What Happened to Lani Garver

by Carol Plum-Ucci

  Geneva kicked in right on cue. "That's pretty cool, Claire. But don't you feel like a guy doing that?"

  Any thought of feeling butch had never crossed my mind, and I could hear the echo of Lani rambling on about his "boxes" until I realized how obnoxious it is when it's happening to you.

  I said, "No...," and lay there seething, despite how Macy kept poking me, mumbling, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll get her off Scott. I promise."

  Fortunately, their abuse turned to whooping from the guys as gravel crunched under the tires, because Vince liked to gun it down Mariner Road. There were no houses along this five-mile stretch to the wharf, so the cops didn't patrol it. They didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to lead foot it down a gravel road chocked with flood-tide debris and sand holes. They didn't understand the extent of Vince Clementi's insanity.

  Vince's speed sent my cheek smashing into Phil's forehead, who said, "Hang tight, babe. I'll make you comfy."

  My body shifted, and suddenly I was in a wind machine, staring up at the stars. Like I needed more attention. But the summerlike air on my blushing face felt good, and having my head out the window put some distance between me and my embarrassment. Part of me wanted to shove myself back into the car, waiting for Vince to hit a pothole and separate my neck from my body. Yet, I could feel the security of everyone's hands on my legs and arms. Vince really cooked it, up to probably sixty. I kept trying to turn my neck to see where we were going, but the wind kept forcing my eyes shut.

  Scott squeezed my ankle, shouting something to Vince about don't be lame and go over any potholes. Vince swerved on purpose—probably to get even with Scott for telling him his business. At this speed my body jerked out the window from the waist up and only stopped because of Scott's death grip.

  I screamed. I tried to look ahead by making a wind block with squinted eyelashes. It couldn't last more than a couple of minutes.

  The road curved, then sped us down this giant sand dune toward the spotlights on the wharf parking lot. I caught a glimpse of Tony Clementi's truck there, and this combo of good and bad feelings whipped up more. Tony was Vince's big brother and a fisherman, about five years older than us. He was known to be such a great partyer that he made me uncomfortable at a party. He was nuts before he even had anything to drink. Some people said it had to do with his size, five five, which meant he constantly felt the need to prove himself. Others said his size was the "side problem," and the "real problem" was Vince and Tony's dad, who had been in the habit of hurling beer bottles at smart-mouthed sons instead of getting up off the couch to take care of it. When Tony was four years old, a hurled Rolling Rock fractured his skull and supposedly affected that part of his brain in charge of growth.

  Vince, at seventeen, was six-foot-one and at about age twelve had hit the size where he could hurl something back at Mr. Clementi without fearing revenge. Tony never reached nearly that size. He took abuse until he was seventeen. On a Saturday night in August that year, Mr. Clementi decided to take a left instead of a right coming out of the Rod 'N' Reel in a drunken stupor.

  Kids wondered with cackles if Mr. Clementi's death meant he had defined the phrase taking a long walk off a short pier, but no one wondered with Vince and Tony in hearing distance. If you said anything in front of them other than "He drowned trying to save a night fisherman," they'd beat you to tomato juice. Go figure how kids could defend a dad like that. It's funny what we accepted from somebody who owned a car.

  The bigger weirdness was how Tony managed to be twice everything Vince was when he was only half the size. He was twice as surly, twice as daring, twice as nuts. Vince drove crazily. Tony did crazy things in the paths of cars.

  And there I was, out Vince's window to my waist, when I thought I saw Tony standing in the middle of the road. I strained my eyes through my eyelash windscreen, but already my heart was banging.

  "Vince, don't swerve!" I shouted, but my shouting was drowned in everyone else's ... "Swerve! Don't hit him this time! Swerve!"

  Vince wasn't slowing down. This was one of their psychobrother games. When it started four months ago, Vince would refuse to slow down, and Tony would dive out of the headlights at the last minute. When that version got to be no fun anymore, Tony started waiting until Vince hit the brakes, and he would splatter onto the windshield. He'd suffer a few serious bruises and feel it was worth it to see if he could make a girl wet herself. I felt close to wetting myself. A lot of girl's voices screamed, "Swerve!," which meant, if Vince swerved right, Tony's body would take my head off on this narrow stretch of road.

  Vince jammed on the brakes and didn't swerve, which gave me a second of relief before realizing Tony was adding a new dimension to the psycho show. Instead of splattering onto the windshield, he kept rolling or kicking, then he was on the roof of the car. He spilled over the side and came down on top of me, never realizing I was halfway out the window. He hit like a freight train, and my neck nearly did a one eighty before Tony and I spilled onto Mariner Road. Vince hadn't completely stopped yet.

  7

  Tony had never gotten anyone killed, because his brain hatched intelligence only when people were about to die. He wrapped his arms and legs around me tight, so ninety percent of the hitting-rolling impact was on him. He's got fisherman skin, like bricks. I thought we rolled about ten miles in the meadow grass alongside the parking lot, but when I untangled myself from his laughing convulsion and stood up, the car was only about fifteen feet in front. Doors flew open. My neck was bouncing like my head was on a spring, and my head hurt kind of all over, but I figured it came from the goose egg under my bangs, where my palm already pressed down instinctively. I wanted to panic but didn't need to hear a lot of screams.

  Tony's face danced in front of me, and he was sucking his knuckles. In the redness of the taillight, his whole face looked evenly red, so I gathered he wasn't bleeding—not that I cared.

  He hollered, "Vince, what the hell are you doing, hanging a girl out the window!"

  Probably his version of an apology. I searched my tangled brain for words from my aunt Phyllis, an emergency room nurse. ... face bleeds worse than any other body part ... need pressure... Not panicking was like holding back a dam explosion, especially when nobody was doing anything constructive.

  Macy was all "Scott! Scott! She's holding her head!"

  She and Tony were trying to pull my hand down, and I didn't think they knew how face injuries could gush. I started shoving arms off me.

  "Someone go down to the boat and bring up the first-aid kit!" My even voice got lost in their clatter.

  "She's okay. Just give her some breathing room." Scott's arms went around me.

  I didn't want to get blood all over his football jacket, so I pushed off him and ducked under his arm. Solve it myself. My shaking legs carried me toward the dock. Tony fell in beside me. The smell of beer blew up my nostrils.

  "Babe, slow down and let me look! I'm a fisherman! I seen injuries you ain't even heard of!"

  I shook away, thinking, Yeah, I'll trust you—who flings himself in front of a moving Impala.

  "Broken shell, something..." My voice shook. "Get some ice. By the bait shop."

  "Ice, ice, ain't I nice?" He ran off.

  Scott gripped my arms. "Claire, if it's really bloody under there, you could get blood all over my dad's boat! You'll get my ass kicked. Don't do it!"

  When he wrapped his arms around me again, I realized no one comprehended the size of this problem. It was like the Sophomore Show. Macy's part was to get my boyfriend focused on me and not Geneva, and his role was to be Mr. Comforting.

  "Everybody shut up!" I finally yelled at the bedlam. "Stop giggling, stop screaming, just shut up and act your fuckin' ages."

  You could have heard a fish jump. Sincerely un-Claire, but I felt like I had been trying to walk up a wall. I lifted my hand so my palm full of warm blood was perfectly visible to Scott and felt the wound explode with warmth. "Well, then ... we've got a problem. Because I can either fix th
is with your dad's first-aid kit, or we can all go to the emergency room and get in a lot of trouble."

  Before I finished the sentence, blood ran through my eyelashes, and I sniffed it up my nostrils. I leaned forward so when it dripped off my chin it would hit the ground and not the sleeves of my cheerleading jacket, still tied around my waist. Blood on my sacred cheerleading jacket would give my mom a drama fest.

  Scott steered me forward, and I could hear Mike telling everyone to shut up again.

  "We'll just clean it up. Your old man'll think it was crew if—"

  Tony, holding a bait bucket full of crushed ice, caught up with us on the dock as we reached the bow. I dug my free hand into it. Ice helps bleeding stop, but the freezing cold ate into the raw wound. I actually let Scott carry most of my weight as I focused on not hurling the ice a couple of miles.

  He let me down easy until I was sitting on the dock, staring into an audience of sneakers, none of which was moving.

  "I'm gonna puke." It was Macy's voice, and I remembered her tantrum during lunch when I cut my thumb. My night life's invading my day life...

  "Just take your girlfriend on the boat," I told Phil, just to put something in the air.

  Tony took ice chips and started washing my face off. As he dropped little fistfuls of bloody ice into the harbor, he started laughing. Howling, actually. Who knew why, except that it's probably a Tony Clementi way to relieve stress. I allowed myself to join in because laughter might keep all these frozen feet from snapping off at the ankles.

  I grabbed a fresh fistful of ice and switched hands again, which were shaking bad. Scott sat down behind me, and I leaned back on him, thinking his body heat might stop my allover body trembles.

  After a few minutes he asked, "Think it stopped bleeding?"

  "Dunno. You tell me."

  He leaned around the side, and he and Tony stared just above my eyes as I slowly drew my hand away.

  Tony shook his head. "Damn. Your scalp is, like, standing up. It's pulled up from your skull right below where your hair starts. Like, all the little hairs are still in place—" He laughed like that was awesome. I could have done without the description.

  I slammed the ice onto the wound again, which probably made him add his version of comfort. "But the part that's standing up is only about an inch long! And the blood, it's just ... running. It ain't gushing now."

  "Tony, chill down," Scott interrupted. "It's still bleeding but probably not so bad that you couldn't get to my dad's bathroom without leaving a trail of blood. Can you get up?"

  I nodded, yet didn't complain when Scott hauled me up like he was some hoist. A deluge of whew!s hit the air, and Tony started directing traffic onto the bow.

  "She's never been so okay! Little head gash—bleeds like hell, but hey. Did you know a concussion can add ten points to your IQ?"

  So, why aren't you Einstein? I forced a weak grin because I liked how his stupidness was actually making people laugh in relief and move on. I could clean the thing out without the helpless stares. Even before Scott got the light on in the bathroom, I could hear them giggling and sparking a doobie on the stern, kind of a subdued version of the usual. Sets of eyes kept looking in at us, but I could not get over the feeling that everyone's biggest wish was to pretend the whole thing never happened. Except Macy, who kept shouting, "Just shut up, you psycho queen!" Obviously at Tony, who would be denying that he caused all of this.

  "You sure you're okay?" Scott pulled the first-aid kit from a little overhead cabinet.

  "No ... not sure."

  "God. You handle shit good, woman."

  "Too good," I mumbled, studying the rest of my face in the mirror under my palm. No other marks, just a blood streak Tony had missed with the ice. "I should have wigged out or cried or something. Listen to them now..."

  But even Scott wasn't hearing me. He was looking out the door and shouting behavior lectures because of the squeaking we were hearing. Commercial fishing boats are not like yachts. Fishing captains keep them regulation clean, but there are no frills, and nothing really looks and sounds new. The squeaking meant the guys were climbing on the salt-infested hoist for Mr. Dern's giant fishing net, and probably pushing it out, suspending each other over the cold water.

  "Too good, too good," I moaned under my breath.

  I let my hand go, determined not to scream, no matter what I saw in the mirror. It was pretty much like Tony described. A little flap of my forehead stood straight up about a quarter inch below my hairline, and you could almost see my skull, all caked with beach sand. Tissue jutted around the edge that filled up with blood again after a couple seconds. I let the wound stay open and snatched a wet paper towel from Scott.

  "Got peroxide?"

  He stuck a bottle in my hand. I kept dousing the wound, and injuries of lesser value started making themselves known. My knuckles stung, and I noticed that they were skinned. My hip and knee felt skinned, too, but when I glanced at my jeans, they were not torn, just muddy. No mom-nervous-breakdown sights visible.

  I squirted my bangs with a bottle of squirt soap and stuck my whole forehead under the faucet. The numbness from the ice took the edge off the pain.

  "Found a big butterfly." Scott pulled a bandage out of the kit and tossed me a clean towel. "I watched my dad butterfly crew a couple times. Let me do it."

  I nodded, and satisfied that it was dry enough, I let the towel down.

  Scott stared. "Claire. That's fuckin' disgusting."

  I snatched the little packet out of his hand and tore it.

  "No ... I can do it," he said. "I seen worse. Just ... you being a girl and all—"

  "What does that have to do with it?" My voice was shaking with impatience, so I yelled to keep from sounding whiny. "Don't all people bleed!"

  I dropped the open bandage into his giant paw, and now that more blood had run down my forehead, I caught it in a wet paper towel.

  "How'd you learn first aid? You one of them new lifeguards I don't know about?"

  I didn't answer.

  Truth was, I had spent a lot of time during chemo listening to my aunt Phyllis describing this or that first-aid technique. She saw that it interested me and spouted all sorts of emergency-room stuff to pass some boring hours. I don't know why it interested me, except that it gave me a feeling of control over the universe, which seemed so out of control, at least from a medical standpoint.

  But this was not the place to say that. Scott had just told me a contusion was disgusting. What if he knew I was scared I might need more chemo?

  After a minute, I couldn't resist temptation any longer and looked at my blood on the paper towels. When I had been sick, one doctor had cheerily explained that healthy blood was a darker red, while mine had an orange tinge to it. The spots on the paper towels looked dark red now, like healthy blood, but it was dark in here, and I was practically seeing double. The universe was being sucked into this place I sometimes called the Claire Zone of Bad Luck.

  Bad luck that Scott Dern looks like he does. Despite that I was tall, here was a blond, green-eyed version of Superman, who looked down on my forehead, despite his feet being spread out to get himself eye level. If someone took a picture of us from behind me, it would show Scott Dern on three sides. He eyed the wound, and the slightly cross-eyed effect made him look focused and serious. Laying the butterfly on, he scrunched his nose in disgust—a freckled, permanently sun-scorched nose that spelled To hell with what I look like. So I'm lucky, so what. From that sun mouth I smelled Wrigley's Spearmint, and I watched a piece flatten in perfect teeth as he grimaced and pressed on the bandage.

  Bad luck. You could lose him. The thought tried to back up on me, but I jammed it down.

  I knew he'd hit my hairline on the top, and my own aim would have stopped the bleeding better. But I wanted to be this smaller person whose worst problem was that my butterfly was tangled in my hair, and who could be saved by someone big and strong and so much the hunk you could hardly stand it.

  I gr
abbed on to the sleeves of his jacket, almost feeling myself shrink in size as his arms curled around me. He kissed my forehead below the bandage, then started kissing me big-time. Kissing him had never been this easy—so not strewn with teeth and spit. After a minute I realized, That's it. That's the secret. It's what Geneva does to make guys kiss great. She acts ... small. Nothing like a big dude saving a helpless girl to bring on the gallant routine.

  I tried to ignore an overwhelming sense of doom by gripping his neck harder. But the noises from the deck wafted in—the growing sounds of laughter and hollers, and either Vince or Tony Clementi was already daring the guys into a round of chicken. Like we hadn't already had one accident. Yeah, I was too good.

  This doom feeling grew. I could almost hear the problem out loud. You're not Geneva. You're not small. You're not helpless. You've been through more stuff in your life than these people have. Their crap is naive—you're not naive. You didn't realize it before because there hadn't been any accidents.

  It wasn't the type of thought that I wanted to have right then. I gripped Scott's neck like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. If he'd kicked the bathroom door closed and got a big, bad idea in his head, who knows, I might have done the old "back flop" as Macy called it. I might have done anything to hang on to the people I loved and everything that was familiar.

  One great redeeming value about these guys I learned from Mary Beth—they lie. They don't screw girls half as much as they'd like you to think, and if a girl isn't half raping them, they're usually pretty cool. Scott finally ended this kissing, and I could see he was still shook up, not thinking at all about finding a crew bunk. "If you want to go home or anything, I'll get Vince. That was—whew—way nasty."

  Part of me wanted to go home. But my hair was wet. I wanted my bangs to dry before I went running in to Mom, all "Hi, did you pay your bills," with a butterfly bandage plastered in plain view. Why give her another reason to knock off a late-night vodka...?