Adventures with Max and Louise (3 page)

Since mom died, our Dutch Colonial has lost its well-groomed charm. The black shutters need painting. Chipped pots have fallen off the flagstone steps. The lawn has more dandelions than grass. The rosebushes have been gnawed by aphids to sickly little stubs. I rarely enter through the front door, normally walking around the back into the kitchen. It’s strange to be helped into my own house. I hand Angeli the keys, and she opens the door.

As soon as I’m inside, the reality of my situation hits. I slide down onto the floor, staring down at my buxom chest. “Oh, Angeli,” I gasp. “I have breast implants. Me with D cup implants. What am I going to do?”

“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Angeli says, pulling me off the floor into the kitchen. “You’re gonna need a bigger bra.”

Seated at the kitchen table, I rest my head on my folded arms. Angeli puts the kettle on for tea. Since high school, this has been our routine. I man the kitchen for all snacks and meals. Angeli, after years of belabored cooking lessons from her mother, has one area of expertise: tea.

“I need cake,” I sigh, motioning to the countertop, where my famous old-fashioned sour cream chocolate cake sits, glossy and seductive, under a glass cake saver. I perfected this recipe one rainy day when I came upon, for some reason, three pints of sour cream on the verge of going bad in our fridge. Three days and many ounces of unsweetened chocolate later, a cake was born.

Angeli nods, pulling two plates out of the cupboard. She slices us two thick slabs of cake, placing one before me on the table. As is our custom, she eats perched on the counter. We wait in silence for the water to boil.

“You’ve got them for two months, you might as well enjoy them,” Angeli says through a mouthful of cake. “Get some great bras and sexy shirts. I can take you shopping. It can be an experiment: life before and after big boobs.”

“What am I going to tell my dad?” I groan.

“How about the truth?”

“Yeah, sure. Oh, by the way, there was a slight mix-up in surgery. I’ve got Christine McDaniel’s breast implants. See ya.”

Angeli nods. “If I mentioned one word about my breasts to my dad, he’d burst into flames.”

The rain beats against the kitchen window, making our afternoon tea break seem highly civilized and wonderfully cozy. Angeli eats her cake delicately, like a cat. We’re companionably silent, enjoying the warmth of the kitchen.

As I savor the cake slowly between sips of tea, I wonder what Christine McDaniel is doing right now.

Chapter Three

T
HREE DAYS LATER,
Angeli arrives after work with a bigger bra. In fact, she arrives with six bigger bras with matching panties, each one more frothy and frilly than the last. She dumps them on my bed, beaming with a self-satisfied grin. As a little girl, Angeli wore nothing but Catholic school uniforms by day and saris, purchased by her aunts in Mumbai, after school. In the eyes of the St. Joseph’s girls, once they’d gotten over the whole Poopy Pants thing, the saris made Angeli terribly exotic. To Angeli, the saris represented her mother’s desire to keep her smothered in another century, another world, and at arm’s length from all things American.

“We’re more Indian than we were in India,” Angeli complained.

In her teens, Angeli made up for those hated saris with a vengeance, taking a job at Limited Express, using all her earnings to build a modern American wardrobe. St. Joe’s bathroom became her changing room. Although her parents were horrified when Angeli dropped out of medical school to work full time at Nordstrom selling Clinique makeup, to her friends it was a relief. Retail made much more sense for Angeli.

“Aren’t they fabulous?” Angeli asks, holding a bra up, admiring the lacy edging in the mirror.

I lift one of the bras. It’s lime green with turquoise lace, brilliant as a parrot. “I’m not supposed to wear underwire,” I protest.

“For Pete’s sake,” Angeli flares. “The man can’t expect you not to wear wireless. You’ll flop around like Jell-O. These babies are built for support. I talked to my friend Janelle in lingerie. She said all of these were perfect.”

“You told Janelle?” I wailed.

“Of course I told her. You’re not the only woman in Seattle to get breast implants.”

“That doesn’t mean the whole world has to know.”

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Try them on.” She smiles encouragingly. “Please?”

“Who else have you told?” I scoop the lingerie off the bed.

“Just Martin.” My boss. Great.

“Is that it?”

“And Trina.”

“Who else?”

“Just Denise, and that’s it.” She bites a fingernail. “And I may have told my parents and a couple of gals at the Clinique counter.”

I step into the bathroom and start stripping. “Great. Now the whole main floor of Nordstrom is going to know.”

“Honey, you just went from an A to a D cup. People are going to notice.”

Never having worn a front-clasp bra, I fumble with it, tangling it behind my back, trying to twist it and flip the cups up to the proper position. I take the damn thing off and put it on like a vest, which doesn’t work.

“Shit! Can you help me?” I call into the bedroom.

Angeli appears, trying hard not to laugh. “Here, you just twist this. Okay, let’s start over.” She untangles the mess I’ve made, slips it on me, and starts to fasten it.

“I can do it.” I’m somewhat annoyed at being dressed like a toddler. “Thanks.”

After Angeli leaves the bathroom, I try on the matching panties, glancing in the bathroom mirror. I can’t believe how my breasts look in a proper bra. They are spilling, gushing, overflowing out of the fabric. The delicate red bow in the center attracts the eye to my cleavage. My cleavage! Those two words have never been linked in my entire twenty-five years on this planet. I, Molly Elizabeth Gallagher, have cleavage. I stand up straight to admire the effect of the bra, marveling at how it displays, to great advantage, my new breasts. I turn sideways to enjoy the spectacle. It’s startling how different my body looks. A sudden longing for a boyfriend hits me. I’m getting way, way ahead of myself. These are just loaners, I remind myself.

“I’m coming out. Don’t laugh.” I warn Angeli.

I step out of the bathroom. Angeli’s hands go to her cheeks. “Wow.”

I glance down at the cleavage. “Wow good or wow bad?” I’m a tad nervous. This is a whole new aspect of myself I’ve never entertained. The cleavagey me.

“Wow good. I mean, that guy does awesome work.”

“I wonder what happened to Christine McDaniel.”

“Not your problem,” Angeli laughs.

She takes me by the shoulders, turning me around to look in the mirror. Gently, she places her chin on my shoulder. Our eyes meet in the mirror. “Okay, here’s what I think. You have spent a lot of time grieving and a lot of time taking care of your dad and sisters and everyone else but yourself. Now, I know you didn’t ask for this, but you can use this as a time to enjoy everything fun and girly and frilly for a while. It’s a chance to be someone different.” Her voice lowers to a whisper. “Most people never get that chance.”

I pat her hand in thanks, pondering her advice while carrying the lime green bra into the bathroom. It’s funny to be trying on clothes like we used to in high school. I can imagine the smell of Mom’s cooking wafting up the stairs, half expecting Trina to come stomping in, demanding her missing tube of Stila lipstick.
I spent eighteen bucks on it, so I’d better not find it in your room or else!
Angeli loved the drama in our house and admired my mom for serenely stirring or baking or sautéing, unruffled; the eye of the hurricane.

I call to Angeli from the bathroom. “So, you’re saying I should work this Dolly Parton look?”

“No, but while you’re at it, a haircut would be nice. And some makeup,” she shoots back. Angeli lives for makeovers.

Holding a limp hunk of hair in my hand, I study myself in the mirror. I’m a slightly heavier version of myself in high school: same shoulder-length, mousy brown hair, wide green eyes, and bushy eyebrows. My arms are well developed from wielding heavy saucepans. For the first time, I notice that the implants balance out my thicker hips and legs. But no, this wasn’t the plan, just a temporary detour. I tear myself from the mirror and return to my bedroom, slipping on an old chenille bathrobe.

“I get what you mean about a new look and everything, but, Ang, this is temporary. In two months, they’re gone.” I lie down on the bed.

Angeli hooks her purse over her shoulder. “Okay, but tomorrow we’re taking ’em out for a test drive.”

“We’ll see.” I crawl back into bed, suddenly exhausted. “In less than eight weeks those bras won’t even fit me. You shouldn’t have spent so much money.”

“Not a problem.” She grins. “They were on sale.”

D
AY FOUR
. I wake up to the smell of coffee and the patter of rain on the gabled roof, and I’m relieved. I reach my hand out and, bam, there it is, an aching pain on either side of my chest. I look down, and there they are, Max and Louise. Instantly, I’m alarmed at the fact that I’ve named my own breasts. Where did that come from? It sounds like something from one of the cheesy romances Angeli used to steal from her aunt’s apartment. I remember one she described in which a man and woman named their sex organs, using the names to describe how they wanted more, more, more.
Okay, this is beyond strange.
I’m relieved when Dad peeks in the door, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, placing the coffee on my bedside table. He’s been bringing me food, leaving trays while I slept, endlessly.

I sit up, taking a sip of coffee before responding. Dad always makes coffee so strong it peels back my eyelids. “Fine, fine, better, actually.”

“Good. I think it was a good move, kiddo. Sorry I wasn’t there.” He’s seen me awake, but we’ve barely spoken.

His eyes glance down at my chest before quickly shooting up to my face. He’s noticed.

“That’s okay,” I say. “Angeli was great.”

“Okay then, well, good. I’m gonna go meet Gwen for breakfast down at The Grill. You want something?”

Gwen was my mother’s best friend. They met when Gwen went through a terrible divorce years ago. She was over at our house nearly every night, crying over a glass of chardonnay. After Mom died, she was as lost as we were. She and Dad have been spending a lot of time together lately, which strikes me as odd. In fact, Gwen strikes me as odd. Well, maybe not odd, just annoying. I don’t know what on earth Dad could see in a woman who owns a poodle and uses the word
super
about three times in every sentence. Unlike my mother, she’s a lousy cook and wears loads of makeup. She’s very big on the whole Color Me Beautiful method of dressing, which was a huge hit in the ’80s and then, thankfully, went away, except on Planet Gwen. She’s always telling me that I am a spring and that I shouldn’t wear red or navy blue.

“We spring girls should wear pastels,” she says, as though she’s still a girl and not about a zillion years old.

“No thanks, Dad. I’m good.”

He gets up from the bed and goes to leave, then stops and stands awkwardly at the door. “You sure about that? No Denver omelet or hash on toast?” These are two of Dad’s favorite meals in the world. I feed him things like Tuscan bread salad and pasta puttanesca, and although he doesn’t complain, he’s always secretly hoping for hash on toast.

“No, thanks.” I wish I had the guts to tell him about the obvious swells under my nightgown he’s been assiduously avoiding with his eyes.

“All right then, I got my cell phone on me if you change your mind. I’ll say hi to Gwen for you. She sends her love. She’s gonna come see you tomorrow.”

“Okay, Dad. Have fun,” I say, trying not to think of the greasy spoon down the hill that dad and Gwen adore. It’s the kind of place where limp parsley and a desiccated orange wedge are considered fresh produce. I review restaurants for a living; if it were up to me, The Grill would have a Mr. Yuck sticker on the door.

He clomps down the stairs two at a time, leaving me to wonder why I feel so resentful of his relationship with Gwen.

“You’re jealous,” says a voice inside my head. At least, I think it’s inside my head. The weird thing is that it doesn’t sound like something I’d say to myself or anyone else. And what’s even weirder, it’s a man’s voice.

Chapter Four

I
DON’T HAVE
time to think about the man’s voice in my head because no sooner has the doctor’s recommended four days of rest expired, than my cell phone rings. It’s my boss, Martin. He needs me to work.

“Look, I know it’s kind of tricky, what with the mix-up in surgery and all, but I really, really need you to do a review,” he says.

Martin, my other best friend from school, basically handed me this job out of pity. When his food columnist moved to Las Vegas with three days’ notice, he begged me to write some filler columns while he searched for a likely candidate. I agreed but refused to have my picture in the newspaper, adopting the byline Diner X. I surprised everyone, including myself, by making Diner X everyone’s gossipy go-to friend. I not only wrote about the food but dished up gossip, insider 411, and somehow, in my drab turtlenecks and plain Jane get-ups, got just about everyone in the restaurant to talk.

I offer readers advice on the appropriate restaurant to start and end a romance, the perfect setting to come out of the closet to your parents, and the ten best places to rekindle the flame. By the time Martin interviewed more qualified candidates, my column was so popular, he hired me. Since then, it has been syndicated in seventy markets. As plain old Molly, I’m a flop, but as Diner X, I rock.

“Who told you about my surgery? Never mind, I know it was Angeli. You didn’t tell anyone else at the paper, did you?”

He’s quiet a little too long before saying, “Give me a little credit, Molls.”

“Thank you.” I’m relieved that at least one of my friends has the decency to treat this as a private matter. “What restaurant?”

Martin is quiet for a moment. “I might have mentioned something vague and unsubstantiated to one or two people, but that’s it.”