The Botox Diaries (2 page)

But world peace is going to have to wait, because I end up spending the next hour flicking through the Lands’ End catalog and poring over pictures of the “Kindest Cut” bathing suits. All modeled by women more-or-less my age, apparently grateful for the extra bra support and the no-ride backside. The one-piece suits are cut high on top, low on bottom and loose all around. How did I get this catalog anyway? Do the fashion police know I’m over forty? I reflexively glance down at my breasts. Still firm, but less than perky. Maybe I just need my morning coffee. I was reading just yesterday that caffeine is a great pick-me-up—for your breasts. No wonder Starbucks stock is on the rise.

I sigh and toss aside the catalog. From the next bedroom, I hear my daughter Jen moving around, humming happily to herself. Why would I worry about long-gone bikini-wearing days when the present is blessed by a loving daughter with a crooked smile who gets up in the morning singing? Sure enough, a minute later she comes bounding into my room.

“Hey, Mom. Wanna hear my new song?” she asks, bursting with more energy than Britney Spears in a Pepsi commercial.

“Sure,” I say, sitting back with a smile. My little girl—well, not as little as I think she is—has on a teeny-tiny pink nightgown that makes her look more Baby Doll than baby. Even straight from bed, her skin is dewy and her big brown eyes are clear and bright. I’d need alpha hydroxy, two moisturizers, and Visine just to look half that good.

Jen grins and poses dramatically at the foot of the bed, arms flung out wide and hips bouncing from side to side as she starts to sing. It takes me a minute to register the tune. But then I get it, that Madonna song, “Like a Virgin.”
Like
a virgin? She’s eleven years old, for heaven’s sake. As far as I’m concerned, the only time she should use the “V” word is in an ode to the Virgin Mary. It makes me long for the days when she warbled that unbearable Barney song.

“Love your singing,” I venture, trying to be supportive. But I’ve got to know. “Where the heck did you learn that song?”

“They play it on the oldies station,” she says, jumping onto my bed.

Madonna on the oldies station. I shudder to think where that puts the Rolling Stones—or me.

“I’m going to sing it for Ethan,” Jen says excitedly.

Ethan, her boyfriend. One of us has to have one. Although hers is twelve.

“You are
not
going to sing that for him,” I say just a little too prissily. I look around the room to see if my mother just came in, because that was definitely her voice. I soften my position. “I mean, the whole act might be a little much.”
Touched for the very first time?
I don’t think so. No use giving the boy pointers.

“Well, I’ll sing it but I won’t wear a belly shirt, okay?” she asks
with a mischievous twinkle. Then suddenly she leans over and looks at me wide-eyed. “Mom, your hair. What happened? It’s all gray!”

“What do you mean?” My hand flies up to my head.

“It’s all gray,” Jen repeats. “Ooh. Eck!”

Horrified, I tug at my roots. Is it possible? I’ve avoided the L’Oréal aisle at the drugstore for all these years and now it’s suddenly an emergency. Who knew this would happen overnight?

“How bad does it look?” I ask anxiously.

“Pretty bad,” Jen says. But then she breaks into giggles.

“April Fool’s!” she crows triumphantly.

“Got me,” I say, laughing and throwing the pillow at her as she ducks, doubled over in laughter. Scary that she knew I’d buy into anything about looking old.

Jen runs back to her room to catch up on more oldies—yup, Britney should be hitting that category any day now—and suddenly it occurs to me what my dream this morning was all about.

It’s April first.

My subconscious knew the date, even if I didn’t. Sixteen years ago today, over a breakfast of crepes and champagne, Jacques, my passionate French lover, handed me a sapphire-and-diamond ring and asked if I’d marry him. I gasped and said, “This isn’t an April Fool’s joke, is it?”

To which he said, “What mean, ‘April Fool’s’?”

Perhaps I should have taken our cultural chasm as a sign that the marriage wasn’t going to last any longer than the delicate Chanel sandals he’d bought me. Kisses in cafés, long luxurious lovemaking and out-of-body orgasms—okay, even many of them—don’t necessarily a solid marriage make. Although it does take you a while to notice. And I didn’t really have anyone to blame but myself when six years later the marriage crashed.

But enough. I haven’t even showered yet and already I’ve dreamed about sex with my ex, been April-fooled into feeling like Barbara Bush, and gotten vicariously giddy on Dom Perignon. But today’s a workday and I have a great idea for the charity where I’m gainfully employed—at least part-time. Of course if I don’t get moving I’ll be presenting the plan in my p.j.’s.

* * *

The day after Lucy jets back from the coast, she calls—during daylight hours, thank goodness—wanting to have lunch.

“There’s a new sushi place near my office,” she says. “Want to try it tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I say agreeably. Lucy’s so clued in that she knows what’s going to be in Zagat’s even before the ballots are counted.

“I’ll have my assistant Tracey make a reservation,” she says, then adds in a conspiratorial whisper, “By the way, the chef is Iguro Mashikuro. I always love his eel.”

He has his own eel? Lucy can make anything sound exciting. I wonder what she has to say about his salmon roe.

The next morning at eleven a.m. I’m dressed in black capris and my best TSE cashmere sweater-set when the skies turn black. How can Al Roker have gotten it wrong again? Millions of dollars for the Doppler 4000 and they still can’t tell the difference between an April shower and a monsoon.

Maybe I should call Lucy and suggest we postpone. We can always meet tomorrow morning at Dell’s instead.

No, braving Hurricane Andrew would be better than breakfast at Dell’s, the local landmark that’s been serving inedible food since 1952. I never got the appeal. The consistently bad service? The guaranteed watery eggs and watery coffee? For a few precious weeks last fall we did have a Starbucks. Then a group of moms declared it wasn’t “quaint enough” for our little town. They organized a rally that was the biggest event in Pine Hills since the Brownies’ Walk to School Week. Kids carried placards:
BUCK
STARBUCKS! FRANCHISED COFFEE IS OBSCENE!
And my personal favorite,
DEATH TO ESPRESSO!
And dammit if Starbucks didn’t pack up their lattes and leave. So, I say to myself, reaching for my J. Crew trench, Manhattan or bust.

Thirty-seven minutes later, after I get off the train in Grand Central Station, I head for the taxi stand on Vanderbilt Avenue. The people are lined up, but the taxis aren’t, so I start walking through the drizzle. I’m striding up Madison Avenue when I hear the first clap of thunder. I
stick out my hand to hail a taxi and three drivers whiz by me without even glancing in my direction. Oh, great. I can’t even pay someone to pick me up. Could it be that even the cabbies are trolling for twenty-five-year-olds? At forty-one, have I already become completely invisible? I shiver. This may not be the time for big philosophical issues—the rain is starting to come down in sheets. I’m only on Forty-eighth Street and the restaurant’s fourteen blocks away. With any luck my underwear will still be dry when I arrive.

The restaurant has no name out front, and I walk up and down the block where it’s supposed to be located three times before I venture up a flight of stairs and push open an unmarked wooden door. A perfectly beautiful Asian woman in a sleeveless black dress, bare legs, and black spike mules is standing behind the lacquered front desk.

“Is this Ichi’s?” I ask, trying to close my umbrella and managing to spill a large puddle of water on the gleaming marble floor.

She looks at me blankly. I’ve pronounced it ITCH-ies, which is obviously wrong.

“ICK-ies?” I suggest.

Still no response.

“EYE-cheese?”

Blank.

“EYE-keys?”

She takes pity. “Welcome to AH-SHAY’s,” she says.

No way do you get AH-SHAY’s out of a place spelled like ICK-ies, but I’m not arguing with a woman who’s gone sleeveless on the third wettest day of the year.

“I’m meeting Lucy Baldor. We have a one o’clock reservation.”

She looks carefully through her book, as if she can’t believe that I actually belong here.

“Ms. Baldor hasn’t arrived yet. Would you like to be seated?”

“I’d like a ladies’ room first.” Maybe I can squeeze some of the water out of my hair and turn it from wet mop to dry mop.

She gestures elegantly. “Just behind you to the left.”

“Thanks.” I try to step away from the desk, but my dripping umbrella
has turned the floor into the Antarctic ice shelf and I immediately go flying: my umbrella in one direction, my bag in another, and my butt in the most obvious direction—straight down until it slams into the cold marble. Ms. Sleeveless Dress pretends like she hasn’t seen a thing.

Nobody offers to help me up, so I slip and slide my way back to my feet and scurry off to the ladies’ room, which is plastered with wall-to-wall mirrors. What fresh hell. The hair that I’d spent twenty minutes blow-drying into a sleek ’do has been water damaged into a mass of stringy ringlets, and the blotchy black circle running down my cheek proves that the waterproof mascara isn’t. A hasty comb-through and a swipe across my cheek with a wad of toilet paper are the best I can muster. An hour and a half out of the house and I’ve gone from having a vague resemblance to Cybill Shepherd to looking like Courtney Love, the Kurt Cobain years.

Back out front, I’m led to a table and I heap my wet coat on the back of my chair. Nobody comes by to take it, to offer menus, or to plunk down a measly glass of water. It’s okay. I can wait. I fumble through my purse, looking for props and trying to pretend that I have something to do. Seventeen minutes, two Altoids, and one phone call to check my messages—there are none—later, I’m strumming my fingers on the water glass when Lucy comes in. She makes her way across the restaurant with a lean, coltish stride that makes heads turn—literally—at every table. Her makeup is flawless, her streaked blond hair swings at the perfect angle around her chin, and her Burberry raincoat and spike Manolo Blahniks look like they just came out of the box. Does this woman walk between the raindrops? Even if she came by limousine, and I bet she has, she had to get from the curb to the door, and as I glance out the window I see, yep, it’s still pouring.

“You look fabulous,” I say, getting up to kiss her on both cheeks.

“You too, Jessie,” she says, going for the newly chic third kiss. Left, right, left. I never remember that last one and our noses bump.

A maitre d’ materializes from nowhere to help Lucy out of her coat and whisk it away. He apparently doesn’t notice my coat, still heaped
on the seat. With Lucy settled into her chair, two waiters and a busboy scramble over with water, menus, and a chorus of greetings, confirming my taxi-hailing suspicion. Maybe I am becoming invisible.

“I’m so glad to be at this restaurant,” Lucy says to me spiritedly when the minions have left. “I’m told the best plan here is to let the chef prepare whatever’s freshest. Is that okay with you?”

“Sure.” I’m willing to risk my life at Kmart sale days but not on day-old sushi.

Lucy orders for us, chatting with the waiter about the quality of the uni. “That’s a sea urchin,” she explains, turning to me, to keep me in the loop.

“The uni. Ah, it’s superior, today,” the waiter confides, with a wink. But of course. For Lucy, he’ll probably find a cache of uni-uni. She orders a few more dishes I’ve never heard of and gives the menus back to the waiter. Then she turns her radiant attention toward me.

“Before we say another word, I just have to thank you for making those cupcakes with Lily,” she says. “She hasn’t stopped talking about them.”

“Oh, it was fun,” I tell her honestly.

“But you went to a lot of trouble and I’m really grateful,” she gushes.

“I told Dan to come for dinner with the boys the night we made cupcakes,” I say, determined to prove I could have done even more, “but he’d already promised them Taco Bell. He’s such a great dad.”

“Yeah, he is,” Lucy says half-heartedly.

“No, really,” I say with enthusiasm. “Of all the husbands I know, he’s the only one I’d consider. You don’t mind that I’m jealous, do you?”

“No, go ahead,” she says. “I’m having trouble getting too excited about my life these days so you might as well enjoy it. Sometimes your life can look perfect to everyone else and feel flat when you’re living it, you know? You should understand.”

What intrigues me about Lucy is that despite her fabulous job, her three wonderful children, and oh, yes, the Mercedes and the six-bedroom
house, she has moments when she feels truly and sincerely miserable. She calls it a classic midlife crisis, and for some reason, she’s decided that I am the one person who gets it.

“You know what I mean, don’t you?” she asks, leaning forward.

Well, maybe I do. I felt that way once myself. After all, I did leave Jacques.

“After all, you did leave Jacques,” she says.

What? On top of everything else she’s a mind reader?

“Yeah, I did,” I say. “Do you want to hear for the four-hundredth time why everyone thought I was crazy but I knew it was the right thing?”

She grins. “No, I think I’ve got it.”

“But what’s up with you?” I ask. “When you called from L.A. it sounded like you had news.”

“Not really news.” Lucy takes a deep breath and looks as if she’s about to tell me something important. But instead she shakes her head. “It was nothing. Just a guy I work with who was flirting with me. Kind of fun for a day or two. But hey, I’m married. I stopped thinking about sex a long time ago.”

We both laugh and I know she wants to get off this subject. Much as I’d bet there’s more to the story, I let her get away with it.

“And what’s up with your love life?” she asks, moving on with lightning speed. “Are you still going out with that painter?”