Strange but True (32 page)

“I want to get a card to send to Ronnie's family, so I'd rather go myself.”

“We'll get the card for you, Missy. You shouldn't have to worry about that now.”

She reaches out to stroke her daughter's hair but pulls away when she brushes one of the large bandages on Melissa's face. There is a gauzy white strip above her right eye that stretches over her forehead, another covering her left cheek. Every two days, they go to the doctor's office to have them changed, since it is too complicated to do on their own.

“Mom,” Melissa says in the same monotone voice the narrators use on the Discovery Channel to describe the awesome power of a black hole, the great speed of a bobcat, or any number of unthinkable facts about the universe. In Melissa's case, the unthinkable facts are this: “I was cheated out of the funeral, I was cheated out of the wake, I was even cheated out of the memorial service at school, all because I was stuck in the hospital. Everyone else got to pay their last respects to my boyfriend except
me
. So the least you can do is let me get his family one lousy fucking card.”

Normally, her mother would scold her for using such language. Normally, she'd threaten her father's wrath. But ever since the accident, her parents act nervous and unsure of themselves in Melissa's presence, as though their daughter has been taken away and they're not certain how to handle this wild, injured one left in her place. Neither of them can bring themselves to look at her for more than a few seconds at a time, never mind yell at her for using the
F
word. Instead of offering up any sort of reprimand, her mother runs her hand over her own stiff yellow hair and looks at one of the wilted flower arrangements. “Fine then,” she says. “As soon as you finish your soup, I'll take you to CVS.”

When they pull into the crowded parking lot almost an hour later, every space is occupied. Around and around, her mother circles, letting one car after another cut in front of them and steal the next available spot. In the flat, emotionless voice Melissa used back at home, she tells her to pull into the handicap zone.

Her mother grips the steering wheel and brakes. “But we don't have a permit.”

Melissa turns to face her in the driver's seat. “Look at me, Mother.” She does, but only for a second. Melissa goes on anyway, “I look like the walking dead. I dare a cop to even try and give me a ticket.”

After that, Melissa can tell her mother is more nervous around this new daughter of hers than ever before. She pulls in front of the blue sign with the wheelchair symbol, cuts the engine, and asks, “Are you sure you don't want me to go in with you?”

On the way here, Melissa made it clear that she wants to do this alone. Once more, she tells her, “I'm sure. But I need money.”

Her mother removes her wallet from her purse in a tentative, uneasy manner, the way she might if she was being robbed. She produces a five-dollar bill and gives it to Melissa.

“I need more than that.”

“For a card?”

“Yes. I might get a bunch. One for his brother, one for his father, and one for his mother.”

“I think a single card for the entire family will do just fine,” she says, but Melissa doesn't retract her hand, so her mother gives her a twenty-dollar bill as well.

Inside the store, Melissa walks slowly up and down the aisles, her flip-flops slapping against her heels as she listens to a dreary, Muzak rendition of a Taylor Dayne song piped in from somewhere in the spongy white ceiling. She passes shelves full of toothpaste, mouthwash, dental floss, shampoos and conditioners, then rounds the corner and heads through the candy section. As she works up the courage to go and pull a pregnancy test from the shelf and throw it in her basket, Melissa thinks of when she came here a few weeks before to buy the red lightbulb for her trip with Ronnie. After they were done in the storage closet, he unscrewed it and Melissa put it back inside her purse. Now she wonders whatever happened to her purse, her dress, and her corsage. She makes a mental note to ask her mother, then rounds the corner and spots a shelf full of Trojans and Ramses not far from the pregnancy tests. Melissa remembers laughing as Ronnie told her about coming here as well to buy a box of condoms—condoms they never used.

I was freaking out, Missy. But I finally had the balls to do it
.

As she stands there staring over at the pregnancy tests, the words on the packages seem to shout at her: First Response!, 99% accurate! e.pt.!, Early Detection! Melissa looks around to be sure no one is watching. Other than a line of old ladies over by the pharmacy and a woman with a stroller studying a Children's Tylenol container, there isn't anyone in the immediate vicinity who might see what she is about to do. In two quick movements, Melissa thrusts out her hand, swipes a pink and white box off the shelf, and drops it in her basket. Before going to the register, she gets the idea to pick up a few random items so the pregnancy test will not stand out as much at the counter. She grabs a bag of fish licorice, a copy of the local newspaper, a flimsy pair of $3.99 sunglasses, plus those three cards for Ronnie's family. Even though Melissa plans to pay the Chases a visit sometime soon, she figures she will mail these cards first with a note telling them how sorry she is for their loss.

Their
loss.

That's how her parents make her feel anyway. Like this is a terrible tragedy for the Chase family, but a mere inconvenient blip in the grand scheme of Melissa's life. When they come into her room to pray with her, they say things about moving on, putting “this incident” behind her, preparing to take the next step toward her future with God on her side. There have been so many times when Melissa wanted to scream at them to shut up, to tell them that they don't understand how she feels and never will. But she stays silent. She keeps her face as still and motionless as possible, because it hurts to make even the slightest of expressions.

After she selects a card for each of the Chases—one with a purple lilac for Mrs. Chase, another with a burning sunset for Mr. Chase, and a third with a field of red poppies for Philip—Melissa takes a breath and approaches the register. She doesn't know any of the women behind the counter or anybody waiting in line, and for that she is grateful. When it's her turn, a lady with a butterfly barrette in her frizzy black hair rings up the items. She glances at Melissa's face, then promptly looks away. It is exactly what her parents do—exactly what Melissa used to do too whenever she saw a handicapped person, because she thought it was rude to stare. Now she realizes how rude that deliberate looking away is. The woman puts the kit in the bag along with the rest of Melissa's purchases. With her eyes still focused on the counter, she tells her that the total is twenty-four dollars and eighty-seven cents. Melissa shoves the twenty and the five into her hand, grabs the bag, and walks out of the store without waiting for change.

Back in the car, her mother has popped a classical music tape into the stereo and pumped up the air conditioner. The tinkling piano clashes with the Taylor Dayne song still echoing in Melissa's mind. The cold air blowing against her bare legs makes her all the more uncomfortable. Her mother starts the engine and says, “It looks like you got more than a few cards in there.”

Melissa shoves the bag against the passenger door in case the pink and white box is visible through the cloudy white plastic. She says nothing.

“You'll be glad to hear that the cops didn't come around to bother me,” her mother tells her.

“I didn't think they would,” Melissa says and slouches in her seat.

As they pull out of the handicap spot, she stares up at the blue sign with the wheelchair symbol. Her thoughts linger on that woman with the butterfly barrette at the register, the way she looked away from her face—just like her parents. I am a freak, she thinks, sliding her hand into the CVS bag and fishing around for the sunglasses. No matter what anyone says, I will never be the same again.

Once she locates the glasses, Melissa attempts to put them on, but the bandages are so bulky they get in the way. Her mother sees what she is trying to do and says, “Don't worry. Once your wounds heal, your father and I are going to take you to a plastic surgeon like Dr. Patel suggested. He gave us a list of almost a dozen names, and we are going to find the very best one. It is all going to be fine. You'll see.”

Again, Melissa says nothing. For weeks, she has been hearing about this magical list of plastic surgeons and all the miracles they are going to perform. But she has seen her face with the bandages off. Even though Dr. Patel did not want her to look, Melissa caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of a silver towel rack while the bandages were being changed, so she knows full well how impossible it will be to make her look like her old self. Thinking of that reflection now, Melissa rolls down the window and tosses the sunglasses outside. She watches in the side-view mirror as they clank and bounce off the curb before snapping against the pavement.

“What did you do that for?” her mother asks.

“They don't fit,” is all she can say. Then she remembers the red light-bulb and asks, “Whatever happened to my purse and my dress and all the rest of my stuff from the prom?”

“I—” Her mother stops speaking a moment. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because it's my stuff, Mother. I want to keep it so I can remember that night.”

“Why on earth would you want to remember something so horrible?”

Melissa looks out the passenger window. They are driving along a stretch of road where the tree branches arch overhead. The resulting shade makes it possible to see the faintest of reflections in the glass. Because it is all I have, Melissa thinks as she stares at her bandaged face, remembering how ugly and disfigured she is beneath, Because even if I wanted to love someone else, which I don't, who is going to want me now? No one, that's who. Not like this anyway. To her mother, she simply says, “I just do. That's all.”

“Well, we got your dress and shoes back from the hospital and your purse back from the police station. As far as I know, your father put all of it in the garage. But I suggest you leave it there. It will be too painful for you to look at right now.”

After that, they ride along with only the sound of the tinkling piano between them. Melissa's reflection is gone, and she stares out the window at the lush, leafy summer woods blowing by. She wonders what her first step will be if the pregnancy test turns out to be positive the way she hopes. She wonders exactly how her parents will react if she has to tell them that she is going to have a baby—
Ronnie's
baby. Then Melissa thinks of a documentary she watched the other day about a rhino, or maybe an octopus, or a rare species of bird, she cannot recall exactly. Whatever it was, she remembers that the creature sought seclusion before giving birth. Maybe she will do the same, Melissa thinks. Maybe she will move away somewhere and have the baby without telling a soul.

Her mother turns the car onto Church Street. They pass the white clapboard church where Melissa has gone to services every Sunday for as long as she can remember. She thinks of the repetitious cycle of sermons her father has given over the years. There is the one about faith, during which he quotes a passage from the Bible where Jesus shouts up at God from the cross, “Why hast Thou forsaken me?” There is another about miracles, during which he quotes the passage where Jesus turns water into wine. And then there is that one about the importance of praying to Christ and Christ alone in times of need, since he does not believe in praying to saints or to the Virgin Mary the way Catholics do. As Melissa recounts her father's greatest hits in her mind, they drive past the wooden board and stones on the side of the road, which made up the jump Wendy Dugas and those girls were attempting to Rollerblade over only a few weeks before. The sight of it fills Melissa with deep sadness because she remembers how excited and hopeful she had felt about her trip with Ronnie as she watched them from the window.

“Now that you seem to be feeling a little better,” her mother says, breaking the silence as she pulls the car into the driveway, “your father and I think it would be a good idea if we took you to a dentist sometime soon as well. You'll want to get your teeth fixed before starting college in the fall.”

College in the fall
.

Not once since the accident has Melissa thought of Penn, or September, or classes, or schoolbooks, or any of the other details she might be mulling over if things hadn't gone so horribly awry. No matter what the pregnancy test shows, one thing is certain: Melissa cannot—she
will not—
go off to Penn now that Ronnie won't be going with her. How can she when every single day will be a reminder of the life they planned?

If you're on dish duty, I'll help you scrub…

“Did you hear what I said?” her mother asks as the car comes to a stop.

Melissa stares at the closed garage door and wonders about her dress and purse inside, that red lightbulb, which must be shattered into hundreds of tiny shards. “I heard,” she says.

“And?”

“And what?”

Her mother turns off the engine and lets out a long breath. “And—I don't know. When would you like us to make the appointment?”

Melissa looks away from the garage door at her mother—her poor hapless mother who has never been good at handling small tragedies, like when the toaster catches on fire or when the sump pump in the basement breaks and the downstairs floods. She is far better at tackling the minor problems life serves up, like a tear in a sweater that needs sewing, or a stuck zipper on a winter coat that needs fixing. The way she treats Melissa is just like one of those minor problems, as though her daughter can be easily fixed—sewn up, zipped up, made as good as new. Melissa opens her mouth and tells her, “Make the appointment for whenever you want. I really don't care.”