Ava, my daughter, dressed in her Gothic black skirt, swished into the kitchen and paused to appraise me. I posed in a linen silk suit. “Not bad, Mom. Off to yet another Charlotte consultation?”
“No. Just a checkup for myself.” Nothing to do with her sister. Ava opened the refrigerator. “A checkup for your boobs?” The escaping cold made a shimmer in the air. “I don’t care for that word.”
“Mine are bigger than yours, Mom, and I’m only in ninth grade. Aunt Margaret’s are bigger than yours, too, so mine might—”
“I have to go, sweetie.” I made sure my Blue Cross card was in my purse.
“Call me Strega.” “I prefer Ava, as in: ‘Ava has gorgeous, wild, Pre-Raphaelite hair.’ ”
“Strega means witch. I look like a witch.”
“You have an eye for the flow of black satin.”
“I don’t want to stay home alone, Mom. Take me with you to the doctor’s office.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. I assumed you’d be at school.” She should have been, but the teachers had the afternoon off to prepare report cards.
“I’ll keep you company in the waiting room.”
“Not today.”
“I won’t be any trouble.”
“I need to do this by myself, Ava.”
“Fine.” She made a fist around her garlic-sack necklace and appraised me again. I resisted the urge to smooth down my Jackie Kennedy pageboy. Ava spat, “Your neck looks older than your face. Ask that doctor if he does plastic surgery on necks.” “I’m going.” I’d spent hours on the image I hoped to present to Margaret’s surgeon, and I wasn’t about to muck it up by dragging along a bosomy, smooth-necked strega.
“Wait!” Ava grabbed my arm.
“Let go! You’re hurting me.”
“I’ve been reading about how witches and saints used to get tortured. I’m a witch. I’m freaking out!”
“Don’t you have homework?”
“I can bring my homework to the doctor’s office!” I wrestled her away with more fingernail strength than necessary, got out of the kitchen, sneaked a glimpse in the foyer mirror and told myself: Your neck looks fine. You’re graceful. Slim. Your outfit earns an A-plus-plus. You’re A-plus-plus-plus. I started the Saab and drove, taking deep breaths, reminding myself that Ava was more than old enough to stay home alone—even her sister, Charlotte, stayed home alone. And that Ava was a drama queen. And that according to the team of specialists who evaluated and set social goals for Charlotte, I was an exceptionally patient mother, intuitive, gentle, kind. Then it finally hit me that I was actually on my way. To see. Dr. Locke.
I’d been longing to see Dr. Locke ever since we’d met, 10 days earlier, in my sister’s hospital room, where I so hadn’t wanted to be. I hated hospitals. I even hated the country club of a hospital where my husband, Dr. Henry Nagel, the chief of pathology, was in his element.
Oh, yes. Henry had seemed much less blurry than usual that afternoon, handing Margaret a tea-rose bouquet. Margaret, her color good, her hair shiny, held the flowers like a glowing bride. Her husband, Scott, hovered over the bed. The men shook hands and Henry offered to take Scott to the doctors’ lounge for some decent coffee. Margaret said, “Go.”
I wanted to go, too. But I had to stay.
Scott pressed his lips together and smiled a deliberately goofy smile at his wife. “You don’t like me anymore?” Margaret rolled her eyes and reached up for her husband’s face. I noticed the attractive gray in his stubble. Scott gave her a look full of heat and history and moved in for a kiss. I tried not to consider whether my autistic daughter would ever know such passion. Little Charlotte, almost 11, could hardly recognize happy, angry, sad, afraid. “Hey, break it up,” Henry grunted. “No smooching. No smooching.” Then before taking off, he reminded Margaret that she had an excellent prognosis. She reached for his hand. “How can I ever thank you for the private room, the referrals?”
He shrugged, then the husbands were gone. I told Margaret that Henry appreciated her gratitude and wondered if she suspected that I didn’t appreciate Henry enough. She asked me about Ava and Charlotte, and I asked about my nephew Jake, her only child. We said nice things about one another’s children. Then the IV pole trembled as she turned and closed her eyes. With her hair all around her on the pillow, Margaret seemed young and peaceful—she who had seemed so old and angry back when the years between us had made a world of difference.
Margaret was 12 and I was 6 when our mother died and our father took off in search of God-knows-what. Margaret had raged in tie-dyed T-shirts, colors bleeding. I’d bonded with our designated uncle and aunt. I’d wowed them with my sweetness and my skill on ice, cutting figure eights on the proper edges of my blades. “Heads up in there!” a nurse called in. “The surgeon wants to take a look.” Margaret straightened her sheets. I whispered, “I’ll leave you alone with the doctor.”
“Wait! Don’t go. I want you to meet him, Julia. He’s my hero.”
“I’m sure your hero is very nice, but—”
“He’s very cute.”
“Be quiet! He’s coming!” He came in. And yes, he was cute, but better than that—elegant, with fair wispy hair, a fine thin face. He seemed the sort of man who’d instinctively walk up to the most interesting painting in a gallery. I’d worked in galleries and known such men. But as the surgeon approached my sister, he radiated a warm concern those men had never possessed.
Margaret tried to sit up, but he touched her face, murmuring, like a lover, “Just relax.” The gentle words seemed directed at both of us, and something in me gave way. I felt exhilarated, disoriented—on smooth ice, dream ice.
His hand still on my sister, the surgeon introduced himself with a nod in my direction. “I’m Daniel Locke. I think I know your husband.”
“Julia Nagel. How do you do?” He didn’t put out his hand for me to shake, which was a good thing, because I might not have been able to let go. Henry had said that Dr. Locke had million-dollar hands. In fact, he had hands that promised not just skill, but strength as well. I remembered how the only female surgeon I’d ever met had bragged that as a little girl, she’d torn apart her dolls to see and feel their insides. Now, 10 days after that fateful visit, here I was in Dr. Locke’s private office, in a cropped paper gown. I called, “Come in,” like an over-eager hostess.
Dr. Locke entered the examining room, and this time I did shake his hand, hearing myself say, “When Margaret let you operate, she felt like a circus girl, jumping off an elephant’s head. She told me she knew you’d catch her.”
“Your sister’s terrific. Even the anesthesiologist noticed her style.” Her style? Margaret’s? I was the one with style. At that very moment, my skirt—which I’d chosen for the subtle but decorative stitching along the waistband—accentuated my flat abdomen. “Please sit up straight, Mrs. Nagel. Actually, you are sitting up straight. Good. I assume you examine yourself once a month? After your period?”
“Oh, yes,” I lied.
“Have you felt anything new?”
“No.”
“Yearly mammograms?”
I nodded, the good-posture nod of a good haircut.
“Please put your hands behind your head.”
He examined them with his eyes, revealing nothing. Then he told me to lie down. I laid down. He reached for my wrist with one hand, while his other hand pressed my right breast. “Let me move your arm. Just relax.”
He lifted it high, probing my armpit. Then he did the same on the other side. I wanted to tell him how in the winter my sister let the hair grow under her arms; her husband liked it. Such a stylish couple.
“You’re fine, Mrs. Nagel. Nothing to worry about. See me again in a year.”
“Wait. How often do you examine my sister?”
“That’s not relevant. Your sister’s in a different category. You can check yourself.”
“I don’t like to check myself.”
“My nurse will instruct you.”
“I have to come back sooner than a year.”
“Your sister’s tested negative for the breast cancer genes, but come back in six months.”
“Six months isn’t soon enough.”
“I’m sorry. Your insurance won’t cover a visit any sooner.”
“Henry will pay out of pocket.”
“Mrs. Nagel, the protocol on breast cancer screening—” “Margaret says you’re her hero.”
“That’s flattering to hear, but—”He turned away.
“If I were flattering you, you wouldn’t know it.” He laughed, turning back. “OK.” He touched my shoulder.
“If you can’t wait, make another appointment sooner rather than later. Whenever you want.”
He shook my hand again. Holding on to it, he said, “Your sister has a very good prognosis. She’ll tough it out through the treatments.”
“Thank you.” A controlled warmth returned to my voice, as if he’d just presented me with a hostess gift that had cost more than necessary.
Then he ruined the moment. Still holding on, he said, “Mrs. Nagel, you should try to keep busy.” Keep busy? I thought. What the hell does he know about my days and nights? How dare he?
At the parking exit I discovered that I could have gotten my ticket validated, but I paid, grateful to feel something as benign as four dollars’ worth of irritation. I thought: Irritation and indolence must be soul mates. And: Margaret and Dr. Locke must be soul mates. Margaret was enormously busy—researching, publishing, having sex. Her husband compared their love before the biopsy, when their life had seemed relatively safe, to a comfortable mellow cheese—she’d told me this. He’d compared their love after to pungent Gorgonzola.
I got home, stripped down to my slip and got into bed. When I opened my eyes I saw Charlotte, sweet Charlotte, still in her schoolgirl sweater and kilt. Her indifference to form made her the perfect child to catch her mother napping under a goose down quilt. She was kneeling on the floor, watching me with her own special patience. My aunt and uncle used to watch me, thinking I was asleep, reciting the blessing of my childhood: May you never turn out like Margaret.
A week later, during the second examination—a quick bit of business, with a nurse in the room throughout—Dr. Locke asked if I’d seen my sister since he’d taken her stitches out. I said, “No.” Then he said, “No changes,” so apparently his fingers remembered something, but the rest of me seemed to have left no impression on him whatsoever. Even his obnoxious keep busy seemed preferable to being just another patient. Once again, I returned home and went straight to bed, to dream of the daughter who’d find me upon returning from school, who found me, in fact, and climbed in without speaking. Charlotte seemed to grasp—she who grasped so little of normal human interactions—the beginning of a mother-daughter tradition. And so it was.
Whenever Ava discovered us napping, I made of Ava’s face a pop quiz for Charlotte. “Does Ava look happy?” I’d whisper. “Or hungry or surprised or desperately and inappropriately in love?” Charlotte would giggle. Ava would groan.
Once, I tried to imagine a painting of a mother and her daughters stretched out on a down quilt in the afternoon light, all three wearing pale petticoats. But Charlotte needed so much room to feel safe, and Ava took up so much space, like Margaret, same wild hair, same deep cleavage.
After my third examination in as many weeks, Dr. Locke told me to get dressed and come to his office. I sputtered, “If there’s something the matter—”
“Nothing is wrong with your breasts, Mrs. Nagel.” In his inner sanctum, the surgeon sat behind a neat and substantial desk and waved a list of Web sites. I remembered how I used to get jealous of the nurses and technicians who got to see Henry in his place of power, day after day. I felt nostalgic for the power my husband had once had to move me—not Gorgonzola passion, but certainly a tasty Brie at the perfect temperature.
I studied the wife photo. Mrs. Locke was attractive in a sporty way, rather like the aristocratic Camilla, who’d broken Princess Diana’s heart.
“Is your wife athletic?” I heard myself asking, as if soliciting members for a physicians’ wives’ soccer team.
“She swims. At the Y near the Urban Institute.”
“She works at the Urban Institute?”
He nodded. Busy, busy. No time for silly worrying. “We’re separated. But patients feel safer with married physicians.”
“My husband doesn’t see actual patients.”
“He’s damn good at interpreting the pieces of them he does see.”
“Thank you.” Pause, toss of the hair. “I suppose.” Getting along swimmingly with the separated doctor.
“So, Mrs. Nagel, I assume you’re coming back next week, no matter what I give you to read?”
My sister’s hero crumpled up his list of resources and tossed it in the wastebasket. Then he stood up, and I, his patient, stood up, and his lips touched mine for a soft-hard, dreamlike second. I whispered, “Goodbye, Dr. Locke.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Nagel.”
I walked to the receptionist’s desk. I demanded a standing appointment every Thursday for the foreseeable future. And through the first two months of Margaret’s chemotherapy, I felt safe, protected, shameless. Much too busy to visit my sister. Dr. Locke didn’t bill me. “I can’t be bothered with your paperwork, Mrs. Nagel,” he noted, his eyes on an exquisite sheer bra I’d hung from the hook on the examining room door. I had a flair for seduction, flashing a bit of garter belt, decorating my flat belly with tiny, temporary tattoos. For three consecutive visits, we spoke very little, but as he said “No changes,” I granted him a sigh that offered anything. Exams ended with a kiss—teasing, taunting—and a touch that grew less appropriate from week to week—a hand on the front of my blouse, the back of my thigh.
On my seventh exam, while feeling me on the right, he said, “Margaret tells me you used to work for a gallery on K Street?”
“Long ago.”
“You studied art?”
“I’m actually a certified elementary-school art teacher.” I tried to keep my face bemused, but I could never completely elude the fear that he’d feel something that hadn’t been there the Thursday before. He covered the right, exposed the left. His fingers must have been able to feel my heart race. He asked, “Is it true that Michelangelo envied surgeons?”
“He robbed graves. Am I all right?”
“You’re just fine.”
I jumped off the table like a child. A fine child. I put on my flesh-colored camisole, not waiting until he left the room, not turning away, just standing beside the table. I studied his hands and imagined them cutting open my sister. I raised my arms and felt the bones of his skull under his hair, hair as soft as Charlotte’s, and I imagined his bones hitting ice. I kissed the ridges above his pale eyes and ached with longing. Ava ambushed me in the kitchen and announced that she might get her head shaved. “Mom, don’t you want to know why?”
I knew why. “I’m sure Aunt Margaret would rather you made her some brownies. Or a casserole.”
I turned to Charlotte. “What would you like for an afterschool snack?”
“I have to consider my options.” Charlotte dropped herself into her chair and hugged her bony knees against her little chest. Ava pointed at her sister. “Charlotte’s epidermis is showing.”
Charlotte muttered, “Leave me alone!”
“Her panty crotch is showing, too.”
Charlotte lowered her legs and hid her face in her lap. I went to her and knelt. “Epidermis just means skin,” I explained.
“Everyone has skin and you have especially lovely skin. Ava didn’t want to be mean, did you, Ava?”
Ava sneered, “Give me a break. Her epidermis was showing and so was her stupid panty crotch. What can I have for a snack?”
“I’m not waiting on you, young lady!”
But Charlotte, her pretty skin sauna red, screamed, “Wait on her! Wait on her! Wait on her!” and wouldn’t quiet down until I’d presented Ava with options, and Ava had demanded a grilled cheese-and-tomato sandwich, and the butter had begun to sizzle.
Ava said, “St. Agnes was stripped bare by the barbarians, and God made her hair grow from her head to cover her nakedness. It grew fast and thick and long.”
Charlotte giggled to herself, waited a beat and whispered, “Aunt Margaret has epidermis under her wig.” Ava said, “Talk about mean.”
I suddenly and terribly missed my sister.
I remembered how my uncle used to blame Margaret’s bangs for the pimples on her forehead. He’d scream at Margaret to get her hair off her face. He’d try to pin the bangs back, and she’d scream at him to get away from her, as my aunt held me close and whispered that he was only trying to help, that blackheads made pimples, that life was easier for girls without pimples—pretty girls, sweet girls—pretty, sweet little girls like me.
I went to the phone and scheduled an extra appointment, insisting I needed to be seen the very next day.
“No changes.” But I didn’t sit up. I stayed stretched out on the table, pressing my ankles out, letting his blessing flow over me. He asked,
“Has Margaret shown you her breast?”
“I’m afraid not.” I tried to seem disappointed, as if I’d been unable to get tickets to a special exhibition at the Phillips Collection. Then he touched me with a man’s fingers, where he’d touched so many times with a doctor’s fingers, and I felt my legs go weak, my pelvis tilt, my blood surge toward my panty crotch from every direction.
He gave me the name of a Georgetown hotel. He told me to give his name to the concierge and to wait in the room. I went, gave his name and waited by a window that was framed by gorgeous pre-WWI molding and opened onto a wide view of the Potomac River. Roller bladers skated along the shoreline. The doctor let himself in. He wore surgical blues and carried a folded paper gown. He smiled an exaggerated version of the smile he’d given Margaret after her operation.
I put on the gown and sat up straight on the side of the bed. Hands on my waist. I knew the drill. First sit up. Then lie down. He studied my breasts clinically, thoroughly, his face blank. Then he nodded, smiled and studied them with his mouth, rolling me on top of him. I closed my eyes and opened my legs and pretended to be my sister, climbing up an elephant’s trunk, up and up and up, looking down into a whirling darkness, jumping into the darkness, falling, clutching, falling, gasping, falling, throbbing. Do. Not. Ever. Let. Me. Go.
“Thank you, Mrs. Nagel.” He kissed my hand. “My first doctor’s wife, believe it or not.”
“I’m making Margaret a vegetarian casserole when I get home.” As if I’d one day cook for the surgeon.
“She’ll have some numbness under her arm, but the sensation in her nipple might be intensified. From what I’ve been told. Off the record.” With his 10 fingers, he pushed back my hair, making a frame of his million-dollar hands. I didn’t know what to do with my eyes, my mouth, until he kissed me and the world became lips and tongues and a sculptor’s fingers digging into my scalp. He murmured, “She’ll grow back her pretty hair.”
I sat up, dizzy, crumpled. “Examine me. Now. Examine me again.”
“Enough. No need to escalate this fetish of yours, Mrs. Nagel.”
Keep busy busy busy.
I made myself shower and get out of that room, growing weaker and weaker, as if he’d severed a vein and sewn up the skin around it. And I made that vegetarian casserole. And I made Charlotte help me. And I made Charlotte stay on task until the oven timer went off and she chimed, “Let’s take a nap in your bed!”
“No. We have to go.” I wanted to drop off the damn thing before Margaret and Scott got home from their busy jobs.
“Nap first. I want to see your dreamface. Dreamface. Dream face.”
Ava, nibbling dregs of grated cheese off the cutting board, said, “I’ll go!”
Charlotte leaped and chanted, “Strega will go! Charlotte will stay!”
Ava and I arrived before 5:30, but my brother-in-law’s ancient Honda was parked in front of the little lawn he mowed himself. Ava knocked. Scott came to the door in a ratty bathrobe.
“You!” he exclaimed with mock horror, pointing at me. Then pointing at Ava, “And you!” Ava grinned. She’d received the better you!
Then Margaret came to the doorway, also in a ratty bathrobe. Rattier than thou, husband and wife. And both with a residual glow. We all pretended that what was obvious wasn’t, and giddy with pretense, we talked about my nephew Jake’s rising chess ranking—he was at a championship. Margaret put the casserole on the table in the dining room, just beyond the front door. My sister’s tiny house didn’t have a foyer. Either you were in or you were out.
She lifted the foil.
Ava said, “Charlotte arranged the carrots and zukes so carefully, it looks like a machine did it.”
Scott gave Ava a wink. Margaret gave her a hug. I wanted out. But we were so in.
Margaret said, “Scott, you should put the casserole in the refrigerator.”
He mock-moaned, “You mean I have to make room for it?”
She mugged, “Whatta ya gunna do?”
They looked at each other as if they’d just cross-referenced a hundred private jokes. Then Margaret smiled at Ava. “You look great, Ava-slash-Strega.”
“Aunt Margaret, do you have any pictures of yourself from when you were my age?”
“Let’s go upstairs and see.”
They ran off, and I followed Scott into the kitchen, where Mr. Gorgonzola rearranged the refrigerator. Then he stood and offered me something to drink. I shook my head. I told Scott, “When we were girls, Margaret broke a teacup. By mistake.”
“She’s all marked up for the radiation therapists, Julia.” He started unloading the dishwasher.
“The teacup she broke was green glass, from a set our aunt had saved for 30 years. A complete tea set. While Margaret got screamed at, and I mean really screamed at, I served my dolls a proper, pretty tea.”
“Did you hear what I said about the radiation? She already has bright Magic Marker lines across her chest. Red and blue and green lines at odd angles. She said you’d call her a Picasso.”
“Did you know that St. Agnes was stripped naked by barbarians, and she had perfect unscarred breasts, like mine, but God made her hair grow to cover them up? To protect her?”
“What the hell did you just say?”
I made myself laugh, as if drilling Charlotte for a test on forced laughter. I said, “I wanted to see if I could get you to drop a glass.”
“Mom!” Ava bounded down the stairs and charged into the kitchen, squealing, “I found a picture of you. You’re in a glittery ice skating costume, on your butt!”
“Very funny.” I sounded like a witch. Everyone heard it. Even Charlotte would have heard it. But I managed to soften my voice to say, “Margaret, you remind me of a nice, round, rosy white Rubens. Not an angular Picasso.”
“Thanks a lot. I guess.” She pretended to be indignant. I made a fuss about needing to get home to Charlotte. Margaret said she understood. More thanks for the casserole.
Just before I walked out the front door, Margaret turned serious, almost grave. “Thank you for coming, Julia. This was a nice visit.”
It had been nice, basically. No broken glasses. No shards. No bleeding on the outside. On the drive home I asked Ava about witches and tried to follow her tutorial on sun-versus-moon forces. Then she said, “Mom, I’m pretty much finished with the witchcraft thing. I’m getting into drama club.”
“I’m pretty much finished with making dream faces for Charlotte in the middle of the afternoon.”
“Good. I mean, I think the moon goddesses, if there are moon goddesses, would approve.”
Ava followed me in through the front door, stopped in the foyer and told me that Aunt Margaret had asked her to pass on a giant hug. “From her to me to you.” Then Ava swooped, holding on with so much passion and so much need that in order to breathe it all in I had to imagine a Mary Cassatt charcoal drawing—mother and daughter, graceful and warm. Safe. Healthy. Cherished. And artfully smudged.
Author Bio
Susan Land lives in Bethesda with her husband and son and teaches at The Writer’s Center. She’s won three grants from the Maryland State Council on the Arts for her fiction and recently contributed a chapter on video games and magic cards to Like Whatever: The Insider’s Guide to Raising Teens. Several of the characters in “Coven: Watercolor, 1998” also appear in “Woman With Birds of Paradise,” second-place winner of the 2008 Bethesda Magazine short story contest.
