Mood Ring Ch. 03

"NO!

Well, maybe; I don't know. Kissing Haley was just for fun until one night when we had been at a bar and, well: I drove her home and we weren't kissing for the attention. It freaked me out so much that I called a guy I had just met and we spent the night together. It happened about two months before my car accident and I haven't thought about it until tonight. I guess until tonight I have been running from it and repressing it."

She asked, "Did you have a boyfriend? "

"No, thankfully I cannot add cheating to the list of things that I carry around to beat myself up with." I flashed a quick smile to let her know I was joking.

She calculated in her head, "So that means your baby was a product of that one-night stand? You poor poor little thing! To have to face that on your own; I quickly deduced that your family did not know and I made sure that they never found out. Yes, there is a privacy law in effect, but you know as well as I do how people let confidential information slip through because of their ignorance. We estimated about 10-11 weeks based on the fetus and your body signs. I am so sorry for your loss." She reached over and gently squeezed my forearm in empathy.

I actually teared up to hear her express sympathy. (The last time anyone had talked to me about it, I was still in a morphine haze, my face felt like hell and everything was a bad dream that I had woken up into. Having been pregnant and then losing my baby were just incidental scenes in the nightmare play of my wrecked life featuring my broken face. It is different hearing it in your head and then hearing it again out loud. But I had already had my cry for the night.)

"Thank you. It is weird, but in a way I feel like I got a second chance. Having a baby would have made my life very difficult. I could have done it and I am sorry that I lost my baby. I love children but those circumstances absolutely sucked."

About that time the low volume chime sounded to announce the arrival of our first course.

Inside the dumbwaiter was a tray on which sat two white porcelain bowls. She brought it over to the table and I could see that the bowls contained a pale green soup sprinkled with dill. Along the plate were some thinly sliced cucumbers. It looked scrumptious and I was starving.

We dug into our soups and continued our conversation.

I had quickly come to a realization. "Anya, you know what just occurred to me?"

She shook her head negative but as a sign to continue.

"Lynne McKinney died in that car accident. I have been carrying a ghost for the past three years. The crying was her sorrowful spirit leaving my body."

She looked at me like I was not making sense or that I was about to slip into crazy.

"No, look at it this way. I am speaking figuratively. Lynne McKinney made some really bad choices right before she was in that accident and I have been trying to deal with them ever since. The thing is; I don't have to. The accident gave me a clean slate so to speak. Tonight is really the first night that I have felt alive in three years. Like you said, I cannot change my past but I am responsible for my future.

The accident gave me a new face. Heck even because of the pregnancy, my body looks different to me."

She looked at me quizzically. I colored, "I don't want to talk about it. Forget I just said that."

It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. But I think she knew because she tried to repress a smirk.

Of course I was referring the fact that as a result of my short exposure to the hormones of pregnancy, my breast tissue had changed; in preparation to produce milk, the tissue had grown. After the termination of my pregnancy they had remained firm and much larger. My areolae were still a plum color. Even my nipples remained plump and semi-erect much of the time. Most women have their breasts return to normal. Some don't. Maybe because of the way my pregnancy was interrupted, mine had just stayed the way they were. I had learned to deal with them and wear padded bras much of the time. Tonight my decision to go out without wearing any underwear underneath my little black dress had resulted in much embarrassment on several occasions.

I laughed and swatted her arm, "Shut up!"

She broke out into a laughing fit that I joined.

It was so nice to have a good laugh with a friend after the tension of the evening!

Another chime sounded announcing our salad.

It was a blood-orange, beet, and fennel salad and looked like a culinary dream.

I started to eat it and stated after some more thought, "I have been so busy mourning the things that I lost and can never replace. I think that is what I meant when I said I have been living like a ghost. Like a displaced spirit; instead of living, I have been mourning my lost looks, friendship, even on a subconscious level, my baby." She made a clucking-intake sound with her mouth at that.

I looked at her. "Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw the changes from my former appearance. The first time I saw my face, I was all bandaged and when they took the bandages off, I was still swollen and discolored. The surgeries to repair the damage lasted over a year and I have equated the changes in my face with the bruising and swellings and have been superimposing them over my healed face. I was completely disassociated with who I am and who I was. I haven't been able to connect with the person I see in the mirror."

Again she clucked her tongue at me in sympathy and started to caress my forearm lightly with her hand.

I was in the self-discovery zone and it barely registered that she was touching me so softly.

"But tonight when I made an effort to make myself pretty, I made a turn. I looked in the mirror tonight and liked who I saw for the first time since the accident. My new haircut and the fact that all of the scars have faded allowed me to regard myself from outside myself."

She smiled at me warmly, "Yes, Peter did outstanding work on you."

I was puzzled and paused with the fork halfway to my mouth, "You know Dr. Chapman?"

She replied, "Peter Chapman is one of the premier plastic reconstruction and cosmetic surgeons in the world. He is based out of Los Angeles. How did you think he came to work on you?"

I had never thought to look my gift horse in the mouth and I was floored. "You arranged for him to repair my face?"

She nodded and smiled, "You are one of the ways I have tried to redeem myself for the things I have done in my past. I saw your photos from before the accident and felt I had to do what I could for you."

I felt stunned by her generosity. "My unknown benefactor has made herself known. Thank you so much!"

"Lynne, please! You of all people can understand doing something and not wanting recognition. But, you are very welcome. It is my pleasure to see you thrive. Peter is not only an excellent surgeon, he is an accomplished artist. He did do outstanding work on you. You are lovely!"

I did not know how to respond, so I made a joke, "Maybe I can change my name to Galatea."

She snorted, "Don't you dare! That would make me Pygmalion! I won't have anyone call me a pig!"

We clinked our glasses together enjoying our verbal play, and emptied them.

"Ready for the next course?" She asked.

"How many courses are there? I am not full, but I shouldn't overeat since I've already had so much to drink tonight."

After my cathartic cry, I was feeling simply warm and cozy instead of drunk, but if I moved my head fast enough, the room would spin a little.

"Five including dessert; so next course, then the main, and then the piece-de-resistance!"

As she reached over to signal the next course, I reached for the bottle noting that it was halfway empty and refilled our glasses. I didn't do too badly. I purposely filled her glass to a higher level than mine.

She leaned back in her chair and regarded the glasses side by side. She crossed her arms over her exquisite breasts and asked me.

"Lynne McKinney! Are you trying to get me drunk?"

"Don't know anybody named Lynne." I replied with mock innocence. "My name is Frances. "

I purposefully used my unused primary name because I didn't think anyone could like it. I had hated it ever since I was a little girl because other kids would make fun of me by rhyming "Franny" with embarrassing body parts. Fran wasn't much better so I became Lynne at an early age.

Anya exclaimed, "I like it: 'Frahn-sis' It is beautiful."

I was stunned. Her accent made it special.

"What is that name to you, did you just randomly pick it?"

I told her, "It is my given name. My full name is Frances Lynne McKinney."

She said," it is lovely, you are my Frances! It will be your name just for me?"

"I don't use it for anyone else. Frances is all yours."

*****

I had tried to avoid two women already in my past with catastrophic and life-changing consequences. One was the young bisexual girl who was secretly in love with me and clumsily tried to seduce me thereby driving me straight into an unwed pregnancy. The other was the drunken woman driver who ran my car off the road involving me in a catastrophic accident that made me lose my baby and the appearance with which I had been born.

I may be a slow study but I didn't think that I would be swerving to avoid this lovely lady whom fate had seen fit to place directly in my life's path. Avoidance seemed to be on the lesson plan and experience taught that it was the path to disaster.

Yes, I was starting to get flirty again on purpose. The danger was still there and very real, but since I realized that I could let go of the past, I was a new person. I was tired of wanting things the way they used to be, of not feeling anything about anyone or anything. I liked the person I saw in the mirror.

I did not know what future Frances was going to find, but it was going to be my future that I embraced: not a dead woman's dreams that had died, not in an auto accident, but before that with the reflexive rejection of a friend and in the embrace of a stranger.

If my auto accident had been the funeral, the wailing I had experienced earlier in the evening had been an exorcism of Lynne's spirit that hadn't realized she had been dead for three years. I released her and felt the chains fall away.

I was reborn and about to take my first steps into a new world. I knew it was ok to stumble and fall but I would have someone there to catch me up and wipe away my tears and gently encourage me to keep trying. I was scared to death and vitally excited at the same time.

(Continued in Mood Ring Ch. 06)

(Ch.'s 04 and 05 tell the story thus far from Anya's POV)