Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light

by Helen Ellis

  Dani said, “That bitch didn’t think you were my mother. She was just trying to drum up business, the dumb bitch!”

  But the cat lady had gotten to me.

  I said, “It’s my neck. It’s draping me like a lobster bib.”

  Dani said, “Your neck is fine. It’s fine! But if you want me to go with you to do something I will.”

  * * *

  ————

  All my adult life I’ve had a double chin, but what was once buoyant and cute had begun to drop. Like a paint bubble from a ceiling leak. Nora Ephron wrote that the neck goes at forty-three. And she’s right. But I waited until I was forty-eight to see a plastic surgeon about mine.

  Because I am scared of plastic surgery. I don’t want to look like a cat lady. Or get that Joker mouth. Or die under anesthesia like the author of The First Wives Club or Kanye’s mom. Going under the knife has always seemed like ordering a grocery store sheet cake. If the cake decorator screws up, you’re stuck with a face that has somebody else’s name on it. You know, e’s where your i’s should be.

  Nobody in my family has had plastic surgery. Not Mama or my sister or anybody in our family tree. We’re pruners. Warts, skin tags, age spots, and suspicious moles are taken off. I’ve had them frozen with liquid nitrogen, lasered, scraped, duct-taped, and Q-tipped with green blister-beetle juice. Last year, my dermatologist advised me to get Mohs surgery on a bump beneath my eye.

  “It’s cancerous,” she said.

  “Barely,” I said.

  I told Dani, “I don’t want to have a scar on my face.”

  Dani said, “You’ll have a scar or a bump.”

  I had the surgery. Wide awake, two scoops with a scalpel, and twenty stitches later, I’m happy to report that I am left without a mark.

  I think it’s easier to have plastic surgery if your mother did it before you. Like some women my age find it easy to cook for twenty and debone a fish.

  There’s a picture of Mama at her thirtieth birthday party tying on a chin strap that she got as a gag gift. But she never had a neck lift. And at seventy-eight Mama has wrinkles and a neck that ain’t what it used to be, but she radiates warmth. She laughs like a teenager and beams like a lighthouse. She can still rock a red lipstick. Mama is a beautiful woman.

  None of my southern childhood friends or their mothers have had anything done either. But most of my New York City friends and their mothers have done it all.

  My friend Kay said, “My mother had a nose job in the tenth grade—Jewish rite of passage. Fun anecdote: a woman in an elevator once remarked, ‘You and your daughter have the same nose.’

  “My mother replied: ‘Impossible. Two different surgeons.’ ”

  In preparation for their 5.0 reboots—aka fiftieth birthdays—my New York City friends have had bags taken out from under their eyes, chin implants, micro-dermabrasion, chemical peels, and their teeth filed into stakes for veneers.

  One friend got gastric bypass and lost two hundred pounds. She went to South America and got a tummy tuck, breast reduction, and all the excess skin hacked off her body from her knees up. After nine hours in an operating room, the surgeons had to stop before they reached her neck because she’d lost too much blood. After two months of healing, she looked amazing. Never in my life have I seen such a transformation. She was and still is a beautiful woman. But she wasn’t happy with her neck.

  Take away the fat, a fifty-year-old neck don’t snap back.

  So here in Manhattan, my friend got a thread lift, which is exactly what it sounds like: a doctor threads string under the skin of your neck, yanks it toward your ears, and ties a knot. Four to six times. The downside is that the strings loosen after three years, and you have to be restrung like a baby grand. The risk is that if one snaps, your neck looks like it’s got a varicose vein. I saw it done to an audience member on Wendy Williams, and let’s just say it’s not for me.

  Before my plastic surgery consultation, everything I’d tried on my neck had been topical. I’ve had a “Magic facial,” which is a nice woman massaging my neck and jowls vigorously for ninety minutes. I’ve had a “Mahala facial” with a Kansa wand, which is a nice woman playing me from skull to chest like a xylophone. I bought Gwyneth Paltrow’s heart-shaped facial sculptor. I bought Madonna’s big black beauty roller with carbon in the balls. My dermatologist gave me a serum derived from foreskins.

  You wonder what they do with all those circumcision leftovers. Well, it ain’t all stem cell research. Some of it makes my baby dick cream.

  But you can’t fight gravity.

  The skin on my neck was smooth, but the fat was not going anywhere. And it was sagging like a bar of Dove soap in a sock. And there was movement. If I shook my head, my neck swung an extra beat. If I pinched the chub, the chub stayed pinched. I was so aware of what I didn’t want, of what I was so sure was so out of place, I went to sleep every night cupping it like an ascot.

  I knew it was bad by what people who loved me said when I asked them if my neck was as bad as I thought.

  My friend Laura said, “All I see is your smile.”

  Mama said, “You can wear scarves.”

  So I turned to the Bridge Ladies. As I’ve said, every woman needs friends who are a little bit older than her to give her advice.

  And here’s my advice: Find a woman who is five to ten years older than you who you think looks great. Ask her what she’s doing to look so great. If she says, “I drink water and exercise,” forget her. She is not a very good friend. Very good friends get off on making their friends look and feel their very best. A very good friend will give you the name of her plastic surgeon and a play-by-play of what she’s had done.

  Val said, “Ultherapy. It’s an ultrasound machine that melts the fat under your skin and tightens everything up. There’s absolutely no cutting. And you see results immediately. Immediately! Rumor has it that Jennifer Lopez has an Ultherapy machine in her house and does her whole body every six months. I’ve done it twice.”

  I said, “I’m scared.”

  Val said, “What’s to be scared of? Do it! You’ll be so happy you did it. The only thing you’ll be sad about is that you didn’t do it sooner. But now, listen, Helen, I’m warning you: my doctor looks extreme. You’ll want to stare. But trust me, she won’t do to you what she does to herself. And P.S.: she’s totally worth it, but crazy expensive.”

  The consult alone was six hundred dollars.

  Unlike the cat lady who operates in a shadowy studio apartment, this double-board-certified facial plastic surgeon appears on morning shows and in women’s magazines, headlines conventions, and is a daily presence on Instagram. She posts before-and-after pictures of rhinoplasty and butt lifts, plus stuff I’d never heard of like nasolabial folds filling and jaw narrowing. And no, I have no idea what double board certified means, but I think it makes her doubly good.

  Her office looked like a spa. Her receptionist looked like a Kardashian.

  I was given a questionnaire with an outline of a body and asked to circle the parts that I wanted enhanced. I circled the neck. In an exam room, my pictures were taken like I was getting a mug shot.

  “Turn to the left! Now turn to the right!”

  When I saw my pictures appear on a computer screen, I didn’t recognize myself. The pictures were in 3D, and I swear on all that is holy that they had been enhanced to make my face look as round and lumpy as a cauliflower.

  I heard the doctor’s stiletto heels on the marble floor before she knocked and opened the exam room door.

  She was another cat lady. But with this one, I took her all in. Blown-out extensions that flowed over her high and mighty tits. Designer dress tailored to her shallowest breath. Buffed nails and a Chanel watch. Bulbous cheeks and a button nose. Her face was as tight as a snare drum. Ba-dum tss! She had the Botox wonky eye.

 
Believe me: now that I’ve mentioned the Botox wonky eye, you’ll see it as often as Tom Hanks sees lost gloves.

  The double-board-certified cat lady held my face and gingerly turned it from side to side. She squeezed my double chin as if she was testing an avocado. She said, “You know that one of your eyebrows is higher than the other.”

  I most certainly did not.

  “I can fix that,” she said. “And I can fix your double chin. But if I just tighten your neck, your face won’t match. We should do your full face and extended neck. And you need Botox.”

  I said, “I want the least. Do the least.”

  She said, “You want more than you think you do.”

  I left her office with a surgical proposal for a “facial rejuvenation,” which included cool-sculpting in addition to Ultherapy. Total fees: six thousand dollars.

  Dani said, “I’ll go with you and hold your hand.”

  Val said, “Do it. You’d pay that much to have your bathroom redone.”

  But I couldn’t get over the double-board-certified cat lady’s throwaway remark about my eyebrows. Who has perfectly symmetrical eyebrows? And who points out another woman’s eyebrows when she’s at her most vulnerable, talking about what she thinks is her most vulnerable spot? I like my face the way it is. I didn’t make a second appointment because I already felt cut.

  * * *

  ————

  Since my Mohs surgery, I see my dermatologist every four months for a skin cancer check. The woman is thorough. She blows cold air from a hairdryer to see my scalp. She looks into my armpits and under my breasts. She spreads my fingers and toes. And yes, she checks where the sun don’t shine.

  I’ve said: “Are you a dermatologist or a Brazilian bikini waxer?”

  I’ve said: “Are you gonna pull a rabbit out of my vagina?”

  She laughs, and then we talk about my neck.

  It had been eight months since I’d seen the second cat lady, and two years since I’d seen the first. My dermatologist is not a cat lady. She is five to ten years older than me, looks her age, and doesn’t overdo. She is a beautiful woman.

  I trust her judgment. Medically and aesthetically.

  So at forty-nine, I was going to let her give me a nonsurgical neck lift.

  We’d been talking about it since the treatment was FDA approved in 2015. My dermatologist had given me a five-page glossy pamphlet, which I’d kept in my desk drawer and took out to study like the pink booklet I’d gotten in the fourth grade about puberty. The pink booklet promised me that my body would change. The pamphlet promised me that I could make a change to my body. “Help take the ‘double’ out of your chin with kybella®.”

  A “before” profile picture read: Now you see it.

  The “after”: Now you don’t.

  My dermatologist assured me: “You’re the perfect candidate because you have a full neck. I can’t do it because I have a crepey neck.”

  I said, “I wish I had your neck.”

  Her twenty-something-year-old assistant stood in a corner, smart enough not to get involved.

  I was about to get twenty shots of stomach bile to the neck.

  No, I don’t know whose stomach bile. Yes, I am sure there is a more clinical name for the stuff.

  The stomach bile attacks the fat cells. You swell up like a bullfrog, then your body eats the fat. The downside is that this happens gradually, so it takes a month for you to look normal again. Then you have to get the procedure two to six more times, every four to six weeks. But the results are permanent.

  “Ready?” my dermatologist asked.

  “Do it,” I said.

  She tipped my chair so far back, I almost said “Ahh.”

  Her assistant handed me two testicle-size frozen water balloons to teabag against my neck for ten minutes.

  Then my dermatologist applied a numbing cream. Then there was more icing. She took a rubber grid, laid it over my double chin and neck, and marked twenty injection sites with a felt-tipped pen.

  The shots themselves took two minutes. She must have used the tiniest, finest needle and barely stuck it beneath the surface of my skin. She poked me quickly. The needle stung. Ten shots in, my neck burned. I felt a hardening. I braced myself as she finished the job.

  Then it was over, and I was back with the ice balls. I lay there for ten more minutes, and the pain went away.

  She sat me up and said, “Smile.”

  I smiled.

  “Now, grimace.”

  I grimaced.

  “Excellent,” she said. “No nerve damage.”

  I chose the right time to do this: winter. I walked home with ice balls tucked under the collar of my down coat. When I got home, I iced my neck under a scarf. When I got up the courage to look, my neck looked like my nightmare of what my neck could become if I never did anything. Fat connected my chinbone to my collarbone. And there was a jiggle factor. Without a scarf, if I walked, I jiggled. I felt the jiggling. I slept in a scarf. For a week. Monogrammed pink pajamas and a scarf.

  There was bruising, but no one could see the bruises under a scarf. I wore turtlenecks and turtleneck sweaters. There was numbness. I couldn’t feel my neck for a month.

  But after five weeks, folks started to see a difference.

  Val said, “Your neck has definition. Your face is separate from your neck! You look like you’ve had a facelift!”

  Dani said, “You look like you lost weight.”

  I did not lose weight.

  When I went back for the second round of injections, my dermatologist said she thought my double chin had shrunk by 50 percent. She gave me a heavier dosage. I smiled and grimaced, then went on my way. Six weeks later I took my last round, only ten shots this time for “fine-tuning.” And six weeks later, I felt better about my neck.

  The bulge is gone. There’s nothing to cup in my hand at night.

  It cost half of what the most expensive cat lady wanted to charge me. And it was the least I could do. I paid for my procedure with money paid to me by my publisher for writing this very book. My double chin is now my Doubleday chin.

  · ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ·

  On March 7, 2020, I met my friend Meredith at JG Melon on the Upper East Side for burgers and martinis. The place was, as usual, jam-packed, and we were happy to eat crammed against a wall under a coatrack.

  Meredith said, “Since you’re writing another book of true stories, does that mean your friends are recurring characters?”

  I said, “It does!”

  On March 17, Manhattan shut down because of a pandemic.

  Today is August 25, and even though I’ve seen Meredith and other friends a handful of times at a social distance, I miss the crowded restaurants, water parks, game nights, garage sales, airports, and poker rooms that I write about in this book. And I miss the New York Society Library, where I reread two of my favorites that still hold up: Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck. And I miss my recurring characters.

  I miss Mama and Papa in Birmingham, who make life fun.

  I miss my little sister in Pasadena, who is doing a great job.

  I miss Ann Napolitano and Hannah Tinti, my most trusted readers and advisers, my dessert and my hooch.

  I miss Jenny Jackson, aka the Darling Killer, who fulfills my Romancing the Stone Holland Taylor/Kathleen Turner fantasy, and gave me great advice: “Write the stories you tell me when we have a glass of wine with lunch.”

  I miss Brettne Bloom, aka Big B, who threw me a party with fried chicken and pink deviled eggs, and gave me great advice: “Give your book more than one heart.”

  I miss Todd Doughty, aka Blankets Up, aka my happy-making thing in a difficult world, who brought me a cake that read, You’re Wonderful, but Evil, and gave me great advice: “Don’t do t
hat.” Twice.

  I miss publishing people: Bill Thomas, Suzanne Herz, and Judy Jacoby, who give me a frosted rose-covered cake of a career, and John Fontana, who (to my great delight) lights that cake on fire; Nora Reichard gives me Reddi-wip and barbed wire; Pei Loi Koay gives me all caps and a flourish; Valerie Walley gives me a lift; Ruth Liebman gives me an escape hatch; Chris Dufault and the Doubleday sales force give me wings; Michael Goldsmith gives me room to Zoom; Julianna Wilson gives me a mic; Brent Katz gives me character; Sean Yule gives me exposure; Jason Richman gives me the big picture; Hannah Engler gives me carousels; Jesseca Salky and Dan Novack give me peace of mind; Jen Childs, Erica Melnichok, Elizabeth Fabian, and Kelly Coyle-Crivelli give me badass librarians; Julie Ertl and Caitlin Landuyt give me an anchor; Maris Dyer and Hallie Schaeffer give me answers; and Alison Rich, Stephanie Bowen, and Neda Dallal gave me a podcast, which made me write fast and free, which is very enjoyable.

  Last year Doubleday sent me on a book tour, during which I hugged and shook hands with anyone and everyone and never got sick. I was so grateful for the chance to visit independent bookstores, libraries, and festivals then, and I am all the more grateful now.

  I will never forget that at the San Antonio Book Festival Clay Smith wore a denim jacket, on the back of which was embroidered: “Read a Fucking Book!”

  I will never forget that when my parents and I walked into the Alabama Booksmith Jake Reiss yelled at Mama (as he has for twenty years), “Hey, Hey Big Helen!”

  A woman in the audience at the Dallas Museum of Art taught me that “We drowned all the dumb babies” is Southern Lady Code for “We raised you to be smarter than that.”

  A cameraman at the Mississippi Book Festival taught me that “She never stood a chance” is Southern Lady Code for “Her mother was a whore too.”