by Amber Kizer
2 believe?
M: y
S: im a little bit of this
and a little of that
M: u don’t have to tell me
The cursor added layers of hurt and rejection to the screen without Misty saying anything about how she felt them.
S: n
im not dodging
i like the stories
all of them
Moses & Muhammad werent that far apart
i even like the passion of zealots whose faith is so strong that intellect has no place in their narrative
Huh? Sometimes Sam made me dumb by default.
Puzzled, Misty frowned. What was he talking about? She thought of all the check boxes on the forms she had to fill out. Wasn’t it a simple question? Christian? Jewish? Muslim?
Other?
M: english?
S: the people who see life so simply that their worldview is black & white
right & wrong
u or me
they see no negotiating or compromise
Her thoughts immediately went to her grandmother’s shrine of gold paint and beads and burning spit.
M: u like that?
S: i didnt say i could be that
but
i envy it
how easy life must be for those
who see it so clearly
life is only complicated when u
can see angles & degrees
Vivian would add color to that list.
Misty’s eyes watered, but she refused to call them tears.
S: u there?
M: y
what else do u think about God?
Thrilled that he was answering rather than asking her why she cared, Misty fell a little more in love with Sam.
She doesn’t even know he’s a teenager, too. He could be elderly, and in prison, and she’d be thrilled.
S: i like the serenity i see in buddhism
they dont get all riled up
not like christians
or muslims
or jews
M: they don’t?
S: have u ever heard of extremist buddhists?
zen terrorism?
Misty giggled.
M: that’s terrible
S: try it—
whats a zen terrorist do?
M: they hit people over the head with bells
S: passable
but u can do better
M: they ‘om’ until people go nuts?
S: better
M: they insist everyone wear those robes and half of the redneck world kills themselves instead of wearing a dress?
S: thats awesome
i can see the confederate flag draped over willie tom’s gut in an elegant sarong
Misty laughed, but stifled herself, fearful of calling attention to her hiding place in the stacks.
S: u dont believe?
in anything?
M: no
i can’t see a purpose
S: thats sad
i wish
Don’t, Sam. Don’t say it.
Sam let the cursor blink and Misty waited, her fingers frozen on the printout of a tie-dye album cover, soon to be the neck of a crane. I hoped he’d follow his intuition or listen to me for once and change the subject.
She finally typed to him.
M: u wish what?
S: will u describe yourself to me?
Panic ripped through Misty’s gut.
M: BRB
She stumbled down the stairs, leaving her bags behind her, and headed for the handicapped bathroom tucked near the children’s section.
She locked the door and flipped on the light.
Bent over the sink, Misty stared in the mirror and saw a monster superimposed over the real her. The her she used to be. Five feet and delicate, waist-length black hair that was so shiny the light hit it and zapped all color away, leaving a mirrorlike reflection. Her eyes were bright with humor. Her lips a perfect pink bow. Her skin clear and clean.
But the monster outside was hideous. Puffy and bloated. Her face round, her fingers stubby and meaty. Her skin was mottled with spots, pigment rashes, and dry, flaky patches that were astonishingly slick with oil. Her hair seemed permanently dirty, slick at the roots but dry and brittle at the ends. It frizzed up as if she was standing near too much static electricity. Her eyes were beady, and sunken, behind the bags and doughy lids. She alternated between too cold and too hot. Sweat pitted out every shirt. So no matter the temperature, she wore a thick, heavy fleece to cover herself. She was sure she reeked of rot.
She saw nothing in the mirror of her true self. Should she describe her real self or the new monster to Sam? He never needed to know the truth.
Gathering her hair into a knot, she tucked it up under the hood of her sweatshirt. She wet her face, then filled her palms with mounds of foaming antibacterial hand soap. Scrubbing until the pale skin was red and the inflamed places angry. With her nails, she scratched off the whiteheads of pimples and the crusty scabs of healing ones, the flakes of dead cells collected under her nails, and still she knew the oil lurked. She hit the water faucet continually, keeping it roaring and steamy, as hot as it could possibly get in those fifteen-second intervals.
Stop, Misty. Stop hurting yourself.
I tried to stop her. Hug her. Soothe her. I wanted to rub lotion on her skin and salve on her broken heart. The self-loathing radiated out until the bathroom filled and I felt like we drowned in it, like treading water in the middle of the ocean without reprieve. It was killing us.
The handle jiggled and someone knocked. Finally. Someone noticed her suffering. At least, they needed the toilet.
Misty wadded up the recycled fibers of paper towels and scrubbed at her face. Taking away the water, the soap, and trying to diminish the horror of what she saw.
Describe herself?
Misty no longer knew herself.
Returning to the computer, determined to change the subject, she hoped he never asked again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Leif felt antsy and awkward. He’d negotiated a cease-fire with his parents. If he ran five miles a day, they’d let him out of the house to socialize. He lied about the running. They’d freaked when he stopped using the home gym, when his mother no longer did six loads of sweaty workout wear a week.
Vivian greeted him at Art & Soul and he got to work. He wasn’t about to upset her again. He wished he knew what he’d said.
“Can I see what you’re working on?” he asked Vivian.
“Take off your pants,” she answered without looking up.
He must have heard wrong. “What?”
“You heard me,” she said, smiling in her voice and on her face.
He liked seeing her bright smile. It lit her from the inside out and reminded him of summer vacations. He wanted her to do it more often. She’d been full of frowns and degrees of sadness since he got there, and he didn’t think it was because of him. He wished she’d tell him what she thought so hard about. If he thought she’d laugh, he would strip in a heartbeat. His hands stayed planted firmly in his pockets. “But—”
She set down her chisel and microscopic brush. “It’s not that easy to get naked in front of a stranger, is it?”
“You’re not a stranger.” Leif showed her his fingers and made a move toward his waistband. He called her bluff.
The blush that heated her neck to forehead flew up at the speed of light. She coughed as if clearing her throat of a tickle, but really she floundered for a response.
“So, you’re not really asking …” He stopped fingering the button.
And this sounds like a dare.…
Vivian crossed her arms and I knew she was about to return his bravado. “Only if you want to see my work in progress.” An excited kind of fear sent shock waves through their bodies. I wasn’t sure who was more amped, but neither wanted to back down first.
I’m about to see more than I want to.…
His heart thumping wit
h nerves and more than a little desire, Leif touched his zipper, then laughed in surrender. “I’m not ready to, you know, show you the goods. Not even for a peek at the painting.”
Smooth.
Vivian giggled. It wasn’t an embarrassed laugh as much as an appreciation of both his push, and his retreat. He understood her. Got her sense of humor. Saw the world at least a little from where she stood in it.
Vivian poured her heart into all of her portraits. I knew who she wanted to be painting, but she was a long way from being finished. Like anything done with this much heart, it took hours of work, days of early drafts that were messy and convoluted and verbose.
No one got to see the portraits until she was certain the meaning was clear and easy to read. Not even Leif. As tempted as she was to let him peek. Stripping and streaking might very well come easier than opening an unfinished piece to his critique.
Leif wandered, as much because he wanted to diffuse the crackling tension as because he found that without the strenuous workouts, he overflowed with movement. “What’s that one on top?” He pointed at a stack of canvasses leaning against the studio wall.
“Me.”
Leif made a show of looking down and checking his pants.
“What are you doing?” Vivian asked.
“Why aren’t they finished? Why’s it sitting here for people like me, with pants on, to see?”
“Very funny.”
“No. Seriously. What’s the problem?” He studied her and the canvas.
Vivian walked over and fell into the swirl of paints and colors. The vortex of her organ failure and subsequent transplant rushed at her as if an opponent in a boxing ring hit the ropes and came swinging back. “I was working on it when …” She stopped, the words knocked out of her throat by the emotion of memory.
Leif pressed. Like a typical guy, he knew she was upset, but not how much. “When what?”
“Right before the transplant.”
“But you’re better,” Leif stated, though I wasn’t sure he truly understood that Vivian would never get better, not completely. “What haven’t you finished?”
Give the boy a gold star for asking the obvious.
Because she didn’t know if the transplant changed her. If she was part of someone else. Vivian specialized in portraits made up of tiny nuggets of pictograms. What was the sum of her parts? Had that changed? Had her donor changed her, or was it just the experience of lying on the edge of death that made her feel this way?
It’s not me.
Vivian weighed her options. Did she share the truth? Or did she make up a stupid excuse about not liking it?
Tell him the truth. He can handle it.
How much fact could he handle? He knew about the CF and the transplant. So far, he hadn’t run away. But he had to be on the edge of bailing. No one stayed around by choice. People liked easy answers, easy lives, stories that resolved and ended. Vivian’s story was an endless loop of a broken body that never resolved. Not in this life anyway.
“What are you afraid of?” Leif asked, as if reading her mind.
She pondered. “I don’t know.” She couldn’t give him that much of herself. She wasn’t even sure she understood it all. Her greatest fear was that if she finished the painting, there would be nothing left for her to do (Pantone 383).
Ah, that’s a scary feeling. She seemed surprised by the feeling; I didn’t know it was there either.
Leif licked his lips. She noticed. He did it every time he was choosing his words carefully. As if easing the right words out from a tight space.
Vivian stepped away. “Sorry, I can’t—”
Talking about her death was a sure way to chase him off. And maybe that would be easier than looking forward to seeing him and hoping he’d be different. A melancholy blue settled like a rock in her stomach (Pantone 535).
“It’s okay. I, um … never mind.” Leif didn’t understand what he’d said that was so terrible.
I wanted him to push Vivian. Prod her. Make her face this.
He turned to leave. I tried to block the door, but all I managed to do was knock a few books and notecards over. Oh my god! How’d I do that? I tried to move more books, but nothing happened.
Leif immediately dropped to his knees to pick them up, and Vivian hurried over. She was desperate to fix the mess she had made by not answering him. She had to say the right thing (Pantone 7548) to help him understand and see. Before he left and never spoke to her again.
“I should have died,” she blurted, kneeling down next to him.
“When? Why?”
“My heart and lungs were infected, scarred from the CF. I kept coughing up blood and they couldn’t get it to stop.”
Leif sat back until his butt hit the floor. This cocoon of truth under the tabletops and around the chair legs felt precarious and fragile.
Vivian eased to a sitting position as well. “My friend Sally just died.”
“Did she have the same thing?”
“CF.” Vivian nodded. “But they didn’t find lungs in time. I was lucky.”
“Do you feel lucky?” Leif’s expression was mystified and his heart beat so loudly I wondered how she didn’t hear it.
“No one’s asked me that.”
“So?”
“No. Yes.” Vivian shook her head. “I should have died, but someone gifted me another chance with their organs.”
“Gifted?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to think of the right word to use. Donation seems like something you do with your old jeans, or spare change, or soup cans, right?”
Leif nodded. “True.”
“And what better gift could there be, really?” Vivian cringed. “It’s life. There’s nothing to compare to that.”
“True.”
They lapsed into silence there on the floor of the instruction manual aisle. I moved away, feeling like I was intruding, though I still felt and heard and saw everything.
Squared, in this case.
Leif ended the silence, demanding gently, “Tell me about your friend who died.”
“Which one?”
“There’s more than one?”
Vivian nodded. “This will be my sixteenth funeral.”
“Wow.” He rocked back. “All kids?”
She thought for a moment and then answered, “The eldest was twenty-eight; the youngest, six.”
“They all had CF?”
“No, you meet lots of different kinds of broken bodies when you spend a lot of time in the hospital. The peds ward is full of cancers and birth defects and terrible accidents.”
“What kind of accidents?” And I knew Leif’s mind had turned to the incident on the football field, while I was thrown back into thinking about the car accident.
“Car accidents, near drownings, fires. I don’t know, stuff that they talk about on the late-night news. Will you tell me what happened?” She gestured to his leg.
“To me?”
“Yeah, you limp. Sometimes it looks worse than others.”
“You can see that?”
“Yeah.” Vivian blushed, as if he’d caught her doing something illegal (Pantone 17-1564).
“Most people don’t notice. But then, you’re not most people, are you?” Leif said this last bit in a whisper almost to himself.
“Please?”
Yes, Leif, tell her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
We all turned to thinking about that night. I still smelled Mother’s perfume and that reeking alcohol. Leif felt the sweat on his back and grass beneath his feet, smelled the crisp fall air and the stench of ancient sweat-stained uniforms. Heartbeats and play counts filled the room around us. Vivian waited, innately understanding that what she’d asked was difficult to answer.
Leif blew out a breath. “Is it weird that I heard it before I felt it? Like it happened outside of me, and inside, at the same time?”
Vivian shook her head. “Sometimes I think I hear my heart stutter like it’s sending out an SOS t
o its original person.”
“Really?” He frowned, automatically rubbing a hand over his thigh, his knee, his shin.
“When it happened, did you hear a pop?” Vivian pressed. “Guys in the hospital who blew out their knees always talked about a pop.”
“Some, but it’s not like I was just running and it blew.” Leif shook his head. “My leg vibrated and crushed in, bone on bone, like that sound when you smash a hard-boiled egg on the counter.”
Ew.
Vivian managed not to flinch. “When did the pain hit?”
“Not until I tried to jump back up and fell down. I saw everyone’s face and knew it was bad. I guess I passed out at some point.”
Vivian’s fingertips touched his wrist. A moment of understanding.
“Have you seen the video uploads?” Leif asked.
She grimaced. “There are videos? Why would anyone want to watch you, anyone, get hurt like that?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I lived it. I don’t need to watch it like a movie. But my dad thought it was motivation. He played them over and over again on his phone while I crutched laps around the hospital floor.”
“Oh. Your dad sounds—”
“Like a winner, right? He was a professional quarterback. My mom was a gold-medal Olympian in three Summer Games. They run marathons for fun.” He deepened his voice as if announcing a starting lineup. “We are winners. Champion Leolins.”
“Wow.” Vivian understood the pressure; it had to be similar to her parents’ need for her to live. Win. Live. Same dif.
“Watching those videos made me want to puke. The audio was the worst part. Will you come with me? I want to show you something.”
“Now?”
He staggered to his feet. “Yeah, right now.”
Vivian wasn’t sure what she expected, but the neutral beige (Pantone 4685) of the exterior and the interior decorations of Leif’s house wasn’t it. She thought perhaps there might be Olympic gold medals hanging from the ceiling and a scoreboard above the dining room table. It could have appeared in any decorator magazine and offended no one.
They snuck down the lower hall. I recognized the squeak of the exercise bike and click of the weight machines: his parents were working out again. They’re obsessed.