On Mela’s way to the fitting area, the saleswoman intercepted her. “I’ll just unlock you a room.”
The slatted door rattled when the woman closed it. The room was so small that Mela felt pushed up against the full-length mirror. In the dorm, she hardly glanced at herself before going about her day. Here she couldn’t help but look. She eased off her blouse. She still hadn’t found the right word for was reflected there. Knockers, hooters, boobs, gazoombas, headlights, nay-nays, yazoos. Sophomore year her boyfriend had named them Little Suzi and her sister. Little hadn’t been appreciated.
Mela cupped her hands under her breasts, yes, that really was the best word. She examined them from different angles. They were…larger. Attention getting, and womanly. Thanks to the baby. But her thick waist and watery-looking thighs, those weren’t so appealing. She looked more fat than pregnant.
Mela knew she’d been overeating. Finishing her senior thesis, “Gender-based Adolescent Initiation Ceremonies amongst the Shoshoni Indians in Northern Colorado,” had been anything but easy. Eating took her mind off wondering if every bodily sensation might be a sign that her period was coming. Instead of nauseated, her appetite was voracious. She ate nacho cheese chips, Double Stuff Oreos, rocky road ice cream thick with chocolate sprinkles. Foods Mark would thoroughly disapprove of.
“Could I bring you anything else?” the saleswoman called.
Mela quickly slipped on a “Barely There.” It was there all right. Who could wear these things? Mela’s ribs were still too wide, even if her breasts were fine. Well, they had seemed fine a second ago. Grown up.
“Maybe something a little bigger…around the chest?”
“Of course,” the woman said.
Mela listened to her retreating footsteps. She hated the idea of telling anybody. They would all start up: her mother crying, pleading with her to consider “all the options,” her father yelling, and at some point, offering money. And Mark—
Mark would never let her alone. He’d make sure only the pure and organic passed through her lips. Raw chard. Rice milk. Rennetless cheese. She did love Mark, in a way. His long sweep of dark hair. The insistence and intelligence in his eyes. But Mark could get a little bossy. He didn’t like her shopping at Albertsons—“Mela, everything’s covered in plastic. Even the apples.” He didn’t want her using teabags with strings. He even hated tennis—“Game of the ruling class.” It was just tennis.
No, she had it all worked out. She could make it past graduation without anyone knowing. Then she’d hitch to The Farm. They loved babies at The Farm. Lots of mothers on their own there. She would phone Mark after she arrived. He could come to the birth, if he wanted. Stay afterward. Or not. Plenty of other men around. She’d already written the letter to say she was coming. All she had to do was mail it to Tennessee.
The saleswoman opened the dressing room door and handed her something. “We just got these in. It’s the latest color. Mint green.”
In spite of the hooks, Mela found it felt almost good, much needed support for her swollen breasts. The green reminded her of pistachio ice cream. If she had to wear underwear, why be serious?
“We’re having a special,” the woman said. “Three bras for the price of two. Matching panties half off.”
“This one’s fine.”
“Why don’t you give them a try? I’ll be back in a minute.” She turned and left.
Mela studied the price tag sewn into the bra. She knew the woman wanted to make a sale, but so? She was a working woman, a sister. Mela’s parents had sent an extra check this month, an early graduation present.
“It’s only money,” Mark said. “A bourgeois obsession. Fucking money shouldn’t rule the world.”
Mela leaned against the glass sales counter as three pale green bras and matching panties disappeared into crisp tissue paper.
“Good choices,” the saleswoman said, pushing down on the keys of the brass cash register.
Mela smiled. “Thanks.” She felt a sudden gush of fluid below. Something wet slid down the inside of her thigh. She handed the woman her check. “Would you happen to have a bathroom?”
The saleslady eased the tissue into a daisy-covered bag and shook her head. “Not one open to the public.”
“I won’t be long,” Mela said, trying to sound as if it wasn’t urgent. She felt another trickle.
“Oh, I suppose you could use the employee restroom. Just this once.”
The woman led Mela past the fitting area to a small dark room. The toilet bowl was stained with rust. Peeling masking tape held together the cracked mirror. Mela sat down heavily on the toilet seat. Blood. Yes, blood. It seemed heavier than a period, but she couldn’t really be sure.
A fist of tears tightened in her chest. She began to cry, cry without holding back. She leaned forward and sobbed in her hands. It had all been so perfect. Life after graduation. The baby. Now what would she do? Who would she love? She stared up at the stained ceiling.
“Is everything all right?”
Mela recognized the saleswoman’s voice and froze. The toilet water was bright red. She had no idea how much time had passed.
“Yes.”
“Well then,” the voice said, “you can’t stay in there forever.”
3.
Before leaving, Mela checked in the mirror. No gray roots, at least not at the moment. She smoothed an eyebrow and tucked her colored-brown hair behind one ear, something she’d decided made her face look younger. She tucked in her blouse and walked toward the front door.
“Mom.” Katie sat up the couch, staring at her.
“What?”
“They show.”
“What shows?”
“Your boobs, Mom.”
Not boobs, Mela almost said. Breasts. She bit her lip. She was the mother, after all. Someone who knew nothing. She sighed. Twelve was not an age but a disease. Where was the creature who used to trail after her saying “Uppie, uppie,” so Mela would lift her daughter’s small body? I was your first food, Mela wanted to say. The reason you can feel a thing such as disapproval. Well, Mark had something to do with it. Ever since Mela had moved out six months ago, Katie had been impossible.
“All right,” Mela said. “If it’ll make you happy, I’ll cover up. Then leave.”
Katie had been the one who’d urged Mela to schedule a professional fitting at Macy’s in San Francisco: “Amy’s mother did it. Now she looks so cool. Your underwear, Mom, needs to make it into the twenty-first century.”
“Sure you don’t want to come, too?” Mela asked.
Katie rolled her eyes.
Driving north on Highway 1 toward Stonestown Mall, the ocean appeared. Mela wound past oddly-shaped lagoons and wind-bent cypress trees. Beyond the cliffs, huge waves swelled and spilled over. She imagined herself floating up out of the Volvo, flying high above the rough surf. She wasn’t sure who she was these days, or where she was going. Being fifty-one was strange. Final in one way, but in another, full of loose ends. Being fifty-one and single was an even stranger combination. Like anchovy ice cream or coffee served in a baby bottle. All Mela knew was that she had to try living life without Mark. Without inspecting every food label for fat content, without rejecting any bit of clothing less than one hundred percent cotton—or better yet hemp—without raising heirloom tomatoes on the deck every summer. Leaving Marxism behind after college hadn’t made Mark less rigid.
Whenever Mela tried to talk with Katie about what had happened—how she wasn’t angry, how she still loved Daddy, she just needed time, space to see who she was, what she wanted—her daughter shrugged. Whatever. One of her favorite words.
After his first angry outburst, Mark hadn’t wanted to talk either, focusing their conversations instead on Katie. This was not the man who used to argue about who should apologize for not apologizing first. The last time she’d dropped Katie off, Mark had i
nvited her in, offered a glass of the homemade lemonade he and Katie had concocted with Meyer lemons and wild mint from the backyard. The three of them sat sipping the barely sweetened drink on his deck as if everything were fine. Mela sighed. Maybe Mark had started seeing someone. Discovered Viagra.
But so far, living alone wasn’t bad. In her new apartment near the Santa Cruz beach, the simple act of putting daisies (Mark hated daisies) on the table instead of sunflowers (he saved the seeds) gave Mela enormous pleasure. Last week she’d played tennis with one of her interior design clients. Enjoyed it.
The mannequins at the entrance of Macy’s Intimate Apparel department wore bras the colors of jewels: pearl, emerald, turquoise. Beautiful, but stiff. She’d never understood the appeal of underwire. Of course, it was all about support. Make the most of what you got: big, small, medium. She didn’t fit neatly into any of those catagories.
The faceless figures wore panties in matching hues. Mela wondered what her less-than-firm hips would look like in one of these gems. A satin thong?
“Mrs. Lewis? I’m Joy. Your fitter today.” The young woman wearing the plum-colored sweater and short black skirt smiled brightly at Mela’s chest. Mela smiled, too, some. She’d taken the name Gray-Lewis when she and Mark finally married thirteen years ago, after living together, breaking up, then moving in again. She’d never been a Mrs. Lewis, but it wasn’t worth arguing. Joy probably thought that The Beatles actually wrote that awful elevator music, that a hippie was something to be for Halloween. Joy’s eyes looked around Mela, through Mela, as if her body were fading along the edges as she stood there. Joy was, well, perky, a word often used to describe young breasts. Two firm mounds rose from Joy’s chest.
“Make yourself comfortable, Mrs. Lewis. I won’t be a minute.”
Mela sank into a chintz chair that reminded her vaguely of Westport. It wasn’t just young women who treated Mela differently now. Men did, too. It used to be exciting getting in an elevator with a handsome guy, saying “Wow, that was fast,” or when the elevator stalled, “Who knows where we might end up?” Watch him grin, or if she was standing behind, admire the back of his ears, the black hair lining the nape of his neck. She’d imagine them stuck between floors. Now men in elevators stared into their phones, clicked and unclicked the brass locks of their briefcases, impatient for the doors to part.
Her mother had once said, “You think it’s hard being a woman? Try being an old woman.”
Ma, Mela thought, I wish you’d stuck around. I have a few questions. Like, why didn’t I appreciate my young body? Like, what should you do when you fall out of love? Stay? Go? You stayed. I left.
Joy tapped Mela gently on the shoulder. “We’ll be in the first room on the right. I’ll give you a moment to get settled.”
The fitting room was plush, not big but not small, its walls textured with iridescent diamonds. The hooks were white porcelain. Mela felt wealthy just standing there. One long mirror stretched her slim, a pleasing distortion. She kept her shirt on, knowing Joy would be back soon. Suddenly she felt nervous, sweaty in the crooks of her elbows and between her breasts. Her cheeks burned. Was this a hot flash? Maybe. Her periods had been wonky lately.
Joy knocked and opened the door without giving her a chance to respond. “Before we begin, Mrs. Lewis, tell me. What is it you’re looking for in a bra?”
“Well, there’s this one…” She must have purchased dozens of bras over the years: silk, rayon, spandex, cotton even. She’d tried strapless, racerbacks, demi-cups, sports numbers. All of them felt fine in the dressing room. But when she wore one at home, soon it was like a tourniquet tightening around her chest. Only this flesh-colored, worn-out thing, purchased years ago, and what she was wearing now felt good. The manufacturer had probably dropped the style long ago. “I’m not sure if they sell it anymore.”
“Is it Maidenform? Jockey? Goddess?”
“I’m not sure.” From the expression on Joy’s face, Mela saw this was the wrong answer.
“How about size?”
“36B maybe?”
“Excellent. Let’s measure you to be sure.”
Turned out Mela was 38A. Another strange combination. Big where you should be small and small where you should be big. Most women wore 34B, she’d heard.
Joy returned, her arm dripping with rayon. “A bra should fit snugly,” she said, handing Mela something nude-tone. “Adjust the straps correctly and the back won’t ride up.”
Mela nodded.
“Support is important at your age.”
“I know.”
“No…” Joy hesitated. “Let’s go with this one first.” She held out a gold-colored bra. “Lean forward and let your girls fall into it.” Girls? Mela thought. But she slipped off her shirt and did as Joy said. When she straightened up again, two contoured foam cups stood up stiffly on their own as if they held nothing inside. Joy stared at Mela’s chest and imperceptibly shook her head. “I’ll be right back.”
Mela fumbled trying to get the slippery fabric on the plastic hanger, then finally gave up. She turned toward the mirror—her new apartment didn’t have a full length one—and looked.
Her breasts had shrunk. Being pregnant with Katie, of course, had changed everything. Silvery stretch marks shone under the fluorescent lights. She’d enjoyed being buxom, but it didn’t last. Her nipples were now long and flat, like permanent pink stains. Mela pushed up both breasts with her hands. The skin felt silky and cool.
“Mrs. Lewis?” Joy called.
Mela slipped on a bra, any bra, and opened the door.
“We just got this in,” the young woman said, holding out a silk undershirt. No, not an undershirt—a French camisole—Joy corrected, in a rainbow of colors. All of them had hidden bras. “Aren’t they terrific?”
Mela had to admit they weren’t bad. Colorful. Enough coverage to avoid embarrassment. Supportive, too, if you didn’t mind feeling smothered in organic silk. She looked almost attractive in the mirror, breasts swelling above the V neckline. A much younger version of her much older self.
How was that possible? The pace of change was relentless, her body advancing toward some unknown but absolute endpoint. It’d been easy getting pregnant after she and Mark married, too easy. This had not done wonders for their sex life. She had never told Mark, never told anyone, about that time at Henderson’s Department Store, the sudden gush of fluid, the blood and tears. Maybe she hadn’t even been pregnant. She’d never know for sure.
“Now that looks great.” Joy stood at the dressing room door holding a stack of camisoles. Pistachio, champagne, and cinnamon-colored, she said. “Delicious, don’t you think? And a wide variety of colors to choose from.”
Impulsively, Mela decided to buy three. They were nothing like the ribby white undershirts, she told herself, the ones her mother made her wear as a girl. Tight, but didn’t they have to be?
“That’s how you know they’re doing something,” Joy had said.
The young woman tapped the purchase into the thin computer. Mela watched as she encased the garments in silver paper and slipped them in the starred bag. These are camisoles, she would tell Katie. French camisoles. Her daughter would probably still call them old-ladyish.
On her way out, Mela passed racks of gleaming underwear, counters with circles of coral and pink lipstick. She walked quickly, unsure if this was the way she’d come in. She started down a new aisle. This one displayed boots with thin high heels and purses hanging from silver chains. Up ahead, a row of glass doors appeared, the light glowing green across them.
The light would be like that when Mela pushed through the doors again, this time moving in the opposite direction to return the camisoles. At home they’d turned out to feel increasingly uncomfortable. Tight and somehow cloying.
Joy didn’t recognize her. “Could I help you with anything else?” she asked from behind the cash register.
/> Mela shook her head. There seemed no point in reintroducing herself.
As she turned to go, the aluminum sales counter shimmered, burnished circles spinning away and away. Out of somewhere a memory rose, water lapping against her twelve-year old shoulders, her feet touching the cool currents below, her arms threading back and forth. How hard she had to work to stay afloat, how for a moment the ocean seemed all hers.
Restraint
My father’s hand is out of the restraint and the oxygen mask dangling around his neck. The plastic cup tilts out, spilling air. He’s bunched the hospital gown above his waist. For the first time in my thirty-four-year-old life, I have a clear view of something I’d only glimpsed before. Out of the uncircumcised folds runs a catheter, the inside coated a dark yellow.
His hand swipes at the tubing.
“Dad, stop.” I quickly cover him with the sheet and tighten the mask over his nose and lips.
My father grumbles and turns toward me, but his wrinkled eyelids stay closed. His chest and shoulders heave with the enormous effort of breathing. The plastic fogs for a moment, then his breathing calms. I pull the Velcro tabs apart, but cannot bring myself to bind my father’s wrists. The restraints are soft white pads lined with terrycloth, but still—restraints.
I go look for help.
Yesterday, I found my father sitting up on his own, the green strings of his oxygen mask tucked neatly over his ears. Someone had shaved him and combed his thick white hair, but parted it on the wrong side.
“Dad,” I said, walking into his room. “How are you?”
I didn’t think he’d answer. My father had been on a ventilator for a week, and the doctors had just removed it the night before. The CCU physician had told us his situation was hopeless, though his cardiologist had never said that. Instead he talked to us about ejection fractions and flabby heart tissue. My mother and I prepared ourselves for the worst. But after my father was off the ventilator, rather than dying, he got better. The nurse monitoring his vitals that night was amazed.
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