The Monkeyface Chronicles (34 page)

The elastic bands are colour coded to denote their level of resistance. When we first started using them, my pale blue sausage arms could barely stretch the yellow band, the weakest of the colours; now, I can curl three sets of twenty reps with the blue band, the thickest and strongest of the lot. Although my skin is still creamy white, the bluish tinge has disappeared, and my muscles have redeveloped, albeit in a leaner form than before.

Lately, Amiya has been taking me three times a week to the physiotherapy room to exercise on the treadmill, the stationary bicycle, and the weight-lifting machines. I've just had what will hopefully be the final skin graft over my new face, though, so I've been ordered by Dr. Chin to keep my heart rate down until it is finished healing. I can't wait to use the machines again, to feel that burning in my muscles.

“Well, handsome,” Amiya says while jotting some notes on the sheet on her clipboard, “you're becoming strong. You have worked very hard. Soon we will have to free you into the world again.”

I nod (I can do that now), and say, “Thanks, Amiya. I love you.” It comes out sounding something like
“Tanks, A-mah-ah.
I wov oo.”

When I started learning to speak again, Amiya joked that I had to practice telling her that I loved her. It's nothing inappropriate — Amiya is older than my mother, and has seven children of her own. She's like the big, cuddly aunt I never had.

“Do you feel strong enough to do another set?” she asks.

Although every muscle in my body aches and trembles, I nod yes.

Amiya wraps the ends of the blue elastics around my wrists, and says, “What's our mantra, Philip?”

Other than the P sounding slightly like an F, my reconstructed mouth can say this phrase better than any other: “No pain, no gain.”

After Amiya comes Dr. Rasfalian-Mapletree, the Speech Therapist. She jokes that once I can say her last name ten times quickly, her work will be done. She lets me call her Rachel for now. It still comes out sounding more like “
Way-chell
,” but I am getting better with my Rs.

We begin by exercising my speaking muscles.

“Smile, kiss, smile, kiss, smile, kiss,” she says, and I do it over and over again, until the muscles around my mouth ache. Now I know how campaigning politicians and new brides must feel.

Dr. Rasfalian-Mapletree crosses one shapely, nylon-sheathed leg over the other, smoothes the skirt of her trim-fitting professional's suit, then pushes her fashionable glasses back up her nose with her slender fingers. She does this every minute or so, since her nose isn't much more than a pointed bump on her face, like a Disney cartoon girl.

“The rain in Spain flows mainly on the plain,” she says, like she's speaking along to a ticking metronome.

I repeat:
“Da wain ids Pain fwows mainny aw da pwain.”

“Good!” she says. “Better every day. You've been doing your exercises, haven't you?”

I nod.

“Say it!”

“Yess. I ‘ave.”

“Good. Good. This week I want you to concentrate particularly on the tongue and lip exercises for the letters L and H,” she says, somehow making perfect enunciation completely sexy, “and I want you to put some extra effort into practicing the compounds ST and CR, and the blends CH, TH, and SH.”

Of course I will put in the extra effort.
Everything
since the accident has taken extra effort. It has been a full-time job just retraining myself to do all of the things most six-year-olds take for granted, like chewing, swallowing, using a pencil, holding cups and utensils without dropping them on the floor.

“Now, one more time,” Dr. Rasfalian-Mapletree says, “
The
rain in Spain flows mainly on the plain.”

I love her as much as I love Amiya, although for rather different reasons. At the end of our session, she says, “I've got another book for you,” and she hands me
The Metamorphosis
and Other Stories
, by the Czech writer Franz Kafka.

“Szank-you”
I say. Talking with my new face feels like running a marathon in somebody else's unlaced work boots.

“You're welcome,” she says, then adds, “You could exercise by mouthing the words as you read.”

I watch her legs as she leaves the room, then I raise the back of my hospital bed and read Kafka for a while; Dr. Rasfalian-Mapletree is the sort of woman who could hand me any book, and I would read it. She has been the star of several vivid, pleasant dreams.
Smile, kiss, smile, kiss.

Kafka's stark style matches the grey sky outside the window. “
May I kiss you then?”
he writes.
“On this miserable paper? I
might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”
When my face is numb from mouthing Kafka's translated words, I put the book aside and watch the snowflakes float past the frosted window pane, lit like falling campfire sparks by the orange streetlights in the hospital parking lot.

Bob the PCA wakes me when he arrives with my dinner on a tray. Bob used to spoon-feed me like a baby bird, but now I can do it myself. I hardly ever drop the spoon anymore.

There is a chocolate cupcake on my tray, with white frosting, and a single candle plunged into the centre. Today must be December twenty-first. The Winter Solstice. The official first day of winter. My nineteenth birthday. How did he know? I didn't realize it myself. I've lost track of time.

“Your mother sends her love and regrets,” Bob says. “She was on her way here, but had to turn back because of the snow.”

“Izz okay,”
I say,
“shoon ah weel go vishit her myshelf.”

There is something new on the bedside table, placed between Michael's pocket watch, my jackknife, and the photo of Adeline: the 1983 silver dollar that the old mayor gave Dennis when he turned thirteen. He must have left it while I was sleeping.

After I've finished eating my cupcake, I lie back on my hospital bed and hook my hands and feet under the rails, flexing my muscles against the cold metal.

Every day, my muscles get a little bit stronger.

Pull, pull, pull, rest.

Every day, my face hurts a bit less and heals a little bit more.

Smile, kiss, smile, kiss.

Every day, my new voice becomes clearer, more confident.

The rain in Spain flows mainly on the plain.

As the snowflakes flutter past the window beside my bed, I flex my muscles until they sting, and then I flex them some more.

Very soon I will be able to walk, talk, eat, drink, and do everything else that other normal human beings do, and then they will set me free among them. Very soon I will leave this place with the important things in my pockets: Dennis' dollar, Michael's watch, Adeline's photograph and the old mayor's jackknife. Very soon I will walk back out into the world.

Spring, 2008

Pretty Boy

I
was allowed out of my hospital room a few months ago to move in with Dennis, but I've been obliged to return every other day for my physio exercises, speech therapy, and minor adjustments to my facial reconstructions. Now I stand at the hospital's front desk, with a pen held tightly in my rehabilitated right hand. I sign my name in bold, rolling script:
Philip
Skyler
. My signature looks different than it did before.

This place has been the centre of my life for two years. Two birthdays. Two Christmases. Two New Year's. Eight seasons. Twenty-four months. It feels like it's been a lot longer than that.

Just one more signature, and I am a free man.

I turn to face the people who helped me through it all, my surrogate hospital family. They look at me like they are expecting a valedictory address. Maybe this is what my high school graduation ceremony would have felt like.

“You're a real success story, kid,” Dr. Chin says, gripping my hand. “Take care of that face. It's my greatest work, my
Mona
Lisa
, my
Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
.”

Right after my accident, Dr. Chin requested photos of what I looked like before. He took one look at my Van der Woude Syndrome face, and said, “No, no, no. I can't rebuild your face like that.”

“Can't,” I asked him, “or
won't
?”

“Can't
and
won't,” he said. “I'm not sure I can actually reconstruct the bridge of your nose or your jaw like that, and I won't try it, anyway. My reputation as a plastic surgeon would be ruined. So, I'll run some computer simulations, based on your own cranial structure, and the facial features of your parents and siblings, to see what your face
should
have looked like.”

For a long time I resisted. I had told Adeline that I would
never
get my face changed. But since Dr. Chin steadfastly refused to make me Monkeyface again, eventually I gave in, and I handed Dr. Chin the photo of the male's face from the sculpture of The Lovers in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Adeline had once said,
“The beautiful man is what your soul looks like
to me.”

So, I'm leaving the hospital with my original big brown eyes and mess of dark hair, but the rest of my face is new and different, like I've traded in an old jalopy for a new Ferrari. I now look a bit like each of my brothers, a bit like my mother, a bit like the old mayor, and a bit like a sculpture of a guy who reminded Adeline of a 1940s Hollywood Movie Star. It's not a bad blend.

Dr. Chin finally releases my hand from his confident grip. “I should put your face on my calling card,” he says.

Bob the PCA also shakes my hand and says, “The world's your oyster, kid.” Then he says, “Aw, what the hell,” and he hugs me, his palms slapping against my back like wings flapping.

Amiya embraces me like I'm a soldier son about to head off to a faraway war. She says nothing, just sniffles a few times. I tell her, “I'll miss you, too, Amiya.”

Dr. Rasfalian-Mapletree slides her arms around me. It's the first time I've been this close to her. Her hair smells like mint leaves and rose petals; my new nose lets so much more through than the previous cartilage-free version did. “Thanks, Rachel,” I say. “For everything.”

“That voice of yours is going to melt their hearts,” she says.

“This voice of
yours
,” I say back to her.

“Philip,” she says, “you can go anywhere from here. And you should.”

I thank each of them once more for all they've done, and then I walk out onto University Avenue. The leg muscles that Amiya helped rebuild flex beneath me, and there is a tight feeling in the stomach that Bob the PCA once fed. I hold Dr. Chin's chin up high. I will carry them with me always. I smile at the world, saying “Good afternoon” to people I pass on the sidewalk, feeling Dr. Rasfalian-Mapletree's speech therapy on my lips and tongue.

On King Street I stop at the Beer Bistro for Steak Frites and a few fine beverages. When I haven't been at the hospital, I've spent much of the past few months here; Dennis still uses his apartment to film new “sequences” for his website, and I haven't been eager to witness that again. I savour the hoppy bitterness of a Czech Pilsner, then the roasty malt body of an English ale. By twilight, I'm into the sweet, complex flavour of a Belgian Trappist Ale, more grateful than ever that my sense of taste has survived intact.

I wander back to the apartment, swaying slightly, taking a long, ambling route, looking up at the older buildings of stone and brick, up farther at the sharp-edged towers of silvery glass, then straight up at the cottony clouds that reflect the nighttime light of the city. Cutting through a little park just to smell the new spring grass and the freshly turned earth, I roll up my shirt sleeves, let the cool evening air prickle my skin.

I will never take another sensation for granted.

In the morning, after breakfast with Dennis, I meet up with Landon and Arty at this great subterranean pub called
C'est
What
, just up the street from Arty's gallery. Arty tells me that I'm “a gorgeous boy.”

After a couple pints of excellent micro-brewed beer, I cross the street and meet Adeline at The Hot House Café for lunch. By the time we leave to retrace the walk we took together two years ago, I'm in a similarly intoxicated state.

On University Avenue, we pass
Gumby Goes to Heaven
. This time when we turn up Queen Street, Adeline allows me to lead her into the Eaton Centre, where she helps me pick out some new clothes.

“You need a new look to go with your new face,” she says.

I leave looking something like a well-traveled young professor: grey sports jacket, conservatively striped oxford shirt, city-guy jeans. Two similar outfits are in the bag.

“You look
so
good,” Adeline raves, as she watches our reflections in mirrored glass. “
We
look so good. We look like
somebodies
. Who in Faireville would ever believe it?”