“Never.”
He pressed his fingertips into my muscles, massaging, trying to take the memory of the cruel lens at the crash away.
I shivered. Photographers. Cameras. I’d have to face them again soon. The speech in Asheville was never far from my mind.
Chapter 29
Cathy The Speech
The café was finished. Closed and empty, but done.
Thomas and I scheduled our wedding ceremony for October. It would be a small, loving event with the girls as bridesmaids, Delta as the matron of honor and Thomas’s brother, John, as the best man. John and Monica would be bringing their boys. They’d meet their new cousins, Cora and Ivy, for the first time.
“Maybe we can lure Delta inside the new café by threatening to hire a caterer,” I told everyone. “Surely she wouldn’t let a stranger take over her kitchen.”
“Looks like the old café, only cleaner,” Pike proclaimed. “A good job.” The Crossroads Quilters—of which Ivy and I were now regular members—hung our weird quilt on a wall in the new dining room. Ivy’s Biltmore Estate design impressed everyone. My homage to Oscar night looked more like a strange garden with a red walkway. But people were polite in their praise.
Thomas handed Delta the key to the café’s new front door. She sat at her sunroom’s wicker table, pretending to read a newspaper. “I installed the old lockset in a new front door,” Thomas pointed out. “So that’s your original key. And it opens the door just the way it always did.”
She continued to read the newspaper, or pretend to. “It’s y’all’s restaurant, now. Y’all keep the key.”
I pushed the key under her newspaper. “No, you keep it. Think about the possibilities.”
She pushed the key away. “I don’t have to think about the possibilities. I’m retired.”
I pushed the key back. “You’re only fifty.”
She pushed the key away. “Becka’s pregnant again. Now I’ll have time to play with a new grandbaby, not just plop it on a prep counter while I salt a squash casserole.”
I snapped. “All this time you lectured Thomas and me about how to live our lives. About never giving up. About keeping the faith, the hope. And we believed you. We rebuilt the café because we were sure you’d come back to your senses. If you really believe you can stop caring about other people—that you can stop nurturing and nourishing other people—then hide here in this sunroom for the rest of your life. But if you want to see how much your inspiration has changed my life, then take this.”
I slid a folded card toward her. “This is an invitation to my speech at the burn association’s meeting in Asheville. If you don’t come to see me, I’ll know you never really cared.”
I walked out.
Terror. It soaked my bones, slithered through my veins, layered ice onto my skin. As Thomas pulled the Hummer into the parking deck of the Asheville Civic Center that crisp autumn afternoon I sat stiffly, frozen in the front passenger seat, silently rehearsing my speech again. It was neatly printed in large, bold type on a sheaf of papers. I had memorized it, recited it a thousand times, performed it in front of the girls, Thomas, the cat, the puppies, the chickens, the goats, and all the wildlife on the ridge.
But I had not performed it in front of strangers. Strangers in public. Strangers in public who had cameras. All these months, every step I’d taken outside the sanctuary of the Cove had been carefully orchestrated, my face covered by hoods, scarves and then artful hair, my audience a trustworthy one of friends and neighbors, people who didn’t take pictures, people who didn’t talk to reporters, people who didn’t judge.
“Can we go to dinner after you talk, Mommy?” Cora asked from the back seat. “I want pizza. Daddy says we can go out and eat like regular people after you get over tonight.”
Ivy shushed her. “Mom’s concentrating. There’s lot of statistics in her speech. She’s gotta get ’em right. Chill out.”
“What are statistics?”
“Numbers, sweetie,” Thomas said, glancing in the rearview mirror as he shoehorned the Hummer into a parking space. “Your mom likes numbers more than personal anecdotes.”
Mouthing the last page of my speech, I ignored his snide implication. I wasn’t interested in confessing intimate details of my experience to a room full of gawkers. I planned a formal performance, an impersonal act. As I lipped the words I tilted my head, angled my shoulders, lifted and lowered my chin—every move a practiced nuance. I’d crafted every inflection, every facial expression, every body pose, for the entire thirty-minute speech. My topic? The Beauty Culture—An Insiders’ Perspective On Self-Image. Thomas and Ivy had helped me research all sorts of serious psychological and sociological studies. My speech was filled with factoids and summaries of scientific opinion. It sounded important, solemn, academic. Look, the Southern-belle geisha knows big words and percentages. Yes, and the actress knew how to sell a boring speech that revealed nothing about her personal pain.
“Showtime,” Thomas said gently, breaking my anxious reverie. The Hummer was still and silent. We had parked. He and the girls watched me worriedly. I folded my speech, tucked it in my purse, and checked my face in the visor mirror. Shield of hair over the scarred side, check. Snug turtleneck sweater to hide my scarred neck, check. Tailored jacket and pants to hide the scarred arm and leg, check. Pleasant, unrevealing expression on my face, check.
“Showtime,” I echoed in an octave high enough for a piccolo.
As we walked into the civic center the girls trotted close beside Thomas and me. Cora held our hands and swung them merrily. Ivy tucked an arm through mine and patted the sleeve of my jacket. “Mom,” she said quietly, as we entered through a service door, “Even if you throw up, it’ll be cool, okay?”
I hugged her. “I just hope no one photographs me hurling chunks. I don’t want to be the star of a sixty-second spew-video on the Internet.”
Dr. Bartholomew smiled sheepishly as he greeted us in a back hall. “I’m sure you’re accustomed to drawing a crowd, but we’re stunned at what’s happening.”
“I’m trying not to think about it.”
He had scheduled me for an ordinary workshop room, as he’d promised back in the summer. Thirty, forty people in the audience. But a couple of days later the burn association blurbed my appearance in its online newsletter, and afterwards the programming chair was flooded by media inquiries—USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, to name a few, and all the big entertainment magazines, like People and Star, and Entertainment Tonight—plus a stampede of members asking that the association move me to a bigger room. So Dr. Bartholomew had switched my speech to the civic center’s ballroom, which seated a few hundred. But then so many reporters asked for press passes, and so many members asked for a bigger venue, that Dr. Bartholomew had asked my permission to super-size my audience one more time. I’d agreed fearfully.
“Exactly where am I giving my little speech now?” I asked in a small voice.
His smile became a hopeful wince. “The Thomas Wolfe Auditorium.”
“That sounds big.”
“It’s where the Asheville symphony performs.” He paused, wincing harder. “It seats 2,500.” Another pause, and now his face was a prune of apology. “It’s packed.”
My knees went weak. Thomas grabbed me by the elbow. “She needs a minute to adjust to this idea. Some place private.”
“Absolutely. Follow me. I’ll take you backstage.”
I numbly let Thomas tow me to the auditorium complex. The girls hurried along behind, their mouths open in awe. “Wait right here with Dr. Bartholomew,” Thomas told them, then led me into a dressing room and shut the door.
He took me by the shoulders. “You’ve performed in front of tough audiences all your life. These people are burn victims and medical professionals who treat burn victims. They’re on your side. You can do this, Cathy. You can do it.”
I pulled away from him and paced, hunching a little, clutching my stomach with shaking hands. “National media. Dozens of
photographers. All wanting the first pictures of me and my scars.”
Thomas blocked my way, pried my hands away from my navel, and held them to his chest. “You,” he said in a graveled voice, “are the woman who didn’t scream when nurses scraped your raw skin. You are the woman who crossed the mountains in a snowstorm to find your grandmother’s house and then camp out there without heat, without electricity, without running water, alone. You are the woman who saved the lives of two helpless puppies. You are the woman who made a home for two unwanted little girls. You are the woman who put everyone else’s safety ahead of your own during the fire at the café. You are the woman who refuses to give up on Delta.” He lifted my hands to his mouth, kissed them, then finished, “You are the woman who saved my life, and who makes my life worth living. You can give this speech.”
I gazed up at him, sagged a little, and nodded. “I’ll get through it. I will. Somehow.”
He kissed me on the forehead so as not to smudge my makeup. “The girls and I will be in the front row, rooting for you. Just look at us and forget everyone else.”
I exhaled long and slow, then straightened. “Okay. Okay.” Settle. Breathe. Focus. “Okay.” My mantra. Okay.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Thomas headed for the door. Just before he walked out I said, “Thomas? All the things you listed? I couldn’t have done them without you.”
He looked back at me with a quiet smile. “And we’ll get through this speech together, too.”
The door shut quietly behind him.
I faced the dressing room’s brightly lit makeup mirrors. For the first time since that day at the Four Seasons, nearly eighteen months earlier, I was stepping in front of the world. That time, I saw biscuits and tragedy in the glass.
This time, I only saw my fear.
Thomas
“Will Mommy be okay?” Cora asked as we found our seats on the front row, center. She stared up at the crowded balcony, then the packed main floor. “All these people came to see Mommy? But Mommy doesn’t want to see them.”
I nodded. “But she’ll be fine.”
Ivy nudged me. “Dad, look at all those guys with cameras right in front of the stage. There must be, like, a hundred of ’em. She’s gonna freak.”
“No, she won’t. She’s a star. You’ll see.”
I wish I felt as confident as I sounded. We sat down. I looked at Delta’s empty seat next to mine, and crossed my fingers.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, SEBSA is pleased to welcome Cathryn Deen.”
Applause. The deep, rolling clatter of it, an orgasmic wave of sound. In the old days I’d love that swell of appreciation, the whistles, the sound of my name being yelled among the clapping.
Now I had to force one foot in front of the other, had to make myself smile as I walked onto the elegantly lit stage before all those people, all those cameras. Blinding, terrifying. Trapped. I’m trapped out here, now. All I can do is throw up, run off the stage, or collapse. A pathetic sight, just like last year at the accident, captured for the curious and the mean and the greedy to enjoy, preserved in the uncaring ether of a computer’s mind, to be shared in seconds with people all over the planet.
I shook Dr. Bartholomew’s hand. He waved me toward a spotlight. I tried to breathe normally. The portable mike on my turtleneck would pick up even the smallest groan of hyperventilating horror. I walked numbly to a handsome podium and laid my speech there, then stood, staring at the cameras, the glaring lights, the audience. Applause. It went on, rising and falling. My hands shook by my sides. I couldn’t inhale. If I didn’t get myself under control my voice would fracture, I’d squeak when I talked, and these people, the whole world, would realize how weak I really was. I’d never cracked on stage, before. My heart pounded so hard the mike might pick up the staccato drumbeat.
Finally, the audience grew quiet. I still just stood there, afraid to speak. Slowly I began to study the faces looking back at me. So many of them were scarred, deformed by fire. Much worse than mine. What could I say to people who had suffered worse that I had? What kind of statistic or mealy-mouthed formality could sum up what they’d been through, what they lived with, and what they now understood about life without the veneer of physical perfection?
I darted a frantic gaze over the front row, squinting past the wall of cameras. Thomas and the girls. If I could just find them. There. There they were. Looking up at me with all their love. Thomas sat on the edge of his seat, trying to appear calm, supportive, casual, no-big-deal-if-you-go-catatonic-honey. But failing. He looked worried.
He wanted so badly for me to do well. I managed to gear my frozen eyes down to the text of my speech. The words were big and bold and dull and waiting. I want to thank the Southeastern Burn Survivors Association for inviting me here today. I’m here to talk to you all about the meaning of personal appearance in American culture . . .
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. I swallowed hard, reached for the glass of water on the podium, sipped some, watched water splash from the glass because my hand was shaking so hard.
I can’t do this. I can’t. Thomas, I’m sorry. I can’t.
People shifted a little in their seats, glancing at one another, holding their breaths. I sensed the worst thing a performer can feel in a theater—the dreaded vibe of the awkward silence. Ignore it. Look at Thomas and the girls, look just at them, and try to ignore everyone else and . . . say something, say anything! Frantically I peered at the front row again. I locked my gaze on Thomas, but he nodded to his left. My eyes responded automatically. Left. Look to his left.
Delta.
Delta sat there, looking up at me with tears in her eyes and one hand on her heart. She knew I was sinking fast. She grabbed a big, plasticware serving plate off her lap, flipped the lid off it, and held the platter up.
Biscuits, she mouthed.
Biscuits. She was baking again! Our symbol for everything good, everything hopeful, everything worth believing in, everything worth fighting for. She had brought biscuits as an apology for her temporary loss of faith and to remind me who I was, and who I always would be. I was Mary Eve Nettie’s granddaughter and Delta Whittlespoon’s cousin. The heir to the sacred dough.
I looked down at my speech. It’s now or never. People will see you the way you want them to, but you have to tell them who you are, not who they think you are. Tell them. Tell them. Tell them.
I picked up my speech. I held it high, turned it sideways, put one hand on either end. I tore the papers in half. Then I tore the halves in half, and the half-halves into fourths. Then I tossed the pieces into the air like confetti. Cameras flashed.
The entire auditorium went even more silent. People gaped at me. At least I had everyone’s rapt attention. I left the podium and, still not saying a word, walked to the edge of the stage. I looked down into the bank of cameras, then out at the audience. I shrugged my jacket off. The turtleneck was sleeveless. I tossed the jacket behind me onto the podium, then gracefully raised my scarred right arm so everyone could see it. Like a game-show hostess outlining a prize washing machine, I swept my left hand along the length of the right. Here’s the new Cathryn Deen arm, from shoulder to fingertips, see the deep pink scar tissue of the arm and the gnarled flesh of the hand. This fine appendage is yours to photograph, to look at, to stare at in open pity or even disgust. Free!
Cameras flashed.
Next, still not speaking, I angled my right foot forward, the knee flexed slightly, the toe pointed. I swept my hands down it. Abracadabra. And now for the new Cathryn Deen leg. I hitched up the flared pants leg until it clotted above my knee and I could pull it no higher. The scars swirled down the outside of my knee and calf, ending at a grotesque tendril that curved over the top of my foot.
Cameras flashed.
I let my pants leg drop back into place. Next, I raised my hands, palms up, then palms down, fingers fanning toward my face. And now, for the grand finale. Sinking my hands into my carefully coiffed shield of hair
, I fluffed wildly, destroying the hair-welding alchemy of mousse and gel and spray. Then I swept my freed hair back from my face. I turned my head so everyone could get a good look at the scars, the ruined hairline, the ugly ear. Some people gasped.
Cameras flashed endlessly.
I posed. I gave them what they wanted—no, this time, I gave them what I wanted. My timing was impeccable. I still had what it took to mesmerize a crowd. Let the photographers get their fill, let the entire auditorium full of reporters, photographers, fellow burn survivors, doctors and nurses and therapists see the reality, let them all get a good, long look.
The only people whose opinions I cared about were seated in the front row, and when I looked calmly down at them, they were all smiling. The girls grinned up at me. Delta laughed and cried with her arms circling the platter of biscuits; Thomas had tears on his face but he nodded his fervent approval. Yes, this is who you are, and I love you for it.
I strolled back to the podium, folded my jacket, and rested my hands on either side of the lectern. I cleared my throat. “Just like everyone else with a less-than-perfect body in this auditorium tonight, I’m not a burn victim. I’m a burn survivor. A year ago, every time I looked at myself, I wanted to die.” My voice was clear and strong and confident. “But today I can honestly tell you that if I could turn back time and prevent the accident that scarred me—but that would mean giving up the people who’ve become part of my life because of that accident, the people I have come to love in this new life of mine, in this new body of mine, the people who love me regardless of these scars—if I could choose to be beautiful again, but lose those people—I’d choose to be scarred.”
The audience went wild. People leapt to their feet, clapping with scarred hands, crying with scarred faces. I would stand there for the next hour-and-a-half, telling them the story of the past eighteen months in honest detail, about the pain, the fears, the failures, but also about the love, the lessons, and the victories. They would applaud again and again, and the standing ovation I would receive when I finished would go on for ten minutes.