The Summer That Melted Everything(41)

“Later that night, while the father lay asleep beside the boy, the boy got out of bed and went to the porch. He took down the noose and carried it to the yard where the other pieces of chopped rope were piled. Piece by piece, he tied the rope together until it was long enough to stretch whole once again around their house. When the father woke the next morning and saw the rope, he promised his son, in the sober morning light, that the rope would stay together forever. In the world of truth, it stayed complete for seven months.

“While the rope was chopped after that, it was never chopped so short again to make a noose, and the son, while bruised, was always grateful to the father for at least keeping the rope long enough, because if it were to happen again, the son knew he would not prop the stool back up beneath his father’s thrashing legs.”

*

When I was twenty-one, I was with a woman with hair like rope. I say woman because she was thirty-seven. She had this small cabin by a lake in Maine. During the day, I’d go off to the town to replace the spires of the boot factory I’d been hired at. She’d go to work as the secretary of that factory. All day I’d be on the roof, on top of her, and then at night we’d go to that cabin, and all night she’d be on top of me.

I liked her. But I loved her hair. It was dark and long enough to graze the backs of her calves. During the day at work, she wore it up in a braided bun. But at night, at the cabin, she let the braid go loose, twisting and turning and so much like rope, I named her that very thing.

I remember how she’d stand up out of bed, naked in front of the windows. The moonlight silvering her flesh. She’d take her braid and circle it around her thin waist. It went all the way around, making the trip back to her belly button, where she would gently tie a loose knot.

“My, my.” She’d click her tongue and look down, admiring what her hair could do. She’d say her hair was like Samson’s and was where all her strength came from. Then I’d pat the bed and she’d come over, her legs around me, her hands on my chest, her rope stretched back. I came feeling like a good man who had not yet picked up the ax.

I stayed in Maine with her that winter, long after I’d finished working on the spires of the factory. I found other work to do in town.

Then, at the end of January, while standing in only a pair of wool socks, she wrapped her hair around her waist. The ends would not tie in a knot.

“It has begun,” she whispered.

That night I heard the chop of an ax. As the weeks went on, soon the ends of her hair would make it only to her side. Chop, chop, chop.

“Have you been cutting your hair?” I asked her.

“My belly is getting bigger. It’s making my hair shorter.”

Of course I knew that. I just didn’t want to say it. Neither of us ever said it. She just started buying bigger clothes, and I suddenly made a cradle for the back bedroom. There wasn’t a plan to make the cradle. I just one day picked up a handsaw and a piece of wood, and next thing I knew, I had a bed for my child in front of me.

The closest we ever got to discussing the baby was the night she asked me what I thought.

“Fielding? I asked what you think?”

I’ll say it now because all the years in the world have passed, and I am old enough to know I wanted the child.

I knew I would be no good for it. I would build it cradles, yes, but wouldn’t actually cradle it myself. How could I with my sleeves drenched in blood? The snake has had its victories over me. And in its victories I am no longer sweet nor gentle. The very things a good father must be. It’s impossible to make a family when your mind spins mad with the old monsters. Isn’t it?

The fear of being the horrible father was a noose tightening around my neck. It was why when she asked what I thought, my answer was, “I don’t like how your hair doesn’t wrap around anymore.”

That long rope that in its length meant I could have a shot at a good life. Its length meant I hadn’t done anything bad yet to chop it off. But wasn’t her growing belly my bad inside her? Wasn’t that growth an ax, making the rope shorter, making her weaker? And weaker she’d gotten.

Pregnancy did not give her that glow. It gave her a redness to the cheeks like punches. It drooped her eyes from all the sleeping she did not do. And mornings sounded like sickness being flushed down the toilet. Maybe she was like Samson, the long hair her strength, and I was Delilah, cutting it shorter and shorter with the wielding ax I put inside her.

I suppose I said the wrong thing to her, for shortly after, she began buying castor oil. It was said the oil would help with hair growth, so every night she’d slather it on, staining pillowcase after pillowcase. Even if her hair had grown, it wouldn’t have shown, because her growing belly was always outpacing her hair.

Castor oil was everywhere. On the doorknobs, on her clothes, on her forehead from where the oil dripped from her scalp. She was sent home from work because the oil kept dripping onto all the paperwork.

Then came the day she drank the oil. I didn’t know, I tell you. I was off at work, trying to wipe the castor oil off my hands. Later in the hospital, she would say she drank it because she thought it would make her hair grow from the inside out, like a big oily vitamin.

“Oh, Fielding, I had no idea it could affect the baby. I wouldn’t have drank it. Doctor?” She wanted to make sure he heard too. All the nurses as well. She didn’t want them to think she had tried an at-home abortion. “I didn’t know it could induce labor. And as soon as the blood and the cramps came, well, I called straightaway for an ambulance. It felt like a kick to my stomach. Oh, Fielding, stop looking at me like that. Please. I didn’t do this on purpose. Fielding, I said I didn’t do this on purpose.”