Things Jolie Needs to Do Before She Bites It

by Kerry Winfrey

“She’s basically the strongest baby in the world,” Abbi says, gazing at her. “And smart. And so, so beautiful.”

  A golf-ball-sized knot wells up in my throat. Abbi’s right—Margaret is beautiful. And as Abbi starts talking about how she wants us to go get her pancakes from the hospital cafeteria because she’s only had ice chips since she got here, I realize that Margaret’s beauty has pretty much nothing to do with what she looks like. She’s beautiful just for existing, for being this little perfect miracle that came early and still turned out okay. For having those little fingers that curl around mine, for bringing us all here and making us happy.

  I think about all the time I’ve spent wondering why I couldn’t look different, why I couldn’t just look normal, pretty, beautiful. Would I want Margaret to ever feel that way about herself? No. It’s literally her first day on earth, and I just met her, but I never, ever want her to feel like she’s somehow not enough.

  I just want everything for her already. Like, I want her to be an athlete or a doctor or an astronaut or a beauty queen or an artist or anything she could ever possibly dream of. I don’t want her to be afraid of trying, or afraid of people looking at her, or afraid of failing publicly.

  And maybe to actually help Margaret do everything she wants to do, I have to do the things I want to do, too, even if they’re scary. Like how I was in the musical. Like how I made nonromantic friends with Noah. Like how I’m going to get surgery because I want to, and it’s a risk, but some risks are worth taking. Like how it might be worth jeopardizing a friendship if there’s something a whole lot bigger at stake.

  “Welcome to the world, Margaret,” I say.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Abbi and Margaret get to come home from the hospital a couple of days later, so I spend the few days that are left before my surgery helping Abbi, waking up at three a.m. to find her bleary-eyed on the couch, holding a screaming Margaret to her boob and wailing, “I don’t know why she won’t eat!” But it gets better, or maybe we all just get used to it. Between the four of us, we can do it, and it makes me happy to see Abbi finally realize that she’s not doing this alone.

  Also, I’m still listening to Deep Dive whenever Derek posts a new episode. I can’t decide if it makes things better or worse to hear his voice when I know that he doesn’t want to talk to me.

  Because the thing is, I miss him. And I like him. And I should’ve admitted that a long, long time ago, instead of being scared and assuming he couldn’t possibly like me. When I think about the way he looked at Happy Endings, or the way he touched my hair in the art supply closet, I get chills. But I can’t make him respond to my texts, or my calls, and I’m not exactly going to show up at his door to beg and grovel my way back into his heart. This isn’t a television show, and grand gestures tend to be a lot creepier when they’re attempted in real life.

  Maybe I messed it up for good. Maybe being afraid to take a chance means I lost my best friend. Whatever it is, I’ll just have to deal with it.

  The night before my birthday—two nights before my surgery—Evelyn comes over to coo at Margaret and bring us a Stouffer’s frozen lasagna.

  “I tried to make you a casserole,” she says, “but I started watching the episode of Golden Girls where Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche end up in prison, and it burned and set off the smoke alarm. I guess cooking’s not my thing.” She shrugs, unperturbed.

  “That’s okay,” I say, preheating the oven. “This is perfect. Anyone who claims they don’t love frozen lasagna is a dirty rotten liar.”

  “Exactly,” Evelyn says, grabbing a seat at the kitchen island. “So where is she?”

  I smile. “I’m a little offended that you don’t care about seeing me, but I get it. She’s napping, but you’ll hear her when she wakes up. The entire street will hear her. So how’s Marla?”

  Evelyn smiles. “Just as batshit determined and intense as ever. Which I love. She’s building a house with Habitat today, or she would’ve come over with me.”

  “Too bad,” I say unconvincingly. I get that Evelyn likes her and I’m all for being a supportive friend, but I’m still kind of scared of Marla.

  “But my life is boring and drama-free,” Evelyn says, putting her hands on the island and leaning forward like she’s in a boardroom-meeting scene in a movie about lawyers. “Let’s talk about you. Your surgery is in two days! Are you freaking out?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and then I think about it for a minute. “Actually, no. I think I had, like, some sort of existential epiphany when I saw Margaret for the first time.”

  Evelyn looks at me skeptically.

  “It’s like … whatever’s going to happen is going to happen. I can’t not take a chance because I’m scared. I don’t want to have severe jaw pain for the rest of my life. I don’t want to have a hard time chewing my food. And, yeah, I want my teeth to meet and for my smile to look different. And I can’t not do that because I’m scared.”

  “Wow,” Evelyn says, impressed. “Jolie Peterson, dropping wisdom. Maybe you should write a memoir and get it on Oprah’s Book Club so you can talk about what you’ve learned.”

  “I just wish I’d learned it a little earlier,” I say. “You know, before I ruined everything with Derek.”

  Evelyn purses her lips, opens her mouth and shuts it. Then finally she says, “How long have you liked him?”

  I think about it. “I guess … I guess I always did. But I never thought he could possibly like me, not the way I am. I just thought we could keep on going the way we were, where he had some might-as-well-be-fake girlfriend in another state, and I didn’t have a boyfriend, and it was pretty much like we were together, but with no kissing, or risk, or taking chances.”

  Evelyn snorts. “But where’s the fun in that? Anyway, he’ll come around. He’s not going to let you go into surgery without saying something. I promise.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.”

  We hear Margaret’s cry come from the nursery, followed by a frustrated groan from Abbi.

  “So,” Evelyn says, “did you complete everything on your list?”

  I almost laugh. My whole list seems so silly now, after everything that’s happened over the past two months. Who cares about any of it? But I can think of one thing I really want to do before my surgery.

  “Actually … do you want to help me with something?” I ask.

  Evelyn claps her hands. “Anything.”

  I run upstairs, reach under my bed, and pull out my scrapbook. I flip through its pages one last time, past the perfect faces of all those girls. Past their straight teeth and their symmetrical smiles. Maybe I’ll look like them after my swelling goes down … or maybe I won’t. I don’t care anymore. Because no matter how my jaw looks, I’m still the same Jolie.

  I run back downstairs, scrapbook in hand, and wave it at Evelyn. “You want to have a bonfire?”

  “Is that your creepy face scrapbook?” Evelyn asks, tilting her head. “Sure.”

  So we do. I mean, sure, my dad has to come out and help because it turns out neither of us knows how to build a fire. To his credit, he doesn’t ask why I’m burning a scrapbook full of cutout magazine pictures of women, even though it probably makes me look like a serial killer. My mom even comes out, and although she doesn’t know about my scrapbook, when Evelyn tells her we’re having a “feminist bonfire moment,” she yells, “DOWN WITH THE PATRIARCHY!” and we have to remind her that we have neighbors.

  After the scrapbook is reduced to ashes and the wood my dad found is still burning, Abbi brings out some graham crackers, marshmallows, and Hershey bars. And as I eat s’mores in front of the fire with my family and one of my best friends, I truly couldn’t care less how I look.

  * * *

  I’m not allowed to eat after midnight on the night before my surgery—my birthday—so we celebrate by going to a big family dinner at Gionino’s that day. We bring Margaret, and even though Abbi’s worried she’s going to scream, she sleeps through the whole meal. Evelyn brings over c
upcakes later and hangs out for a while, but I still miss having Derek around. But I didn’t run into any waiters or cover myself in marinara sauce at Gionino’s, so the night’s a success.

  I eat my leftovers as close to midnight as I can because I’m terrified of being hungry when I go into surgery, and then I head to bed to have what will surely be garlic-fueled nightmares.

  After a few minutes of tossing and turning, my phone buzzes. It’s a notification that there’s a new episode of Deep Dive, which is weird, because Derek just posted a new one yesterday. Even though he’s not on a schedule, per se, he doesn’t usually post two episodes so close together.

  Since I can’t sleep, I hit play right away.

  Derek usually starts each episode with a geeky preamble, his explanation of why he’s interested in whatever it is that he’s talking about. But this time, he launches right into it.

  “The night my dad died, I couldn’t sleep. Obviously. I mean, who could just fall into a blissful slumber after the worst day of their lives?”

  I actually gasp, alone in my room.

  “But eventually I did sleep, even if it was only for a couple hours. And when I woke up, at first, everything was fine. There was that moment—just a few seconds—before I remembered what had happened. When I was just a kid whose dad hadn’t had a heart attack at work the day before. When I was just a kid whose life was the same as it had always been.

  “But then—bam!—it all hit me, and it was like I was experiencing it all over again. And that’s how it was every morning. Waking up happy, and then feeling the worst feeling, losing my dad over and over again.”

  I exhale shakily. This is by far the most Derek’s ever said about his dad, even if it’s to an audience of mostly Danish citizens.

  “But eventually, that stopped. I woke up already knowing he was gone, and I didn’t have to deal with that awful moment of realizing it all over again. You’d think that would make me feel better, right? But it didn’t. It made me feel a lot worse. Because I had been living for those few seconds every morning—the only time I felt like my dad was still alive. And when I didn’t get those anymore, well, it was then that I realized he was really gone. Waking up without him was normal.”

  I swallow hard.

  “I talk about a lot of things on Deep Dive. And those are all really things I’m obsessed with, don’t get me wrong—I’m not acting like I’m not a huge nerd about marine life and cave paintings and all the other stuff I talk about every week. But I spend most of my time thinking about my dad, and none of my time talking about him. And I just realized—or I guess someone helped me realize—that I can’t just crowd him out of my brain with a bunch of facts about lemurs. That’s not gonna make it hurt any less. And maybe if I do at least acknowledge him … well, it won’t make it better, but it’s not gonna make it any worse.

  “This has been Derek Jones. Stay deep.”

  I can feel my heart beating in my throat. So this wasn’t him contacting me, it wasn’t our usual jokes, it wasn’t a pep talk. It wasn’t him declaring that he’s totally, madly in love with me even though I screwed up.

  But it feels like a whole lot more.

  I think about what Evelyn asked me earlier, if I completed everything on my list, and I realize that I haven’t actually thought about the list since my kiss with Noah.

  When Evelyn created the list, she shared it with me on the list app we both have on our phones, so I scroll through it before I fall asleep.

  Eat all the appetizers at Applebee’s? Check.

  Read Jane Eyre? Check.

  Jump off the Cliff? Sort of check. At least Peter accomplished this one.

  Go to a bar? Check.

  Run a mile? Ugh, check.

  Kiss Noah Reed? Check, check, and check.

  Drive a convertible? Well, I guess there’s something to save for after surgery. If I make it through.

  On the off chance that I do die during surgery tomorrow—and I realize that there’s nothing I can do about that one way or the other—I know that I made these two months something really special. But not necessarily because I did everything on my list. It was because of all the things that happened on their own, the things I never could have predicted. I made friends with people I never would’ve thought I could. I became an aunt. I realized every kiss isn’t a good one. I starred in a musical, for Pete’s sake! And apparently I helped my best friend realize that he can talk about the worst day of his life.

  I start a new list: “Jolie’s New and Revised List of Things to Do After Surgery.” There are only two items on it:

  1. Hang out with Evelyn more.

  2. Stop being afraid.

  I share it with Evelyn, and she immediately texts me the kissy-face emoji. I think about grabbing my laptop so I can scroll through my favorite Reddit threads one last time, but I decide against it. Instead, I head to the bathroom to pee, but first I catch my reflection in the mirror.

  Tomorrow morning will be the last time my face ever looks like this. I’ve hated this face, waged war with it, and covered it up as best I could, but for better or worse it’s been mine for seventeen years. After tomorrow, I’ll see a different face staring back at me from the mirror—at first, a swollen face, but then one with a smaller jaw and a straighter smile. This is what I’ve been wanting for years, but standing on the edge of all this change, I feel like I want to pause time and remember exactly what it feels like to be here now—in the before.

  Once I’m back in bed, I close my eyes and try to settle into sleep. My thoughts are a tornado of anxieties—surgery, pain, recovery, change. But I have a feeling that this situation is a lot like kissing. No amount of worry or preparation or lists will help me; all I can do is put myself in Dr. Kelley’s capable hands.

  Chapter Thirty

  I have to be at the hospital at the ungodly hour of seven a.m., but it’s basically impossible to sleep when Margaret’s crying, so I wake up at four.

  “Hey,” I say, walking into the nursery, where Abbi’s breastfeeding Margaret in the rocking chair in the corner. There was a time in our lives when it would’ve been weird for me to see her boobs so much, but that time is definitely not now.

  “Go back to bed!” Abbi says. “Don’t you have to wake up in like an hour?”

  “I can’t sleep.” I sit on the carpeted floor and enjoy the silence that now occurs only when Margaret is eating.

  But I’m glad I’m up. There’s a special kind of quiet that happens at four a.m., and while I don’t necessarily want to get up this early for the rest of my life, I appreciate it.

  “Are you all packed?” Abbi asks. She switches Margaret to the other breast, and Margaret lets out the most dramatic scream for the two seconds she isn’t eating, like not having food right now is the worst thing that’s ever happened to her. I realize that at this point in her life, it basically is.

  “Yeah,” I say, which is mostly true. I threw a bunch of stuff in a bag. The truth is, I couldn’t really focus on what I might need—clothes to wear post-surgery, maybe my Kindle if I want to read—because there’s still a part of me that believes there won’t even be a post-surgery.

  “You’re going to be fine,” Abbi says, as if she read my mind.

  “I know,” I say, picking at the carpet. “I’m just scared.”

  “You’re allowed to be scared,” Abbi says. “I’m scared every day now. It’s just my way of life.”

  I smile. “Yeah, but you’re rocking this whole mom thing.”

  She looks at me skeptically. “I haven’t showered in four days. I don’t think I’m rocking anything.”

  “Maybe you’re rocking smelling bad.”

  “Probably. But just remember: You’re going through a big change, but at the end of it, you’re still going to be you. A surgery isn’t going to change that.”

  “You’re right.” I think about going to make some breakfast, but then I remember I can’t eat anything. “Ugh, not being able to eat sucks.”

  Abbi snorts. “Ta
lk to me when you’ve been in labor all day and you’ve only eaten ice chips.”

  We sit there in companionable silence until Margaret finishes eating, at which point my mom pops her head in the door.

  “Ready?” she asks.

  I’m not sure I am, but I nod anyway.

  * * *

  Getting to the hospital and into the operating room is a blur, but then I’m there, on the table, as a nurse places a mask on my face. This is the moment I’ve been dreading and dreaming of for years. It feels surreal, but there’s no time to think about it.

  “Jolie, just count backward from one hundred, okay?” Dr. Kelley says.

  “One hundred … ninety-nine … ninety-eight…,” I say shakily as I close my eyes.

  I open them and see a nurse. At least I think she’s a nurse. What if this is the afterlife, and she’s an angel who’s about to explain to me what’s going on?

  She smiles at me. “You’re in recovery, Jolie.”

  I try to say, “Wait, already?” but my mouth is full of gauze and I feel a little bit like my head is surrounded by pillows. So I guess I’m not dead—presumably the afterlife doesn’t involve surgery recovery.

  “Just relax,” she reassures me. “Your family will be in soon.”

  I close my eyes and when I open them again, Mom and Dad are standing over me. Mom’s arms are crossed as she stares at me with concern.

  “Oh!” she says with relief. “You’re awake!”

  “I’m not dead!” I try to say, but it comes out as a mumble.

  “Shhhh.” Mom puts her hand on my arm. “Just get some rest, okay?”

  So I do. The next day passes in a confusing blur. I wake up to see a nurse changing something, my dad watching a soap opera on the television, my mom eating a pudding cup. And then they’re telling me I can go home.

  I feel groggy as a nurse pushes my wheelchair down the hospital corridor toward the exit, where Mom and Dad are waiting with the car. I’m wearing my clothes again, but I have no idea how they got on my body.

  “Are you okay?” Mom asks as she helps me into the front seat.