Yearbook (27 page)

“I want to know something.” She squeezed tight. “Promise me the truth.”

“You’re hurting me.” “ Did Corky take me out on a bet?” Guy looked away. “Jesus.” “Well?” Amy pinched harder. Guy looked at her, saying nothing. “I have to know!” “Hey, I said that hurts!” “Tell me! Amy raised her voice. “First let go.”

Amy dropped her hand. “I’m waiting.”

There was a long pause before he was able to mumble, “That’s what I heard.”

Amy pinched her own fingers. “Why didn’t you warn me, Guy? I promise I’ll never forgive you. You were my friend.”

Guy looked her straight in the eye. “Because you were so happy, Amy. I thought for once in your life you should be happy.”

She wiped her cheek. “I feel so sorry for you, Guy. Can I tell you that? I wish I knew who got the worse deal. Me because I only had that one night, or you because you can’t even touch him.” “That’s not true!” Guy’s voice broke.

Hurrying from the room, Amy searched for her coat on the crowded rack in the empty hallway. She pulled it off the hanger.

As she was buttoning up, Corky came in from the other room. “Where you going?” he asked good-naturedly. “Go to hell!” She headed for the door. He grabbed her arm. “Let go, dammit!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Leave me alone.” She pulled her arm free.

“What is it?”

“You, you bastard!”

He caught on. “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

Amy laughed and cried at the same time. “I don’t care so much that you told her. I can almost understand your feeling you had to justify what we did. But you didn’t have to say you loved me!”

Corky looked down. “You asked me to, remember … ?”

“Liar!” She slapped his face.

Without thinking, he instinctively slapped her back. She let loose, slapped him again and again, harder and harder.

He stood there and took it. Then he caught her hand. “Enough,” he said softly.

She turned and rushed out of the house.

He searched for his coat. Ro-Anne came down the stairs. “What are you doing?”

Corky whirled on her. “What the hell did you say to that girl?”

“Who?”

“Amy!”

“That zombie? I told her hands off!”

“Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?”

“Don’t you yell at me!”

“What really kills me is that I’ve known it all along. Can I tell you that? I was crazy to think there was ever anything more to it.” He went to the door.

“What are you talking about? Where you going?”

“To find her!”

“Now!? You can’t leave now. Not in the middle of my party!”

Turning the large brass knob, Corky opened the door.

“Don’t bother coming back!”
Ro-Anne’s stomping foot underlined her words as she pulled the red ring off her finger. “Here!” She extended it to him as though it were infected.

“Don’t give it to me. I never gave it to you. Give it back to your mother. You really are dumb. Let me tell you something!”—he pointed a nervous finger at one of her breasts—”the only reason we lasted so long together is because I was afraid people wouldn’t think as much of me if I wasn’t going with the
prettiest
girl in school. That tells you what kind of jerk I am! So take your crown and scepter, Little

Miss Pee Wee Shit, and shove em up your prize-winning ass!” Car keys in hand, he ran out into the snow.

THIRTY-SIX
 

RO-ANNE STARED AT the door. Of all nights, how dare he!

‘There she is!” someone shouted from the other room. “Hey, Ro!”

How to explain? What to say? Fresh as the pink rosebuds on her wrist, Ro-Anne pirouetted in place and offered her grandest smile all the way into the living room as the band played “Sixteen Candles. “

“Where s Corky?” someone asked.

“Corky? Too much to drink, probably … went for some air, I guess.”

“He all right?” asked another guest.

“Corky, Corky.” Ro-Anne laughed as she fastened sparkling eyes on Chuck Troendle. “Doesn’t anybody want to dance with the birthday girl?”

Chuck Troendle was happy to dance with the birthday girl.

After brushing the snow from his windshield, Corky took off in the Chevy, circled the driveway twice, and saw no one.

Coasting slowly down Ridgewood Drive, he scanned one side, then the other. He rubbed the frosted window with his sleeve, turned the corner and went into a skid. Carefully, he eased on the brakes and set the car back on course.

Snow had piled into drifts against doorways and tree trunks. Where the hell was she? She had to walk down Ridgewood if she was heading home.

He reached the end of the street, turned around and drove back up the long block until it ended. No sign of her.

He made a left turn at the intersection and drove beneath the overpass of the state highway. Looking all around, he caught a fleeting glimpse of umbrella. He quickly stretched over, rolled down the window and yelled, “Amy!”

The umbrella swiveled and the old man beneath it, walking his dachshund, looked at Corky. The next instant he screamed, dropped the leash and covered his face.

Corky swung around, and the last thing he remembered hearing was the roaring engine of the truck as it ripped through his windshield.

Soaking wet and freezing, her hair limp and ragged, Amy arrived home.

Evelyn left the Late Show and rushed to her. “What happened to you?”

A trembling Amy held her mother’s hands. “I want you to call Aunt Bernice, Mother. Tell her we’re coming to New York.”

The revolving red light of the police car tinted the snow. Orange flares lit up the roadway, warning approaching drivers to turn back—road closed.

The rescue squad from the highway patrol finally arrived. An acetylene torch had to be used to cut through the crushed metal so they could get to the boy pinned behind the steering wheel. Men in an ambulance sat and waited.

The Chevy was barely recognizable. It smelled of Chanel.

The driver of the Seven-Up truck studied the wreckage, piecing together for the police a confused explanation of what might have happened.

One moment he had come off the highway and was making a right turn, the next there was this small blue car below him, folding like an accordion.

After two and a half hours of separating metals, they were finally able to free Corky from his trap. An ambulance attendant squirmed his way in to check if the crash victim was still alive. In a sea of blood he found a weak pulse.

Attendants carefully lifted Corky out from the smoldering, melded dashboard and broken steering column, and it wasn’t until they’d laid him down on the stretcher in the snow that they first discovered his left foot had been severed at the ankle.

With the police car leading the way, its siren alarming a stilled countryside, red lights flashing, the ambulance crawled through the deep snow toward neighboring Rushport.

The attendant standing over Corky kept yelling at the driver to hurry. The kid was still losing so much blood so fast, he wasn’t sure how long he might last. A red puddle had formed at the bottom of his leg. Blood spurted from the left side of his head.

It was still snowing heavily when they pulled into the emergency room at Rushport Memorial an hour later. The patient had gone into shock and was comatose. The doctors went to work.

Blood was their primary concern. After giving Corky a transfusion, they checked their limited supply and then called a blood bank in Hempstead, ordering a dozen additional pints sent over at once.

The left side of Corky’s face had been damaged so as to be medically labeled
comminute.
Hamburger.

At five in the morning Corky was wheeled into the operating room for emergency surgery. Doctors rushed to tie off arteries in his forehead and leg which kept gushing blood as fast as they received it. The left side of his slashed neck was sewn. The bones in his crushed nose had caved in and had to be evacuated so they would no longer apply pressure on his brain.

One surgeon worked on his head, another tied the two arteries at the bottom of his leg and applied a bandaged dressing.

The patient was still losing large quantities of blood, even after the arteries had been connected. The medical team agreed on the diagnosis. Internal bleeding.

Inserting a scalpel just below the chest cavity, the surgeon made a seven-inch incision, down to the navel. A quick examination revealed a ruptured spleen. It was removed.

The police found no identification on Corky or in his car. His wallet had been lost in the steaming wreckage, but they were able to trace the license plate number to Carl Henderson, Jr.

The information was given to the head nurse at the reception desk.

The telephone rang twice before Carl Sr. reached for it. “Hello?’’ he grumbled.

“Does a Carl Henderson, Junior, live there?”

“What time is it?”

“Carl Henderson. Does he live there?”

“It’s Sunday morning! Who is this?”

“There’s been an accident. I’m calling from Rushport Memorial Hospital. We’re looking for a—”

“Accident? What kind of accident?”

Dora bolted up in bed.

“Acar accident,” said the nurse.

“Corky? Not Corky!”

“Is this Carl Henderson’s father?”

“Corky! Yes, yes it is.”

“Your son’s been in an automobile accident, Mr. Henderson. Can you come at once?”

“What?…yes…sure…”

“Rushport Memorial. Right off the Southern State Parkway at—”

“Yes, yes. Is… is it serious?”

There was a pause. “Very serious. “

Carl and Dora drove through the snowstorm to get to Rushport. When they arrived ninety minutes later, pale and numbed, they were told their son was still in surgery. There was no definitive report as yet on his condition, but if they would sign various releases and have a seat, a doctor would speak with them as soon as possible.

Hours later one of the surgeons left the operating room to have a cigarette and talk with the Hendersons. His stained uniform made him appear more butcher than doctor. He apologized for his appearance, saying there was no time and he would be going directly back to the operating table.

He then delivered a barrage of medical terms and conditions, few of which made sense to either Carl or Dora. He mentioned nothing about the leg. At the time, it seemed the least of the patient’s problems.

“But… will he be all right?” Carl was finally able to ask.

The doctor dropped his cigarette and ground it into the floor.

Dora couldn’t speak.

The surgeon looked at the patient’s parents, at eyes pleading to hear something hopeful. “We can’t tell anything yet. Right now we’re trying to control the bleeding. When we get through that, we’ll know more.”

Evelyn was having the time of her life.

Everything was falling into place. Arrangements were being made. She called her sister Bernice in the Bronx. Bernice in turn called her best friend whose son was a noted Fifth Avenue plastic surgeon.

Though completely booked this Easter recess, he agreed to squeeze Amy into his tight schedule. Amy and Evelyn packed to leave.

After ten hours, the white lights in the operating room were turned off.

Corky lay on a hospital bed, his life connected to tubes sending fluids in, draining them out. Neither receiving nor sending, accepting nor rejecting, if his brain functioned at all, it was in some dark, faraway sleep.

His parents spent the rest of the day in the waiting room. Late in the evening a doctor told them there’d been no change as yet. It might be days before they could assess any permanent damage. For now they were simply doing their best to keep him breathing.

After being given a brief look, Carl and Dora went across the Southern State Parkway and checked into the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge. It had stopped snowing.

Dora stared out the window, out into the cold, white night. Carl put on the television and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at Dorothy Kilgallen correctly naming the occupation of an opera singer. Then he broke down.

Dora hurried to him and he buried his face in her lap, and cried. “It’s my fault, Dora! All my fault.”

“Don’t talk nonsense.” She combed his hair with her fingers.

“I don’t want to live, Dora. Not anymore. I want to die. “

“Ssssh.” Softly, she kissed the top of his head.

“It was me, Dora. Do you know that?”

“What, dear?”

Carl raised his reddened eyes. “I wished for it, Dora. I wished something like this might happen.”

The fourth floor hallway of the large Bronx apartment house smelled of burnt pot roast.

Aunt Bernice opened the door, welcoming Evelyn and hugging Amy. “There’s my little girl,” she glowed. “There’s the next Miss America!”

THIRTY-SEVEN
 

THUMP HURLED FROM the truck, Monday’s
Newsday
landed against the front door.

Peering outside, Guy was whipped in the face by an early morning wind. The paper rested precariously between two bottles of very cold milk. Bull s-eye.

When Guy lifted one of the bottles from its niche in the snow, the newspaper unfolded.

While bent over, he glanced at one of the front page headlines: WATERFIELD STAR ATHLETE CORKY HENDERSON IN AUTO CRASH Disbelieving eyes refocused on the large type. Then the milk bottle in his suddenly numb hand crashed to the cement, dissolving the printed outrage in a sea of white.

The Sommers’ phone did not stop ringing. Girl friends, classmates, cheerleaders, they all called. They all thought she should know. Ro-Anne knew.

As copies of
Newsday
opened at breakfast tables around town, the calls poured in. Once Marian had heard, she had gone upstairs and broken the news to Ro-Anne.

They dressed quickly and drove to Rushport in Marian’s Thunder-bird.

Ro-Anne cried the whole way.

Guy called the hospital. They told him Corky was in critical condition and would be receiving no visitors. He said he’d call again the next day.

He phoned Amy. Dr. Silverstein said she wasn’t home; didn’t know when to expect her.

Ro-Anne and Marian walked into the waiting room and exchanged hugs and tears with Carl and Dora. They sat with Corky’s parents for five of the longest hours Ro-Anne could remember.