The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus (4 page)

She comes bearing hugs and air kisses for all,

plus a vampire book for Samantha,

a bottle of champagne for the rest of us,

and a bouquet of asters for the table.

She says she's gotten some promising winks

on Match.com, but thinks maybe she'd do better

with a more girl-next-doorish sort of photo.

So I take her out back to pose by our pepper tree.

And when I study her face

through my lens,

a second wave of thankfulness

rises within me.

Because if Alice

hadn't gotten that nose job

and then claimed she'd only

had her deviated septum fixed,

and if she hadn't had gallons of collagen

crammed into her lips

and tried to pass off the sci-fi results

as an allergic reaction to some chili powder,

and if she hadn't gotten her eyelids lifted

and her bags sliced off

and actually expected me to believe

she'd merely had her tear ducts unclogged,

and then had so much Botox force-fed

into her forehead that she couldn't

even raise her eyebrows in surprise

when I finally told her I was worried about her,

I might have gone ahead and done

the exact same thing to my
own
poor

defenseless face—I might've stepped

into that very same pool of quicksand

and, just like Alice, been swallowed whole.

Sometimes, when my cousin and I are lunching,

and we duck into the ladies room together

to reapply our lipstick

and we're standing there,

shoulder to aging shoulder,

in front of the mirror mirror on the wall

and I take a look at
her

and then I take a look at
me
,

sometimes

doubts begin scampering across my mind

like hungry rats, and I can't help wondering

if it's better to be

an unnatural-looking moon-faced,

eyelid-less, wrinkle-free

fifty-three-year-old woman who looks forty

or a natural-looking sunken-cheeked,

droopy-lidded, wrinkle-ridden

fifty-year-old who looks ninety.

And sometimes,

at moments like these,

I find myself tempted

to climb down off of my

I'm
-going-to-grow-old-naturally

high horse

and beg my cousin Alice

for her plastic surgeon's

phone number.

While trying to jog off the three pounds

I gained at Thanksgiving,

I turn to watch a sun-bleached

twenty-something goddess

zooming down the bike path

on her Rollerblades,

grooving

to a tune on her iPod,

her hair a golden flag

fluttering around her bronzed cheeks,

legs so long

they should be illegal,

haunches as toned and sleek

as a puma's,

and a shock wave of painful truth

crashes down over my rapidly graying head:

I never had a butt like that,

even when I had a butt like that.

How, then, do I explain the fact

that when I was writing that last poem

I couldn't remember how to spell “illegal”?

I tried “illeagal.”

And “illegle.”

And “illeagle.”

Then cursed like a cuffed criminal

before finally just giving up

and spellchecking it.

Is this

how it's going

to be?

All the knowledge I once had

slowly seeping out of my head

like an inner tube losing its air?

Hell.

The next thing you know,

I'll be forgetting how to spell my own nayme.

The four of us have gathered

to watch the “world premiere”

of the video montage

that Michael made for my mother.

There's baby Samantha,

lying on her back in her crib—

floating on her little sheepskin cloud,

crowing along with her mobile's tinkling song,

gazing up at its spinning pastel birds,

her arms flapping away

as if she wants to join them.

There's Samantha dressed as Tinker Bell,

trick-or-treating for the very first time.

She runs up all the front walks

chanting, “Twick or tweet! Twick or tweet!”

But as soon as each door opens,

she clams up and buries her face in my skirt.

There's Samantha doing a puppet show.

Wolf puppet says, “Hi!”

Bunny puppet says, “Hi! Hi!”

Wolf puppet says, “Hi! Hi! Hi!”

Bunny puppet says, “The end.”

Sam says, “Now I'll do another one!”

And there she is, having a tea party

with Monkey, Wendy, Tess, and Laura,

sipping chocolate milk from teensy china cups

and nibbling on tiny pink cupcakes.

I glance over at my daughter,

all grown up now,

who raises an eyebrow and says,

“Did you bake those cupcakes for us?”

“Yes.”

“And you made those place cards, too,

with our names all spelled out in glitter?”

“Uh huh.”

“Even that place card for Monkey?”

“Yeah…”

“Mom,” Sam says, shaking her head,

“you were out of control!”

But then

she flops down next to me on the couch

and gives me a bone-crushing hug.

She's smiling fondly at us,

but it worries me to see

how stiffly she's holding her neck—

as if it hurts to turn her head.

She's admitted to having had

some mysterious aches and pains lately.

Though she's refused

to see her doctor about them.

“Come over here

and sit on Grandma's lap,” she says.

But when Samantha eases herself down,

my mother winces.

“Am I too heavy, Grandma?” she asks.

“Of course not,” she says. “You're just right.

It's this dang chair that's so creaky—

not
me.”

And as I watch them,

my eyes mist over—

remembering them rocking together

when Sam was three days old…

Naturally, when Mom arrived

from Cleveland that day, sweeping in

through the door of our California bungalow

like a bright breeze,

the baby was hysterical—

her face an anguished beet,

her tiny feet

kickboxing the air,

her mouth

spewing a steady stream

of high-pitched

lacerating screams.

But my mother just smiled,

as calm as a waveless sea,

and when she took Samantha

into her pillowy arms

an instant hush fell over the child,

as though my mother had found

the baby's misery switch

and simply flicked it off.

Then,

she reached into her purse

and pulled out the first of many gifts:

a silky-soft stuffed monkey—

his eyes two winsome gleaming beads,

his grin utterly goofy

yet somehow more serene

than Buddha's.

Samantha reached out

to pull Monkey's face

toward her own,

as if for a smooch.

She was too young to realize

that her hands even belonged to her.

But she seemed to know

that
Monkey
did.

I, Holly Miller, hereby swear

that I will never again

allow myself to be lured away

from my writing

by clicking

on those hideous headlines

that litter my computer screen

like landmines waiting to be stepped on.

So I am
not
going to click

on the article about the nasty insults

that Anderson Cooper slung at a celebrity mom

that prompted her to lash out.

Though I'm dying to know which

celebrity mom it was

and exactly what she and Anderson

said to each other.

And I am
not

going to click on the article

about the location

of America's greatest bathroom

(which

apparently was found

when “Pros Flushed Far and Wide

to Find the Best Spot to Tinkle”).

And even though

I
do
remember Ann-Margret

and I'm yearning to see

how she looks at sixty-seven,

I am
not

going to click on the link.

I am
not!

I am NOT!

Wow…

She looks
good…

I'm at Macy's

shopping for some new underwear,

the walls of the fitting room closing in on me

like the trash compactor in
Star Wars,

while I stand here, bug-eyed,

observing my body

from each devastating angle

of the three-way mirror…

When did my neck begin dripping

off my chin like melted wax?

When did my upper arms

turn into my mother's?

When did my legs

get so criss-crossed with spider veins

that they started looking

positively tie-died?

And why on earth

has it taken me this long

to realize that I have dimples

where
nobody
should have dimples

and that,

from the back,

I could easily be mistaken

for the Michelin Man?

Is why Michael doesn't seem

to have noticed any of this.

In fact, he's always telling me

I'm just as cute as the day we first met—

twenty-two years ago

in front of the buffet table

at an art opening,

when our fingers bumped

while reaching into a bowl of cherries

and Michael said life
was
one

and I laughed.

Then, when he asked me how I liked the art,

I confessed that I hadn't even glanced at it—

that I'd been passing by the gallery

and realized I was famished,

so I'd snuck inside to pilfer

some cheese and wine and cherries.

Michael claims I turned a deeper shade of red

than the Bings I'd been scarfing down,

when he told me I was lovelier

than any of the paintings on display.

And when I told him I didn't think the artist

would be too happy to hear him say that,

he told me he
was
the artist.

At which point,

I nearly choked on a cherry.

And a moment later,

when he asked me to join him for dinner,

I said yes without thinking twice.

Because Michael wasn't just a highly skilled flirt,

he was toe-curlingly handsome.

And he still is.

The bastard.

How come
I
keep getting more gray

and
he
keeps getting more gorgeous?

The months of this year

before Samantha leaves for college

are blowing past like the pages of a calendar

in some hokey film.

One minute,

the three of us are sitting by the fire

singing “Auld Lang Syne,”

watching the ball drop in Times Square…

The next—it's Valentine's Day

and I'm waking up to find, just like every year,

a funny handmade valentine from Samantha

taped to my bathroom mirror.

I'm thinking,

Next year, on Valentine's Day,

the only thing I'll see when I look in the mirror

will be my pathetic lonely mug…

Then, suddenly, it's Saint Patrick's Day,

and Samantha's waking me up with a pinch

because, like every year, I've forgotten to wear

my green pajamas.

“Ouch!” I say, swatting her hand away.

Then I pull her in for a squeeze,

thinking,
Next year, on this day,

there will be no pinch…

no squeeze…