A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That (13 page)

3.

In the car on the way home, I was angry. “What irritates me is that he knows how painful the surgery is. He said it himself: days of Demerol. That's being in a stupor for days. And the bit about carving up your labia? That's butchering one area—and a rather important area, I might add—to pretty up another,” I said.

“That's optional. He said that I could opt out of that one. I'm sure the breast would look nicer
with
a nipple, though.”

“I'd certainly opt out. I'd opt out of the whole damn thing.”

“Did you see the woman's breasts?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Couldn't even see the scars.”

“They were there,” I said, stopping at a red light on Sunset Boulevard. I twisted in the seat and faced my mother. “You know they were there, right?”

“No,” she said, turning away from me. “I don't know that. I got up close—you saw me. There wasn't one sign of Dr. Morgan's good work. He's a brilliant man, an artist. You shouldn't be so hard on him, Rachel. You're full of judgment. I don't judge people the way you do. Where did you learn that?”

“I'm not going to pretend that I don't have opinions.”

“Opinions are one thing, but judgment is another. You were sitting there asking him smart questions, but not looking at the woman. Where's your empathy?”

I shook my head. “I'm just saying there were scars there, even if you couldn't see them.”

“I'm the one who got right up next to the woman, and
I
didn't see any scars.” She was defiant, crossing her arms across her chest.

“He had to sew something to something, didn't he? It's not like he used glue. There's sewing going on—he had to use stitches.”

But my mother was busy then, looking out the window at a pair of transvestites or transsexuals, a brunette and a blonde, in matching shorts and halter tops. They sat at a bus stop just feet away, arm in arm. “What pretty girls,” my mother said.

“They're not girls.”

“Well, whatever they are, they're pretty.”

The light turned green but I didn't move. Horns honked. A man hung out his car window and called me a bitch as he sped away in a silver convertible. “I hate Los Angeles,” I said, accelerating too hard. We lurched forward and I quickly shot my arm across my mother's chest to keep her from hitting the dashboard. “I'm sorry,” I said.

“It's fine—I'm fine,” she said, obviously still mad.

“Why can't you get your treatment at Memorial? Beach Memorial has a great reputation. They've got a Woman's Center.”

“You know why not.”

“Is it really because of the movie stars here?”

“They get better treatment. They stay alive longer because the doctors are very good up here.”

“It seems to me that a movie star is dropping dead every week, Mom. It's on the news. They die just like the rest of us.”

“I trust these doctors,” she said.

“The scars were there, you know that, don't you?”

“Look,” she said. “I just want to get undressed one night and not have to remember the whole thing. I want to forget.”

“I understand that,” I said. I twisted my neck, making sure my blind spot was clear, and moved lane by lane into the fast lane. It made sense, my mother's desire to forget. I wished I could forget, too, but there were things about my mother's breast cancer that I knew and couldn't stop knowing—the tumor's size, the lymph node involvement.

Still, there were moments when even I almost forgot. I'd be laughing with Angela at a bar or coffee shop, talking to my students about their stories or poems, and the tumor would be far away from me. Later, I'd be sitting with my mother, playing Scrabble, or maybe I'd be watching her from across the room, sewing a new skirt, and the tumor would appear behind my eyes. I'd be at the movies, reaching into a bag of popcorn or riding my bike on the beach, and it would show up—a fat, sneaky thing, a stalker the size of a plum.

4.

From the lobby window, I could see Angela sitting in the car, waiting, the cigarette's red cap rising to her lips. I had one hand in the mailbox and waved with the other, motioned to my friend with one finger that I'd just be a minute.

In the car, I opened the package addressed to my mother from The Beauty Club. It was something we shared—makeup and tips, brow pencils and powder. I thought there might be a lipstick I would like. I had planned to put the lipstick on and show up at my mother's dinner table, and maybe I'd ask her if I could keep the new lipstick or maybe my mother would just offer it up to me the way she offered everything else.

Inside the brown envelope was a lipstick, yes, a tube of dark mascara, and a rosy blush—all toys we could share—but on the bottom of the envelope, way down deep where I had to dig my hand in and feel around, was something cylinder shaped and hard, no cosmetic that I recognized.

We were almost downtown, stopped at a red light, and I was telling Angela that I thought I'd die when my mother died, and I didn't mean it figuratively. I meant I thought I'd stop breathing and my heart would quit, and Angela was listing reasons to stay alive. “Lemon drops,” she said. “Tacos. You like movies and books,” she said.

“Not enough to stay alive for them,” I said.

“Music,” she tried.

I shook my head.

“Red wine. Orgasms.” She paused. “A good night's sleep.”

“That's sort of like being dead, though, isn't it?”

“Maybe.”

“To see how it all turns out.”

“What turns out?”

“All of it,” she said.

I was shaking my head no when I pulled the vibrator from the envelope. I thought about shoving it back inside quickly without telling Angela what it was, but she had already turned to me when she heard me gasp. It wasn't just the vibrator and thinking of my mother masturbating that upset me, but also that my mother's boyfriend had stopped sleeping with her, and that no amount of love I gave her could equal what was in my hand.

It was impossible not to imagine my mother, alone and flushed, using it, her quaking thighs and one heaving breast, her body so incredibly hers then, most aware of itself dying or coming, and I understood that she was a woman who wouldn't submit passively to one fate without, in that participatory way, remembering the other.

“How about Mexican food?” Angela said. “Let's get some of those tacos that make life worth living.”

“Tacos sound good,” I answered, putting the vibrator back inside the envelope and folding it closed.

“It's good that your mother is still concerned about these things.”

“What things?”

“You know, pleasure.”

“I'm hungry,” I said. “Can we talk about food?”

“We are,” Angela said.

 

5.

My mom had made her decision. She returned from the doctor's office, beaming, excited. She put her purse down on the dining room table. She set down her sunglasses and keys, cleared her throat. I was sitting on the couch, reading a student's short story. Daniel Gilb's piece was about a quadriplegic teenage boy who loved and hated his father. It wasn't bad. Daniel was a good writer, bright and passionate, and I was enjoying it. My mother cleared her throat again. “Rachel,” she said. I put down my pen and looked at her. I folded my hands across one knee. I rocked back and forth like a toy horse. “What?” I said. “You made up your mind, right?”

She nodded.

“I knew it.”

“I'm cancer free—”

“Now,”
I interrupted.

“Yes, now.”

I rocked again, harder. I stopped myself.

“It's not about vanity or even beauty. I know you think so, but it's not. It's more about poise.”

“Poise?”

“If I'd been small breasted to begin with, who knows what I'd do now. I'd probably just live this way. Maybe I'd get a tattoo like those women in the book you left out,” she said.

“It's not a book, Mom, it's a magazine.”

“Whatever it is, I am not one of those women. Cheers to them, that's what I say—but that's not me.”

“Okay.”

“Don't try to change your mother, Rachel. You always say that I want to change you, but—”

“I just wanted you to see them.”

“I saw them.” She paused, then continued. “It's terrible having a D cup on one side and nothing on the other.” She walked toward me, stood in front of the couch, holding her remaining breast in her palm like an offering.

“I'm sure it is,” I said.

“I feel like I'm going to tip over sometimes—literally, fall down.”

“You're not.”

“But I feel like I could.”

“You say that, and it doesn't make sense. Tipping over? That's about vertigo or something. Maybe you've got vertigo.” I paused. I picked up the pen and began tapping it on the coffee table. “I wish you'd just wait,” I said again.

“For what?” She sat down on the opposite end of the couch and faced me.

I was silent.

“I know what you're thinking,” my mother said. “You're a pessimist. You've always been one. I don't know where you get that—all that negative thinking, all that worrying.”

“You've never worried about anything.”

“I guess not.”

“That's why we're in this—” I began, and then stopped myself.

“Go ahead,” she responded. “Say it.”

“I'm not saying anything.”

“Then I will. That's why
we're in this mess.
That's why the tumor got so big, because I didn't worry.” She nodded. She clicked her tongue. “It was my tumor, Rachel. And it's gone now. You worry enough for both of us, don't you think?” She scooted closer to me. Our shoulders were touching. “If all that worry added one tiny thing to your life, just one, it would make sense. As it is, I don't see the point of it,” she said.

“Worry doesn't need a point.”

“Maybe it does.”

“There's no point,” I admitted.

She looked at the papers in my lap. “How's the story? Is that Daniel's new story?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“You like that boy, don't you?”

“He's my student.”

“I know that, but if you like him, you like him. I don't believe in those rules.”

“I do.”

“If he's special, he's special. He's been taking your classes for years. He lives here and he likes you,” she said.

“He's young.”

“You're young. I think you should give him a chance. Get to know him, at least. He's not flying in and flying off—he lives here,” she said again.

“I'm not
that
young.”

“How's the writing?”

“It's good.” I picked up the pages and looked at Daniel's words, one bold syllable after another.

“What's the story about?”

“He's always writing pieces about boys without legs or without use of them—teenagers who can't move.”

“I like a more cheerful story myself, but you're the teacher.”

“The reconstructive surgery scares me,” I said.

“It's good
you're
not having it, then.” She patted my knee and stood up.

“You know what I mean.”

“I'm glad you're here, Rachel.”

“You told me that this morning.”

“I'm telling you again.”

I looked down at Daniel's story and pretended to go back to work. “You got a package yesterday,” I told my mother.

“From The Beauty Club?”

“It's on your bed,” I said.

“Great,” my mother said. “I've been waiting for that. There's a lipstick in there I think you might like.”

I didn't look at her, but stared at the boy's words. “I opened it up, didn't see anything interesting.”

“Did you try on the lipstick?”

“Wrong shade,” I said.

6.

The surgery took six hours and went as expected. Dr. Morgan emerged from the double doors noticeably exhausted. He stood, damp-faced, in front of me and removed his paper hat, using it to mop the perspiration from his forehead. He crinkled the hat in his fist the way another type of man might have smashed a beer can. He stuck the hat in the pocket of his white jacket and looked at me. “She's fine,” he said.