Replacement Child (18 page)

Me, age 7

Me sitting on Linda's full body cast, clowning around

The family with me

Mom, Linda, and me dressed up for my Bat Mitzvah

Me playing a gig at 22

1966

B
Y THE TIME
Linda was seventeen, she used special theatrical makeup designed to cover the red and brown raised scar tissue. It performed miracles for her, covering the scars and letting her features emerge like a painting.

I used to watch her sitting at the vanity table my mother gave her, artistically re-creating herself one brushstroke at a time. There were jars and bottles of creams and powders, brushes, pencils, application pads, and sponges filling the small plastic surface and tucked beneath a narrow shelf. Linda was adept at using the pink and green tints to counter the corresponding brown or red tones of the scars. Then, applying the paste-like foundation and a layer of white powder, she would set the base. The finishing touches transcended the sum of the parts; the hint of blush to the cheeks, the tasteful black outline of the eyes, the extension of lush lashes. It all came together with the delicate balance of a Renoir.

I marveled at how she knew just where to put what, and at her skill and patience. It would take her at least an hour to get the results she wanted. I knew from listening to my parents that the stuff was very expensive, so she was careful not to waste it when
she wasn’t going out. I’d heard my mother assure her that she would make sure she could always afford her makeup.

When I was around fourteen and could have started wearing makeup, I totally dismissed the notion. Perhaps it was some kind of reaction, or rebellion, to seeing my sister chained to that vanity table for so many hours, so dependent on the transformation that the creams and powders provided. This, I thought, was another source of Linda’s resentment toward me. And another source of my guilt. My face and I could go anywhere right out of the shower. It was a daily affront, and I figured I didn’t need to make matters worse by adding eyeliner and blush. Even so, she used to accuse me of attracting boys whenever we went anywhere. “You don’t have to do anything,” she’d say. “They just seem to gravitate to you!” I did not agree with her that that was the case, but she generally persisted in pointing it out all through my adolescence so much so that I made a conscious effort not to even look at any boys when Linda and I were out together. I tried to blend into the background, make myself smaller, and dress in dark colors. I don’t think I bought my first piece of makeup until I was twenty-two.

When Linda was seventeen and I was twelve, a cosmetic surgeon offered to attempt to graft new skin to Linda’s face—something no one had tried before. For the first time, she allowed herself to imagine her face without scars.

She dreamed, and I dreamed with her. How would boys react to her with her new face? Would she be asked to the prom now? Could she put behind her the kind of rejection she
experienced at those awful spin the bottle games in junior high? How might her world expand?

I wanted this for her as much as she wanted it for herself. It was a chance to even things out between us—a chance to erase my unfair advantage.

Linda was buoyant about this hospital trip. It was the one surgery she had waited for, and the only one that I ever remember her being excited about. I helped her pack her favorite nightgowns for the trip, like she was going on a honeymoon. She didn’t pack any makeup.

Before she left that day, she gave me a tighter-than-usual squeeze and took a deep breath and a long hard look at me.

She was admitted overnight at Columbia Presbyterian in New York City, prepped for surgery the next morning, and put under anesthesia. When she woke up, however, the news wasn’t good. My mother stood next to the doctor when he told her why she had no bandages, as she had expected.

“The scar tissue is just too close to the nerves to do this kind of surgery,” the surgeon explained. “You could wind up much worse if we went ahead, with a possible paralysis of your face. I’m very sorry.”

I can’t imagine what my sister went through hearing this very final verdict. Later, she told me that was when she decided she was done trying to make herself over. She didn’t want any more surgery to reconstruct, reconnect, or realign anything anymore. My mother tried to convince her for a while to get more done, but Linda was adamant and refused.

Meanwhile, I had heard the news at home and waited anxiously on the curb outside our house for them to return. I thought they would have packed up and left the hospital right away and would be home any minute. I wanted to hug my sister and tell her everything would be fine. By that time, my protective instincts for Linda were well honed, and I felt she would need me now.

“Hey, Juicy, whatcha doin’ out here?” my father said as he sat down next to me.

“Waiting for Linda and Mom. They’re on their way home from the hospital, right?”

“Well, I just got off the phone with Mom. They aren’t coming straight home. They decided to go to Washington, D.C., for a few days.”

“What? We were all supposed to go there—together!”

We had talked as a family about making this trip to visit the monuments and the Smithsonian museums.

“It’s to cheer Linda up, since they couldn’t do this face surgery thing. They were all packed anyway, so Mom thought they would just get in the car and drive for a little getaway. This was very hard for your sister, Judy. I told her you would understand.”

I tried to understand. I really did. It made perfect sense, and I knew how disappointed Linda must have been that they couldn’t fix the scars on her face. I was, too.

“Yeah, that’s okay,” I told my father then, trying to hide my disappointment. But I felt like I was in a movie and the camera was zooming away, making me smaller and smaller—until I disappeared.

2006

I
’
M WAITING FOR
Justin to get home from school and fill the house with music. Even though I should keep working on some of my corporate writing that helps pay the bills, I look forward to the excuse to put it aside and talk to my boy, listen to him play the piano or even blare the music that we sometimes disagree on. Although often I’m pleasantly surprised when he chooses to play some Bob Dylan or Grateful Dead.

My home office is plastered with the photos and the newspaper clippings I’ve been piecing together. It’s not yet a year since my mother passed away, and I find myself staring at her photo for a long time. I remember her mostly now as the woman I knew when I was a child: beautiful, robust, and giving. I think of the things I should have done as her daughter, that I did not do or did not think of doing. All the things I could have done for her at the end to make it easier.

I am also coming to grips with the reality of my father’s life and the hole he left in mine. The more I relive our past together, the more I understand my own feelings toward him, as well as some of my own motivations throughout much of my
life, especially my choices of men. As much as my father was the comic, fun-loving guy, I latched on to the defining nucleus of our relationship—a stoic distance.

Still, as I re-create that awful day and its aftermath, with the notes from my family and every scrap of detail from newspapers and investigative reports found on the web, my own childhood fades to gray—as insignificant as it felt when I was going through it. How could anything in my life compare to what the rest of my family members had been through? To what they suffered, and what they lost? I am still a footnote in the story, stranded outside.

My most mundane episodes, along with the days that stand out in a bright white light, were infused with my parents’ hopes and fears, their grief and loss. I was a sponge, thirstily soaking up the spillage of the tragedy.