That evening the floods come down, big ripped clouds bouldering with thunder, rattling the brass mirrors that hang in my mother’s sitting room. I’ve got all the windows open, the smell of rain whooshing through, clean as chalk. Somewhere, a door slams shut. Behind the house, the darkening hills meet the sky in a series of uneven ridges, like a herd of sleeping camels nestled muzzle to flank. In the darkness, I step onto the covered porch and sit down in the wicker peacock chair where my grandfather used to read Louis L’Amour and smoke Marlboros. I wonder what he would say if he knew his only daughter got a face lift. Even though he was a wholly timid man, a wearer of corduroy jackets with elbow patches and a player of bridge, I like to imagine that he is the one sending down this deluge, punishing my mother for her frivolity. I have decided to do a little role play in order to get through my anger: I will be the nurse, and my mother will be a soldier who has taken shrapnel to the face.
I watch the lightning whitewash the sky, coming down in skeletal fingers. To me, its silence is one of nature’s greatest triumphs. I cannot think of another thing that approaches destruction with such muted quickness. Except perhaps a falling bomb, but even that whistles before its spectacle. My bomb never whistled, never gave us any warning. It lay in wait, wrapped in foam to look like a rock, a typical EFP — Explosively Formed Penetrator. A formal name for a casual killer. But I don’t like the term “roadside bomb” either. Sounds like a goddamn tomato stand.
But what about man’s ability to reconstruct? I suppose I will see once I take the bandages off my mom’s face. I lost my leg to man’s innate talent for killing, perhaps she will salvage her beauty through our talent for restoration. I walk inside. Blood pools on the bandage at the base of my mom’s neck. I’ve forgotten the screaming red of new blood. I sit down at her feet. It is strange to see her prone, she who is so outwardly self-possessed. She is making soft noises, moaning, all lip and hum.
“How are you doing?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Ma, are you OK?”
Still, no words, but slowly, she reaches her arm up to the side of her face.
“Fair?”
“Yeah, Ma.”
“What have I done? What is it that I’ve done?” she says, her voice like paper on paper, barely audible.
“You want a Vicodin?”
“No,” she says. “Come here and sit by me.”
I scoot along the edges of the couch until I’m sitting next to her. She fumbles around until I realize she is trying to grab my hand, so I give it to her. I try to make her a soldier but fail, because this is the house where I grew up, not the desert; the house where I came into my body, my face; where I snuck skinny boys into my room and learned the human landscape. I can’t imagine my mother as government issue in this house. So I just hold her hand. I hear her sigh.
“Am I hideous?” she asks.
“I’ll know tomorrow when they take off the bandages,” I say. She laughs, or tries to.
Thunder rolls its way through our small canyon out back. Lightning fills the windows with its blue light and then we are in darkness.
“Damn,” I say.
“What is it?”
I realize she can’t see our darkness, so I say, “Nothing,” and then continue to sit with her, holding her hand, watching the lightning make our oak trees into wizened monsters. We sit close, and I can feel her breathing. I close my eyes and feel her put her arm around my waist, pulling me deeper into her stomach. We were never the embracing kind, so it’s a little awkward at first, but then I just relax into her.
“You smell good, Fair.”
“I took a shower,’” I say.
She rubs my arms, up and down like she’s trying to make me warm.
“You’re all muscle,” she says. “How did your body get so strong?” She sounds almost childlike now.
“Army’ll do that to you,” I answer, thinking of the thousands of hours I’ve spent sweating and kneading and pushing my body into its current shape. But my mother has never been too interested in what my body could do. I’ve stopped working out since the attack, and a thin layer of flesh has formed over my muscles. I’ve gone up a cup size. Though I’m hardly voluptuous, I like it.
“Fair?”
“Yes?”
“May I touch it?”
“What?”
“Your…your leg.”
I hesitate. I don’t really want her to touch it.
“Ma…”
“Honey, let mama,” she says. “There now. Let mama. Let mama.”
She’s holding me and beneath the strange antiseptic smell, I smell her skin. That mother smell that takes me back to the start before things became complicated. I untangle myself from her arms and start to unbuckle the prosthesis. After I remove it, I brush off my stump, which is sticky with sweat. I take her hand and place it on my knee so she can feel her way down. She moves her fingers over my kneecap. And then she is cupping it in her palm, trying to smooth the ruffled skin. I close my eyes.
“My Fair. My dear. My Fair,” she repeats, her hand still on my stump, and I feel a wrench move around my heart. I open my eyes, but I can’t see my leg in the dark. I can hear her crying.
“Ma, you can’t get your bandage wet,” I whisper.
“Lie down with me. Here. Lie down with mama,” she eases my shoulders down horizontally so that I’m lying beside her.
I lie down next to her, and she pulls me close.
“I’ve forgotten what another body feels like,” she says.
“I’ll take care of you, ma,” I say.
“Honey, I know. I know you will. Aren’t we a pair of aces.” She laughs weakly. “You’re a good girl, Fair.”
Good. Just. Adequate. I am happy to be these things other than beautiful. We lay silently for several minutes. Slowly, my eyes adjust to the dark. I can see the outline of the hydrangea on the porch. I know under the bandage, my mother’s face is turning itself inside out, pus and blood finding their way beyond her skin. I hold onto this image of her soldered face. The sight of her blood brings fear, then a sudden tenderness. Like I do for my wounded friends, I pray for her to get her face back so that she might recognize herself. She squeezes my hand, and I feel hers, hot with the blood it contains; whole. I am grateful for the touching, the ritual in it. The laying of hands. The blessing of two bodies meeting in quietude.
