A corpse even gets her hair done before the undertaker closes the lid.

Not Bethany.

Tears welled in the corners of her eyes as she stared aghast in the bathroom mirror.

Early gray peeked from above the hairline like a perverted Peeping Tom looking into affluent housewives’ windows. Black roots sprouted from both sides of her scalp above the ears. The style her hairdresser called beachy-blondie now looked like a bubbly art gallery print of a colorful sunrise scribbled over by a limited four-year-old.

With Wynne downstairs home-schooling Ashley and Palmer, Bethany had time to work a wonder. Working wonders was what Bethany called any of her limited successes. That cake she baked last year for Ashley’s birthday when the peanut butter icing actually tasted like peanut butter instead of crap the way Palmer described it? That was Bethany working a wonder. The morning she helped Palmer find the bulk package he panicked about misplacing that he had to deliver by noon? There she goes again, Bethany working a wonder. Persuading Wynne to grow a moustache for a week so he looked like lead singer Freddy Mercury in that movie about the rock band Queen? Bethany, did you work another wonder. Yes, she did.

With beauty shops ordered closed until who knew when, Bethany would take her hair coloring into her own hands. You didn’t have to be a feminist to be a woman who could take care of herself.

The box of dye in the back of the cabinet, stored with a useless accumulation of cosmetic samples, make-up, facial creams, eye shadow and other health and beauty aids, would do the trick.

This was an emergency and Bethany was an accident that already happened.

Trim of figure and busty of breast, Bethany stood with her hands planted firmly on her hips. Struggling to exude confidence, she faced a terrible foe and started to tremble. Her dark roots looked like earth worms trying to surface after a punishing rain, pushing their way past blond strands that once blew softly in her face. If only she could relive those days when she brushed a soft golden lock from her eyes, batted long fake lashes sprinkled with glitter and fished for boys with the ease of a seasoned lobster fisherman pulling up traps in Maine. That’s how she hooked Wynne. One look at the thin platinum tresses splayed across the tops of her tanned bouncy boobs, he went wobbly with desire. Now Bethany’s hair looked like desert tumbleweed blowing across an Arizona highway at the opening of a serial killer movie.

Every country club wife got her hair done at least once every two weeks. How could a girl live without a touch-up, as essential to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as voting Republican in the next presidential election? If America truly stood tall as the land of milk conditioner and honey shampoo, how dare those liberals hold her hair hostage? Politically correct snowflakes shut down the economy to deprive women of their God-given right to look good. If that wasn’t sexism Bethany didn’t know what was.

Beauty delayed is beauty denied.

Enough was enough.

Like a Minuteman during the Revolutionary War, the time had come for Bethany to pick up a musket. In this case, firing the shot heard round the world occurred when she tore open the boxed dye (no need to read the instructions, I mean, how hard can it be?) and poured the contents into a baking bowl. Mixing the dye and hot water from the tea kettle with a spoon Wynne used to mix his protein powder in the morning, she watched the pigment turn as brilliant yellow as the thick dairy butter she lathered on her breakfast pancakes at the shore.

Bending over, she combed out her head of shoulder-length hair, a mane that reminded her of silk. In reality, her coiffure bristled with the consistency of wet barn straw left to dry outside in a burning summer wind. With a towel pulled tightly around her neck, she moved quickly to the bowl and dipped deep into the steaming mixture. At first the sensation felt tingly. Then she smelled ammonia and felt a stinging vapor that burned and made her light-headed. Maybe the chemicals in the dye changed over the years. Maybe she mixed it incorrectly. All she added was Clorox because she thought she remembered one of the girls’ in the Chamber of Commerce golf tournament saying something about Clorox. Maybe that was for clothes and not hair. Or nails. Or was it to put in a butterscotch pudding-facial with cucumber slices? Was she supposed to put cucumber slices in the hair dye? Butterscotch?

When Bethany lifted her head, her skull smoked. Bethany’s hair shined a mottled blue, flecked with electric orange and marbled with funkadelic green. Splotches of matted hair that didn’t fall out in the sink sizzled on her head.

Bethany’s screams woke Wynne and the kids from their naps downstairs.

Wynne yelled back.

You out of the bathroom yet, honey?

Stoned again, Palmer couldn’t stop giggling.

Now Ashley screamed.

Yeah, Mom, I really gotta go.