Hostile Makeover

by Wendy Wax

  Her mother blew her nose into a crumpled tissue. “You’re right.”

  Shelley went stock-still. “What did you say?”

  Her mother sniffed. “I said, you’re right.”

  Shelley stole a quick glance out a nearby window to make sure hell had not, in fact, frozen over. If they’d been somewhere other than this hospital under these circumstances, she might have pumped a fist in the air or called the Guinness World Records. But her mother’s admission only underscored how dire she thought the straits were.

  In the bathroom, Shelley finger-brushed her teeth, gargled with the tiny mouthwash she kept tucked in her purse, and freshened her makeup.

  In the hospital cafeteria she bought four coffees and an assortment of fruit and Danish, which she passed out when she got back to the waiting room. Numb, they sipped on their coffees and waited for the caffeine to do its job. Part of her couldn’t bear the waiting another minute, while the other part preferred the fear to the knowing; once bad news was given there’d be no taking it back.

  An eternity later, she looked up and spotted Dr. Shapiro heading toward them. Her heart began to pound as she took in his tired eyes and the expression on his face. Sliding into the vacant seat between her sister and mother, Shelley grabbed their hands and held on. It was clear “piece of cake” were not going to be his first words.

  Judy squeezed back so hard it hurt. Her sister’s eyes were caked with sleep and had black smudges beneath them. Her lips were chapped and her lipstick had been eaten off a long time ago. It was hard to decide which was more frightening: her sister’s state of dishevelment or her mother’s disturbing silence.

  Panic rolled off them in waves: Shelley recognized it because it matched her own. She wondered briefly what sort of bargains they’d been making and whether the sum of all the things the Schwartz women were willing to change or give up would be enough for God.

  Together they raised their gazes to meet the doctor’s. There was a collective intake of breath.

  “The blockage was much worse than we were expecting.”

  Her mother gasped and squeezed Shelley’s hand so hard she had to hold back a gasp of her own. At the words “much worse” Shelley’s brain began to race. Was he making excuses? Preparing them for the fact that they hadn’t been able to save him? If everything was all right, wouldn’t he have said that first?

  “The next twenty-four hours will be crucial.”

  Her brain stopped racing and she let out a ragged breath as one clear thought emerged. If her father hadn’t made it, the next twenty-four hours wouldn’t be crucial.

  Oh, thank you, God, thank you. She squeezed the hands clasped in her own and drew a steadying breath.

  “He’s in recovery right now. Once we have him stabilized, he’ll be moved to ICU.”

  “When can we see him?” Judy’s voice was full of the relief Shelley was feeling. Their mother still hadn’t spoken.

  “Once they’ve got him situated in ICU, immediate family can see him one at a time. But he should sleep for quite a while.”

  “So, he’s all right?” Her mother’s voice was high and tight.

  Dr. Shapiro adjusted his glasses. “Well, as I said, the next twenty-four hours are critical. Right now we take it one day at a time. But ultimately, if things go well he’ll be looking at some serious lifestyle changes.” The doctor ran a hand through his short brown hair, and Shelley realized that he’d used that hand to help save her father’s life.

  “But assuming he takes this as seriously as he should . . . well, the rest of him appears to be in pretty good shape.”

  They were too numb to ask any more questions, too relieved to think about details. As they watched Dr. Shapiro’s retreating back, the fear began to dissipate. Shelley wanted to jump for joy, whoop it up, skip inappropriately through the halls singing at the top of her lungs.

  As they began to gather their things, her mother pulled her compact from her purse and applied powder and lipstick with a shaky hand. She popped a piece of spearmint gum into her mouth and offered the pack to the rest of them. Shelley could see her pulling the tattered remnants of real life back around her. When she spoke, it almost felt strange to hear her voice again.

  “Well,” she said with a glint in her eye that smacked of unshed tears, “you better believe I’m going to give your father a piece of my mind for scaring us this way.” She smoothed her hair back into place. “Why, I can practically feel the gray hairs sprouting.”

  “Mother,” Shelley said carefully, “I don’t think Dr. Shapiro would approve nagging and scolding as an incentive to recovery.”

  “Hmmph!” Miriam Schwartz snapped her purse shut and slung the strap over her shoulder. “For your information, I never nag. I only prod your father along when it’s absolutely necessary. Subtle is my middle name.”

  There was a lot of eye-widening, but no one came out and countered her claim to subtlety. Miriam Schwartz had just spent the night confronting what must have been every one of her worst fears. However she chose to express her relief, it was not their place to criticize. And of course, asking her mother to stop nagging was like asking her not to breathe.

  “Besides,” her mother said in a deceptively reasonable tone, “your father’s the one who’s been ordered to change his lifestyle. Dr. Shapiro, who by the way was NOT wearing a wedding ring, didn’t say a word about me.”

  The dough was moist and smooth in Judy’s floured hands, the weight of it comforting. Intent, she used her fingers and palms as well as the heels of her hands, pressing forward, pulling back, applying both muscle and finesse to work the dough into two perfect rolls.

  It was Wednesday, four P.M., four and a quarter days since her father had come out of surgery, and she hadn’t left the house once all day. The boys would be home soon and she knew she should be planning dinner, but she was making mandelbrot instead. The dog-eared recipe card, written in Nana Rose’s spidery handwriting, was propped up against the flour canister. Judy knew the recipe by heart, but the card, like the smell and taste of this German/Jewish version of biscotti, brought her grandmother closer. When the mandelbrot was finished, she’d store it in one of Nana’s old tins.

  Nana Rose had lived to ninety-one. She’d been independent and feisty right up until the day she dropped dead in the middle of her kitchen while making matzo balls. Both her mother’s and father’s families were known for their longevity. Sprung from good European peasant stock, the Schwartzes and Kleins got shriveled and wizened and shrank like Great-aunt Sonya was doing now; they didn’t drop dead from heart attacks at the age of sixty-three like her father had almost done.

  Judy arranged the rolls of dough on the baking sheet and slipped it into the preheated oven.

  She’d assumed her parents would live to ripe old ages; had assumed she and Craig would do the same. But what if she didn’t have another fifty years? What if she was going to drop one day soon in the sportswear department at Bloomies? Or while letting Lars, her sadistic personal trainer, push her through yet another workout? What if it happened in a car pool line while she was waiting for one of the boys?

  Her thoughts swirling, she cleared the counters and scrubbed the mixing bowls, breathing in the almond-scented warmth that began to fill her kitchen. She gathered the dirty clothes strewn across the boys’ bedroom floors and deposited them in the laundry room, then hurried back to the kitchen to take the warm mounds from the oven. She had just sliced the dough and put the crescent-shaped pieces back in the oven when Sammy, her youngest, breezed through the kitchen door.

  “Hi, sweetie.”

  At twelve Sammy had already more than matched her five feet four inches. Although he was rapidly catching up with his older brother physically, in many ways he was still her little boy and not averse to the occasional display of affection.

  Judy gave him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. “How was the social studies test?”

  “Killer.”

  “And?”

  “I knew it. I did fi
ne.”

  “Good.” The timer went off and she pulled the browned cookies out. “What kind of homework do you have?”

  “Just language arts and science.”

  “All right. Pick one and get started. After dinner we’ll—”

  “I’ve got baseball practice at six-thirty. Can’t I do my homework when I get home?”

  “Practice? But—”

  “Just a little TV and then I’ll get dressed and start on my science.”

  She was too busy regrouping around the unexpected practice to negotiate. Had she really forgotten? Or missed an e-mailed schedule change? She’d been so busy cleaning and baking today, she hadn’t even gone on-line.

  Moving to the pantry she perused its contents, looking for something she could make for Jason and Craig that would be portable enough for Sam to eat in the car.

  The kitchen door opened and slammed shut. Jason sauntered in and dropped his backpack in the middle of the floor.

  “Do not leave that there,” Judy said as she did every day. He grunted and kicked it approximately two inches to the left and she came around the counter to stand in front of him, knowing better than to try to hug or kiss him. At fourteen and a half, he towered over her. His shoulders were almost as broad as his father’s. The child they had once dubbed “the mouth” now communicated via shrugs, grimaces, and monosyllables. She no longer had any idea what he thought or felt.

  “How was school?”

  “OK.” He opened the refrigerator, grabbed a carton of milk, and lifted it toward his lips.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  With a shrug, he pulled a glass out of the cupboard, filled it to the brim, and drained it in one long gulp. Abandoning it without a backward glance, he grabbed a handful of Oreos from the cookie jar and headed back toward the door. “Going to Joey’s,” he mumbled around a mouthful of chocolate.

  “But what about homework?”

  “Already finished it.”

  She checked the clock. If she made some kind of casserole, she could pop it in the oven before she left to drop Sam at practice and get back in time to put it on the table. She reached for a can of tuna. “Be back by seven for dinner.”

  “I have wrestling practice at six forty-five.”

  “You have practice tonight, too?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He was gone before she could question him further. Turning back to the pantry she reconsidered her options. She’d do a drive-through for the boys and let Craig fend for himself. Her own appetite had disappeared months ago.

  “Where’s my belt?” Sammy shrieked from the top of the stairs. “And my other red sock?”

  Judy sighed. When you were a lone woman in a house full of males you were pretty much the only person who actually knew where things were. Or cared.

  “Try the laundry room,” she shouted over the ringing of the phone. He clomped off as she brought the receiver to her ear.

  “Judy?” Craig’s voice was hurried and distracted. This was nothing new.

  She looked up at the clock on the wall. “Where are you?”

  “On my way to the Witherspoon dinner.”

  “But both the boys have practices tonight. I wanted to go to the hospital to see my father after dinner.”

  “Judy,” he spoke as if to a child. “This has been on the calendar for weeks.”

  “No way,” she protested as she walked over to the family calendar. She was the most obsessively organized person she knew. She scheduled their lives like a commander scheduled his troops; her calendar was her battle map.

  She glanced at today’s square just to prove her point. And clamped her mouth shut.

  “You know, writing things on the calendar is only helpful if you remember to look at it on the appropriate day,” Craig pointed out.

  Very funny. She looked at that damned calendar constantly. She didn’t make a move without consulting that calendar.

  She changed the phone to her other ear. Except lately she’d become reluctant to look at all those packed squares and what they represented. She’d been reluctant to consider a lot of things lately.

  Craig had his little chuckle at her expense and then said good-bye. Judy put away the mandelbrot and told herself she should be happy she didn’t have to cook dinner.

  She’d just throw the boys in the car, toss something down their throats—like the seal trainers did at SeaWorld—and deposit them at their respective practices. At which point she’d have about forty-five minutes to regroup before she turned around and started picking them back up.

  “Sammy, hurry up!” she shouted up the stairs. Jason ambled through the door and she waved him in, trying to light a fire under him. “You need to hurry, too,” she said. “You’re going to have to come with me to drop Sam. Throw your gym bag in the back of the car and let’s go.”

  Sammy pounded down the stairs and Judy fell in behind him, shooing both boys toward the door, trying to figure out when she’d lost her grasp on the details of their lives.

  At the step down to the garage she stopped to flip off the kitchen light and retrieve her purse and keys from the kitchen desk. But neither of her children was hotfooting it to the car. In fact, they’d turned and planted themselves in her path and were now considering her out of identical brown eyes.

  “What?” she asked, annoyed by all that she’d forgotten and all that she still had left to do.

  “Well . . .” Sammy looked embarrassed. Jason’s expression indicated he thought she was dumber than dirt. “Well,” her oldest said now. “We know we’re in a hurry and all.” He gave her an odd once-over and she dropped her own gaze to see what he was looking at.

  “But don’t you think you should go back in and change out of your pajamas?”

  chapter 5

  On Monday morning Shelley met Nina for breakfast at the Lox, Stocks and Bagel, a trendy new deli located above a brokerage house in Buckhead. Nina was dressed for work at the small engineering firm she’d recently joined. Shelley hadn’t been able to force herself to go into the office since her father’s heart attack. The idea of the office without him was more than she could take.

  Pushing her mushroom omelet around on her plate and sipping halfheartedly at her coffee, Shelley watched Nina consume two eggs, an order of corned beef hash, home fries, and whole-wheat toast with the precision of a surgeon. In her methodical way, Nina packed away more food than any truck driver, yet still looked like a supermodel. Shelley had been trying to hate her for it since they’d met in Mrs. Gerber’s first grade class, but her friend’s unfailing good humor and practical nature generally compensated for her enviable metabolism and ability to make every other woman in a room disappear.

  Nina Olson was naturally blond and blue-eyed, with Scandinavian cheekbones and an aquiline nose that hadn’t required remodeling. If you looked up “shiksa” in a Yiddish dictionary it would say “non-Jewish female” and be accompanied by Nina’s picture.

  “How’s Miriam taking all of this?” Nina reached for a piece of Shelley’s untouched rye toast and slathered it with jelly.

  “About like you’d expect. One minute she’s fussing over him and telling him to take it easy, the next she’s complaining that he’s not trying hard enough to get better. He just got home from the hospital yesterday, and he’s already got that hunted look on his face. I’m heading over there after breakfast.”

  “Well, give him a hug from me and tell him I’ll stop by after work.”

  Nina’s own father had died when she was in elementary school, and her mother had married a variety of men who’d come and gone too quickly to get attached to. Harvey Schwartz was the closest thing to a father figure Nina had.

  “Then you have to tell him all your ideas for moving the agency more deeply into media. This is a perfect time to start taking on more responsibility.”

  Shelley shot her a look. “You’re starting to sound like Howard Mellnick.”

  “It’s just common sense, Shelley. You’ve been waiting for yo
ur opportunity, and your dad’s supposed to take it easier. Who better than his own flesh and blood to help supervise things while he’s out?”

  “Gee, I don’t know, let me think.” Shelley struck a thoughtful pose, went so far as to rub her chin. “Ross Morgan?”

  “Ross Morgan is not his flesh and blood.” Nina eyed what was left of Shelley’s toast and when Shelley didn’t protest she helped herself. “You are. And there’s nothing wrong with a little good old-fashioned nepotism.”

  The idea of asking and being turned down again belonged in the category of “too painful to contemplate.” It was way too soon after her Easy To Be Me debacle to confront her father’s perception of her.

  Nina popped the last of Shelley’s toast into her mouth. “As your father once told us both,” she said after chewing and swallowing, “‘If you don’t ask, you can’t get.’ If you don’t throw your hat in the ring, Shel, you can’t complain when you’re not elected.”

  “If you don’t stop quoting my father and channeling Howard Mellnick I’m going to have you exorcised. And frankly, if I had to choose between Ross Morgan and me right now, I’m not sure I’d choose me.”

  Nina narrowed her eyes at that. “Don’t be ridiculous. You are totally competent when you’re not sabotaging yourself.” She made her voice sound large and omnipotently Oz-like. “The Mellnick and I have spoken.” She signaled for the check. “You might be able to blow one of us off, but not even you are pigheaded enough to ignore us both.”

  The waitress came to the table and laid the check on it. “So you’re the ones,” she said, eyeing their plates. “The dishwashers have been trying to figure out who the clean-platers are for weeks. I’m assuming I can take these?”

  Once, long ago, Shelley might have protested her innocence and pointed the gluttonous finger at Nina. Nowadays she no longer bothered.

  “Can we change the subject now?” Shelley asked when their plates had been cleared. Knowing Nina was right about approaching her father didn’t make the idea any less daunting.