Facelift (3 page)

“Room 525.”

Is that the psych ward? But I refrain from asking that particular question. I glance around. “And where . . . ?”

“Around the corner to the elevators. Take one to five.”

“Thanks.” I walk through the maze of hospital corridors passing gurneys, medical personnel, and wheelchairs. My footsteps are slow, almost dragging. I should have taken longer with my makeup, maybe even showered. In the steel, industrial-sized elevators, I see a blurry reflection of myself—face elongated, eyes narrowed with determination. Not exactly what “Mirror, mirror” had in mind.

I step out of the elevator and try to get my bearings. Locating the sign that points me in the right direction, I follow it down one hall, bypassing breakfast carts and doctors making their rounds. When I spot the room number, I verify the name beside the door:
Redmond, M.
I gather my courage as if piling laundry into my arms, but I sense my composure slipping out on the floor like wayward socks and worn-out bras.

The door is cracked open, and I inch it forward, peer inside. A nurse stands beside the first bed. A patient (which I can tell by the bleached blonde hair is not my ex-mother-in-law) sniffles, and the nurse pats her arm. “It’s going to be all right.”

“Excuse me?”

Both nurse and patient look over and stare at me as if I’ve barged in during an exam. The patient, her face mottled red, looks about Isabel’s age. She wears a tight bandage around her chest. “I’m sorry. I’m looking for Marla Redmond.”

“Next bed.” The nurse tilts her head in the direction of a mauve curtain.

“Sorry.” I move past the first bed, edging around the moveable table with an untouched breakfast tray. A giant step over an open suitcase brings me to the curtain, which reminds me of a circus tent where I’m not sure what oddity I’ll find on the other side. What should I do? Knock? Scratch? Whisper, “Cliff?”

I breathe in a deep, cleansing breath, fortifying me with the strength I never had during our marriage, and release it slow and steady. Straightening my blouse and praying Cliff is on the other side, I pull the thick material to the left.

A woman swathed in bandages groans. Tubes spring forth from her like antennae on an alien. She looks like a mummy waking up. My hand clutches the curtain. “Marla?” A glance to either side tells me Cliff must have gone for coffee. I hope he brings two cups. “Marla?” I take a hesitant step into the inner chamber, hoping it isn’t her. Marla Redmond has never been my favorite person, but I wouldn’t wish something like this on her. Unfortunately I recognize her auburn hair sticking upward in places and matted down in others and her blue eyes—well,
one
eye—staring straight at me. “It’s me, Kaye.” She attempts to drink from a straw, but her mouth pulls to the side, and water dribbles down her chin. It somehow galvanizes me into action. A tissue box sits beside her breakfast tray, and I yank out a square and dab at her chin.

“Careful.” Her consonants slur, making it sound like, “car full.”

I can’t imagine what happened to her . . . a fall? A car wreck?

“What happened?” I reach out to touch her but stop short at the sight of the IV taped to the back of her hand. The skin covering her petite bones is pale, almost iridescent, but that’s normal for her.

The nurse comes around the edge of the curtain. “How are you doing there, Mrs. Redmond? Getting a sip of water? That’s good. It’ll help wash the anesthetics out of you.”

The nurse doesn’t seem to be interested in any answers to her questions and simply checks the machine next to the bed, which I realize is hooked up to Marla’s heart. At one time I imagined nothing occupied that space. But from the steady green blip on the monitor, I see I was wrong. My own heartbeat accelerates. Then with a “See you later,” the nurse leaves the curtained-off portion of Marla’s room.

“What happened?” I repeat. But Marla doesn’t seem capable of answering. Or maybe she’s simply ignoring me as she did when Cliff and I were married.

Reluctantly I sit in the chair next to the bed and stare at the tubes and wires hooked up to my
ex
-mother-in-law. Guilt settles into a cozy nook in my heart, as if I somehow willed this to happen. Usually so formidable, Marla looks fragile. Around the edges of the bandages, her skin looks dark, bluish, bruised.

Glancing toward the doorway, which is obscured by the curtain, I wish Cliff would hurry back. Where is he? Maybe talking to the doctor in the hallway? Or buying flowers down in the gift shop? I don’t have time to babysit Marla all morning. I’d like to see Cliff, see if I can bring him something, and be on my way. After all, I do have appointments today. Guilt once again pinches my conscience. Wasn’t there a sermon at church recently about God’s time, not our own? Cliff used to say, “I’m not tithing to hear that!” when the pastor would preach on a prickly subject. Which is probably why he wasn’t paying attention the weeks the topic was infidelity. Gritting my teeth, I lean forward, touch Marla’s hand. “Did you have a car wreck?”

“Surgery.” Her words are loose like she can’t quite handle them in her mouth. “Heart.”

I glance at her chest, then to the heart monitor blinking at me. “You had heart surgery?”

“Heart arrythm.”

“Arrhythmia?” My own heart skips a beat. “But why surgery?”

“Cosm,” she mumbles.

Did she mean
because
? I state my question slowly, clearly, and loudly. “Because why?”

She gives a tiny shake of her head, then grimaces. “Plastic.”

“Plastic what?” Memories of the nauseous feelings I suffered after my C-section have me searching around for a plastic container. “Are you going to throw up?”

“No,” she croaks. “Face”—she draws the end sound out like the hissing of a snake—“lift.”

My knees suddenly feel like the threads holding them together have come undone. “All of this”—I indicate the tubes and bandages—“for plastic surgery?” I stare at the heart monitor and watch the blips and numbers.
Heart arrhythmia.
What does that mean? That her heart is off rhythm? Someone should have consulted me. I could have told them that years ago.

I grimace at my sarcasm. Bad habits are hard to break.

Marla’s one visible eye shutters closed. She looks tragic. She went through all this to look younger? I’m not surprised at the lengths Marla would go to find the fountain of youth at her overripe age. What is she sixty? Sixty-five? Even though she took meticulous care of her skin, having weekly facials and staying out of the sun, I suppose age catches up to all of us. Would I do this? Go to all this trouble, and face possible death just to hold onto Cliff? How desperate am I?

A knock at the door breaks the awkward silence. I jump up, readjust my clothes and poke my head out of the curtain’s slit. Instead of Cliff, an older gentleman stands in the doorway. I notice the woman in the next bed has fallen asleep.

“Yes?” I answer for both women.

He glances down at the flowers he holds, which appear to be a literal garden variety and not the hothouse kind. “I’m looking for Sylvia—”

“Sylvia?” I prompt when he seems to have forgotten the last name.

“Plath.”

“Oh, well, um . . .” I try to remember the other name beside Marla’s on the outside of the door but can’t. “I’m not sure of her name. But this is—”

Marla gives an alarmed cry. She holds her hands up, waving her arms like windshield wipers gone amok.

“Sorry, wrong room.” The man backs away.

“You might check at the nurse’s station.” I move toward Marla.

“What’s wrong?” Her heart monitor blinks rapidly. “Should I call somebody?”

Marla gives a stiff shake of her head, making a drainage tube bob, and reaches for the Styrofoam cup of water. I place the straw between her lips, which are pinched and dry. “I thought that might be Cliff. I wonder when he’ll be back.”

“Wok,” she says but did she mean “work.”

“What?” I pinch the straw and water spurts out of the end, dotting Marla’s hospital gown. “Oh, sorry.” I dab gently at her chin. “Did you say Cliff’s at work?”

She nods.

Terrific. Now I’m fully entrenched in my nightmare. “Well, how do you like that?” Figures that’s where he’d hide out. His relationship with Marla can be characterized as cat and mouse.

“Kaye,” Marla’s mouth barely moves as her fingers curl around mine and squeeze tight. “Don’t go.”

With anger tightening its grip on my throat, I manage to pry loose its tentacles and draw a steadying breath. “He could have at least told me.”

“Kaye,” she says again, her voice slightly clearer, more forceful. “What am I going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

She sighs through her partially open mouth. “I’m fifty-five. Old.”

That can’t be right. I’d have thought she was at least over sixty. My gaze follows the IV. Maybe the drugs are making her hallucinate. I cup my hand over hers and try to reassure her. “You’re not old, Marla.”

“Don’t know what it’s like.” Her face crumples like a rumpled tissue. She moans. “Now this!”

“What do you mean?”

“Such mess. My face . . .”

Stunned, unable to believe my stoic mother-in-law (
ex
-mother-in-law) is admitting anything other than, “I’m fine,” I hope she’s also had a change of heart. Or maybe the drugs she’s been given are making her babble. Or the anesthesiologist could have used truth serum.

She squeezes the stiff hospital sheet, her knuckles white. Her eye wells with tears.

“Don’t cry, Marla. You’ll make your bandages soggy.” I reach for another tissue. “It takes a while to heal from surgery. You’ll be better in no time.”

She sniffs, tries to regain her composure. I’ve never seen her lose control, not even when her husband died suddenly five years ago. “Dr. Scar—” her tongue overworks the ‘r’—“didn’t finish.”

“Who?”

“Surr . . .” She garbles the word.

“What?”

“Doctor,” she says carefully, barely moving her mouth.

“What do you mean?”

“Could not finish lift.” She taps her heart. Her mouth twists. “One side, one eye.”

I draw a quick breath and plop back into the chair. Over the years, I’ve joked with friends that my mother-in-law was Frankenstein.

Now, she truly is.

Chapter Three

Living in the most affluent area of the Dallas and Fort Worth metroplex has its plusses (and a few items in the negative column). Though I’m unable to keep up with the Joneses, the Joneses are able to hire me to help sell their mini-mansions, which in turn helps me keep the lights on at my own humble abode.

Southlake teems with all the best stores from Ann Taylor to Williams-Sonoma, along with every bistro and boutique imaginable. Nip and tucked between them are plastic surgeons and day spas for the relaxing and pampering of the already pampered, places I once frequented but which I now avoid. Even though the economy has been hard hit in the past year, the parking lots full of Mercedes, Beamers, and gas-guzzling Escalades seem to indicate otherwise. Either credit cards are smoking from overuse and credit agencies are hounding the rich and careless, or money really does grow on trees. If so, I need to find that variety at my local Calloway’s Nursery and plant an orchard.

After returning home from the hospital to don a suit and the dreaded panty hose, which make me look ultraprofessional, I stop in at the local coffee shop for fortification before my meeting with a potential new client. As I wait in line, I notice my advertisement is still stuck to the community board. I’ve received several calls off of it.

“Kaye!”

I turn and find a group of moms I recognize from PTA meetings. “Elise!” I stuff my receipt in my bulging wallet—more full of receipts and bills than actual money. “How are you?” I move toward the women while I wait for my order. They’re all wearing workout shorts and tank tops, revealing tanned and toned arms and new polish on their sculpted fingertips. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”

Elise, a petite blonde who looks like she could put on a cheerleader outfit and go out for the high school squad even though I know for a fact she’s several months over forty, pivots around, exaggerating the swing of her backside. “What do you think?”

She’s wearing a formfitting warm-up and looks like she’s lost a good twenty pounds, which I undoubtedly found. “You look great. What’s your secret?”

The other women, who I vaguely recognize but don’t actually know, resume their conversation while Elise moves closer to me. “Want the number?”

My stomach drops, as has everything else—or so it seems. “For what? Weight Watchers or Marie Osmond?”

“My surgeon! I had breast implants and a tummy tuck. Next year”—she wiggles her fanny and a couple of businessmen at the next table pause in their conversation—“when my checking account has recovered, I’m having a butt lift.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah.” She winks.

“Well, I . . . uh . . .” I’m not sure what to say.

She leans forward. “You should try it. Maybe it’s the ticket you need.”

“Oh, well, thanks.” My mind wanders down that slippery slope as I imagine myself slimmer, lifted, wrinkle free, my cups set high and overflowing. Would that bring Cliff back? Is that what drove him away? And am I just a few procedures shy of bringing joy back to my family? The big roadblock to me, besides my depleted checking account, is Marla and the very solid memory of what could happen. Not to mention the doubt that would settle firmly between Cliff and me. What kind of a marriage is based on smooth skin and flat abs?