“Why don’t you lie down,” I said.
He went into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. “I have to remove my prosthesis.”
“By all means.”
“I don’t need help.”
He was angry, and so many things suddenly became clear. “I figured you could do it on your own, Teo. Is it bothering you?”
“Yes, it’s bothering me. Sitting, standing, walking, not walking—” He swiped his hand through the air to take care of anything he’d left out.
“Okay, how do you get around without it? I’m assuming there’s a better alternative than hopping on the other leg if you need to get to the bathroom, or drink a glass of water.”
He was gritting his teeth. “I have crutches in my suitcase.”
“They fit? That’s pretty amazing.”
He got up and went to get it, and while he was gone I turned back the covers and fluffed the pillows.
Once he was back I took the suitcase from his hands and set it on the other side of the bed. He more or less collapsed on the sheets and stripped off his jeans—boot cut and wide enough to slip on and off without a lot of difficulty. He wore boxers beneath.
I opened the suitcase, taking out what had to be adult crutches, although they looked like they would fit a child. “Here you go.” I looked closer as he pulled them apart. “They’re retractable? Hey, those are cool.”
“Are you finished pretending this doesn’t bother you?”
“You’re the one who’s bothered.” I came around and sat beside him. “Why didn’t you take your prosthesis off on the plane?”
“Ryan...” He shook his head.
“Teo...” I mimicked, then I nodded. “Lie back. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll do the honors. How hard can it be?”
“I’ll do it. Just leave.”
“Do I pull?” I paused. “No, wait. Now I remember. There’s a button somewhere at the bottom, a pin. Then I pull.”
He started to push me away, then he stopped, cocking his head. “How do you know that?”
“YouTube. I have a natural curiosity, and now I have more than general knowledge about below-knee amputations and jazzy new legs.” I felt around his ankle and discovered the pin on the side. “May I?”
His expression softened from angry to annoyed. “You are a nutcase.”
“You knew that going in, buddy.” With that I pushed the pin, and Peg slid off. What was left of the leg he’d been born with was covered with layers of sock-like material.
“The padding makes the prosthesis more comfortable?”
He lay back against the sheets and stared at the ceiling. “It makes it fit so what’s left—”
“Residual leg?”
“Yeah, or call a stump a stump.”
“So the sock thingies make Peg fit with no rubbing.”
“You are just full of questions.”
I lay down on my side and turned so I could brush his hair back from his forehead. “So with all this protection? What’s hurting?”
He didn’t look at me. “It sounds crazy.”
“Even more interesting.”
“Pain in the foot they took off.”
I schooled myself not to show even a hint of sympathy, which I knew he would hate. “Phantom pain. I’ve heard of that. What happens?”
“Sometimes it feels like the Inquisition is pulling off my missing toes with pliers. Sometimes it’s more like I stuck them in a light socket. Today? Both.”
That sounded awful, but I kept my voice as light as possible. “How often does it happen?”
“More at first. Rarely now.”
“The trip did it?”
“Probably.”
“You have meds? Can I get them?”
“Over the counter, and I’ve taken them. I don’t go with the heavy stuff. I gave that up with the leg.”
“Will it help if I massage it?”
He propped himself up. “Why are you doing this?”
“What?”
“Trying to make this sound like no big deal.”
“Pain is always a big deal. But if I’m too casual, it’s your own fault. You’ve made the amputation sound like nothing since the day I found out about it. You’ve been a big macho guy. But guess what? It’s huge. To you especially.”
“I’ve moved on.”
“I don’t care if you have half a leg or no leg or three legs. You’re here. Against all odds we’re here together. I’m crazy about you. I’m crazy about Peg. She’s a star. But if I can do anything to help you feel better? I’m in.”
“I can handle this on my own.”
“The last time you needed me, you pushed me away. I went because I was a mess, too, and I didn’t know what else to do. But this time, I do know. I’m not going anywhere. Lie back.”
When he didn’t answer, I got up, circled the bed and stood over him, hands on hips. “I’m going to channel Arlie Gracey. Please don’t make me.”
He lay back, and I perched on the edge and began to peel off the layers protecting his leg. When I was finally down to bare skin, I took a long look. Then I trailed my fingers over it.
He sat up and tried to push me away.
“Uh-uh-uh.” I grabbed his hands.
“What am I going to do with you, Ryan?”
“I have an excellent idea for exactly what you’re going to do when you’re feeling better. So, let’s hurry that along. Will it help if I massage your leg? Get ice? Do a little naked dance to take your mind off the leg-that-went-away?”
He almost smiled.
“I’m going to try something. I want you to relax and listen to my voice. Can you give me one chance?”
He was fast losing the strength to argue. His face was pale and scrunched in pain, and his expression said he would try anything if I would leave him alone afterward.
I hoped a piece of the truth would help us both. “I had terrible screaming nightmares after, well, you know. That’s the most common symptom of PTSD.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I was in therapy for a while. Actually quite a while. Did you know that men and women experience trauma differently? Not always, but often enough. Men get angry. And women? We just go dead inside.” I stopped chattering and let that sink in. It described what had happened to both of us so well, and the way it had worked against our relationship.
“I was furious,” he said, which surprised me. “Sometimes I still am.”
“I was trying to be strong for you, but I was a wet sponge. And at night? I’d go to sleep and see Quayle coming toward me with that...that look on his face.” I shook my head to make it go away. “Anyway, my therapist taught me to change parts of the nightmare, and eventually it worked. I got to the point where when the Evil One appeared, he would be wearing a dunce cap, or a silly mustache. And that would break the spell. I’d wake up, and even if I wasn’t smiling, at least I wasn’t screaming.”
He grasped my hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Let’s see if a little visualization can help you relax, okay, and maybe soothe your leg? Will you try it?”
“Can I imagine you in a dunce cap?”
I was glad he could joke. “May I try?”
“Will it get you off my case?”
“It’s possible.”
He closed his eyes, and I took that as a good sign.
“We’re both going to pretend you still have your whole leg. I’m going to touch and kiss the right leg first. Pay attention to how it feels. And then I’ll going to touch and kiss the left one. You’re going to imagine it feels exactly the same. And your toes and your foot will begin to relax.”
“This is not an accepted therapy.”
“Of course not. I’m making it up. But we might hit the jackpot.”
I stroked his intact leg, slowly wor
king my way down. Then I followed the path with my lips. My fingertips and my lips remembered the feel of his skin, the heat, the resilience.
“If you think that’s relaxing, you have another think coming,” he said.
I stopped kissing and pressed a little harder with my fingertips, massaging gently as I went. “Work in progress.”
I fell silent, slowly moving toward his knee, taking my time. Once I got there, I started to hum softly, something tuneless and, I hoped, soothing. I kissed his knee, and then below, circling his leg with my fingers and thumbs, brushing gently but not too gently. By the time I got to his foot, I thought he might be relaxing a little. He seemed more pliant, more willing to let me slip a hand under his heel and gently massage his toes.
Minutes had passed. I’d taken my time, and now I started with the other leg. Instantly he tensed. I hummed louder, and slowly massaged above the knee. His thigh was as hard as concrete, and I worked slowly, digging in with my fingertips. Even though I couldn’t tell if he was relaxing, I pretended he was and told him so.
“You’re letting go. That’s great. You can feel your leg relaxing all the way down to your toes.” I moved my hands lower, and then bent and brushed kisses along his knee, and lower until I was kissing the stump. He didn’t stop me, and that was powerful incentive. No matter what else happened, we had crossed that line and we’d never have to look back.
“You can feel my hands moving lower,” I said softly. “My fingertips are stroking your calf and it’s so relaxing. I can feel every fiber relaxing. Your muscles are letting go, the skin is softening, like jelly.” I imitated the therapist who had worked with me on my nightmares.
Finally I graduated to his toes. “Your toes are tense, nearly cramped, but as I massage them, they begin to relax. Before, the big toe was as rigid as a fence post, but now, it’s beginning to bend. In fact you can bend it a little yourself, and then more. And now? Now you can easily bend it without my help. Slowly, ever so slowly, all your toes are beginning to straighten and align, and the tension is easing. The pain you feel is easing, too.”
Finally I’d run out of things to say and do. I sighed, slid the imaginary foot—which almost felt real to me—back to the bed, and wiggled up until I was lying beside him.
“Do you feel any better?”
He turned over, opened his eyes and pushed me down, covering half my body with his. He bent lower and kissed me, and then, with a groan, he rolled to his back.
“I don’t feel any worse.” He reached over and pulled me close until I was snuggled against him. “Did you really see Quayle in a dunce cap?”
“Let’s just say I came close, but it makes a good story. I did learn how to wake myself up before he got to me. That was huge.”
“This was... What you just did... It was huge for me. Even if the pain’s still hanging around. Thank you for touching me.”
I took a moment to swallow tears. “Maybe you just need a little more time to let everything wash over you, Teo. Your brain’s probably sorting out all the bum signals.”
He closed his eyes.
I got to my feet so I could cry in the hallway. “I’m going to the front desk to see about takeout. Think about something wonderful and try to relax those toes, okay?”
I slipped on my shoes and found my handbag. In the public restroom I gave in and cried until no tears remained. Then after I washed my face, I searched the main part of the hotel for food to bring back to the room. It wasn’t simple, but I managed to get sandwiches and bags of plantain chips with bottled drinks.
As it turned out, I had plenty to eat. Thirty minutes later when I got back to the room, Teo was sleeping like the dead.
I spent the night on the sofa bed in the other room, afraid to wake him.
* * *
We were on the boat heading to the resort before we talked about the night behind us. Teo looked rested, and said whatever pain remained was under control. Before we left our room, I gave him privacy to get Peg back in place, a process more complicated than removing her. Peg plays hard to get.
The long bus ride to catch the boat had been bouncy but scenic. Teo told me he’d been to Costa Rica once before, and I told him I’d like to come again under better circumstances. Other than that, we slumped against each other and tried to get more sleep.
The boat was comfortable, and we’d been allowed to tag along with a tour group, so the pace was just slow enough to give us a chance to enjoy the wildlife. A guide narrated from the front, but we sat by ourselves in the back.
“Thanks for last night,” Teo said.
“You may not remember, but nothing happened. At least nothing more exciting than a kiss.”
“Plenty happened. Thanks for being there for me.”
“You missed a great chicken sandwich.”
“That’s not all I missed.”
I tucked my arm under his and took his hand. “If you play your cards right, tonight could be better. If I happen to be in the mood.”
His laugh was tantalizing. “You probably saw me at my worst.”
“If that’s your worst, we’re in good shape. But for the record, I didn’t see a single thing to deter me from getting you naked tonight.”
The narration halted just as I said the last words. Teo laughed and I blushed. I put my head on his shoulder and stared out at the scenery.
I’d made reservations for two nights at the resort where Alexander Milton Kearns, now known as Ex, presided over several bars. Two nights was the minimum, and I’d thought we might want to observe and assess before we challenged him. By the time the boat pulled into Toucan Village, we’d been treated to dense tropical foliage with sightings of spider monkeys and crocodiles. I recognized some of the many birds as Florida friends, but not all. The woods along the canal were alive with movement and song.
We got out and collected our bags, making arrangements for a return trip on Sunday morning. The buildings seemed simple, almost primitive, but the grounds were lavish and the resort sprawled in every direction. Above us, though, the sky was turning darker. They didn’t call this rain forest for nothing.
After sitting so long Teo was ready to walk. “Let’s look around while the tour group registers.”
We left the backpack and suitcase at the front desk after a rapid stream of Spanish passed between Teo and the clerk, a middle-aged woman as trim as my mother.
“What did you tell her?” I asked as we walked away.
“I asked for a quiet room. I told her we planned to make noise all night long.”
Of course he hadn’t told her any such thing, but I winked, as if I believed him. “Did you tell her I always scream your name?”
“Who else’s?”
I slipped my arm around his waist, and we made a show of pretending to be lovers or honeymooners. For me, no acting ability was needed.
“I thought we’d look for the bars,” he said. “And with luck, the bartenders.”
Signs in the reception area, a large open room with decks and covered walkways, pointed to a total of three bars. The first took up a wall on one side of the dining room. Another was by the pool, and the last was in a gazebo with a roof thatched with palm fronds that stood alone looking over the river.
The dining room and its bar weren’t open. We were too late for lunch, and it was too early for dinner. The bar by the pool was doing a brisk business, so we sat on a stool and ordered beer and Costa Rican tamales cooked in banana leaves instead of corn husks.
Ex wasn’t there, and the two young women behind the counter weren’t in need of anybody’s supervision. We finished what passed for lunch and moved on to the gazebo, which was closed until five.
The skies took that moment to open. There was no warning patter of raindrops. One moment we were dry, and the next we were drenched. We sprinted to a covered walkway leading back to the reception area, got our luggage and dire
ctions. As we were leaving, I could swear the receptionist winked at me.
“Wow.” On the walkway again I watched rain sluicing off the roof to the ground beyond us.
“Mariana said that the sun took a vacation last week. But she thinks this should pass soon.”
“Seems like a great time to take a nap, since we can’t sightsee.”
“They do a jungle walk at six and another at eight.”
“We’ll be looking for a different kind of wildlife about then.”
Maybe Teo really had told Mariana a quiet room would be best, because she’d given us one so far from the lobby that at one point we had to backtrack and read more signs. But when we finally reached the correct walkway, I was delighted. Our room faced jungle, and the walkway in front of it, with two plastic chairs, wasn’t shared by another room. The key was in the lock.
The resort billed itself as ecotourism. In keeping with that, the room was not luxurious, but it was spacious and clean, built from a wood that gleamed with a golden luster. And while the room contained nothing remotely resembling technology, there were a couple of outlets and a small area where we could hang clothes. A wide-bladed ceiling fan lazily churned the air and was as close to air-conditioning as we would get.
The bed took up half the room. And there was one. No sofa bed to retreat to tonight. “Again,” I said, “they only had one room when I made the reservation.”
Teo gave his suitcase a push and it rolled to the wall. He put his arms around me and slipped off my backpack. “One room is perfect.”
“So what should we do while it’s raining? I can’t imagine bird-watching.”
He brushed my hair back from my forehead and kissed it. Then my nose, an earlobe, another, my cheek and finally, my lips.
“Do you remember how good sex was before everything happened?”
I felt warmth flooding through me that had nothing to do with rain forest heat. Suddenly my knees refused to lock. “How could I forget?” I saw what he wanted to say, but couldn’t.
“You were afraid things might be different because of the missing leg.” I kissed him gently and smoothed my hands under his shirt to feel the solid expanse of his back. “Things are different, Teo. You are so remarkable. I want you more than I did then, even if I don’t deserve you. Don’t you know I love you?”
A Family of Strangers Page 36
