Sisterchicks Say Ooh La La! (3 page)

She was so mad at me she called her mother to come pick her up.

Two days later Amy walked over to my house with a bandanna on her head. She came up to my small bedroom that had pictures of kittens and horses pinned to the wall. We closed the door and whispered so no one would hear us.

“Promise me, Lisa! Promise me you won’t let me ruin my reputation,” she said tearfully.

“I promise, Amy.”

After that, Amy was sparing with her kisses, but she didn’t stop her systematic development of a new crush on each of the boys in our class. The longest crush was the one she had on Charlie Neusman. He never responded in kind, and I always thought that bothered her, even though she didn’t talk about it.

That’s the only explanation I could find for the way Amy acted after Charlie asked me to the prom. He was my first date. The prom was my first dance. It took three days of pleading and discussing before I could persuade my parents to let me go with Charlie.

When I told Amy, she said she was happy for me. The next day she turned strangely quiet. The remaining few weeks of our senior year played themselves out, and she stayed away, always giving me what sounded like reasonable excuses for her disassociation with me and everyone else in my family. I kept waiting for Amy’s tempo toward me to change the way the big mood ring she wore on her thumb changed every few hours.

Yet Amy didn’t change.

I finally asked if she still had a crush on Charlie or if she wished he had asked her to the prom instead, and she said no. I couldn’t think of any other reason she would be mad at me.

At graduation we hugged, and Amy whispered in my ear, “I’m sorry. I’ll never forget you, Lisa Marie.”

I thought it was a strange thing to say. What was even stranger was the way she couldn’t find time to get together and do things the way we did every summer. But we both had summer jobs that kept us busy, and soon Amy and I had drifted apart. She went to college in Kentucky. I stayed home and went to community college in Memphis.

We didn’t speak to each other for almost eight years.

Those were fumbling years for me. I went from being the small dot at the end of a long exclamation mark at our house to being a mere speck of a life that could easily be brushed away. I wanted to prove to the world that I was strong. I was woman. I roared! But no one was close enough to hear me.

That is, until Amy rolled back into my life, stretched out on a hospital bed with her abdomen rising under the tight sheet like the dome of a package of Jiffy Pop popcorn.

M
y meeting up with Amy
in the emergency room of a Cincinnati hospital is remarkable since she didn’t even live in Cincinnati. I’d only moved there a few months earlier. I was at the hospital that rainy October afternoon because Derrick, a potential new boyfriend, was under observation for slitting his wrist. (Yes, I knew how to pick ’em, back in the day.)

The wrist slitting was an accident. Derrick was at my apartment helping open the box of a new coffeemaker. I handed him my pocketknife, since he didn’t have one. He flipped open the blade without watching what he was doing, and the sharp tip caught the wrist on his other hand right on the artery. Blood gushed everywhere.

I wrapped his wrist in a dish towel, told him to press hard, and drove my Honda Civic like a race car to the
hospital. Derrick wailed like a puppy. That’s when I knew our barely-begun relationship was doomed. My brothers would never let me stay with a man who: 1) didn’t carry a Swiss Army Knife at all times, and 2) didn’t know how to bleed silently.

Derrick received two stitches in his wrist and a glass of orange juice. A resident psychiatrist came behind the drawn curtain and asked Derrick if he had been depressed lately. Catching on to the assumption being made, I explained that the wrist slitting was an accident.

Derrick, however, reviewed a variety of recent maladies for the psychiatrist, including a sore elbow, a ringing in his right ear, a popping sound in his ankle, and occasional swollen eyelids, which he thought might be the onset of lupus or mononucleosis. He couldn’t decide which one.

The straight-faced doctor ordered a round of tests, which surprised me. It must have been a slow day in the emergency ward. A nurse suggested I wait in the lobby. That’s when I saw Amy. Or, I should say, that’s when I
heard
Amy.

A hospital assistant was rolling a very pregnant dark-haired woman in a wheelchair past me and into the curtained area across from Derrick. The attendant helped her up onto the hospital bed, and she let out a long
oooh-oooh
-sounding groan.

I paused and turned to look at her again. When most people moan or groan, they use sounds such as
owwww
or
ohhhh.
Amy was the only person I’d ever heard groan as if she were slowly saying, “ooh la la.”

Waiting until the sheet was pulled taut over the woman’s middle and the head of the bed was elevated, I got a good look at the patient. My heart pounded.

“Amy?” I stepped closer to her bed.

She halfway opened her unmistakable brown eyes and squinted at me.

“Amy, it’s Lisa.”

“Lisa?” She tried to sit up and reach out her hand to me just as another contraction overtook her. “Lisa!”

I dashed to Amy’s side and grabbed her hand. She squeezed with a force I’d never felt in all our years of Red Rover, Red Rover.

“Don’t leave!” Amy cried breathlessly. “Don’t let go, Lisa.”

I promised her I wouldn’t leave; I wouldn’t let go. And I didn’t.

In between contractions Amy gave me one of her biggest, bravest smiles. “I can’t believe you’re here!”

“I can’t believe
you’re
here,” I said. “What are you doing in Cincinnati? Last I heard you lived in Lexington.”

“We do. Mark’s brother is getting married tomorrow. We drove up for the wedding. Mark is at the airport picking up his parents.”

“And Mark is …” I was fishing for the answer I hoped would be evidence that she had followed the “first comes
love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage” principle for her life.

“Mark is my husband.”

I smiled and adjusted her pillows.

“He’s a college professor, Lisa. Can you believe I married my college professor? We were almost a campus scandal.”

Somehow I knew that made the romance even more delicious in Amy’s mind. I looked forward to hearing all the details. At the moment another contraction was coming over her tense frame. With another “ooh,” a minute later she released her grip on my hand. Her eyes were still closed and her speech slow as she said, “Mark is shuttling relatives. All day. To the hotel. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

I stayed with Amy for the next contraction and then left long enough to try to place a call to their hotel and contact Mark. Since this was in the days before cell phones, I had no success in reaching him.

Four and a half hours later, Jeanette Marie Rafferty came into the world. She was five weeks before the due date but weighed seven pounds one ounce and had a full head of black hair. Nothing “preemie” looking about Jeanette!

Mark arrived breathless after Jeanette was rolled up in a pink blanket. The poor guy could barely speak. He had no idea Jeanette Marie had entered the world until after she squealed her first “voilá!” I watched the gentle giant of a
man take the infant in his arms and look adoringly at his wife as tears puddled in his eyes.

Slipping out of the room to give them a moment in private, I, too, teared up. Clearly Amy had married a good man. Mark was nothing like my brothers, and for that I was thankful. I did notice, however, that he was not French.

And neither was Derrick.

I found Derrick watching TV and sipping 7UP from a straw. All the tests had come back clear. The doctor told Derrick he was going to be just fine. He slipped into the car holding his wrapped wrist and waited for me to close the door for him. That’s when I gave him my diagnosis for our relationship, which was not just fine. No surprise. Check another potential boyfriend off the list.

Over the weekend I visited Amy twice in her hospital room, each time armed with an outrageously large gift basket brimming with the cutest baby girl items I could find and a few treats for Amy. She was sleeping each time so I tiptoed out with my basket, wondering if I’d see her before they drove home.

On Monday she was discharged from the hospital, and Mark insisted they stay at the hotel a few more days before driving home. I took the afternoon off of work and arrived at the hotel, toting my oversized gift basket and feeling strangely shy.

Did I overdo the presents? Would a simple boxed sleeper
set have been a better way to go? Maybe I should have bought Amy a single bottle of lotion instead of the six-piece home spa set.

Too late to change my mind. Mark opened the hotel room door with his daughter cradled in his free arm. Amy called to me from the bed, “Lisa, you came!”

I gave her the audaciously brimming basket of gifts and confessed to my clandestine hospital visits. Amy gave me a scolding for not waking her on my visits, but her hands already had untied the bow, and she was pulling out all the fun gifts.

Her favorite was a stuffed giraffe with a polka-dotted bow around its neck. She practically squealed when she found the extravagant spa set of lotion and bath oils for her. In a way I felt as if I’d finally made up for the birthday when her only gift from me had been a Bible.

My mother was the one who insisted I give Amy a Bible for her twelfth birthday, which Amy graciously thanked me for when she opened it. All the other girls at the party gave Amy gifts like Bonne Bell frosted lip gloss and Jean Naté cologne.

I was so embarrassed that I announced in front of everyone I had another present for Amy at home, but I’d forgotten to bring it. The guilt of my lie made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t keep down the piece of strawberry cake and Neapolitan ice cream, which I urped up in the bathroom. I left Amy’s party in quiet humiliation.

The next day I confessed my lie to Amy, and she said, “I know.”

“Aren’t you mad?”

“No, why would I be mad?”

“Because I just told you. I lied. I don’t have another present for you. All I gave you was a Bible.”

“I know. I always wanted my own Bible. It’s even more special because it came from you. Everyone else gave me stuff I’m going to use up. You gave me something I’m going to keep for the rest of my life.”

I was absolved that day and immediately stopped punishing myself.

Standing by Amy’s hotel bed now, watching her delight in all the gifts for her and Jeanette, made me feel absolved once again.

Jeanette began to squirm in her daddy’s arms. I couldn’t take my eyes off the beautiful infant.

“May I hold her?” I asked eagerly.

Mark handed off his precious cargo and reached for the list of baby supplies Amy had prepared for him. “You sure you’ll be okay if I go to the store?”

“Of course!” She looked up at me with a bright smile. “We’re going to be fine.”

I took Amy’s words to heart, as if she were uttering a blessing for the next season of our friendship. We were going to be fine. I just knew it. I also dearly hoped that, after all my moves and job changes, things were about to
be fine for me in every way. If nothing else, I’d have Amy to stand beside me while I tried to put together the pieces of my erratic life. That possibility brought me great comfort.

Mark slipped out the door as I rocked the baby back and forth.

“Lisa, I love all these gifts.” Amy arranged them on the bed for further viewing. “I haven’t even had a baby shower yet! It’s supposed to be this Friday. Won’t they be surprised when I show up with a baby! These are the first presents anyone has given us. Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome. I was worried that maybe I overdid it.”

“Are you kidding? Overdoing it with gifts? Never! Look how cute this is!” She held up a bib that was trimmed with yellow ducklings. “Thank you again. Really. Thank you for being at the hospital on Friday and for coming today.”

“I honestly didn’t have much to do with the hospital encounter.”

“I know.” Amy put down the bib and looked at me with her huge eyes. “God did that, didn’t He? Just for us. You promised to be there for me when my first baby was born, remember? I think God heard that promise. There’s no other explanation.”

I didn’t have another explanation so I nodded and agreed with Amy that something mysterious and larger than us was at work. It had been several years since I’d been to church, so I didn’t think God was paying much attention to me. I certainly hadn’t been paying much attention
to Him. I wanted to wait until I knew He would be proud of me before I showed Him the report card of my life. Sadly, a few too many semesters had passed, and I still didn’t feel as if I had done anything worthy of His watchful eye.

“Come sit down.” Amy patted the side of her bed. “Would you think I was crazy if I said I’ve dreamed about this? About you and me connecting one day when we least expected it? I’ve missed you, Lisa. I’ve thought of you a million times over the years. When Mark and I got engaged, I tried to find you, but I didn’t know your parents had moved from Memphis. I sent a wedding invitation to an address I got from your brother Will in Indiana, but it came back with no forwarding address.”