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Bruises, bouquets and dreams impossible
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 4, 2001 Do not snicker. Before I die, I want to look the way Audrey Hepburn did in Sabrina after her trip to Paris. This is the original Sabrina, made almost 50 years ago, that had William Holden and Humphrey Bogart fighting over her, and not the pale sister of a 1995 remake with Julia Ormond, Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear. Just 30 minutes. That's all I want of the elegance that Hepburn had about her always, like a shawl across her shoulders on a cool night. Oh, those tea-length skirts that drew attention to the waist just the right size for a man to put his arm around. Oh, those off-the-shoulder blouses that revealed her tender collarbones, her ballerina neck. Hepburn would have stopped traffic at a crystal slipper ball even if she showed up wearing a black eye with her strapless Edith Head gown. Somebody would rush forward and offer her a chair. Somebody would call her a poor dear and give her a martini to cure her dreadful headache. And some man with character etched into his face and a rough voice edged with a soft touch would be dumbstruck with love. He wouldn't even see the black eye. This is why I hate going to the movies. I never get the gown, the tiny waist or Holden -- so what if the mad crush of my life is dead? It's another sign of my stinking luck. I just get the black eye. I walked into the office the day after New Year's. I kept my head high. Looked straight ahead. Like it was as ordinary as sunrise followed by bacon and eggs to have one eye circled with a rich but revolting magenta bruise as large as Rhode Island. They are not very funny where I work. "So what happened to the guy who lost?" "Everybody's going to think your husband popped you." "You need a pair of Jackie O sunglasses. Please." "Let's see. You ran into Dick Greco. No, Go Davis. Forget it. Sandy Freedman pulled up a stool, jumped on it and she popped you." I wish. What a story that would make, much better than the mundane events that left me wounded. My husband, daughter and I were going to hit the after-Christmas sales. We drive a Jeep Cherokee, a car whose first advantage is its popularity among thieves. Its second advantage is its use as an accidental weapon. We parked in Hyde Park Village. My husband opened the tailgate, set up the stroller. I tucked our daughter in. Then instead of standing right up, I stepped back, body half bent and moved through the space of the open trunk as my husband, who was paying as little attention as I, slammed the tailgate. I saw it coming. Next came a bright white light. Then screaming. I was on the floor, covering my face. My daughter asked if Mommy was dead. For a minute my heart hurt worse than my head. Paramedics appeared. It happens that Tampa's fire chief, Pete Botto, is as crazy about this column as Greco, Davis and Freedman. So the paramedics wondered if it would improve their progress up the Fire Department career ladder if they dumped me somewhere on the Pinellas side of the bay. They had second thoughts and took me to the ER. There I had three hours, at several hundred dollars per hour, to contemplate the lumps swelling big as ostrich eggs on my forehead and the stupid collisions of events that make up a life. You could meet and marry a person in Seattle just as easily as St. Petersburg, a friend said recently. In other words, love is as much of an accident as sticking your head in the trunk at the wrong moment. What? Good is as much a matter of chance as bad? Who wants to look at life with such a cynical eye? Now and then I've been told -- by people using loud tones -- that I am hard headed. Must be. Never bled a drop last week. So don't argue with me. At least in my dreams, I am Sabrina -- fetching as ever but with a black eye patch.
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