With an expert hand, Maureen inserted the filler on the left side of my face and then had everyone move in to look at me. Ten sets of eyes peered down at me and I got a contact buzz from the wine fumes. Everyone was impressed at how much one syringe could do.
“Here,” Maureen said, handing me a mirror. “Look at how different the right side is now.” My jowls were gone on the left, as were the deep, asymmetrical trenches on the side of my lip. [I have the bad habit of speaking out of one side of my mouth only, as though I’m a gangster in a ‘30s film.]
“That’s amazing!” I replied. “Fletch, Fletch, lean in and see! This is what I’ll look like after I have a stroke!”
At one point during the night, Maureen said that because of my Mediterranean skin, I’ve aged better than those with thinner skin. That’s when I mentioned how old I was and the entire audience gasped.
They weren’t shocked because I did or did not look my age, but because I dared mention the number. They all recoiled as if I’d screamed “Voldemort!” at in the banquet hall at Hogwarts.
When Maureen was finishing up my lips, a leathery woman shuffled in and asked about cost. She wanted to know how she could erase the years. Maureen gave her a rundown of options and then handed her a price list. The woman immediately began to complain in her deep smoker’s voice. Were my eyes closed, I’d have sworn she was one of Marge Simpson’s sisters.
“That’s all too much,” she barked. “I can’t afford any of this.”
I totally understood. Nothing we were doing was cheap. I was there only because I’d exchanged my dignity for a couple of syringes.
[Suddenly I understood how people could ruin their lives for once more hit of heroin.]
“We do run specials,” Maureen offered. “Next month, for example, we’re offering twenty percent off all fillers.”
“That’s still too much. What else you got?”
Maureen tapped the sheet. “We have so many other options. You might consider a few rounds with the laser, as that will eradicate the brown spots and bring up the clear, younger skin underneath them.”
To me, that sounded like a reasonable alternative. I always associate liver spots with old age.
She looked at her sheet. “Pfft. Still too expensive.”
“Perhaps if this is something you want, you could set aside a portion of the cost each month and save up.”
“Nope, that doesn’t sound like me.”
“Girl… me either,” I thought.
“Then perhaps you’d want to invest in some our skincare products, like moisturizers and sunscreen.”
Seriously, it’s always possible to slow down the aging process, no matter how old you are. While the price of some beauty treatments can be exorbitant, there’s always lower-cost alternatives. For example, I swear by Oil of Olay Regenerist. South Korean snail mucous only runs about twelve bucks on Amazon, and it’s a lifesaver once you get past the idea of it. [It feels like egg yolk and there’s no odor. It’s seriously fine, don’t be a big baby about it.] The drugstore’s full of low-cost options, too, like Vitamin E oil. And anyone can shave off years without spending a dime through adequate hydration and enough sleep.
“Couldn’t you just give me some free injections now? I’ll do whatever you’re giving her.” She gestured towards me and moved as though to stand in line behind my chair.
Maureen replied, “I’m sorry, I already have all my models for tonight.”
“Then when are you doing this again? I want to get it done and I don’t want to pay for it.”
I appreciated how Maureen could stay focused and patient while she shaped my lips, as I’d stopped feeling empathy. In fact, it was all I could do to not kick the lady in the gooch with one of my red sneakers.
Maureen sighed. “Why don’t you give them your name at the desk and I’ll see what I can do?”
The woman nodded and left without another word, not even a “thanks.”
“This is why you’re a professional,” I said. “I’d have been all, ‘Take your forty bucks and buy yourself another carton of cigarettes. Really, go the other way and exacerbate the aging process. Just smoke more.’”
Maureen said, “I didn’t know what to say to her. She’s not a client and I’ve never seen her here. I asked you to model because I’ve known you for five years. This is a thank you for being a loyal customer.”
“I really appreciate it!” I replied. “This is a vain girl’s dream come true.”
I would have smiled, but I had a needle in my lip.
When I was done, I traded places with Fletch. He handled everything like a champ, like he was meant to get injections, like he was born to be a lady who lunched. I wondered if the spangled bell-bottoms were growing on him.
As we offered our thanks and said our good byes, Maureen cautioned us that we might bruise or experience some swelling over the next few days, which is typical. Again, not my first rodeo.
I saw Fletch’s face before I saw my own when we woke up the next morning. He appeared to have traveled back in time fifteen years during the night. I half-expected to turn on the radio and hear Destiny’s Child or Matchbox Twenty.
Fletch looked like he’d been on a relaxing tropical vacation, only to return home to find he’d won the lottery, whereas I looked like a victim of domestic violence.
My tear troughs had swollen up to the size of deviled eggs and I was bruised all about my mouth and chin. Every place the needle touched had doubled or tripled in size. I knew this was possible, especially in having so many procedures at once, so I’d planned to stay in the house for the next few days. The bruising was entirely my fault, though. I’d forgotten to stop taking aspirin a week before the procedures.
Fletch had to go to a meeting unexpectedly, where everyone praised him for, “A fresh haircut? New shirt? A different workout regime? Whatever you’re doing, keep it up!” His coworkers didn’t know what happened, only that it had agreed with him.
Meanwhile, I had to take my cat to the vet, where everyone at the front desk assumed I’d been mouthy. The more I tried to explain that I wasn’t punched, the less likely it sounded, particularly since our previous two visits had been when Libby and Hambone had gotten into it. Nothing says “classy” like a pit bull fight.
While Fletch basked in the glow of his fantastic new visage and youthful good looks, I spent the next week pressing bags of frozen peas to my face, ignoring the fact that I (temporarily) looked worse than before I started.
Eventually, the swelling went down and the bruising disappeared, making way for my younger face. But that’s not the best part, nor is it that everything was entirely, blessedly free. Or that when I see myself in the mirror, I still look like me, only a slightly better version of it and now my outside absolutely lines up with how I feel on the inside.
The best part is, Fletch and I finally have a new story to tell, a new conversational shortcut we can take, and a guaranteed laugh whenever the other person says, “Just smoke more,” or references cat-fur vests and spangled bell-bottoms.
Wait, no; that’s a lie.
The best part is being carded at the grocery store again.
FLETCH’S LAST WORD
I am never going to understand cat-fur vests or spangled bell-bottoms.
Nine
Little Pink Houses
“Privacy - like eating and breathing - is one of life’s basic requirements.”
- Katherine Neville
“Love is an action verb.”
“Kiss each other every day.”
“Never stop dating your spouse.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say to myself, reading the Huffington Post’s words of wisdom from married people to newlyweds, “but that’s not everything.” While all this advice is important, they forgot the most important component to long-lasting happiness:
Never share a sink with your spouse.
I’m not saying you can’t double up on a toilet or tub; that’s doable. Not ideal, but doable.
But Go
d have mercy on those who share a sink.
The sink is a trouble zone, far more than the commode or shower. Sink habits vary greatly from person to person. It’s rare that two people have all the same proclivities. For example, I have a friend who’s the greatest girl in the world. She could not be more kind, more giving, more present in conversation. Yet what she does to bathroom surfaces is unthinkable; it’s like she paints the walls with Sensodyne.
Add a partner who shaves into the mix and that’s a fight waiting to happen. Every damn day, cocked and ready to blow. No matter how tidy Fletch is in all other aspects of life, something happens when he picks up a razor.
Something untoward.
I suspect he shakes his head all wet-Golden-Retriever-after-a-swim-style once he cleans up his neck beard. That’s the only logical explanation for the tiny hairs strewn from one side of the counter to the other. Even on the days he doesn’t shave, stubble leeches from the walls, like crystalline efflorescence migrating from masonry.
It’s maddening.
So many things can go awry with a shared sink area. From improperly squeezed tubes of Crest to lids left askew to leaving the bar of Irish Spring wet in the soap dish to not quiiiiiiite turning off the tap, the sink is the Fallujah of household.
The sink can and will break a relationship.
This is why I pray for those couples who decide to move into a “tiny house,” especially when the kitchen sink is the only one in the whole dwelling.
I was not initially opposed to the “tiny house” phenomenon. When images started popping up in my Facebook feed a couple of years ago, I’d click over to inspect the blueprints, marveling at how the designers managed to wedge so many amenities into two hundred square feet. I loved the clever details, such as stacked shelves doubling as staircases and all-in-one washer/dryers. Plus, a lot of the tiny houses had wheels, meaning someone could take their place with them should they need to relocate. How cool is that?
Tiny houses, which range from one hundred and fifty to four hundred square feet, are basically mobile homes with better PR. I’ve always had a soft spot for trailer living. My father’s parents (Nanny and Gaga) bought a massive mobile home in New Hampshire after they retired. Their place was a triple-wide model, located on an acre of rolling green lawn. The spacious kitchen accommodated a table for eight. Nanny had plenty of room to prepare her signature roast beef, seasoned to perfection. The large living area held two huge divans, where three generations could gather to watch Donny & Marie. They had a couple of bedrooms that could house one king bed, or in my grandparents’ case, two twins, separated by a nightstand. The trailer was bordered by wide expanse of metal awning that created a shaded patio, perfect for listening to my Gaga spin his crazy yarns about [what I thought was the fictional land of] Nova Scotia.
From end to end, Nanny and Gaga’s manufactured home was far longer than our house in New Jersey and it boasted better amenities, such as a full pantry, a dedicated laundry room, and walk-in closets. Everything was pristine and sparkling, but built on a 7/8ths scale. I loved it.
I always preferred to stay with the New Hampshire grandparents, as my maternal grandparents’ house was… vaguely terrifying. My Noni and Grampa grew up in abject poverty after having immigrated from Italy, so Noni was loathe to dispose of anything for fear she may need it later. Nothing that came into her home was ever permitted to exit, so even though their place was sizeable – two stories with a full basement and a vast attic – every room was packed full.
For example, Noni had three refrigerators in her kitchen, yet a pair of them were non-functional for the entirety of my childhood. These dead behemoths served no purpose, save for squatting on valuable kitchen real estate.
The one working fridge was easily fifty years old, short and wide, wedged into the back of a narrow pantry, its shelves groaning under the weight of pots full of mystery meat sauce.
[Squirrel? Possum? Raccoon? No one knew for sure.]
The appliance had an external motor that would grind away, reeking of petroleum and old cheese. Because said engine produced a hum like that of a Panther Airboat, my extended family would compensate for the noise by yelling over their ravioli and Sunday gravy.
Noni’s fridge was manufactured before freezers were included/invented, yet she patently believed any frozen item placed inside would stay in that state through her sheer force of will. She was perpetually pissed off when this didn’t happen. The upside is that when the pints of stored ice cream would inevitably melt, brother and I could pour the contents on cereal during our visits.
Ironically, last summer when Fletch didn’t properly close our fridge door, the motor burned out. We called an authorized Sub-Zero repair service and found out that the repair would cost three thousand dollars.
Not kidding again.
Three thousand dollars.
In addition, we couldn’t replace the broken fridge with anything more affordable as no one makes them that specific size anymore. [This model is twenty-eight years old.] We’d have to tear out all the cabinetry around it and either rebuild or live with a fridge that didn’t match the separate freezer and had big gaps all around it. Every solution we researched was more expensive than the one before it. Fletch thought maybe he could fix it himself, but parts weren’t available.
So, I moved everything to the cheap beer refrigerator in the laundry room and found myself using the empty Sub-Zero to hold stuff, resigned that a kitchen full of dead appliances was not only my fate but also my cultural heritage. We lived this way for three months until it occurred to me to call an unauthorized repair service.
I’ve never been so happy to write a check without a comma in it.
Anyway, after my Nanny and Gaga passed away, my mother, brother, and I spent the summer on their property, as it was only minutes from the beach. We’d splash around in the ocean all day, often returning with Samantha, our dog, in the evenings. Sam loved to dive into the warm tidal pools formed in the wake of submerged boulders. My dad would come up for weekends and vacations and he’d buy me a new book of paper dolls every visit.
Given a bit of distance, my parents found time to miss each other, and I can’t recall any fights that summer. This was the happiest time in my family’s life. That’s why I always associated mobile homes with paradise. Trailers were clean and nice and new, so orderly, a calming medley of old gold and avocado green, where grandmothers used salt and cooked meat she didn’t trap herself.
That’s why I was absolutely Team Tiny House.
Until I watched the show Tiny House Hunters.
I wasn’t a viewer initially. In fact, HGTV was three seasons-deep before noticed that Facebook had reached critical mass regarding despising everyone/everything about the phenomenon.
I enjoy nothing more than being righteously indignant over that which is trivial, so I set my DVR. I wasn’t even annoyed at first, didn’t understand the fuss. My inaugural viewing involved a funky, older Canadian woman looking to simply her life. She was tired of being shackled to a mortgage and yearned for the freedom and mobility a tiny house might offer. [I bet she’d never be expected to fork over three stacks to fix a fridge in a tiny house.] As she inspected various tiny houses on wheels, each as neatly appointed as a small yacht, I understood the appeal.
Despite my claustrophobia, the idea of being in such a compressed space didn’t bother me. Each of the tiny houses she saw smacked of coziness, like living in the ultimate reading nook. Human beings are a lot like goldfish, able to adapt to any size tank. Ultimately, they’ll be fine in any place that gives them a sense of peace.
While waiting for the next installment of Tiny House Hunters to record, I stumbled across a different tiny house show. In this one, the hosts give the buyers a couple of big paper grocery sacks and tell them they can only bring what fits into the bags.
I almost had a panic attack.
Personally, I could adjust to living in fewer square feet, but winnowing down ninety-five prevent of my stuff? No way. The pro
spect is too daunting; I’m exhausted just imagining it. I never want to have to make that many assessments.
Because I overthink everything, I stress out when faced with multiple choices, even when they’re all fine options, with low stakes. I literally feel my heart pounding when looking at the beverage choices in a 7/11. Am I more in the mood for a hot drink or a cold one? Do I want a cappuccino from the machine or would I prefer a hazelnut coffee? Would I be better off with water, and if so, do I want the kind with or without electrolytes? Do I get a regular Slurpee or one of the lower sugar options? And if I decide on a carbonated beverage, do I want it from the fountain or in a bottle or can?
If I feel this way deciding on a soda, I can’t imagine weighing the merits of every possession. I like things. Perhaps this is a character flaw, but I’m willing to live with it. Of course, Fletch never has this problem. He’ll opt for Diet Coke every time, unless he’s thirsty and then he chooses water.
Soon after, the DVR picked up a second episode. In this one, an artsy woman relocated to Asheville, North Carolina, and was hunting for a small space of her own while she figured out her second act in life. She viewed a few darling options and chose the cute little home that felt like an enchanted treehouse.
Why was this show making everyone in my timeline so insane? I didn’t despise the ladies I’d seen; I wanted to read contemporary women’s fiction about their lives! I’m not looking to live tiny, but I understand the overarching desire to abridge, to streamline. Sometimes it feels like all Fletch and I do is address things around the house, whether it’s repairing, refurbishing, cleaning, or beautifying, and, Christ, I’m tired. I love our home, but occasionally I wish we could spend more time living in it and less time tending to it.
I roped Fletch into viewing the show after our weekly take-out run. I’d told him our friends had been hate-watching and maybe we could enjoy deriding it together. During the Chicago Fire season, our tradition is to spend our Tuesday nights eating cheeseburgers and pointing out plot holes or clumsy dialogue.
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