The Deep End (27 page)

Joanne is shaking her head up and down, trying to tell Eve that she understands. But the truth is that she understands less and less every day about what is happening to her best friend.

“God, you’ve been so good to me. You drive me all over the place, you sit with me through one useless appointment after another, you’re always there when I need you.” She stops. “I guess it’s true what they say about always hurting the one you love.” Joanne manages a
smile. “So,” Eve says, changing the topic, “you really think this Dr. Ronald Gold is the same guy we went to school with?”

“I’ll be with you as soon as I can,” the dermatologist is saying as he comes out of his office into the crowded waiting room. He is about five feet seven inches tall, with a full head of reddish-blond hair and an engaging smile. There is no question that he is the same Ronald Gold they went to school with. Joanne watches as he fumbles with the appointment calendar on his cluttered desk, recalling similar gestures with his chemistry notebook. He hasn’t aged a day, Joanne thinks, wondering whether he will feel the same way about her should he get the time to take sufficient notice of her presence. “I apologize,” he says to his captive audience, composed mostly of teenagers, with a small sprinkling of adults. “I apologize for the chaos,” he continues, obviously searching for a pen. “I know I put it down here somewhere,” he mumbles. Joanne thinks that she sees a silver pen peeking out from underneath a stack of papers, but feels it is not her place to point it out. “My receptionist quit last week,” he announces to no one in particular, “and I called an agency to send me a temporary but she never showed up. Actually, I’m probably lucky. Sometimes those temps are more trouble than they’re worth. It takes you the whole day to explain things to them, and then they send somebody different the next day and you have to do it all again. I can’t find the damn pen.” He looks up from the table sheepishly. “Anybody here have a pen they can lend me?”

Joanne moves to his desk, extricates the lost silver pen from under its paper mountain, and hands it to the boy
who used to crack his knuckles, along with a steady stream of jokes, behind her in chemistry class.

“You want a job?” he asks immediately, then, “Do I know you?”

“We went to school together. Joanne Mossman, well, that is, it
was
Mossman, now it’s Hunter.” Is it? she wonders.

His smile grows until it stretches into his ears. “Well, Joanne Mossman,” he exclaims, “I wouldn’t have recognized you—you look so much better now than you did as a kid.” Joanne laughs, but the laugh is full of appreciation. “I’m serious. I’m not trying to snow you. I mean, you were always pretty, but you were always a little uptight, you know what I mean? Strictly the pearl necklace type. You look a lot looser now. I like what you’ve done to your hair.” Joanne is aware she is blushing. “Hey, you still blush, I like that too.” He puts his arm around her waist and motions with his other arm for the attention of the rest of the room. “Everybody, this is little Joanne Mossman. What’s your married name again?”

“Hunter.”

“Little Joanne Hunter. Same husband you started out with?” Joanne nods, not sure what else to do. “We went to school together. She had a clear complexion even then.” He studies her face. “What’s this? A pimple?” His expert fingers move across her face. “Nothing serious,” he says. “We’ll take care of you in a few minutes.”

“I’m not here to see you,” Joanne says quickly, aware that everyone is still listening to their conversation. “I’m here with a friend.” She points to Eve, who is sitting in a chair against the wall, a stack of old magazines on her lap and a disgruntled expression on her lips.

“Is that little Evie Pringle?” Dr. Ronald Gold asks as Eve
stands up, towering a good three inches above him. “Still together, you two, huh?”

“It’s Eve Stanley now,” Eve tells him. “We have an appointment twenty minutes ago.”

If he is aware of the intended sarcasm, he ignores it. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry about the delay, but my receptionist quit on me and my nurse is out with a cold.” The phone rings. “And the phone keeps ringing.” He reaches over and grabs it. “For you,” he says to Joanne. Her eyes widen. “Just kidding,” he says quickly, catching the look of concern. “What? You gave somebody my number? Yes, this is Dr. Ronald Gold,” he announces into the phone. “Certainly, I can see you, Mrs. Gottlieb. For you, anytime. Drop by this afternoon, I’ll take a look. Don’t worry, the offending blemish will be gone before the bar mitzvah on Saturday.” He hangs up the phone and looks back at Eve. “I’ll be with you as fast as I can. Michael,” he calls to a young boy whose face is all but hidden by a raging mask of pubescent acne. He looks back at Joanne. “And after your friend, I want to take a look at you.”

“So when did you start getting these?” he is asking as Joanne lies on the examining table, her face cold after the treatment of dry ice the doctor has applied. Ronald Gold’s fingers press down hard on her chin.

“Just in the last month,” Joanne tells him. “I couldn’t believe it. Women my age aren’t supposed to get pimples.”

“Show me where it’s written that women your age—
our
age—aren’t supposed to get pimples. Women your age get pimples, believe me. I have lots of women coming in here in their forties, even their fifties.”

“Great. Something to look forward to.”

He pokes her cheek with a needle, causing a slight sting. “I’m just going to inject a little cortisone into this one. Tell me, what have you been doing to your skin lately?”

“What do you mean?”

“Anything different?”

“I’ve been using a new moisturizer that Eve recommended …”

“Eve’s a dermatologist?”

“No, but she said that I should start taking better care of my skin.”

“You still do everything Eve tells you? Just like the old days?”

Joanne tries to smile but his forearm is resting on her mouth as he presses down on another potential blemish. “Well, it’s just that I never did anything with my skin before, to take care of it, I mean …”

“And you never had problems before, did you?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t that tell you something?” He backs away. “You’ve been plugging up your pores, little Joanne Mossman Hunter. All those fancy, expensive creams and moisturizers are giving you pimples. Stop using them.”

“And do what?”

“And wash your face once a day—once—at night, that’s all you need, with a mild soap—I’ll give you a list. You don’t need any moisturizers. I’ll give you some vitamin A cream to apply before you go to bed. If you’re going to wear makeup, use one with a water base, and use a powder blush, not a cream. Cream clogs the pores. And stop reading those fashion magazines. They know as much about proper skin care as your nutty friend Eve. What’s her problem anyway?” he asks in the same breath.

“We were hoping you’d tell us.”

“I’m a skin doctor. That’s for the outside of the head, not the inside.”

“You’re saying it’s an emotional problem?”

He shrugs. “Psychiatry is the dumping ground of the medical profession. A doctor can’t find something physical, he assumes it’s emotional. I couldn’t tell you what Eve’s problem is except that there’s nothing wrong with her skin. It’s a little dry, that’s all. More than that, I can’t tell you.” He backs away and studies her face as if he were planning to paint her portrait. “That should do it,” he says. “So you want a job?”

Joanne laughs, then realizes he is serious. “Are you kidding?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “You found my pen, you can do anything. Go ahead, name your price.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? Babies at home? A husband who doesn’t want his wife to work? Tell him that times have changed. Hell, my wife’s a dentist. She works harder than I do.”

“That’s not it,” Joanne says, not sure exactly what it is.

“What then? Not challenging enough?”

“Are you really serious about this?”

“Do I look like a man who’s joking? I look like a man in desperate need of a good receptionist.”

“What would I have to do?”

“Answer the phone, greet the multitudes, keep my appointments straight, laugh at my jokes. If you’re a really good girl, I might even let you squeeze a few pimples. What do you say? Is that or isn’t that an offer you can’t refuse?”

“Can I think about it?” Joanne asks, surprising herself. What is there to think about? She can’t seriously be
considering working for this man. Why not? she asks herself, the thoughts colliding in her head like so many one-legged runners across the highways of America.

“Sure. Think about it, talk it over with your husband, and call me Monday. Not that I’m trying to pressure you, you understand.” He smiles.

“Why do you want
me
to work for you?”

“Why not you?” he asks. “Something wrong with you?” His boyish grin relaxes, his gray-blue eyes clear and warm. “I like you,” he says simply. “You remind me of my youth. Hey, I read this somewhere—you want to know what’s the really scary thing about middle age?” She nods. “It’s waking up one morning,” he tells her, “and realizing that your high school class is running the country.”

Eve’s mother is waiting in the doorway—has she been there the whole time?—as Joanne pulls her car into her driveway. “That’s not really my mother,” Eve states as she opens the car door. “It’s Godzilla.”

“Eve,” Joanne urges, “if she’s making you so miserable, just ask her to leave.”

“I can’t do that.” Eve walks up her front steps with Joanne trailing after her.

“You were a long time,” Eve’s mother greets them, her voice vaguely accusing. “What took so long?”

“We had to wait almost an hour,” Eve says, walking past her mother and into the house. “The good doctor was very disorganized.”

“His receptionist quit and his nurse is out with a cold,” Joanne further explains, although Mrs. Cameron is no longer paying attention.

“My God! What did you do with the furniture?” Eve
exclaims, walking into the suddenly unfamiliar living room and restlessly pacing back and forth.

“I moved a few things around.”

“A few things! Is there anything that you
didn’t
touch?”

“Well, you were gone so long. I was nervous; I had nothing to do.”

“You ever think of reading?” Eve asks as she and Joanne circle the newly arranged room, the lilac print sofa where the chairs were only hours ago, the mauve chairs consigned to opposite corners of the room, the coffee tables and lamps uprooted and relocated. “How did you move that sofa all by yourself, for God’s sake? Who are you, the Bionic Woman?”

“Godzilla,” Joanne mouths in Eve’s direction when Mrs. Cameron is looking the other way.

“This is too much for me,” Eve says incredulously, her voice somewhere between laughter and tears. “I can’t cope.”

“Go up and lie down,” Mrs. Cameron says to her daughter, who is already out of the room and halfway up the stairs. “Stay,” she whispers under her breath to Joanne. “I want to talk to you.”

“Thanks, Joanne,” Eve calls down the stairs. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“So what happened?” Eve’s mother asks immediately.

“Nothing much,” Joanne states, following the older woman into the kitchen and sitting across from her at the kitchen table. “Apparently the doctor gave her a pretty thorough examination. As far as he’s concerned, there’s nothing wrong with her skin except that it’s a little dry.”

“She told him she always used to have oily skin?”

“He said that skin changes, just like everything else. He said it could be her hormones, the pregnancy, the
miscarriage. I’m not sure. Eve can tell you exactly what he said.”

“But there’s nothing serious?”

“Mrs. Cameron,” Joanne says patiently, “how serious can dry skin be?”

“Did you tell Eve that?”

“I tried.”

“And?”

“She says that the dry skin is only a symptom of the larger problem.”

Eve’s mother drums her fingers anxiously on the table, her face downcast. Joanne is suddenly aware of how much older Eve’s mother seems these days, for the first time her features betraying their almost seven decades. The bags underneath her eyes are heavy and sagging. There is a slight twitch at the sides of her colorless lips. Joanne realizes that Arlene Pringle Hopper Cameron, who has buried three husbands, whom Joanne’s mother always referred to affectionately as Mighty Mouse (though this is something she has never confided to Eve), is on the brink of tears. “I don’t know what to do,” she cries softly, lowering her head into her hands.

“Why don’t you go home?” Joanne suggests gently, seizing the opportunity. “You look tired. You need some rest.”

“I can’t go home,” the woman says, looking up at Joanne. “Eve needs me here.”

“Eve can manage on her own, Mrs. Cameron,” Joanne urges. “She has a cleaning lady twice a week, and I’m right next door. I’ll talk to Brian, he’ll just have to spend more time at home. It might even be good for Eve if she has to do more around the house. It might take her mind off her pains.”

“Don’t you think I’ve suggested that to Eve?” Mrs. Cameron asks, catching Joanne by surprise. Truthfully, this thought hasn’t occurred to her. “I have my own heart problems, you know. You think this is easy for me? I have my own life, my bridge club, my mah-jongg ladies. I know that sounds pretty trivial, but what can you do? Some lives aren’t as important as others. I’m too old to play nursemaid. But every time I suggest to Eve that I go home, that she try to help herself more, she gets angry. She yells, ‘What kind of a mother are you that you’d abandon your own daughter when she needs you the most?’ What am I supposed to do? If I even suggest going out for an afternoon, she gets hysterical. She says if I were any kind of a mother, I’d want to be here, to take care of her.” She shakes her head. “I’m not perfect, Joanne, God knows. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But I’ve tried the best I know how, and I don’t know what else to do. You’re the only one she listens to—you tell me, what should I db? She’s my daughter and I love her. I don’t want to see her unhappy. I don’t know how to help her.” She dries her eyes with a tissue. “She’s forty years old but she’s still my child. You don’t stop being a mother just because your children get older. Well, I don’t have to tell you that. How are your girls?” she asks, trying to smile.