Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg Read Free Book Online Page B

needed Meggie more.
    I pull a magazine from the pile in the handwoven basket Ruth keeps under her coffee table. The cover advertises a story about preventing breast cancer. I wonder if she has seen it. I put the magazine at the bottom of the pile, go out into the kitchen and turn on the light. I want some tea, but I don’t want to wake Ruth up by running water.
    Assuming she is alive.
    I stand up, then sit back down. Then I stand up again, tiptoe into her bedroom. She is turned away from me, but I can hear her breathing. I see moonlight lying against the back of her bald head, pooled in the small valley at the top of her neck. They are so graceful and beautiful, necks, so full of a kind of combined strength and vulnerability. I wish we could get over our horror of baldness and appreciate instead the tender revelations it provides.
    When Ruth first heard about how the chemowould probably make her lose her hair, she asked me if I would go with her to get a wig when the time came. I said I would, but I also asked her if she were sure that’s what she wanted to do.
    “What else would I do?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “If it were me, I think I’d be more of a scarf type. Or just walk around bald. I mean, it’s kind of a badge of honor, isn’t it?”
    “You didn’t think I should get fake boobs, either,” Ruth said.
    “I know. Same reason. Except what you did is just as good.” What Ruth did was to get prostheses three times the size she was—she went from a 34 A to a 38 C.
    She waited until her hair was quite thin before she decided it was time for a wig. And even then, on the way to get it, she asked me, “Do you think I have to get one now? Does it look really bad?”
    She was driving, and I looked over at her and the sun was coming through her hair, making it look like an aura. I thought it was beautiful. “It just looks as if you have real thin hair,” I said.
    “That’s what I think, too,” she said. “But I’d better get one now in case it gets worse.”
    I was carrying a magazine I thought would give us ideas for wig styles. Ruth had said she wanted something really short for a change.
    “Look at this woman on the cover,” I told her, holding up the magazine. “Her hair is pretty short, and she looks great.”
    Ruth snuck a glance, then looked back at the road.“Yeah,” she said. “That’s what I’ll do.” Then she sighed and I was careful not to look at her. I turned on the radio, and we rode the rest of the way there without talking.

T he place was located in a suburban medical building. When we got into the lobby, we looked at the roster of names to see what office we were supposed to go to. A man in a uniform seated behind a small desk asked, “May I direct you ladies?” We didn’t even look at him, even when he asked again. We were full enough of what we had to do.
    The sign on the door said PATRICIA LOOMIS , which Ruth and I agreed was highly unimaginative. “It should say BALD BUSTERS or something,” Ruth said. “Or HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW.”
    She took in a breath, opened the door, and announced herself to the blank-faced receptionist wearing a show-off ponytail. Then we sat on an overstuffed sofa with a coffee table in front of it that held a book called
Cancer and Beauty
.
    “Oh, man, look at this,” Ruth said, picking the book up and flipping through it. Mostly it was tricks for tying scarves.
Don’t be afraid to get creative!
the book said. She rolled her eyes and put it down. There was a basket of fake geraniums on the table, too, and Ruth fingered one of the thick green leaves in disgust. “In keeping with the fake-o theme, I suppose,” she said. She crossedher legs, swung her foot. “I’m a nervous fucking wreck,” she said quietly, not looking at me.
    “Me, too.” I looked down into my lap, saw my fingers squeezing a knuckle.
    Finally, a woman came out and called Ruth’s name. As we followed her down the hall, she turned around and looked