Sweet Memories

by LaVyrle Spencer

  “Catherine, thank you for taking time to meet me,” Theresa opened, as soon as their waitress left them alone. Catherine waved a hand dismissively.

  “I’m happy to do it. Anytime. I only hope I can help with whatever it is.”

  “It’s personal. Nothing to do with school. That’s why I asked you to meet me here instead of in the office.”

  “Herbal tea has a mellowing influence anyway. This is much much nicer than school. I’m glad you chose it.”

  Catherine stirred unrefined sugar into her tea, laid down the spoon and looked up with a laserlike attention in her blue eyes. “Shoot,” she ordered tersely.

  “My problem, Catherine, is sexual.” Theresa had rehearsed that opening line for two weeks, thinking once the last word fell from her mouth the barriers might be broken, and it would be easier to talk about the subject that so easily made her blush and feel adolescent.

  “Go ahead, tell me.” Again the blue eyes held, while Catherine leaned her head with prematurely silver hair against the tall back of the booth in a relaxed attitude that somehow encouraged Theresa to relax, too.

  “It has to do mostly with my breasts.”

  Amazingly, this woman still kept her eyes on Theresa’s. “Am I correct in assuming it’s because of their size?”

  “Yes, they’re ... I’ve ...” Theresa swallowed and was suddenly overcome by embarrassment. She braced her forehead on the heel of a hand. Catherine McDonald reached across the table and circled Theresa’s wrist with cool, competent fingers, letting her thumb stroke the soft skin in reassurance before gently lowering the hand and continuing to hold it for a full thirty seconds. The contact was something strange and new to Theresa. She had not held a woman’s hand before. But the firm squeeze of the counselor’s fingers again inspired confidence, and soon Theresa went on speaking.

  “I’ve been this size since I was fifteen years or so. I suffered all the usual persecution, the kind you might expect during adolescent years ... the teasing from the boys, the awed stares from the girls, the labels males somehow can’t help putting on that part of a woman’s anatomy, and even the misplaced jealousy of certain other girls. I asked my mother at the time if I could talk to a doctor or counselor about it, but she’s almost as big as I am, and her answer was that there was nothing that could be done about it, so I’d better learn to live with it ... and start buying heavy-duty bras—”

  Here Catherine interrupted with a single brief question. “You still live with your mother and father, don’t you, Theresa?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. Go on.”

  “My normal sexual growth was ... impaired by my abnormal size. Every time I found a boy I liked, he was scared by the size of them. And every time I settled for a date with somebody else, he was out for nothing but a groping session. I heard rumors at one time in high school that there was a bet among the boys that anybody who could produce my bra would win a pot worth twenty-five dollars.” Theresa looked into her teacup, reliving the painful memory. Then she swept it from her mind and squared herself in her booth. “Well, you don’t want to hear all the sordid details, and they’re not really as important anymore as they once were.” Theresa’s eyes grew softly expressive, and she tipped her head slightly to one side. “You see, I’ve met a man who ... who seems to ... to look beyond the exterior and find something else that attracts him to me.” Theresa sipped her almond tea.

  “And?” Catherine encouraged quietly. This was the hard part.

  “And ... and ....” Theresa looked up pleadingly. “And I’m a virgin at twenty-five, and scared to death to do anything with him!”

  To Theresa’s amazement, Catherine’s response was a softly exclaimed, “Wonderful!”

  “Wonderful?”

  “That you’ve come right out and unloaded it at last. It was hard to say, I could tell.”

  “Yes, it was.” But already Theresa found herself smiling, loosening up and feeling more and more eager to talk.

  “All right, now let’s get down to specifics. Tell me why.”

  “Oh, Catherine, I’ve been living with this oversize pair of pumpkins for so many years, and they’ve caused me so much pain, I hate them. The last thing on earth I want to do is let a man I think I love see them naked. To me they’re ugly. I thought when he ... if he saw them, he’d never want to look at me without my clothes on again. So I ... I ....”

  “You held him off.” Catherine’s eyes were steady as Theresa nodded. “And you denied your own sexuality.”

  “I ... I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

  “Well, start.”

  “Start?” Theresa was astounded by the advice. “Exactly. Work up a good healthy anger at what you’ve been robbed of. It’s the best way to realize what you deserve. But first, let me back up a square and ask about this man.”

  “Brian.”

  “Brian. Did his reaction to your size offend you?”

  “Oh no! Just the opposite! Brian was the first man I’ve ever met who didn’t stare at my breasts when we were introduced. He looked me straight in the eye, and if you knew how rare that was, you’d understand what it meant to me.”

  “And when he tried to make sexual contact and you put him off, was he angry?”

  “No, not really. He told me he’d come to like other things about me that went deeper than superficialities.”

  “He sounds like a wonderful man.”

  “I think he is, but I have such an odd feeling about ... well, he’s two years younger than I am—”

  “Maturity has nothing to do with chronological age.”

  “I know. It’s silly of me to bring it up.”

  “Not at all. If it’s a concern, you’re right to introduce it. Now go on, because I interrupted again.” For the next hour and fifteen minutes Theresa expounded on all her secret hurts gathered up, stored through the years. She expressed her dismay over the things she’d had to forgo because of her problem, and the reluctance she’d always felt to discuss it with her mother, once Margaret had expressed her opinion on the subject all those years ago. She admitted she’d gone into elementary music because it allowed her to work with children who were less discerning than adults. She confessed that Brian had accused her of hiding in various ways. It all came out, and when Theresa had spilled every thought she’d harbored for so many years, Catherine pushed her teacup away, crossed her forearms on the table edge and studied Theresa intently.

  “I’m going to suggest something, Theresa, but I want you to remember it’s only a suggestion, and one you should think about for a while and mull over. There is an answer for you that you may never have considered before. I believe in time you and Brian will come to work out your self-consciousness, because he sounds like a man willing to go slowly at building your self-confidence. But even when you achieve sexual ease with this man, the other problems will not go away. You’ll still feel angry about the clothes you’re forced to wear, about your Rubenesque proportions, about the stares of strange men. What I’m suggesting you inquire about is a surgical procedure called mammoplasty—commonly called breast-reduction surgery.”

  Theresa’s eyes widened unblinkingly. Her lips fell open in surprise.

  “I can see it never entered your mind.”

  “No, it ... breast-reduction surgery?” The words came out on a breathy note of suspicion. “But that’s vanity surgery.”

  “Not anymore. The surgery is becoming an accepted treatment for more than just bruised egos, and the idea that it’s prompted only by self-indulgence is antiquated. It’s my guess that you have more physical discomfort than you even attribute to breast size, and the surgery is being used to eliminate many physical ailments.”

  “I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”

  “Of course you would. It’s not the kind of thing you jump into on a night’s consideration. And it may not be the answer for you, but dammit, Theresa! Why should you live your life with backaches and rashes and without the amenities of a woman
of more modest proportions comes to take as her due? Don’t you deserve them, too?”

  Yes, came the immediate, silent answer. Yes, I do. But what would people think? Mother, dad, the people I work with.

  Brian.

  “The yellow pages still list the surgeons under Surgeons—Cosmetic. The term has come to have negative connotations in some circles, but don’t let it deter you if you decide to look into the possibility. Better yet, I know a woman who’s had the surgery, and I know she’d give you the name of her surgeon and be willing to share her feelings with you. She spent her life suffering all the same ignominies as you, and the surgery has made a profound change not only in her self-image but in her general health. Let me give you her name.” Catherine extracted a note pad and pencil from her purse and wrote down the name, then reached out to touch the back of Theresa’s hand. “For now, just consider it, let the idea settle in, with all its constituent possibilities. And if you’re worried about facing people, don’t be. It’s your life, not theirs. Not your mother’s or your father’s or those you work with.” The sharp blue eyes brightened further. “Aha! I can see I’ve struck a nerve already. People be damned, Theresa. This decision is one you make for yourself, not for anyone else.”

  As they left the restaurant, the silver-haired woman turned toward the redhead. “Whenever you want to talk again, let me know. I’m always available.”

  That night in bed, Theresa considered the rather stupendous possibilities of “Life After Surgery.” She thought of what it would be like to walk proudly, with shoulders back, wearing a slim size-nine sundress. She considered how it would feel to lift her arms and direct the children without the drogueish weights pulling at her shoulders. She dreamed of having no more painful shoulder grooves from the slicing bra straps that marred her flesh. She thought of summer without rash beneath her breasts where the two surfaces rubbed together constantly now. She imagined the sheer joy of buying the sexiest underwear on the rack, and of having Brian see her in it, then without it.

  Brian. What would he think if she did such a thing?

  In the dark, beneath the covers, Theresa ran her hands over her breasts, feeling their enormity, hating them afresh, but suddenly smitten by a hundred unasked questions about what it would entail to have them reduced in size. It was heady simply knowing she had the option!

  She tried to imagine the freedom of having only half as much where all this flesh was now, and it seemed almost unbelievable that it could happen for her. But it was too important a decision to make on one night’s consideration, and without all the facts, as Catherine had pointed out.

  And there was her mother to consider. Somehow, she knew her mother would disapprove—her fatalistic attitudes already having been voiced. And the people at work—what would they think? How many times in her life had women—ignorant of the attendant miseries of having massive breasts—told her she should be happy she was endowed as she was? Their attitude was programmed by a cultural bias toward large breast size, so she shouldn’t blame them for their uninformed opinions.

  But with the new seed of suggestion planted, those countless comments and hurts from the past had already ceased to hurt as much.

  But what if Brian objected? Always her thoughts went back to Brian, Brian, Brian. What would it feel like to have him see her naked if she was proud of her body instead of ashamed of it?

  Chapter Nine

  THERESA DIDN’T MENTION IT in any of her letters to Brian, though their correspondence continued weekly, and more often semiweekly. He sent the tape of “Sweet Memories,” and the first time she played it Theresa knew an aching loneliness. She closed her eyes and pictured Brian playing his guitar and singing the poignant song, felt again his kisses, yearned to see him, touch him. She still hadn’t given him her answer about meeting him in Fargo. She wanted to—oh, how she wanted to—but she trembled to think of telling her parents about her plan. And no matter what Brian had said in his letters, she was sure if she went he’d expect a sexual commitment before the weekend was over.

  In early March, Theresa was crossing the parking lot at school, picking her way across the ice-encrusted blacktop when one of her two-inch heels went skittering sideways and dumped her flat onto her back. Books flew, scattering across the pitted ice while she lay looking at the leaden sky with the wind knocked out of her.

  Joanne Kerny, a fellow teacher, saw Theresa go down and hurried to help her sit up, a worried frown on her pretty face. “Theresa, what happened? Are you hurt? Should I get help?”

  “N ... no.” But Theresa felt shaky. “No, I think I’m all right. My heel slipped, and I went down so fast I didn’t realize I was falling until my head hit the ice.”

  “Listen, stay right here and I’ll go get somebody to help you inside, right away.”

  The fall had made Theresa’s head hurt, but she managed to stay on the job through the remainder of the day. She worked the following day, also, but by the third day she was forced to call for a substitute teacher: her back was in spasm. She went to the doctor, and his examination turned up no broken bones, but some very painfully bruised muscles, for which he prescribed a relaxant. But in the course of his examination and questioning, Dr. Delaney asked some questions he’d never asked before.

  “Tell me, Theresa, do you have back pain regularly?”

  “Not exactly regularly. Rather Irregularly and more so in my shoulders than my back.”

  He probed further. How often? Where? What seems to bring it on? Does it bother you to wear high heels? Are you on your feet all day? At what age did the back irritation start? And when he stopped at the door on his way out, his next order sounded dire enough to strike a bolt of fear through Theresa: “When you’re dressed I’d like to talk to you in my office.”

  Five minutes later Dr. Delaney informed her without preamble, “I believe, young lady, that you’re in for increasing back problems unless something is done about the cause of these aches, which, if I diagnose them correctly, are happening with increasing frequency the older you get. They can only be expected to get worse if untreated.” At her startled expression he rushed on. “Oh no, this fall is only a temporary inconvenience. It’ll heal and cause nothing permanent. What I’m speaking of is the strain on your back, knees and chest by the extreme weight of your breasts. The back and shoulder aches you’ve had, which started in your teen years, are undoubtedly being caused by a bone structure too small to support all that weight. I’m going to recommend a good specialist for you to talk to about it, because there is a solution to the problem, one that’s far less critical, less risky, and less painful than the back surgery you may eventually have to undergo if you ignore the problem.”

  She knew what Dr. Delaney was talking about even before she put the question to him. “Are you talking about breast-reduction surgery?”

  “Oh, so someone’s suggested it to you before?” She left the doctor’s office with an odd feeling of predestination, as if the fall in the parking lot had happened to lend her a further and more valid reason for considering the surgery. Certainly if she were to bring up the subject to her mother and tell Margaret what Dr. Delaney’s prognosis was, her mother would accept the idea of breast reduction far more readily than if Theresa suggested having it only to relieve herself of sexual hangups, and so she could wear the clothing of her choice.

  Dear Brian,

  I’ve done the most foolish thing. I slipped and fell down in the parking lot at school. We’d had rain on top of ice and I was wearing shoes with little heels, and down I went. I’m staying home for a couple of days, on doctor’s orders, but he says it’s just bruised muscles and they’ll fix themselves. But meanwhile, I have another vacation (sort of), but I wish you were here to spend it with me.

  The pen fell still. Theresa’s gaze wandered off to the dismal gray day beyond the window. The clouds scuttled low while sleet pelted down to run in rivulets along the pane.

  What would he think if she wrote, I’ve been thinking about having my breasts made s
maller?

  She hadn’t realized, up to that point, she was considering it. But there were many questions yet to be answered before she could make her decision. And somehow, it seemed too intimate a revelation to make to Brian yet.

  She pulled herself from her musing and touched the pen to the paper again.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about Easter. I want to come, but you’re right. I’m afraid to tell my folks ...

  __________

  Two DAYS LATER the phone rang at four in the afternoon.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, sweets.”

  It seemed the winds and rain of March dissolved, and the world erupted in flowers of spring. Theresa’s free hand clutched the receiver and joy spiraled up through her limbs.

  “B ... Brian?”

  “Do any other men call you sweets?”

  “Oh, Brian,” she wailed, and the tears suddenly burned her eyes. Her back still hurt. She was depressed. She missed him. Hearing his voice was the sweetest medicine of all. “Oh, Brian, it’s really you.”

  He laughed, a brief dissatisfied sound ending with a gulp. His voice sounded shaky. “How are you? How’s your back?”

  “Suddenly it’s much better.” Through her tears she smiled at the phone cord, picturing his face. “Much, much better.”

  “Your letter just came.”

  “And yours just came.”

  “But I didn’t know about your accident when I wrote. Oh, babe, I got so worried, I—”

  “I’m fine, Brian, really. All except ....” All except her life was none of the things she wanted it to be. She was afraid to have the surgery. Afraid not to have it. Afraid to tell her parents about it. Afraid to meet Brian in Fargo. Afraid her parents would disapprove. Angry that she had to seek their approval at all.

  “Except what?”

  “Oh, I d ... don’t know. It’s s ... silly. I ... I just ....”

  “Theresa, are you crying?”