Breathers (16 page)

ometimes I give myself the creeps.

Usually this happens in the middle of the night, when I wake up and forget why my left arm doesn't work or that I'm gradually decomposing and I wonder what that smell is.

Other times, I catch my reflection in a mirror and nearly scream before I recognize the look of horror on my own face.

On rare occasions, I sit in the wine cellar on my mattress watching the thirty-two-inch television my parents bought for me, my attention drifting to the bottles that line the walls, imagining that each bottle is filled with a magic elixir that will heal a different portion of my body.

The 1986 Grgich Hills Cabernet Sauvignon restores my left arm, the Beringer Founder's Estate 2000 Merlot my left ankle, the Castello Di Brolio 1995 Chianti my face, and the Monticello 1999 Pinot Noir my voice. My father has Chardonnays, Sauvignon Blancs, Chenin Blancs, and Rieslings down here, too, but I never had much use for white wine. It's like drinking a Corona instead of a Guinness. I just never saw the point.

This morning, I'm watching
Back to the 80s
music videos on VH1 while I gargle with the 1999 Monticello Pinot Noir.

It's probably just my imagination, but the wine seems to have more flavor this morning.

Between each round of gargling, I swallow my magic elixir and test out my singing voice. Not that I'm belting out lyrics at the top of my lungs. I don't know all of the words to most of the videos, and most of the words I do know come out as muttered gibberish, as if I'm afraid to discover that I'm deluding myself into thinking my power of speech is actually returning. But when “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen comes on, I crank the TV up loud enough to drown out my own screeching. Maybe a little too loud. My father starts pounding on the wine cellar door, telling me to “turn that damn thing down!”

I pretend I can't hear him.

I still don't know all of the words. But with the volume turned up, it doesn't matter. I'm butchering the song, croaking out unintelligible words that sound like a duck trying to learn how to speak Dutch. Except every now and then, I quack out something that sounds vaguely familiar, a grunt or a screech that approximates speech. Words like “too” and “no” and “eye.” Sure, they're just baby steps. But what am I, if not an infant?

Born into a world of decay.

Relearning how to walk and talk.

Suckling from the bosom of hope.

I don't understand how it's physiologically possible for my speech to be returning. Maybe it's not. Maybe I'm just learning how to create sounds that mimic words. Either way, it's something new. And when most of the newness of your existence tends to involve a new odor or a recent loss of a body part or a fresh crop of maggots, anything that seems to point in the opposite direction is a definite improvement.

When the song ends and the station goes to commercial
break, I turn down the volume, take a celebratory gargle of the Pinot, and listen to my father curse me from behind the door upstairs. Normally, when my father denounces my existence, it tends to darken my mood. It's kind of hard to think happy thoughts when one of your parents suggests that you would better serve mankind by feeding yourself into a wood chipper.

This time, his contempt amuses me and I start to laugh, spraying Pinot out my nose and across my bedding, which only makes me laugh harder. Pretty soon, I'm laughing so hard I could almost choke to death if that were possible. And suddenly, I wish I had someone to share the moment with. Someone who would laugh with me. Someone who would appreciate the changes I'm going through. Someone who would understand how I feel.

On the television, a man and a woman walk hand in hand along the street, drawing the attention of everyone they pass— their smiles radiant, their faces perfect. I don't know what they're advertising but it reminds me of Rita and the walk we took through the village and I find myself wishing we were like the couple on television.

I reach up and touch my own face, my fingers running across the patchwork of stitches, and I wonder if my voice is the only aspect of my zombieness I can improve. I wonder if there's anything I can do to make myself look less corpse-like. I wonder if there's any way I can be as happy as the people in the commercial.

Until I realize it's an ad for life insurance.

he trick,” says my mother, as I spread the makeup with a soft applicator sponge, “is to blend outward and not get it too cakey or thick. Otherwise, you end up emphasizing the blemishes instead of hiding them.”

My mother's choice of concealer is Yves Saint Laurent Ivory Beige, which works well with her complexion. I need something more like Ivory Paste. And my skin is so dry that it seems to suck all of the moisture out of the makeup.

“You should clean and moisturize your face before applying the concealer,” she says. “It'll make your skin smoother and more receptive. You might even want to try a nice exfoliant.”

When I asked my mother if she had anything that might help to hide the stitches on my face, I was just hoping for a jar of cream or something simple that I could experiment with on my own. Instead, she grabbed her entire makeup kit along with her lighted vanity mirror and sat me down at the kitchen table.

“Now, the concealer doesn't exactly match your skin color,” she says, without a trace of sarcasm, “so what we'll want to do is use a lighter-colored foundation and blend it in.”

When my mother says “we” she means me. In spite of her enthusiasm in wanting to help me hide my stitches and make me look more human, as she so tactfully put it, my mother still refuses to touch me. She just points and gives me direction and slides the tube or bottle or jar I need within reach. I don't think she realizes how repulsed she is by the thought of physical contact with her son, but at least we're spending some quality time together.

The liquid foundation looks and feels like whole wheat pancake batter as I spread it across my cheeks with a tiny damp sponge. Just because I'm curious and I know it won't hurt to try, I take a swig of the foundation to see if it tastes like pancakes. It doesn't.

“Andrew!” scolds my mother. “That's thirty-five dollars a bottle.”

You'd be amazed at how much formaldehyde you can consume from a single bottle of liquid foundation. Cover Girl is especially nourishing.

Once I have the foundation spread across my cheeks and forehead and chin, it's time for the contouring powder, which has the appearance and consistency of ready-to-mix chocolate cocoa. I'm tempted to give it a taste, just to see, but my mother is watching me so instead I apply it to my face with a brush.

“Make sure to brush in a downward motion, honey,” says my mother. “That way the hairs on your face won't stick up.”

After the contouring powder comes a translucent finishing powder. I can't really tell the difference, except the finishing powder seems finer and gets patted on with a cosmetic sponge rather than a brush. My mother tries to persuade me to put on some blush as a finishing touch, but somehow I don't think having a rosy glow to my cheeks will create a natural appearance. Then again, after the concealer, foundation, and powder,
natural
isn't the word I'd use to describe how I look.

My mother comes around the table, stands two feet behind me, and leans down to look over my shoulder. “I think it's perfect,” she says, smiling at me in the mirror. “What do you think, honey?”

I think I need a second opinion.

Just then my father walks in and sees me sitting there wearing a smock with my hair drawn back from my makeup-encrusted face with hairpins, and says, “Jesus H. Christ,” then turns around and walks back out of the kitchen.

wake up in the middle of the night and I can't get back to sleep.

I'm restless. Agitated. My mind won't shut down.

That and the mask of foundation and concealer my mother helped me to apply has my skin so tight that my face feels like it's been pumped full of formaldehyde.

While it's true that being embalmed can get rid of crow's feet and laugh lines and take fifteen years off your obituary, it can also leave your face as hard and as fake looking as a porn star's breasts. Plus the whole process is pretty invasive.