Embrace Me

by Lisa Samson

  Another three pounds down and working out like a fiend, Daisy joined me on The Port of Peace Hour the week before ours was set to air. The show bought time on twenty small religious stations around the south, so relieved to get new programming they were set to air it several times a day. I mean, how many times can a station reair old segments of Ever Increasing Faith and expect to have an ever increasing viewership?

  Harlan introduced us before the crowd at Port of Peace, conducting a small interview with me, mentioning my father crusading in DC, of course. After that, Daisy and Charmaine sang a duet.

  The flesh on my arms still rises when I remember the way their voices blended. Charmaine’s power with Daisy’s controlled under-pinnings as they slid their way in and out of the melody and the harmony, neither taking the lead for long. Charmaine sang in that old-school way, smiling at Daisy as she sang, then smiling at the audience, as if she truly enjoyed what she was doing. It wasn’t like the young singers today where everything is choreographed down to the dart of the eyes and good Christian girls grunt out praises to Jesus like they’re making out behind the bleachers with their boyfriends. Sorry, Father.

  After that show, I kissed Daisy on the cheek in great excitement.

  She flushed like a rose. Pink and soft. Daisy read into that kiss just what I wanted. Enough to keep her with me.

  The day our show aired for the first time on a local station, we sat together in her parents’ living room. Trician made us punch with diet Sprite, poured some mixed nuts in bowls, and we watched, I still have to admit, an engaging show.

  Daisy shone, playing sassy sweet with ease on top of my nerdy every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining angle. You couldn’t call us Regis and Kathie Lee but we had a style all our own, a great combination.

  When Wally, Daisy’s dad, turned off the set and said, “Now that was a real nice show. A real nice show,” I wanted to scream. I wanted more than nice.

  Daisy walked me to my car. “It was good, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  I opened my car door and began to get in.

  “Drew?”

  I looked her way.

  “You feel something, don’t you? Like we’ve got some little spark?

  I mean, the way we interacted, the way the senator laughed and said, ‘Now you all make a fine couple.’ It was good. What he said was true.”

  What could I say? I didn’t want to start a relationship, but I didn’t want to lose her once Nashville came through. So I smiled, rubbed my hand down her bare arm, and got into my car.

  She tapped my shoulder. “Only ten more pounds until my goal weight.”

  “Good job.”

  I drove home to my Spartan apartment. Before I arrived, however, I drove a few miles out of town and bought a pack of Marlboro Lights. I felt more dead inside than ever before, and only one thing made me feel alive. And you can’t smoke a knife afterward either.

  In the months ahead the show slowly gained in popularity. Daisy grew thinner and thinner, her advances stronger. I held her at arm’s length, praying to God He’d keep my feelings from growing. Was that too much to ask?

  For the next year she continued to drop more weight, well past her goal, meeting me at the gym where we’d exercise together, me in sweatpants because of the burns on my legs. I didn’t start burning my arms until much later. I’d get a handle on it all, the latest round healed up, until everything was pink and new, and then I’d start again. But I remained the same inside.

  Was I trying to match up my outer man with my inner man?

  I’m not sure. Even now, lying here on the couch, watching my mother sleep, I don’t know. Maybe I’m simply a little crazy. Maybe I’m like my mother that way.

  The more overt Daisy’s advances, the more I tried to shut myself down. Imagine bringing Daisy home to DC, I’d think to myself.

  Imagine bringing Daisy, however sweet and kind, to a man whose taste ran to the likes of Monica Parrish.

  Yet another area where I didn’t quite meet his standards. No way. It just wasn’t going to happen.

  I throw back the covers. All I’m wearing are my boxers and my thermal undershirt. Yes, there are my jeans, folded neatly on the dining table.

  “It’s all right, I saw them.” Monica’s eyes are open. “I’m guessing there are more on your arms.”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “How long have you been doing this to yourself?”

  “Years. On and off. Knives first. On now for a good long time with the cigarettes.”

  “I’m sorry. I’d like to think this would have been avoided had I been there.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. Who’s to say?”

  “It’s a sin. You know that.”

  “No.”

  “Well, it is. But an understandable one.”

  “Thanks.” I stand up and reach for my pants. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “That would be lovely.” She closes her eyes.

  “Are you going back to sleep?”

  “No. This is my time to pray for you. I do it every morning before I get out of bed.”

  For a moment, I see a self-righteousness in her I wish I didn’t. As if praying was enough when I was in the care of that man.

  I have to forgive her. I have to forgive her for praying when she should have been storming the castle walls.

  Soon the coffee’s spitting from the machine and I stand on the deck smoking a cigarette. Is this a sin too? Or just a bad idea? I’ve asked myself that a thousand times.

  ’Cause if this is a sin, so is drinking Coca-Cola and eating Velveeta and Twinkies. I just don’t know anything anymore.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” she calls.

  “Mom?” I shut the patio door behind me.

  “Yes?”

  “Why didn’t you just kidnap me? Take me away and we could have hid up in Maine together?”

  “I’m not that brave.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean, we all aren’t movie heroines, Drew. I’m sorry for that. I wish I had been. I was scared of him.”

  So she isn’t as perfect as I remember.

  Maybe it’s better that way.

  I won’t have so much to live up to.

  Trician and I scrolled through the footage on the editing machine. “She still looks a little bumpy,” she said.

  “I don’t know, Trician. She’s lost a lot of weight.”

  “Lipo, you think?”

  “It’s your call, Trician. More precisely, it’s Daisy’s.”

  “And clothes look so much better on extremely thin women. She’s losing her breasts, though. Maybe we should get some implants. The butt lift looks a bit odd now.”

  A little bit here; a little bit there.

  “We’re this close to a contract in Nashville.” Trician held her thumb and forefinger parallel, a half inch apart.

  “Come on, Trician. This is going a little too far.”

  “I’ll pull her out of the show right now. You’ve got to convince her.”

  I sighed. We weren’t quite where we needed to be with the numbers. And at the end of the day, Daisy was responsible for herself. She was an adult. If she didn’t want to have the surgery, she should speak up and refuse.

  Daisy balked at first but a few evenings in my apartment settled it.

  I’m ashamed to say it went too far, Father Brian. And she suddenly thought we were a real item. I convinced her to keep the “relationship” a secret, claiming it would be a circus if all the church people knew about it.

  She came to my apartment a lot, after hours. One night, she took off her shoes and curled her feet up beneath her on the couch. I showed her a photo album and she said I looked like my mother, that she’d heard of my father but wasn’t really into politics.

  I truly loved her at that moment. But I pushed it down. It was a chance at redemption. I know that now, Father. But I cast it aside.

  Later she confessed to me she and her mother were having real problems. “I just want t
o get away from her.”

  “Why not just leave town? Make your own life?” I don’t know why I said it. I wanted to pull the words back as soon as they were out.

  Mostly because I needed Daisy. She got more fan mail than I did. I think any real love we might have known was simply doomed by the circumstances.

  “How many people do you know that really do that, Drew?

  Honestly. We act like it’s an option for everyone, that everybody in the world has it in them to do that. But how many people really do it?”

  Wow, does that sound familiar.

  “You’re right. We can’t have sex anymore, Daisy. You know that, don’t you?”

  “But I love you.”

  “It’s not right.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I prayed she wouldn’t ask me if I loved her too. She didn’t. She knew the truth.

  She made her excuses, a Bible study to attend, and left my apartment. I leaned out the window of my bathroom and smoked a cigarette.

  Daisy and Monica. Neither of them brave enough to do a big heroic deed. But then who is? Really?

  Monica and I drive into Campton in her minivan. Why she needs a minivan I don’t know. She wants to introduce me to her friends at work.

  “Where do you work?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “I see.”

  “No, actually, you don’t. The gang will love you.”

  “The gang?”

  “Just wait.”

  “So what has happened to your prophesying these days?”

  She chuckles. “I just keep it to a more local scale.” Reaching over and grabbing my knee, she lets out a squeal of joy. “I can’t believe we’re together again. You and me, Drew.” She sets a pair of sunglasses on her nose and smiles at the road ahead of her, her chin tilted slightly up from her long neck, a polka-dotted scarf tying back her auburn hair, now streaked with white.

  We snake along Route 15, passing small farms, a chair store, car repair shops, a woodworking place, until the houses thicken, a church appears, a hardware store, and then a stoplight.

  “It’s our only stoplight.”

  “Nice.”

  “Well, it is what it is, as they say.”

  She takes a right, drives a short way to the strip shopping center just before a Dairy Queen.

  “You work at the Dollar General?”

  “No. There.” She points to a small storefront to the left. “Mountain Mist Tattoos.”

  “You work at a tattoo parlor?”

  “It’s even worse. I own the place.”

  FOURTEEN

  VALENTINE: 2009

  Jessica, a healthy woman with dark curly hair, pulls out a scarf and hands it to me. “For you.”

  She and the other two “monks” arrived back from Thailand yesterday.

  We sit at Blaze’s kitchen table drinking tea with honey.

  “Augustine told us all about you.”

  “He’s pushy.”

  She laughs freely. “Not really. He just loves people. Pushy and loving are two very different things, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So anyway, he told me about your beautiful brown hair and asked me to bring you back something in a dark pink.”

  “He did?”

  “E-mailed me from Java Jane’s.”

  “One thing I don’t get about Augustine. He doesn’t try to change people. He’s never once told me to stop wearing my scarf altogether, although he said it wouldn’t bother him if I did. He’s never once given me that hokum spiel about loving yourself for who you are.”

  “No, he wouldn’t do that. I mean, look at the guy. He’s wearing his own sort of scarf, right? Don’t we all?”

  “You look pretty wholesome and natural.”

  “We all walk around with some kind of shame we hide.”

  I think about that. I’m not telling her what I told the disciples, that’s for sure. “Augustine doesn’t share his past.”

  “No. He hasn’t with any of us. We respect that.”

  “It must be a doozy.” I refresh our tea.

  Dahlia calls me to come get Lella, and I make my excuses, showing Jessica out.

  I carry Lella to Dahlia’s rental car. Dahlia follows.

  “Look, Val. I bought a pair of secondhand legs for Lella. And we’ve got a wheelchair in the trunk of the car.”

  The legs are already enclosed in chocolate-brown pants matching a new caramel-colored sweater and shirt she’d bought Lella the day before at The Limited. The Limited!

  Lella’s eyes glimmer. “Imagine, Valentine. A real pants suit. We’re going to the mall to shop for a couple more outfits.”

  “That’ll be fun.”

  “Oh, yes. And after that we’re going to the movies. Aunt Dahlia says they actually have little spots for wheelchairs these days. Right in the theater. Imagine that!”

  “You’ll have to tell me all about it.” Please don’t.

  “I will.”

  I set her on the front seat, belt her in, and hurry up the front walk before they drive away.

  Why I never thought of legs is beyond me. Lella could have gone all over the place. Of course if she wanted to go out during the day, she’d need someone else to push her, but Rick would have happily volunteered. They could have gone to the movies, sat in the park on nice days, the bloom of the sunshine on Lella’s face. Instead, Lella sat in her room day after day with me, reading magazines and comic books, listening to a thousand versions of “Embraceable You,” watching me make jewelry and suggesting gemstone combinations.

  I’m no good for her.

  Rick pounces an hour later when I come down to get another cup of tea. “That’s a great scarf, Val.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know”—he jerks a thumb toward the general direction of the front door—“we should take a lesson from Lell. We should go out too. Show off that scarf.”

  I place the kettle on the stove and turn up the flame. “You know, Rick, you’ve said some stupid things in your life, but that’s got to be one of the most stupid.”

  “Come on, Val …”

  “No, really. Do you think this scarf will make me any less conspicuous? I mean who goes around with a scarf under their eyes? All anybody will do is wonder why I’m wearing it. It’ll be a disaster.”

  “Okay, okay.” That rubbery skin on his face turns crimson.

  Gosh, why do I do this to him? “Look, Rick, there’s no hope for me and you. I just don’t like you in that way.”

  “Is there someone else?”

  I grunt for a reply.

  “Valentine, your injuries don’t matter to me.”

  “Oh, so it’s my sparkling personality?”

  “You know, you care a lot more about people than you think.”

  Now there’s where Rick’s wrong. I’m perfectly aware that I care about people. More than I should, probably.

  “Let’s just keep things where they are, okay? I liked it better when you were just my friend.”

  “I can’t help the way I feel about you, Val.”

  “You’re going to have to. Why not Lella? Why don’t you love her?”

  He shrugs and pulls out a chair at the kitchen table. “I don’t know. I just don’t. She’s beautiful and all that, but …”

  “Seriously, you should think about going out with her. I mean, she’s got these new legs and all.”

  I lift down a teapot and settle in several tea bags. If I was better at conversation I’d fill the silence, but today is different. Lella has legs and all I got was a new scarf and the same old Rick.

  “You want to play a game of Scrabble?” I offer.

  “Make it Trivial Pursuit and you’re on.”

  “Great. I stink at Trivial Pursuit.”

  “That sure is the truth.”

  “I’m just taking a break from recording,” Charmaine says over a phone call. She tells me she’s been praying for me like crazy. “You got a lotta pain in there, Val. Maybe
it would help to talk about it more.”

  “Charmaine, it’s a gruesome tale. Trust me, you don’t wanna know it all.”

  “I really do. Val, I want to bear your burdens.”

  “You wanna hear about the burns?”

  “I’ll be done recording in an hour and then I’ll be over.”

  “I’ll meet you at the dock.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  And she is, because she said she’d be.

  “You want some chocolate?” She reaches into her pocket.

  “Not today. I just better get this out.”

  I fill her in on what I told the disciples, then continue.

  “The toilet in the motel room was stopped up. I called the front desk and the lady said they’d be right up with some Drano.”

  “Oh, my heavens,” Charmaine whispers.

  “The maintenance man, a slippery fellow with long yellow hair, poured some of the stuff into the bowl and said he’d let it set for a little while. He told me to flush in a bit and give him a call if it didn’t work.

  “His cell phone rang and he hurried out of my room, leaving the Drano on the counter by the sink. I found the Vicodin and the OxyContin, filled the plastic cup half full with water, and they slipped down easily. Three each. I just wanted to slip away for a bit. That amount wouldn’t kill me, I supposed.”

  Charmaine grabs my hand and holds it.

  “When I look back now, I realize what happened next was a psychotic episode. Nobody really wants to burn their face off no matter how different it looks, no matter how gruesome a mask it’s become.”

  “I think gruesome is a little harsh, Valentine.”

  “No, Charmaine. People didn’t gasp on the set because I looked different from before. People gasped because I’d become a freak, some sort of Hollywood clown woman, a person who couldn’t stop.

  “Here’s the truth of the matter—though it was Mother’s and Drew Parrish’s idea, I’m the one who drew the judgment from everyone. I alone was the one to turn away from. As I looked at myself in that gritty medicine cabinet mirror, something snapped in me. There was a lot of snapping going on around that time.

  “I started clawing at my skin. Get this face off of me. The person inside the reflection was screaming. Get it off!

  “So I balled up a towel and reached for the Drano, squirting it onto the terry cloth. I slathered it onto my face and massaged it in. I hoped and prayed it would reach those implants in my chin and cheeks and just eat them away.”