At least it’s the kind of place you only need to go to once. Miles and miles away from midtown, one streetlight after the next out in the soulless ‘burbs, past a Dominos next to a Walgreens next to a Big Scoop Yogurt next to a PetsMart next to Blockbuster next to Arbys and Jimboys, a Jiffy Lube, a Wendy’s, a Starbucks for the second time.

Aretha and Wilco on the sound system got me through, slapping the steering wheel, rocking: I am a Natural Woman, and those Theologians don’t know nothin’ of my soul. I pulled into the strip mall parking lot and looked for shade. There was none, so I took the space right in front, sucking it up in the 103 degrees. Stepped across melting blacktop onto sidewalk and almost opened the door to the Poodle Clip by mistake. The glass door of Wig Wonderland says welcome, Tuesday through Friday, 10-5, and I pushed it twice, helplessly, then pulled on it because it said right there on the door, “Pull.”

Just as I pulled I heard, “Wait! I told you I’d come!”
My friend Deb had driven 45 minutes to get here and would drive 45 minutes back to work when we’d finished. She gushed as if we were just about to cash in our Day of Beauty certificates at La Costa spa. Just two girlfriends out for a giggle we were, smirking at the whole….concept… the Poodle Clip next door, the potential of walking out of this place as blondes, redheads, silver-haired cougars, maybe.

Inside there is a wall of faceless Styrofoam heads in a room decorated in country kitsch, with inspirational sayings on the wall: “Love is the greatest healer,” “Every time a door shuts, a new one opens.” “Let your heart cry, let love dry your tears.”
Mantovani’s “1001 strings” is playing over the store’s sound system. I hadn’t heard that since my mom put it on the record player and I rolled my eyes and slammed my bedroom door. I looked around at all the inspirational treacle, the teddy bears and Christian overlay of everything – angels scattered about, Psalms stenciled on the wall, faith will get you through and all that. It made me think, this is a store for dying women.

If Deb hadn’t come I might’ve said, so sorry, wrong door! I meant to go to the Poodle Clip! And fled. But there Deb was, lifting a curly blond number from the shelf, handing it to the gaunt, smiling saleswoman to adjust on my head as I sat before a gold-framed mirror in a beauty parlor chair.
“No, you are definitely not a blonde,” Deb pronounced. “Not curly, either.”
Fifteen wigs later the three of us were unanimous. I should buy “Tess,” the slightly spiky reddish number cut right below my ears and feathered in the back – thick and stylish in a way my own hair could never be. It was starting to feel like a real beauty parlor. Like I had scored.
“You look hot,” Deb said.
I wet my index finger to my tongue. Touched it to my wig with a “Tssst!”

Relief. Now I could get the buzz cut, the scarves I liked. When my hair fell out in 13 days I’d be set. Tess and I would get through this thing.
The saleswoman handed me an angel pin and an uplifting little poem. “We’re all survivors, here,” she had said earlier, while fitting one wig or another on my head. So when we reached the checkout I asked her when she’d been diagnosed.
“Oh, I didn’t have cancer,” she said. And before stupidly asking, “Then why…?” I felt the silent weight of a worse kind of survival – the loss of a daughter, perhaps. A best friend. I saw it in her eyes as her teeth smiled, handing me Tess in a bag.
“Thank you,” I said, reaching my hand out to shake hers. “You do important work here.” She glided around the sales counter and enveloped me in a hug. At that moment even the Mantovani seemed…okay. The angel, a sweet talisman.

At home, my dog eventually stopped barking at the Styrofoam intruder, threatening to bury Tess in the yard. Tess held up to dozens of washings, to being tossed on the dresser as I lay like a block of cement, sweating chemicals and tears. Between those times, at the grocery store and at work, people said, “I love your hair!”
I never loved it, but it got me through. About a year later, after the poison had left my body, my own hair grew back thick and wavy, dyed its once natural brown. I handed Tess, my stack of headscarves, wire brush, and wig spray over to Ellen, a neighbor whose lymphoma had returned. She’d given her first wig away, she said, to another friend. Bad move, she supposed. But she was an old hand. This time it would work, she was sure, and then she’d pass Tess along, too.

In another two months, my friend Linda called to tell me of a diagnosis more severe than either mine or Ellen’s. A sentence with no reprieve – in her pancreas and lungs — and yet she was determined to fight the medical fight. She’d make the best of those times between treatments, times when she might actually feel good.
We talked about the fear, about pushing it away to enjoy the small things in front of us – the moment being experienced right now. We talked about pain control and not accepting “no” from the insurance company. About how statistics are just statistics and how the Internet can make you crazy so it’s sometimes best just to ignore all the studies and proceed with your plan. I am not sure I believe this, never have been sure. But this is what you say.

“Oh, and there’s one thing I wanted to ask you,” she said in the middle of all this momentousness. “Do you know a good wig place in Sacramento?”

I parked in front of the Poodle Clip, leaving the AC on until the very last second, when Linda was out of the car. I led the way, pushed the door, walked in like I owned this place I’d vowed never to see again.
The gaunt woman with the too-black hair extension beamed Linda a big smile and sat her down in the beauty parlor chair. Fighting my own fear, I felt like I was floating on the “1001 Strings,” over the ruffles of baby blue and beige, the angels and animals carved out of wood, painted to look antique.

I told Linda she looked great in the “Monica.” She had lovely, thick hair to begin with, I pointed out, so no wig would be a big improvement. Three more options considered, and Monica it was. A soft auburn, slightly waved, shoulder-length look, just this side of conservative. A look like Linda’s.
“Thank you so much for coming with me,” she said as we pushed out the door. “Now I feel set. That’s a load off.”
“Oh, hey, it was fun,” I said, only partly a lie. I felt her relief and was pleased. “If you get sick of Monica we can come back for Marilyn Monroe.”
I asked if she wanted to stop for ice cream. No, a nap is what she wanted.

Linda’s hair did not fall out in 13 days. It barely fell out at all, even after three chemos with three more to go. And as she was lying like cement and then getting up to walk slowly, slowly, I was grabbing each moment and demanding from it maximum life.
I traveled and ate out and had long funny conversations with my son and ate out some more and made love and went to plays and to the beach. I talked to Linda along the way, met her for lunch, wrote her cards on those days I knew were poison cement days.
Sometimes she’d answer her phone, often not.

Then, yesterday, I answered mine and afterward noticed how strangely conversation flows when people are in shock. Like sticks in a river, words bob along in eddies of triviality until something shakes loose and they crash down over a cliff. Then swiftly back to the eddy, calm. Then crashing over a cliff again, terrifying.
“…And just last Monday she was jumping up and down because the Kings tickets came and she got the game she wanted,” Linda’s mother said.
Her earlier words pounded, repeated themselves in my mind.
“Miami Heat,” she said.
Silence. Sticks bobbing in the eddy.
“The doctor said that once the upper bowel is dead, the body just can’t survive, and that’s why we had to remove the life support.” She repeated herself now.
“I’m so sorry, Carol. I can’t begin to imagine your pain.” I repeated myself, too.
“There’s a lot of paperwork here, still.”
“Just leave it for now, Carol. You have time.”
“It’s not supposed to go this way, you know, a child before the parent.”
“I know. I am so very sorry.”
“And she never did get to wear that wig. It was so cute on her, too.”
Words. Flowing back into the eddy, to rest.