Saving Lives

by emmie dee

© 2004

 

"So who's the fox in this picture? Trying to get me jealous, showing me pictures of cute ex-girlfriends?" Diane Marino asked Paul Meyer. The two sat at Paul's desk in his dorm room. Family photos were scattered about. Paul had invited Diane home for Thanksgiving to meet the family, and was using the photos to give her a little background information about his family. The two had only been going together since late September, but they were very interested in one another. Diane was tall and willowy, "five feet thirteen" as she wryly referred to herself, with black hair and an olive complexion. By contrast, Paul was five inches shorter with light brown hair, light tan skin, and a wiry build. This "odd couple" appearance brought comic reactions from others, but they were okay with their physical differences because they were comfortable with themselves and with one another. Both had been considered outsiders in high school, not only because of their physical stature, but for their sharp intellects and quiet, gentle natures. Now, in college, they felt more free to be themselves. Paul and Diane weren't lovers, but they could each genuinely say that they loved the other, and they sometimes talked tentatively about what married life together might be like. Diane's long fingers, tipped with garnet nails, held the photo by the corner for Paul's inspection.

"Which fox? The one on the left?" Paul asked innocently, pointing to a slightly chubby figure.

"No, of course not. You've already told me about Margo, your next door neighbor. She's the one over at the state university, right? She's nice, but I mean this really cute one. She sort of looks like you in a way. Is that your sister?"

"No," Paul grinned. "That's Paulette Meyer. She was me. Uh, I'm her. Uh, so you really think I was foxy?"

"You? That's you? No way!" exclaimed Diane, looking more carefully at the picture. "But yes, those are your eyes under all that makeup, and your smile." Diane's smile had turned to a look of concern. "Paul! Is there something you're trying to tell me? Something I need to know?"

"No, I'm not normally a cross dresser and I don't plan to change my gender," Paul said. "I don't dress up just for my own pleasure. It's kind of fun in a way, I admit, but not enough a turn-on to make it worth the effort. Now you, on the other hand, are all the turn-on I need."

"So, have you been Paulette since this picture was taken?" Diane asked, some worry wrinkles creasing near her eyes.

"Let's see. I've assumed a feminine role two or three times in drama class or drama club in high school or here, a few times at Halloween, once at a costume party, stunt nights, that sort of thing." Diane looked just a little relieved at Paul's answer. "The reason that I wanted you to know about Paulette is that I figured you might hear something about this when my family sat around the Thanksgiving table telling you stories to embarrass me. I wanted you to hear it from me first how I became Paulette two months after my fourteenth birthday. To understand it, let me show you a picture of my real sister, Carrie. She saved my life once—really. And in a small way, Paulette repaid the favor."

Diane put the first photo down and reviewed the next picture her boyfriend handed her. "She's nice, Paul, she looks like a wonderful person. And she really saved your life?"

"Right. Look carefully. Do you see anything unusual about her?" Paul asked.

"Not really. Maybe—her face isn't quite symmetrical, or is it just the angle of the picture?" Diane studied the picture more closely.

"Most people can't really pick that up, consciously anyway, but you're right. Asymmetrical is a good way to describe it. When I was eight, she was fourteen. Carrie was crossing the street to go to a friend's, and I ran out to ask her something—I can't even remember what. A big grey Chevy pickup truck was rumbling through, way faster than the speed limit. She turned and pushed me out of the way—most of the way, anyway, and she kissed the grill. The long and short of it was that I broke my right leg and tore the tendons in my left knee and ankle, but she was much more seriously injured. Diane, it was awful," Paul shuddered. He breathed deeply to regain his composure. "Carrie had a skull fracture and concussion, severe internal injuries, dislocated shoulder and hip, and her pretty face was mangled. Broken cheekbone, broken orbit—eye socket, cracked jaw, some teeth knocked out on that side. You wouldn't easily notice the damage now, she's not obviously disfigured, and they did a great job of mending her, but it was slow. Very slow. There are some tiny scars, thin white lines that you can't really see in the photo. Anyway, she almost lost her life; she took a terrible trauma, to save my life.

"It was a long recuperation for both of us, especially for her," Paul continued the story. "She was in the hospital for over a month, and then kept going back for more surgeries to repair her face or other parts of her body. I kept going back for therapy on my leg. The rest of the time we were at home together. We bonded. We became much closer emotionally than most any brother or sister could be. My older brother Patrick, three years older than me, is a nice guy, but we were never really, really close like Carrie and I were. And she never threw it in my face that she had saved my life, never tried to make me feel guilty. Whenever anybody would mention how brave she was, or what a sacrifice she made, Carrie would just smile and say, 'He's worth it.'" Paul wiped a tear from his eye, and Diane noticed her own eyes dampening.

"So, am I to guess that you played dress up during your recuperation?" Diane asked, puzzled.

"No, no, not at all," Paul said. "Nothing like that. I just wanted you to understand how grateful I am to Carrie, and how close we are. I'd do just about anything to help her.

Like I said, Paulette didn't come along until six years later when I was fourteen, and Carrie was nineteen. Anyway, during those months after the accident, we read together, we played games, we talked and talked, and sometimes we just sat there and hung out. We developed good imaginations, and we would make up stories, or pretend to be undercover agents or movie stars or things like that. No dress-up, or anything. Well, there was that time when fruit-flavored lipstick was popular among teenage girls, and one day she was putting some on and I asked how it tasted. So she put some on me. I fussed a little because that seemed like the appropriate response, and she helped me rub it off."

Diane interrupted. "Would you like to taste my lipstick, Paul?" They leaned over and kissed, warmly and deeply. "Now," she said. "Back to your story. That must have been terrible, to be injured so badly, to be cooped up inside all the time when you could have been out playing. And even worse for Carrie, losing her looks."

"It was tough, but we had each other. Mom was a great help, of course, she kept us from feeling too sorry for ourselves with just the right mix of toughness, humor, and compassion," Paul answered. "And we both appreciated the gift of being alive—we still do. Neither one of us takes life for granted. Our faith made a difference, too. Hey, but now I'm getting preachy."

"Aren't you considering becoming a preacher?" Diane asked with a smile. "Isn't preachy okay?"

"I just don't want to take myself too seriously, you know? And I guess that I'm still trying to discern my call. Preacher, teacher, maybe something totally different—God only knows, I guess." Paul pondered. "Those months of healing made me patient. I'll sort it out, or it'll get sorted out for me, I guess. But anyway, I was just telling you all that so you'd know why I would do anything for Carrie. Oh, by the way, back during the recuperation is when Margo got in the habit of stopping by our house. We were the two smartest kids in our grade school class, and neighbors, as well, so she would bring my homework by, and would stay and visit with us. She became almost another sister. But let me move on to the year Paulette's picture was taken. I have two words for what kicked it all off when I was fourteen—cutthroat Monopoly®."

"Huh?" Diane asked.

"Yeah. Mom's a nurse, and she worked nights then. Dad hasn't been in the picture since I was three. Carrie at that time was in beauty school, studying to be a cosmetologist, and would stay home evenings to keep me and my brother in line. We went a little crazy sometimes with board games. We'd play to kill, and we revised the rules. You probably know the one where you put all the fines and such that would normally go to the bank into the middle, and whoever landed squarely on Go would collect it. That, plus we formed these little alliances against one another, and a whole lot of other stuff. Competitive wasn't the word—bloodthirsty was. Like, you know, we were pretty decent to one another except when we were playing the game. Aggression City. Plotting Central. Once in awhile we would make bets—not with money, but taking one another's chores, doing something stupid if we lost, things like that. The first person to go broke would pay off the winner—so after one of us went bankrupt, the other two would play on forever for the right to put the squeeze on the loser—who would have all that time wondering whose penalty will be the worst.

"One day in May, Carrie and my brother Matt were after each other—usual turf wars between the dutiful bossy older sister and the seventeen year old guy with a big head—and so they planned to take their aggressions out on the Monopoly® board. They invited me to play, too."

Diane murmured. "I think I can see where this is going."

"Yeah," Paul agreed. "Carrie said that the loser would get a makeover—that she would get to practice on him—nothing permanent, but other than that she could do whatever she wanted. I went for the loser doing my chores. Matt said that if I lost he would give me a crew cut, like his—I had sort of a bushy-headed surfer-looking mop at the time—and that if Carrie lost and he won, she would have to get a Big Hair style and dye it red. Carrie protested that this was too awful and too permanent, but she agreed to do it for six weeks if she lost, as long as her makeover model would spend one night a week for six weeks letting Carrie make him beautiful if she won. And she would pierce his ears, if she could get mom's permission. We all agreed. A six-week penalty—that was the biggest blood we'd ever gone for. We were all good, so the game was pretty evenly balanced. Carrie had a slight lead when we had to set the game aside to go to bed. The next day we told mom what we were up to. Mom, understand, is really, really big on mutual respect, on treating each family member like we'd want to be treated. So she said that if were willing to let that happen to each of us, it was okay with her—but if any of us gave the other person a hard time about it, we'd wish we hadn't. If Carrie won, for example, and one of us boys would tease the other or tell other people about it, that boy would be Carrie's next model.

"The game continued well into the next night. Carrie's lead grew and Matt was in third place and the bundle in the middle had grown into a heap when Matt landed on Go. That swung the tide, and I slowly but surely started losing ground. Carrie was disappointed and did what she could to help me, since Matt was her intended target, but it was no use. Matt chortled a lot and tried to rub it in with little stuff that wouldn't get him in trouble with mom, and Carrie just said to me, 'It'll be okay, Paul. I'll be nice to you. It will help me in my studies, and we can play like we used to during pretend time,' Since I was fourteen, not eight, that sounded a bit childish. But this was Carrie, and if I could help her out, it'd be worth a little embarrassment. Matt had a job on Friday nights, so we agreed that each Friday would be Salon Night."

"She must be pretty good to get you looking like you did in the picture," Diane said softly.

"She is good at what she does. And she has a nice manner, easy to talk to. I think she ends up being like a psychologist to her customers. But what you see in the picture came further down the road. The first Salon Night, she had me wash my hair before we started. At first, I was so nervous going into her room and sitting at her vanity that I faced away from the mirror. Maybe I could ignore it all. She pinned a towel over my shoulders. Like I said, my hair was really floppy then, so she dried it with a hair dryer, brushing it out as she went. Once in awhile, she'd snip a bit with scissors, just to even out ragged edges. And she'd talk, just nice conversation, how proud she was of me, how brave and nice I was for helping her, generally making me feel good about myself. And I remember mentioning to her about my Confirmation verse," Paul said.

"Confirmation verse?" Diane asked.

"Yeah. In my denomination, most of as are baptized when we're babies and we confirm the baptismal vows—make them our own—after a year's class when we're fourteen. It's a big thing. When we get confirmed, the pastor lays his hand on our foreheads and prays for the Spirit, then gives us our own Bible verse, our Confirmation verse. We're supposed to keep it the rest of our lives, and use it as a guide. He drew them by lot, he said. Mine was John 15:13: 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' So I told Carrie that when I thought of that verse, I was supposed to be thinking of Jesus, which I did, but that I also thought of her and how she risked her life to save mine. I was getting kind of sloppily sentimental, I admit, but really, Carrie taught me what real love—God's love—was all about. By this time, she was working through my hair with a curling iron. Finally, she smiled in satisfaction and had me turn around. I almost stumbled over the seat. It was my hair, but it wasn't mine. It was fluffed and waved, and looked, well, lovely. She asked 'May I?' and clipped a fake braid into the side so it hung down over my shoulder, like I'd had long hair previously and she'd cut everything but the braid, with a few little beads at the end."

Diane laughed. "I'd have loved to have seen that!"

Paul smiled. "It got better—or worse, depending on what side of the lipstick you're on. She told me to look up, then grabbed me by the eyelash and started tracing eyeliner. Then mascara, then eye shadow—nothing bright and garish, but subtle. She traced around my lips with a lip pencil, then handed me a lipstick and told me to stay inside the lines. I did. 'Wow, I don't look like Paul any more,' I said, staring at my image. That didn't look like a boy in the mirror, not at all. 'You can be Paulette, my fashion model/spy/heiress,' Carrie told me. It took some scrubbing to get everything off by bedtime, but the next morning I was just another guy hanging out on Saturday with friends. My buds told me all about the movie they'd seen the night before—some action flick—and asked me what I did. 'Nothing much. Just hung around at home.'"
"So what happened next time," Diane asked with a bemused smile.

"The next Friday, she handed me a pair of denim shorts, real short, zipper on side, and a yellow tee with a few flowers intertwined with a ribbon as design. They were old clothes of hers that she had dug out of a storage box. 'It'll help put us both into the mood,' she told me. I showered and washed my hair, and slipped into the outfit. It was kind of weird, I guess, but us model/spy/heiresses had to put up with that kind of thing. This time I watched from the beginning. She dried my hair part of the way then used a curling iron with a smaller cylinder, rolling each section of hair into tight little ringlets. I was a little restless just sitting there and fidgeted a little. She said, 'Pick a color of nail polish and do your nails while you're waiting.' I chose a coral that wouldn't be too vivid, and started daubing. My left hand came out fine, but I was a little clumsy painting my right. She said to continue, so I slipped off my shoes, tucked my knee up by my ear on the vanity bench, and did my toes while she curled away. Carrie combed furiously at the curls, but kept them tight, and this time she added a yellow headband, to go with the tee shirt, I guess. She tried a couple of colors of blush and eye shadow that didn't seem to work for her, and finally got the combination she wanted. It was subtle again, but in the process, it was obvious that it was Paulette in the mirror, not Paul. And through it all, of course, we just chattered away, talking about the end of school coming up next week, stuff like that.

"I agreed with her request that she fix me up like for a party the next Friday. It was funny, but as these weeks went on, I would think of it as a game, a little dabble in make-believe, and look forward to it. It was a bit of a kick—not really arousing sexually, but just an off-beat thing to do—stretching the boundaries a bit. Later, in high school, I would go out for drama and I'd feel the same way about 'becoming' a character—looking like an old man, or a mad scientist, or whatever. Are you sure you want to hear all this?" Paul asked uncertainly.

"It's fascinating, Paul, and funny. I'm glad you trust me enough to talk with me about it," Diane said. "And I certainly want to meet your sister."

"You'll love her—she's great," Paul said. "So on Friday number three, I have to wear this mint-green party dress of a shimmery fabric—but for the first part of the evening it just sits there on a hanger, and I have to put on a stuffed bra to fill it out right. Of course before that came the panty hose. She doesn't spend so much time on my hair, but it looks sort of similar to the first week, just nice and full of body until she pins the fall to it. For awhile I feel all this hair down my bare back, but she swoops it up over my head into an updo, making big curls and spraying them into place. She sticks press-on nails on my fingers, and has me paint them a metallic green to match the dress. My makeup, of course, is less subtle and more dramatic, and she puts a touch of glitter on my cheek. She asks me then about piercing my ears. There's a little wrinkle on my earlobe, and she says that she can put the hole there, so it wouldn't be visible if I didn't want to wear the earring on the right side. School was out now, so not that many people would see me. And boys were starting to wear earrings in both ears then—not common, but not unheard of, either. I sort of wanted to, but sort of didn't.

"Just then, the front door opens, and Margo walks in, calling for Carrie. 'Guess what, Carrie? Mom finally gave me permission to get my ears pierced. Can we do it now before she changes her mind?' she calls out. We've a small house, and it isn't too much distance from the front door to Carrie's bedroom. Carrie rushes to the hallway, closing the door behind her. Carrie's trying to put her off, but I remember something. Margo has trusted me with some pretty serious secrets in her life. If I try to hide this from her and she discovers it, she'll be angry and disappointed. She'd be more likely to tell somebody if she found out that way then if I just was honest with her. So I call out and tell Carrie to let Margo come in. Margo walks in, sees a young woman with in her underwear and pantyhose and a serious updo, and looks around to see where I am. Then she does a double take and starts laughing. Now Margo is a serious gal, she doesn't laugh easily, but when she laughs, it's a serious laugh. She's gasping and wheezing and pointing at me. Carrie and I can't help but laugh, too. We're howling, and Margo is suddenly serious. 'What in the name of high heaven is going on here?' she asks. 'Four words,' I say, 'Cutthroat Monopoly.® I lost.' So Carrie tells her that she was using me for a guinea pig, and Margo is jealous because I'm so cute, and we laugh some more. Then Margo asks to see me in the dress, and Carrie puts it on me. I wobble around in some high heels that don't fit, and we laugh some more." By this time Paul was laughing so hard he kept interrupting his own story, and Diane was caught up in the hilarity, too. "So anyway, here we are, me in my prom dress and Margo in her jeans and tee, sitting together on the side of Carrie's bed, and she pierces our ears. She found a wrinkle on my earlobe to help hide the extra hole. And Margo and I are saying we'll always be girlfriends together because we bonded by getting our ears pierced."

Diane looked quizzical. "Should I be jealous of Margo, then?"

"Margo would have been sexually attracted to me only if I had been born as Paulette. That was the secret she trusted me with. She's come out since she went to the university, so I can tell you. We're close friends, but not that way." Diane nodded gravely. Then she smiled, walked and stood behind and to the right of Paul and took his earlobe in her fingers and looked closely at it.

"Looking for the hole?" he asked.

"Yes. Just curious. Oh, here it is. Does it still go all the way through, or has it grown over?"

Paul responded. "It probably is still open, but I'm not sure. Last time I used it I was a gypsy fortune teller at the campus carnival last year. A friend in the theatre department helped fix me up, and nobody knew it was me." As he spoke, he felt something small and metallic touch his earlobe.

"I'll go slow," Diane said. "If it hurts, I'll stop right away." The earring slid through and Paul felt her put the back on it. Then he felt her unattach the stud that he had in his left ear and pull it out. Quickly, another earring took its place. Diane walked back to her chair with one stud in her ear. "We girlfriends swap out earrings every now and then," she said with a smile. "I'm a visual person, and I thought it would be fun to see a little more of Paulette as you're talking about her."

Paul reached up and ran his finger down the earring, feeling the fine chain that ended in a tiny golden bow. Diane's height and long neck enabled her to wear long dangly earrings well. On Paul, they reached nearly to his collarbone. He smiled. "Sorry I don't have the stuff to finish the illusion," he said.

"That's all right. You look cute enough as it is," Diane responded. "Continue, Paulette."

"Not much more to say about that night. It was just sitting and talking and then me getting back to my old self. School was out by then, so I could wear the studs most of the time without too many people seeing me and raising their eyebrows. Oh, yeah. One other important thing that night. Carrie had a practical final exam coming up at the beauty school—a makeover that she had to give. She asked Margo to be her subject—victim—uh, client. I was surprised that Margo was thrilled. She usually didn't pay much attention to her looks, like it was beneath her intellectually, but I think that really she was insecure about that part of her life. That evening was our third session. The next wasn't much—she just played with different styles of makeup and wiped them off. There was only one more. She put old-fashioned rollers in my hair and asked me to sleep overnight in them, and then combed them out into a wavy hairdo in the morning—no dress-up with it, or anything. My brother was out that weekend on a fishing trip, so only Carrie and mom saw me with all that hardware in my hair. Since it was an overnight, it took the place of my sixth session."

"So that was all?" Diane asked. "But none of those describe how you look in the photo."

"All of that was what I had to endure for losing the game," I explained. "But a month later, Margo came to the door with a grim look on her face and asked to talk to Carrie. She told Carrie that her uncle in Denver had died unexpectedly, and her family was leaving the next day for the long drive out. That meant that Margo couldn't be Carrie's makeover client the next Friday. Carrie was nice about it, and told Margo that her family was more important, but when Margo left I could tell that my sister was really upset. 'I could just die,' she said. 'Isn't there someone else?' I asked. All of the women she would normally ask had to work. The only backup was to use someone off the street, and that had its own set of problems. And she just felt better emotionally having a friend do it. 'How about Paulette?' I asked. 'I'd be willing to do it for you, Carrie. I'd love to.' She said how sweet I was, but explained that unlike our Friday evenings together, this would involve some major league work. Each person was given a list of things to do during the day, and they could involve acrylic nails, perms or coloring, things that you couldn't just wash off or shampoo out quickly. 'Even if I have to look like a girl for awhile, I'm still willing,' I told her, even though I was scared to death. She explained to me that most of the stuff could be undone, though I might have to get my hair cut short afterwards to get the perm or coloring out. The nails could be trimmed back, but they couldn't be taken off completely. She said we should sleep on it and make sure, but the next day I was still willing. She saved my life, so in some small way I could save hers."

"So that's where the Paulette in the picture came from," Diane said. "No wonder she looks so great—not forgetting of course, that the original package is pretty cute to begin with."

"We decided that I would be Paulette from the beginning of Thursday morning, and that I would stay as Paulette until Sunday afternoon. That was partly because we had a trip planned to Grandma's as soon as my makeover was complete—the three of us, anyway. Matt was off on another fishing trip, thank heavens. And mom had told Grandma about me doing this for Carrie, and Grandma had insisted that her new daughter come see her. She's sort of an aging hippie, a real free spirit, you understand, and enough of a feminist to think that Paulette might be an improvement over Paul. Puberty hadn't really hit me yet. I was just barely five feet tall, still waiting for my growth spurt that would take me to my current towering five-eight. I didn't have whiskers then, and no body hair except for my armpits and a few scraggly hairs on my chest. They went first. Carrie though that pink would be a good color for me, so for Thursday I wore hot pink shorts and a sleeveless top, pink flowers on a white background. I did my own nails, hot pink, of course, both hands and feet. Carrie did my hair pretty much like the first time, except this time she gave me bangs—long ones, curling down over my eyelashes, so she could trim them up the next day. My earrings were pink plastic bows, a little larger than the metal bows on the ends the ones I'm wearing now, thanks to you, and barrettes held pink ribbons in the sides of my hair. After that, we drove to another suburb and had a girl's night out with dinner and a chick flick movie. All the time, they would whisper pointers for me, so that I would seem authentic but wouldn't try too hard the next day. I even wore a nightgown that night.

"So Carrie Meyer and her niece, Paulette Hardin—that's my mom's maiden name—went to this smelly, busy beauty college and I wondered what I was getting myself into. But I trusted Carrie, and tried to smile sweetly and demurely as I was introduced to all these people in smocks. Carrie had brought me an outfit for the occasion—I don't have the picture here, but I'll show you at home. It was pink, of course, and I think she called it a shortall—bib coveralls on top but with short legs to better show off my cute legs, right down to their painted toenails peeking through the sandals.

"I was really nervous that the list would include a curly perm, but it wasn't quite that bad. It was to be a completely different hairstyle, with three shades of streaking throughout. Then a facial, pedicure, acrylic nails, and a cosmetic makeover. Paulette was to be a glamour babe. So Carrie washed my hair and explained to me what would be happening. She decided that since my hair was light brown, the streaking would begin with a very dark brown, go to almost white, and then finish with an intermediate blonde in each section. She clipped and clipped on my hair, and that big shapeless mass became prettier and prettier. The streaking took forever, as she pasted color on practically every other hair and wrapped them in foil packs. The facial was new and totally different, as Carrie covered my eyes, leaned me back, and put goop on my face. I could feel her working on my nails, roughing them up and adhering the acrylics. I was almost asleep when I felt her working on my toenails, shaping them nicely. When she washed the stuff off my face, my nails were now long and glowing with a highly glittery reflective pink polish. She worked on my face, making sure my lips looked a little larger in dark pink, that my cheekbones were highlighted, and that my eyes were gorgeous. Unfortunately, a faculty member told her then that she needed to wax my eyebrows. Talk about panic! She told me that she would be very careful about it and that nobody would notice, but I still worried. And it hurt! They looked nice, but would they look ridiculous on Paul? It turns out that if anybody noticed later, they didn't say anything. So when Carrie was done with her handiwork, I got to see myself as this foxy chick, Paulette, and I couldn't help but hug my big sister. Of course, she passed with flying colors. Afterwards, we had another meal out to celebrate, and drove forty miles to my grandmother's house. We had fun playing dress-up the next day—that's when they took this picture. I almost hated to see it end, but it was a relief in a way just to be plain old Paul again. I guess that's about it."

"You were so good to do that for your sister," Diane said softly. "But it sounds like you really got into the spirit of things and had a good time of it. But one question."

"Yes?"

"Will I get a chance to see Paulette sometime? I think that I'd like to meet her."

Paul smiled, cocked his head, fluttered his eyelids, and tapped the delicate chain on his earring. "Maybe. If you want. Sometime."

  

  

  

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