Settling Up

I
gasped
as I noticed it, leaned closer to the mirror and tipped my head forward.

Oh sweet lord. Yep, there it was. Or, more like, there it
wasn’t
. Specifically speaking, hair. On my head. At the very top, a small circular spot of skin poked through the brown follicles. It was about the size of a nickel.

My fingers swiped at the hair. Backward, forward, side to side. When the bald spot (shudder) was covered up, my heart slowed and I could feel the worry loosen its jujitsu-death-grip on my lungs.

For a moment.

But then my fingers would part the hair in just the right spot (or more like the wrong spot) and it would appear, sending my heart into a new fit of erratic pounding and causing my lungs to contract beyond comfort yet again.

I took a deep breath, swiped my hair into a side-part, and closed my eyes.

Okay. It’s not that bad, Lauren. You never part your hair in the middle anyway.

I nodded; I was right. This wasn’t the end of the world. You couldn’t see it at all when I combed my hair this way, the exact way I’d worn it since I could remember. I peeked an eye open to verify that statement. Yep. No angry pink scalp to be seen.

But even with this verification, my body tensed and tingled at something new. Oh dear. My regular side part, even though it was no different than it had been yesterday, was no longer simply a hair style. Even though it looked the same, the discovery of the bald spot had morphed it into something new and terrifying.

A comb-over.

I was officially using a comb-over to disguise premature-lady-pattern baldness.

I flopped my balding self down onto my bed and let my arms fall limply at my sides. How had this happened? I was only thirty.

The monumental birthday had passed by only a month before and I was already falling apart. In a matter of minutes, I’d gone from feeling young and in charge to identifying myself as a helpless geriatric. How in the world would I be able to hold myself together for fifty or sixty more years if I was already crumbling?

I had to assume that using this trajectory, I would be a wig-wearing-woman by the ripe age of forty-two, clinging to the small wisps of Gollum-esque hair that sat hidden underneath.

I shuddered at the visual.

The scariest part was that I
had
noticed that I was losing more hair than normal in the shower each morning. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now… Was this something genetic or perhaps stress related? It had been a bit crazy the past fourteen months at work. I’d been trying to get tenure and department head all in the same year. I knew it could be done, because Kirsten Thomas had just gotten both the year before. The same year she’d married her perfect doctor husband and bought her perfect waterfront mini-mansion.

A clammy-feeling settled over my skin as I ticked off Kirsten’s accomplishments. I’d been focusing only on my work performance, but what if her promotions had been based on more than that? Did they look for candidates who seemed more settled? More stable? I looked around my sparsely decorated condo. I didn’t have plants, because I always let them die. Besides a few well placed pieces of art and some clean but comfortable furniture, it looked as if I could’ve just moved in a few days ago, not seven years.

Maybe a condo didn’t say, “I’m settled.” Which also brought to mind the other thing Kirsten had on me. Marriage. I had just completed my annual tax forms the very night before and had once again marked that “single” category. In my head, I had calculated the statistics of finding a man at my age, feeling okay about my odds. Now I would have to recalculate based on how many men out there might not mind a wife with a serious hair issue. The numbers hadn’t been looking too terrible before, but I had a bad feeling that they were about to turn dismal.

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket, dialing the person who had always been there for me, no matter what.

“Hello?” Hearing my sister’s voice settled my shoulders a few millimeters.

“Hey, Betsy.”

“Oh, hey. You left your blue scarf behind when you were here for dinner the other day. What’s up?”

“Balding.”

“You — what?”

“I found a bald spot, Bets.”

I could almost hear the air shake out of her. She was only three years younger than me. If the balding was genetic, this terrible revelation affected her almost as much as it did me.

“Are you…? Sorry, of course you’re sure. You’re Lauren. You probably already checked it seventeen times and from every possible angle. Never mind.”

I nodded, her guess wasn’t too far off.

“I’m sorry, Laur.”

I heard a shuffling on her end and tapped my fingers on my leg impatiently.

“Betsy, if you’re going to check your hair, put the phone down while you do it.”

“Sorry. Hold on.” She plunked the phone down on the counter and I waited mostly-patiently while she checked. “Okay. We’re all good here.”

“That’s what I thought at your age, too,” I muttered, but I doubted Betsy heard me because Josh, her husband started talking to her in the background.

“Oh, it’s Lauren. She’s found a bald spot and I was just… well, you know.” Josh was probably just on his way out the door for work. Bets stayed home with their two little girls. “Bye, honey.” I heard her kiss him goodbye and then she returned to me. “Sorry, Lauren. Okay. Oh my gosh. So what are you going to do?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just found it and all I can think about is the fact that I just submitted my taxes and all of those questions about being single that didn’t seem so scary last night are screaming back at me now.”

Betsy took a deep breath on the other end of the line, a sure sign she was about to tell me to do the same. “Laur, breathe.” (Told you.)

I did as she said.

“You’re getting yourself all worked up and although my knowledge of hair issues is somewhat limited to what to do if either a piece of gum or Barbie hairbrush get stuck in a toddler’s, I can’t imagine that having a panic attack is going to help you fix this.”

I pulled in another deep breath. “Okay, you have a point.”

“You need to calm down. Is your neck red?”

I stood up and looked in the mirror. A splotchy red stain spread up my chest and around my neck.

“Erm… that would be a yes.”

“Okay. Let’s see…” Betsy mumbled as she thought.

My younger sister had always been my anchor, my life-line to the real world. I was the first to admit that after having skipped a few grade-levels in school and having a better understanding of numbers than I ever would of people, I needed a little help. Bets was that person for me. She could usually talk me through any situation.

“Can you go see Rachel?” She finally suggested. “I’ll do some research on this end while you do.”

My heartbeat began to slow. This was one of the many reasons I loved my sister. She knew me like she knew herself (even though our family called us “the opposites” because where I excelled in school, Betsy always excelled with people). Bets was right. I needed to calm down and let her run point on the internet searches. Rachel was a dealer at the local card room where I often went to play Blackjack. The number-focused game plus the sage advice Rachel usually kept in her back pocket made the casino a sort of sanctuary for me and my emotional anxiety.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure Rachel’s working today. That’s a good idea. I’ll call you later then. Thanks, Bets.”

“You’re very welcome. Love you, Baldy.”

I smiled and hung up, starting in on counting concrete digits, a strategy I’d come to use when I needed to calm my anxious tendencies (returning to numbers and their infinite stability usually made me feel a little less scattered, a little less emotional). Today I chose primes. 2…3…5…7…11…13…17…19…23...

My fingers absentmindedly drifted through my hair as I got to twenty-nine. I felt a tiny pluck as a strand accidentally wrapped around my pinky and snapped out of my head. My eyes flew open and I held the piece in front of my face.

Goodbye little comrade
, I thought with a pout. I let it drift to my bedroom floor and pinned my arms down by my side.

That was it. No more unnecessary touching of my hair. Every tiny follicle, every hair on my head needed to stay right where it was. I could do my cool-down-counting in the car, dammit. I needed to see Rachel, now.

I stood, grabbed my purse, and was out the door faster than you could say, “Rogaine”.

T
he familiar (while
not necessarily pleasant) smell of stale cigarettes left over from the years when it was legal to smoke inside calmed my nervous mind as I walked through the old wooden doors of my local casino. It was a pretty small set up, but I liked it that way. It didn’t hold any of the slot machines you might see at some of the bigger casinos, just a card room with about ten tables and a bar along the side wall.

I moved through the place, my flats scrunching on the red and black playing-card themed carpet.

“Morning, Lauren.” James, the owner, waved at me as I made my way over to the tables.

“Morning.” I smiled politely, but I didn’t stop to chat like I normally might have. It wasn’t James I had come to see.

I needed to see Rachel, the no-nonsense woman in her fifties whom I’d befriended after years of coming here and who always seemed to have the right advice no matter what situation I had gotten myself into. And even if she couldn’t help, at least I would be able to distract my mind with cards, numbers, facts -- no more scary emotions (emotions being second, under people, on the list of Things Lauren Doesn’t Understand).

I had discovered the game of Blackjack in college during one of my wilder outings on a night after having passed a particularly hellish Trig final. My number-loving brain latched onto the probability of possibilities instantly and, in doing so, my anxious mind became so wholly involved in the math that it couldn’t focus on other worries. Since then, I’d been all but hooked.

For the past seven years, Rachel and I had enjoyed a bi-weekly date at the Blackjack table. And because my classes were almost always in the afternoons and evenings, I could usually be guaranteed that I’d have the table (even the whole place on certain occasions) to myself each morning I ventured inside.

That morning, there were just a few other regulars hanging out at the various tables. Norm, a tall man with wild white hair, a voice three decibels louder than any voice has a right to be, and who smelled of old puzzles, sat at one of the poker tables with another man. I waved hello to him as I strutted up toward my usual table.

Simon, one of the dealers, was there at the moment but I knew that in a few minutes they’d be rotating and I would have Rachel all to myself. While Simon occupied the table, though, I paid my usual fifty dollars, got my chips (all in fives), and played a few hands.

I spotted Rachel at another table. She didn’t seem to see me, but that was okay. It wasn’t my normal day, so she wouldn’t have been expecting me to show up. Instead of trying to get her attention, I spent the first few hands thinking about what wise advise she might be able to give me today in light of my newly discovered physical decline.

Finally, I saw the dealers begin to switch and Simon packed up to leave. As he walked away, I dropped my head forward and let my fingers part my hair in the exact spot so as to display the problem I had come to discuss with her. (Rachel was a woman who appreciated a dramatic entrance, being a big fan of song and dance based reality television shows.)

I heard her approach a few seconds later.

“You will
not
believe what happened to me today. Look at this!” I said, my words muffled by my hair as I pointed at my scalp and waited for her prognosis. And I waited. She was taking longer than usual.

Finally, Rachel cleared her throat. That’s when I realized something was wrong. She sounded different, somehow. At first I thought she might have a cold, but then where was her familiar vanilla scented perfume? All I could smell was a spicy cologne (not that it was unpleasant, in fact…).

I peeked through the curtain of my hair, glancing down at the green-felt covered table top. Rachel’s hands seemed different, as well. They were bigger and her soft I-know-she-used-lotion-religiously skin had been replaced by the tanned and hardened covering of someone much more… manly.

A tattoo of black shaded trees in an inked-stained forest crested this now-very-decidedly-NOT-Rachel’s forearm. My jaw dropped and my fingers wildly patted my hair back into its side-part-now-turned-comb-over position. Swiping the remaining hair out of my face, I lifted my head up and looked wide-eyed at the man standing in front of me.