Making Faces

by Amy Harmon

To Fern, Ambrose Young was absolutely beautiful, a Greek God among mortals, the stuff of fairy tales and movie screens.

If dark chocolate could sing it would sound like Ambrose Young. Fern shivered as his voice wrapped around her like an anchor, lodging deep in her belly, pulling her under.

Small and pale, with bright red hair and forgettable features, Fern knew she was the kind of girl who was easily overlooked, easily ignored, and never dreamed about. She had floated through childhood without drama and with little fanfare, grounded in a perfect awareness of her own mediocrity.

Fern Taylor loved Ambrose Young, had loved him since she was ten years old and had heard his young voice lifted in a very different kind of song, but in that moment he reached a whole new level of beauty, and Fern was left reeling and dazed that one boy could be gifted with so much.

He had become very good at living in the moment, not looking too far ahead at what might come.

“Every living thing dies, Bailey. Some people live longer than others. We know that your illness will probably make your life shorter than some. But none of us ever know how long our lives are going to be.”

He left us sooner than we wanted him to, but that’s how life is. We don’t get to choose when we go or how we go. None of us do.”

Where Fern had always lost herself in romance, Bailey lost himself in history. Even as a child he would dive into stories of the past and wrap himself in the comfort of their timelessness, of their longevity. To read about King Arthur, who lived and died more than a thousand years before, was its own immortality, and for a boy who felt the sands of time slipping by in an endless countdown, immortality was an intoxicating concept.

“What if you say something like, ‘Even when you’re not around, you’re all I see. You’re all I think about. I wonder, is your heart as beautiful as your face? Is your mind as fascinating as the play of muscle beneath your skin? Is it possible that you might think about me too?’”

It started with simple questions. Easy things like sour or sweet, winter or fall, pizza or tacos. But then they veered into the deep, the personal, the revealing. Back and forth they went, asking and answering, and it felt a little like undressing--removing the unimportant things first, the jacket, the earrings, the baseball cap. Before long, buttons were undone, zippers were sliding down, and clothes were falling to the floor. Fern’s heart would flutter and her breaths grew short with every barrier crossed, every piece of metaphorical clothing discarded.

The worst part was that every word had been real. Every word had been the truth. But she’d written the letters as if she had a face like Rita’s and a body like hers too, like she was a woman who could woo a man with her figure and her smile and back it up with a brain to match. And that part was a lie. She was small and homely. Ugly. Ambrose would feel like a fool for the words he’d given her. His words had been words for a beautiful girl. Not Fern.

Bailey loved every member of the wrestling team and considered himself the team’s assistant coach, mascot, personal trainer, head statistician, and all-around wrestling guru.

“Do you think there’s any way someone like Ambrose could fall in love with someone like me?” Fern caught Bailey’s gaze in the mirror again, knowing he would understand. “Only if he’s lucky.” “Oh, Bailey.”

“It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that you aren’t ever going to be loved the way you want to be loved.”

“There are times like that, Bailey. Times you don’t think you can take it anymore. But then you discover that you can. You always do. You’re tough. You’ll take a deep breath, swallow just a little bit more, endure just a little longer, and eventually you’ll get your second wind,” Fern said, her smile wobbly and her teary eyes contradicting her encouraging words. Bailey nodded, agreeing with her, but there were tears in his eyes too. “But there are times when you just need to acknowledge the shit, Fern, you know?” Fern nodded, squeezing his hand a little tighter. “Yep. And that’s okay, too.” “You just need to acknowledge it. Face the shit.”

“Bailey?” “Yeah?” “I love you.” “I love you too, Fern.”

“Because sometimes we fall in love with a face and not what’s behind it.

Ambrose knew what it felt like to be whole, to be perfect, to be Hercules. How cruel to suddenly fall from such heights. Life had given Ambrose another face and Fern wondered if he would ever be able to accept it.

The people who cared about him still cared about him, and their love or affection wouldn’t change just because his appearance had.

She was quietly lovely, unassumingly pretty, completely unaware that at some point between awkwardness and adulthood she had grown so appealing. And because she was unaware, she became more appealing still.

“Karaoke, baby.” “Karaoke?” “Yep. Haven’t done it in a while, and we’ve been getting complaints from the produce section. Seems the carrots have formed a Bailey Sheen fan club. Tonight is for the fans. Fern’s got quite a following in the frozen foods.”

“If Bailey had been born without MD, he wouldn’t be Bailey. The Bailey who is smart and sensitive, and seems to understand so many things we don’t. You might have looked right past Bailey if he’d grown up healthy, wrestling on his dad’s team, acting like every other guy you’ve ever known. A big part of the reason Bailey is so special is because life has sculpted him into something amazing . . . maybe not on the outside, but on the inside. On the inside, Bailey looks like Michelangelo’s David. And when I look at him, and when you look at him, that’s what we see.”

“I guess it means we don’t understand everything, and we’re not going to. Maybe the whys aren’t answered here. Not because there aren’t answers, but because we wouldn’t understand the answers if we had them.”

“I’ve been in love with you since you helped me bury that spider in my garden, and you sang with me like we were singing “Amazing Grace” instead of “The Itsy, Bitsy Spider.” I’ve loved you since you quoted Hamlet like you understood him, since you said you loved ferris wheels more than roller coasters because life shouldn’t be lived at full speed, but in anticipation and appreciation. I read and re-read your letters to Rita because I felt like you’d opened up a little window into your soul, and the light was pouring out with every word. They weren’t even for me, but it didn’t matter. I loved every word, every thought, and I loved you . . . so much.”

Maybe someday, as the knots became unraveled, this moment would wrap around him, tying him to her. Or maybe her love would simply loosen the strings, freeing him to walk away.

“How does a girl like you . . . a girl who loves romance novels and writes amazing love letters,” Fern’s heart ceased beating, “how does a girl like you manage to sneak through high school without ever being kissed?”

“I have no pride left, Ambrose!” Bailey said. “No pride. But it was my pride or my life. I had to choose. So do you. You can have your pride and sit here and make cupcakes and get old and fat and nobody will give a damn after a while. Or you can trade that pride in for a little humility and take your life back.”

Fern sneaked a look at his profile, noting that in the darkness, in the space between bursts of cascading light, that his face was beautiful, as beautiful as it had ever been. Even the smoothness of his bald head did not detract from the strength of his features. Somehow it made them more stark, more memorable.

“You are still beautiful,” Fern said softly, her face turned to his.

“Ambrose Young! I have waited my whole life for you to want me. If you don’t hold me tight I won’t believe you mean it, and that’s worse than never being held at all. You’d better make me believe you mean it, Ambrose, or you will most definitely break me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Fern,” he whispered hoarsely. “Then don’t,” she whispered back, trusting him. But there were lots of ways to cause pain. And Ambrose knew he was capable of hurting her in a thousand ways.

She made him shake, made him quake inside, made him vibrate like the tracks under an on-coming train.

Her lips welcomed his, moving softly, seeking, savoring, and Ambrose Young felt himself slip and slide, falling helplessly–with very little resistance–in love with Fern Taylor.

Ambrose groaned and laughed simultaneously. Leave it to Bailey and Fern. They would have a greatest hits CD.

Bailey continued: “I think that’s why Fern has always liked to read so much. Books allow you to be whoever you want to be, to escape yourself for a while.

“I would give anything to do one of those Freaky Friday switch-aroo things with you, Ambrose. Just for one day I want to trade bodies with you. I wouldn’t waste one second. I’d be knocking on Rita’s door. I’d pummel Becker a few times, throw Rita over my shoulder, and I wouldn’t come up for air until neither of us could move. That’s what I would do.”

It’s kinda ironic that Rita and I are friends, seeing as I’ve never been able to chase her. Maybe that’s the silver lining. I couldn’t chase her, so she never had to run.”

Nothing around Fern would collapse. The room would not burst into flame, the mats would not melt beneath her, but when Ambrose was done with her, she would be a smoldering pile of what used to be Fern Taylor all the same, and there was no way she could go back. She would be unalterably changed, ruined for anyone else. And she knew it as surely as if she’d been kissed by a thousand men.

“You make me feel safe, Fern. You make me forget. And when I kiss you I just want to keep kissing you. Everything else falls away. It’s the only peace I’ve found since . . . since . . .”

“In the dark, with you, I forget that Beans isn’t going to come walking in here and interrupt us. He was always sneaking girls in here. I forget that Grant won’t fly up that rope like he’s weightless and that Jesse won’t try his hardest to kick my ass every damn day because he secretly thinks he’s better than I am. “When I came in today, I almost expected to find Paulie asleep in here, curled up in the corner, having a nap on the wrestling mats. Paulie never went anywhere else when he sluffed. If he wasn’t in class, he was here, sound asleep.” A sob, deep and hard, rattled and broke from Ambrose’s chest, like it had grown rusty over time, waiting to be released. Fern wondered if Ambrose had ever cried. The sound was heart wrenching, desperate, desolate. And Fern wept with him.

And there they sat, comforting and being comforted, letting the thick darkness absorb their sorrow and hide their grief, if not from each other, then from sight.

“I’m free!” he yelled. “He yells that every time he’s in the water,” Fern giggled.

“I always dreamed a hot guy would come through my window,” Fern whispered theatrically, snuggling into his side and wrapping her arms around his waist like she couldn’t believe he was real. “Bailey told me,” Ambrose whispered back. “What? That sneak! He broke the best friend’s code not to reveal secret fantasies! Now I’m embarrassed.” Fern sighed gustily, not really sounding embarrassed at all.

“I wanted to see you again,” Ambrose whispered. “I can’t seem to stay away.”

“I love my mom, but she’s lost. I didn’t want to be lost with her. People like Elliott aren’t ever lost. Even when the world tumbles around his ears he knows exactly who he is. He’s always made me feel safe.”

She was right. He was partially blind, but in spite of that, maybe because of that, he was seeing things more clearly than he ever had before.

“Fern decided super heroes weren’t for her,” Bailey said from the back. “She decided she would just be a fairy because she liked the option of flying without the responsibility of saving the world. She made a pair of wings from cardboard, covered them in glitter, and rigged up some duct tape straps so she could wear the wings around on her back like a back pack.”

She liked the option of flying without the responsibility of saving the world.

“Thank you, Brosey,” Bailey whispered. And Ambrose started to hum.

“He’s gone, Ambrose.” “I know.” “I can’t stand it. It hurts so bad that I want to die too.” “I know,” he repeated softly, his voice steady. And Fern knew that he did. He understood, maybe better than anyone else could. “How did you know I needed you?” Fern whispered in broken tones. “Because I needed you,” Ambrose confessed without artifice, his voice thick with heartache.