Pieces of Me (16 page)

His heart thumping with nerves and more than a little desire, Leif touched his zipper, then laughed in surrender. “I’m not ready to, you know, show you the goods. Not even for a peek at the painting.”

Smooth
.

Vivian giggled. It wasn’t an embarrassed laugh as much as an appreciation of both his push, and his retreat. He understood her. Got her sense of humor. Saw the world at least a little from where she stood in it.

Vivian poured her heart into all of her portraits. I knew who she wanted to be painting, but she was a long way from being finished. Like anything done with this much heart, it took hours of work, days of early drafts that were messy and convoluted and verbose.

No one got to see the portraits until she was certain the meaning was clear and easy to read. Not even Leif. As tempted as
she was to let him peek. Stripping and streaking might very well come easier than opening an unfinished piece to his critique.

Leif wandered, as much because he wanted to diffuse the crackling tension as because he found that without the strenuous workouts, he overflowed with movement. “What’s that one on top?” He pointed at a stack of canvasses leaning against the studio wall.

“Me.”

Leif made a show of looking down and checking his pants.

“What are you doing?” Vivian asked.

“Why aren’t they finished? Why’s it sitting here for people like me, with pants on, to see?”

“Very funny.”

“No. Seriously. What’s the problem?” He studied her and the canvas.

Vivian walked over and fell into the swirl of paints and colors. The vortex of her organ failure and subsequent transplant rushed at her as if an opponent in a boxing ring hit the ropes and came swinging back. “I was working on it when …” She stopped, the words knocked out of her throat by the emotion of memory.

Leif pressed. Like a typical guy, he knew she was upset, but not how much. “When what?”

“Right before the transplant.”

“But you’re better,” Leif stated, though I wasn’t sure he truly understood that Vivian would never get better, not completely. “What haven’t you finished?”

Give the boy a gold star for asking the obvious
.

Because she didn’t know if the transplant changed her. If she was part of someone else. Vivian specialized in portraits made up
of tiny nuggets of pictograms. What was the sum of her parts? Had that changed? Had her donor changed her, or was it just the experience of lying on the edge of death that made her feel this way?

It’s not me
.

Vivian weighed her options. Did she share the truth? Or did she make up a stupid excuse about not liking it?

Tell him the truth. He can handle it
.

How much fact could he handle? He knew about the CF and the transplant. So far, he hadn’t run away. But he had to be on the edge of bailing. No one stayed around by choice. People liked easy answers, easy lives, stories that resolved and ended. Vivian’s story was an endless loop of a broken body that never resolved. Not in this life anyway.

“What are you afraid of?” Leif asked, as if reading her mind.

She pondered. “I don’t know.” She couldn’t give him that much of herself. She wasn’t even sure she understood it all. Her greatest fear was that if she finished the painting, there would be nothing left for her to do (Pantone 383).

Ah, that’s a scary feeling
. She seemed surprised by the feeling; I didn’t know it was there either.

Leif licked his lips. She noticed. He did it every time he was choosing his words carefully. As if easing the right words out from a tight space.

Vivian stepped away. “Sorry, I can’t—”

Talking about her death was a sure way to chase him off. And maybe that would be easier than looking forward to seeing him and hoping he’d be different. A melancholy blue settled like a rock in her stomach (Pantone 535).

“It’s okay. I, um … never mind.” Leif didn’t understand what he’d said that was so terrible.

I wanted him to push Vivian.
Prod her. Make her face this
.

He turned to leave. I tried to block the door, but all I managed to do was knock a few books and notecards over.
Oh my god! How’d I do that?
I tried to move more books, but nothing happened.

Leif immediately dropped to his knees to pick them up, and Vivian hurried over. She was desperate to fix the mess she had made by not answering him. She had to say the right thing (Pantone 7548) to help him understand and see. Before he left and never spoke to her again.

“I should have died,” she blurted, kneeling down next to him.

“When? Why?”

“My heart and lungs were infected, scarred from the CF. I kept coughing up blood and they couldn’t get it to stop.”

Leif sat back until his butt hit the floor. This cocoon of truth under the tabletops and around the chair legs felt precarious and fragile.

Vivian eased to a sitting position as well. “My friend Sally just died.”

“Did she have the same thing?”

“CF.” Vivian nodded. “But they didn’t find lungs in time. I was lucky.”

“Do you feel lucky?” Leif’s expression was mystified and his heart beat so loudly I wondered how she didn’t hear it.

“No one’s asked me that.”

“So?”

“No. Yes.” Vivian shook her head. “I should have died, but someone gifted me another chance with their organs.”

“Gifted?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to think of the right word to use. Donation seems like something you do with your old jeans, or spare change, or soup cans, right?”

Leif nodded. “True.”

“And what better gift could there be, really?” Vivian cringed. “It’s life. There’s nothing to compare to that.”

“True.”

They lapsed into silence there on the floor of the instruction manual aisle. I moved away, feeling like I was intruding, though I still felt and heard and saw everything.

Squared, in this case.

Leif ended the silence, demanding gently, “Tell me about your friend who died.”

“Which one?”

“There’s more than one?”

Vivian nodded. “This will be my sixteenth funeral.”

“Wow.” He rocked back. “All kids?”

She thought for a moment and then answered, “The eldest was twenty-eight; the youngest, six.”

“They all had CF?”

“No, you meet lots of different kinds of broken bodies when you spend a lot of time in the hospital. The peds ward is full of cancers and birth defects and terrible accidents.”

“What kind of accidents?” And I knew Leif’s mind had turned to the incident on the football field, while I was thrown back into thinking about the car accident.

“Car accidents, near drownings, fires. I don’t know, stuff that they talk about on the late-night news. Will you tell me what happened?” She gestured to his leg.

“To me?”

“Yeah, you limp. Sometimes it looks worse than others.”

“You can see that?”

“Yeah.” Vivian blushed, as if he’d caught her doing something illegal (Pantone 17-1564).

“Most people don’t notice. But then, you’re not most people, are you?” Leif said this last bit in a whisper almost to himself.

“Please?”

Yes, Leif, tell her
.

We all turned to thinking about that night
. I still smelled Mother’s perfume and that reeking alcohol. Leif felt the sweat on his back and grass beneath his feet, smelled the crisp fall air and the stench of ancient sweat-stained uniforms. Heartbeats and play counts filled the room around us. Vivian waited, innately understanding that what she’d asked was difficult to answer.

Leif blew out a breath. “Is it weird that I heard it before I felt it? Like it happened outside of me, and inside, at the same time?”

Vivian shook her head. “Sometimes I think I hear my heart stutter like it’s sending out an SOS to its original person.”

“Really?” He frowned, automatically rubbing a hand over his thigh, his knee, his shin.

“When it happened, did you hear a pop?” Vivian pressed. “Guys in the hospital who blew out their knees always talked about a pop.”

“Some, but it’s not like I was just running and it blew.” Leif shook his head. “My leg vibrated and crushed in, bone on bone, like that sound when you smash a hard-boiled egg on the counter.”

Ew
.

Vivian managed not to flinch. “When did the pain hit?”

“Not until I tried to jump back up and fell down. I saw everyone’s face and knew it was bad. I guess I passed out at some point.”

Vivian’s fingertips touched his wrist. A moment of understanding.

“Have you seen the video uploads?” Leif asked.

She grimaced. “There are videos? Why would anyone want to watch you, anyone, get hurt like that?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I lived it. I don’t need to watch it like a movie. But my dad thought it was motivation. He played them over and over again on his phone while I crutched laps around the hospital floor.”

“Oh. Your dad sounds—”

“Like a winner, right? He was a professional quarterback. My mom was a gold-medal Olympian in three Summer Games. They run marathons for fun.” He deepened his voice as if announcing a starting lineup. “We are winners. Champion Leolins.”

“Wow.” Vivian understood the pressure; it had to be similar to her parents’ need for her to live. Win. Live. Same dif.

“Watching those videos made me want to puke. The audio was the worst part. Will you come with me? I want to show you something.”

“Now?”

He staggered to his feet. “Yeah, right now.”

Vivian wasn’t sure what she expected, but the neutral beige (Pantone 4685) of the exterior and the interior decorations of Leif’s house wasn’t it. She thought perhaps there might be Olympic
gold medals hanging from the ceiling and a scoreboard above the dining room table. It could have appeared in any decorator magazine and offended no one.

They snuck down the lower hall. I recognized the squeak of the exercise bike and click of the weight machines: his parents were working out again.
They’re obsessed
.

“Gym,” he whispered, pointing upstairs.

He held her hand and ushered her into his bedroom.

Her curiosity overcame any shyness, but I noticed the stiffness in Leif’s shoulders, as if waiting for her to find fault.

For a moment, after he clicked on the overhead light, Vivian’s brain jumbled. How in the world did he expect her to react? She dropped her bag off her shoulder. “Um …”

Don’t scream and run away, for starters?

Leif sighed. “It’s hideous, isn’t it?”

“Do you get lonely?” Vivian asked, gazing at all the life-size wall decals and cardboard cutouts of people. Most of them in some sort of athletic uniform.

“What?” Leif asked.

“All the people.” She waved her hands around. “It’s kinda crowded in here, like a full stadium.”

“Oh damn.” Leif glanced around. “They’re not mine. My parents think that I’ll be inspired to be like Mike, or Derek, or Lance.”

“Or Tom, Dick, and Harry?” Vivian was shorter than all of them, and in the corners they were three-deep, like a true crowd.

“Yeah, it got worse when I got hurt. Used to be I’d just get one for Christmas and birthdays.”

“Did you ask for them? Like one year I wanted My Little Ponies.”

“No, I asked for things like CDs or video games.”

“I don’t see any gaming stuff?”

“I never got what I asked for.” Leif’s shoulders relaxed.

Vivian shook her head. “How do you sleep with all of them watching you?”

Leif shrugged.

He hasn’t thought about it, girlie
.

“Do you change in the bathroom?” Vivian pushed.

I giggled.

His eyes widened. “There are more in there.”

“No!”

Leif leaned down toward her. If it were a movie he’d kiss her, but Vivian knew he couldn’t possibly see her that way. She stepped back, ostensibly to check the bathroom.

The shower curtain was a photograph of football players in helmets and uniforms.

“That’s the offensive line of the Raiders.” He laid his hands on her shoulders.

He’s making moves, don’t run away!

“I thought you were kidding.” Vivian felt a shivery blossom of potential that scared her (Pantone 7493). Returning to the bedroom, she grabbed her bag and dug through it, finally pulling out a set of paint pens.

Leif crossed his arms but his smile was amused. “What are you doing?”

“Closing his eyes.” Vivian drew a blindfold over LeBron James’s fierce gaze. “He’s watching.”

Leif held out his hand.

“You want me to stop?” Vivian deflated and started to hand over her pen. “Sorry—”

“No, give me one too.” Leif painted a pair of silver sunglasses over Tedy Bruschi’s eyes. Then added a mustache.

“I like that.”

“He needs a nose ring.” Leif nodded at Lance and smiled when Vivian dotted a bit of gold over one nostril.

Joy (Pantone 12-0727), comfort (Pantone 17-4021), and passion (Pantone 18-2326) arched between them like sparks of current.

I sat on the bed and watched them mutilate the army of athletes on cardboard, plastic, poster, and vinyl cling.