Hole in Her Head

                                                    Hole in Her Head

         The hole in Kathy's head grew rapidly to such a width and depth that soon the shiny reddish matter of her brain peeked through, surrounded by stringy clumps of what little hair she had left.
         "You always said you wished you could get inside my head, Tom."
         "Yeah, but I didn't literally want to see it."
         Tom always gave Kathy a hard time for having a hole in her head.
         "If you'd just quit scratching at it, you'd give it a chance to close up."
         Kathy wasn't sure she wanted it to close up.  Like the parting of storm clouds to let rays of divine light shine through, this was an almost godly experience for her.  She could see her own brain and she was still alive.  She was pretty sure she was one of few, if any, to have such an experience.  Besides, it didn't really hurt; it was just a little sore around the edges.
         Kathy was invited to numerous local and national television talk shows, but she decided she'd only appear on ten.
         Oprah gave Kathy a fancy hat that she'd had specifically made for her.  The famous talk show host called it the "Kathy Hat" and she gave one to all her audience members.  She mentioned it would soon be sold nationwide at Macy's.
         "Don't wear the hat the whole show," Oprah told Kathy after she'd put on the hat and the audience oohed and awed and clapped.  "We still want to see that hole in your head."  She playfully slapped Kathy's resting hand.
         The audience clapped again.  Kathy took off the hat and beamed.
         Kathy was invited to meet the president.  She was so excited that she had a blue pant suit tailored especially for herself.
         "Wow, where'd you get the money for that?" Tom asked when he saw her wearing it to break it in before flying to D.C.
         She didn't want to tell him that she'd been making so much money off her talk show appearances that she'd quit her job at the post office.  "I have my sources of income," she said.
         Tom wasn't buying it.  "How many of these talk shows have you done now, Kathy.  Fifteen?  Twenty?  I thought you were going to stop at ten."
         "People want to hear my story, Tom.  What can I say?  And if I can afford to treat myself to little things, who can blame me?"
         Kathy met the president in the nation's capitol a day later.
         "My, how did that happen?"  The president asked, his concerned brow ridge highlighted by fifty flashing bulbs as he shook Kathy's hand on the front lawn of the White House.
         "I scratched at my head a lot and one day my skull just opened up,"  Kathy said nonchalantly.
         "Well, Linda and I think you're a real American hero, Kathy," said the president, patting her on the shoulder as he smiled into a sea of cameras.
         A picture of Kathy and the president was on the cover of her local newspaper.  The mayor gave her a key to the city.  All of a sudden, she had dates lined up for weeks, when before, she'd had a dry spell of years.  She went out nightly to clubs with friends until the small hours of the morning.  Her blue pant suit morphed into leather minis and sequined tanks, and her new favorite drink was a cosmopolitan.  The paparazzi followed her everywhere, critiquing every outfit and drunken outburst she provided.
         Tom became jealous of Kathy's new fame and popularity.
         "Ever since you've had this hole in your head, you've changed.  It's like you're a different person now with your fancy clothes and new friends.  We never even hang out anymore.  I miss the old Kathy," he confessed to her one evening over the phone.
         Kathy felt badly that Tom's feelings were hurt, but she couldn't let him hold her back just because he didn't have a hole in his head.           
         Kathy continued her talk show appearances, earning decent money, though before long, she had to move on to the Canadian talk show circuit.  The weather was much colder than in L.A., where a lot of her U.S. appearances had been, but Vancouver and Toronto still had fabulous clubs.
         "I don't know how to tell you this." Kathy's doctor was grave one day when she was in for a check up.  He sighed and then continued.  "The hole in your head is beginning to heal."
         Kathy was horrified.  She was silent for a moment then pushed the words out of her mouth.  "If I keep scratching at it, won't that make it stay longer?"
         "I'm afraid not, Kathy.  The healing seems inevitable.  There's nothing I can do.  I give you a month tops before we can't even see your brain anymore."
         Kathy cried all night.  Her life was over.  She'd grown so accustomed to the hole in her head that she didn't know if she could exist without it.
         Her club friends noticed that her head was healing and said things like, "Oh, jeez Kathy, I'm sorry," and "I didn't know it was curable?"  But they stopped calling her to go out the worse her head looked.
         All of a sudden, Kathy couldn't find work on talk shows.  Money became tight and she found herself alone, broke, and with an ever lessening hole in her head. 
         The dreaded day came when she looked in the mirror and she swore she could not see one bit of pinkish brain matter, not one shiny millimeter.  She felt like she would faint at the sight.  It was one of the most disturbing things she'd ever seen.  She curled up in the fetal position in an arm chair and sat like that for hours.  She fell asleep and when she woke up, she decided to call Tom, whom she hadn’t spoken to in months.
         They had a brief conversation and decided to meet in the park.
         "Well, I hate to say I told…" Tom began.
         Kathy cut him off.  "I know what you're going to say, Tom, so save your breath."  They were sitting on a park bench on a sunny afternoon and Kathy's head was healing so well that little tufts of hair were beginning to grow back where only weeks before, her scalp had been missing.  "I called you here to apologize.  I lost sight of what was important in life.  True friends and a healthy scalp."
         "I'm glad to see you've regained  your senses.  Call me crazy, but I like seeing your head with a full layer of skin and hair on it."  He touched her hand with a sheepish look on his boyish face.
         "Well, you're the only one," Kathy said. 
         She didn't feel sad or like she'd lost anything.  She suddenly realized Tom was a real friend, one who didn't care how big the hole in her head was or if she even had one at all.  And she didn't care that Tom didn't have a hole in his head.  Tom might be boring looking, but he was a stand-up guy and she saw a flash of a future with him.  It was a quick scene of her sitting at the kitchen table reading aloud passages from Byron while Tom emptied penne into a colander in the sink, and it was not completely unlikable.
         Kathy reached up and felt where the hole in her head had been.  Instead of warm gooey sponginess, her fingers touched soft warm skin and silky tufts of hair.  For the first since she had healed, she didn’t miss the hole her head.