Love in Many Languages

by Jamie Bennett

  “I’m wearing a bra and everything,” I said. And I had foregone the ointment, so no one would be reminded of flammable liquids at this nice party. I had brushed my hair carefully and put on lipstick, even. I had checked it in the rearview mirror before I came in, because I wasn’t used to having it on, and I had lingered on my reflection, examining things a little. My lips were the same shape as they had been before. They had felt gigantic and stiff for a while after it happened, but I had been noticing that they seemed more normal, usual, lately. I had looked at my teeth, too, and they were the same as they had always been. I had angled the mirror up a little but when I started to see the scar on my cheek, the line of cars waiting for the valets had moved, and I had stopped looking. It was for the best.

  Karis laughed at my bra remark, even though I had meant it seriously. She and I walked over to the bar and got some appetizers, and found Augusta to say hello. I was enjoying myself too, talking to some new people and to Karis’ mom, Mette, whom I had last seen when I was in the hospital. We talked about her dressmaking business and how Karis’ wedding gown was coming.

  “Karis looks like an angel in it,” she was telling me, smiling, when another woman, Augusta’s mother-in-law, walked up on my other side. She ignored Mette, Karis’ mom, and stood very close to me. I took an uncomfortable step back, because even though I didn’t mind physical contact, I didn’t want it with this woman, who really was a czarownica.

  “Ione. You’re the other bridesmaid,” she announced.

  “Yes. Hello, Diana,” I answered her.

  “Augusta told me you were in some kind of accident.” She leaned forward again, her eyes scrutinizing every part of my face.

  “Yes,” I said again, and took another step back. “A few weeks ago.”

  “Did you have rhinoplasty?”

  “No.” I could have explained that my nose had been broken but they had manipulated it back into shape, but I didn’t want to talk to her about it, not when she was staring at me like she still smelled kerosene on me.

  “Why are you wearing that? What is it for?” Diana demanded. She pointed to my arm, still in a brace and a sling.

  “It got broken.” I also didn’t explain to her that I had plates under my skin now, to hold both my forearm bones together, or that it was going to be much longer before I had my arm back to where it should be. I wanted to have an open heart, but not with this woman.

  “Ione was severely injured,” Mette put in. “We’re all very glad that she’s feeling better.”

  Diana nodded, but she was frowning, too. “I need to go speak to Augusta,” she told us, and walked away. We both watched her.

  “Let me tell you about the veil,” Mette said, and I listened for a moment while she talked about lace, but then I wanted to know. I told Mette that I wanted to find Augusta, too, and I walked through the party looking for her and her mother-in-law.

  They were easy to find, because Diana’s voice was so high-pitched and strident. I followed her whine to the little hallway that led to the powder room, as they called it in this giant house.

  “Will she be fixed by September?”

  I stopped.

  “I don’t know why any of this is your concern.” Augusta didn’t usually talk as loudly as her mother-in-law, but anger had made her voice rise. “You have nothing to do with Karis’ wedding.”

  “Think of how it will look,” Diana continued. “I’m thinking of the pictures. For the rest of your lives, that woman will be looking like that in the pictures. She’ll ruin them.”

  “Again, I’m not sure why you’re worrying about it.” Augusta’s voice had gone up more. “Karis doesn’t care.”

  “She should,” Diana answered. “But maybe it’s for the best. You’ll already upstage the bride with your flashy hair.”

  “My hair is not flashy—”

  “That Ione would have put you both to shame with how she looked before. I don’t understand why your little mousy friend picked you two to be bridesmaids anyway, instead of looking for women more her height and in her range of attractiveness. At least now it won’t be a problem with what happened to Ione.”

  “I know that Karis hasn’t picked her friends based on their looks, because she’s not a shallow bitch,” Augusta said, very loudly. “And if you say one word about this to Karis or to Ione, you’re out for all holidays for the next five years. Understood? Mind your own business and shut it.”

  “My son wouldn’t let you keep me away!” Diana protested.

  “Try me.” Augusta rounded the corner of the hallway and walked straight into me. “Oh…Ione. I hope you didn’t hear…”

  “I did listen to what she said, but I’m not going to tell Karis, so don’t worry. I’m sorry you have to deal with that woman,” I told her. Diana took that moment to walk past, and Augusta gave her a look that could have frozen water. She ignored us and kept going.

  “Ione, she’s an idiot. I hope you don’t believe anything that she said, about anything,” Augusta told me earnestly. “I never listen to a word out of her mouth because she’s small-minded and mean.” She almost yelled the last part after Diana, whose shoulders stiffened as if she had heard.

  “No, I know that Karis isn’t worried about how things will look.” My fingers went to the scar on my cheek, and I rubbed over it lightly.

  Augusta took my hand. “Come here, ok?” She took my hand and pulled me into the powder room, and she turned on all the lights. “See?”

  I looked at myself in the mirror, my whole face. The eyes that looked back at me hadn’t changed; they were the same green that they had always been, the color that I liked because my babcia had said my eyes meant I was a fairy in disguise. My nose was still off, different, but not what I had been thinking. No matter what my fingertips had told me when I felt it, I had been imagining a hook like in the German fairy tales I had read as a kid, but it wasn’t like that at all. I ran my finger over the bridge.

  “And the doctors said it was still swollen, right? That they expected it to go down more?” Augusta gently touched my cheek. “You’re still a little puffy here, but if I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t be able to see it. And that will go away, too.”

  The scar on my cheek was red and a little raised. I touched it again, feeling the slight bump. “I need a haircut,” I mentioned.

  Augusta laughed. “You always need a haircut. See? You look a little different but most of the bruises have faded. The rest will, soon. If I walked past you in the street, I wouldn’t think anything except maybe that I wished I had that natural wave and shine in my hair. I would also probably wonder, why isn’t that woman wearing a bra?”

  “I am,” I told her, and put her hand on my shoulder so she could feel the strap. “See?”

  She laughed again. “Thank you.” Someone knocked on the door and she called that it was occupied. “Ione, I never knew you to care about your looks before.”

  “I don’t. I mean, I never did. I never thought that how I looked meant very much. It didn’t to me, but I see now how much it meant to everyone else. Fox moved out because he couldn’t stand the sight of me.”

  “Fuck that little fucker.”

  “That’s about what Cooper says, too, except he uses ‘weasel’ instead of ‘fucker.’” I sighed. “I did think Fox was my friend, and it hurt my feelings, a lot. And so many other people have acted the same way. Dov, at work, used to come to my desk every day to hang out. Many times a day. Now when he gets a glimpse of me, he winces, and he won’t talk anymore. He barely says hello. That’s just two people, but really, it’s almost everyone.”

  “Everyone like Karis?”

  “No, of course not! Not the people I really care about, but it’s…” I tried to think of how to explain. “I had thought that people liked me, they were my friends, because of me. Who I am. That hasn’t changed, but when my face was swollen and they didn’t like the way I looked, then they didn’t like me anymore, either. I never, never tried to judge people like that, and I honestly
didn’t understand how much other people were judging me.”

  “I think that’s definitely true about Fox, because Cooper is right, he is just a little weasel,” Augusta mused. I also thought of the juice delivery guy, trying to get me to promise to him that I would fix my face, because it was such a waste if I didn’t. “But there could be other reasons that people reacted differently to you,” she continued. “Like, I know that when Reid was hurt in his rock-climbing accident, some of his old friends didn’t know how to reach out and say they were worried or sad. It was more like they didn’t know how to say anything. They were afraid of messing up and somehow making it worse for him, so they ignored him. Which was, of course, not the right thing. It would have only taken a ‘hi, I’m thinking about you.’ I know their silence hurt his feelings.”

  “Maybe. I guess it’s pretty human to try to run away from problems.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t know. I’m only married to the guy who attempted for years to pretend that his mother was a figment of his imagination, until she appeared numerous times on our doorstep and demanded to be in the delivery room when I had Phoebe. I’m sorry my mother-in-law was here tonight, and I’m sorry you had to hear her say such a dumb load of crap.”

  The whole time we had spoken, Augusta hadn’t once used her little-ray-of-sunshine voice, not at all. I hugged her. “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure. Should we go check on Karis and see if she’s become unhinged? Remember when she was hiding in the basement when my mom tried to introduce her to her book club?”

  We went together back to the party, and I had fun, and forgot that I was supposed to care how I looked. Karis managed to enjoy herself too, after she disappeared with Reid for a while and came back with her hair very messy, but looking much more relaxed.

  ∞

  My phone rang late, late that night, so late that I was actually asleep. I heard it in my dream as an alarm telling me to run, and I jerked awake, so hard that it hurt the parts of me that weren’t totally healed yet.

  “Hello?” My voice was low, and even to myself, I sounded scared and nervous. “Hello?”

  There was silence, and I almost hung up. Then someone said my name, very softly.

  “Who is this?” I asked. “Who’s there?”

  I heard my name again, and this time I was sure that it was a woman’s voice.

  “Corrie?” I wavered out. “Is that you? Corrie? Where are you? Are you all right?”

  There was another silence, but I could hear breathing now if I listened very closely. “Be careful, Ione,” the voice whispered. “You need to be careful,” and the call cut off.

  I was sobbing and I couldn’t find the number at first, couldn’t figure out how to make my phone work at all. He had told me to call him if I remembered anything else, or if I had any trouble, and I thought this could be very, very bad. “I’m sorry to wake you up,” I said when Ash answered, but it came out more like, “Sorry,” and then just crying. I finally was able to make him understand that I thought Corrie had called me, and what she had said. He said he was on his way and I waited at the window, pulling the curtain a little to look outside, and glad for Sania’s prison yard outdoor lighting system. I wrapped myself in a blanket, but I shivered and shook even though I had turned off the air conditioning and I knew it had to be hot inside my house.

  The car that pulled up first in my driveway was very familiar to me, and I opened the door as Cooper ran up the walk. “Why didn’t you call me?” he was asking, and hugging me with one arm as he locked the door and hit the alarm code with the other.

  “I—I thought about calling Karis but it was her party tonight, and Augusta has her baby, and you have your mom and your brother, and I just thought—” I stopped because a sob caught in my chest. “How did you get here?”

  “I’ve been talking to Ash about what’s going on since I ran into him at the hospital. I’m glad you called him. Next time, call me, too.” I nodded and held on to Cooper as tightly as I could, and he hugged me back. After a while, he cleared his throat. “Ione, do you think you should put some clothes on before Ash gets here?”

  I nodded, because I was just wearing my underwear, and a little tank top that didn’t cover a lot.

  “Just to make him more comfortable,” Cooper said. “What do you think?”

  In theory, I agreed. “I don’t want to let go of you,” I explained. “I feel a lot better when you’re here. I’m really frightened right now.”

  He bent and put the blanket back around me, then he held me closer. We stood like that until Ash knocked at the door, and I did find the robe that Augusta had gotten for me to wear in the hospital.

  Ash talked to me for quite a while, sitting on the new, avocado green sofa with the nubby upholstery that was so much like our old one had been. He took information off my phone, and made some calls on his, and asked me questions about the voice, and the words, and what I had heard in the background. The more he asked, the more I seemed to remember, like that there had been music when I had first answered, a pulsing beat that sounded like it could have been playing at a club. And I had also heard a voice calling out that I thought could have been a DJ.

  “That’s really good,” Ash told me. “That’s great information.” He paused. “You seem pretty sure that it was Corrie’s voice. But you also said that whoever it was only spoke a few words, and mostly in a whisper. I’m not trying to make you doubt yourself, but are you sure?”

  I thought again. “It was how she said my name. She didn’t say much but I know. I’m sure it was Corrie. What do you think she was warning me about?”

  Ash looked very grim. “I’m not sure. I’m going to ask for more patrols by here, but is there anywhere you could go for the night?”

  The thought of leaving my house terrified me, making it almost impossible to speak. “No,” I said, as Cooper said, “Yes. You can come with me.”

  “No.” I looked at both of them, then repeated it. “I don’t want to leave my house.” I was gripping Cooper’s hand. “Thank you, but I don’t want to go.”

  “You’d rather stay here alone?” he asked me, and I started to cry again. It didn’t make any sense, and I knew it, but I didn’t want to leave, so that was what I said to them.

  “Ione, don’t cry. It’s ok,” Cooper said, and I turned my head into his shoulder. “What if I stay here with you for the rest of the night, and in the morning, we’ll figure it out?” I nodded and Ash said it sounded like a good plan to him, too. They talked for a moment at the door before Cooper came back to sit with me.

  “Do you think you can go back to sleep?” he asked.

  I shook my head and started to say no, but I yawned before the word came out.

  “Lie down and try,” he said, and I walked over to the bed and took off the robe, letting it fall to the floor. I looked over my shoulder and his eyes were on me.

  “Almost all the bruises on the outside of me are gone,” I noted, and he nodded carefully.

  “You look…all better.”

  “Pretty much,” I agreed. Sania’s salve was kind of miraculous. I wished the inside of me could catch up. I wished I wouldn’t keep hearing Corrie’s voice whispering to me that I should be careful. I wished I didn’t see that boot and the hands with the thick fingers and dirty nails, and hear that grating, angry voice. I wished that when I tried to sleep, I didn’t smell the cigarettes that had drifted off his body. I smelled them so strongly that when I opened my eyes, I thought he would be standing over me, his face in mine again.

  The mattress dipped as Cooper sat down next to me. “You’re shaking so much that the bed frame is creaking. Are you scared, still? Even though I’m here?”

  “Thank you,” I told him. “Thank you for being here.” I held out my arms to him and he kicked off his shoes and lay down, cuddling me to him, careful of my arm and trying not to bump me too much. “Can you hold me closer?” I asked. His arms tightened. “More?” We lay pressed together.

  “Are you crying?” he asked
me softly.

  “It was such a good night. I felt a little like I did before. I forgot, a little, until she called.”

  “I’m glad you had fun. I’m sorry it ended like this. It’s going to keep getting better. Pretty soon it will be like it was before for you, Ione. I swear.”

  “She sounded so frightened…”

  “I’ll bet it was some kind of terrible, malicious prank she’s pulling. A joke.” Now he sounded furious.

  I pulled away and looked up into his face. “No. She wouldn’t do that.”

  “Ione, you’re talking about the woman who would have let you bleed to death on your floor,” Cooper answered, every muscle in his body tensing. “You think she wouldn’t keep it going with prank phone calls?”

  “I think you’re not understanding her. She really didn’t want to hurt me, I know it. She’s in something over her head, and she’s young. People can make mistakes.” I hesitated. “I watched my boyfriend in high school break into a house. I drove him away, after. He didn’t even have to make me, I just did it. I was so confused and scared, I don’t know what I would have done for him.”

  “Did you ever watch him almost beat a woman to death in front of your eyes, and then turn away? Did you—” He stopped. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said that.” He patted my back as I cried into his shirt. “I’m so angry at her. I’m so angry this happened to you, and I blame her.”

  “You could blame me. I invited her to stay here, I wanted to be her friend.”

  “You thought you were doing the right thing by helping Corrie. It’s not your fault.”

  “I let all those people into my house,” I said. “Probably a lot of them were terrible, despicable people who would have wanted to hurt me or someone else. Probably most of them were, and I just got lucky for a while that nothing happened to me.” I had been so dumb, I saw that now. Just as dumb as I had been in high school.

  “But you’re more careful now. You lock the doors, you turn on the alarm, you don’t let strangers in.” We both heard a noise outside and I jumped. “I’m going to look,” Cooper told me, and rolled out of bed. I sat up, ready to run while he looked out the front window, then silently walked into the kitchen.