“You'll have to help me undress, you know, and I don't think Ambrose can handle it. The sight of my glorious naked body takes some getting used to.”
Ambrose, Bailey and Fern were at Hannah Lake. It had been a spontaneous trip, prompted by the heat and the fact that Fern and Ambrose both had the day (and night) off. They'd hit a drive-thru for food and drinks, but they hadn’t gone back home to get their suits.
“You won't be naked, Bailey. Stop. You're scaring Ambrose.” Fern winked at Ambrose and said, “You will have to help me get him in the water, Ambrose. At that point I can hold him under all by myself.”
“Hey!” Bailey interjected with mock outrage. Fern's laughter peeled out and she patted Bailey's cheeks.
Ambrose got behind Bailey and hooked him under the arms, lifting him so Fern could slide his pants around his hips and down to his feet.
“Okay. Set him down for a minute.”
Bailey looked like a frail old man with a bit of thickness around his mid-section. He patted his belly with good humor. “This little baby helps me float. It also keeps me from falling over in my wheelchair.
“It's true” Fern said, pulling Bailey's shoes and socks from his feet. “He's lucky that he's chubby. It gives his trunk some support. And he really does float. Just watch.”
Fern set Bailey's shoes neatly to the side and removed her own sneakers. She wore shorts and a turquoise tank top and made no move to remove those, unfortunately. Ambrose unlaced his boots and unzipped his jeans. Fern looked away, a rosy tinge climbing up her neck and onto her smooth cheeks.
When he was standing in his boxers, he picked Bailey up in his arms without a word and started walking toward the water.
Fern pranced along behind him, shooting instructions about how to hold Bailey, how to release him so that he wouldn't tip forward and not be able to turn onto his back.
“Fern. I got this, woman!” Bailey said as Ambrose released him. Bailey bobbed, almost in a sitting position, butt down feet floating up, head and shoulders well above the surface.
“I'm free!” he yelled.
“He yells that every time he's in the water,” Fern giggled. “It probably feels amazing. Floating without anyone holding onto him.”
“Kites or balloons?” Ambrose said softly, watching Bailey. Floating without anyone holding onto him. Those were the very same words he'd used when Fern had asked him the question long ago. How foolish he'd been. What good was flying if there was no one on the other end of the string? Or floating when there was no one to help you back to dry land? Ambrose tried to float, but he couldn't seem to keep his legs from falling like anchors. He resorted to treading water instead, and the symbolism didn't escape him.
Bailey crowed, “Too much muscle? Poor Brosey. Bailey Sheen wins this round, I'm afraid.”
Fern had found the sweet spot and was concentrating on keeping herself afloat, her pink toenails peeking above the surface of the water, her eyes fixed on the clouds.
“Do you see the Corvette?” Fern lifted her arm out of the water and pointed at a fluffy conglomeration. She immediately started to sink and Ambrose slid a hand under her back before her face slipped beneath the water.
Bailey wrinkled his nose, trying to find a car in the clouds. Ambrose found it, but by that time it had shifted and looked a little more like a VW bug.
“I see a cloud that looks like Mr. Hildy!” Bailey laughed. He couldn't point so Fern and Ambrose studied frantically, trying to catch the face before it dissolved into something else.
“Hmmm. I see Homer Simpson,” Fern murmured.
“More like Bart . . . or maybe Marge,” Ambrose said.
“It's funny how we all see something different,” Fern said.
They all stared as the image because softer, less defined, and floated away. Ambrose was reminded of another time he’d floated on his back, staring at the sky.
“Why do you think Saddam had his face plastered all over the city? Everywhere you look you see his ugly mug. Statues, posters, banners every-freakin'-where!” Paulie said.
“Cause he's 'Suh damn' good-looking,” Ambrose said dryly.
“It's intimidation and mind control.” Grant, ever the scholar, filled in the answer. “He wanted to make himself seem God-like so that he could more easily control the population. You think these people fear God or Saddam more?”
“You mean Allah,” Paulie corrected mildly.
“Right. Allah. Saddam wanted the people to think he and Allah were one in the same,” Grant said.
“What do you think Saddam would think if he saw us swimming in his pool right now? And I must say, it’s ‘Suh damn’ fine pool,” Jesse stood in the chest deep water, arms spread on the surface of the water, staring at the ornate fountain that rimmed the far side of the pool.
“He wouldn't mind. He's 'Suh damn' generous he would invite us to come back whenever we want,” Ambrose said. The “Suh damn” jokes had been going on for days.
Their whole unit was splashing around in the huge outdoor pool located at the Republican Palace, now in U.S. hands. It was a rare treat to be this wet and this comfortable, and the boys from Pennsylvania couldn't have been happier if they were actually back home in their very own Hannah Lake, lined with trees and rocks instead of ornate fountains, palm trees and domed buildings.
“I think Saddam would demand we kiss his rings and then he would cut off our tongues,” Beans joined in.
“I don't know, Beans, with you that might be an improvement,” Jesse said. Beans launched himself at his friend and a round of water wrestling ensued. Ambrose, Paulie, and Grant laughed and egged them on, but they were all too grateful for the wet reprieve to waste it by joining in on the horseplay. Instead they floated, staring up at the sky that didn't look all that different than the sky over Hannah Lake.
“I've seen Saddam's face so much I can see it when I close my eyes, like it's burned on my retinas,” Paulie complained.
“Just be glad Coach Sheen didn't use the same methods of intimidation during wrestling season. Can you imagine? Coach Sheen's face everywhere we looked, eyes blazing at us.” Grant laughed.
“It's weird, when I try to really picture his face, or anyone's face, I can't. I try to pull in the details, you know, and . . . I can't. It hasn't been that long. We've only been gone since March,” Ambrose said, shaking his head at the unreality of it all.
“The longest months of my life.” Paulie sighed.
“You can't picture Rita's face . . . but I bet you can picture her naked, right?” Beans had stopped wrestling over Jesse's comment about his tongue, and he was wielding it offensively once more.
“I never saw Rita naked,” Ambrose said, not caring if his friends believed him or not.
“Whatever!” Jesse said in disbelief.
“I didn't. We only went out for about a month.”
“That's plenty of time!” Beans said.
“Does anyone else smell bacon?” Paulie sniffed the air, reminding Beans that he was being a pig again. Beans splashed water in his face, but didn't attack. The mention of bacon had everyone's stomachs growling.
With one last look at the sky, the five climbed out of the stately pool and dripped their way to their piled fatigues. There were no clouds in the sky, no faces to reconstruct in white film, nothing to fill the holes in Ambrose's memory. Unbidden, a face rose in his mind. Fern Taylor, her chin tipped up, her eyes closed, wet eyelashes thick on her freckled cheeks. Her soft pink mouth, bruised and trembling. The way she'd looked after he'd kissed her.
“Have you ever stared at a painting so long that the colors blur and you can't tell what you're looking at anymore? There's no form, face, or shape–just color, just swirls of paint?” Fern spoke again, and Ambrose let his eyes rest on the face that had once filled his memory in a faraway place, a place that most days he would rather forget.
Bailey and Ambrose were silent, finding new faces in the clouds.
“I think people are like that. When you really look at them, you stop seeing a perfect nose or straight teeth. You stop seeing the acne scar or the dimple in the chin. Those things start to blur, and suddenly you see them, the colors, the life inside the shell, and beauty takes on a whole new meaning.” Fern didn't look away from the sky as she talked, and Ambrose let his eyes linger on her profile. She wasn't talking about him. She was just being thoughtful, pondering life's ironies. She was just being Fern.
“It works both ways, though,” Bailey contributed his two cents. “Ugly is as ugly does. Becker's not ugly because of the way he looks. Just like I'm not devastatingly handsome because of the way I look.”
“So true, my floating friend. So true,” Fern said seriously. Ambrose bit his tongue so he wouldn't laugh. They were such dorks. Such an odd little twosome. And he had the sudden urge to cry. Again. He was turning into one of those fifty-year-old women who liked pictures of kittens with inspirational sayings printed on them. The kind of woman who would cry during beer commercials. Fern had turned him into a blubbering mess. And he was crazy about her. And her floating friend too.
“What happened to your face, Brosey?” Bailey inquired cheerfully, switching subjects the way he always did, without warning. Okay, maybe Ambrose wasn't crazy about the floating friend.
“It got blown off,” Ambrose answered curtly.
“Literally? I mean, I want specifics. You had a bunch of surgeries, right? What did they do?”
“The right side of my head was sheered off, including my right ear.”
“Well that's okay, right? I mean that ear had some major cauliflower if I remember right.”
Ambrose chuckled, shaking his head at Bailey's audacity. Cauliflower ear is what happened to wrestlers' ears when they didn't wear their headgear. Ambrose never had cauliflower ear, but he appreciated Bailey's humor.
“This ear is a prosthetic.”
“No way! Let me see!” Bailey bobbed wildly and Ambrose steadied him before he tipped face-first into the drink.
Ambrose pulled the prosthetic ear from the magnets that held it in place, and Fern and Bailey gasped in unison, “Cool!”
Yep. Dorks. But Ambrose couldn't deny that he was relieved by Fern's response. He had given her every reason to run away from him, screaming. The fact that she didn't even flinch eased something in his chest. He inhaled, enjoying the sensation of breathing deeper.
“Is that why your hair won't grow?” It was Fern's turn to be curious.
“Yeah. Too much scar tissue on that side. Too many grafts. There's a steel plate on the side of my head that attaches to my cheekbone and my jaw. The skin on my face was peeled back here and here,” Ambrose indicated the long scars that crisscrossed his cheek. “They were actually able to put it back, but I took a bunch of shrapnel to the face before the bigger piece took the side of my head. The skin they put back was like Swiss cheese and I had shrapnel buried in the soft tissue of my face. That's why the skin is so bumpy and pockmarked. Some of the shrapnel is still working its way out.”
“And your eye?”
“I took a big piece of shrapnel to my eye, too. They saved the eyeball but not my sight.”
“A metal plate in your head? That's pretty intense.” Bailey's eyes were wide.
“Yeah. Just call me The Tin Man,” Ambrose said softly, the memory of nicknames and old pain making it hard to breathe again.
“The Tin Man, huh?” Bailey said. “You are pretty rusty. That double leg yesterday was PA-THETIC.”
Fern's hand slipped into Ambrose’s and her feet found purchase on the rocky bottom beside his own. And just like that the memory lost its bite. He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her to him, not caring if Bailey gave him grief. Maybe the Tin Man was coming back to life. Maybe he had a heart after all.
They swam around for about an hour, Bailey floating happily, Fern and Ambrose paddling around him, laughing and splashing each other until Bailey claimed he was turning into a raisin. Then Ambrose carried Bailey to his chair and Fern and Ambrose lay out on the rocks, letting the sun dry their clothes. Fern was wearing the most and was definitely the wettest, and her shoulders and nose started to show signs of sunburn, the backs of her pale thighs turning a soft pink. Her hair dried into deep red ringlets, falling down her back and into her eyes as she smiled at him drowsily, half asleep on the big warm rock. He felt a strange, falling sensation in his chest and lifted his hand to rub the spot just above his heart, as if he could soothe the feeling and send it away. It was happening more and more often when he was around her.
“Brose?” Bailey's voice cut through his reverie.
“Yeah?”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Bailey informed him.
Ambrose froze, the implications clear.
“So you can either take me home pronto, or you can accompany me to yon forest.” Bailey nodded toward the trees surrounding Hannah Lake. “I hope you brought toilet paper. But either way, you're going to have to quit looking at Fern like you want to gobble her up, because it's making me hungry, and I can't be responsible for my behavior when I'm hungry and I need to use the can.”
And just like that the mood was broken.