Flavor of the Month (29 page)

“The gift of being seen.” Yes, it was a gift, to be looked at approvingly. With her newly emerged slim body, Mary Jane had received wolf whistles. Only from behind, and only from some gross construction workers, but she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t been thrilled. How long had she gone unnoticed? Thirty-six years seemed too long. She would look at the children and give them the gift of being seen, and she swore to herself she wouldn’t wince.

There were dozens of kids, and all of them, beneath the frightening failures of their faces, had the gift that children have: they were innocent and vulnerable and curious and alive. She had her favorites right away, of course. Sally, who was fourteen, and a victim of craniosynostosis: her skull had prematurely fused. She had undergone more than a dozen operations already to correct a frighteningly deformed head and jaw. And Jennifer, a three-year-old black girl whose brachycephaly gave her the pop eyes of a Crouzon’s-disease sufferer. But of all of them, from the first night on, it was Raoul who drew her. Raoul, with eyes that had done all his speaking for twelve years. Raoul, born in South America without a tongue or lower jaw, unable to nurse, since there was no suction his poor deformed mouth could manage. Raoul, abandoned after his birth, who now tried, with a new mouth and tongue, to learn a new language. And Raoul, who made her laugh.

Raoul was twelve, and an active kid. He’d already had six major operations on his mouth and tongue, and was in for a seventh. He’d spent his first three years in a hospital, then his next two in an orphanage. But, despite all that, he had a strong spark of life and love. Raoul couldn’t say much, but he could write and draw almost anything. Mary Jane played endless games of tic-tac-toe with him, and bought him a connect-the-dots book which so enchanted him that he designed his own. During her second week there, he gave her a picture to connect the dots on.

She picked up her pencil and followed his numbers. It was a nurse, complete, as she was, with comfortable shoes and a name tag. But when she got to the dots of the face, she realized it was a portrait of her, with her delicate cheekbones, almond eyes, and her awful, ridiculous nose. She nodded and tried to smile, then Raoul took the pencil, “
LINDA
M
ARY JANE
,” he wrote, and looked up at her with a face full of affection. She was confused for a moment, until she remembered that
linda
was Spanish for “pretty.” She looked down at his ruin of a face. There was no irony there. He was the first male who had ever called her that.

Don’t feel so sorry for yourself, she said. Look at Raoul. And she did. Night after night. And in no time at all, his ghastly grin seemed normal to her. Normal and welcoming.

Often, in the early evening, Brewster Moore stopped by, visited with the children and the frightened, overwhelmed parents who came. He spent extra time with Raoul. Then he usually had a cup of coffee with her. She came to look forward to it. On the nights he didn’t, she felt a strange disappointment. Oh, fine, she thought. My life has become so small that I am obsessed with my nose and in love with my surgeon. Perfect. Nothing wrong with that. But maybe I should think about getting a life.

Because she was, for the first time, drawn to nursing, to Dr. Moore, and to these children. The idea of abandoning them, as everyone else had, troubled her. Better move on before you get trapped, she told herself. Better move on before you lose your nerve.

So she decided, one night: after this surgery, it was California. However she came out, it was time to move on. For two years her life had gotten smaller and smaller. Now it was time to expand.

She’d need a new name. Her new age was twenty-four; she was still born in a year of the Dog, but it was a different year. And though she’d keep the same career, she certainly hoped that she’d be more successful than she’d been before, in her first incarnation. She was, of course, afraid she’d fail again, but it was time, she knew, to get on with it.

Once, of course, she had the new nose.

“
Ever consider surgical improvement? I think if you had asked me that when I was twenty,” she says, “I might have said yes, but after seeing such bad facelifts, no
.” Emma Samms was being quoted in an interview in
People
magazine. Mary Jane threw the magazine down on the floor. She was sick to death of reading about how naturally beautiful women kept themselves so. “Drink lots of bottled water,” “Never eat red meat,” “Simple yoga exercises and meditation to help you project your
inner
beauty!” Fuck the inner beauty. It had never gotten her a date
or
a part. And it was a load of crap anyway. As if Perrier would alter your bone structure or clear up your skin! That new ingenue, Phoebe Van Gelder, had sworn she stuck to a macrobiotic diet, but Mary Jane knew, through Neil, the skinny bitch was on drugs most of the time, and had had a major nasal reconstruction. Sure, the Phoebe Van Gelder New Age diet: carrots and cocaine.

Over the last months, doing her research on beauty, she’d read all of the bullshit: “How to Lose Five Pounds This Weekend!,” “Ten Tricks to Prevent Aging,” “Top Models’ Secret Makeup Tips for You.” Yeah, the real tip was “Be young and tall and gorgeous with perfect bone structure.” Well, Mary Jane knew the real secret to beauty now for the average woman. Beauty meant pain, expense, surgery, and almost full-time maintenance. It sure didn’t leave time for the day job.

God, she was cranky, she admitted to herself. She glanced briefly into the tiny mirror she now kept in her purse. The bruising under her eyes was just about gone. She averted her face. It had been weeks now since the nasal surgery. She still wasn’t pretty. If anything, her nose loomed even more hideously on her face. But Dr. Moore had explained it would take some time for the swelling to go down. Now there was only the final rhinoplasty left—the “refining,” as Dr. Moore called it, that remained to be done on the nose. She noticed that Dr. Moore never referred to “your nose,” only “the nose.”

“Most cosmetic surgery needs to be done in multiple stages,” he had explained. “For financial reasons—and emotional ones—most surgeons to the middle class don’t bother. After all,” he mimicked, “‘Missy does look
so
much better now, with that big bump gone.’ But nasal tissue swells, and it sometimes takes months for the swelling to go down. Most surgeons are butchers. They break the nasal cartilage. It causes all kinds of temporary swelling. The only way to see the actual contour, to see both how the tissue takes to the cartilage armature and how the skin drapes the tissues, is to wait. And then ‘refine.’ Which often means a second operation. But most women don’t want to undergo another procedure. Ergo, the instant nose. Now, with your face, on the other hand…”

Brewster explained that he had perfected a rhinoplasty procedure that didn’t require the breaking of the nose. “And that means less swelling, no discoloration at all. But I didn’t want to work on the nose until the rest of the armature was completed. And I want to wait for a second chance to work on the tip.”

She’d been through the swelling, the taste of blood always in the back of her throat, the difficulty sleeping. “Refinement”? She laughed to herself, but even smiling hurt. Oh, no, she remembered. It didn’t hurt. It caused “discomfort.”

The last operation was surprisingly quick, less than an hour. Mary Jane got up off the table with little more than wooziness and a neat white pad of gauze taped over the new tip of her nose. After a night of restless sleep, she spent the next day packing her few belongings and telling the hotel she’d be leaving. Not that the ever-changing front desk staff cared. She worked her last week at the clinic, and said goodbye to the children. She did everything she could do to prepare for her departure, except take off the gauze.

Now the months of pain and waiting and Dr. Moore’s kindness were over. Now she’d see the best he could do. The face she would live with. And she was afraid. So afraid that she couldn’t do it alone. She left on the bandage, and avoided reflections in plate-glass windows; she’d long ago covered the medicine-cabinet mirror at the hotel. She simply had to trust this little man, the doctor, her only friend, and see what he had wrought. She made the appointment with the ever-cold Miss Hennessey for her final visit.

Now, at last, here in his office, the time had come for revelation. She was so nervous, she wanted to ask to hold his hand, but she was far too shy. As if he knew what she felt, Dr. Moore came up close behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and walked her to the corner of the room. He had her face the wall mirror, and he lifted the last bandage from her nose.

She stared into the mirror.

A perfect stranger stared out at her. A perfect stranger. An oval face, with just a touch of squareness, firmness at the sides of the jaw. A broad, smooth forehead, thin, tapering brows, cheekbones that wouldn’t quit. And the nose. The nose! It was long, but perfectly so, straight and long, with a thin bridge and wonderful sharpness where it met her upper lip. It was beautiful. It was all changed and beautiful.
She
was beautiful! All changed, except for her eyes.

Then, for a moment, she had the panicky feeling that her own eyes were staring out at her, trapped in a strange, lovely face, while her own,
her
face, on this side of the mirror, hadn’t changed. Involuntarily she lifted her hands, and blinked as her fingers touched
her
, yet moved over the stranger’s perfect face in the mirror. It was eerie, but it convinced her this perfect face was really hers.

He gave her plenty of time. She looked and looked, and was surprisingly unselfconscious in front of him, perhaps because he was staring as hard as she was. At last he broke the silence. “Are you satisfied?” Dr. Moore asked softly.

With difficulty, Mary Jane pulled her eyes away from the mirror and looked at him. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you more than I can ever say.” She stared back at the mirror, the mirror that was now her friend. Gently she touched her face, her own face, again. Then she held out her hand to him. “You’ve given me a new life. Now I can leave. You’ve given me a second chance. I’ll never be able to thank you.”

He looked away; maybe she’d embarrassed him. But he turned back quickly and smiled. “Are you prepared for a new life?”

She nodded, proudly. “I’ve got it all planned. Even a new name.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Galatea?” he asked.

It was her turn to smile, and she shook her head. “Jahne,” she said. “I’ve always hated ‘Mary,’ but I was afraid to be plain Jane before. Now it will be J-A-H-N-E. Not plain at all.”

“So, Jahne Moran…”

She shook her head again. “Not Moran,” she said. “I’d prefer a new name. But with the same initial. I’d like to use ‘Moore.’ I mean…” She blushed. “…if it’s all right with you.”

“I’d be delighted. Truly. Quite a compliment.”

“Something else, Dr. Moore.” She paused. “Could I write to you? And Raoul? I mean just occasionally. I know how busy you are. You wouldn’t have to write back.”

“I’d be delighted. And I
would
write back.” The little man smiled.

Jahne stood up. She found it was harder to say goodbye than she’d expected. She had a lot of feeling for this artist, this healer, this good doctor.

“I’m going to make one last visit to Raoul.”

“He’ll appreciate that.”

“I hope that he recognizes me without the bandage.”

“He’s an artist. He can see deeply. He’ll know you. But no one else will.”

“Are you sure? Certain?”

“Mary Jane, you look twenty-four and magnificent. You have a flat stomach, thin legs, high breasts, and a perfect face. Not to mention Mai Von Trilling’s nose. Who is going to recognize you?”

“No one,” she agreed, and smiled.

“M.J., M.J.,” Raoul yelled as he saw her from a distance moving through the ward. They were special friends. He drew her wonderful pictures, and she brought him little treats. She would miss him very much. His speech had improved a lot since she’d started working with him. As she got closer to him his face changed. The sparkle left his brown eyes, the smile slipped from the wreck of his mouth.

“
Buenos dias
, Raoul,” she said. “What’s the matter?” For a moment, her stomach knotted. Perhaps she wasn’t what she thought. Maybe he was disappointed with her looks.

“What is it, Raoul?”

“Did the doctor do this to you?” the boy asked. It was still difficult to understand him, but she had learned to. Now she nodded. Oh, God. Maybe Brewster had lied to her. Perhaps she didn’t look as good as she thought. Raoul turned away.

“What is it?”

“You’ll go now.”

“How do you know?”

“Because now you are so beautiful,” he said, and tears welled up in his eyes.

“Oh, Raoul,” she breathed, and hugged him.

Mary Jane waited, listening as the phone up in Albany rang. Finally, Mr. Slater picked it up. “Mr. Slater, this is Mary Jane Moran.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Moran, I’ve been meaning to call you. But there has been no progress on the probate. I was thinking perhaps that we could simply probate your father as the heir and get you both executor and power of attorney. That would…”

“Mr. Slater,” Mary Jane interrupted, “I have a proposal for you. When the will is finally probated and the farm is sold, how much do you think it’ll be worth?”

“Well, the market isn’t good, but perhaps forty or fifty thousand dollars. Maybe less.”

“Would you be prepared to take the estate in lieu of fees, and simply send me a check for ten thousand?”

She listened for a moment to the silence at the end of the line. Greed fighting with morality? “Well, that’s quite irregular, and there is no telling when this might be settled and the farm sold…”

“I know. That’s why I’m willing to take so little. Is it a risk that you are willing to take?” She knew she had him hooked; she could tell by the tightness in his voice. All these small-town lawyers were alike. Now that it was in his interest to do so, he’d have the whole business cleared up in a week. Still, she needed the money now, to finance her new life. She held her breath.