Clifford’s head lay, inert and helpless, cradled in his arms like a stillborn child. A vein in his temple filled and began to throb. He could feel it swell and release, swell and release, against his arm. A delta of veins and arteries relentlessly fed his headache.

This was going to be a bad one.

His wife sat directly across the table. He imagined she had an outstanding view of his bald spot.

“Spineless. You’re just spineless.” Lillian was right, of course. Only a man with no spine would be unable to lift his head. “This is the way you handle everything, isn’t it, Clifford? Just hide, and wish it would go away.” He wanted to lift his head to show her that he was not hiding, simply stunned by her revelation. But he found that he couldn’t.

He should have known a blow was imminent when she sat down across from him with a cup of that foul hibiscus tea, clanking her spoon around to cool it, huffing and blowing with her audible gusts. She removed the spoon, banged it on the side of the cup like she was getting a banquet crowd’s attention, and spoke.

If only he’d let his head fall before she spoke.

“I have a lover.” Ugh, that word. Lover. She not only had a lover, but it was Theodore Reinke, a man who in every possible way was Clifford’s superior. And apparently, Theodore Reinke had shown her a superior kind of love. “Real love, Clifford. Not the pale, skim-milk variety you’ve trickled out to me for the past seven years, but love with passion, love with promise.”

He wanted to say, forget about whole-milk love, Lillian. Skim is healthier. But he couldn’t speak.

She’d waited. She’d had her moment of revelation. It was his moment, then, to summon some kind of effective response, to harden with resolve or erupt with righteous anger.

He held his head like a damaged thing.

The absolute surrender of his response had stunned her into silence. Well, only briefly. “Clifford? Aren’t you even going to LOOK at me?” If he were able to lift his head, he could look her in the eyes and tell her that it though it pained him, not just the affair, but with HIM, My God, of all people. . .  but he would forgive her. They would move on.

If he could just lift his head, he could tell her that.

Lillian rapped her nails on the table top. He listened to the galloping clicks. Then she stirred her tea again, clankety-clank in the nearly empty cup. A slurp instead of a sip, then the clunk of the cup on the tabletop.

More fingertip drumming. “I can’t stand any more of this, Clifford. I want out.”

She was tapping her heels.

For seven years, he had listened to her rap and click and slam, thud and bump and smack and knock. He had gritted his teeth and lived with the noise because he loved her. And she was leaving. Unfaithful, untrue, unapologetic, undone. Unfortunately, he could not move his head.

“I said I’m leaving.”

He should have seen this coming, but of course he never saw anything coming. He was always lost in thought, roaming around in the cavern of his cranium. Her voice sounded sad when she asked, “Clifford? Are you just going to SIT there?” It was the moment to speak, to throw himself at her mercy, to talk about the seven years they had spent together.  Clifford’s head stayed down under the crushing weight of its own ugliness.

She stomped upstairs to pack, leaving him alone with the weight of both his head and her news.

He opened his eyes and looked at his forearm. A luminous ghosting of crescents and stars lit his vision.

Big heads, big headaches.

As a child, he had attracted occasional stares and whispers, speculation that he might have hydrocephalus. His mother had a phrase for it. “Big heads, big brains.” She enjoyed his ceaseless questions that no one could answer. “What does thinking look like, Mom? What color is love? What’s the sound of pain?”

“The sound of pain?” she’d uttered, awed. “Well. I never.” She was proud of his mind, if a little dismayed at the size of what contained it. His head was freakishly large. He had a forehead that only a mother could love. He would have liked to have covered it with some sporty cap, but due to the size of his head, he had never been able to wear a hat in his life.

Why could he not manage the simple act of raising his head?

Clifford’s view of himself varied according to his mood. On a good day, his forehead rose smoothly above bountiful brows that framed his steely eyes. On a bad day, his myopic gaze was milky and unfocused, his brows were the wild-haired brows of an old man, and his forehead was sadly reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s.

This was a bad day.

The swelling atery enlarged, engorged, and emptied into a Ganges of agony that flowed through his head and neck. I should come up with a way to deal with headaches like this at home, he thought, a do-it-yourself trepanning kit. A drill, some gauze, the promise of all that pain and pressure gushing forth at the moment of exquisite release. Release, that is the key.

He wanted to ask Lillian if she would come downstairs for a moment and bash in his head with a brick. But she might become further incensed. That would possibly result in harder snaps, clicks, thumps and thuds as she packed her earthly goods. And he didn’t wish to give her reason to make any more noise than she already made.

He heard the angry report of her shoes on the kitchen floor. “Clifford? Are you getting a headache?” Clifford winced and cradled his head. “I can tell you’re getting one.”

He didn’t answer.

He could hear her calling a cab. She slammed down the receiver, then opened the junk drawer. Probably taking the address book, looting all the rubber bands. Lillian slammed the junk drawer, too. His body recoiled from her bangs and slams as if he were being riddled with gunfire. He considered banging his head repeatedly against the tabletop. That would require lifting it, though.

Her voice was almost tender. “Is it a bad one?”

For seven years she had coddled him, made him lie down in darkened rooms, covered his lumpen brow with cold compresses, ice chips to dissolve in his mouth against the nausea. For seven years she had nursed him through these spells. She had read magazine articles full of suggestions for coping with the pain, and researched doctors who had new treatment methods. It was his pain, though. Not hers.

She stood over him. He was waiting for her hand on his neck, her palm on his brow, anything to help with this sparking short-circuit in his head. “Go on, hide, play dead.” He felt her fury like a blow. His vein throbbed. His headache marched on in a lock-step. Her derision continued. “You’re just like a possum. Playing possum.”

He wondered, was it possum or opossum? The little beasts littered the roadside, their sharp white teeth bared in deathly grimaces. Two police officers were officially censured for dropping a load of the marsupial carcasses at the door of a BBQ joint in the predominantly black neighborhood across the river. Had those officers delivered possums, or opossums?

Did they leave a note?

The cab’s honk was mercifully faint. He thought, I could lay my head under the tire of that cab, pay him to drive over it. That might help. Lillian stood over him. “I think you know where I’ll be, Clifford.” Her foot, tapping. She spun sharply on her heel. Clifford could feel the imprint it made in the wood like it was his body upon which she pivoted, his skin bearing the small scar of her turning away. “And about your headache? You should take something for that.”

The house echoed with her last slam.

Take something. My God. She had no idea. Take something.

She had never had a headache like this in her life. She knew nothing of this fire that licked through your nervous system, grabbed you and shook you and set you down twelve hours later, unable to think clearly or speak coherently. Like riding out an electrical storm. He moved his arms and let his forehead lie directly on the cool table top. Ah, better. But the relief, any relief, was only temporary.

It all has something to do with this forehead, he decided.

Theodore Reinke had a relatively short brow, manfully creased, shaded by an unruly shock of graying hair. The man was setting up facilities all over the state and harvesting an obscene amount of money. Clifford decided, why shouldn’t she leave me for a man with the courage to strike out like the Johnny Appleseed of private virology labs?

Yes, Clifford decided, the only advantage I can claim on Theodore Reinke is my advancing years, my venerable age, my dubious distinction of being that many steps closer to losing my teeth, my hair, my potency, and my life. After all, why wouldn’t Lillian prefer a younger man with vision, elan, brio, and a cutthroat bidding strategy? Why wouldn’t she prefer a man with a normal forehead?

My God, he cried, Lillian is leaving me for a consultant.

In the silence, he surrendered to the dizzy, spinning ride. The pain had a momentum, now, and he felt the rush of its progress through each layer. Skin, muscle, socket, bone, brain, all wracked, contracted. Out of control but still on track, it wheezed along. His inner eyelids reflected the blinking lights, flashing, exploding, looming, receding. His senses danced with radiant agony. Beautiful, beautiful pain.

Like a carnival, he thought, like a carnival. Something creaked, something snapped, something could no longer hold. An unfamiliar sound ruptured the quiet.

So, he thought. This is what it sounds like.

The unbearable weight lifted, and with it, his head.