Flavor of the Month

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Well, she reminded herself, the oral surgery had been much worse. That wasn’t any goddamn discomfort, and she’d demanded Percodan and gotten it. Eight teeth pulled—four wisdom teeth, four of the perfectly healthy molars beside them—so that there was room in her mouth for the others to straighten out. “It’s not that your teeth are too big,” Dr. Kleinman told her, “it’s that your mouth is too small.”

  “I wish my grandmother could hear you say that,” Mary Jane muttered, remembering all the times she’d been called a big mouth.

  Her teeth had ached. Her jaw had been broken and realigned by Dr. Moore; then Kleinman, the master orthodontist, had begun his work. At least she hadn’t been able to eat for weeks, and she’d dropped another nine pounds. When she had nothing better to do, she could now count all her ribs when she held her breath.

  So she’d pop a Percodan, crawl onto the lumpy cot in her hotel room, and stroke her ribs like a washboard until the pain let up and she fell into a sleep too drugged for “discomfort.”

  But worse than the tooth pain had been the electrolysis. A Frenchwoman, Michelle, had worked over her hairline and eyebrows, following Dr. Moore’s template, burning out hair follicles with a tiny needle inserted into her forehead. It was agony, and the smell made her want to gag.

  “Easier to raise your hairline than surgically build you more forehead,” Dr. Moore said. “And your hair is beautiful.” It was the first time he had complimented her, and she felt herself flush with pleasure.

  “My grandmother called it ‘Indian hair.’ It’s so thick and heavy that I was ashamed of it.”

  “Medically speaking, your grandmother sounds like an asshole,” Dr. Moore told her, and she had laughed despite the “discomfort.”

  She liked him. She liked him very much. And throughout the long, painful, boring hospitalizations, during the examinations in his spare office, even in phone calls to her, he treated her…kindly. With compassion. As if she was as serious a patient as Raoul or Winthrop, or the little girl who’d had her face burned off in a car accident, or the teenager who’d been kept in the basement by his parents, or some of the other horrors who waited in his office, hoping for a human face, a face he could give them to end their shame and isolation.

  Still, even the steeliest determination has to grapple with financial realities. After eleven “procedures,” Mary Jane had to face the fact that she was close to broke. She hadn’t worked in almost twenty-two months, the longest “vacation” in her life. Not that all the surgery had been a day at the beach. Brewster had called her lucky—he said all she needed was money and time. Well, she’d certainly run out of the latter because now her money was just about gone. The only asset she had left was the farm up in Scuderstown, but in the more than two years since her grandmother’s death it had been immersed in the legal tangle left by the old woman. Her grandmother had stubbornly left it to her son, Mary Jane’s father, although he had been non compos mentis and hooked to machines at the V.A. for more than thirty years. Mary Jane had counted on that money’s coming through by now. Leave it to Grandma to ruin my plans, even when she’s dead, Mary Jane thought.

  Slater, the Albany lawyer, was still trying to clear probate, but it was taking a long time, and his fees would probably eat into what little the farm would bring. By the time the money came through, Mary Jane, like her grandma, would also be dead of old age.

  She tried to live on even less, and sold the engagement ring she’d had from her mother. But the four hundred dollars she got for it wouldn’t last long. When she was down to her last thousand dollars, she had no choice—she went to Dr. Moore to tell him.

  Mary Jane sat across from him, once more, in that austere office. “I have to stop the surgery for now,” she said. She tried not to let her lip tremble, or show any emotion. She remembered the breakdown she’d had in this same chair the first time they spoke. “I mean to go on. It will just have to wait for a while.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Personal reasons,” she said. She really liked Dr. Moore, and she’d come to understand the compassion that he contained behind his formality, but she didn’t want to discuss her problems with him.

  “Well, I know this is a difficult thing that you are going through. Identity, self-worth, aesthetics, pain, anxiety, fear, scarring. It’s a great deal that you are asking of yourself. If there is any way that I or the team can provide more assistance…”

  She could see his concern. That he had done wrong. God, he must think she was having second thoughts! “I’ve run out of money,” Mary Jane mumbled.

  “What?”

  “I’ve run out of money.” She said it more loudly, more angrily than she meant to. They were silent for a moment. Brewster Moore blinked.

  “Is that all? Jesus, I thought you were having regrets or some kind of mental problem. It’s just the money?”

  “Just?”

  “Well, what I mean to say is that, as long as it’s only financial, I think we could work something out.”

  “But I have to get a job. I’m really down to the bottom of my savings. And working isn’t going to make me enough to pay my rent and surgical fees. I’ll have to put everything off until my grandmother’s estate comes through. If it comes through.” Tears filled her eyes. She’d put her life on hold for so long. How much more delay and disappointment could she take?

  But Dr. Moore seemed unfazed. “Didn’t you use to be a nurse?” he asked. “You could work for me now.”

  “With Miss Hennessey? No thanks.” The nurse still gave her the creeps. And she felt the woman resented her growing relationship with Dr. Moore. Not that it was anything more than professional. Once or twice, Mary Jane wondered if she herself wished it were more. And if Nurse Hennessey had a yen for the doctor, too.

  “Oh, she’s not so bad.”

  “You say that because she worships you.”

  “Well, it’s nice to have someone admire you, even if it’s only Miss Hennessey.” He laughed. “No, I was thinking perhaps you could work at the clinic with the children.”

  “Raoul and the others?”

  “Yes.”

  She felt her stomach tighten. “I don’t think so.”

  “I think you’d be good for them. I want them to see people who go through successful surgery. Of course, yours isn’t as extreme as theirs, but, as a role model, you’ll do. And they’d be good for you. Plus, I need the help and you need the rhinoplasty. A good exchange for everyone.”

  “But it will still take a long time to save up the fees.”

  “Tell you what. We continue with the procedures now, and you pay me out of your inheritance or future earnings. Meanwhile, if you’re a clinic employee, I think I can get the hospital to waive its fees.”

  She felt tears come to her eyes again. He was being so kind. Was it just pity and charity on his part? Or professional pride in a project he wanted to see completed? She decided not to question it too deeply and simply be grateful.

  And so they made the deal.

  Now Mary Jane sat in a back booth at a Chinese restaurant, eating the dull steamed-vegetable dish before her. Even Buddha couldn’t delight in this, she thought. She pushed the plate aside. Brewster Moore had explained it clearly—“to keep this somewhat unnatural weight and the benefits of surgery, you can only eat two spare meals a day.” She was going in this afternoon for her first job at Brewster’s clinic, and she was nervous. She knew that there he dealt with the most severe types of facial deformity. What would those poor, freakish patients feel if they knew that she, normal as she was, was also going through a series of surgeries?

  She looked down at her plate. Eating had always been her solution to anxiety, but no more. Now it was steamed vegetables and a little brown rice, even under stress.

  The placemat had the Chinese horoscope on it. She was born under the sign of the Dog—“Generous and loyal, you have the ability to work well with others. Compatible with the Horse and Tiger. Your opposite is the Dragon. 1910, 1922, 1934, 1946,
1958, 1970, 1982, 1994.” She had been born in 1958. Well, she was generous and loyal, and she did work well with others—with Brewster, anyway, if not jealous Miss Hennessey. She looked up Sam’s birth year, 1952. Yes, there he was—a Dragon. So, the Chinese knew their relationship was doomed from the start. It said he was robust and passionate, his life filled with complexity. He was compatible with the Monkey.

  Despite the long months, despite the separation, despite the pain of what she was going through alone, she still thought of him. His smile. His long, slow hands on her body. His laugh, and the way he shook his head over a joke. Despite everything, she still missed him as badly as she had the first day he left her. Did he ever miss her?

  She wondered what year Crystal Plenum was born. Monkeys were 1944, 1956, 1968. Was the bitch two years older than she, or ten years younger? What surgery had she had? What lies did she tell?

  Well, Mary Jane decided, even if she did change her age, she was going to stay a Dog, if not in looks, then in Chinese horoscopes. But she wouldn’t be a 1958 dog, she’d be a 1970 one. She thought she could pass for twelve years younger—the eye job and radical face lift seemed to have eliminated all wrinkles, and her skin’s elasticity was such that she didn’t have the stretched look that she had been afraid of.

  It was the nose that still troubled her. She hated, as she always had, to look in the mirror. Now the fine cheekbones and the delicate chin that had emerged from under Brewster’s scalpel seemed to mock the pendulous nose that still hung in the center of her face. In a way, she was uglier than she had ever been. She avoided all mirrors. There was a wall of them on the other side of the restaurant, facing her banquette, but she kept her head averted.

  Dr. Moore had insisted that the rhinoplasty come last, after all the other work had settled. She trusted him, but, despite the lithe body that now looked good in tight jeans, despite the more feminine brow, the cheekbones, the improved hairline, the dental work, and even the colored contact lenses, the face that she glanced away from was barely attractive. Could the rhinoplasty fix all that?

  Well, she sighed, the work on the ward should give her a sense of proportion.

  And by the end of the first week, she realized it had. Brewster had asked her to come on as night nurse. There were few medical requirements—she simply administered painkillers to those children out of recent surgery and comforted all the children who were too frightened or restless to sleep. Brewster said they needed conversation and attention as much as anything else. “And they need to be looked at. So many people avert their eyes. Look at them. Not to stare. Just give them the gift of being seen.”

  “The gift of being seen.” Yes, it was a gift, to be looked at approvingly. With her newly emerged slim body, Mary Jane had received wolf whistles. Only from behind, and only from some gross construction workers, but she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t been thrilled. How long had she gone unnoticed? Thirty-six years seemed too long. She would look at the children and give them the gift of being seen, and she swore to herself she wouldn’t wince.

  There were dozens of kids, and all of them, beneath the frightening failures of their faces, had the gift that children have: they were innocent and vulnerable and curious and alive. She had her favorites right away, of course. Sally, who was fourteen, and a victim of craniosynostosis: her skull had prematurely fused. She had undergone more than a dozen operations already to correct a frighteningly deformed head and jaw. And Jennifer, a three-year-old black girl whose brachycephaly gave her the pop eyes of a Crouzon’s-disease sufferer. But of all of them, from the first night on, it was Raoul who drew her. Raoul, with eyes that had done all his speaking for twelve years. Raoul, born in South America without a tongue or lower jaw, unable to nurse, since there was no suction his poor deformed mouth could manage. Raoul, abandoned after his birth, who now tried, with a new mouth and tongue, to learn a new language. And Raoul, who made her laugh.

  Raoul was twelve, and an active kid. He’d already had six major operations on his mouth and tongue, and was in for a seventh. He’d spent his first three years in a hospital, then his next two in an orphanage. But, despite all that, he had a strong spark of life and love. Raoul couldn’t say much, but he could write and draw almost anything. Mary Jane played endless games of tic-tac-toe with him, and bought him a connect-the-dots book which so enchanted him that he designed his own. During her second week there, he gave her a picture to connect the dots on.

  She picked up her pencil and followed his numbers. It was a nurse, complete, as she was, with comfortable shoes and a name tag. But when she got to the dots of the face, she realized it was a portrait of her, with her delicate cheekbones, almond eyes, and her awful, ridiculous nose. She nodded and tried to smile, then Raoul took the pencil, “LINDA MARY JANE,” he wrote, and looked up at her with a face full of affection. She was confused for a moment, until she remembered that linda was Spanish for “pretty.” She looked down at his ruin of a face. There was no irony there. He was the first male who had ever called her that.

  Don’t feel so sorry for yourself, she said. Look at Raoul. And she did. Night after night. And in no time at all, his ghastly grin seemed normal to her. Normal and welcoming.

  Often, in the early evening, Brewster Moore stopped by, visited with the children and the frightened, overwhelmed parents who came. He spent extra time with Raoul. Then he usually had a cup of coffee with her. She came to look forward to it. On the nights he didn’t, she felt a strange disappointment. Oh, fine, she thought. My life has become so small that I am obsessed with my nose and in love with my surgeon. Perfect. Nothing wrong with that. But maybe I should think about getting a life.

  Because she was, for the first time, drawn to nursing, to Dr. Moore, and to these children. The idea of abandoning them, as everyone else had, troubled her. Better move on before you get trapped, she told herself. Better move on before you lose your nerve.

  So she decided, one night: after this surgery, it was California. However she came out, it was time to move on. For two years her life had gotten smaller and smaller. Now it was time to expand.

  She’d need a new name. Her new age was twenty-four; she was still born in a year of the Dog, but it was a different year. And though she’d keep the same career, she certainly hoped that she’d be more successful than she’d been before, in her first incarnation. She was, of course, afraid she’d fail again, but it was time, she knew, to get on with it.

  Once, of course, she had the new nose.

  “Ever consider surgical improvement? I think if you had asked me that when I was twenty,” she says, “I might have said yes, but after seeing such bad facelifts, no.” Emma Samms was being quoted in an interview in People magazine. Mary Jane threw the magazine down on the floor. She was sick to death of reading about how naturally beautiful women kept themselves so. “Drink lots of bottled water,” “Never eat red meat,” “Simple yoga exercises and meditation to help you project your inner beauty!” Fuck the inner beauty. It had never gotten her a date or a part. And it was a load of crap anyway. As if Perrier would alter your bone structure or clear up your skin! That new ingenue, Phoebe Van Gelder, had sworn she stuck to a macrobiotic diet, but Mary Jane knew, through Neil, the skinny bitch was on drugs most of the time, and had had a major nasal reconstruction. Sure, the Phoebe Van Gelder New Age diet: carrots and cocaine.

  Over the last months, doing her research on beauty, she’d read all of the bullshit: “How to Lose Five Pounds This Weekend!,” “Ten Tricks to Prevent Aging,” “Top Models’ Secret Makeup Tips for You.” Yeah, the real tip was “Be young and tall and gorgeous with perfect bone structure.” Well, Mary Jane knew the real secret to beauty now for the average woman. Beauty meant pain, expense, surgery, and almost full-time maintenance. It sure didn’t leave time for the day job.

  God, she was cranky, she admitted to herself. She glanced briefly into the tiny mirror she now kept in her purse. The bruising under her eyes was just about gone. She averted her face. It had been weeks now si
nce the nasal surgery. She still wasn’t pretty. If anything, her nose loomed even more hideously on her face. But Dr. Moore had explained it would take some time for the swelling to go down. Now there was only the final rhinoplasty left—the “refining,” as Dr. Moore called it, that remained to be done on the nose. She noticed that Dr. Moore never referred to “your nose,” only “the nose.”

  “Most cosmetic surgery needs to be done in multiple stages,” he had explained. “For financial reasons—and emotional ones—most surgeons to the middle class don’t bother. After all,” he mimicked, “‘Missy does look so much better now, with that big bump gone.’ But nasal tissue swells, and it sometimes takes months for the swelling to go down. Most surgeons are butchers. They break the nasal cartilage. It causes all kinds of temporary swelling. The only way to see the actual contour, to see both how the tissue takes to the cartilage armature and how the skin drapes the tissues, is to wait. And then ‘refine.’ Which often means a second operation. But most women don’t want to undergo another procedure. Ergo, the instant nose. Now, with your face, on the other hand…”

  Brewster explained that he had perfected a rhinoplasty procedure that didn’t require the breaking of the nose. “And that means less swelling, no discoloration at all. But I didn’t want to work on the nose until the rest of the armature was completed. And I want to wait for a second chance to work on the tip.”

  She’d been through the swelling, the taste of blood always in the back of her throat, the difficulty sleeping. “Refinement”? She laughed to herself, but even smiling hurt. Oh, no, she remembered. It didn’t hurt. It caused “discomfort.”

  The last operation was surprisingly quick, less than an hour. Mary Jane got up off the table with little more than wooziness and a neat white pad of gauze taped over the new tip of her nose. After a night of restless sleep, she spent the next day packing her few belongings and telling the hotel she’d be leaving. Not that the ever-changing front desk staff cared. She worked her last week at the clinic, and said goodbye to the children. She did everything she could do to prepare for her departure, except take off the gauze.