“I’ll be right there when you come out of anesthesia,” she said, patting Joanne’s hand as she rode the gurney into the operating room. “It’ll be worth it, you’ll see. Beauty is priceless. And you have to start maintenance while your underlying muscles are still strong, not flabby. It’s too late for me now. Way too late. Just can’t believe I’ve already turned eighty.”
These were her mother’s last words to her before she went under.
Oh, the incredible pain. Joanne gulped hard, slowly awaking in her bed after being wheeled out of surgery. Her face had been resurfaced like the blacktop on a road—abraded with an electric sander with a special type of gritty sandpaper, then peeled with acid. She felt like her face was raw hamburger. Where was her mother, anyway?
The nurse said she was outside taking a smoke. Joanne fell back to sleep, waiting.
The night she came home she slept on a special pillow covered with Vaseline-smothered Saran wrap. Her eyelids were lightly bandaged so she could partly see through the gauze. Her mother had prepared the pillow ahead of time, according to Dr. Payne’s instructions. Special satin pillowcases, two to a package, in petal pink. Her mother had ordered them from Victoria Secret’s boudoir collection. It took three more days for scabs to form on Joanne’s face, and in the meantime her hamburger face almost peeled off onto her pillow, slipping and sliding like her two young daughters on their Slip’N Slide.
On the fourth day, Joanne steeled herself to look in the mirror. She loved mirrors, but not as much as her mother. And not now. Her face looked shattered.
“Mom … Mom!” she cried out. Her mother had been sleeping on the couch. No one else was home. Al had taken the girls on a camping trip.
“I can’t have Megan and Sarah see me like this. It’s still too soon. Call Al and let him know not to bring them home for ten more days. The campground number is on the coffee table next to the sofa.” A tear slowly slid down her face, making her wince, feeling like it was traversing bumpy terrain, a switchback. Beauty is its own reward, she told herself.
Her mother dug her nail into her hand. “Don’t you cry, you hear me?” she demanded. “The tears are salty and will burn. Besides, your skin is raw, and it won’t heal if it’s moist.”
Looking in the mirror after surgery, Joanne was not completely satisfied. Some of the spots on her cheeks were still visible. And the little stitches behind her ears and in her hairline were neat, like stitch number 23 on her Singer, but would they show if the wind blew her hair up? Dr. Payne had been right—about coming back for more enhancements, that is. After she healed from these procedures, she was going to schedule a second dermabrasion for wrinkles, and a tummy tuck. Everyone—that is, Al and her mom—had long said that her stomach was too flabby ever since she’d had Sarah.
“God, Jo, you’re letting yourself go,” Al had said to her when the girls were still little. Joanne had gained about fifteen pounds that she just could not lose. “I thought I had married a red-hot mama, not some dumpy housewife with a gut.”
“You could use a tummy tuck,” her mother advised. “Nothing too extreme or dramatic. Just a little one.”
She had waited a long time, but she was finally going to do it. As soon as her face stopped looking like hamburger meat.
The tummy tuck was awful. She had to wear a girdle so her stomach muscles wouldn’t pouf out into a big, ugly bulge. The worst of all, though, was the boob job. She’d just wanted to make them more perky—not too much larger. They had been hanging around her navel ever since she nursed her daughters—each of them for over a year—to the point that, to her, they’d looked like baby-foot-shaped raw pizza dough.
After the procedure, dragging a morphine drip—prescribed to help cut off the relentless, excruciating pain of recovery—as she limped from room to room, Joanne had stumbled sometimes. Experienced blistering headaches. Vertigo. She’d really thought she was going to die. Breasts were unbelievably sensitive tissue.
But now she truly was a work of art, and she could take great satisfaction in that. A serial artist. The human mind isn’t Pyrex—it can shatter. So can the face. And she had to think of her future. Getting a man in her life. The way to true happiness. Her mother had told her so. Her face was her birthday present to her mom—a belated eightieth birthday present. After all her mother had done. Jules would take care of all of them, as she always had. All she had to do was ask.
There were stunning views of the Cascades from Joanne’s tiny living room in her new apartment, after leaving Al. She could see all the beautiful, perfectly honed bodies on bikes or just jogging in expensive tracksuits down on the trails below every day. Her mother loved the human scenery.
What was the problem? Why couldn’t Mom and Daddy move in? Her mother had pushed for Al to move in with her back in her student days. But look how that turned out, she thought grimly. Maybe that’s why her parents didn’t want to move in with her—too much togetherness. Her place was small, she had to admit, but Megan and Sarah could sleep on the futon couch if they needed to.
The SafeHarbour director had discouraged the proposal to have her mother and father move in with her. “There’s no support there,” she said. Maybe she just didn’t want to lose the rental income. But she had offered other reasons for suggesting that her parents’ living situation should stay the same, if at all possible. According to experts in cognitive deficiency, the director said, changing an elderly person’s environment could be deeply disorienting and worsen their condition. Both her parents were showing signs of dementia and perhaps Alzheimer’s.
Maybe they had to think of another plan.
“We have to talk. I just got off the phone with the SafeHarbour director, Ann Pike,” Jules said.
“What’s going on?” Joanne asked.
“Their housekeeper just informed her that an unauthorized surveillance system has been installed in Mom and Dad’s apartment.”
“She should have talked to me first. I’m the point of contact—I’m the one who lives nearby, Jules. Why would she go behind my back like that?”
Joanne hadn’t expected the subject of surveillance equipment to reach Jules. She was a little embarrassed. But then again, hadn’t Jules gone behind her back and told everyone else in their family besides her about Uncle Wilson’s bequest? Why couldn’t everyone in her family just be direct with each other? Her face and body ached from the surgery.
“That’s not the point, Joanne,” Jules said. “Where did this surveillance stuff even come from?”
“I was worried,” Joanne said. “What if something happened and they couldn’t reach the emergency pull in their room? That’s why Al installed the surveillance system. For their safety. That’s all.” She hated how defensive her voice sounded, strong and clear. She knew her sister, with her psychology training, would understand.
She hadn’t planned to tell Jules about the surveillance stuff. That cat was out of the bag now—but she still wasn’t going to say anything about the content of the recording she had heard between their mother and Andrew. That she would keep to herself.
SAFEHARBOUR
Aida had had to find out from her granddaughter—Zoë, no less. Three hundred thousand dollars! Who would have imagined that? And nothing for her husband, after all he had done for his brother? They had always seemed so close.
She was sure that Zoë hadn’t known she was revealing her family’s secret when she mentioned the money to her grandmother. But you never knew with families. Secrets. Lies. The unforgivable. How long would Julia have kept it a secret from her?
Aida knew SafeHarbour was the last “harbor” for the wealthy and elderly. There, the frail and disabled were pampered amidst green woods and tennis courts, gym, and swimming pool. Having lost spouses, friends, and even adult children, SafeHarbour’s elderly were tiptoeing around their final loss: their own death. Social calendars were filled with bridge clubs, shopping, exercise classes, stage performances, and field trips. The residents themselves were reduced to a useless minority.
They had moved to Washington from Ohio for their sunset years. Aida had become tired of the harsh winters and had waited for a long, long time to move into a place like SafeHarbour. Her husband had denied that he was at retirement age for longer than he should have. It wasn’t until his patients started voting with their feet in the late nineties and moving on to younger physicians that he finally gave in. And by then, Aida had felt that her husband “owed” her—owed her a life focused on her, a life where her identity was not exclusively being a doctor’s wife. Finally, it wasn’t all about him anymore.
When one of the “penthouse” apartments had become available, Aida had pounced. Overlooking the woods, the penthouse had a kitchen/living room facing the front door, with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a study with a small balcony. Spacious for senior citizen communities, though it was still several magnitudes smaller than their home in Ohio. But now they were being squeezed into smaller and smaller spaces, until finally their remains would be in a tiny, decorative urn. Her children may consider this new efficiency apartment safe and economical, but she was confused—couldn’t find things sometimes. And people seemed strange, the way they talked. “Mom, we’d love to have you move in with us,” Joanne had said. “Jules thinks it would be a great idea, too.”
Why would that be a good idea? Burdening her favorite child? She’d refused. “Sweetheart, you’re way too busy to put up with your father and me. Why would you even think of such a thing?”
“Just because we want you closer to us.”
“Your sister put you up to this, didn’t she? No way. We’ll just continue to live here, thank you very much.”
Aida didn’t like change—especially not at her age. She liked routine and her familiar furnishings. But now their Duncan Phyfe furniture looked tired and dislocated in their one-room efficiency, like play structures in a day-care center for the elderly. So did the pale-green jacquard sofa and the glass étagère with its collection of fake food—jade fruits, papier-mâché peppers and broccoli—and lifelike dolls on the upper shelves. The dogwood curtains had disintegrated; they let in too much light now. The small kitchenette was bursting with pots and pans, the result of sixty years of accumulating kitchen stuff in Akron.
Except for her husband’s blood pressure monitor, the mahogany coffee table, with those weird animal-feet legs, was bare. The PC—a Christmas gift from Mike and Jules—sat on top of her husband’s old physician’s desk, which was crammed in one corner. Bob spent all day looking at the ticker tape moving along the bottom of the screen.
But Aida had never asked to be happy. Just content. And for her, SafeHarbour was a seniors’ sorority, “love boat” for the old. And it also provided her with an audience. She always volunteered, along with less talented old broads, to sing at the annual talent show, and always won first prize for her signature song, “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly.” Encores, too, for “Someone to Watch Over Me.” That always brought the house down.
There also were musicals, mostly Rodgers and Hammerstein. She guessed there were comforts at SafeHarbour after all … small details that made living there more bearable, if you had the requisite amount of “perkiness” and positive energy like she had. It was certainly a better place than Akron. And she felt protected from the outside world there. Aida liked being the energetic one in the room, and around all these decrepit old residents, she felt decades younger, even though she wasn’t.
As she walked across the dead-end street to the short block of quaint stores opposite SafeHarbour’s gates, she reminded herself that seniors were not a pretty sight. Despite that fact, she liked spending her time—lots of it—volunteering in the women’s clothing section of the second-hand shop, Yellow Brick Road. Proceeds went to the local SPCA next door. A convenient arrangement—old biddies replaced their dead spouses with a neglected animal from the SPCA and donated their dearly departed husbands’ old clothes and golf clubs to the consignment store next door.
As she approached the door to Yellow Brick Road, Aida spotted a SafeHarbour resident walking her small, silver-haired Lhasa apso out of the SPCA. They were both modeling the same haircut. Aida couldn’t remember the woman’s name but a residue of dislike registered. She pretended not to see her. “A move up in the world,” she snickered to herself as she stepped into the thrift store: from dead husband to cute little dog, from silver hair to silver fur. She had such a great sense of humor, but not everyone appreciated it. That was their problem.
Residents of SafeHarbour took great comfort, she felt, in fondling a furry little pet when widowhood hit. She didn’t care for pets; she liked people. Those who were worthy of her, that is. She needed an appreciative audience. She was through being ignored. Even more so with cleaning up others’ shit.
“How’s our favorite volunteer?” Francine cheerfully greeted Aida as she entered Yellow Brick Road, the buzzer sounding off.
Aida smiled. She derived energy from the other “senior” women at Yellow Brick Road. By comparison, she was a showstopper. Francine had come out of the back room to say hello—Aida guessed her covolunteer must have been back there tagging new donations and entering them into a ledger before hanging them on racks. None of that for her—what a snooze. She had to be in the front, where the action was. Where people could see her. Not in the back room, far away from admiring eyes. She was good for business.
“My, oh my, Aida, you certainly dress up,” Francine said, looking her up and down. All the women did that, and Aida loved it. She knew she was still attractive, even at her age. You’re only as young as you feel, she thought. That’s what she tried to impress upon her two daughters, but only Joanne listened. She often felt she had spent most of her life as an old woman, not a young one. Seemed unfair somehow. But her greatest asset was still there to pull men in. She just had to accept that her admirers had been age-appropriately adjusted. The looks she got now were from old men, not the young Turks of her diva days.
“Oh, this old thing? I just rushed to put it together.” Lie. It took Aida at least an hour every morning to decide what to wear. And this particular outfit had maxed out her major credit card, the one she used exclusively for replenishing her wardrobe. But no matter. Aida was proud that she dressed as if she still attended Junior League luncheons. And customers seemed to appreciate her air of entitlement, as well as her fashion sense. She was highly valued. She just knew it. So obvious. She was different and always had been. Went after whatever she wanted.
“I can’t stay long. My older daughter, Julia, was just here from California to celebrate my birthday. It was okay—too much fuss, if you ask me. But you know how it is with guests. I had to put everything on hold when she was here. Lots to catch up with. And Sarah’s coming over after school for her scheduled playtime with her grandma.” She liked using the word “grandma” as if it belonged to someone else. She had never imagined herself being called that by anyone. Ever.
“You never told me you had another daughter, Aida!” Francine said, interrupting her thoughts. “And we’ve been working together for three years now, haven’t we? Isn’t it wonderful to have daughters? Must have been special with all your kids here to celebrate.”
“Oh, I’m absolutely positive I’ve mentioned my older daughter to you before.” Francine can be so irritating, she thought, looking over at her. Chunky reading glasses, nose pointed down. Dressing as she does, as if she were going to weed her garden. Probably a hand-me-down from one of her teenage kids, or maybe something that couldn’t be sold even here. Like my son’s wife, Abigail—looking like a hayseed. No self-respect.
“Nope, I’m certain,” Francine insisted. “You only talk about Joanne and Andrew. This is the first I have heard about another daughter.”
Aida sniffed. No reason to mention that Andrew hadn’t come out for her birthday. Francine was so forgetful and nosy. How could she not have mentioned Julia at least once in the three years she had volunteered there? It just wasn’t possible. Well, Francine’s got to be at least fifty—almos
t the same age as Julia, she thought. She wondered why her coworker was aging so rapidly. You just had to fight the inevitable and maybe it would go away. I’m not going down that path—not just yet, anyway.
She felt her irritability was showing on her face. Why hadn’t Francine learned how to filter her words, to know the margins of accepted behavior? She had no social skills. At least Aida had taught Julia and Joanne that much.
“I’m certain I’ve mentioned Julia before,” Aida said, digging in. “But you know, I’ve noticed you’ve been repeating the same old stories and instructions over and over again. Starts to set in around menopause, you know—along with the middle-aged spread.” She smiled to herself, knowing Francine was sensitive about her weight.
Francine said nothing.
Aida wasn’t done yet. She went over to give her a squeeze around her waist, making sure to feel her rolls around the middle. Kind of disgusting. She should do something about that. But Francine was too out of shape for a tummy tuck.
“You just get used to not being noticed anymore. A kind of encroaching invisibility,” Aida continued, gaining momentum. “There are benefits to a place like SafeHarbour, you know. You should apply for an apartment. You might find some old geezer—I could make some introductions for you. The rich old farts are unaware they’re surrounded by old hags.” She chuckled softly, knowing Francine had financial worries about paying for two kids’ college tuition. She was recently divorced, with a deadbeat ex. Good riddance, if you asked her.
“Why don’t you tell me a little bit about Julia,” Francine said with a forced smile. “Is she married? Any kids?”
Aida’s cheeks puffed out. She could feel them heat up. “Since you can’t remember anything, sweetie”—she paused and reached for Francine’s hand, but was startled to see Francine recoil from her touch—“I’ll tell you again, hon, but you’ll probably forget by the time tomorrow comes around.” She laughed. Sweetly, she thought. “I gave her the beautiful name ‘Julia’ and refuse to call her anything but that. She’s an academic—or should I say, a failed academic. I think she is having problems with her husband and daughter but she doesn’t tell me anything. What more can I say? Hmm. She’s a royal pain in the ass sometimes. How about that for an answer? But the birthday celebration was good enough, I guess.”
Things Unsaid: A Novel Page 11