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Coppertone 2
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| My throat ached with ineffable emotion as I cut the tape with my fingernails. I dug through the Styrofoam peanuts and extracted a solid tissue-wrapped article. There was an oddly familiar configuration to the lump. I broke the tape and carefully unwound the layers of tissue. Ted intentionally overdid the protection to build the suspense of the moment, I suspect. Finally, the last gauzy layer was peeled away: I held a ten-inch-long model of Coppertone in my hands. It was beautiful- made of metal. The same copper and beige paint scheme, the same jazzy whitewalls, and the same dashboard that I looked upon for so many hours of the finest day I ever spent. I lost it. The waterworks commenced and wouldn't stop. Chad knocked lightly on the door and looked in. "You alright? I thought you passed the driving test." "No. I'm okay. I'm not sad or anything... Look what I got from Ted." "Wow! That is so cool!" I hesitated for a moment, then made an instinctual decision. I handed Chad the letter. "You can read it. It's so beautiful." When Chad finished the letter he gave me a long hug. He knew how much this meant to me. "Aren't you upset that he's getting married?" he asked softly. "Yeah. But I'm happy- I wasn't wrong about us. I mean, it wasn't just me." This was fuzzy talk, but Chad knew what I was saying. My wombmate. I don't recall much about my actual graduation. Mostly I just reread memorized bits of Ted's letter as the pomp and circumstance of the tedious proceedings played out before me. A bald guy talked about the path we were embarking on for damn near an hour and I had to pee. That's all I remember. Chad saw Wendy with Ian at the graduation party at Rachel's house. He had a really hard time with it. He got drunk for the first time that night, on coffee brandy and Old Duke wine (henceforth dubbed "Old Puke"). When we got home I cleaned him up. He proposed some very odd things to me. I wasn't shocked. I just said no and told him I loved him. I knew he wouldn't remember any of this the next day. I've never understood why hitting the bottle is the age-old remedy for love gone wrong; you just wind up with an aching head to go along with your broken heart. Chad was picking up traits from Daddy. Scary. I felt sorry for my brother. Giving a guy sex and taking it away makes him crazy- you have to understand that about guys. Like anyone, I have my regrets about things I've done. I can't fault Wendy for what she did to Chad. I've done the same thing to guys. Sometimes you have to. The next day I sent Ted- and Colleen- a nice 8x10 of me. It's not the shot that was in my yearbook, but it was actually my favorite. A very toothy smile (recall that I was wearing braces during my Ted summer) and I have an expression that reminds me of the face one wears when one is anticipating the familiar punch line to a favorite joke- arched eyebrows and mouth set to laugh. My emerald eyes, bare shoulders, clavicles. A trace of Hooterville Junction. Take that, butt-hole cream girl! Sorry. I know: I'm awful (I'd seen the ad and she was, of course, beautiful- which I egotistically accepted as a convoluted complement). I wrote a short note that Colleen could read without resentment and wished them well. I did say I that forgave him and it "could have been fun under different circumstances"; if Colleen pressed him for specifics that was his problem. When the invitation showed up a few weeks later, I declined but did so with the utmost diplomacy. I had a hard time on the eleventh of August, though. Did some crying. No biggie. Chad and I attended the state university. We lived at home as it was only about fifteen miles away. Chad majored in business administration and I majored in education. I thought I might like being a grade school teacher. Well, we both graduated. I had a few romances along the way. Chad didn't. He never got over Wendy. He drank to forget what he wouldn't stop thinking about. Funny what bright people chose to do to themselves sometimes. Chad became an assistant manager at a record store, and I taught ballet and jazz dancing to kids. We remained unusually close as young adults; in fact, we shared an apartment. It made sense. I couldn't afford an old Corvette, but I did buy a cute little red 1966 Corvair convertible, which Chad fixed up for me. Another doomed Chevy: one rainy night I was driving through a city, and a shopping cart lady, confused by a busy intersection and probably dazzled by the reflected light of the wet streets, stepped into the path of my darling car. I locked up the brakes and a big old Chrysler shortened my little car by about a foot and a half, destroying the rear-mounted engine (its life's blood pooling on the asphalt). The impact rolled my car forward and it struck her cart and spilled the contents (everything the lady owned, I presume) on to the street. I was okay, but I did bite my tongue badly during the impact and that caused considerable bleeding. And thus began the infection that would very nearly kill me. I was twenty-seven years old. Bacterial endocarditis is an opportunistic infection of the heart, which most often afflicts people with heart valve abnormalities. It often occurs when mouth-borne bacteria is released into the bloodstream- as might happen during routine dental procedures- and lodges in the lesions particular to certain heart defects. Infections can easily be prevented by a timely dose of antibiotics for those at risk. Chad and I go through that prior to dental procedures since our heart abnormalities had been diagnosed years before. But no one thought of that after my accident. I certainly should have. My tongue laceration was not serious- a little blood, that's all- and the ambulance people took my word for it when I told them I was fine. As for whiplash- I'm a ballerina; we're made of rubber. I was alertly attending to the cart lady when they arrived, so they had no reason to doubt me. I called Chad and waited for him at a Burger King and tried to be thankful that nobody- just my beloved little car- was hurt; I did not succeed. I thought of my friend Ted and his dear Coppertone. The model he gave me almost ten years before now resided in a glass display case Chad had crafted for it. Ted would be about forty now. I was still in love with him. A few weeks after the mishap I came down with a fever- mysterious in the absence of any other symptoms. The fever induced extraordinary dreams- the realm visited by LSD users, I would assume. One week into my fever, I read my own grave marker. The date of birth, May 11, 1966, was correct and I was inclined to assume the date of death was also: April 27, 1993. I had forty-one days to live. A few days later I went to see my doctor. He examined me and informed me that my mitral valve was "severely compromised" and surgery was "mandated by the course of the progression of the infection." Translation: you're fucked, lady. I deteriorated rapidly and by the time of my surgery the exertion of mere existence had me gasping for air. Prior to my surgery Chad visited me in the hospital. He tearfully told me that he would follow me wherever I chose to go. I knew what he meant. I couldn't put forth much of a rebuttal, what with my oxygen mask. And I'm not sure I wanted to. We arrived together and we would leave together. We held hands all day. My valve job was successful. At twenty-seven and essentially healthy I recovered quickly. In fact, for the first time in my life I had a non-leaking pump and I felt better than I ever had in my life. Put simply, I didn't have to breathe as much as I used to. But that is not to say that everything was fine. The surgery left me with a scar, a pink zipper, running the length of my sternum (scenic Hooterville Valley) and two one-inch scars on my upper abdomen left by the insertion of drainage tubes. I felt disfigured- much as a mastectomy patient would. I wore turtlenecks and decided I would never have sex again. I was thrilled to be among the living, mind you, but I did write off a certain aspect of my life. I will surely alienate some readers with what I am about to say, but I'll say it anyway. This sort of thing is psychologically more difficult for attractive women to deal with- a scratch on a shining new car being so much more arresting than the same blemish on a battered old vehicle. Chad and I continued our cozy cohabitation. A couple of years after that I wrote a poem about a long ago summer night titled "Soomerki" and entered it in a national amateur poetry contest sponsored by a poetry magazine (no, I'm not going to reproduce it here- it now makes my toes curl with embarrassment). I won a third-place prize, which was $250 and a Nikon SLR camera. I discovered I had a knack for photography. One weekend four years ago I went to a vintage Corvette show to take some photos. I was taking a shot of a somewhat weathered jewel blue/white cove '61Vette, and a guy asked me if was taking pictures. I recognized a fellow shy person by the inane nature of the inquiry- we shy folks have to help each other when we can- so I started talking to him and learned he was the owner of the vehicle. His name was Stewart McCullen, and he was an airline mechanic. Well, we started a pokey romance, impeded by my reluctance (my turtleneck wasn't coming off for anyone) and his reticence (he wasn't about to ask me to remove it). But he grew on me. One weekend when he didn't call I ached with an emotion I thought I had long outgrown. The following weekend, bolstered by my third Long Island ice tea, I weepingly shed my turtleneck and exposed the monster within. I honestly thought he would declare us "friends" and head for high ground. Instead he pitched a tent and couldn't quite contain his ardor. He whipped up another batch within minutes, the trooper, and yet another fifteen minutes later. Turns out, this exact thing was a dream come true for old Stewie. He's sort of a pervert in that way, God love him... I, of all people, should have known about still waters. We got married two months later. Chad continued to live with us and this presented problems, but not the ones you might expect. Stewart and Chad got along so swimmingly that I was miffed at the both of them for depriving me of the attention of my two favorite men in the world. They worked on "Sapphire" constantly (Stewart named his mount after I told him the legend of Coppertone). The battered old Vette transformed to a prizewinner as a result of the attention she received. There were worse problems to have, I knew, and I was basically happy with my life. I would recommend almost dying to anyone who wants to get a grip on reality. I got a call at two-thirty in the morning one October night. I knew that either Mummy or Daddy had died- both prospects unthinkable to me. Daddy changed so much after he thought he was going to lose his girl- towards both me and Chad. I thought I would blow out my valve job as I lifted the receiver. The first thing I heard was this: "Ian is leaving me for someone smart." It was Wendy, drunk on NyQuil (the only thing handy). She said that she hurt too much to be alive anymore. Well, I got her calmed down after a while. We hadn't seen each other in years. She tearfully told me about her life, her little boy Jeffrey, and the other woman Ian was leaving them for. "Well, Honey, I can think of a great guy who has never stopped loving you," I said. "Really?" she sniffed, "Who?" Typical Wendy. I see a lot of Wendy now. What with her being my sister-in-law and all. These two will have their problems, but for the first time Wendy is involved with a kind man who doesn't expect her to be anything more or less than she is right now, and my brother has the pretty girl that he has so desperately needed for so long. I have been trying to wean Chad off booze- I am his older sister after all. He has come a long way, but you know what they say about old habits. Oddly enough, reuniting with his lost love has not eliminated the need for the crutches he used in her absence- you are what you are, I guess... Chad's the greatest stepdad a kid could have. They'll do just fine: I'll see to it. Stewart and I bought a house last summer- a cozy place off a dusty road where we can raise the little girl we adopted as an infant. She's a towheaded, pink-skinned sweetie who plans to marry Barney when she's "eleventeen" and whom I love more than life itself. Corvette will turn three in August. © 1999 den5722 |
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