worried at her bandage.
“They say this ll take a few more weeks to get right. You gotta heal between surgeries. I feel like I been storing my face in a Veg-O-Matic,” she said, slumping deeper into the floppy, marshmallow cushions.
Jackie was one of those people who threw more energy out into the world than the atmosphere was able to absorb. It caused her to ping-pong around through life. You thought you knew where she was heading, and then suddenly, zing, she’d be off in some other direction.
“Hodges said he saw you in Town. Steppin’ out.”
“At the grocery store. First time. I like Hodges, but he always looks at my tits when he talks to me.”
“He sent me around to check on you.”
“Not necessary. I’m a brick.”
“So, you’re okay.”
She stopped picking at her bandage and started picking at her shirtfront.
“No, I’m not. I’m all fucked up.”
“So let’s unfuck you up.”
“How’re you going to do that?”
“By getting you out of the house.”
“I’ve been to the grocery store.”
“No, like out and around.”
“Not like this. The stares.”
“Let’s fix that.”
“Oh, sure.”
I took her into the master bathroom and sat her on the john. I studied the bandage for a while, then went through her closet and vanity for supplies.
“You gotta talk to the doctor,” she said.
“What do they know about it?”
She saw me with her big hair-trimming scissors in my hand.
“Jesus, Sam, what the hell are you doing?”
“Just stay still.”
First I cut a line from the knit of her brow to the back of her head, right above the little dent everybody has at the back of their heads. Then I cut away most of the helmet. I had her hold the important part of the bandage against the wound while I reconfigured the chin strap into a single piece over the right side, secured below by a gauze choker. The net result freed her mass of hair so that it covered most of the damage and exposed the uninjured, though black and blue, side of her face. I tied things off with some yarn that I could string through her hair, and fooled around with her coif until she almost looked normal, for a girl with a stoved-in face.
I made her stand in front of the mirror.
“How did you do that?”
“I’m a design engineer. The doc took a more expedient, less cosmetic approach. This’ll work just as well.”
“It still looks pretty bad.”
“Way less bad. Got anything to drink in this house?”
It took about a hour for her to shower, shave her legs and put an inch of makeup on her face, but eventually I got her out of the house. She hadn’t worked around to thanking meyet, but at least she’d stopped sighing and moaning. By the time we were in the Grand Prix it was late morning. The sun was all the way out and the sky all the way blue. The air was dry and clean, so I kept the windows rolled down to air things out. The wind tossed around some empty coffee cups and messed up Jackie’s hair a little, but she didn’t seem to mind. Liberation.
This time of year I never drove on Montauk Highway, the main artery on this part of the Island. It was filled day and night with summer people. But you had most of the secondary routes to yourself because the summer people were mostly from Manhattan, and were afraid to deviate from established routes. They’d all seen
Deliverance
.
Hodges once told me the East End of Long Island had a different kind of light from the rest of the country. He’d learned this in the 1950s from one of the artists who’d set up shop out in Springs, then a homey little enclave in east East Hampton. He compared it to the light of Florence—bright on a sunny day, but with all the edges burnished off, as if filtered through a diffusion screen. Hodges told me it was caused by the way the big river of weather coming out of Pennsylvania and North Jersey would clip the Boroughs, then push up over Long Island Sound into Connecticut, leaving the East End in its wake, covered by a
“They say this ll take a few more weeks to get right. You gotta heal between surgeries. I feel like I been storing my face in a Veg-O-Matic,” she said, slumping deeper into the floppy, marshmallow cushions.
Jackie was one of those people who threw more energy out into the world than the atmosphere was able to absorb. It caused her to ping-pong around through life. You thought you knew where she was heading, and then suddenly, zing, she’d be off in some other direction.
“Hodges said he saw you in Town. Steppin’ out.”
“At the grocery store. First time. I like Hodges, but he always looks at my tits when he talks to me.”
“He sent me around to check on you.”
“Not necessary. I’m a brick.”
“So, you’re okay.”
She stopped picking at her bandage and started picking at her shirtfront.
“No, I’m not. I’m all fucked up.”
“So let’s unfuck you up.”
“How’re you going to do that?”
“By getting you out of the house.”
“I’ve been to the grocery store.”
“No, like out and around.”
“Not like this. The stares.”
“Let’s fix that.”
“Oh, sure.”
I took her into the master bathroom and sat her on the john. I studied the bandage for a while, then went through her closet and vanity for supplies.
“You gotta talk to the doctor,” she said.
“What do they know about it?”
She saw me with her big hair-trimming scissors in my hand.
“Jesus, Sam, what the hell are you doing?”
“Just stay still.”
First I cut a line from the knit of her brow to the back of her head, right above the little dent everybody has at the back of their heads. Then I cut away most of the helmet. I had her hold the important part of the bandage against the wound while I reconfigured the chin strap into a single piece over the right side, secured below by a gauze choker. The net result freed her mass of hair so that it covered most of the damage and exposed the uninjured, though black and blue, side of her face. I tied things off with some yarn that I could string through her hair, and fooled around with her coif until she almost looked normal, for a girl with a stoved-in face.
I made her stand in front of the mirror.
“How did you do that?”
“I’m a design engineer. The doc took a more expedient, less cosmetic approach. This’ll work just as well.”
“It still looks pretty bad.”
“Way less bad. Got anything to drink in this house?”
It took about a hour for her to shower, shave her legs and put an inch of makeup on her face, but eventually I got her out of the house. She hadn’t worked around to thanking meyet, but at least she’d stopped sighing and moaning. By the time we were in the Grand Prix it was late morning. The sun was all the way out and the sky all the way blue. The air was dry and clean, so I kept the windows rolled down to air things out. The wind tossed around some empty coffee cups and messed up Jackie’s hair a little, but she didn’t seem to mind. Liberation.
This time of year I never drove on Montauk Highway, the main artery on this part of the Island. It was filled day and night with summer people. But you had most of the secondary routes to yourself because the summer people were mostly from Manhattan, and were afraid to deviate from established routes. They’d all seen
Deliverance
.
Hodges once told me the East End of Long Island had a different kind of light from the rest of the country. He’d learned this in the 1950s from one of the artists who’d set up shop out in Springs, then a homey little enclave in east East Hampton. He compared it to the light of Florence—bright on a sunny day, but with all the edges burnished off, as if filtered through a diffusion screen. Hodges told me it was caused by the way the big river of weather coming out of Pennsylvania and North Jersey would clip the Boroughs, then push up over Long Island Sound into Connecticut, leaving the East End in its wake, covered by a
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