“What?”
“Wash me.”
“What?”
“Wash my titties.”
“No, Mom. Please.”
In a sharp low voice that sounded as if it rose from somewhere else, she spit out the syllables with menacing insistence. “Do as I say. Wash them.”
“No, I can’t.”
She gripped his wrist. Her eyes were like bulging dark marbles. “I’m your mother.” And she thrust her breasts toward him.
His insides clutched. She was crazy again and there was nothing he could do about it or she’d get mad and turn to stone. So he took the sponge and made a quick dash across the top of her chest just under her neck.
“You’re not washing my car.”
She took his hand and showed him what she wanted—to rub the sponge across her nipples in slow deliberate circles.
“That’s better. Now show me you can do it properly yourself.”
He began to do what she wanted. But after another moment, she said she didn’t like him standing over her, that she wanted him on his knees. So he got down on the bathroom rug.
“That’s it. Nice and slow. Just like that.”
As he sponged her, he felt confused and scared. She liked what he was doing, lying back against the wall, making soft moans. But did other kids wash their mom’s breasts? He didn’t think so. At least it wasn’t something they’d talk about. But she had told him to do it, said it was all right; and since his dad was never around, she made the rules.
“You like doing this?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
He didn’t answer.
“What’s the matter?”
“I have to go.”
“You’re crying. What’s the problem?”
For a long moment he could not get the words out as tears flooded his eyes.
“Tell me.”
“I-I don’t want to make you naughty.”
Her face froze. “What?”
“I don’t want to make you dirty. I don’t want Jesus to be mad at you.”
His words hit a nerve, and for a moment her face flickered with expressions as if she were trying to decide the punishment. But she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. He could see her struggling. When she opened them again, she looked at him directly, as if staring through all the shifting rubble of her mind and into his wounded soul. “Then, you’d better leave.” She let go of his wrist.
Without a word he turned and left the room.
Later that evening, she and his father returned. He heard them come in, heard her heels on the stairs and landing like small hammers in the still of the night. Moments later the wall thumped rhythmically. Then the sounds of her gasping. At first, he was terrified that something was wrong, that maybe his father was hurting her. But then he heard her muffled giggling.
When he was older, he would look back to that night—and to others that followed—only to realize that those sounds, which had sent seismic pulses through his brain, had been meant for him. Lila’s sex sounds were for him, not herself or Dad. For him: she was getting back.
39
That Saturday afternoon, Lanie Walker drove Dana to Dr. Monks’s clinic for her upper lid lift. The rhinoplasty would be scheduled at another time.
As instructed, she had nothing to eat or drink for six hours, and she felt some heightened anxiety as they rode to the clinic. Lanie prattled on as was her way, saying how the procedure was a piece of cake, like going to the dentist, and that it would be over before she knew it. Dana knew all that, and although it was irrational, she wished Steve were taking her. In spite of their difficulties, he had for so long been her source of comfort and support that she felt vulnerable. She also wished she had told him it was more than Botox she was getting.
Lanie accompanied her up to the suite. The receptionist and other staffers all said how great Lanie looked. When Dr. Monks came out they embraced. “Now you take good care of her.”
He smiled and promised he would. Before she left, she gave her cell phone number to Ms. Madlansacay to call when Dana was ready to be taken home.
Dana was taken into the prep room where Dr. Monks and the nurse practitioner explained the procedure. The operation would take less than an hour. They would do the upper eyelids first, then the Botox injections. Because she was young and healthy and the surgery was minor, they would not need an anesthesiologist. Dr. Monks would administer the local anesthetic himself.
“We’d like you to strip down to your underpants and put on a gown,” he said.
She nodded, but for some reason, that innocent doctor-patient statement rendered a slight self-consciousness. Maybe it was the way he looked at her or her awareness of how the green scrubs made his eyes blaze like gemstones.
“Maureen will set up an IV in your arm for Versed. That will put you in sedation.”
“So I’ll still be awake.”
“Yes, but in a twilight state—in fact, it’s quite pleasant and you won’t feel any discomfort. You also won’t remember any of the operation.”
She was not so concerned with discomfort as much as her own possible reaction. In her research she had read that while Versed created a pain-free state, it also lowered inhibitions. “Am I going to say a lot of dumb things that I’ll be embarrassed about later?”
He smiled with amusement. “I doubt it, Mrs. Markarian. It’s not a truth serum.”
She had imagined those comforting social barriers in the fore of her brain all but dissolving as she blurted out that she hoped he wasn’t gay or asked him if he ever got romantically involved with his patients.
He explained the procedure, patting her arm. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
When he and the nurse left, she undressed. Maybe it was her changing mind-set—her emerging “new self”—but she wondered what he was like behind the scrubs and professional sheen. What he was like as a man. She tried to imagine him being loose and casual, laughing with friends, banging his fists in frustration, making love. As she got ready, she wondered if maybe she was no different from all those other women who developed crushes on their cosmetic surgeons.
A few minutes later the nurse returned to take her blood pressure and insert the IV needle intake. She was then led across the hall to the operating room where Dr. Monks was getting ready.
“How you doing?” he asked as he slipped on his surgical gloves.
“I’m doing fine.”
“Good. A week from now you’ll be nearly healed and glowing with even more youth than you already radiate.”
The nurse slipped under her a grounding pad for the electrical coagulator. She then put on a blood pressure cuff and hooked her up to a heart monitor. When it was set in place, Dr. Monks repeated, “It’ll be over before you know it. All set?”
“Yes.” Remarkably she felt none of the anxiety she had brought with her. In fact, she glanced at the blips on the monitor, certain that her heart rate was not even elevated.
Dr. Monks’s smiling face filled her vision. In spite of the rough skin, it was a kind, serene, almost genderless face that reminded her of saints in Italian Renaissance paintings.
With a syringe he administered the sedative into the IV and patted her arm again. The nurse then pulled back her hair and put a paper hair net on her head. She washed her face with an antiseptic solution, patted it dry, then put on a drape so that only her face was exposed.
In a moment, Dana felt the sedative flood her brain and thicken, leaving her with a delicious drowsiness.
She heard Dr. Monks ask, “How you doing?”
And she heard herself respond, feeling her lips and tongue move, sensing the words as they dribbled out of her mouth. Although she thought she was in control and making sense, like a delayed echo the last thing she heard was her own voice: “I hope you like me.”