Adventures with Max and Louise (6 page)

“Tough practice, huh?” he’d say, if he wasn’t hanging with his buddies.

“Yeah, really rough.”

“I hate running in muck like that.”

“Yeah, it stinks.”

That was the extent of most of our conversations. He was unfailingly polite but casual. I was tongue-tied, unable to utter more than three words. Every time he passed me in the hall, I held my breath. After Mom died, he sent me a thick, black-bordered vellum card, with
In Condolence
written in Gothic script. I’d snatched the card up when my aunt tried to toss it, hiding it in my desk drawer. It’s still there.
I’m very sorry for your loss. We miss you at school.
That simple card with his sprawling signature, not Chas, but his full, carefully lettered name, Charles Matthew Bowerman, made me fall deeply, privately, passionately in love.

And here he is, less than five feet away. I am an absolute, rotten mess. Chas hasn’t seen me yet, so I freeze. Stretching his legs, he takes a step in our direction. My brain screams: back up, run, and dive into the nearest manhole. If I don’t move, he won’t see me. It works for deer.

Wolf takes my arm, pulling me toward his van, closer to Chas. “Come on, Molly, what’s the holdup?” Burrowing as far into my coat as I can, I try to hide. It’s too late; Chas sees me.

“Molly? Molly Gallagher?” Wolf lets go of my arm, and I stumble toward Chas, bumping his arm. I feel as sexy and attractive as a wet rodent.

“Hi, Chas. Long time no see.”
Brilliant.

“Wow, Molly, it has been forever, hasn’t it? Donald, this is Molly Gallagher. We went to Seattle Prep High School together. Class of ’00.” The silver-haired businessman nods politely. “What the heck you been up to?” Chas asks. He crosses his arms, revealing an antique Rolex.

I wish that time and maturity had immunized me to Chas’s charms, that his blinding smile, immaculate suit, and well-bred demeanor left me cold. They haven’t. My brain, already soft from the booze, melts into fondue. Raking my hand through my rat’s nest hair, I pray for some last-minute semblance of order.
Please, God, don’t let him see me get into the Shaggin’ Wagon.

“Well,” I say, my voice shooting into a nervy squeal, “I’m a—” I glance over at Wolf, who glares at me impatiently. I lean into Chas and whisper, “I’m a food critic for the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
” Why didn’t I wear something nicer than this stupid old blazer? He can’t even see my new implants.

“Not Diner X?” Chas asks.

My heart soars. Chas reads Diner X! Out of desperation, I do something I’ve never done in my entire adult life: I wink. “No, gosh no! Diner X is anonymous.”
Gosh? Who says gosh?

“Everyone at the club spends half the morning rehashing Diner X’s latest column, trying to figure out who he is.”

“Couldn’t tell you . . .” I tilt my head, make eye contact, and try for mysterious. He hasn’t gotten the gist of the wink. He probably thinks I have a nervous tick.

“How’s your sister Trina?”

Wolf impatiently swings his key ring around his finger. It’s both loud and highly annoying. I resist the urge to tell him to knock it off. “She’s fine. Married, two kids.” Off the market, pal, but I’m not. Searching his finger for a ring, I breathe a sigh of relief when both hands come up empty.

“Great, great. Good to hear it.” There is a long moment of silence. We all grin, examine our shoes, gaze down the street.

Wolf makes the first move. “Molly, we’d better get you home.” Why does he keep saying my name? It makes it seem like he actually knows me.

“Okay.” Praying that Chas won’t think he’s my boyfriend, I add, “Chas, this is Wolf; his mother owns the restaurant. I’m doing some consulting for them.”

Wolf shakes Chas’s hand. “That’s my chariot behind you.”

Chas steps aside, gets a look at the van, and chuckles. “Great. Well, it was good seeing you, Molly. Keep in touch.”

Keep in touch: the kiss of death.
“You too, Chas. Bye.”

Both men watch as Wolf opens the van door; crumpled 7-Eleven coffee cups and a bag of McDonald’s refuse tumble out. Chas stoops and hands the garbage to Wolf. “Here you go,” he says, giving me a funny look that I can’t decipher, probably pity.

“Thanks,” Wolf spits back, throwing the garbage back into his van. “You’ll have to get in on my side. The passenger side doesn’t open.”

Chas gets a perfect view of my big old backside crawling over the driver’s seat into the van’s interior, filled with more junk food wrappers, two-by-fours, hiking gear, and empty Starbucks cups. Waving stiffly, Chas whispers something to his associate as the van pulls into traffic. They both snicker. For a split second I wish I were dead before changing my mind.

I wish Wolf were dead.

Chapter Seven

T
EN DAYS AFTER
the surgery, I dream I am at a fancy party at Trina’s house, a lovely huge Cape Cod on Lake Washington. All the guests wear tailored suits and cocktail dresses, sipping champagne out of crystal flutes. There is a low murmur in the room, and Hami, Trina’s husband, gives a toast in front of their grand stone fireplace. I’m near the front of the room wearing a pink low-cut cocktail dress with a good four inches of exposed cleavage. Every man in the room stares intently at my breasts, like zombies. Their wives shoot murderous glances at me. I desperately attempt to make eye contact with Trina, who fusses with appetizers being carried out of the kitchen.

“Too many carbs,” she repeats as she scrapes hummus off toast, spreading it onto lettuce leaves.

Hami asks everyone to raise their glasses in a toast to his sister-in-law, who has won the evening’s door prize. He hands me an envelope. I rip it with trembling fingers, pulling out a gold-edged gift certificate from Dr. Hupta’s office. I read it aloud: “Redeemable for one free liposuction. Offer valid for one year.” I look around the crowd, bewildered, but they’re buzzing with excitement. Is this some kind of mean joke?

“The implants have been such a success, we thought we’d get you a fun surprise. Join the club!” Trina shouts, waving happily.

I wander around the room from group to group, seemingly invisible. All the women are strangely perfect, not a blemish, wrinkle, sagging breast, or ounce of fat. They are the Stepford wives of Seattle, but it isn’t their husbands who’ve held them to this standard; they’ve done it to themselves. Every conversation revolves around their “procedures,” past and future. I’m frantically searching for a door out when a ringing phone interrupts me. Where is it coming from?

I wake up. I’m safe in my own bedroom. I don’t own a pink cocktail dress. The phone is ringing. I glance out the window. The first rays of dawn haven’t even touched the street. Who on earth would be calling me at this hour?

“Hello?” I croak, still thinking about my strange dream.

“Molly, it’s Denise. I’m in the slammer. I need you to come bail me out.” It’s my younger sister. Her quarterly jail visits are like clockwork. And she always calls me.

“Geez, Denise. The paperboy isn’t even awake yet!” I stuff my head under the pillow with the phone a few inches from my ear.

“I have to get out of here. There’s a public hearing on the Colony at ten. I have to be there.”

Squinting at the alarm clock, I see that it’s five-something. “Well, then, that only leaves five hours. I’ll be right there.”

The Colony, the artists’ colony where Denise lives, has been sold and is slated for demolition. A group of rebel artists have refused to vacate, deciding, in a last-ditch effort, to save the place by getting it registered as a historical building. Several fledgling artists, including Jacob Lawrence, lived there during their salad days. It has become Denise’s raison d’être.

“I was hoping you’d treat me to breakfast.” She knows the effect her scrawny frame has upon me.

“Yeah, that’s just what I do when people wake me up at five in the morning asking me to bail them out of jail. I take them out to breakfast.”

She is silent. “You want me to call Trina?”

We both know that Trina, with a staff of three, can barely manage to get her kids off to school, let alone get dressed and made up before noon. Mornings, Trina believes, are devoted to trainers and what she calls maintenance work on her forty-year-old body.

After a bit of well-deserved grumbling, I hang up with the promise of hurrying to the courthouse. I have a lunch review of a new eatery favored by what I call the Grazers: young urbanites who flock to hip eateries in herds, abandoning their favorite for the newer, flashier model as soon as it opens.

After a shower, I slip into a leopard-print bra from Angeli, fumbling a bit with the miniscule clasps. A lifetime of Jockey for Her has hardly prepared me for the fine motor skills required for these racy little numbers. When I’ve added the matching underwear, I check myself out in the mirror. A whole new woman gazes back. Well, okay, maybe not a whole new woman, but someone in a plunging leopard-print bra that creates what I believe the French call décolleté. Just for fun, I add another flick of mascara. I enjoy the effect so much, I dig through my collection of Mom’s old silk scarves, finding a leopard-print square that I use to tie back my hair. Maybe I am channeling Anne Bancroft in
The Graduate
. Who wouldn’t want that? She’s not an age; she’s an attitude.

I pull on another shirt borrowed from Angeli. It exposes too much cleavage. Or does it? Gazing at myself for a long while in the mirror, I’m utterly confused. One half of me wants to play dress-up with the fun new breasts, the other half is exhausted and wants her old flat, anonymous life back.

You don’t sport knockers like these if you don’t want attention.

The same weird Englishman’s voice says to me, “What ’ave ya got to lose?”

I spin around the bedroom, sure that I am losing my mind. It could be the neighbor’s radio. Maybe someone is playing the BBC next door. I don’t have time to think about it because Dad yells upstairs from the kitchen.

“You havin’ coffee, Molly?”

Snapping out of my reverie, I open the door and call down the stairs, “No, thanks, I’ll have some downtown!” I really do have to stop staring in the mirror.
I’m still the same person, right?

I
N THE KITCHEN,
Dad reads the newspaper. Catching a brief glimpse of me over the newspaper, he coughs, spraying coffee over himself. Although it’s been over a week, he’s given me wide berth and never, until this moment, seen me in anything but a bathrobe. Now he’s noticed. I race past, grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl. He reaches out, quick as a wink, and grabs my arm. I stand there for a second, looking at his big paw. He lets go.

“You mind telling me what the hell’s goin’ on here?”

“What do you mean?” I’m really not ready for this conversation. We might be an American family, but we are not of the touchy-feely variety. We are Irish Catholic. We drink in public, suffer in silence.

“For crying out loud, Molly. I’m your father. Don’t make me get specific. It’s awkward enough as it is, seeing you like this. Have a little pity.”

I look down at my chest with a foolish smile. Red creeps up my face. How is it I can live with this man my whole life and be uneasy discussing anything to do with sex or my body? Oh, yeah, he’s my father.
We’re both adults. I’ll just spit it out.

“There was a mess-up in the medical charts, and I was given another woman’s breast implants.” I blurt out. The words are one undecipherable mess.

My dad is stunned. He glances at my breasts for a second before he flushes crimson, looking away. “That’s the strangest goddamned thing I’ve ever heard!” He lets it digest. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, Dad, really.” I consider telling him about Denise in the hopes of distracting him but decide that he won’t fall for it. Mostly, it just wouldn’t be fair. The man hasn’t even had breakfast. One daughter with an unwanted boob job and one in jail are just too much for your average retired cop.

“I have to go, Dad. Have a good day.” I rush down the hall to the front door.

“Don’t you need a sweater or something?” Dad asks. I do need a sweater, but all I can think about right now is getting out of the house and avoiding one more word with him.

“I’m fine!” I say, dashing out. As soon as I’m on the front steps, I slow down. The implants aren’t painful anymore, but they’re definitely tender and sore. Given my new size, I’m going to need a stainless steel running bra if I’m going to take up jogging again. Walking to the bus stop, I can’t help but laugh, thinking of the stunned look on my poor father’s face when he saw my breasts. As I turn the corner, Mr. Francis at the newspaper stand gives me a second look. This is absolutely bizarre. First the guy on the bus, then the weird climbing guy at the restaurant, then old Mr. Francis who used to give me free candy when I picked up my dad’s magazines. How am I supposed to react to all this attention? Part of me is utterly embarrassed, but then again, didn’t some therapist on TV say that embarrassment is suppressed joy? I don’t have much time to dwell on it because, as luck would have it, my bus arrives.

T
HANKS TO MY
sister’s various brushes with the law, I can easily find my way to the courthouse. Once there, I pay the fine, then head over to the bailiff’s office. When Denise spots me, she smiles, then hugs me, proceeding to ogle my breasts the entire time we’re standing in line. She has the subtlety of a marching band. I manage, just barely, to ignore her as we shuffle along with the other sad-eyed, bickering, exhausted friends and family who have come to rescue their loved ones. In a feat of unusual restraint, Denise manages to hold her tongue throughout the releasing procedure until we are in front of the judicial building.

“Oh. My. God, Molly! Trina told me, but Oh. My. God!” She punctuates her words with dramatic inflection, causing people scurrying past to stop and stare. Lesson one: big boobs, when positioned correctly, make men, women, and even children stare. And Denise’s hysterics are adding to the problem.

“Would you shut up already?” I stage whisper. “Get a grip, Denise. You’ve got a pair of your own, you know.” Grabbing her arm, I drag her down the sidewalk toward Lilly’s Cafe, our favorite postjail eatery. A cold wind blows up the street from Elliott Bay. I wish I’d overcome my embarrassment with Dad and grabbed a coat.