“A lot were from other parts of the country,” Meg explained. “It seems you have a lot of fans.”

  “Had a lot of fans,” Leslie corrected her.

  “How about if I ask one of the nurses,” Meg suggested, “to give them to some of the folks who haven’t gotten anything during their stay?”

  “That’d be fine,” Leslie agreed. “Maybe something good could come out of this.”

  “Why don’t you wait here,” Meg said, “and I’ll tell Molli we’re leaving and that she will have some floral deliveries to make. Why don’t you call your Mom and give her the word we’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Picking up the phone, Leslie dialed the familiar number and waited for a response. “Dad, this is Les.”

  She waited for a moment and then assured him, “I’m fine. Meg and I will be there a little later. Tell Mom. I’ll see you soon.”

  Walking over to the mirror, Leslie took another long look at the scars that lined her face. Grabbing a brush, she attempted to comb her shoulder length hair in a Veronica Lake style that at least hid a few of them.

  As she slipped the brush into her purse, Meg came back in. “Do you think Hunter could fall for me now?”

  “I don’t know,” Meg admitted. “But I feel that if he’d have fallen for you a month or a year ago, he could now. You’re still the same person on the inside.”

  “The inside isn’t what I’m talking about,” Leslie sadly nodded. “A month ago I would have wowed him with a flash, a wink, a smile, and a face that could have moved most any man. I can’t do that now and I don’t want to be a charity case for anyone.”

  “You?” Meg said as she raised her left eyebrow, “A charity case?”

  After sitting back on the corner of the bed, Leslie asked, “Do you remember Blanche Ward?”

  “No,” Meg shook her head, “the name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Well, Blanche was in my class, and she was very nice, smart, even funny, but she was also very plain. And she was overweight. I was thinking about her last night. Tommy McCall took her out after he broke up with Connie Seymour.”

  “Wasn’t Connie the girl with the long blonde hair and the body that wouldn’t—well, you know?” Meg laughed as she motioned in a swirling manner.

  “That was Connie all right,” Leslie smiled, “except I think that your top motion should have been a bit more pronounced. Everything about Connie spelled sex appeal. I used to marvel at her walk. I swear she threw her hips so far from side to side that she could close the locker doors on both sides of the hall with her hips.”

  “There was a girl in my class like that,” Meg said as she put a few more items in a bag.

  “Anyway,” Leslie continued, “Tommy took Blanche out a few times and she fell head over heels for him. She would wash his car, do his homework, followed him around like a little lap dog. There wasn’t a moment when she wasn’t thinking about her Tommy.

  “It lasted for about a month. Then Tommy dumped her and went back to Connie. I don’t think Tommy meant to hurt Blanche; he was only trying to prove to himself that there were things more important than looks. In a way it was a noble effort, but the effort caused Blanche a great deal of pain. When she fell back to reality, she fell hard. She withdrew for the remainder of her high school years. I mean she was there, but her personality was missing. And then, she went to college somewhere downstate. No one I know has heard from her since.”

  “Tough,” Meg noted. “Not easy being a high school girl.”

  “It is more than just high school,” Leslie said. “Tommy took Blanche out for the wrong reasons. He just wanted to prove that he was a good person with some wonderful qualities. That he was more than just a good-looking guy, but that he had a big heart and mind that saw deeper than a face or a body. So, it was really a missionary date. Something to make him feel good about himself.”

  “In relationships, there is pain,” Meg suggested. “You get hurt several times before you really find love.”

  “But,” Leslie cut in, “isn’t that what Hunter’s doing? Am I just a feel-good date? Is he talking to me for missionary reasons? Kind of like the way he volunteers to work with problem teens?”

  “I don’t think so,” Meg replied.

  Looking back toward the mirror, Leslie again ran her fingers over the scars. Shaking her head, she pulled a scarf from her purse and tied it in such a way that it covered both her hair, and the bottom part of her face. Finally, she put on an oversized pair of sunglasses. Looking back at her reflection, she nodded her head. She hadn’t completely covered the mess, but she had managed to hide the majority of it.

  “You ready?” Meg asked.

  “Yeah,” Leslie responded while turning to face her cousin.

  “Well,” the nurse mused, “I see that you have dressed for the occasion.”

  A bit put off by her cousin’s remark, Leslie shot back, “You didn’t expect me to go out like I looked, did you? I mean people would stare.”

  “They will now too,” Meg softly informed her, “but it’s your decision. If that’s how you want to look, that’s fine with me. By the way, your sweater’s beautiful. I wish that I could look that good in jeans, too.”

  “You do,” Leslie shrugged, “but does the way I’m covering up my face look that weird? By the way, I don’t want a wheelchair. No way!”

  “I tell you what,” Meg assured her. “I have to roll you out the door, but as soon as it closes, you can get up and walk on your own. And by the way, you look all right, that is, if you are trying to hide something.”

  “I am,” came the blunt reply. “Now will you check if anyone is in the hall before you wheel me out.”

  Glancing out the door, Meg called back, “It’s all clear.”

  The short hundred-foot trip to the back door was the longest that Leslie ever remembered making—longer than any runway during a show or stage during a pageant. Rather than having each foot draw her closer, it seemed that each one put her farther and farther away. Finally, after what seemed like hours, she made it. She was just getting out of the chair when an older couple strolled up the walk.

  “Good evening, ladies,” the gentleman said.

  Panicked, Leslie glanced at the sidewalk and hurried out the door into the night air. Once in the parking lot, she raised her head as her eyes searched for her cousin’s familiar yellow Mustang. Spotting it, she surged ahead, almost like she was running a race.

  “Wait up,” Meg hollered as she doubled her steps to catch up. “You’re supposed to take your time and at least act like you are feeling a little bit sick. I mean, after all, you just got out of the hospital.”

  Ignoring her cousin’s pleas, Leslie maintained her pace, stopping only when she arrived at the passenger door of the car. After she loaded the bags in the trunk, Meg hopped in the driver’s side and buckled up. Looking over at her cousin, she smiled and waited for her to do the same thing.

  “Let’s go,” Leslie urged.

  “As soon as you buckle your belt,” Meg responded.

  “Oh for God’s sakes, Meg,” Leslie snapped back. “We aren’t going that far.”

  “Yeah,” the driver admitted, “but most accidents happen close to home. Besides, if I had to make a quick stop, you’d go flying into the windshield.”

  “It couldn’t hurt me any more than I am now, so what’s the difference?”

  “The big difference,” Meg smiled, “is that you would bleed on my interior, and this car is the only possession of real value I have in the world. I don’t want you smashing the windshield or staining my interior.”

  Shaking her head, Leslie submitted and snapped her belt into place. Smiling, Meg flipped the key and, once the engine caught, backed out of the parking lot and headed down the road. She had driven four blocks before either of them spoke.

  41

  I don’t think Hunter is pulling a missionary dating trick on you.”

  “What?” Leslie asked.

  “Like what’s his name did to Blanche,” Meg answered. “I think that you’re dreaming up a bunch of stuff when you’re talking about romance. I mean Hunter is probably looking for a friend, someone to share some old times and make some new ones. The last thing you need to do is worry about whether he loves you. There’s more to life than just love, or for that matter, more to love than just looks. You ought to think about that. Don’t cut yourself off from a friend that you may need just because you think that you’re different. It’s OK to be scared, but don’t let fear control you. After all, if you can walk through Central Park by yourself or grow up in the same house with your mom, then surely you can find enough courage to handle whatever happens in your relationship with him.”

  Leslie didn’t respond to Meg’s words, but they did make sense, and having Hunter consider her just a friend would make dealing with her own problems much easier. After all, a friend could readily overlook scars and flaws. So, she would just have to make sure that the relationship remained nonromantic. Of course, convincing her heart to do that would be far easier than convincing her mind.

  “We’re here,” Meg announced as she pulled the car into the driveway. “I can see your mother waiting on the porch.”

  Glancing up, Leslie caught her mother’s stocky form marching down the front steps and toward the car. Her father was waiting just outside the door.

  “Leslie Marie,” Flo’s voice boomed across the yard and likely alerted everyone on the block to what was happening, “how I do wish you would have let me bring you home. My Cadillac would’ve been so much more comfortable than Meg’s old sports car. I mean the ride must have been terrible, especially with your injuries. Come here, honey, and let me help you across the yard.”

  Shaking her head as she exited the car, Leslie looked across the street and saw Mr. and Mrs. Boyd sitting out on their porch enjoying the night air. Now realizing her mother was putting on a show for the neighbors, she decided to change the rules of the game.

  “Mom, I’m fine. It was my face, not my feet that suffered the most. I’ll make it without your help.” Then, as Meg popped the trunk on the car, a mischievous grin crossed Leslie’s lips, “But Mom, if you do want to help, why don’t you grab my bags.”

  “A … a … a …” Flo stammered as she looked into the dusty trunk. “A … Johnathon, why don’t you be a dear and come down here and get your daughter’s things. I better walk alongside of her, just in case she stumbles or something.”

  “I’d better help her up the stairs,” the man answered with a smile. “You get the bags.”

  Meg nodded, smiled, and slipped back into her car. After her eyes met and Leslie nodded, she started the Mustang and backed out of the drive. Leslie’s eyes followed the yellow car until it drove out of sight.

  Leslie stayed up long enough to eat a bit of the food her mother had picked up at a deli and then begged off to go to her room. As she closed the door a strange kind of feeling settled over her. All around her were visible signs of the past, pictures of her with old friends, at high school dances, and at slumber parties. From a large bulletin board hung dried out Homecoming mums, cheerleader letters, and funny notes. Pennants and posters covered the walls and old books and diaries lined two white shelves. In all the years she had been gone, her mother had changed nothing. This room was almost like a shrine.

  Sitting at her desk, she opened a drawer and pulled out a desk tray filled with old letters. Under the tray were some snapshots and finally her senior annual. Putting the letters and photographs back, she closed the drawer, picked up her yearbook, and wandered slowly across the room to her bed. Lying down she began to leaf through the pages. She stopped when she got to the one that showed Springfield High’s Most Handsome and Most Beautiful.

  Looking back from the page was a much different Hunter. He didn’t possess that self-confidence that he had on the two days she had recently seen him. He was good looking, but in a juvenile sort of way. On the other hand she appeared very much like she had on the cover of Fashion and Style. While Hunter’s pose looked unnatural and therefore a little awkward, she looked so perfect that the image seemed a bit staged. Hunter looked eighteen, she looked twenty-five. Now, just at the moment he’d caught up with her, he had left her far behind. He appeared like he stepped off the cover of GQ while she belonged on Monsters Illustrated.

  A slowly creeping depression seeped into the room as she continued to study the annual’s pages. Feeling the emotions begin to play with her ability to think and keep things in perspective, Leslie closed the book and got ready for bed. Turning out the light, she glanced out her window and down on the street that had changed so little during the time she had been away.

  As she stared out into the moonlit street, a tug-of-war was being waged in her mind. A part of her begged to escape to old memories while another facet asked her to accept what she had become. Somewhere she heard a laughing, the kind of laughing the wicked witch had employed in The Wizard of Oz. Trying to find its point of origin, she soon realized it was coming from deep within her own head.

  42

  In New York, Leslie had never watched television. With her busy life and work schedule, she simply hadn’t had the time. Now, it seemed, it was all she did. From the time she got up on her first day staying in the house where she’d grown up to this moment, almost four days later, she’d done nothing but eat, sleep, and bury herself in game shows, soap operas, and syndicated reruns. By doing so, she avoided having to listen to her mother run down the quality of local doctors and lawyers as well as the horrid leadership of the social clubs that seemed to take every spare moment of her life. During these rants, the more her mother talked, the louder Leslie turned up the volume on the TV.

  Even though a host of family friends had come by, except for Meg, Leslie had refused to see anyone. When company came she hid in her room, the TV blaring, and ignored her mother’s knocks on the door. She couldn’t bear the thought of revealing how she looked to those who’d once known her beautiful face. The strange thing was that her mother seemed to want to put her on display. Flo was taking some kind of perverse pleasure in using Leslie to attack the local medical community and police force.

  Leslie did take Hunter’s calls. They chatted about old times, his work and local happenings, but when he suggested coming by for a visit, she cut him off. She was not going to let him see her either. She didn’t even look at herself. For the entire time she had been home, Leslie had refrained from using direct light and she had not allowed her folks to open the shades. By living in the dark, she kept everyone else there, too.

  On a Friday afternoon, Leslie’s fifth day at home, Flo strolled into Leslie’s room, marched up to the TV, turned the set off, and looked toward the bed where Leslie had been curled up. “Honey, I really do want to stay here with you, but if I don’t go to the Garden Club meeting heaven knows what Gladys Short will pick out to go in front of the new library. That woman thinks that she is such an expert on plants and landscaping just because she got a degree from Iowa State University. I mean, what can you learn in college about things like that! You’re born with that skill, you can’t teach it. I know so much more than she does about what looks good. If you don’t believe me look at her front yard. I told the landscaping service where everything should be placed.”

  Leslie just nodded, grabbed the remote, and turned the TV back on. A nostalgia channel was showing an old black-and-white episode of Gilligan’s Island.

  “Fine, Mom,” Leslie mumbled, keeping her eyes glued to the flickering images of the skipper and his first mate, “I’ll be fine.”

  When, a few minutes later she heard her mother’s car pull out of the driveway, Leslie said good-bye to the professor and the movie star, turned the television off and got out of bed. Wandering through the house, she fully embraced the gifts of silence and solitude. Finding her father’s old tomcat curled on a living room windowsill, she sat down beside him and began to stroke his head. Glancing up, the cat momentarily studied her, then once more shut his eyes.

  “Spot, you’ve been in some fights since I left,” Leslie told the uninterested cat. “Your ears are shredded and that scar across your nose proves you may have lost a few more battles than you’ve won. Age must be catching up with you.

  “Kind of funny how the world goes on no matter what happens to us. I mean you could get run over tonight on your rounds and except for Dad missing you for a few weeks nothing would really change. That’s the way it is for me, too. The modeling world is going on, someone else is doing the campaign that supposedly only I could do and Springfield just keeps being Springfield. Unfortunately, this all happens with me being very much alive. If I’d only died then things would really be back to normal.

  “By the way, how do you take Mother’s grating complaints all day long?”

  Glancing up from the cat, Leslie noted an old blue truck parked across from her house. It appeared very out of place on a street that boasted only the finest in upper-class American cars. As she looked closer, she noted a man was sitting inside the old vehicle and appeared to be staring at her house. Passing it off as someone waiting for a neighbor to get home, Leslie turned her attention back to the old cat. A few minutes later, she got up from her seat and returned to her room to watch television.

  Gilligan was now over, but Mr. Ed had taken over the screen and for the next half hour it was the horse, of course, who grabbed the young woman’s attention. After the talking horse rode off Tales of the Gold Monkey came on. She gave it five minutes, grew bored, and walked to the kitchen to grab a snack. She was chowing down on potato chips when she heard the doorbell. Ignoring it, she continued to eat. Finally, after seven rings, she gave in and ambled to the front entry.

  “Hunter,” she exclaimed as she cracked the door a few inches. Why was he here? Hadn’t she made the point that she didn’t want to see him face to face?

  43

  Hi,” the handsome man replied. “I got off early today and seeing as how it was such a beautiful afternoon, I thought that I’d come by and see you.” As he finished, a rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance. Looking back over his shoulder at the approaching storm, he grinned and added, “Well maybe it will be a beautiful day for a few more minutes, and then a really great one if you’re a duck.” He grinned and asked, “You’re not a duck, are you?”

 

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