My Life in Black and White (5 page)

“Talk to me, Beans. How did this happen? Step me through it.”

“She can’t talk yet, Mr. Mayer,” a voice said—gruff, but kind. “You’ll have to wait for the meds to wear off. It could be a few hours.”

“I’ll wait,” my dad said. Then, “You hear me, Beany? I’m not going anywhere.”

The next few times I woke up, I felt no pain. Zero. Because when half the bones in your face have been pulverized, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men are trying to put you together again, here is what the nurses do: jack up the pain medication. Which makes you feel great. But weird, too. Like one of those giant sea turtles at the Mystic Aquarium, floating around and around in your silent tank, while the people on the outside stare at you and flap their mouths and tap on the glass, trying to get your attention.

Talk to me, Beans. How did this happen? Step me through it.

By the time I could speak, I didn’t know what to say. It’s not that I couldn’t remember what had happened. The image of Taylor and Ryan together was burned in my brain for all eternity. I just didn’t know what to tell my dad, who’d been working so hard for the past decade that he didn’t seem to realize I’d grown up. To him, I was Lexi Beans. A child. Someone to make pancakes for on Sunday morning. Not just regular ones, either. Animal shapes. Needless to say, I wasn’t about to mention the word
kegger
in my father’s presence, let alone the words
blow job
.

“Give her time, Jeff,” my mother said, pouring a cup of water from the beige plastic pitcher next to my bed. “She’s been through a lot.”

You have no idea
.

“Drink,” she said, pressing a straw to my lips. “Hydration promotes healing.”

I marveled at the absurdity of her words. “Hydration promotes healing,” like she was some kind of expert. Like she actually believed herself. She was putting on a good show—calm, competent mother in the no-nonsense Talbots shirtdress. Perfect hair. Impeccable makeup. But I knew she was wigging out. After my surgery, I heard her talking to my dad. They thought I was still under, but I wasn’t. No matter how hard he tried to calm her down, to assure her that I would be fine, my mother kept asking the same hysterical questions, over and over:
“What if they can’t fix her?”
“What if she’s disfigured?”

“Do you remember anything?” Ruthie asked now. I couldn’t exactly see her because she was standing on my right side, and my right eye was swollen shut.

I opened my mouth just barely, like a ventriloquist. “Jarrod hit a tree.”

Then Ruthie hit the profanity button, which sent our mother reeling.
“Shhh, Ruth, language. People will think you were raised in a barn!”

“Your daughter may be scarred for life, all Dickweed gets is a broken bone, and you’re worried about my
language
?”

“Ruth Ann,” my mother said, though it was unclear which bugged her more, the “Dickweed” or the “scarred for life.”

“Ruthie,” my father said gently. “You’re not helping.”

“Fine. Forget Dickweed. Rank, ill-breeding maggot pie. Yeasty, rump-fed codpiece. Vain, pockmarked—”

“Ruthie,”
he said again. Not gently. “Knock it off!”

At which point, my sister shut up and my dad explained to me that they’d spoken to Taylor’s parents. Jarrod was released from the hospital the morning after the accident, with a broken collarbone and a mild concussion.

“He’s going to be fine,” my mother said, reaching out to smooth the pill-y blue blanket on top of me. “You both are. Thank God.”

“Well.” My father cleared his throat. “
Lexi
is going to be fine.”

There was a beat of silence. My mother put down the water glass. “What are you saying, Jeff?”

“I’m saying, Laine, that there may be a case here.” My father launched into lawyer-speak.
“Reckless driving. Reckless endangerment. Criminal prosecution. Compensable injuries. DWI
—
”

He turned to me. “Was Jarrod drinking before he got behind the wheel?”

“No, Dad,” I said, which was the truth. Sort of. I remembered Jarrod working the keg, but I couldn’t remember him actually drinking anything. In the car, his breath had smelled disgusting, but not like alcohol. More like sour cream and onion.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” I told my father. It’s not like he asked me if
I’d
been drinking. And, anyway, I only had one beer. One beer that I didn’t even want.

“I need to see the police report. Someone must have administered a Breathalyzer…. I’ll put in a call to Frank at the station. Just because Jarrod was released from the hospital doesn’t mean—”

“Jeff.” My mother stared at my father. “You’re not
seriously
proposing we
sue
this boy.”

“Yes, he is,” Ruthie piped in. “That’s exactly what he’s proposing.”

“Ruth,
please
.” My father was agitated now. In full public-defender mode, he fired up his lecture on the distinction between criminal and civil litigation, until my mother finally cut him off.

“Think of Alexa,” she said. “This is Taylor’s brother we’re talking about. Her best friend.”

Well,
I thought,
not anymore.

My father sighed and then said, “I
am
thinking of Alexa. That’s exactly who I’m thinking of. The whole
point
of civil litigation is to ensure—”

“Hello…” I cut in weakly. “I’m right here. You can stop talking about me like I’m in a coma.”

“Sorry,” my dad said, cringing. Then, “It’s your call, Lex. Do you want to bring legal action against this kid? Just say the word.”

I closed my eyes, trying to will away the nausea that had suddenly engulfed my body. Taylor and Ryan. The crash. Everything about that night felt like a dream. A sick, twisted dream.

Only it wasn’t.

It really happened.

I was actually lying here in a hospital bed, with half my face bandaged and the other half not—like one those half-moon cookies Taylor and I used to bake by the dozens during our fifth-grade baking phase. Vanilla frosting on one side, chocolate on the other. Whenever I ate one, I would start with the vanilla. I’d take my sweet time. Bite after tiny bite, saving the chocolate—the best part—for last. But Taylor? Well,
Taylor
ate hers straight up the middle, plowing through both flavors at once, with no regard—

“Beans,” my father said softly.

No regard whatsoever
—

I could feel his hand on my foot, squeezing. “Beany?”

NO REGARD.

“Jeff, I think she’s asleep.”

“No, she’s not, Mom.”

“How can you tell?”

“I shared a room with her for three years, remember? She snores like a truck driver.”

I opened my one good eye and tried to glare at Ruthie, but it didn’t really work. My face was too sore and swollen to move. Which sucked. Everything sucked.

“You suck,” I muttered, just loud enough for my sister to hear.

“See?” Ruthie patted my arm. “She’s awake.”

“Lex,” my father said. “Do you want me to start making phone calls? Because I will.”

“It’s your decision, baby,” my mother said to me. “Either way, everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”

After a long silence, during which I was thinking,
I will never eat another half-moon cookie again as long as I live,
my dad tried once more. “What do you want to do, Beans? Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“Nothing,” I said finally. “I want you to do nothing.”

Because I knew, even then, that the damage had been done. And there wasn’t a thing my father could do to fix it.

How Do You Make a
Venetian Blind?

EVERY MORNING WAS the same. The nurse on duty would walk into my room with a bag of ice chips, which got Ace-bandaged to my head for twenty minutes. Then I had to rate my pain. Mostly they used a number scale, 0 to 10, with 0 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain imaginable, but one nurse, Janelle, always brought in this stupid laminated chart of facial expressions. “Are we a smiley face or a boo-hoo face today, Alexa?” Like I was three years old or brain damaged, which made me want to yank her perky little ponytail right off her head. But I didn’t. I never even said a word. I just pointed to the face that looked the way I felt: horrible.

Depending on my pain level, I got either codeine or morphine, pills or shots. Then the gauze came off, my face got doused with antiseptic, and new gauze went on. If I got pills, they didn’t kick in right away, and sometimes it hurt so bad I cried. Other times, I’d bite my lip hard enough to draw blood. To distract myself, I’d close my eyes and replay the images of the party, over and over again, on the miniature movie screen in my mind.
Taylor-and-Ryan, Taylor-and-Ryan, Taylor-and-Ryan.

The whole time my mother was firing questions. How were things looking? Was the swelling any better? When would it go down completely? What about the scarring? What were they doing now, to prevent scarring later?

Finally, the nurses would cut her off. “Okay. Mrs. Mayer? The doctors will be making rounds in a little while. They’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

Day Five. The doctors brought in diagrams to explain things to me. 3-D models of the human skull.
“This is the zygomatic bone.” “This is the malar.” “The lachrymal.” “The maxilla.”
While they blathered on, I stared out the window at the summer passing me by.
Why couldn’t this have happened to me in January? I should be at the beach!
I pictured Ryan’s hands, rubbing oil onto Taylor’s bare back, as the two of them lay poolside in the LeFevres’ backyard, drinking Crystal Light.

“Alexa?” the doctors said. “Do you understand what we’re saying about your face?”

“Uh-huh,” I’d say, nodding. “Yup.”

My face. Everyone in the hospital was obsessed with my face. The doctors, the nurses, the med students, and—worst of all—my mother. Unlike my dad and Ruthie, who ate in the cafeteria and went home to sleep, my mother never left my side. She was too busy hounding the doctors to go anywhere. How was my face healing? Was the swelling going down? What would it look like later? My face was all anyone could talk about. And me, the actual owner of the face? I couldn’t have cared less. The only thought in my head was Taylor and Ryan.
Taylor-and-Ryan, Taylor-and-Ryan, Taylor-and-Ryan.

“Look at these roses Ryan sent,” my mother said when the flowers and cards and balloons started pouring in. “They’re absolutely gorgeous.”

I pretended not to hear.

The next fifty times my mother commented on Ryan’s roses—how gorgeous they were, how thoughtful he was—I said nothing. Finally, without stopping to plan my words, I cracked. “Will you throw them in the trash? Please?”

I kept my eyes on the ceiling, but I could feel my mother’s stare.

“I beg your pardon?”

I turned my gaze to the wall. Cards were taped up everywhere.
Get well soon, Lexi. Hope you feel better, Lex. God speed, Alexa. We’re praying for you.

“Alexa,” my mother said.

“What.”

I expected a lecture on gratitude. Instead, she walked around the bed and pulled up a chair. “What happened? Did you two have a fight?”

Obviously, I couldn’t tell her. This was Laine Chapman Mayer, Southern belle, who I am 99 percent sure did nothing more than kiss until she got married. Her idea of The Talk was to hand me and Ruthie a book titled
Abstinence and You: 501 Reasons to Wait
. The notion of telling my mother about Ryan and Taylor’s hookup was insane.

“A fight,” I mumbled. “Uh-huh.”

“Oh, honey.”

This was my mother’s big opportunity to launch into
her
high school boyfriend story. Landry McCoy, star forward on the basketball team, Laine Chapman, head cheerleader, who, naturally, fell madly in love, applied to all the same South Carolina colleges, and—

“Oh, God,” Ruthie said, entering the room with a soda the size of a barrel. “Is this Lifetime Television, The Laundry McCoy Story?”

“
Landry
McCoy,” my mother corrected her.

“Who names their kid Laundry? That’s just wrong.”

“It’s
Landry
, and it’s a family name.”

Ruthie took a sip of soda and grinned. “Good ole Laundry McCoy … Well, go on.”

It is an old routine with them. My sister mocks our mother’s high school boyfriend, but she secretly loves hearing the Landry McCoy story almost as much as our mother loves telling it.

I used to love it, too. Especially the part where my father, the University of Virginia law student, shows up at the UVA-Clemson game and sees my mother for the first time. He is short, nerdy, and not remotely athletic—the opposite of Landry McCoy. But does he let this stop him? No. My father walks right up to my mother after the game and says, “I’m Jeffrey Mayer. I’m just a schmuck from Hackensack, but I’m going to marry you.”

“Of course,” my mother said, smiling, “I thought he was crazy, but then I started getting these
letters
…”