To My Romeo, with Love novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Clippers

The hair started coming out on the fifteenth day.

I was in the shower with shampoo in my hands, and when I rinsed, a dark rope of it stayed wrapped around my fingers.

I stood very still with the water running.

I pulled once, gently, at the crown of my head.

A handful came away, long and shining and wet.

I turned off the water and sat down in the tub.

I had been warned.

The nurse had warned me, and the pamphlet, and the internet.

Nobody had warned me that it would feel like watching my own face leave.

I came downstairs in a towel with the handful still in my fist.

My father was at the stove frying eggs in his work shirt.

He took one look and turned off the burner.

"Okay," he said. "Sit."

"Dad, I can do it myself."

"I know you can. Sit anyway."

He went to the hall closet and came back with his old clippers, the ones he used to buzz himself every summer until his hair thinned.

He plugged them in beside the toaster.

I sat on a kitchen chair with a bath towel over my shoulders, and my father stood behind me and touched my hair with both hands.

"It's the nicest hair in the family," he said. "Your mother had hair like this."

"Dad."

"I'm not crying. I have onions in my eyes."

"We're having eggs."

"Then I have egg in my eyes."

I laughed, and then I was crying, and then he turned on the clippers.

They hummed.

He went slowly, the way he does a delicate brake job, and long brown strands slid down my shoulders and onto the linoleum.

I closed my eyes.

When the sound stopped, the kitchen was very quiet.

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