If You Only Knew Page 15

  "She had some big work done. Those things are like cannonballs."

  "--and even before this, I noticed I was looking a little tired. I've been thinking about it."

  "Really? Since when?"

  "Jenny, I'm allowed to have thoughts without immediately picking up the phone and calling you. Are you going to be a pain here? Or are you going to be supportive?"

  "Uh...supportive. Sorry. Let's go!" I fake a smile.

  Rachel has told me just about everything since finding that picture on Adam's phone. I know about the counseling session. I know she told him to ask Emmanuelle to get transferred, and he said he couldn't do that. I know she called AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to see if he has another phone. I know she broke their wedding picture, and got it reframed. I know she got a clean result from the STD panel. I know she deliberately oversalted his dinner the other night, and he ate it anyway.

  But she's never once brought up plastic surgery.

  The doctor's office is as dark as a cave. The windows are frosted, and there's a code to punch in. It feels more like we're going into witness protection than a doctor's office. When my eyes adjust, I can see that it's actually quite lovely in here. There's a huge dispenser of lemon-and-cucumber water and some hot water for tea, several tasteful black couches and cube end tables. Birdsong twitters from unseen speakers. A faux waterfall gushes behind the reception desk, reminding me that I had three cups of coffee this morning.

  Rachel whispers to the receptionist, her shoulders tight, smiling hard to counter her shyness...and maybe the humiliation she feels at being here. It's hardly original, is it? Husband has affair, wife decides to get some work done. Except Rachel isn't the plastic-surgery type.

  The soft-voiced and beautiful young woman checks Rachel in, and we take our seats. "Hi," says a woman next to me. I recoil, then scratch my nose to cover. She looks like someone took a baseball bat to her. Her face is swollen and plum-colored; her hair is matted. She's wearing pajamas and slippers. One of her feet is hugely swollen, and tubes snake out of the bottom of her shirt.

  "Hi," I say, remembering to speak. Rach is staring at a Martha Stewart magazine, pretending to be invisible.

  "Are you getting work done?" the poor, poor woman asks.

  "No! Nope. Not yet. Maybe. Someday. I don't know."

  "Well, Dr. L. is great," she says. "I'm just sorry I waited this long."

  "How...how long?"

  "I should've done this when I was sixty," she says, ventriloquist-like in her ability not to move her lips. "I'm eighty-two, can you believe it?"

  She's actually ageless, given that her purple face is stretched tighter than an eggplant.

  "So what did you have done?" I ask, unable to help myself.

  "The whole package," she says. "Got my eyelids done, some Botox, a little filler, chin implant, cheekbones, got my lips done, neck lift, breast implants, tummy tuck, ass lift."

  "Oh...wow," I whisper. I can't imagine the pain--let alone the cost--of all those procedures. I think she might be smiling at me. Or grimacing. An ass lift? At eighty-two? I plan on proudly letting my ass drag when I'm eighty-two. I sure as hell wouldn't--

  "I say go for the whole package. No need in coming back ten or twelve times. Just have them knock you out and go for it."

  "So are you in a lot of pain?" I ask my new best friend.

  "Agonizing," she answers. "I won't lie. I was hit by a car when I was sixteen. This hurts more. I was begging for morphine the first three weeks."

  My eyelids flutter. I've never been brave with pain.

  "Rachel Carver?" a nurse calls.

  Rach puts down the magazine and stands up, running her hands over the front of her dress.

  I scramble up after her. "Did you hear that?" I hiss. "She was begging for morphine!"

  "Can you just relax, please?"

  "Rachel, that woman looked like she was attacked by gorillas."

  She doesn't answer. I'm being an ass, but come on! My sister does not want this, I'm almost positive.

  The nurse shows us into a spacious exam room, much nicer than the regular doctor's office, where you practically need to sit on each other's laps. Rachel is given a soft terry-cloth robe, and when she's changed, the doctor comes in, a very normal-looking woman, which I find reassuring. Maybe around sixty, a pleasantly big nose, bags under her eyes. "Hi, I'm Dr. Louper," she says. "Rachel, right? So nice to meet you. So you're interested in the Mommy Makeover?"

  "Mmm-hmm," my sister says.

  "And why now?"

  Why indeed.

  "Well, I'll be forty in a couple weeks," Rachel says, her voice shaking a little.

  "You look great for forty!" The double-edged compliment--forty is when you look old and haggard and flaccid, but you hardly do! "The most important thing to remember is that this should be for you. If it makes you feel better about yourself, why not go ahead, right? You have three daughters, it says here, so like most women, I bet you put yourself last." She smiles kindly. "This would be something just for you to enjoy for years to come."

  Rachel looks reassured. I don't roll my eyes. But I want to.

  "Let's have a look, then," Dr. Louper says.

  For the next fifteen minutes, Rachel is examined as if Dr. Louper is about to buy a racehorse. I'm surprised she doesn't ask Rachel to turn her head and cough, frankly. My sister's stomach, breasts, thighs, ass are pinched and poked and lifted. "So we've got sagging here, a little drooping here, some cellulite here. And of course, the loose skin here--you had triplets, so no wonder! You're a superhero!"

  "She is indeed," I say.

  Dr. Louper smiles. "We can do a little tummy tuck and get rid of that little bit of extra skin, move your belly button up to here, tighten everything up so you look like a teenager, because honestly, you don't have that much extra weight."

  "She has no extra weight," I say, unable to stop myself.

  "Your sister's right. And then for your breasts, I'd recommend a breast lift to get the girls back where they were, maybe some subtle implants if you'd like to go a bit bigger." She smiles reassuringly, but I can't get Eggplant Woman out of my mind. "And while we've got you on the table, we can do a little lipo on the thighs. You barely need anything. But a lot of women these days are doing that and then having some of the fat injected into their labia to plump things up down there."

  Yes. So Rachel can enjoy that for years to come, because what woman doesn't fret over this? After all, don't we all walk around with mirrors in our panties, making sure our labia looks plump enough? I try to fix my face, but I'm fairly sure my disgust shows.

  "We can even do a little vaginal tightening to enhance sexual pleasure for both you and your husband."

  My sister bursts into tears.

  Thank God.

  "Please give us a few minutes," I say, taking my sister in my arms. The doctor looks confused, but takes her evil clipboard and leaves.

  "Rachel," I say, hugging her tight. "Oh, my poor honeybun."

  She's really sobbing now.

  "You don't need anything changed about you," I say, my voice shaking.

  "I know," she whispers. "I just can't... I can't help... I hate myself for coming here, but I can't help it! Emmanuelle is so beautiful, Jenny! She's so scary beautiful! She's Maleficent beautiful."

  I want to say so what or who cares or that shouldn't matter. But of course it does matter to my sister. "I bet she's not that beautiful."

  "She is," my sister says.

  "Well, she has a very ugly vagina," I say, and my sister bursts into that mixture of laughter and crying. "And she's a whore," I add.

  My sister gives me a watery smile. "I'm so glad you say all the things I can't," she says, wiping her eyes.

  Dr. Louper opens the door. "Is everything okay?" she asks.

  "Yes," Rachel says. "I'm sorry. I'm just not ready for this."

  "That's completely understandable. You have to do this for the right reasons," the doctor says kindly. "Come back if you ever change your mind."
>
  *

  I take my sister out for an early lunch and tell her about some of my clients--the Russian girl who wants to wear a dress completely covered in Swarovski crystals, no matter that it will be so heavy she'll barely be able to walk in it; the bride with the EE bra size who wept when I told her it would be no problem to make her a dress.

  "And Kimber? How did that go?" Rach asks.

  "Oh, interesting appointment, that one. Mrs. Brewster wants her in a long-sleeved, high-necked ball gown. Not a centimeter of skin showing anywhere. The pictures she brought in were so ugly my eyes bled. Kimber is being an incredible sport about it, but I doubt very much it's her dream gown."

  "Jared is really crazy about her. Kimber, that is."

  "Well, she lights up every time she says his name."

  "Think they'll last?" Rachel says, toying with a lettuce leaf.

  "I do, actually." After so many brides, I have a good sense about these things.

  "Do you think Adam and I will last?" she asks.

  "I...I don't know. Do you think so?"

  "I have to give him a chance," she says. "Right?"

  I think of her tears an hour ago. Of the STD panel and the five days it took for the results to come in. "No, Rachel. You don't. You deserve better."

  Gratitude flickers across her face, fast as a hummingbird, and then is gone. "I love my life," she says, her voice so soft I can barely hear her, and it just breaks my heart.

  Then she perks up, or fakes perking up, more accurately. "You have a date tonight! Jimmy Grant, right?"

  "Right. He'd better be normal, Rach, or you'll pay."

  She grins, and it's almost sincere. Jimmy is the divorced dad whose kid goes to the same nursery school as the girls. "He's very normal. And he's pretty cute, too. Could be the one."

  That's my sister. Her life is in the shitter, but she still wants me to find a happily ever after.

  *

  Rachel and I pick up the girls, and I spend an hour playing bucking bronco with all three of them (and probably rupturing a few discs). Then I head for home. I don't want to run into Adam, who's been coming home early, Rachel says, and I did promise Leo I'd make that ramp. And, of course, there is the date.

  I went back to Manhattan the other day for the final fitting on a lovely woman who viewed her wedding dress with the perfect blend of joy and deprecation. I'd had to let out the seams a little bit to accommodate her growing belly--three months along, but already showing. She's forty-three. She and her fiance are thrilled about the baby. See? It's not too late for me, seven years younger.

  Anyway, the thing that surprised me was how the city--The City--felt both foreign and familiar. I knew to get off the West Side Highway before Fourteenth Street; I knew where to find a parking space on Greene Street. I knew to stop at Benny's Burritos to pick up dinner, because lukewarm Benny's is still better than anything you can get in a hundred-mile radius.

  But in less than a month, New York is no longer mine. The city always seemed alive to me, a great, jagged dragon sitting on its jewels--the unexpected alley garden on the Upper West Side, welcoming you to sit and rest; the homeless man on Madison Avenue who offered critiques of your outfits for five bucks; the brownstone on East Eighty-First street where no one lived, but which could be accessed by the garden door, so you could wander the empty rooms as if you owned the place. Central Park at sunrise in June, a golden paradise filled with birdsong against the reassuring sound of fire sirens...reassuring, because New York's Bravest were on their way.

  What I didn't quite expect was that as soon as I left Manhattan behind, the beneficent, regal creature forgot me. It tolerated me when I was a student of eighteen, it gave me my chance, it celebrated me when I made it, and it forgot me the second I drove over the Henry Hudson Bridge. You're always just a foster child in the city that never sleeps. The second you go, someone else takes your room.

  And though it was hard to picture, I'm glad. It's an almost shameful confession. I love my hometown more than I thought I would. I love the buildings and the old trees, the little alleys between houses, the tiny backyards. I know where the tree roots buckle the sidewalk, and I know that the middle Ortega girl has a beautiful voice, that the cat who climbs the tree outside my bedroom window belongs to the Capistranos. I know the old guys who sit outside the barbershop downtown playing chess--Miles and Ben--and I know that Luciano's has better takeout eggplant parm than Firenze, which is three times more expensive.

  I know that if impressive music seeps out of Number 11 Magnolia, as it does now, Evander James has a lesson. Leo has some fairly proficient students, and he has some abject beginners, and then he has Evander.

  Heavy, ominous notes crash from inside Leo's apartment. I stand at the gate and watch the boy as his hands fly across the keyboard, his entire body playing, arms, shoulders, body moving with the sounds. His face drawn with intensity and fervor. It's like watching a force of nature, like watching electrical current move through him.

  Even I can see that he's special.

  Leo sits behind him and to one side, his arms folded, watching his pupil's hands, a slight frown of concentration. He glances up to me, winks, then looks back at Evander.

  The music stops, and the boy sits there for a minute, reverent and silent, then turns to Leo, who leans forward and says something, pointing to the music. Then they both get up, and a second later come out into the courtyard.

  "Hello, Harriet the Spy," Leo says.

  "Hello, Maestro," I say to Evander.

  "He's the maestro," Evander says in a near whisper.

  "Is he? He looks like Voldemort to me." Evander smiles at this. Leo, too, and there's that delicious tug in my uterus.

  "Evander's gonna hang around for a while," Leo says, glancing up as a mother and child approach.

  "Leo! Hello! So good to see you!" It's one of the Hungry Moms, as I've come to think of them--they who always carry food and look at Leo with voracious eyes. (Hey. At least I've never offered him food.) Hungry Mom is dragging along little Sansa or Renfield, a miserable-looking girl of about ten, and carries an expensive-looking picnic basket in one hand. She cuts me a cursory look, then decides I don't exist. "Listen," she purrs up at Leo, "don't say a word, but I made too much for dinner, so I brought some over for you. In fact, Renley here--" that's it, Renley, not Renfield "--is dying for you to come over for dinner one night! And not to brag, but I have taken quite a few courses from the Culinary Institute!"

  Renley looks close to death by boredom.

  "Hi, Renley. Did you practice this week?" Leo asks.

  "No." She glares at Evander. "What's he doing here? He's poor. He can't afford lessons."

  Evander looks at the ground.

  "He's my star pupil," Leo says, his voice hard. "The best student I've ever had and probably ever will have."

  "Now, Leo," Hungry Mom says, "it's not really fair of you to tell Renley that she's not as good as--"

  "But she's not," Leo says. "Renley, you will never, ever be as good as Evander. I could lie to you and say you have talent and you just need to keep at it, but the truth is, you don't. Evander, on the other hand, can already play Bach and Chopin and Debussy, and you're still hacking your way through 'Ragtime Raggler' after three months. So show some respect, or find another teacher."

  Well, if there was any doubt I was half in love with Leo, it's gone now. Evander's eyes are wide.

  Renley looks at Evander. "I'm sorry." She sounds as if she means it.

  "You can't talk to my daughter like that!" Hungry Mom yelps.

  "I just did," Leo says.

  "We're done here," she says frostily. "Renley, let's go!"

  "Yay! Thank you, Mr. Killian! No offense, but I only took piano because my mom said I had to. Bye, Evander!"

  Evander looks confused.

  They leave, the mother hissing, Renley skipping. "There goes dinner," Leo says. "Well. Want to play some more, kid? Miss Jenny and I have a dog ramp to build."

  "Can I help?" the boy as
ks.

  "Sure," I say. "You can make sure Leo doesn't cut off any important parts."

  Leo has left the supplies where they are. The pieces of wood are equal and make sense: four two-by-fours for the frame, a piece of plywood and four strips of lighter wood so Loki won't slide. A gangplank.

  "Who cut these for you?" I ask.

  "The woman at the hardware store," Leo says.

  "I could tell it wasn't you." He smiles. "Evander, hold on to this, honey," I say, handing him a strip of wood and picking up the hammer. "I'm going to nail this one in, and then you can have a turn."

  The boy is just beautiful, ridiculously curly lashes, the green eyes of Derek Jeter. He'll be a heartbreaker someday. All that and a prodigy, too.

  "How come you know how to do this and Mr. Killian doesn't?" he asks.

  "Some of us are geniuses in other ways, Evander," Leo says, sitting in his lounge chair and stretching out his long legs. "Cut me some slack." Loki collapses beside him. I check to make sure his furry chest is still moving.

  "My job is all about putting things together," I tell Evander. "I'm a dress designer. Wedding dresses, mostly."

  Evander flicks a look at me. He's still very shy, even though I've seen him four or five times now. I hammer in the nail, then hold the hammer out. "Your turn."

  He takes the hammer carefully and gives the nail a tentative tap, then another. "Doing great," I confirm. Tap tap tap. He seems unwilling to give the nail a good smack. Fifty or so taps later, the nail is in. "Good job."

  "Thank you," he says, a little smile lifting his lips.

  "Can I ask you a question?"

  "No, I'm sorry, I won't marry you," Leo says. "And Evander's a little young yet, right, pal?"

  This gets a full-fledged smile from the boy. I give Leo a tolerant look, then hammer in another nail. "What does it feel like to be able to play the way you do?"

  Evander doesn't say anything for a minute, just looks at the ground. Then he lifts his eyes to me. "I can feel the music inside me," he says in such a soft voice I can hardly hear him. "It gets bigger and bigger, and then it comes into my chest and down my arms and it gets out through my fingers."

  I glance at Leo, who's listening closely.

  "Does it hurt?" I ask.

  Evander laughs. "No. It's my friend. My best friend."

  "Do you play a lot?"

  "Not really," he says. "Maybe five or six hours a day. I wish I didn't have to go to school, because the music quiets down then."