“Why did you come see me?” he asked her.
She seemed embarrassed to have been caught relaxing. She straightened her spine and folded her hands. “I came to apologize for lying to you earlier. I did it because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings—”
Rolland let her drift off, his mouth pursed. “I didn’t cut you off,” he said, laughing.
“I know you didn’t,” she jumped in, hurriedly, then laughed. “I just mean to say that it was easier to say I wasn’t hurt so that we could get to the greater goal of you learning which way west is.”
He gazed at her out of the corner of his eye. “Okay.”
“Do you understand anything I’ve just said?”
“Yes. So it’s better to lie than to tell you you’ve confused the hell out of me.”
Melanie crossed her legs and touched his arm and it felt like fire had been set to his limb. Rolland liked the heat and didn’t want it to stop. For the past three months he’d been cut, sewn, stapled, massaged, twisted and rehabilitated by so many people that he thought he was immune to the human touch, until now. He moved his arm closer so she would touch him again.
“I don’t want you to lie to me. If I’ve confused you, then tell me. What I mean to say is that I’m sorry for lying to you. It won’t happen again.”
She drew her hand back.
“So what happens when you don’t want to tell me something?”
“I just won’t answer you.”
“That’s not fair, Melanie. That’s the only way I get information.”
He could tell she was considering what he’d just said.
“As your therapist I have to keep some things confidential, so I’ll just tell you it’s confidential and you’ll have to respect that.”
“That’s fair.” He opened the book he’d been reading and pointed to the sky. “Melanie, have you ever seen mauve? It’s a cool color.”
She leaned over to look at his book, and he caught a whiff of her perfume. “Yes, it’s cool,” she said.
“You have to look at the sky,” he told her.
“Oh.” She sat back embarrassed.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed. I know cool has two meanings.”
“You’re a mess.”
He looked down at his clothes, then at her and she started laughing until her meaning dawned on him. “Oh, you’re funny. Mess has two meanings. I can see therapy will be fun with you.”
“What do you do when you get upset?” she asked him as they watched people walk the large campus.
“I try to figure out what went wrong,” he said, crossing his legs. “I never get angry with people. I get disappointed. I mean, what can anyone do to make me angry? They’re trying to help me. If they don’t give me cake? Sometimes that’s not so bad.”
She smiled and his stomach fluttered.
“This is all I know. So I don’t get angry. I get frustrated. I want to leave the campus and come back like real people do. I feel like you’re all having more fun than I am.”
“What kind of fun?”
“Driving.”
She laughed. “Driving is important, but I wouldn’t say it’s fun.”
“You have your arm out the window, your sunglasses on. You wave to people, blow your horn. You’re going somewhere. It’s fun.”
“You’ve seen me driving?”
“Yes, I’ve seen everyone driving. Even Purdy and she’s not a good driver. She’s hit everybody’s car.”
Melanie’s mouth fell open. “No way.”
“Does that mean am I lying? I’m not. I’ve seen her. Horace and I have seen her hit cars in the parking lot.”
Melanie cracked up and looked around. “Did Horace tell you not to tell people?”
He considered her question for a moment. “Maybe he did.”
She patted his arm. “Let’s talk about something else. May I ask you something?”
“My life as far as I remember it is an open book.”
“Okay,” she said, and he liked the way she squeezed her lips together. “Why don’t you have a sock on your left foot?”
He stretched his long leg out and flexed his foot.
“Melanie, we were having a hard time earlier with west. I’m not sure if it was me, but let’s just say it was. I decided that to spare your foot anymore damage, I wouldn’t wear a sock on this foot as long as your toes are healing. No sock will remind me that left is west.” He stood up. “Left is west,” he said and turned left.
Melanie applauded. “If left is west, which way is south?”
Rolland stopped and closed his eyes. Other patients and their family members walking by on their way to the dorm watched Rolland.
Melanie gave them the sign to be quiet.
“If you’re facing north and west is left of north, then south is left of west?” Rolland pivoted to the left and looked at Melanie expectantly.
“Yes! Rolland, that was great.” She’d gotten off the swing and hurried over to him. “Which way is east?”
“Left,” he said confidently.
And she gritted her teeth and jumped before he could catch her toes.
“We’ll work on it,” she told him. “You did great.”
“Almost perfect. Horace would say I got too cocky trying to impress you.”
“Impress me? Why?” Her smile faded a little.
“You’re my new therapist and who wouldn’t want to impress the person who holds their future in the center of their hands?”
“In the palm of my hands.”
He took her hand and drew a circle in the center. “Right, and that’s a lot of responsibility to place right there. Besides, you’re beautiful and when I see you, I get a fluttering feeling in my stomach.”
“Oh, Rolland.” She drew her hand back and her smile disappeared.
“It’s not like when they gave me the medicine that made me throw up, Melanie. Now you look ill.”
“No.” She reached for him and her hand stopped midair. Then she touched him anyway. “I’m not ill. It’s just—well. Do you understand about relationships? Man and woman relationships?”
“I wasn’t born yesterday. I didn’t forget everything. I see how these women look at me. I’m scared of’em.”
She nearly laughed, but smothered it behind pursed lips. “Right. Why?”
“They whisper when I walk by, but I can still hear. Once I got my new face, well, I was the cat’s meow.”
Melanie burst out laughing and tried to hide behind her hand. “Who told you that?”
“The optometrist who worked on my eye after my facial bones healed. I had been developing cataracts, so I had Lasik surgery to fix everything.”
“No.” She looked horrified, but remembered reading this in his file.
“Dr. Hoover said I was the cat’s meow.”
“Okay, don’t you say that again.”
“Why?”