He turned to Helena, allowing his gaze to sweep over the big, shabby-appearing woman with her short, straight gray hair, her pale, deeply lined face, her legs lined with varicose veins. Charlotte thought her mother seemed so stooped from the weight of hard times, so well past her prime. How would Freddy see her now, after all these years?
Charlotte was wondering this when she saw his lip turn up slightly in a sneer. She knew with a sick certainty that he was wondering what had happened to Helena over the years to change her so much. Charlotte’s temper flared in defense of her mother. Helena had changed because she’d worked her fingers to the bone to take care of me, she thought. Because she’d been abandoned by her lover, by my father—by you, Freddy. He’d had his bit of fun, then run away, leaving the woman to pay the price. How dare he lift his nose at her now that she was old and tired, not the pretty young girl he’d ruined years before.
“So,” he said, turning to her with a short, pleased laugh.
“What do you know? I have a kid after all.”
Charlotte felt very little tenderness toward him. That she was his daughter was still too fresh, too raw, to consider. Those emotions she’d have to deal with later. She was grateful for all he’d done for her, but that was not love. Certainly not love.
“I guess this changes everything,” Dr. Harmon said in a solemn voice. “Surely, if you’re her father, you won’t want to do anything to jeopardize her health.”
“No, Frederic,” Helena said. “You cannot take her away from her doctor when she is sick.”
“Of course I can.” He seemed almost flippant. “I’m her father. I’ve got more right than ever now to see that she’s taken care of. And I know what’s best for my girl.”
Michael pushed himself from the wall.
Dr. Harmon straightened his glasses, as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard right.
Charlotte opened her mouth to reply when she heard her mother shout.
“No!” Helena’s voice was imperious. It was the tone Charlotte knew so well, the one that sent her shivering at attention as a child, the one that brooked no disobedience. Even Freddy stiffened when confronted with a full dose of Helena’s righteous indignation.
“You are the same now as ever,” she said, glaring at Freddy. “I see that now. I am not the young girl I once was. Life has hardened me, but it has also made me wiser. I see you now as you really are. You are the same,” she hissed through clenched teeth, her hands bunched before her. “Selfish, uncaring, self-indulgent. You hurt me, but I will not allow you to hurt my child.”
She turned to meet Charlotte, face-to-face. Charlotte’s breath caught in her throat as Helena neared, feeling the enormity of the moment bear down on her in the form of this powerful woman. This was her first confrontation with her mother since that terrible night in the kitchen, the night before she left Chicago. They’d said terrible things to each other, unforgivable things. It all seemed so long ago, so meaningless now, in light of all that had passed since then.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte blurted out. Her pride no longer mattered. She simply wanted to stop the silent, hateful feud. This woman, for all her strengths and faults, was still her mother, and she loved her as only a child could.
“No,” Helena said, bringing her strong, hard fingers up to gently cup Charlotte’s tender face. She studied it, made peace with it. Charlotte was caught off guard to find repentance, not anger, in her mother’s eyes.
“
I
was wrong,” Helena insisted. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.” She gathered herself up and cleared her throat, falling back on her rigid competence to get her through this unusual display of emotion. “I should have told you about your father. And how you were born. I made it dirty. It wasn’t. It happened. Too long I spent wishing I had Frederic, when all that time I should have been happy to have you. I said you were my punishment. No, that is not true. You were a gift.” She drew herself up and clasped Charlotte’s long, slender fingers in her large, thick ones. “It is I who ask
you
to forgive
me.
”
Charlotte gave a muffled cry. Her mother had asked for her forgiveness? Never had she heard those words from her, nor did she ever dream she would. She longed to wrap her arms around her mother, but she held back, remembering how her mother preferred not to be touched.
And then it was her mother’s arms around her, clasping her tight. Charlotte felt herself slipping back in time. She was a child nestling her head on Helena’s shoulder, smelling not the sterile scent of Lysol but the sweet perfume of soap and dusting powder deep in the soft folds of her neck.
Except—she wasn’t a little girl. It was time to grow up and to make a woman’s decision. She straightened and wiped the girlish tears from her eyes.
Then she turned and sought out Michael. He was standing in the shadows, eyes on her. When she looked at him, he straightened and walked toward her. For a flashing moment she was transported back to the Mondragon nursery, feeling again the same love well up in her heart as when she’d stood on the cabin’s porch, watching as he walked up the hill toward her, toward home, at the end of the day.
He was walking toward her now, she realized, after working to bring her mother and Dr. Harmon here, after orchestrating this unveiling. Might he love her, after all?
Her
—the woman behind the mask. She felt the fluttering of hope. She had to know. She didn’t want any more lies now, either.
“Why did you come back?” she asked him, staring into eyes the color of the earth. “The truth.”
He was standing very close to her. He knew what she was asking. She could tell by the muscle working in his jaw and the way his fingers twitched along his thigh.
“Because I love you,” he replied.
“Even without this face?”
He moved forward, placing his hands on her shoulders. “I said I loved
you.
I might have been attracted to the face, but I fell in love with the person. So if your face changes, Charlotte, I know that my love will not.”
She refused to be swept off her feet. She nodded, accepting this statement as she would a precious gold coin given by someone she cared about deeply but didn’t completely trust. She studied the declaration in her heart, flipping it back and forth, her doubt biting down on it, to see if it was real.
“Don’t believe him,” Freddy said, closing the distance. He was red-faced, worried that he might lose everything.
She sensed Michael tensing up.
“Wait,” she said to Freddy, then turned back to Michael. “I know of only one way that will prove to me if you could really love me, no matter what.”
She turned and went to her purse, digging into it till she found her wallet. Then, opening it up, she took from behind her driver’s license a photograph of herself that she always carried with her, to remind her of where she came from, of who she was.
“This,” she said, holding the picture up like a banner, “is a photo of myself before the surgery.” She turned her hand and looked at the photo for a moment, feeling a fondness for the poor unfortunate girl with a chin that looked like a mud slide. Girding herself for whatever might come, she walked toward Michael. Her stomach was roiling, but she’d had enough of lies and fairy tales.
“Take a good look. For both our sakes, be honest. I wouldn’t blame you if you walked away.” She held out the photograph. “Could you love this girl?”
Michael didn’t take the photograph. Instead, he smiled. “I told you, I already do.”
“No, I mean the girl in the photograph.”
“I’ve seen a photograph already. In your mother’s apartment.”
Charlotte made a strangled sound in her throat, and she covered her mouth with her hand. She wanted to believe him, so desperately.
“I knew I’d seen that girl somewhere before,” he continued. “It stuck with me, but I couldn’t place it until I saw you on the stage today, besieged by Vicki Ray’s questions. You had this stoic expression in your eyes, this endurance. And I suddenly remembered where I’d seen that expression before. It was that girl I met in an elevator one cold night. It was the eyes I remembered, not the face. I asked you if you needed help. And you said
no.
”
“I
did
need your help,” she exclaimed. “I should have said yes.”
“Say yes now,” he said, his emotion trembling in his voice. “I let that girl down once before. I’ll never let her down again.”
“Let me look at it,” Freddy said, shouldering his way closer. He took the photograph from Charlotte’s hand and stared at it.
She watched as his jaw slackened, then he raised his eyes to look at her, then back at the picture in disbelief.
“Are you kidding me?” Freddy asked. “And you have any question whether or not to go to Brazil? One look at this picture should be enough. Harmon, you’re a frigging genius.”
“Shut up,” Helena snapped. “My Charlotte was always beautiful. I told her that then and I tell her that now. She has a beautiful soul.”
Suddenly the room erupted with shouts. Everyone was telling her what to do, pulling her in several directions. She shifted her gaze toward Michael, instinctively going there for support. He waited silently for her to make the decision. Her memories—her life—had come full circle.
She turned on her heel and faced down the others as the circle tightened around her. “Back off!” she shouted, her hand held out in an arresting gesture.
Everyone stopped talking at once.
“I don’t want to hear what any of you want me to do,” she said. “This is about
me. My
face.
My
life. Go on out. All of you. I need time alone. I have to make this decision on my own.”
There was a stunned silence and no one moved. Freddy was clenching and unclenching his fist. Then Helena nodded her head and said with her heavy Polish accent, “You heard what she said. Out!”
“No,” Freddy said, digging in. “You’ve got to understand one thing. If you lose your beauty, you lose everything. Your career will be over.”
“Better her career than her life,” Michael retorted.
“Michael, please. Let me handle this myself,” she said, holding out her hand. She faced Freddy.
“I said out there on stage that I’d do anything for beauty. I was wrong. What I should have said is that I’d do anything for love.”
Freddy’s face contorted with rage. “You want to throw it all away? All that we’ve worked for? For what? So you can be a nobody? So you can get married, have kids, grow old and worn-out like your mother?” He tightened his lips and for a moment she thought he was going to cry. Instead, he exploded in anger, pointing his finger at her accusingly. “When we started this thing, you swore that you’d do what I told you to do.”
“You had no right to ask that of me, nor should I have agreed to it. I’m sorry. My first responsibility is to myself.”
“I made you who you are!” he cried, his hand raised in an angry fist. “You owe me. You belong to me.”
Michael stepped forward.
Charlotte again felt the force of Freddy’s possessiveness. It was an obsession. It was unhealthy, and she backed away from it.
“In order for me to belong to you, I would have had to give myself to you. I never have, Freddy. I never will.”
“So you give yourself to that loser instead?”
“I think,” she said, her voice reflecting that she was finished with this conversation, “it’s time for you to go.”
“If I go, he goes,” he said, glaring at Michael.
“I told you to leave,” Charlotte said.
“If I leave now, I leave for good.”
She took a deep breath and cut the tie forever. “As you wish. Goodbye, Freddy.” She would never call him father.
His face flushed, his mouth worked, but for once he did not speak. They both knew there was nothing left for them to say. She thought he looked very old suddenly, every bit as worn and spent as Helena. When he turned his back on her and walked away, she thought of how he’d once walked away from her mother, too.
The moment the door closed, Charlotte slumped, feeling a tremendous relief. She closed her eyes, gently rubbing them. There was so much she would have to think about. She had a serious decision to make. When she looked up, she saw Michael’s face.
Suddenly, the answer came easily.
T
hree weeks later, Charlotte paced the floor of her hospital room, wringing her hands, waiting for Dr. Harmon to arrive and remove the bandages from her face. The implants had been removed, the surgery was a success and all that was left was the unveiling. It was déjà vu.
“Charlotte, relax,” Michael told her. “He’ll be here any moment.”
“I can’t relax. You don’t understand.”
“I understand that you’re worried about what you’ll look like. Anyone would. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“I’ll look the same as I did before the first operation.”
“Dr. Harmon already told you that you wouldn’t. Removing the implants can’t undo the reconstruction. At most, you’ll have a receding chin line. No big deal. You’re lucky.”
“I’m not worried about that,” she blurted out. Four years ago when she waited for the unveiling, she had only herself to worry about. This time the stakes were even higher. Despite his avowals of love, she couldn’t help but worry how Michael would respond to the face.
“Oh, I understand now. It’s about me again.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’m a survivor. I’ll live through whatever happens. But that doesn’t stop me from worrying if you’ll still love me.”
He sighed and shook his head. “Come here,” he said gently, extending his hand.
She ducked her head and took his hand, expecting to be reeled in and comforted in his arms. Instead he stood and led her to the bathroom and placed her before the small, industrial, chrome-lined mirror over the sink.
“Charlotte, look at yourself in the mirror.”
She looked into the mirror and saw her reflection. Her head was completely covered, from crown to neck, with a swaddling of white gauze bandages. Only her eyes were visible, along with openings for her nose and her lips.
“I can’t see myself.”
“Wrong. Look again,” he urged, stepping away. “If you can’t love who you see right now, then whether I love you or not doesn’t really matter.”
Against all that sterile white, her blue eyes seemed to possess even more color, even more vibrancy. They seemed to beckon her to look deeper, beyond the facade, to where the real Charlotte lay sleeping. When she did, she caught a glimpse of the beauty that had eluded her for so long. All her life she’d been playing roles from behind a mask. That night in Chicago, she’d vowed to change her life. She began with changing her face. She didn’t know then that she also had to change how she felt about herself. Like the Beast in the fairy tale, she never believed that she was worthy of love. The magical transformation from ugly Beast to physical Beauty never rendered the ultimate prize of love. This glorious reward was hard earned by qualities that had nothing to do with physical appearance after all.
When she turned, she saw Michael, tall and confident, shaking hands with Dr. Harmon at the door to her room. When she stepped back in and faced them, they couldn’t see that behind the bandages she was smiling.