has toward old friends, old fellow campaigners. It seems that he had some idea of where he was going and the accident should somehow change that murky intention. The road does seem familiar. For the moment he hasn’t the strength to drag his Honda out of the ditch, but that will come back as soon as the shock lessens. At least he is certain that none of his bones are broken this time. It is hard to light a cigarette with his trembling hands, but he manages, then sits with his back against the small maple God has fortunately commanded to have grown two feet south of Aaron Benham’s appointment with death.

He can hear a car coming along the road, so he removes his white helmet and moves a few feet into the brush, becoming invisible. The Honda is deep enough in the ditch to be mostly out of sight. He’ll lick his wounds in private.

The car is an old pickup truck, its springs weak, the bulbous metal of its front bumper and hood shimmying relax-edly over the bumps. Though it is several years older than when he last saw it he recognizes it as Forneau’s old truck,
and now he knows exactly where he is. Therese is driving it, alone in the faded cab, her face stern at the task of driving. She too is older. There is the same drabness of skin, the same good facial bones beneath, but several years have laid themselves upon her in their tiring ways. He thinks that as she is now, given himself then, he would think it strange to want to make love to her.

Fifty yards down the road she turns into her driveway. He hears the last rattle and squeak of the truck, then the cab door slamming, then slamming twice again, the last more solidly. So. He may have intended to come by here. At least this is where he is. With some wonder in his mind he walks, limping, down the road to the old house, his helmet swinging from his hand.

THERESE’S BEAUTY SHOP

says the old sign, more faintly now, muffled by the rains and winds of the last six years. No, it is more like seven years since he’s been by this way. What should his welcome be? He limps to the door and knocks, noticing that the knob and lock have been replaced. The door opens and she is looking at him. She has to look through time, down through the tunnel of all those years. Then her face turns strange.

“You’ve hurt yourself,” she says, and takes his arm. He lets her pull him inside the kitchen and sit him down at a chrome and Formica table that is also new. The room has changed. It is less cluttered, more colorful with orange-red curtains and frills over the cupboards. The battered old hair drier is nowhere in sight. A white-enameled gas range has replaced the wood-kerosene stove. Therese looks at him once, her expression nothing he can decipher, goes into what must be a bathroom, also new, and returns with a washcloth and towel. At the sink she fills a basin with warm water. Her body is still slim beneath the remorseless gravity of the years. Perhaps her neck has bowed almost imperceptibly. She must be thirty-five or thirty-six now. There is a certain graininess about the skin of her elbows, but again he is impressed by the
good bones; the girl and this woman come together so clearly that it might be another time. But then she turns, and her face is more powerful than it once was. It has lived with itself for a long time now. She is no longer shy, or pretty in a young animal way. She is not about to smile at him, but firmly moves his chin so she can wash his face.

“It’s been a long time, Therese. Are you mad at me?”

She squeezes the washcloth over the basin, the water turning pink. “I don’t know what I am,” she says. Her voice is louder than it once was, but not through anger. “You’re too old to ride a motorcycle. Lean forward.” She unzips his wind-breaker and unbuttons his shirt, then follows the blood with the warm cloth.

“Have you got a drink in the house?” he asks.

“So that’s it,” she says. “You a drunkard now? All there is is some home-brew Forneau left down cellar. You want some of that?”

“Sure,” he says.

Her hands move competently over his chest, doing nothing but wash him, as if he is a piece of furniture. “What’d you do, run off the road? Did you mean to come here or was it just accidental?”

“I don’t know. I think I meant to ride on by, but I guess I did mean to ride on by here.”

“Been a long time.” There is grimness in her voice. Her brown eyes are harder, glittery where they were not glittery at all before, but soft and almost furry in their depths. “You never showed yourself around here.”

“You’ve changed your hair,” he says. “It used to be browner.”

“It’s been like this for three years.” There are streaks of gold, or maybe platinum in it, and he prefers it the way it once was, drab and innocent. It’s none of his business, her face declares. She has a vertical wrinkle between her brows, caused, he supposes, by many frowns. Life has gone on without
him, which makes him sad. But it has to, after all, if he isn’t there. If he never shows up.

“How’s your family?” she asks. She removes the basin and wipes him dry.

“Okay, I guess,” he says.

She looks at him wryly, quizzically, as she applies a Band-Aid to his jaw. “You guess?”

“They’re away. They’re down in Wellesley with Agnes’ folks.”

“Humph. When the cat’s away the mice will play. That why you’re half drunk, running around on your motorcycle?”

“May be.”

“You still want some home-brew?”

“Will you have a glass with me, Therese?”

“I hate it. I don’t know why I never threw it out.” She goes down cellar and returns with a dusty brown bottle, then carefully, seeming to resent the necessary carefulness, decants it into a glass pitcher. Her resentfulness is probably from having to do this for Forneau so many times in the past, under pain of violence if she stirred up the yeast in the bottom of the bottle. She brings the pitcher and two tumblers to the table.

“Button your shirt up,” she says, pouring him a full glass and herself two inches of the amber beer. His left hand, it becomes obvious, is still stiff, so she comes over him and buttons his shirt, her warmth over him, her breasts that are larger, softer now, close to him. She smells of the cellar, of potato peels, and of the warm soapy water.

“Oh, I’m not angry,” she says. “I never was, much. By the time I thought to get angry too much time went by. I ended up maybe thinking you were some kind of a coward.”

“How true,” he says, his nose full of the effervescent ticks of the beer, its familiar acid and molasses on his tongue.

“You weren’t scared of Forneau. You were mainly scared of your wife.”

“That may be a simple way to put it, but you’re mainly right.”

She is her own property now. Her dress is in the current style, almost. She is wearing nylon stockings and red shoes. She takes a sip of the beer, grimaces, and gets up to put away the groceries she brought from town. “Life goes on,” she says, with a sigh.

“I never see you around town,” he says.

“I work in the shoeshop in Litchwood, so I do about everything there.”

“I’m in a weird mood,” he says.

“You must be if you come out here after all these years.”

“You’ve fixed the place up. You going to stay here now?”

“I don’t know. It’s easy. I mean it’s cheap. That old truck’s about rusted out and the doors are falling off of it. I don’t know much about things but I make eighty-five dollars a week as a stitcher and maybe I can get a real car if I don’t go spending all my money on rent. I make maybe ten dollars Saturdays and Sundays out of the beauty shop. Got my regular customers.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Maybe that used to be your business.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t harbor no hard feelings, Aaron. I was such a dumb goose in those days, though. I should of left Forneau and found a boy my own age. I was scared half to death Forneau would catch us but as long as you were around it was the only sweetness in my life.”

She has turned softer. She has come back to sit across from him at the table, and toys with her glass, turning it around on the blue Formica. “You meant a lot to me, Aaron.” Her use of his name means that she is remembering without resentment. “It sure didn’t last long, though, did it.”

“No,” he says.

“Well, it’s water over the dam. Life goes on. I got a boyfriend, all right, but he’s married. They all are, the ones that want to keep a girl company. Get to be my age and they’re all married with six kids. Fred, he works in the office. His wife’s a real ugly bitch he can’t even talk to her, he says.
I seen her in the Stop and Shop yelling at her youngest kid you’d think the kid was a criminal or something. Poor Fred. He’s overweight, he’s got a heart condition and he has to take little white pills. He’s a nice, nice man.” She shakes her head, the chromatic hair flying on its tethers with an abandon that seems for a moment youthful. “I put the beauty shop in the other room there. It looks real good. Professional. You want to see it?”

“Sure,” he says, carefully testing his knee as he rises. It works, though the joint seems to be packed with sludge.

“I got a new Sears drier so now I can have two customers at a time. They like that better, some of them. They can gossip better, you know.”

The gluey smell of the hair-setting chemicals brings him back to those other times. He remembers her drab brown hair with sadness and affection. In those days he thought her neither young nor old. She was such a tender animal, unused to receiving tenderness.

He has to admit that the beauty shop does look more professional without the kitchen paraphernalia mixed in among its own chairs, trays and racks of curlers. A fluorescent lighting bar, in peach tones, completes the look of an operating room when Therese proprietorially turns it on. “Very nice,” he says. “It’s a lot different.”

“I’m my own boss now,” she says.

He goes back to the kitchen table and pours himself some more home-brew.

“You sure you need that?” she says.

“I’m sure I don’t need it,” he says, and takes a drink.

“You all right, Aaron?”

“I can’t help wishing it was seven years ago and Forneau was at Camp Drum with the National Guard.”

“Never mind, Aaron. A lot of things’ve changed.”

“That’s right, Therese.”

“Fred says he’s going to get a divorce, but sometimes I don’t believe it. That’s life, huh?”

“That’s right.” He moves toward the door, taking a small detour to leave his glass on the sink counter. “Thanks for the first aid.”

“That’s all right, Aaron.”

“Goodbye, Therese.”

“Nice to of seen you again, Aaron.”

He manages to drag his Honda back up to the road. Harboring no hard feelings, it starts on the first kick. With only a small gnashing of gears he gets it into low and he is off, up through the gears with no clutch. His eyes are bleary, his joints sticky and old. He is not afraid of the curves that he still takes at speed, but his energy has run low, and the only place he can think of, the only destination he can think of at all, is home.

It was during those cruelly beautiful days of final exams, in warm May, when all the young animals, including Allard Benson, found some strange trouble they hadn’t had in February in appreciating the fine dry civilized voices of Addison and Steele, Dryden, Pope, etc. Though still fond of those voices, Allard seemed to be governed these days more by his skin than by his mind. He liked to look at Naomi, who wasn’t speaking to him but did consent to give him smoky, murderous looks whenever they met—looks he interpreted correctly, his mysterious power making him thoughtful. And at Mary, fair beautiful Mary who said, now, beneath the barely trembling green of the maple leaves, “What’s the matter with Naomi? She won’t even say hello to you.”

“We had a political argument,” he said, a statement that might hold up in court.

They were in front of Mary’s dormitory, she sitting on the steps, he astride his creaking, cooling Indian Pony. They had been invited that afternoon, through Harold, to visit Lilliputown and have dinner with Colonel Immingham and his “lady,” as Harold gravely put it. The problem was transportation.
Nathan had taken Angela to Boston and Harold’s Matilda was in the garage, having slipped a link or two of her timing chain.

“It’s only five miles. I suppose we could walk,” Allard said. “Or hitchhike, but that’s a pain. So what we have left is Tonto, the flying red oilstorm.”

“You know I promised my father …”

“Look, Mary, I gave Harold a ride back from the garage and didn’t even blow his wig off. I mean old Tonto can be
sedate
. I’ll go slow, enjoying your arms around me, holding me tight in abject guilt and terror.”

She laughed, shaking her head, her fair hair following softly.