She Is Me (8 page)

He tapped her polished big toe.

“Nice color,” he said.

On a gray July morning, as she and Lotte made their slow painful progress, like a tractor trailer laboring up a steep hill, across yet another waiting room toward yet another receptionist in yet another doctor’s office, Greta clenched her teeth and was silent.

“Hmmph! Look at the
posterior
of that one,” Lotte whispered. Her whisper was like a loud hiss. “And she shows it off?”

Greta did not look. Presumably the one cursed with the remarkable posterior was a large woman in stretch pants, her mother’s favorite target for this particular comment.

“Maybe nothing else fits,” Greta had once said. “Maybe that’s all that’s comfortable.”

“It’s a disease,” Lotte had said. She strung out the word “disease,” just as she had “posterior,” as if they were equally revolting, as if they were synonyms. The letter “s” itself seemed damning. She might just as well have been spitting as talking. “A disease.”

“It’s a disease,” Greta heard her mother say now.

Greta sat Lotte down, balanced the cane against the chair. The cane was looking a little shabby, scratched and dented with use. So unlike Lotte. It depressed Greta.

“Maybe it’s time for a new cane,” she said.

“Where’m I going? Carnegie Hall?”

Greta turned toward the desk.

“My pocketbook!” Lotte cried. The alarm in her voice made the receptionist look up. Greta smiled and rolled her eyes at the woman, then immediately felt disloyal to her mother.

“Here, Mother. I’ve got it.” She handed Lotte her bag and continued to the receptionist’s desk. Behind her, she heard Lotte mutter, “Stupid stick. A new one, yet?” Then came the sound of Lotte shaking out her bracelets. She would hold her arms out in front of her as if waiting for a child to jump into them, then shake the bangles, of which there were many, straightening them with a burst of jingling. Lotte characteristically shook out her bracelets whenever she settled into a new room, as if communicating with any other members of her species that might be lurking in the brush.

“We’re here to see the radiologist . . .”

“Name?”

“Dr. Lyman.”

The receptionist, a beautiful black woman, looked up. Now here was someone Lotte could appreciate. “No,
your
name,” she said, smiling at Greta, an encouraging smile. God, what people she must deal with to be so kind right off the bat: the dying, the walking dead . . .

“My name?” Greta said. “But, it’s my mother . . .”

The receptionist put her hand out and patted Greta’s hand. “What’s your
mother’s
name, honey?”

When Greta finally sat down she realized she was shaking. My mother, she thought. My Lotte. How would she help Lotte if she was sick herself? How would she help Lotte if she had no hair?

She ran her fingers through her hair, which was, indeed, thinning.

I want my mama, she thought.

She took Lotte’s hand, whether to comfort Lotte or to comfort herself she didn’t know.

The surgeon had already tried to get rid of the tumor once, in his office, with something called a Mohs procedure. But the tumor was back with a vengeance, spreading across the landscape of Lotte’s face, and now he wanted to remove a piece of Lotte’s nose. Should the beautiful Lotte’s last days be cursed with half a nose? Before such a drastic step, Greta thought they ought to try radiation. Greta tried to remember if radiation also made you lose your hair. She would have to make sure to ask the doctor that. Privately, when Lotte was out of the room.

“Life Saver?” Lotte offered Greta the frayed paper tube of candy.

Greta shook her head no.

“I don’t like green, either,” Lotte said.

The bed was big for the little bedroom. The walls felt close. The twins next door had such bright outdoor lights. Scraps of Latin music arrived periodically from somewhere farther down the street. Elizabeth stared at the ceiling and tried to understand which wall faced north, which east, which west, which south. She had no sense of direction. It was a source of anxiety even in New York, with its lovely grid of numbered streets and avenues, its lovely song: the Bronx is up, the Battery’s down; although Elizabeth often found herself wandering in aimless circles even in New York, hoping she might accidentally arrive at her destination. In L.A. of course it was a thousand times worse. She got up, looked out the window for the North Star. But she had no idea what the North Star looked like, really. It was in the Big Dipper, perhaps. But where was the Big Dipper? In the evenings, when she looked out the window toward the ocean, she expected to see the sun setting. But it set much farther to the right, which was supposed to be north.

She lay down again and tried to take her mind off her location. But the reason she had started thinking about her coordinates was to help her take her mind off her grandmother and her mother. She had already repeated to herself every scrap of Harry dialogue, partly because she held on to Harry’s words as if they were spoken by the Buddha (she knew it was ridiculous, and she tried to keep her worship private) and partly because she liked to relate Harry anecdotes to Greta and Lotte to amuse them. Harry said this, Harry said that. North by northwest. Her grandmother was going south.

Two of her friends’ mothers had gotten breast cancer, and they were both fine. A professor of hers had died of a brain tumor. She knew a boy in college who’d had colon cancer and he was healthy now. She ran through every person she’d ever met who had or knew someone who’d had cancer, friends who’d just lost a parent or a grandparent. She tried to stop herself, but then she began to think of the people she ought to have called, those friends in New York she’d lost touch with. She knew she’d become careless of her friends even while it was happening. But after Harry was born, people seemed superfluous to her. Sometimes even Brett seemed superfluous. Only Harry was real, a constant presence, a magnificent sun shedding light on the bleak satellites around him. She had seen it happen to others, and she’d sworn it would not happen to her, that self-satisfied, glazed parental worship.

Who was the sun now? She could see only Lotte, a glittering constellation, and Greta, bright and clear as the Milky Way in the desert sky. No central star. No center. No north, no south, no east, no west.

She turned all the pillows over to their cool sides and attempted again to switch her thoughts. She tried to sort out some of
Mrs. B,
but found herself thinking instead of Volfmann, his short graying hair and canine visage, his glowering eyes. Bedroom eyes, she thought, irrelevantly, for they were hardly that. The thread hanging from his jacket. She should have reached over and plucked it.

She kicked the sheet off. Her mother did not look bad, she told herself. She actually looked rather good. She had lost weight, which was okay, and had not lost hair, which was a blessing. She had switched her uniform from jeans and T-shirts to stretchy yoga pants and T-shirts because she needed to lie down so much and wanted to be more comfortable, a fashion decline that was not really appreciable.

Elizabeth had always liked the way her mother dressed. She never fussed. She was identifiable. She was predictable. Lotte’s relationship to clothes, on the other hand, was creative, proprietary, demanding. She was a clothes hobbyist, Elizabeth thought. And then realized, No, it went beyond that. Lotte could have been an artist, if clothes were paint or graphite or marble. She could have been a racehorse breeder if clothes were horses. For Greta, on the other hand, clothes were just clothes. Elizabeth had always relied on that quality in her mother, on her pragmatic vision. Elizabeth had always relied on her mother, period.

She began to cry. When she finished, she got up, washed her face, and found Brett at his desk. She sat on his lap and wrapped her arms around him. He would know what to say to make her feel better. He always knew. Brett kissed her and reassured her. He spoke in a gentle singsong, as if he were telling a wonderful bedtime story. “Those statistics include every ancient crumbling old ruin who ever got sick,” he said. “Greta is young. She’s in good shape. ‘Fifty percent’ means fifty percent
do
recover.
That’s
Greta’s fifty percent.”

Elizabeth listened, her chin on his head, waiting. Brett’s calm had always struck Elizabeth as a thing of beauty, a miracle of physical grace. His tranquility soared before her, as exquisite as a dancer, and she waited for that moment in the ballet when it would lift her in its arms and let her soar, too.

“And I’m here,” Brett was saying. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll watch over you. I’ll feed you and bathe you and tuck you in at night with a martini. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Elizabeth listened and thought how much she loved him. And still she waited for the feeling of calm.

Brett brought her back up to bed. He held her and made love to her and she waited.

He fell asleep on his back and she waited some more, confused. She stared at his long, narrow profile and wondered, Where is the calm?

She waited for hours. She watched Brett sleep. She looked at the clock. It was three
A.M.
No calm. She began to worry. No calm? No calm. She began to panic. It was four. No calm. Her grandmother was dying. No calm there. It was five, and her mother was dying. It was six in the morning and she was helpless. There was no calm. There never would be. How could there be? Her grandmother was dying and Elizabeth couldn’t save her. Her mother was dying and Elizabeth couldn’t cure her. And no one could help Elizabeth. No one. Not even Brett.

“Did you sleep okay?” he asked her in the morning.

“I don’t know,” she said. And she avoided him all day.

Elliot King called Elizabeth and Daisy in for a meeting. He made them wait for half an hour.

“He’s a prick,” Daisy said. She was curled in the leather chair, her eyes closed, looking like a cat, or a snake. Elizabeth tried to decide which. She wondered if Volfmann would be at the meeting.

“Do you ever get lost,” she said, “even though you live here?”

“No.” Daisy opened her eyes. Her gaze spread itself lazily over Elizabeth. “I’ll take care of Elliot,” she said. “Don’t you worry, Cookie.”

Elizabeth smiled and leaned back, lulled by Daisy’s eyes, by being called Cookie. She felt as if she had been handed a cookie and some nice cold milk to drink.

When Elliot finally arrived, Elizabeth was disappointed to see Volfmann was not with him. Then Daisy said to him, “The man behind the curtain!” with such warmth that Elizabeth realized she was jealous.
I’m
Cookie, she wanted to say. Not Elliot.

Elliot, wearing a tight, shiny, stretchy T-shirt that showed off his perfectly formed, proportionate, and therefore pint-size muscles, thought over Daisy’s greeting for a split second, weighing it. His scale pronounced it good, for he smiled.

“Look,” Daisy said, her tone confiding, her voice low, “you are the only one who
really
gets this project.”

Elliot pursed his lips, an unconscious smirk, as if he couldn’t help but reveal his glee at having gotten away with something.

“So, where are we, Elliot?” Daisy said. “Where the fuck are we?”

Elliot talked about demographics. He talked about content creation. That was what Elizabeth and Daisy were engaged in. Content creation. He had two assistants, young and eager, a boy and a girl. Better than graduate school, Elizabeth thought. She heard the word “dramedy.” Her mind drifted to a passage in
Madame Bovary
in which Charles’s conversation is described as being as flat as a sidewalk. On which everybody’s ideas trudged past.

“You’re a wizard,” Daisy was saying.

Elliot shrugged his shoulders modestly. Then, as he escorted them out, his face became sober and grim.

“Madame Bovary,”
he said. He sighed as he turned away and walked back to his office. “A franchise it’s not.”

We see a suite, two bedrooms, each with twin beds, off of a small common room, all of it messy and girly. Two sixteen-year-old girls, CARRIE and MOLLY, are sitting on the floor of the common room smoking a joint. A third girl, LAUREN, is listening to a Walkman, singing a Backstreet Boys song loud and off-key, and doing her nails. ANGLE ON the fourth girl, visible through the bedroom door. A dark-haired beauty, sitting in her bed in a short, white, simple, but revealing, nightgown. She is oblivious to the others. Somehow, she seems both innocent and bursting with sensuality. She is reading intently. . . . Wuthering Heights. She is BARBIE.

The windows behind her are wide open, although it’s freezing cold and windy. WE SEE and HEAR the wind HOWLING through the trees.

CU Barbie turns to windows. Dreamy-eyed from her book. Thrilled by the romantic wind.

ANGLE ON common room. Papers flying, the three girls squealing, chasing their stuff.

CARRIE

God, Barbie, close your freaking windows!

ANGLE ON Barbie, now leaning out the window, beautiful, the wind blowing her long hair. She turns, a pale pre-Raphaelite beauty, and looks pityingly at her roommates.

BARBIE (harsh, angry)

Shut the fuck up.

She turns majestically back to the roaring wind.

BARBIE (cont.) (whispers to herself)

Pussies . . .

“We’re not broke,” Brett said.

He’d just come out of the shower. Drops of water clung between his shoulder blades. Elizabeth reached up and put her hand there. She was still in bed.

“If you think the script is such a stupid idea,” he said, “you don’t have to do it. You really, really don’t.”

“I don’t think it’s a stupid idea.”

Brett buttoned his shirt. Elizabeth wondered why he always wore a dress shirt when he wasn’t going anywhere.

“But
you
obviously do,” she said.

“No. I think you’re being stupid
about
it.”

“That’s what people do here. Pretend they hate what they’re doing. In case it’s stupid.”

“That’s what stupid people do everywhere,” Brett said.

He was dressed now, walking away from her, framed by the doorway to the hall. Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed. She saw her mother, lying down at the doctor’s office, scared and filling up with chemicals. She saw her grandmother, her face decaying as she tried on new hats.