Free The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff Page B

smoke in my direction. "I was supposed to get lung cancer, not lupus, of all things. I'm crabby, not wolfish."
    "Christ, Clarissa," I said. "That was lame."
    "I'm just getting my groove back," she said, and shrugged.
    In April, the day before Clarissa was to start her very expensive monoclonal antibody therapy, we were sitting in her breakfast nook when she put down her coffee. "Oh, hell. Let's just do it," she said.
    "I'm in," I said. "Whatever it is. Let's do what?"
    "Shave it. Shave it all off. Go to our favorite place and shave my hair down to the scalp. Why the heck not."
    "Why do you want to do that?" I said, stunned.
    She looked at me and frowned and said, "Because I can, Willie. I've always wanted to and never had the guts. Now I have the guts. Plus," she said, "my hair's falling out," and showed me a little clump of curls in her hand.
    "All right," I said, and we gathered our things and went out. We went to the tulip garden in Golden Gate Park, and sat there in the heavy ocean wind, and I cut all of those gorgeous twisted curls from Clarissa's head, and they sprang and bobbled there on the ground. I ran the shaver over her head and put on lotion until her pale scalp glistened. And then, as she was rubbing her hands over her new pate, as her eyes closed and she began to look sick among all those red-gold tulips, I reached up and snipped a long swatch of hair down the center of my own head. When Clarissa opened her eyes, I was wearing a reverse Mohawk, my dark long hair falling on the sides and back, and a great gap where I had once had my part.
    She looked horrified, and then began to giggle. "You would do that?" she said. "You would do that for me?"
    I grinned and snipped off some more. Clarissa, cackling, shaved my head.
    When we walked back over Golden Gate, past the golf course, past the bison, the wind licked over our bald heads, and we held hands. And in that city of permissiveness, people grinned at us, mistaking us for what we weren't. A bare-chested Rollerblader circled and circled us as we walked, and said, gliding splay-legged around us, throwing his arms out, "Oh, I adore this town. Hand in hand in the springtime," he sang. "Two baldy ladies in love."
    THE NIGHT AFTER I came home to Templeton, I called Clarissa out of force of habit. Only after her phone began to ring did I realize that I had dialed, the phone was to my ear, and I was calling. Before I could reach for the hook to hang up, though, there was Clarissa's throaty dark voice saying, "I was watching a movie, so whoever this is, it had better be good."
    She didn't sound good, but she sounded better than I had feared, weak but lively. I smiled, despite myself. I took a deep sigh. "Oh," I said. "Oh, don't you fret, Clarissa-cakes. It's good."
    AFTER SHE STOPPED yodeling with joy that I was home and shouting at me for being home and not calling her right away, I told her the full story.
    She had known already about Dr. Primus Dwyer, that he was my seminar professor when I first came to graduate school, that he was a big name, that when I got him as a thesis, then dissertation, advisor, I was thrilled. If anyone at Stanford could help me in the field, he could.
    But she didn't know that we all called him, in hemidemisemi-reverence, "Mr. Toad." It fit, with his plaid waistcoats and beer belly, with his pocket watch and British accent, with his shining nose and unfortunate weak chin. He also had a new red VW bug, and every time we saw him heading down Memorial Drive in it, someone or another would chant, Ladyboy, ladyboy, drive away home; your nose is afire and your chin is all gone. It was cruel, perhaps, but we blamed his wife for dressing him like that. She was razor thin, all bone and black cashmere, the dean of students, and renowned for her jealousy. He reputedly wasn't allowed to close his door when he had conferences with his female advisees, and it was all because of her. The Castrating Bitch, we called her.
    But Primus Dwyer we loved because he