In a Perfect World

in the sky, as far as Jiselle could see. Not even a contrail fraying above them.

Sam walked ahead of her on the path. She’d made him wear one of his father’s fishing caps—a smashed khaki thing that was too big for him—because the exposed flesh on his freshly shaved head looked so pale. Now, trudging ahead of her in the cap, he looked comical, top-heavy, like some cartoon character, with his bony shoulders, his long gait, that hat.

She was looking from Sam’s back to the treetops, thinking what a perfect day it was (warm but not hot, the whole afternoon ahead of them) when it ran across the path only a few inches in front of her.

A warm-blooded darkness. A sneaky, wild, black furred thing, slipping between herself and Sam.

If she hadn’t frozen instinctively, Jiselle would have tripped over it. But after freezing, she jumped backward, screamed, and Sam turned just in time to see the rat scurry off, and Jiselle’s boot (which was all wrong for hiking, she realized at that moment, the heel of it too smooth and high) and the path slide out from under her. And suddenly she was slipping backward into the muck, arms windmilling ridiculously around her as she tried to regain her balance, not regaining it, propelling her instead farther and farther off the path until she finally fell with a thud, and then was simply sitting in the muck, on her butt, the dampness seeping in. She looked up.

The expression on Sam’s face was bright with shock. His eyes were wide, his mouth an exaggerated zero.

“Ji-selle?”

They stared at each other for a few seconds before they both started to laugh, laughing until they were gasping with it. Sam, holding his stomach, doubled over, finally managing to ask, “Are you okay?”

“Well,” Jiselle said, wiping the tears from her eyes, “my pride is a little wounded.”

She tried to push herself up, but her hands slid out from under her, and then, when she slid through the muck again, she just gave up and lay back laughing. What difference did it make now? She was covered by then with the stuff.

Sam reached down to offer her a hand, and Jiselle said, taking it, “This sucks,” as Sam pulled her to her feet, and her body emerging from the muck made a genuine sucking sound, and they started to laugh so hard again that Sam lost his grip on her hand, and she was lying on her back in the muck again.

“What were you thinking?”

She looked up. She hadn’t heard Mark pull in the driveway, although she’d known he was on his way home. She and Sam were sitting beside each other on the couch, reading from the Hans Christian Andersen collection, “The Happy Family,” in which a family of naive snails foolishly envy their cousins, the escargots. Mark stood in the center of the family room holding his bag in his hand as if he might not bother to set it down.

Jiselle tried to keep her voice from trembling as she said, “He had head lice, Mark.”

She had already told Mark this news over the phone. Camilla had gotten home from school, seen Sam’s shaved head, and gasped, “Does Dad know about this?” She let her mouth hang open, staring at her brother, and then looked at Jiselle.

Jiselle had flushed. Hot. Sweaty. Except for the most casual criticism (“Our mother used to squeeze the orange juice herself”), Camilla had never said anything before to Jiselle’s face that wasn’t full of sugary approval —Great! Thank you! How cool!—and Jiselle felt now, seeing her look of deep disapproval, that something shameful was being exposed. Dirty underwear, smelly feet. That shameful thing was, she realized, her own willful naivete. Jiselle had known (how could she not?) that the girl hated her, had overheard what she had to say to her sister from behind the curtains of their rooms, but she had let herself pretend it was something it wasn’t, anyway, and that determined ignorance had made her even more detestable, she realized now as Camilla walked swiftly out of the room.

Sara had simply come in, looked at Sam, and turned around. Her shoulders, Jiselle thought, seemed to be shaking. With laughter?

A few minutes later Jiselle heard Camilla whispering from her bedroom on her cell phone, “She just totally shaved Sam’s head, Dad. She’s gone crazy.”

A few minutes after that, Mark called Jiselle on the house telephone, pretending he didn’t know. He started by telling Jiselle that he was in an airport lounge in Newfoundland. That there was so much wind that a corporate jet had been tipped over on the runway. He asked her how she was, how the kids were, how the weather was, and finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and just blurted out, “I shaved Sam’s head because he had head lice.”

There was a sigh, and then a clearing of the throat, and then, “You’re kidding, right? Jiselle? Tell me you’re kidding?”

“No,” Jiselle said, and even to herself, it sounded like pleading. “He would have hated the shampoo.”

She did not, and never would, tell Mark about the secretary, and what she’d said. If he were my son, I’d shave his head. She knew what Mark would say about that—about superstition, about hysteria, about the flu.

He said, sounding weary, “I guess, Jiselle, we’ll have to discuss this when I get home.”

Now, still holding his black leather bag, Mark walked over to Sam, took his son’s chin in his palm, moved his head around, inspecting, and then he looked over at Jiselle, and said, “There are ways to get rid of head lice without shaving the kid’s head, Jiselle. Jesus Christ.” He shook his own head. “Surely,” he said, “you must have thought…” He trailed off.

“Thought what?” Jiselle asked, but no sooner had the words come out of her mouth than she realized, suddenly, clearly, what.

Joy.

Her curls.

Those cascades of strawberry-blond ringlets ribboned with satin on her wedding day. What that hair must have looked like beside Mark, stretching from her pillow to his in the mornings. The smell of it after she’d washed it. Rain. There was a rain barrel in the backyard, and Camilla had pointed it out one day and said, “Our mother used to wash her hair with rainwater.”

Maybe she used to let the girls brush it. Like handmaidens. In the evenings. Sitting at the little vanity table. The sparks flying off the brush into the air. Maybe Mark used to gather it in his hands and kiss it. Maybe Sam, still a baby, would have taken it in his cereal-sticky fists and shoved it into his mouth.

Oh my God, Jiselle thought, full of understanding:

Sam’s hair had belonged to Joy.

She could feel her lips quivering. She couldn’t speak.

Mark exhaled.

“Look,” he said, seeing the expression on her face. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Jiselle. You just…didn’t think. What’s done is done. It’s just hair. It’ll grow back.” He shrugged, but then he turned away. It was the first time he’d ever come home without taking her in his arms.

“Daddy!” Camilla called then from her bedroom, dancing out from under the cloth in the doorway. She threw her arms around her father. He lifted her up off her feet, swung her around. “How’s my princess?” he asked.

Jiselle watched them from the couch. The light from the sliding glass doors shone on Camilla’s golden hair, and a kind of pure white light flashed from it. Her cheeks were flushed. The little pearl studs in her ears looked damp, iridescent, freshly plucked from the sea.

“It was my idea!” Sam shouted then, loudly.

Jiselle looked down at him, startled, and Sam pressed his eyebrows together, elbowed her sharply.

Mark turned to look at him, and then at Jiselle. How was it that the tears sprang up so instantly, so unbidden, into her eyes, as if they’d been there all along, waiting?

“Sweetheart,” Mark said to Jiselle. “I’m sorry. I know you only did what you thought was best.”

Camilla stepped away, disappeared back into her room, as Mark came over to Jiselle on the couch and kissed the top of her head, as if she were one of the children. Still one of his children, if not his favorite.

“But,” he said softly, “it was a bit thoughtless.”