My husband couldn’t resist stretching a handful of my hair and letting it go to watch it roll up like a party horn. He loved it when I lay on top of him, my curls tenting his face. My hair, the color of autumn, was luxurious, like the women in the boudoir paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites. 

And then, like a hex, an autoimmune illness uprooted the hair from my head, strand by strand, the bulb still on the end of the shaft like sperm that could no longer swim. Heaps of hair amassed in my shower drain. There was always a plumber to be called, always my shame.

I thought of nothing else. My bald spot in the CVS security mirror was as big as the round mirror itself. I rode the tall escalator at the 57th St. Station to peer down at the crowns of other women to see who else had empty patches.

I bought snake oil, nostrums, potions, a laser brush that seared my scalp, and had pricey head massages to wake up follicles.

I no longer window-shopped. I only eyed my reflection. With the sun behind me, my thin hair stuck out as if I had been electrocuted or was trying out as the star in a remake of the Bride of Frankenstein. 

My husband had gone bald in his early forties. In the wind, his combover stood up like a coxcomb. He had a collar of hair around his nape and behind his ears. A friar Tuck-ish sort of look. I applauded when he finally shaved his head. 

One day, in tears, I locked the bathroom door and shaved the tufts of what was left of my crowning glory. I blinked at myself. My deep-set eyes looked bigger, bluer, my cheekbones higher, my neck, swan-like. I was a live ringer for Queen Nefertiti.

But what would my husband think? I worried. I knew where to find him. The TV was blasting. He was sitting in his Naugahyde lounge chair. All my bravado was gone. Slowly, I walked to him like a gawky fawn. 

He smiled, reached for my hand, and pulled me into his lap. With a low growl, a kind of hubba, hubba, he stroked my bristly scalp with his palm while I rubbed my cheek against his four o’clock shadow. We stayed there for a long while before I got up, and he followed me to bed, his slippers slapping double-time in his hurry.