Things Unsaid: A Novel (15 page)

It seemed somehow inevitable that she would eventually hook up with Al. His parents were Southern Baptists from Texas and wanted him to be an engineer, like his father and brother. One problem, however: Al had no aptitude for math. He started flunking all of his engineering courses, and finally his parents stopped paying the bills at UCLA. That was when he decided to transfer to Santa Monica City College to study art. He shared a grimy apartment with four other guys on the outskirts of Santa Monica, an easy commute from campus. He fell for Joanne the first time he met her. When he saw her high-rent apartment, he loved her even more.

Joanne’s parents paid the rent without being asked and made frequent visits to California to see their baby girl. They were happy to take care of her, her mom said. Someday Joanne could support herself and them. But that never came to pass. Sometimes Joanne wondered what would happen if they ever ran out of money. Daddy had reassured her that would never happen. But Joanne didn’t want to depend on her parents forever. She wanted her own dream: to become the owner of a jewelry store.

Joanne had decided Al was not so bad the first time he invited her to his student apartment. “Love the smell,” she said.

“I’m making spaghetti for dinner. That’s what you smell,” he told her with a grin on his face. But the smell she was referring to was patchouli, not
pasta e fagioli
. And really, what was irresistible about Al was his choice of art: nightmare-inducing Nazi images, disembodied mutations, and predatory insects and animals. Just her style.

Al was a closet geek, and older than Jules. Like a docile Labrador, Joanne’s favorite breed, he hovered around her. By the time they celebrated their first Valentine’s Day together, Joanne knew her future.

“Oh Al, you know, you could do much better and save money to boot,” Joanne’s mother had said to him after hearing about his living situation when they came for a visit in early February. “Why don’t you move in with Joanne as her Valentine’s Day present? Don’t you think she’s beautiful? Takes after me. Everyone says so.”

Joanne had felt herself blush. She had only known Al a few months.

The next day Al had sent a dozen roses. Then another dozen the following day. For a whole week, seven dozen in total, a different color each day, until Valentine’s Day. He made reservations for them at a famous restaurant, requesting the most coveted table in Beverly Hills. He also started to cook for her after classes.

“Al may not be exactly your type, but his devotion is impressive,” her mother said. “And you know, none of us gets what she wants all wrapped up in one package with a pink bow on top. He may be as good as it gets. I should know—I married your father, didn’t I?” she laughed.

So she married Al. And just as she was concentrating on getting pregnant, Al lost his job.

“No one should love work. That’s why they call it work,” Al grumbled.

Joanne remembered saying that she felt fortunate snagging an instructorship at the Gemological Institute in Santa Monica right after graduation, and regretting it as soon as the words flew out of her mouth. Al never liked anything. He didn’t trust the concept—let alone the prospect—of happiness, either his or hers. That Southern Methodist upbringing. He didn’t even like sex—or at least, he only liked sex before they were married. When it was forbidden by his church.

When Al picked up her class list, Joanne knew her life would change before he even spoke.

“Hmm, mostly guys, judging from this list. Are they interested in the subject matter or just you?”

“You’re not jealous, are you? There’s no need to be, you know.” She laughed.

Al wasn’t smiling. “Tomorrow you hand in your resignation.”

“But you just lost your job. We could use the money.” She could hear the pleading in her voice as she slipped her arms under his armpits. The way she had with Tim when he used to get angry. Her own voice was scaring her.

“No way you’re going back there. Pretty soon you’ll be huge, anyway. Like a fat cockroach. You won’t even be able to fit behind the steering wheel. Quit your job. You can sew baby stuff to get ready for the big day. We’ll live off my severance and then my unemployment, if we have to. Until I find another job.”

And that was how Joanne kept out of harm’s way: by sitting in front of her new Singer sewing machine all evening, waiting for Al to come home—where did he go all day?—and creating baby clothes, unisex ones. When her hands were tired of sewing, she created serigraphs, her most accomplished form of printmaking—shifting and morphing shapes of uncommon virospheres and body parts. Her favorite subject was the spleen.

Six weeks later, she became pregnant with Megan. Her first baby was born bright and healthy. Al adopted Koko, a chocolate Labrador, from the SPCA, to be Megan’s playmate, but the dog turned out to be vicious, except towards their family.

Soon after Megan’s birth, Sarah was on the way.

“You know, darling,” both her parents observed, “you make such beautiful babies. Thank God they take after you in the looks department.” Joanne could never figure out how they could both say that in front of Al, as if he weren’t there.

“And why on earth did Al buy that filthy dog … and around small children, no less?” her mother asked once, when Al was out at the store. “Don’t you have any sense of hygiene?”

Joanne laughed it off, recalling her mom’s disgust when she first saw Megan crawling to catch Koko and suck on one of his paws. “I think Koko is more lovable than Al,” is all she said.

Al was gone now, but Joanne still had Koko.

Al’s search had paid off, landing an engineering job at less pay at Boeing in Seattle. Well, it wasn’t actually an engineering job. He drew the schematics for aeronautical parts before they were adapted for CAD-CAM input.

“God, I hated looking for a job, day after day, month after month,” Al complained to Joanne after getting the news. “It’s not easy, you know, having to provide for the family. I hate having to be approved by some asshole. And goddamn those LA riots. Those riots caused our bankruptcy. The looting scared off any buyers.” Echoes of her father’s ranting long ago at Lake Tamsin during the civil rights movement. The violence.

Her parents had put a generous down payment on a large house in a good neighborhood overlooking the Cascades, big enough for all of them to move in together, if that day ever came. Her father’s investments would bring in more profits when they needed them down the road. No worries. Just like the good old days on Crestview Avenue in Akron, her father said.

They would move to Seattle to start a new life. A better life. For all of them.

“I think you have some crumbs on your cheek. Maybe from a bran muffin or something,” a neighbor had told her when they had a welcome-to-the-neighborhood lunch at a local restaurant in Edmonds, the Seattle suburb where she and Al had just moved.

Joanne had casually brushed her cheek, where her neighbor had been staring, and felt nothing. She ran to the bathroom to have a closer look, pulling down on the skin on her face. Those garish overhead neon lights magnified everything, including the tiny scars on her left cheek—leftovers from some pustules a distant memory away. What her mother had called a “pizza face” or “hamburger face” from acne she’d had as a teenager.
How embarrassing
.

Joanne had carried those comments with her all these years, and now it was time to do something—to enhance her beauty so her skin would be more like her mother’s. Hollywood had always been plastic in so many ways, and Joanne never had forgotten her own aspirations to be an artist to the stars. But you couldn’t be a famous artist without looking like one. Her only job now was working on her own body. She was a work of art, after all.

It was the weirdest feeling. He reminded her of a large black spider on a white wall when you least expect it. Scary. No one else was in the waiting room. With its overstuffed white sofas, white marble counters, and bleached oak floors, the doctor’s office was a blinding, spotless
whiteout. It was hard to see Dr. Payne in all that white. His dark hair and eyes. His voice sounding raspy and irritable to her, as if he had swallowed something too peppery.

Dr. Payne, plastic surgeon to the stars, came highly recommended by customers who had frequented the Gemological Institute to have their diamonds appraised. Dr. Payne’s office had formerly been next to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, then a more expensive high-rent district in Beverly Hills. Now he was practicing near Pike Place in Seattle.

Joanne felt like she was neon glow … a diner’s street sign. Dr. Payne’s magnifying goggles underscored his buglike appearance, bulging eyes like opaque marbles. “So you’re here for your droopy eyelids, huh? Just a tweak here and there. Eyelifts are very routine, you know. Not a complicated procedure at all. But expensive, because eyes are considered nature’s treasure. We can do the tummy tuck at the same time. Different body part.”

The plastic surgeon’s comments made her wither. She felt foolish, a frog-beetle under a microscope. And what about the cost? Maybe Jules’s windfall could be shared. After all, Uncle Wilson had been her uncle, too … and she shouldn’t have to find out about her sister’s inheritance from her brother.
Why would Jules keep that from me, anyway?

“I guess, whatever you suggest, Doctor. Just as long as I come out more beautiful than when I went under.” She really wasn’t getting any younger.

“Well, I’ll tell you a little secret, just between the two of us,” Dr. Payne said, touching her arm. She pulled it away, but he reached for it again and held her in an armlock. “Most of my patients come back again and again for other enhancements. Once you know what true beauty is, there is always room for improvement. We’re all a work in progress, as the cliché goes.”

His breath smelled like garlic; Joanne drew her head back.

When the day came for the procedure, her mother came with her.

“I’ll be right there when you come out of anesthesia,” she said, patting Joanne’s hand as she rode the gurney into the operating room. “It’ll be worth it, you’ll see. Beauty is priceless. And you have to start maintenance while your underlying muscles are still strong, not flabby.
It’s too late for me now. Way too late. Just can’t believe I’ve already turned eighty.”

These were her mother’s last words to her before she went under.