My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters (24 page)

"I need a copy of your insurance card," she said.

Insurance card? I opened my wallet and pretended to look for it. What on earth had possessed me to buy a Hello Kitty wallet? I looked like such a third-grader.

"Oh, I must have left it in my other wallet." Nose growing, but, hey, I was in the right place. "Can I send you a copy?" I envisioned sneaking into Mom's purse on a stealth mission late at night.
Caughlin Rancher
headline: "Desperate Big-Nosed Girl Bilks Mother's Insurance Company."

"Well, that's usually not our policy, but since this
is
just a consultation." The receptionist tapped her pen against her head. "Can you at least tell me your carrier? What's your copay?"

"Oh, it's a popular insurance. I know that." I saw my nose expanding past the woman's head until it hit the copy machine against the back wall.
Doctor! We have an emergency,
the receptionist would scream.
Hurry! This nose is going to take over the world.

The receptionist's pen hung in mid-tap. "Would you like to phone your mother and ask?"

"Oh, no. No. My mother would kill me if she knew—I mean, if I disturbed her at work," I squeaked like a mouse. "I mean, she knows about my big nose and everything." Oh, God. Why hadn't I been practicing lying skills all these years? I sucked at lying. Sucked.

"Maybe you should pay up front today."

"Certainly." The receptionist's eyes grew wide as I pulled the wad of hundred-dollar bills out of my notebook covered with magazine cutouts of models with ideal noses. "How much is it?"

"Eighty-five."

My cheeks burned as I handed her a hundred-dollar bill. I tossed my head to fan my hair around my shoulders. Nothing moved. Oh, God. I forgot. I'd become Big-Nosed Butchered-Hair Girl. I put my hand up to my hair to smooth it out. It still stood up in little clumps. Mom had begged her hair-dresser—begged—but he couldn't get me in until tomorrow and I wouldn't let Mom come near me with her scissors. She might decide it wasn't even worth it to have a daughter like me.
Caughlin Rancher
headline: "Mother Kills Desperate Big-Nosed Daughter." The article would go on: "'At least the embarrassment is over,' mother sighs. It turns out beautiful Adonis-like son is enough for Michaels family."

Both of the women in the waiting room tracked me with their eyes as I returned to my seat. This time I picked up
Teen People
magazine. I'd blown the whole maturity thing. The page I opened had a quote from a guy with soulful eyes and a totally kissable mouth who said that what he likes best about a girl is hair. "Longer the better." Not my type. Maybe I'd have to move to a forest and date a hedgehog. I paged through the rest of the magazine, feeling like a crumbly dirt clod, ugly and ready to fall apart.
Don't cry. You can't cry. Not now. Maybe you even needed to cut your hair before surgery.

"Jory Michaels?" A woman in purple scrubs opened the doctor-area door. "Follow me, please."

I followed her into a little room that had big posters of the insides of a breast. They should bring tours of boys in here and show them that! Definitely not sexy. I looked at an old copy of
Better Homes and Gardens.
Total Mom mag. The fluffy frosted cake on page 43 reminded me of what a loser I'd become by getting fired from my summer job. That was one thing I'd actually had over Megan: my summer job. Now I was back to being Loser #1. I hadn't answered Hannah's calls (in spite of her long rambling apology messages about "selfishly living in the moment") or Megan's e-mails since wedding-disaster day; I did let Tyler take me out for a "comforting" cheeseburger and fries at Juicy's—I'd called him so he wouldn't come looking to give me a ride home after work. I hadn't minded, really, telling him all the gruesome details (minus the stuff about Gideon), but now I was ignoring his calls too.

About a million years later, a nurse came in to go over my medical history. I wanted to roll up and mummify myself in the crinkly examining-table paper when she asked me about my sexual activity. "None," I peeped. The nurse nodded like,
Of course, how could someone like you have a boyfriend?

"And you're here because?"

"Isn't it obvious?" I watched the nurse jiggle her shiny white sneakers up and down over her crossed knee. Up. Down. Up. Down.

Her foot stopped moving. "Why don't you tell me in your own words."

"I need a new nose."

"Do you have any breathing problems? Sleep problems?"

I shook my head, hating the empty feeling of having nearly no hair.

"Okay. Dr. Lawrence will be in to see you in a few minutes."

I picked up the magazine and read a story about a woman who'd lost her arm fighting in Iraq but came home and started painting. She'd sold a self-portrait for $4,000 in some fancy-schmancy gallery. Now that's optimism. I'd lost my hair, and I hadn't left my room for two days. How pathetic was that?

Knock. Knock.
The doctor came into the room. With her long black hair tied up in a ponytail, she looked too young to be a doctor—plus she had a largish, bumpy nose. Didn't she have a friend who could help her with that? I could see how you couldn't operate on yourself, but didn't all plastic surgeons try to look perfect? Wouldn't that be advertising or something?

"My nurse tells me you're looking to get a new nose?" The doctor sat down and flipped through pages in a folder. "No breathing issues? Sleep issues?" She sounded like Megan.

"No, but I have boy issues, family issues, and ugliness issues," I said. "With a new nose, all those problems could disappear. I'd fit into my family. Some boy might actually like me in the daylight and I'd feel good about myself." I fidgeted and wondered if I'd said too much, or not enough. I should've brought Hannah. She could have elbowed me when I started talking too much. One problem: I didn't want to tell Hannah that I thought I had a big nose.

"So," Dr. Lawrence said in measured tones. "You're looking for a new nose to solve your problems? Am I understanding you correctly?"

"Exactly. I've known it for some time now and I've been saving money from my summer job." I unzipped my backpack. "Also, I've been doing research." I pulled out the Nice Nose Notebook. "I've collected several different noses you can choose from."

The doctor took the notebook from me and flipped through the pages slowly. "You've put a lot of time into this project."

"Yes. I'm very serious." My heart stopped beating quite so fast. This was actually happening. "Just stop and point out any noses you think would work on me."

The doctor closed the notebook without looking further.

"You stopped too soon. I stuck one in there the other day that had freckles on it just like mine." I reached for the book.

"Why don't we go back to my office and chat?" The doctor stood and opened the door for me. I followed her to a posh little office cluttered with papers and boring-looking magazines. A framed photo showed Dr. Lawrence hugging some guy on top of a mountain somewhere.

"I want to talk about what plastic surgery can do for you and what it can't do." She sighed just like Mom had after she saw my hair. "As a surgeon, I can help you work with what you have. I cannot transform your face to look like the models in your notebook. You cannot order a new nose like a sweater from a catalog."

I turned my notebook over in my lap. Why had I glued photos on the back of it too? Blond actresses smiled back at me with cute little crinkled noses.

"I didn't want to order a nose, exactly." My voice sounded babyish.

"Plastic surgery cannot solve family problems, or boyfriend problems, or make you popular."

"I don't want to be popular—that's Megan," I protested. "I want to be beautiful. I want to like myself."

"Plastic surgery can help you feel better about yourself, sometimes, but only if you already feel pretty good about yourself. The way you feel about yourself comes from your
thinking,
not your appearance."

"You sound like some guidance counselor slash advice columnist slash mother." Maybe I hadn't chosen the right plastic surgeon. This one was too touchy-feely New Age psychobabbly.

Dr. Lawrence folded her arms across her rather small bosom. "What
does
your mother think about this?"

I looked down at a small scrap of paper on the ground. "She doesn't know." I looked up quickly. "But she'd totally approve. She's always fussing over my looks because the rest of my family is gorgeous and I'm not, and she really cares about appearances and things. She would totally approve. I think."

"So why haven't you told her?"

"I just wanted to surprise her with my new nose." I'd planned it all out: how I could forge Mom's signature for permission, stay with a friend (probably Megan—she'd be good at post-op care) until I'd healed and everything, then return home. Surprise! I'm beautiful too.

"Rhinoplasty is major surgery, Jory. You don't go home with a brand-new nose like it's an outfit from the mall. You will have weeks of recovery time. It's also quite expensive."

"Oh, I have the money," I said. "Some of the money." My voice sounded more wobbly than I wanted it to. "I have to pay to fix the van I wrecked at work." A stupid tear fell out of my eye. "But I'll still have some left over."

"It sounds like you have a lot going on." The doctor rummaged around in her desk drawer. "You might want to talk to a psychologist."

"I'm not crazy. I'm ugly." More tears.
Don't sob. Keep your voice steady.
Tom's angry voice reverberated in my memory: "Not even worth it."
You can't do anything right, Jory,
I thought to myself.
You can't even buy beauty.

"I'm ugly. Why won't you fix me?"

"Jory, you're not ugly. Your nose actually fits your face." She tapped her own nose. "Most of us will never look like the girls in magazines—and most of them wear a lot of makeup to achieve those looks."

"You're not going to tell me that nose-minimizing makeup will solve all my problems, because it won't."

"There's nothing wrong with using makeup to enhance your features." Imperfect Nose Doctor gave me a look of pity. "You can also show off your best features. You might want to think about growing your pretty blond hair out."

I lost it. Big, loud, make-the-nurse-come-running sobs. The doctor handed me tissue after tissue.

"But I have the money. Won't you just do it for the money?" I held out a wad of cash and waved it at her like a desperate idiot. "If you won't, I'll find someone who will."

"Jory, I won't ever operate on someone who has unrealistic expectations. No surgeon will. Not to mention you need parental consent." Her voice softened. "With maturity, you will discover that you possess beauty in a package uniquely yours."

I kept crying, filling tissue after tissue with wet globs of snot.

Dr. Lawrence called my mom (at work!), told her
absolutely everything,
and asked her to come pick me up. My whole plan came crashing down like that wedding cake, totaled like the delivery van.

With my face buried in my pillow, I screamed out another tirade of obscenities. If Mom was going to send me to my room like a five-year-old, I was going to act like one. It's all her fault!
She's
the one obsessed with her body! So what if I want a new nose? That stupid surgeon and her special adolescent psychologist! I'll just fly to an obscure country in South America and have some doctor who got kicked out of medical school do the surgery. Or maybe I'll go live in the Amazon with one of those weird ancient tribes we studied in Mrs. Currie's class. I will become a legend. Future generations will try to find Crazy Big-Nose Girl, the way people go to the northwest to look for Bigfoot. Big Nose. Has a ring to it, right? I could leave nose prints for people to find—or used tissues.

Mom opened my door. "I expect you to be ready for beading class in half an hour."

"I'm not doing your little bonding activity because I hate you and I'd rather be dead than go anywhere with you. What am I, anyway? Your special charity case of ugliness? I am never showing my face in public again. If you make me go, I'll just run away from home and join some whorehouse out in the desert. Guys with a thing for giant noses will request me."

I wept at the fact of my true ugliness. How sad to be so ugly, so unloved. It took Judith Hearne years to achieve the desperate state I'd reached at the young age of seventeen. I didn't even need much alcohol. Kind of impressive, really.

I gave in to one last good pillow-and-stuffed-rabbit-soaking cry. Fifteen minutes later, I peeled myself off my bed and walked into the hall bathroom. That's when I saw that Finn had a friend over playing computer games in his room. Just what I needed: a witness. The kid would go back to school in two weeks.
Yeah, Finn has a sister. She's really ugly and I was there, dude, when she lost it. Yeah, the dudes from the crazy farm came and hauled her off. No, Finn's not really upset. He likes having a bathroom to himself, and they're turning her old room into a museum for his trophies.

My nose glowed in the bathroom mirror. Big. Red. Jurassic. My eyes looked like dirt clods in pools of blood; they'd need hours to recover. I'd have to wear sunglasses. Maybe I could wear a ski mask. It could become my fashion statement, the way some celebrities carry small dogs everywhere. I'd knit ski masks in different colors and become mysterious, interesting. I splashed water on my face. My eyes stung. Mom tapped on the door and handed me a bottle of eye drops; I doused my eyes until fake sticky tears ran down my cheeks.

My hair. I had refused to see Mom's stylist after the whole plastic-surgeon-psychologist-phone-call thing. My blond hair stuck up in punk-rockish tufts. Work with it, right? I sprayed tons of glitter in my hair (Mom thinks glitter makes girls look like streetwalkers). I spritzed a little more on my most likely candidates for bangs before adding dark lipstick and too much eyeshadow.

Mom could make me go beading, but I could certainly make her regret it.

On the drive down to the Jewel Café, Mom didn't talk much. Part of me wanted her to say something—
anything
—about the plastic surgeon incident, or the school photo shoot. All week she'd been unusually quiet—not silent-treatment quiet, but
thinking
quiet, and that made me nervous.