Goodbye, Janette

by Harold Robbins

  He finished making some notes on the chart and looked up at her. “Sit down,” he said.

  “Anything wrong?” she asked quickly as she sat down.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he said reassuringly. “We’re accomplishing everything that we started to do. It’s just that at this stage of the game we have to explore some options that are open to us.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  He leaned back in his chair, his voice almost professional. “What we are attempting here is almost a complete restructuring of your body. By nature you are one way and we are changing that into a more satisfactory mode. Much of the success we can achieve depends on the ability of your body to adjust to the new demands we make upon it. We train certain muscles to do more and compensate for others. Sometimes this does not happen as quickly as we would like, sometimes it does not happen at all, the muscles themselves are not capable of the demands we make on the. We are now at a point where we have to decide how far we want to go.”

  “Are you telling me that I can’t compensate for the loss of weight?” she asked.

  “I’m not saying that,” he said. “I’m sure that your muscles can. But it will take time. The muscles will have to be developed over a period of several years before we can achieve the optimum results you desire.” He glanced down at his chart. “At this point in time you have achieved seventy percent of the weight loss targeted and your measurements vary from eight to fourteen percent less on various portions of you anatomy than when you came in here. All of this is most satisfactory and I feel at this time that we should not try to go further in either weight loss or size reduction. I am, however, concerned about compensating appearance factors. Despite the exercises and treatments, the muscles are not responding as rapidly as we would like to the demands made. So I think we should consider other options available to us.”

  “What options?” she asked.

  “Minor corrective surgery,” he said. “It would save years of work on your part and would accomplish what you desire immediately.”

  “But there would be scars,” she said quickly.

  “Tiny ones,” he said. “And they would be invisible unless someone searched for them. We do the work in natural folds and creases of the body so that they are completely concealed.”

  “Are there any side effects or chances that it would not work?”

  “We have techniques developed during the war. So far, in more than a thousand patients we have treated, there have been no problems.”

  “How much time does the whole thing take?” she asked.

  “The surgery itself is minimal. The recovery time is two weeks before you can resume normal activities. The scars themselves will become normal, that is, blended into your skin, in approximately three months. But since all of them are generally covered by clothing, that’s no real problem.”

  “And if I decide to have my nose done?”

  “At the most two weeks, and all the swelling and other sings will be gone, leaving no evidence at all.”

  She sat there quietly for a moment.

  “Why don’t you think about it?” he suggested. “There’s no rush to make a decision.”

  She looked at him. “Yes there is,” she said in a firm voice. “I’ve already made up my mind. We’ll do the surgery.”

  He stared at her. “You’re sure?”

  She nodded. “When can it be done?”

  “I’ll get in touch with the surgeon,” he said. “He’ll have to examine you himself first. After that, we’ll try to schedule you as soon as possible.”

  He stared at the door after she left his office and then reached for the telephone to call the surgeon. While he waited for him to come to the telephone he found himself thinking about her. There was a drive and sense of power in the girl. She was only nineteen and he felt it was not vanity that had pushed her into this procedure as it was with his other patients. They were generally older and wanted to be younger. Her motivation went deeper than just that. She was creating a new image with a purpose in mind. What the purpose was he did not know. But whatever it was, it was strong enough to make her want to change her whole life.

  Henri opened the door. “Monsieur Schwebel,” he bowed. “Please come in.”

  Johann let Heidi precede him, then followed her through the door. “My dear, this is Henri,” he said, introducing them. “Henri, my fiancée, Mademoiselle Mayer.”

  Henri bowed. “Enchanté, Mademoiselle. Félicitations.”

  “Thank you, Henri,” Heidi said.

  The butler turned to Johann. “I have all the boxes in the library. We brought them up from the basement. I also had the desk cleared for you.”

  “Thank you,” Johann said. Perhaps what he sought would be here. There was nothing in the company records that had been kept in the bank vaults.

  They had begun to follow Henri to the library when the small voice came from the staircase. “Uncle Johann!”

  “Mein Schatzi!” There was genuine pleasure in Johann’s voice as he turned and the child flew across the room, leaping into his arms. “I thought you would be in bed already,” he said, kissing her cheeks.

  “Nanny told me you were coming, so I waited up,” Lauren said. She turned to look at Heidi. “Is she going to be my new aunt?”

  Johann laughed. “Yes.”

  “She’s very pretty,” Lauren said seriously. “What’s her name?”

  “Heidi.”

  The child looked at her. “May I call you Aunt Heidi?”

  Heidi smiled, holding out her arms for the child. “Of course, darling.” She took the child from Johann and held her tightly. “You’re very pretty too, Lauren.”

  “You smell nice,” Lauren said. “Will you come to visit me?”

  “If you like,” Heidi answered.

  “When?”

  Heidi laughed. “Whenever you want.”

  “That’s good,” the child said. “It’s very lonely here now that Janette has gone away to school again.” She turned in Heidi’s arms, looking at Johann. “When is Janette coming back?”

  “In a few weeks.”

  “How long is that? More than two days?”

  “More than two days, darling,” Johann said.

  “Oh.” The disappointment was evident. She turned back to Heidi. “Janette is my big sister. Sometimes we play that she’s my mother. Just pretend. We have no mother.”

  Heidi was silent. She had all she could to do keep tears from welling into her eyes. She hugged the child closer while looking at Johann. “Perhaps I can come and play with you until your sister returns.”

  “That would be nice,” the child said. She looked at Johann. “Would it be all right if I showed Aunt Heidi my room and my toys?”

  “I’m sure it would,” Johann said.

  Lauren slipped out of Heidi’s arms and, taking her by the hand, led her to the stairway. Johann stood there watching them go up the steps, then turned and went into the library.

  It was over an hour later that Johann rose wearily from the floor where he had been kneeling as he meticulously went through each of the packing cases spread before him. Nothing. They were all personal articles. Mostly clothing. Several sets of toilet articles, brushes, combs, some valueless costume jewelry. Shoes. No papers, no notebooks, no diaries. Nothing to indicate that Tanya had kept any records other than those that he had already obtained from the company’s bank vaults. He pressed the call button for the servant.

  Henri came through the door. “Oui, Monsieur?”

  “I’m finished with them.” Johann indicated the boxes. “You can sent them back downstairs.”

  Henri nodded. “Would Monsieur care for a drink?”

  “A good idea,” Johann said. “Cognac, please. Is my fiancée still with the child?”

  Henri smiled. “Yes, sir. I went by her room a moment ago. Lauren has all her toys all over the floor and they are sitting together looking at each one of them.” He went to the sideboard and returned with a cognac. �
�C’est triste, Monsieur,” he said. “The child needs someone. And she has no one.”

  Johann sipped at the cognac. “What about Janette?”

  Henri shook his head. “It’s not the same thing. A mother is a mother. That’s what the child needs. That’s what she really wants.”

  Johann nodded heavily. “I suppose so.”

  “Perhaps when the little one is old enough to go away to school, it will be better for her,” the butler said.

  “Perhaps.” The servant left the room and Johann sank into a chair thoughtfully. He sipped the cognac. Suddenly a picture leaped before his eyes. The two of them standing there. Lauren in Heidi’s arms. How much alike they looked. Both blond, both fair, both blue-eyed. They could almost be mother and daughter. He shook his head. It really wasn’t fair. Life never organized itself in a reasonable fashion. Everything was always fucked up.

  He finished his drink and went up the stairs to the child’s room. The two of them were still sitting on the floor surrounded by the toys and stuffed animals. “What’s happening?” he smiled.

  Heidi looked up at him. “Lauren has been introducing me to her menagerie. The lions are her favorites.”

  “Why is that?” he asked the child.

  “Because it was my mommy’s favorite too,” Lauren answered, holding up a small scruffy lion obviously many years old. “This was my mommy’s. Janette told me that she gave it to me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” the child said, holding it out to him. “Touch it. It’s very soft.”

  He took it politely and stroked it. “It is very soft.”

  “I told Lauren that we would take her to lunch on Sunday and then spend the afternoon at the zoo and she could see real lions,” Heidi said.

  “That would be wonderful,” the child said happily.

  “Yes,” Johann said, still stroking the stuffed animal. Suddenly he stopped and looked down at it. He thought he had felt something inside. He squeezed it. There was something inside. Slowly he turned the toy over in his hands. Underneath the soft matted hair covering its belly there was a series of cross-stitches where it had been opened and then resewed.

  “Would you excuse me a minute?” He went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Quickly he took out his pocketknife and cut a few stitched lose, then probed inside with his fingers. A moment later he held it in his hand. A small safe-deposit key, wrapped in a piece of parchment paper. There were several numbers in tiny letters written on the paper on one side. On the other just four words. Swiss Credit Bank, Geneva.

  He let out his breath. Tanya. In her own way she was still here. Slowly he put the key in his pocket and went back into the bedroom. He put the little stuffed lion on the bed. “I think it’s time you were to sleep,” he said.

  Lauren got to her feet and came toward him. “You won’t forget about Sunday like Aunt Heidi promised?”

  “No, darling,” he said, bending to kiss her. “We won’t forget.”

  She turned back to Heidi. “Would you tuck me in, Aunt Heidi? Like my Mama would if she were here.”

  Heidi looked at Johann. He nodded imperceptibly. “Of course, darling,” she said.

  Johann bent to kiss Lauren’s cheek. He straightened up. “I’ll wait downstairs.” He turned and looked back before he closed the door behind him.

  Lauren was already in bed, the covers pulled over her chest. She raised her arms toward Heidi. “Would you tell me a story, Aunt Heidi?”

  He closed the door gently and went down the staircase. In the library he poured himself another cognac and sipped it slowly. For the first time in days he thought about Janette. He hadn’t heard a word from her since she had gone to the clinic. Suddenly he realized that she knew nothing about his coming marriage. He took a deep breath. Tomorrow he would call her.

  ***

  The surgeon came into her room and looked down at her. “How do you feel?” he asked.

  She looked up at him. “Lousy.”

  He smiled. “I would be worried if you felt any different. After all, it’s only three days. Come, get out of bed. I want to have a look at you.”

  He held out his hand as she sat up and stepped out of bed. He led her across the room to a full-length mirror. “I’m going to remove the bandages from your bust and hips. I don’t want you to get upset when you see the stitches and the bruises. They’re completely normal and will disappear a few days after the stitches are removed.”

  “My eyes are still black and blue and my nose is still swollen,” she said.

  “That’s normal too,” he said. “Just keep on with the ice packs every two hours. They’ll be gone in two or three more days. The swelling should go down in another week.

  “Take off your gown,” he said, at the same time signaling to the nurse. The nurse came forward holding a tray of instruments. He took a small scissors from the tray as her gown dropped to the floor. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror. “I’m just curious to see what I look like.”

  “I don’t know how much you’ll be able to tell,” he said. “It’s still very soon. All I want to do is check the stitches and see that everything is all right.” He snipped the bandage just under her left arm and then slowly, gently, began to unwind it.

  She watched the mirror as her breasts appeared. He took the last of the bandages off. Her breath caught in her throat. Her breasts looked ugly, covered with black-and-blue marks and dried blood. “Don’t be upset,” he said quickly. “They’ll look better as soon as I clean them up.”

  He worked rapidly with cotton and alcohol. In a few seconds the dried blood and scabs were gone and all that remained were the tiny cross-marks of the stitches. He stepped back and looked at her. “Beautiful,” he said. “You’re healing better than I had hoped for.”

  “Beautiful?” Her voice was angry. “You didn’t tell me there would be stitches around my nipples.”

  “Areolae,” he said. “When your breasts were reduced in size we saw that your nipples were too much toward the sides of your breasts. It wouldn’t have looked natural so we just lifted them and moved them to their proper location. But there won’t be any scars, they will become lost in the natural folds of the areolae.”

  She was silent, studying her breasts. “Can I touch my breasts?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But gently.”

  Lightly she cupped them in her hands. They felt smaller, lighter. “What size am I?”

  “Thirty-four B,” he said. “You were thirty-eight C.”

  “And the scars beneath them and under my armpits?”

  “They’ll heal and disappear too in the natural folds of your body.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Several months,” he said. “But after a few weeks you will hardly see them, and if you don’t like the way they look until then, you can always cover them with a little makeup.”

  She let her hands fall to her sides and turned so that she could look at herself sideways in the mirror. She nodded slowly. The look was right. She looked slimmer, more graceful.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  “Okay,” she answered.

  Taking the scissors again, he snipped at the bandages around her upper thighs and buttocks. This time she was prepared for the bruises and dried blood and said nothing until he had finished cleaning her skin. She turned and looked over her shoulder in the mirror. She ignored the thin line of stitches that ran in the fold of her flesh between each buttock and thigh. Again she nodded. Her buttocks looked smaller and also higher and firmer.

  “What size?” she asked.

  “Thirty-five,” he said. “And you’re still swollen. You may go down to thirty-four. You were almost thirty-nine.”

  She turned to him. “It’s like a miracle.”

  He smiled. “It’s not a miracle. It’s modern surgery. But we did have one advantage.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.r />
  “You’re young,” he said. “Generally when we do these things, our patients are much older and their bodies don’t have the resiliency to heal and mend the way you do.”

  She looked at herself in the mirror. “And the scars will all disappear?”

  “They won’t disappear,” he said. “But they will conceal themselves and in a few months, you’ll need a magnifying glass to find them.”

  “I’m glad I did it,” she said.

  “I’m happy that you’re pleased,” he said. “I’m going to replace the bandages once again just to make sure that you don’t do any damage to yourself while you’re asleep. I think in another three or four days we’ll be able to remove the stitches. And you don’t have to remain in bed, you can move around as you like. Just remember not to bend, stretch, or lift anything heavy.” He gestured to the nurse, who came forward with another hospital gown. He helped her into it, then walked back to the bed with her. “I’ll see you at the end of the week.”

  The telephone began to ring as he walked to the door. She picked it up. “Hello.”

  “Janette?” She recognized Johann’s voice.

  “Johann!” she exclaimed. It was the first call she had received since she had been at the clinic. “Where are you calling from?”

  “Geneva,” he said.

  “What are you doing there?”

  He laughed. “I’m on my honeymoon.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “It’s true,” he said. “Remember what you told me in the office? I decided to take your advice.”

  “How wonderful,” she said. “Do I know the bride?”

  “No,” he said. “But I’m anxious for you to meet her. I thought we might take a drive out to see you.”

  “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “I’m not going to have anyone meet me for the first time out here. I’m right in the middle of my treatments.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “Your voice sounds strange.”

  “My nose is stuffed,” she said. “But I’m fine, really I am. Tell me about your wife.”

  “She’s American. She’s beautiful. I know you’ll like each other. What more can I tell you.”