Making Faces (40 page)

“It wouldn't hurt so badly if I didn't love
him so much. That's the irony of it,” Fern said after a while, her
voice scratchy and thick with tears. “The happiness of knowing
Bailey, of loving him, is part of the pain now. You can't have one
without the other.”

“What do you mean?” Ambrose whispered, his
lips against her hair.

“Think about it. There isn't heartache if
there hasn't been joy. I wouldn't feel loss if there hadn't been
love. You couldn't take my pain away without removing Bailey from
my heart. I would rather have this pain now then never have known
him. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.”

Ambrose rose with her in his arms and settled
them both on her bed, his back against the wall, stroking her hair
and letting her talk. They ended up curled around each other, Fern
flirting with the edge of the mattress, but supported by Ambrose's
arms that were wrapped securely around her.

“Can you make it go away, Ambrose? Just for a
while?” she whispered, her lips against his neck.

Ambrose froze, her meaning as plain as the
devastation in her voice.

“You told me that when you kiss me, all the
pain goes away. I want it to go away, too,” she continued
plaintively, the tickle of her breath against his skin making his
eyes roll back in his head.

He kissed her eyelids, the high planes of her
cheekbones, the small dollop of an earlobe that made her shiver and
bunch his shirt in her hands. He smoothed her hair from her face,
gathering it in his hands so he could feel the slide of it through
his fingers as he found her mouth and did his best to chase
memories from her head and sorrow from her heart, if only for a
while, the way she did for him.

He felt her breasts against his chest, her
slim thighs entwined with his own, the press of her body, the slide
of her hands, urging him on. But though his body howled and begged
and his heart bellowed in his chest, he kissed and touched, and
nothing more, saving the final act for a time when sorrow had
released its grip and Fern wasn't running from feeling but reveling
in it.

He didn't want to be a temporary balm. He
wanted to be a cure. He wanted to be with her under an entirely
different set of circumstances, in a different place, in a
different time. At the moment, Bailey loomed large, filling every
nook and corner, every part of Fern, and Ambrose didn't want to
share her, not when they made love. So he would wait.

When she fell asleep, Ambrose eased himself
from the bed and pulled her blankets around her shoulders, pausing
to look at the deep red of her hair against her pillow, the way her
hand curled beneath her chin.
It wouldn't hurt so badly if I
didn't love him so much.
He wished he would have understood
that when he'd found himself in a hospital full of injured
soldiers, filled with pain and suffering, unable to come to terms
with the loss of his friends and the damage to his face.

As he stared down at Fern he was struck with
the truth she seemed to intuitively understand. Like Fern said, he
could take his friends from his heart, but in purging the memory,
he would rob himself of the joy of having loved them, having known
them, having learned from them. If he didn't understand pain, he
wouldn't appreciate the hope that he'd started to feel again, the
happiness he was hanging onto with both hands so it wouldn't slip
away.

The day of the funeral, Fern found herself on
Ambrose's doorstep at nine a.m. She had no reason to be there.
Ambrose had said he would pick her up at 9:30. But she was ready
too early, restless and anxious. So she’d told her parents she
would see them at the church and slipped out of the house.

Elliott Young answered the door after a brief
knock.

“Fern!” Elliott smiled as if she were his new
best friend. Ambrose had obviously told his dad about her. That was
a good sign, wasn't it? “Hi, Sweetie. Ambrose is dressed and
decent, I think. Go on back.”

“Ambrose!” he called down the hallway
adjacent to the front door. “Fern's here, son. I'm going to head
out. I need to stop by the bakery on the way. I'll see you at the
church.” He smiled at Fern and grabbed his keys, heading out the
front door. Ambrose's head shot out of an open door, a white dress
shirt tucked into a pair of navy slacks making him look
simultaneously inviting and untouchable.

His face was lathered on one side, the side
untouched by violence.

“Fern? Is everything okay? Did I mess up the
time?”

“No. I just . . . I was ready. And I couldn't
sit still.”

He nodded as if he understood and reached for
her hand as she approached.

“How you holding up, baby?”

The endearment was new, protective, and it
comforted Fern like nothing else could have. It also made her eyes
fill with tears. She clung to his hand and forced the tears away.
She'd cried endlessly in the last few days. Just when she felt she
couldn't cry anymore, she would surprise herself and the tears
would come again, rain that wouldn't stop. She had applied her
make-up that morning heavier than usual, lining her brown eyes and
laying the water-proof mascara on thick, simply because she felt
stronger with it; a sort of armor against the grief. Now she
wondered if she should have left it off.

“Let me do that.” Fern held out her hand for
the razor he wielded, needing to do something to distract herself.
He handed it over and sat on the counter, pulling her between his
legs.

“It only grows on the left side. I won't ever
be able grow a mustache or a beard.”

“Good. I like a clean-shaven man,” Fern
murmured, expertly slicing away the thick white lather.

Ambrose studied her as she worked. Fern's
face was too white and her eyes were shadowed, but the slim black
dress complimented her lithe figure and made her red hair look even
redder still. Ambrose loved her hair. It was so Fern, so authentic,
just like the rest of her. He slid his hands around her waist and
her eyes shot to his. A current zinged between them and Fern paused
for a deep breath, not wanting the liquid heat in her limbs to make
her slip and nick his chin.

“Where did you learn to do that?” Ambrose
asked as she finished.

“I helped Bailey shave. Many times.”

“I see.” His blind eye belied his words, but
his left eye stayed trained on her face as Fern picked up a hand
towel and blotted off the residue, running her hand across his
cheek to make sure she'd gotten the shave close and smooth.

“Fern . . . I don't need you to do that.”

“I want to.”

And he wanted her to, simply because he liked
the way her hands felt on his skin, how her form felt between his
thighs, how her scent made him weak. But he wasn't Bailey, and Fern
needed to remember that.

“It's going to be hard for you . . . not to
try to take care of me,” Ambrose said gently. “That's what you do.
You took care of Bailey.”

Fern stopped blotting and her hands fell to
her sides.

“But I don't want you to take care of me,
Fern. Okay? Caring about someone doesn't mean taking care of them.
Do you understand?”

“Sometimes it does,” she whispered,
protesting.

“Yeah. Sometimes it does. But not this time.
Not with me.”

Fern looked lost and avoided his gaze as if
she were being reprimanded. Ambrose tipped her chin toward him and
leaned in, kissing her softly, reassuring her. Her hands crept back
to his face and he forgot for a minute what he needed to say with
her pink mouth moving against his. And he let the subject rest for
the time being, knowing she needed time, knowing her pain was too
sharp.

There was a hush in the church as Ambrose
rose and walked to the pulpit. Fern couldn't breath. Ambrose hated
being stared at, and here he was the center of attention. So many
of the people sitting in the packed church were seeing him for the
first time. Light filtered down through the stained glass windows
and created patterns around the pulpit, making Ambrose look as if
his appearance was marked by a special grace.

Ambrose looked out over the audience, and the
silence was so deafening he must have questioned whether his
hearing had left him in both ears. He was so handsome, Fern
thought. And to her he was. Not in the traditional sense . . . not
anymore, but because he stood straight, and his chin was held high.
He looked fit and strong in his navy suit, his body a testament to
his tenacity and the time he spent with Coach Sheen in the
wrestling room. His gaze was steady and his voice was strong as he
began to speak.

“When I was eleven years old, Bailey Sheen
challenged me to a wrestle off.” Chuckles erupted around the room,
but Ambrose didn't smile. “I knew Bailey because we went to school
together, obviously, but Bailey was Coach Sheen's kid. The
wrestling coach. The coach I hoped to impress. I'd been to every
one of Coach Sheen's wrestling camps since I was seven years old.
And so had Bailey. But Bailey never wrestled at the camps. He
rolled around on the mats and was always in the thick of things,
but he never wrestled. I just thought it was because he didn't want
to or something. I had no idea he had a disease.

“So when Bailey challenged me to a match, I
really didn't know what to think. I had noticed some things,
though. I had noticed that he had started walking on his toes and
his legs weren't straight and strong. He wobbled and his balance
was way off. He would fall down randomly. I thought he was just a
spaz.”

More chuckles, this time more tentative.

“Sometimes my friends and I would make jokes
about Bailey. We didn't know.” Ambrose's voice was almost a
whisper, and he stopped to compose himself.

“So here we were, Bailey Sheen and me. Bailey
had cornered me at the end of camp one day and asked me if I'd
wrestle him. I knew I could easily beat him. But I wondered if I
should . . . maybe it would make Coach Sheen mad, and I was a lot
bigger than Bailey. I was a lot bigger than all the kids.” Ambrose
smiled a little at that, and the room relaxed with his
self-deprecation. “I don't know why I agreed to it. Maybe it was
the way he looked at me. He was so hopeful, and he kept glancing
over to where his dad was standing, talking with some of the high
school kids that were helping with the camp.

“I decided I would just kind of roll around
with him, you know, let him shoot a few moves on me the way the
biggest high school kids let me do with them. But before I knew it,
Bailey had shot in on me, a very sweet single leg, and he attached
himself to my leg. It caught me by surprise, but I knew what to do.
I sprawled immediately, but he followed me down, spinning around
behind me, just like you're supposed to do, riding me. If there had
been a ref he would have scored a takedown–two points, Sheen. It
embarrassed me a little, and I scrambled out, trying a little
harder than I had before.