Making Faces(37)

Fern wished she dared approach him, dared talk to him. But she didn't know how. Didn't know if he would want her to, so she stayed hidden for several moments more before she made her way to the exit and headed for home.





A small whiteboard was mounted just outside the bakery door in the hallway that led to Mr. Morgan's office and the employee break-room. It had been there forever, and it had never had anything written on it, as far as Fern could tell. Maybe Elliott Young had thought it would make a good place to write schedules or reminders, but he’d never gotten around to it. Fern decided it would be perfect. She wouldn't be able to put anything too suggestive there . . . but suggestive wasn't really her style, after all. If she wrote on the board at about eight o'clock, after the bakery was officially closed for the night and before Ambrose arrived to start his preparations in the kitchen, he would be the only one to see what was written on the board. And he could erase it if he didn't want anyone else to see it.

The key was to write something that would make him smile–something that he would know was meant for him–without cluing anyone else in and without making herself feel like an idiot. She struggled with the words for two days. Everything from “Hi. Glad you're back!” to “I couldn’t care less if your face isn't perfect, I still want to have your babies.” Neither seemed quite right. And then she knew what she would do.

In big black letters she wrote KITES OR BALLOONS across the whiteboard, and she taped a red balloon, his favorite color, to the side. He would know it was Fern. Once upon a time, they had asked each other a million questions just like this. In fact, Ambrose had been the first to ask this particular question. Kites or Balloons? Fern had said kites because if she were a kite she could fly, but someone would always be holding onto her. Ambrose had said balloons: “I like the idea of flying away and letting the wind take me. I don't think I want anyone holding onto me.” Fern wondered if his response would be the same now as it had been then.

When Ambrose had discovered she was writing the letters instead of Rita, and the correspondence had come to a screeching halt, Fern had missed questions like these the very most. In his responses, sometimes with only a word or a funny one-liner, she had started to know Ambrose and had begun to reveal herself as well. And she had revealed Fern, not Rita.

Fern watched the white board for two days, but the words stayed there, unacknowledged, unanswered. So she erased them and tried again. SHAKESPEARE OR EMINEM, she wrote. He had to remember that one. Back then, she thought for sure he would share her secret fascination with the rhyming ability of the white rapper. Ambrose's response had been, surprisingly, Shakespeare. Ambrose had then sent her some of Shakespeare's sonnets, and told her Shakespeare would have been an incredible rapper. She had also discovered that Ambrose was much more than a pretty face. He was a jock with a poet's soul, and the heroes in Fern's novels had nothing on him. Nothing.

The following day the whiteboard also had nothing on it. Nothing. Strike two. Time to get a little more blunt. She erased SHAKESPEARE OR EMINEM and wrote HIDE OR SEEK? He'd been the one to ask that one the first time around. And she had circled seek . . . because wasn't that what she had been doing? Seeking him out, discovering him?

Fern wondered if she should pick a different either/or, since he was so obviously hiding. But maybe it would provoke a response. When she arrived at three the next afternoon she glanced at the board as she walked by, not hoping for much, and came to a screeching halt. Ambrose had erased her question and written one of his own.





DEAF OR BLIND?





This was a question she had asked him before. At the time, he had chosen deaf. She had agreed, but had listed all her favorite songs in response, indicating what she would have to give up in exchange for her eyesight. Her list of songs had prompted questions about country or classical, rock or pop, show tunes or a bullet to the brain. Ambrose had claimed he would rather take the bullet, which inspired a slew of either/or questions about ways to die. Fern didn't think she would be using any of those questions in the present situation.

She circled DEAF, just as she had back then. The next day when she checked the board Ambrose had circled both words. Both deaf and blind. She had wondered about his right eye, now she knew. Was he deaf in his right ear as well as blind in his right eye? She knew he wasn't deaf in both ears because of their brief conversation the night she almost hit him on her bike. Below the circled words there was a new question. He'd written, LEFT OR RIGHT?

This wasn't one they had asked before, and Fern had a sneaking suspicion Ambrose was referring to his face. Left side or right? She responded by circling both left and right, just as he had done with deaf or blind.

The next day everything was erased.





Two days went by and Fern decided on a new tactic. She wrote in careful letters:





“Love is not love

Which alters when alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

Oh, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,

that looks on tempests and is never shaken.”





Shakespeare. Ambrose would know why she wrote it. It was one of the sonnets he had said was his favorite. Let him make of it what he would. He might groan and roll his eyes, worried that she would follow him around with her tongue hanging out, but maybe he would understand what she was trying to say. The people who cared about him still cared about him, and their love or affection wouldn't change just because his appearance had. It might just bring him comfort to know that some things stayed the same.