SUMMER HAD ALWAYS BEEN his favorite season. If warm, sweet-smelling May evenings were an indication of the climates to come, he had the next few months to look forward to… and that was about it.
What did she want from him? Why did she have to keep messing with things? Why couldn’t she ever leave well enough alone? He lit a cigarette and wished he had a frosty beer to go with it… a cold six-pack… hell, a half-frozen keg wouldn’t be enough to dull the aching turmoil in his chest.
Let’s change the social consciousness. Let’s change the government. Let’s change the local school system. Let’s change this. Let’s change that. Let’s change our faces! Livy and her damn changes. Thirty-five years she’d been changing things. Didn’t she ever get tired of it? Couldn’t she overlook this one tiny flaw in her world and let it be?
All right. It wasn’t a tiny flaw to her.
She wasn’t even mad that he couldn’t take to her scheme like a pit bull to chuck roast. She was disappointed. Again.
Well, he was very sorry, but show him a man who would remain silent and amenable while his wife rearranged her face after thirty-five years, and he’d show you a man who was deaf, dumb, and blind when they met.
“Hi,” she said, pushing the screen door open enough to stick her head out. He wasn’t entirely happy about being interrupted. He’d been painting blue streaks of resentment and trepidation into the rose and fuchsia sunset, and he wasn’t near finished.
“Hi.”
“Can I come out? Or is this a private swing session?”
He had a thing about swinging in the front-porch swing. She and the kids were welcome to join him, but it drove him nuts if they sat beside him and started swinging to their own rhythm. They had to let him swing his way, slow and steady, or sit elsewhere. And so, he told her, “You can come out, but I’m swinging.”
“Fair enough,” she said, smiling, letting the door quietly bump closed behind her. She picked her moment, midswing, to sit beside him, pulling her legs up on the seat to sit Indian style. “Nice night, huh?”
“Um-hum.”
As far as he could tell, the only advantage to marrying someone you’ve known all your life is knowing all their tricks.
At supper, she’d talked the kids into thinking that she really needed to have her birthmark removed. She had them thinking of it as something to look forward to. What fun! If she got to keep the protective eye goggles she used during the treatments, the boys both wanted a pair. And Chloe went straight from the dining room table to her toy box, in search of all the pieces to her Fisher-Price doctor kit—she’d volunteered to nurse her mother back to health afterward.
And now—what a coincidence—Livy had come outside to enjoy a warm spring evening with him, like she usually did, as if nothing was wrong. Humph. She was as transparent as Glad Wrap.
She’d used this same strategy to get Chloe, he remembered. She’d patiently waited for him to relax into fatherhood, for his mind to wander because he believed he had a family and a career under a loose, pragmatic control and he was feeling relatively secure. Then, POW! when his guard was down, she had him readily agreeing to another baby. He frowned at the deepening purple hues of the twilight. Bad example. Chloe had turned out to be one of the brightest lights in his life.
Nevertheless, the principle was the same and the tactic was all too familiar. He wished she did want another baby. He was good with babies. He liked his kids. At least he was ready, prepared, for the impact another child would have on his life. Altering the physical features of a beloved face was, once again, a phenomenon in his life with unknown consequences.
Well, he was ready for her this time. This time he’d wait patiently for her to make her move, then POW! he’d shoot her down. He was working on a plan. He had his thinking cap on. Somehow he’d find a way to make her understand that her face was his lifeline; that he saw it in his dreams, looked for it everywhere; that the sight of it soothed him, excited him, made everything seem okay for him.
Any second now she’d start to pontificate on her theory of changes that didn’t change anything. He wondered if her phraseology could be classified as an oxymoron, like government intelligence or female logic; or was it a paradox, like being cruel in order to be kind; or was there some altogether different name for her style of talking in circles?
Any second now…
Changes that don’t change anything. Can you imagine it? Saying such a thing to a man whose whole life once changed, between heartbeats, when a little girl with black braids and red hair ribbons punched some other kid in the nose. This to a man whose longest and most solid relationships were with his mother and his wife—and he’d only known one six years longer than the other. A fad fighter, he was the last man he knew to wear, and then give up, his bell-bottom jeans; he never learned to ride a skateboard; he’d flatly refused to swallow any goldfish in college and he never once wore polyester in the seventies as a matter of principle. Livy called his paintings superrealistic, but the truth of the matter was, he was either afraid to or didn’t have the imagination to or simply couldn’t muster the desire to change what he saw.
Any second now, he thought, flicking the butt of his cigarette high and far across the front lawn. He sensed she was preparing to launch her missiles. He watched the hot, glowing pinpoint until it went dark, then stared out at the graying dusk, aware of every slow, calm stir she made in his peripheral vision.
Any second now, she’d find some flimsy excuse to bring the subject up again. Chatter about it like a jaybird drunk on chinaberries—until he got the headache and the hangover.
Any second now…
“I’m scared,” he said, shattering the silence between them.
“I know,” she answered quietly. “Me, too.”
“You are the single most important person in the world to me, Livy.”
“I know.”
“I love you the way you are.”
“I know.”
“Your birthmark is so much of what you are.”
No answer.
“I’ve watched you, all your life, react to it in one way or another. Both good and bad. It’s made you a fighter, Liv. It taught you about empathy and fairness and the insanity of bigotry. It gave you strength; it spurred the development of you mind; it blinded you to your own beauty. Even your mannerisms… the way you automatically turn the left side of your face away when you meet people, and away from cameras; the way you rest your left cheek on your fist, not your right, when you’re reading or thinking; you used to style you hair to cover it, slather it with make-up. I’ve seen you hide behind it like a shield and flaunt it like a weapon. It’s been the single biggest influence in the building of your character that I can think of, and I… I’m afraid you’ll change if it’s gone. You won’t be the same.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she said, notes of compassion and patience in her voice. She turned on the swing to face him. “Do you think that once I look like everyone else, I’ll suddenly hate everyone who doesn’t?”
“No, of course not,” he said, wishing with all his heart that he wasn’t such a coward, that he could anticipate changes as eagerly as she did. “It’s just… I… did you ever read that Nathaniel Hawthorne story called The Birthmark? The one where this mad scientist insists on removing this tiny birthmark from the cheek of his otherwise perfect wife, and he kills her. She’s sweet and wonderful and beautiful except for one tiny flaw, and when he removes it, it’s as if he’s removed her heart. That’s what this feels like to me, Livy. It feels like we’re messing with perfection, and I’m scared to death of losing who you are now… of taking away your heart.”
She smiled. “You think I’m perfect?”
“For me. You’ve always been perfect.”
The palm of her hand was warm and tender against his cheek. Her eyes were dark and warm with emotion, soft and beckoning, brimming with deep affection; her lips bowed gently with happiness and satisfaction—and he didn’t need the porch light to see it so. He’d seen that same expression a thousand times across a room, over a table, beyond a child’s shoulder, early in the morning, late at night, in a random glance, during their lovemaking.
“You are the sweetest, dearest old worry wart,” she said, laughing faintly.” You are my heart, my darling. I gave it to you the day we met. Remember? For safe keeping? And for all these years, you’ve protected it, fed it innocence and beauty, gave it hope. So long as you’re with me, my heart is in no danger.”
He covered the back of her hand with his, turning his head to plant a kiss in it. God, how he’d missed her—living in the same house with her, pushing her so far away.
“Come here,” he said, tugging lightly on her arm. Unfolding her legs to cross them both over one of his, she leaned into his embrace and cuddled close. They rocked in silence, the tension between them fading away as if it had never existed. A choir of night bugs hummed and buzzed and chirped a soothing melody, and for several long moments he forgot his fears.
“I suppose, I’m all that’s holding up this procedure,” he said finally, his voice softly harmonizing with the quiet country evening.
“I have an appointment, three weeks from Thursday. For tests.”
He grinned, nodding. He should have known—which was why he wasn’t angry, he supposed.
“How long will you be gone?”
“Overnight.”
“Can I go with you?”
“The kids’ll be out of school by then. They’ll be worried. It might be better if you stayed with them. It’s only for tests anyway.”
“Okay.”
He was agreeing to stay home with the children, not to having the procedure done. He couldn’t do that, and she knew why. But part of loving Livy was trusting her—about ninety-five percent of it. The other five percent consisted primarily of hanging on tight and praying for the best.
“Thank you,” she said, after a few more minutes had passed.
“For what?”
“For trying to understand. I know how hard this is for you. I know it’s not going to get any easier for you.” Truth be known, the only thing he even halfway understood was that he couldn’t do anything to stop her. As for hard and easy, well, it was hard pretending to be angry with her. “At least until it’s over. Until you can see for yourself that it’s not going to change anything.”
Here we go! Changes that don’t change anything.
He waited for her oration to begin… and he waited. But she seemed content in the silence and darkness and didn’t say a word. He smiled and sighed deeply, almost glad, as he realized talking-time was over. She’d slipped into her show-him mode and there was nothing left to say. Her decision was made and irreversible. Her heart was set. She was committed. Once more, it was his time to hang on and start praying.
“Yesterday, Chloe asked me where shadows go when the sun’s not shining,” she said after a long while.
“And did you tell her they stand behind trees and wait for the sun to come back?” They’d written a story about shadows a few years back. It was one of Livy’s favorites.
“Sort of. I told her they didn’t go anywhere. I said that just because you can’t see something any longer, it doesn’t mean it isn’t still there.”
Ugh! She’d ambushed him, stabbed him in the back with a single sentence.
She was having the port-wine stain removed from her face, but just because they wouldn’t be able to see it any longer, it didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be there—inside, where the only person it ever really mattered to could still see it. People she hadn’t met yet might never know she ever had the mark. People who knew her now and in the past might forget it ever existed. But deep within Livy, where her soul spoke and her heart listened, the shadows of the emotional pain she’d endured, of the lessons she’d learned, of the strengths and weaknesses she incorporated into who she was, wouldn’t simply disappear when the sun was no longer shining. They would remain, stay on like night shadows, a darker darkness in the dark.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross would have understood it. Anyone who’d had an abortion, or a diseased gallbladder surgically removed, or rhinoplasty, or voluntary sterilization for birth control knew about it—that sense of loss she was experiencing. She suspected it was extremely common and very human, but that didn’t make her feel any less alone.
She was mourning a birth defect. Crazy. Totally nuts. But that was the only way she could describe what she was feeling.
The grieving began days before she left for New York. The second guessing. The third guessing. Looking in the mirror and wondering what had possessed her to take such a drastic step. It was maniacal. Excited one minute, terrified the next. A lifetime of wanting the mark removed had a cumulative effect on her; imagining herself without it had no tangible effect at all. It didn’t seem possible. And the sadness… My God, if she’d ever dreamed she’d be sad to see the hideous thing gone from her face, never to return, she might have had her head examined. But that’s how it was, overwhelmingly sad.
It made no sense to her, either.
She kept telling herself it was like graduating from high school or your baby’s first day of school—one of those unforgettable, pivotal moments in your life that is as sweet as it is sorrowful. An end that was a new beginning. Abdicating the familiar with great expectations for the unknown.
It was utterly foolish and illogical, and if she was correct, it was completely normal as well. She didn’t discuss it with Brian. Any doubts or concerns on her part would have been magnified a thousand times in his mind, causing him just that much more anguish.
Perky party faces were what she wore for her family, promising the children New York souvenirs if they were good—she was a devout believer in the bribing of children—and dodging Brian’s requests to go with her, citing state laws against the transporting of mother hens across state lines and ordinances against mollycoddling inside New York City limits and, of course, all the well-known hotel regulations pertaining to the quartering and maintenance of fuddy-duddies in one’s room.
Still, when the nurse helped her adjust the blindfold over her eyes to protect them from the laser rays, she was desperately wishing she’d brought someone to hold onto—a husband, a mama, a teddy bear. She was alone, possibly mistaken and very much at risk. A flood of tears pressed hard against the back of her eyes when the hum-plunking sound of the laser began. For all she knew, the doctor could have been snapping at her cheek with a rubber band, the pain was so sharp and so quick. Over and over, until she was no longer surprised each time it happened but expecting it, now and now and now and now. They swore that nothing was burning, yet the stench of singed skin filled her nostrils and made her nauseous.
Squeezing her eyes tight against the urge to cry, the sudden realization of having gone too far to turn back inundated her. Maybe Brian was right all along. Maybe some things weren’t meant to be changed. The words permanent and forever echoed through her mind. Maybe tampering with nature, with God’s handiwork, wasn’t such a great idea. Test-tube babies. Genetic engineering. Cloning. Organ transplanting. Suspended animation. It all fascinated her, but she’d never been too sure how free and loose man should be when messing with that sort of stuff. Second-guessing God couldn’t be all that wise or prudent.
They uncovered her eyes and placed a cool, saline Telfa pad against her cheek before she could make up her mind to stop the procedure. It was done. For good or bad, better or worse, it was done. Her doctor and the nurse were pleased and encouraging. Only the heavy dull ache on the left side of her face and the fear of bursting into tears kept her from telling them that she felt they’d just made a profound mistake, that she wanted the procedure reversed, that she wanted her face to stay as it had always been—her face.
She could barely recall leaving the hospital or the cab ride back to the hotel. She was in shock, she supposed, because the next clear memory she had was of dropping her coat and purse on the floor, along with the gifts she’d bought the children on her way to the hospital that morning. She left them there, just inside the door of her room, and turned to the nearest mirror.
Holding her tears at bay any longer was impossible as she stared at her reflection, the white dressing on her cheek making her look… afflicted, damaged, hurt. Her hands shook as she gingerly pulled the tape from her skin, released the Telfa pad, and exposed the gory wound on her face.
Only half of the port-wine stain had been treated, as she and the doctor had agreed was best. That half looked like her worst nightmare. It was an ugly dark red with lots of spots as if burned repeatedly with the hot end of a cigarette. What had she done? She sobbed and closed her eyes, tormented by her own stupid vanity and pride. What had she done?
The loss of the soothing coolness and the exposure to the drying air separated the heavy, dull ache in her face from the real pain it had concealed, an intense stinging and throbbing as if she’d been branded with a hot iron.
“Oh, God,” she cried, tears flowing freely as she pressed the cool pad to her cheek again. Frustrated and finding herself in a world of misery, she cursed whatever it was that had compelled her to tamper with anything and everything that touched her life. She’d survived forty-one years with a port-wine stain on her face; would another forty have been impossible? The pain had been tolerable before she removed the dressing; couldn’t she have left it alone? She swallowed two extra-strength Tylenol, finished the entire glass of water, and stared at herself in the mirror once more. Couldn’t she leave anything alone?
In a sight-blurring state of dolor and despair she began to undress. Unaware of the continued flow of tears, her body racked with sobs, she intended to crawl into bed and never get up again.
She ignored the first light tapping at the door. The damned housekeeping staff could just damn well wait till she was damned good and dead before they cleaned the damned room, changed the damned bed, and replaced the damned towels.
She was in her slip, struggling frantically to get out of her pantyhose, when the knocking came again, louder, more insistent. With no little effort, she focused her eyes on the door. She’d forgotten to chain it. If she didn’t answer, wouldn’t the maid simply let herself in?
Her whole body sagged with hopelessness, and she began to cry in earnest—dejected, defective, and defeated.
“Please go away,” she called, praying that if this particular New Yorker couldn’t speak English, she could at least understand the get-away-from-me tone in her voice.
“Livy?” Softly spoken, barely southern English? “It’s Brian. Open the door.”
In utter shame, but without hesitation, she turned the knob and opened the door. He’d told her so, but he’d never say it out loud, not as she would have, were the situation reversed. He was a good person. Kind and sweet and gentle. Not like her. Not stupid and willful and never satisfied.
“Aw God,” he said, taking in her general condition without a blink. “Aw Liv, honey, come here,” he said, his face filled with sympathy, his arms outstretched to receive her weak, trembling body.
He stepped into the room, leaving the door to close and lock on its own, and scooped her up against his body as he might Chloe after a spill on her bike. She wrapped her arms about his neck and buried face against his throat, saying over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Shhhh,” he whispered, trying to soothe her as he carried her across the room to the bed. He sat down, holding her on his lap, cradling her in his arms. “Shhhh. Livy,” he said, rocking her gently. “No, I’m sorry. Shhhh. I knew I should have been here with you. Why do we do this?” he asked, as if he’d asked himself the question before and hadn’t found an answer. “We’re not going off to suffer alone anymore. Not like this. Not like last time. Never again. We’ve nothing left to prove to each other, to anyone. Shhhh. I shouldn’t have let you talk me out of it. I should have been here. I’m sorry.”
He let her cry. For a little while she believed he was crying with her. What was that old adage? Something about friendship improving happiness and abating misery, by doubling the joy and dividing the grief. Funny thing about those adages, they couldn’t live to be an old one unless they were true.
“It’s too late to get my old face back,” she muttered when she was too tired to cry anymore. “They said it didn’t burn, but it smelled like burning and it looks burned and it hurts like a burn.”
“Did they give you anything for the pain?”
“Tylenol.”
“Did you take any?”
She nodded. “I’m so stupid. I don’t know why I’m crying. I want the damn thing gone. I’ve always wanted it gone. And now I… I miss it. I want it back. The way it was.” He didn’t say anything, but continued to rock her and hold her close. “That’s stupid, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
She sighed, feeling a little better.
“Really, really stupid,” she said, looking to feel a lot better.
“Yep.”
“I’ll get used to seeing my face without it. I’ll like my face better without it. No more double takes. No more staring. No more explanations. I’ll be another face in the crowd.” Yep.
“I’m glad you came,” she said, feeling anchored and safe, and getting sleepy. “I was scared… and sad.”
“Me, too. So I came.”
“Who’s with the kids?”
“Mom and Larry. I called them after you left yesterday. I drove all night, hoping to get to the hospital on time, but… I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Livy.”
“You’re here now.” She sat up to face him. His gaze roamed over her face, warm and loving, unafraid of what he might see, accepting unconditionally who and what she was—and what she looked like. She caressed his whisker-roughened cheek with the backs of her fingers, wondering what she’d done so right to deserve a man so wonderful. “More than my husband, more than my lover, you are the best friend I’ve ever had, Brian Carowack.”
He tipped his face toward hers, closed his eyes, and brushed his lips against hers. A feather-light touch, fashioned to convey his endless devotion and desire, and to cause her the least amount of pain at the same time. He smiled. “And don’t you ever forget it,” he said.