Embrace Me

by Lisa Samson

  I hand Roland a bowl of stew. “I think he enjoys it a little too much.”

  “Oh, but Clifford’s a dear!” Lella.

  Clifford’s our Human Blockhead. I swear he’d perform his act in the middle of McDonald’s if they’d let him. Lella’s right, though. He’s a good guy. He’s fixed my truck a few times and always changes the oil for me.

  I feed Lella her stew while Roland eats his. It was a good season. Nice weather a lot of the time, no highway accidents or mishaps, and lots of melt-in-your-mouth funnel cake.

  “You make a lot of money this year, Roland?” I ask.

  “It wasn’t the best year. But it wasn’t even close to being the worst.”

  Roland pays us well. I’ve got no complaints there. And he’s doing all right himself. Maybe he’s got plans he’s cooking up too.

  He finishes his chicken and dumplings and sets the bowl in my sink. “We’ll head ’em on out in about an hour.”

  “Reginald packed and ready?” I ask.

  “Yep. Both heads and all six legs.”

  Reginald’s one of Roland’s crazy stuffed animal oddities. He has his own platform. The other exhibits include a giant toad, a 600-pound squid, and Henrietta, the four-legged duck. Okay, Henrietta is still alive.

  “You all need help packing up?” he asks.

  “We’ll be ready.”

  “Lell? You gonna ride with Valentine?”

  “Surely I will. We love playing that license tag game, don’t we, Valentine?”

  “We sure do.”

  He lays a hand on the doorknob. “Okay. Rick’ll just pull your trailer without you.”

  “Give Rick a thousand thanks.”

  A little over an hour later, the meal cleaned up and put away, Lella, having thanked me a hundred times for feeding her, sits on her donut, strapped in the passenger seat of the truck. We pull onto I-80 south of Omaha. Another season over. Another year closer to a little house near the water. I always picture yellow siding with sherbet colors for the trim.

  “So, Lella, where do you want to live someday?”

  “Well, I do know you’d like to live on the water.”

  “I like the sound of the surf.”

  “I do as well. It’s going to be expensive if we settle right on the beach. But surely there’s still a patch of undeveloped shoreline we can find on the cheap.”

  “I’m hoping. I’m going to make more jewelry this winter than ever before, Lella. We’ll get there. You and me. Five years … seven years, tops.”

  How many times we’ve had this conversation? I have no idea.

  We drive for another hour without speaking much. The road tumbles beneath the wheels of my dark green truck, and I put in Lella’s favorite CDs. George Winston, John Tesh, and some other haunting solo pianists.

  “Valentine, I need to ask you a serious question, if you don’t mind.”

  “Go ahead, Lell.”

  “Why do you want to live your dream with me in tow? I’m so much work. Feeding me, taking me to the bathroom all the time. I’ll just tie you down.”

  “You’re my friend, Lella. And who wants to live alone? My face already isolates me. We need each other.”

  I glance to the side and I’m not surprised a tear falls down Lella’s cheek. She waits until it makes it to her jaw, leans her head over, and wipes it off with her shoulder. “I’d like five minutes with the woman who burned you, Valentine. Surely, I would.”

  I fail to remind her she has no arms or legs. But I guess with a heart the size of Lella’s you can get along without them.

  I lean out my bedroom window despite the chilly morning.

  We winter in the town of Mount Oak because that’s where Roland grew up. His sister Blaze owns this huge, crumbling white house here in town, on those fabled “other side of the tracks.” It’s not literally on the other side of the tracks—the Chessie lines run a couple of blocks south of here. This used to be a nice area a century ago, but now, well, this house looks like a boarding-house for the bedraggled and the slightly stunned, a place where people end up after they’ve reached their pinnacle and come back down. The shutters are painted a dark green, and the shrubbery hugs the stone foundations and the lattice under the square front porch.

  I live in the back room on the third floor. Used to be a sun porch. I’m flooded with light early in the morning, which is okay. I’ve always been an early riser. A night owl too.

  The nights feel cold with all the drafty windows on three sides. The one brick wall somebody painted black. That wasn’t nice.

  Unfortunately winter gives me more time to smoke, and I’m up to two packs a day.

  Blaze calls up the steps. “Valentine! Are you smoking out that window again?”

  “Sorry!” I grind out my smoke in the ashtray on the window-sill and shut the window.

  Rick the contortionist enters my bedroom, sits down on the desk chair, and holds out a magazine. He’s about 120 pounds, long-legged, short-waisted, narrow-hipped, and his ice blue eyes tell you he’s the kind of guy who can keep a secret.

  It’s a body modification magazine. Piercings, tattoos, and whatnots. “Look, Val.” He points to a picture of some weirdo with a forked tongue.

  And I’m the freak?

  I sit on my bed and he hands me the magazine. “What do you think? It would make the Lizard Woman angle complete.”

  “It’s bad enough that I look like a reptile with my burnt face, Rick, I sure don’t need to look like an evil reptile. This guy looks satanic.”

  “Sorry, Val. I just thought maybe you’d be interested.” He gingerly lifts the magazine from my hands.

  “I am still human you know, Rick. Forked tongues are fine on lizards, but I’m not really a lizard, remember?”

  “Sorry, Valentine.” He presses a hand down on his dirty-blond hair and closes his eyes.

  “Just like you’re not really made of dough, like you’re not really a pretzel. Got it?”

  “Sorry, Valentine. I’m really sorry.”

  He slinks off, feet splayed outward, a little like Gumby, only with pockets. He sinks his hands in them. I feel bad, but you have to make some people remember you’re a human being. It’s an occupational hazard, I suppose.

  “I just didn’t think I’d have to do that with Rick,” I say to Lella after telling her all about it as I brush her auburn hair back into a high ponytail. Lella is stunning. I’ve never seen anyone prettier.

  “Valentine, were you nice to him?”

  “Not really.”

  “Be gentle with his heart. Even a three-year-old could see that Rick is awfully fond of you.”

  “Which leads me to believe he stretches his optic nerves out of shape as well.”

  “Oh, Valentine!” But Lella laughs.

  I finish her hair, pat on some light makeup, and dress her in a yellow fleece top and a pair of sweatpants I cut off and sewed across the bottom. “I’ll go get dressed and then bring you down for some breakfast.”

  “I’m not at all hungry yet. Would you mind just turning on the TV? Robert Schuller is on soon. I dearly love that man.”

  “Lella, you and your TV preachers.”

  “Now, Valentine, don’t begrudge me my pastors.”

  I turn on the TV and find the right channel. “He looks like a leprechaun.”

  She just laughs.

  “They all look like leprechauns.”

  “Oh, Valentine, that simply isn’t true. I can think of at least two that look like trolls.”

  I back into the hallway, leaving her door open.

  Blaze calls up two flights of stairs. She’s that loud. “I’m going to church! You want to come?”

  “Yeah right!”

  “Just figured I’d ask!”

  “I’ll make dinner tonight!”

  “Thanks!”

  I watch her back her station wagon out of view.

  Lighting a cigarette, I head to the bathroom. It’s a cramped space under the attic stairs in the hallway. The door’s in my r
oom, thus making it my own commode. It’s a good thing, having my own commode. Just before entering the glorified closet, I start up iTunes on my laptop and the tones of my favorite song enter the quiet space beneath the steps.

  “Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you.”

  Lady Day, sliding up and down the notes, swings the words in the gentle circles of a parent grasping the hands of her toddler and twirling around like the swing ride at the fair.

  I grab a pot of Ponds and look in the mirror. Imagine a purple-red alligator purse. I have hardly any lips left, except on the left side. My skin is dry. I rub in the moisturizing cream, sighing with a small relief.

  It’s too bad I didn’t have insurance when it all went down.

  After I dress I head down for breakfast. I’d like to detail a quaint B&B or farmhouse meal, but I’d be lying. Breakfast at Blaze’s table consists of a gallon of milk, a box of shredded wheat—the big biscuits you break up with your fingers—and a pot of coffee.

  She doesn’t mind if we use her kitchen as long as we clean up the mess and whatever you do, don’t leave the metal cabinets open. I don’t feel like cooking, so I shred up a cereal biscuit, pour on the milk, and let it soak while I fix a cup of coffee. I load in cream and sugar.

  I eat all the sugar I can.

  It’s hard to chew without showing the world or dripping, so hot cereal or sopping shredded wheat, as long as nobody’s around to watch me drip, works.

  I pull a straw from the bag I keep in the second drawer down next to the fridge. I sip my coffee, eat my cereal, and read the Sunday paper, poring over the real estate insert, looking for good ideas. Lella and I will need a rancher. I won’t have the strength to carry her up and down the stairs forever.

  Four cups of coffee later, a fresh pot almost brewed, the clop of feet vibrates the outside stairs leading to the kitchen—wooden stairs, sixth step a little wonky.

  The kitchen door swings open, the curtains on the half window flying out like a dancer’s gown. I quickly pull the green scarf from around my neck over my nose to cover my face from the eyes down. You gotta pay to see Lizard Woman.

  Blaze, Rick, and some guy I’ve never seen before butt their way into my Sunday ritual.

  Now Blaze should be an overweight redhead wearing too-tight sweaters and floral pedal pushers. But Blaze looks rather funereal. Not after the Morticia Addams fashion, but like a funeral parlor. White skin, white blouses, white legs. Dark hair, dark brows, dark skirts, dark shoes, because funeral parlors are almost always black and white, and is there some kind of code about that, some kind of association morticians belong to that tells them how to paint their establishments?

  Blaze works down at the local life insurance company, reminding us further of our own mortality and that accidents can happen. As if we’d somehow missed that.

  She sets down her purse. “What a gathering!” Blaze is a Jesus freak, which is probably why she relates to us. She’s been going to a new church. “Sit down at the table with Valentine, Gus. Is there more coffee, or did you finish it up?”

  “There’s more.”

  Rick pulls out a chair for the guest who takes off a leather jacket that goes perfectly with his gray biker beard. Although it does looked combed. He smoothes a faded red T-shirt. He adjusts a pair of glasses with lenses so thick his eyes look like they’re sitting behind him in the next room. Graying dreadlocks hang halfway down his back, and heavy, stainless steel hoops pull down his earlobes. And tattoos … everywhere.

  “You vying for a spot as the tattooed man?” I ask, pointing to his arms covered with intricately patterned tattoo sleeves. Not the usual skulls and naked bimbos for this guy. Swirls of flowers and vines on the right with a couple of woodland creatures peeking out. Kelp in a current and a rainbow assortment of fish on the left.

  He smiles. Shy. “No. Just like tattoos, I guess.”

  His voice is husky and scratched, higher pitched in a damaged way. He either smoked his voice away or something else took it. It’s pleasant though, nonthreatening, even if it is hard to hear. His build is a little husky too.

  “How come you went so pretty?”

  “Reminds me of beauty.”

  I look away, pick up my coffee. “Oh. Right.”

  He rushes in. “Because beauty, real beauty, is usually hidden, right? It’s like the animals and the fish. They’re looking out, kinda shy, right, from their hiding spots?”

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  Blaze picks up the coffeepot. “That’s what I love about human oddities. Same thing.”

  The man reddens.

  Rick gets a couple of mugs down off the shelf over the stained porcelain sink. “So this is Augustine, Valentine. A good friend.”

  “Then why hasn’t he been here sooner?”

  “Blaze just now invited me.” Augustine shakes my hand. “Valentine. There’s a name you don’t hear often. Not that I can talk.”

  “You don’t look like a saint to me,” I say.

  “You know of Saint Augustine?”

  “Nah, not really. Just the name.”

  Rick pours the fresh pot of coffee into the mugs. “He was a good guy. A real hellion in his younger days. I can relate.”

  I set the sugar bowl on the table. “Yeah, I’ll bet, Rick. If, oh, say, staying out after midnight on a school night can be considered raising hell.”

  “I’m guilty of a little of that.” Augustine. “In my own way.”

  “Me too,” Blaze joins in.

  “Not Valentine!” Rick raises his hands. “Clean as a whistle.”

  “Yeah. But you’d kinda expect that, looking as I do.”

  “Hey, none of that around this house.” Blaze opens the refrigerator door. “So Augustine’s our pastor.”

  She’s got to be kidding.

  “Do the neck tattoos hurt more?”

  “Yeah. Kind of a tender spot.” Augustine sits right around the corner of the table from me.

  Blaze turns around with a bowl of eggs. “Hard-boiled. Egg salad for lunch. What are you making for dinner, Valentine?”

  “Pot roast.”

  “So he’s a pastor. You hear that, Valentine?” Blaze.

  I roll my eyes. “I heard. I gotta have a smoke.”

  Augustine hops to his feet. “I’ll join you.”

  “You smoke?”

  “Used to. I just like smelling the secondhand smoke now.”

  “You’re an odd bird.”

  Blaze begins peeling an egg. “Take it out on the porch, please.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Hang on. Let me put some real clothes on.”

  I hurry back up to my room. Yanking open my suitcase, I decide to go for warmth. With the snow falling outside, a wet November snow, the kind with pillowy flakes, I don’t have many options. A pair of jeans, my fleece-lined moccasins, and a sweatshirt from Oxford will do.

  Augustine follows me out onto the screened porch off the dining room at the back of the house. “You go to Oxford?”

  “Yeah, right. Thrift store.” I light up my smoke. “This has got to be quick. I’m going to have to go up and get Lella soon.”

  “Blaze has mentioned her.”

  “Pretty weird for you visiting the freak house, huh?” He winces. “You known Blaze long?”

  “Just this summer.”

  “Rick?”

  “Met him last winter. He’s a good guy.”

  “You know, he really is.” I light my smoke, turning away from him so he can’t see me as I lift the scarf I tied under my eyes. “He’s not a total freak though, you know?”

  “I guess not. He feels like one though. Does that count?”

  “You asking that for Rick or for yourself?” I mean, look at the guy. He’s so weird!

  “You’re pretty quick, aren’t you?”

  “No. It doesn’t count. You made yourself look that way. Take Lella. She was born like she was.”

  “What about you?”

  “This woman burned my face. I was dating her ex-boyfriend and she
wanted some revenge.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Yeah. Right here in America. So, technically, I’m not a born freak, I’m a made freak too.” I turn away and inhale. “Just made by somebody other than me.”

  “No kidding. Man.”

  “Tell me about it. It puts me in a unique position.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Too long.”

  “How long until the pain was gone?”

  “Months and months. I still get twitches of pain every so often. Nerve damage. I couldn’t get to a hospital right away so it ate down way too far. I’m lucky I can even see. I guess I should be thankful.”

  He breathes in my smoke and closes his eyes for a second or two. “You don’t have to play that thankful game with me.”

  “I thought you said you were a preacher.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s what the neighborhood calls me. I just hang around is all. They expect some kind of ‘message’”— he does the quotation thingee with his fingers—“each Sunday, so I speak a little something, which they can barely hear anyway with my voice the way it is.”

  “Huh.”

  He breathes in deeply through his nose. “It is what it is, right?”

  “Guess so. That’s what I say about my situation. It is what it is. What happened to your voice anyway?”

  “Motorcycle accident. Bad tracheotomy at the roadside. Destroyed my vocal chords.” I inhale on my cigarette. “So what made you go on the road with Roland?”

  “No place else to go.”

  “Parents?”

  “Gone.”

  “As in dead, gone?”

  “Mother’s dead and not a minute too soon. Dad lives in Kentucky. Like, who moves to Kentucky? Not me.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Your parents?”

  He shrugs. “See my mom occasionally. Lost touch with my dad.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Yeah. He’s an addict. It happens.”

  “I’ll bet your mother hates your hair.”

  He laughs. “What woman wants to see her baby boy turned into this?”

  He pulls a smile out of me. But it’s underneath my scarf and a good thing that is.

  After I stub out my cigarette, we climb up two flights to Lella’s room. Her face lights up. “Valentine! And who is this with you?”