Magnetism Read online

Page 4


  ‘You need to get more organised, honey,’

  Finally, I remember that I put the ticket in the glove compartment because I was worried about losing it. ‘I’m organised just fine, Mom. Do you want to fucking walk from here?’ I scoop the stuff back into the bag.

  ‘Honey, you’re very cranky lately.’

  And of all the criticism she’s aimed at me so far this week this is the worst because it’s true. Just like the Seven Dwarves of Menopause in a cartoon someone put up in the ladies’ room at work, I’ve been bitchy, itchy, sweaty, sleepy, bloated, forgetful and a bit psycho lately. I’ve not had a period now for six months. I’m sure my OB-GYN will be happy to confirm it, at the cost of a vial of blood and a hundred and fifty bucks, but what’s the point? It’s perfectly natural. I just need to accept it, and ride it out. In silence, I put the ticket in the slot and the arm lifts to let us out.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I do appreciate you coming to take care of me.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, it’s not you.’

  ‘I know, honey.’ She pauses and sighs. ‘You know, he thinks I’m terrific for my age, and if he thinks that, I could tell him a thing or two!’

  ‘He thought I needed a peel. Do you think I should have a peel?’

  ‘At least a peel. You’re looking your age lately.’

  ‘God, Mom!’

  ‘I’m your mother,’ she says. ‘My job is to tell you the truth. Nowadays there’s no reason to look your age.’

  The blood workup goes okay, and the nurse is happy with Mom’s weight and blood pressure. The operation is going to be done at Memorial Hospital and we are supposed to be there by six a.m. It’s not easy for either of us to wake up that early, but I’m up at four, and Mom makes an unusual heroic effort, which means we manage to arrive only half an hour late.

  I’ve brought the sunglasses and scarf that the leaflet recommended and I put these in a drawer near her bed. She’s scheduled to share a room but the other bed is empty, so she swaps the charts to get the window view. As worried as I am, Mom is in good spirits. When they come with the pre-med she gulps down the pills with one of those small paper cups of water, and makes a joke about getting a legal high, but all I’m thinking afterwards is how small she looks lying there, waiting.

  A few minutes later the anaesthetist comes to see her. He seems competent – asks some good questions and actually looks at her when she replies. Then, her voice changes. She’s slurring her words as she tells him that he’s handsome, that he must have to beat the ladies off, and that just to have his hands on her makes having this operation worth it, whatever it was costing. ‘What’s your cut?’ she says just before she suddenly falls asleep.

  I burst into tears.

  ‘She’ll be okay. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of your grandmother,’ he says, and I don’t correct him. I tell him thanks.

  Chartaine comes to see her next. This time his impressive tuft of hair is contained in a scrub cap. When he sees she’s already asleep he rather sweetly strokes her head, as though he really cares. I think about how she should have had her roots done before this. It’s going to be a month before she can get another colour on. She might have to dig out her wig or something. ‘Just checking,’ he says, ‘does your mother have any false teeth, or bridges?’

  ‘No, she’s got good teeth.’

  ‘Why am I not surprised? She takes good care of herself.’

  I blurt out, ‘I think I’ll have a peel while I’m in town.’

  ‘Well, one thing at a time. Let’s get your mom’s face fixed.’ He picks up her wrist and she wriggles a bit, but remains asleep. ‘Steady heart.’

  ‘She won’t look like a freak, will she? She’ll still look like herself?’

  ‘She’ll look more like herself. Muscles sag; skin loses its tone.’ He glances at my chest. ‘Breasts drop.’ Now he looks at my belly and I reflexively suck it in. ‘After kids, without surgery, a woman’s stomach is never the same again. It’s like that. Things take a toll. Life takes a toll.’ He sighs like he understands about how that might be, about how everything might be, all the disappointments, and how time runs out on you nearly every day. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring. He’s probably divorced. He’s a doctor. He must see crap all the time. No wonder they have the highest suicide rate.

  I let my abs relax. I whisper, ‘I’ve never had kids. I couldn’t.’

  He nods knowingly and looks me straight in the eye and says, ‘Well, you’d have made a great mother.’ He stops speaking and we look at each other. He doesn’t drop his gaze. He squeezes my shoulder and says, ‘Hey, we’ll do that peel and you’ll be fantastic and, meantime, she’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing. I promise.’ Finally he tells me what we already know, that she’s got to stay in for two nights and then she’ll be home.

  While the surgery is going on, I go down to the gift shop and choose a bouquet of flowers for her room for when she wakes up, and a couple of magazines and some chocolates. There really isn’t much choice in the store. The box I choose is heart-shaped and all the chocolates inside are strawberry-flavoured. It probably a leftover from Valentine’s Day but they are still in date. I don’t like strawberry, but Mom will.

  The surgery should only take two hours, so when it runs beyond three hours I’m getting a bit antsy. ‘Is my mom in recovery yet?’ I ask at the desk.

  ‘No, they let us know when they go into recovery, so I’ll have to say, not yet.’

  ‘Has something gone wrong?’

  ‘No, they let us know when something goes wrong, so I’ll have to say, probably not.’

  ‘Can you call them?’

  ‘Ma’am, the operating theatres are very busy environments. They’ve got a whole lot of people to take care of and need to devote their attention to that, not to phone calls. I have to say I think we need to let them do their job.’

  ‘What’s your name? Because I have to say – ’ I point ‘ – you are not wearing a name badge.’

  ‘Susan.’

  I look at my watch, ‘Twenty minutes, and I’ll be back, Susan. If anything has happened to her and you’ve not told me, there will be questions. I’ll want answers.’

  But, before another five minutes is up, a nurse comes to tell me that Mom is in recovery and will be back to the room in an hour. He tells me that she’s okay, done really, really well and that he’ll be with us to go through the information on aftercare around four o’clock.

  I eat the entire contents of the box of chocolates I bought for Mom in the next ten minutes. I shovel them into my mouth and gobble them up – one after the other. I feel sick from all the sugar and fat, and also plain disgusted with myself. A facial peel won’t deal with an extra twenty pounds of weight. I’ll need lipo. I’ve got to operate some self-control. When I’ve finished, I remove the evidence by dumping the empty box at the nurses’ station.

  She’s home three days later and looks dreadful, but this, we’re told, is to be expected. ‘Do you think I’m too old to have a facelift?’ she asks as soon as we get in the car.

  ‘Mom, it’s already done.’

  ‘Do you think it worked?’

  She’s had her eyelids and the bags under her eyes done at the same time as the facelift. Even so, her actual eyes are visible, but the rest of her face is covered with bandages. She could be a stranger under there, except for the voice, and the fact that she’s wearing my mother’s clothes. ‘Sure, of course it worked.’ Then I know for sure she’s my mom because she asks if ‘this time’ I’ve remembered where I put the ticket.

  When we get home, the phone is ringing. Brenda is the first person to call to find out how Mom is doing. Brenda is one of her longstanding Mah Jongg buddies. They’re a group of widows – each as obsessive about the game as the other – and I’ve figured out that when Mom won’t say where she is, she’s playing Mah Jongg. The tick-tick-tick sound of the tiles would drive me nuts. Mom tried to teach me a couple of years ago, but declared I wasn’t up to it, and she never tried again.r />
  ‘She’s doing great,’ I say. This makes Mom shake her head maniacally. ‘Well, not that good really, I guess,’ I add – puzzled. Mom starts nodding. ‘But we’re trusting that she’ll improve.’ The shaking starts again. ‘That she might improve. We’re bearing up,’ I finish. Mom nods her approval at my lies.

  Brenda sounds concerned and says everyone is missing her and that I should wish her well.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me what you’d told them, before I had to field this shit?’ I ask as soon as I hang up the phone. ‘I feel like a midget playing basketball.’

  ‘I didn’t tell them what kind of surgery I needed.’

  ‘Brenda knows you’ve had a facelift. She’s the one who recommended Chartaine. She’s your friend.’

  ‘By the time I get back, I’ll just look rested. We don’t need to talk about it,’ she says. ‘No one wants to discuss plastics.’ And that’s the final word.

  Gus, Mom’s friend from her church, comes to do the work in the garden on schedule, at two o’clock. At the sound of the doorbell she goes to hide in her bedroom with the curtains drawn and I have to make out that she’s having a rest because, of course, she doesn’t want him to know either.

  Even if she is determined not to see him, with Gus around, technically, she’s not alone, so I take the opportunity to go out to the store. Now she’s back I’ve got a list of stuff to get and I need to get her Vicodin prescription filled.

  The displays in the drugstore are now all about the fact that Hallowe’en is only ten days away. There are decorations to choose from and countless bags of treat-sized candies: mini Hershey bars, bite-size Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Tootsie Rolls and we should stock up. I get a sign to put on the lawn, which is a ghost wearing a top hat that says Trick or Treaters Welcome Here and pile bags of the candies into the shopping basket.

  Ten minutes later, on my search for the pharmacy counter, I find myself stuck in feminine products. In Aisle C there appears to be a stepped graduation from bright glamorous boxes of various types of tampons one end of the aisle, to duller boxes of sanitary towels, to disposable douches, to feminine hygiene washes and wipes, to incontinence underwear (male and female) and bed pads.

  It makes me feel ancient, knowing that I can remember the time before Tampax was suitable for girls, and before old ladies gave up stockings for pantyhose. Sanitary belts, garter belts, girdles: all those contraptions womankind discarded only a few years before I was scheduled to wear them. No self-respecting woman would ever wear a girdle now – but what’s different about Spanx, really?

  This aisle of horror ends at a T-junction opposite the pharmacy counter, with shelves there stuffed full of suppositories, boxed enemas, jumbo containers of Metamucil, Ex-Lax pills, other constipation treatments and then haemorrhoid creams, wipes and aerosol foams.

  I drop Mom’s pain med prescription to be filled and then, while waiting pick up some eye ointment that Chartaine suggested too, I wander around the store.

  Mom likes Fresca; there’s a special offer on, so I get two dozen cans. I get a copy of People magazine, and this month’s Reader’s Digest, and a copy of the National Enquirer, which I begin to read when I return and have to sit and wait for the pharmacist to do the final check of her tablets. On page three there’s an article, with pictures, about men in China who developed seizures from playing Mah Jongg, and another one on page six about botched plastic surgery: ‘My surgeon turned me into a werewolf’.

  I read it from cover to cover while I’m waiting and then decide not to buy this trashy magazine. Finally, I get a DVD for us to watch. On the way home I stop at Safeway and buy some cheese and bagels, popcorn and a bag of ring donuts. I can’t think what else to get. We can order takeout if Mom wants different.

  Gus is just finishing. He’s put some new mulch under the trees in the front yard, and has weeded the flowerbed by the driveway. The lawn looks good. He’s set up the sprinkler and tells me that I should switch it off at nine o’clock this evening. Even as I listen to what he’s saying, I’m trying to remember to remember it. ‘Say hi to your mom,’ he says as I wave him goodbye.

  1408, the film, is good. Of course, it’s a horror film and we share a bottle of wine and three bags of popcorn. I tell Mom that she should keep the bandages on until after Hallowe’en so that she can answer the door. I say she looks like a real mummy, and this makes us both giggle even more, but then she keeps saying, ‘No, no,’ and tells me, through gritted teeth, that she can’t laugh because, when she does, it feels like it’s stretching her stitches. I tell her about the Mah Jongg epileptics. She makes these funny desperate squashed laughter sounds, and this increases the hilarity. We haven’t laughed so much together for years.

  When it’s time for bed she says, ‘You should get it done, your face. He’ll take good care of you. It’s okay.’

  A week later I arrive at Chartaine’s office without make-up and feeling optimistic. Even though he tells me to be silent, Chartaine talks throughout the twenty minutes it takes for him to apply the goop. His breath is a bit better, but still a bit bad. He tells me that he enjoyed taking care of my mom and that he likes living in Phoenix for the sun, then right away he says that I’ll have to use a factor 70 sunscreen forever. Did I know that? I mustn’t forget that. He moved here from Ohio then his wife left him for a tennis pro. But he enjoys golf and the golf courses here are the best in the country. Finally, he tells me that the greatest effect from the peel won’t be today or tomorrow but over the next week.

  ‘It’s like a sunburn,’ he says. ‘Your skin will get redder and redder in the next three or four days. That’s normal. I’ll give you some cream to use; don’t use anything else. Nothing else, honey. We’ll follow up in a week and we’ll take it from there.’

  At the very end, as he’s moving the chair to upright again, he says, ‘Fantastic job,’ as if I’ve been doing the treatment, not him. He squeezes my hand and, for the first time in ages I have a surprising and uncomfortable rising sense of excitement that reminds me that, despite the onslaught of menopause, my libido has not entirely checked out. I want him to kiss me. I want him to do more. I can feel my body warm to the idea, and at that thought I think I begin to blush, but I can’t tell, because suddenly my whole face now begins to feel as though it’s on fire.

  By the time Hallowe’en night comes Mom has puffy and purple-ringed eyes, green and yellow bruises on her cheeks and jawline, and the stitches running around the front of her ear and into her hairline are still bright red and angry. The zinc-white ointment I’ve slathered thickly on my face makes it look like I’m wearing a Kabuki mask. There are fewer children than I thought would come and those who do step back when we open the door. A few actually run away.

  We have fifty Tootsie Rolls and a whole bunch of Peanut Butter Cups left over. When we finally switch off the hall light, we decide to finish them off, and down another bottle of wine together. ‘I like him, Mom,’ I say, about Chartaine. ‘It was a good idea. Why not make the best of your looks? Why not?’

  ‘I’m getting my eyebrows tattooed,’ she says. ‘They’ve gone so thin. I want definition.’

  ‘We all want definition,’ I say. ‘I think that’s the main problem.’

  At first I am disappointed to see Chartaine’s assistant, instead of the man himself, for the follow-up appointment. He’s probably off playing golf. She introduces herself and apologises for Chartaine’s absence. I recognise her name – she’s the one who took out some of Mom’s stitches. Marla is very professional, and meticulous as she takes a careful look at my face. She tells me that rosacea, should I develop that, can be fixed with laser treatment, so I mustn’t worry. She can’t tell me the odds for sure, but I get the feeling I should start to plan financially.

  She honestly seems pleased with the results of the peel, and I tell her I am too.

  By the time I leave Phoenix the swelling is going down on Mom’s face and she’s starting to look normal, and better than before. When I return to work, ever
yone says I look refreshed, that the time away did me good. I schedule my next lot of vacation time for Thanksgiving. Mom’s hygienist already has us booked in for tooth-whitening.

  2005

  The Wind

  ‘I’m not coming and you shouldn’t go either. This weekend is five days away and Mississippi is right next door to Louisiana. They’ve evacuated there too. Things are in ruins.’

  I’m at work and we’re on the phone. It’s my mother.

  ‘I have to be there for Patty,’ she says, ‘She’s one of my oldest friends. I really can’t go alone. Please just get the tickets. I’ll pay for yours too. It’ll be fun to be together.’

  ‘Mom, it might mess up her plans if you don’t go to her wedding but she should have cancelled it – or postponed it. My phone hasn’t stopped ringing with people cancelling plans. I’m real busy with rescheduling loads of stuff. She will understand, for sure.’

  ‘She can’t reorganise. She’s got a deadline. They’ve got a honeymoon booked.’

  Then my supervisor, Brad, walks in and I have to pretend that I’m talking to a client instead of to my mom. ‘So, exactly what dates are you looking at?’ I say.

  ‘Friday. Friday 2nd September. We’ll travel that evening and rent a car. The place she’s chosen is real rural, but I know it. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘And how long do you want?’

  ‘Just two nights. I’ll meet you there. Get two flights that arrive in Greenville around the same time and we can both fly home Sunday morning. Please come.’

  ‘I’ll have to check, and get back to you. Can I take a number?’

  ‘You know my number.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ I scribble something down that might look vaguely like an out-of-state phone number. ‘I’ll ring you right back after I review our availability. Looking forward to doing business with you.’ And then I hang up.