Something Different This Week
A Short Story
(I mentioned weeks ago that I wrote a story based on an odd little phrase I came across in a typography book during my residency in Iceland. Well here it is.)
Baby, Your Hair
The old outboard motor belched black smoke and filled the air around them with the smell of oil and gasoline. Anna pinched her nose and made a face. Peter smiled and steered the small wooden boat away from the dock. When they reached the middle of the lake where it was dark—darker, Peter cut the motor. The boat drifted and rocked gently on the mostly still black water, and Anna thought that she was like the boat: rudderless. She asked Peter if the boat had a rudder. He said no, and she nodded to herself. Peter spread out a blanket on the bottom of the boat, and they laid side by side looking up at the night sky, the stars, the hazy edges of the milky way. It was that dark. They held hands. Peter wanted to talk about them, about the future. They were young, and they were married, just not to each other.
He said, We have years ahead of us, many years. Do we want to live with this secret for all those years? Will it not slowly eat away at us, destroy us from the inside out? Do we not owe it to ourselves to act on this desire? These feelings?
Sometimes the way he talked filled Anna with regret. He was so earnest, so painfully earnest always, and it made Anna wonder what she was doing there with him, with a man like him. But it felt too late to undo all the mistakes that had led her there, and so there she was.
Peter ran his fingers through Anna’s hair while he spoke, then brushed a few strands away from her eyes, and said: Baby, your hair.
It was something he said to her one morning when they were leaving a hotel room months earlier. Her hair was a mess, the hair of someone who had just fucked. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her 45 degrees to face the mirror next to the door. Baby, your hair, he said, and they both started laughing. It became a joke, something they’d say to one another whenever they met. It was both a greeting and a farewell; an exclamation of surprise and joy; sometimes they said it to one another while making love, and they’d start laughing all over again. It quickly came to feel like the kind of inside joke shared between spouses, and for that reason Peter invested it with more significance than it deserved.
Peter said it again and then leaned in close to kiss Anna on the neck. He slid his hand down the front of her pants and suggested they have sex on the boat. They soon found, however, that there was no comfortable way to do this, and so they decided to head back to the cabin where they’d be spending the night.
Peter got up and tried to start the motor, but it wouldn’t catch. He pulled the cord and then he pulled it again, still nothing. Anna imagined them having to call for help, and decided she’d rather remain there on the lake for eternity. Peter tried once more, but this time, the cord slipped out of his hand and the momentum sent him falling backwards. He hit his head on the side of the boat and fell into the water before Anna even knew what was happening.
In the seconds that slowed down and consumed Anna in that moment, she had time to imagine one hour into the future, one day, one month: Peter dead, and Anna left to explain to her husband and Peter’s wife what they were doing out there together. What lies would she tell? How would she grieve? She imagined throwing herself overboard and swallowing mouthfuls of water, not as a romantic gesture, but out of cowardice. She imagined all the unanswered questions; she imagined her daughters growing up without a mother.
Time sped back up and Anna dove into the lake. She found Peter unconscious and wrapped her arm around his neck to keep his head above water. His weight pulled Anna down, and she struggled to get back to the side of the boat. With one arm around Peter and one arm hooked over the gunwale, Anna heaved him out of the water and up into the boat. Her head went under several times, and when she finally pulled herself aboard, she was coughing and spitting out lake water.
Back on the boat, Anna leaned in close to Peter and tilted her head to listen at his mouth and nose. He wasn’t breathing. She had no idea what to do, and in her panic, she turned Peter on his side and hit him on the back repeatedly. She was crying and looked around as if expecting help to arrive—but they were in the middle of a lake in the middle of the night, and there was no help coming. Staring out into that darkness made Anna feel like she was back in the lake with Peter’s weight pulling her down. She hit his back even harder and a quiet gurgling sound escaped from Peter’s lips. She hit him twice more, and Peter began throwing up mouthfuls of water, gasping between each heaving belch. He looked up at Anna and the whites of his eyes appeared to glow in the darkness. Anna’s eyes, too, were wide and wild; she was filled with the adrenaline that came from having saved someone’s life.
Once he was able to speak, Peter motioned for Anna to lean in close and he whispered: Baby, your hair.
In that moment, a spell was broken for Anna.
She expected the experience to make her more tender toward Peter, more bound to him somehow, but it did not feel that way at all. It had, for Anna, the opposite effect. She saw him exposed and vulnerable, not yet fully formed. She knew, looking at him there on the bottom of the boat where he sat coughing up the lake and blinking his eyes at her, that it was over. For Anna, it was all over.
Two years later, Anna will say to her husband on the way out of the house one morning: Baby, your hair. She will say it like it’s a test, or an admission of guilt. She’ll look closely into his eyes and wait for his reaction. Her husband will look back at her like she is a stranger. She will only say it the one time, and then never again.