There he was again, ranting. Focus, he told himself. The woman’s upper chest was sufficiently full, no implants needed. Raise the nipple, reduce the size of the areola, and remove excess skin. He knew every move, every single cut he had to make, could do so blindly guided by muscle memory alone, had done thousands of these lifts. Yet the tremor wouldn’t stop.
“Dr. Pryor.” The voice of the OR nurse ripped him from his hypervigilant state. “The patient is ready. Are you okay?”
“Scalpel,” he said, and this time he grabbed the shiny metal object the nurse extended to him.
In the background were the soothing rhythmic sounds of the heart monitor and the gentle lifting of the oxygen sleeve. He poked the breast with the tip of his finger. The tissue was spongy, bounced back. He touched the body with the tip of the scalpel, increased the pressure, and watched the blood appear. The nurse wiped the scarlet line with gauze.
That tremor, he felt it more than he saw it, and hoped the nurse wouldn’t pick up on it. He shifted in place, willed his mind to engage. A perfect circle around the areola. The second cut: vertically down to the breast crease. He knew every slice and tuck in his sleep, could reshape the tissue to improve contour and firmness in the dark, remove excess skin to compensate for a loss of elasticity with one eye closed. The third cut: horizontally down to the breast crease. He repositioned the nipple and areola to a natural and youthful height.
He stepped around the table and began work on the right breast. When the incisions were concealed and the sutures layered deep within the tissue and in the natural breast contours, he stepped back and motioned the nurses to prop up the bed, allow gravity to take over. The symmetry was perfect, the patient was going to be very happy.
He reached behind his back and pulled the strings, loosening the coat. He tucked the gloves within the fabric and tossed the bundle into the bin.
What the next step with Penelope was he wasn’t sure. He’d been kidding himself. Penelope would never make it on her own. But what did his involvement look like? He couldn’t lock her up, put her away in a box underneath the ground to keep her safe. Donna had used those words and he was taken aback by them then. He imagined a box in the ground, just how had her mind gone that far? Donna had her faults but she was a good mother, and for her to use those words frightened him.
He had one wish: to be able to alter Penelope’s brain like he altered breast tissue and nasal tips and eyelids, to cut away the things that were not meant to be there. So easy to fix a body, make it look young and firm and perfect. He was capable of rewinding time but how could he fix a brain, one in which something malign did push-ups every day?
This he knew for sure: Penelope wasn’t a model or a scientific equation. She was a human being and he’d failed her. That was certain, and for that he didn’t need to run labs, check blood, or observe a cutting site. Failure. In all his years as a plastic surgeon he had never known what failure was.
The tremor was gone and his confidence returned. He could fix anything. He had successfully operated on a nose and septum once that was nothing but a gnarly pulp. Sometimes he had to perform controlled fractures, had to make it worse to make it better, and that’s what he’d do, with mallet and chisel, he’d do what he had to do to make it all better.
8
PENELOPE
Penelope’s mother spent hours looking at old photographs. She made Penelope sit next to her and pointed. Here is your first time at the beach. Look, your first birthday. Remember the day you learned to ride your bike?
Penelope stared at pictures of a girl in front of dollhouses, at beaches, and in the family cabin. Her mother remembered years and places—1993, Florida, Disney World; 1995, a cruise to Mexico—and recited the details like an itinerary. She never got confused, never mixed up the details, never said wait a minute, what year was this? There were photographs of a girl hanging upside down on monkey bars, a girl at birthday parties blowing out candles, a girl in a room filled with the quintessential childhood of American Girl dolls and Boxcar Children books.
Penelope believed her mother was telling the truth, didn’t assume those stories to be lies. She recognized the girl in the pictures, yes, it was her, she was sure, but most of the details her mother relayed seemed made up. You loved the beach—Penelope broke out in hives within minutes of being exposed to the sun, tiny bumps merged into raised patches on her chest and arms—and how did her mother come up with having a fondness for animals? That was some far-fetched tale. There were photographs of Penelope kneeling next to a dog but they’d never owned a pet. Her body language clearly showed she was reluctant around the animal, she could tell by her forced smile and how she leaned away from it and her mother would never allow hair on furniture or the destruction of her immaculate lawn. There was a faint memory of a wooden swing, the creaking frame, swinging back and forth, feet lifted upward—a recollection of being suspended—but there was no picture of a swing anywhere. Her entire life felt that way, her mother relaying some picture-perfect past for which Penelope dug in every corner of her mind, yet she came up empty as there was never any proof for what she clearly remembered.
Penelope was about ten when those stories began to lead up to another activity: Her parents handed her paper and markers. Penelope looked forward to this and their undivided attention, and they didn’t stare at her directly but clandestinely, via peripheral vision or random glances, they watched her. Later they’d gather the drawings to give them to someone to look at. Penelope knew that because a doctor asked her once about oversized hands she had drawn on herself and she told him those were leaves and not hands. Though there were red veins but he never asked about those. What she drew seemed to be very important to everyone.
Draw a picture of your parents.
Draw a picture of your house.
Draw a picture of your friends.
How childish to make her color as if she were a toddler, but she liked how pushing down on the tip extracted the ink and dried out the once-vibrant marker until the paper dissolved and soiled the table underneath.
She couldn’t explain the drawings, it wasn’t anything recognizable or real. Once she drew a picture with waves coming out of her head. That was the closest thing to getting people to understand how she felt.
And so she drew happy pictures of happy houses with crooked roofs and crooked flowers bigger than the house itself and her happy family holding happy hands behind a crooked fence, the crooked slats taller than the happy house but spaced so you could still see the happy people in the yard. But that was not what was going on in her head. The inside of her was much darker. She imagined the doctor’s thoughts, how they contemplated a possible switch between good and evil within her though they didn’t call it good and evil but right and wrong.
Her mother was very specific about what was right and what was wrong. Right made her mother smile, like displaying concern and positive interactions (her mother’s words) with other children. Her mother called it “lovable qualities” which in turn made up for her infractions, as if good deeds canceled out the wrong, as if pretending to be good made the wrong inside of her bearable.
And how exhausting it was to hide the wrong parts of her, with her mother always being around, watching. Penelope didn’t pretend around her father as much, for one she hardly saw him but on the weekends, but she could somehow be herself around him, he never saw anything nefarious (her mother’s word) in her every action. He asked her about the fork incident. That’s what everyone called it as if she hadn’t just planted fork tines in the forearm of a girl who chewed with her mouth open. The girl also moved her arm when she lowered the fork, which made it all worse.
Dad asked her why she did it.
The question rattled around in her head, and she kept her hands steady. It builds up, and then I have to do it, I can’t keep it away. Penelope didn’t say that. Even she knew that would be cause for concern.
“You d
idn’t do it deliberately, did you?” he asked but Penelope remained quiet. “You weren’t trying to hurt her?”
Penelope sat, listened, and concentrated.
“Was it an accident?”
Penelope moved her head in what could pass for a nod.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay,” her father responded after a long while.
They played board games, but mostly he read to her and afterward she thought of alternative endings, born of her own imagination, and sometimes she got carried away, adding dark twists and turns. She was glad they never asked her to write but to draw instead.
Later, Penelope overheard a conversation between her parents. She stood in the dark behind her parents’ bedroom door, which wouldn’t shut because her mother had the door and the frame around it replaced for the third time.
“She was in a mood, all those kids and the noise,” her mother said on the other side of the wall. “Should we take her back to the therapist, you think?”
“She’s just a child, and we have to help her learn to function in the world, it’s not rocket science,” her father said.
Her mother’s voice then. Solemn. Calm. “I don’t want to see the other shoe drop.”
Her father mumbled something Penelope couldn’t make out.
“Don’t be dramatic,” she heard her mother’s voice, followed by a door slamming and water running.
I am a shoe waiting to drop. It sounded sad but powerful at the same time.
Back in her room, Penelope colored over the lines of the paper and onto the table. Her mother would be mad.
The next day, after school, she could tell that someone had scrubbed the table clean. She asked her mother if she had touched anything in her room but she said no. Penelope observed marker stains on her mother’s fingers, the kind that would take forever to disappear.
9
DONNA
I step outside and something stirs to my left. It’s Vera, slouching her way to the common area with a book in one hand, wrapped in a wool shawl she is clutching with both hands. I watch her as she lowers her body into a metal chair in slow motion.
Every Wednesday, a man in a black suit leads Vera along the walkways as she hooks her hand around his upper arm. There is a certain familiarity between them. For a long time I believed he was her son who lived in the city somewhere but found out later it was her driver taking her on errands.
As I watch Vera, her face tilted back, toward the sun, her eyes closed, I’m reminded of the cabin in Angel Fire. I wonder if Edward has sold the cabin, maybe he’d be willing to put it in my name? I always enjoyed the leisurely weekends there and I suddenly long to be at the lake. In the mornings, the water condensed into mist as it rose from the lake, and the waves lapped the shore, where here, at Shadow Garden, man-made fountains with electric motors pump water out of algae-covered copper spigots.
Vera sits, her mouth drooping, her neck now tilting sideways. What if she was dead, I think, how long until someone realizes? I slam the patio door shut. Vera jerks awake, puzzled. She lifts her hand and waves at me by merely wiggling her fingers about. I wave back. I motion to her with my hand and point at the chair next to her. Vera nods. When I drop into the chair, I look left and right to make sure there isn’t anyone within earshot.
“Vera,” I say and grab her book from her lap. I’m not interested in the book itself but I don’t want her to get distracted, and she will, she always does. “I’ve made a decision.”
“What’s that, dear?”
“I’m going to see Edward. I have to talk to him.” My breathing is heavy.
I wait for her response but there’s none. Her face is turned toward the sun, her eyes are closed. After a long while, she speaks. “Edward?” she finally says. “You haven’t spoken to him in months. Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I don’t care.” I feel myself getting worked up, tears about to stream down my face. I’ve kept the desperation at bay but it’s about to pour out of me. Vera has never seen me cry, though apart from exchanging pleasantries and gossip, she knows the gist of my story. I’ve spent hours relaying my life to her.
I take in a deep breath. “This is about money. I need to talk to him. I can’t find any paperwork regarding a divorce or a settlement, anything about alimony.”
“Why are you crying?” Vera asks, my tears throwing her off.
I go on and on, explaining how I should have insisted on legal papers, how hush-hush the time was just before Edward discarded me, how nebulous the weeks before, how I couldn’t get out of bed, the melancholy—I want to avoid the D word at all costs—how my overall state of mind was neither here nor there, and how the edges of that time are no longer clear. And Penelope, I worry about Penelope. Always I worry. Always.
“Penelope hasn’t called in months. I’ve no idea where she is or if she’s okay. It’s driving me nuts. And Edward, Edward doesn’t know the half of it, he’s not prepared to deal and so much has been happening, I . . .”
Vera doesn’t display any negative notion though I can tell by her pursed lips that she has some sort of feeling about my disoriented stream of words.
“She’s grown, but who doesn’t call their mother?” I add.
“I don’t call my mother.”
“Your mother is dead, Vera.”
She cranes her neck to look past me. A family with two small children approaches. One of them, a boy the age of five, maybe six, runs after a ball. It bounces and then rolls over the grass, toward us. He picks it up but then stares at us as if he wants to talk.
“Hi,” he says and holds the ball in front of him like it’s a big belly. “What are you doing?” He sounds squeaky and high-pitched, still so many years before he will lose his childlike voice.
Vera opens her mouth but before she can say anything, a woman appears and grabs the boy by the hand, pulling him away. He tugs on her arm but can’t get loose. Her hands close around his twiggy upper arm, and she all but drags him a few feet.
“Parents are so rough these days,” Vera says, loud enough for everyone to hear.
The mother—I’m willing to make that allowance and call her that since I spot a slight resemblance around the eyes and the nose—bends down and whispers in the boy’s ear. I can see how tight her grip is around his arm, how she’s attempting to keep him in check. And we don’t know anything, maybe the mother is trying to protect the child, she doesn’t know the first thing about us, apparently the boy is too trusting. I want to say all this to Vera but she doesn’t have children, she wouldn’t understand. The boy reminds me of Penelope, she too was a headstrong child. Don’t judge her, I want to say. Maybe the child’s a handful, a terror. You can’t tell by looking at them. It’s always so convenient to say if a child goes wrong, look at the family. That was the very reason I never employed a nanny. How do you have strangers in your home, how do you act, how do you maintain privacy?
The family disappears around the corner and I turn back to Vera.
“Can you help me? Can you drive me to see Edward?” I ask.
“I don’t have a car. You know that. We talked about that, Donna, dear, do you ever listen when I talk? The point of my being here is not to go anywhere. I have so much work to do and so little time. I’m not getting any younger.” She hesitates as if she’s searching for something to say but is immediately distracted by a door opening in one of the buildings farther down the path. A woman and a man with a Chihuahua emerge and the man drops the dog in the grass where he immediately squats. The woman scoops him up and off they go.
“Vera . . .” I say, not knowing how to go on.
“I’m sorry. I’m digressing, what’s this all about?” Vera asks. “What’s that got to do with Edward?”
“What will become of me?” I ask.
“Think of your daughter. She—”
“She won�
�t speak to me,” I interrupt. “But I won’t allow him to keep Penelope from me.”
“Keeping her from you?”
Vera is a writer. She picks words apart. Keeping her—the expression bothers her, I can tell. Keeping her implies he’s physically restraining her somehow. It seems like an odd realization, the possibility of such a thing.
“You believe Edward is keeping Penelope from you?”
“When I say he’s keeping her from me, I don’t mean physically, I mean maybe he didn’t tell her where I am. Or he told her lies about me. Or maybe . . . maybe she isn’t well.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Marleen . . .” I pause. How do I tell her about the voices I heard? The pills Marleen gives me. The key she hides. Do I say a series of strange and unsettling incidents has occurred over the past few days? No, that sounds melodramatic.
“Vera, I need you to do something for me.”
“Okay?”
“Your driver.” I pause briefly. I must think this through, slow down. “I want your driver to take me to see Edward. I want him to take me to Edward.”
“Do you even know where he lives? I thought you haven’t been speaking to him? He might be remarried. Have you ever thought about that?”
“I don’t care, I need to talk to him.”
“Maybe Marleen—”
“No, I don’t trust her,” I cut Vera off. “I don’t trust her anymore.”
Vera takes in a deep breath and blows it out. She isn’t fond of Marleen.
“That one,” Vera says and her lips turn downward, “I’ve never been sure what to make of her. I have an eye for such things, you know.”
My phone beeps. It says, your appointment with Dr. Jacobson is in 10 minutes. I have all but forgotten about it. I need to talk to somebody about what’s been happening to me and what’s been making me so anxious. Restless, Marleen called my mood and made an appointment.
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