The Melting Season (14 page)

But I was not her, thinking of something that existed beyond our flat horizon. I dreamed of the small things. Little noises, like the high-pitched squeal of the crickets calling for love, or the pregnant sizzle of bacon and eggs cooking together in a cast-iron frying pan. Or the different colors in our town, on our land, the purple and gold of prairie flowers, and the way those colors repeat themselves again and again, the plain, healthy green of the elm trees that shade the south side of the farmhouse, so it was the coolest part of our home. The swollen purple belly of our tiny town river after a storm, waves of anxious minnows following the flow of water. That was all, just the little details of the world around me. There was no plotline to my dreams, as much as I would have liked there to be sometimes, something to shoot for in the future. But I had no need for bigger things, no need for alteration to my self. That was how I felt then. Couldn’t I already be whole?

 

 

 

 

 

VALKA MADE a little coughing noise, only there was nothing stuck in her throat.

“What?” I said.

“I don’t mean to say Thomas was right about anything. And I am your friend and I will always take your side. But.”

She looked a little green, and she was biting her lower lip. She was straight up and honest almost all the time but sometimes telling a friend the truth was hard. I could see she was about to tell me I was wrong.

“Don’t stop now,” I said.

“If the sex isn’t there, it’s hard for a relationship to work. It’s possible for it to work. Kids, that’s one thing that keeps people together.” She said that part sadly, maybe wishing on a star for a second. “I don’t think your husband went about it the right way, although I don’t even know what the right way would necessarily be in that kind of situation. But if he felt incomplete, he had the right to try and fix it.”

“So what are you saying?” I said.

“I’m saying maybe you weren’t as whole as you think you were,” she said gently.

 

 

 

 

 

“MOONIE, please, don’t make me do this by myself,” said my husband.

“But I do not want you to do it,” I said. I spoke softly. I had been crying that morning, but I did not want him to know. But I could not muster up my full voice, the full version of me.

“A wife should support her husband in his decisions,” he said.

“A wife should be allowed to be a part of making those decisions,” I said.

“I want to be a whole man,” he said. “Help me be whole.” He spread his hands out in my lap, palms up, and he waited for me to put my palms flat on his, two parts making up a whole. I did it. I could not figure out how to stop it all from happening.

So I went with him, through the tall mirror doors. I kept waiting for them to work like fun house mirrors. There would be some whacked-out version of me looking back, my belly scrunched up like a bag of trash, or my arms long like a piece of taffy. But there I was, just me, in my short skirt, and puffy vest over my tank top, and my short little legs, and my long hair, so long and straight and blond, hanging all over me, down past my shoulders, almost to my waist. I was covered in hair. And there was my husband, his hand in mine, only a little bit taller than me, dark denim shirt bound up at the cuffs, pants hanging over his same scuffed work boots he had had forever, brown hair shooting up at the ends. There were those lines in his forehead from working outside in the sun for so long. I loved them. They could look worried or hypnotized or laughing depending on what channel he had clicked on at that moment. And there was the perfect peach of his cheeks, like something ripe and juicy that showed up at the end of summer at the farmer’s market over at the True Value parking lot. He never stopped talking or thinking or moving except when he was watching TV. And even then there was this energy that rippled through him, through those wrinkles in his forehead, like he was a snake charmer. He had enough energy for the both of us.

In the lobby we stopped and stood in front of a giant portrait of Rio DeCarlo, her arms waving high in the air, as if to say, “Welcome to my world!”

“She looks so pretty,” said my husband. I had to admit the version of her hanging on the wall was much nicer than the version of her on that reality show, although she still had that same pencil-thin nose, the round nostrils popping out like two tiny fists.

We followed a sign toward admissions, and walked through the shined and buffed interior. I felt like I was inside the engine of a brand-new car. We passed a bunch of people in long medical coats, but all different colors, hot pinks and purples and aquas, and they all had different patches on the upper arms. The doctors—their coats said “Doc” on the sleeve—were the only ones who wore coats that were white, so white it made me think of those teeth-brightener commercials, those sticky strips that you slip on your teeth at night. (My mother got me some once and I kept gagging every time I put them in, so I gave them to my sister instead.) Everyone who worked there sped by us in their bright coats and gave us nods and smiles, occasionally a wave. A lot of people had the same smiles, I noticed. Their teeth looked like a strip of squares of the peppermint gum I liked to chew. One person after the other, their lips would go up, and there would be those same damn teeth.

The people sitting in the admissions area all looked like they could be my neighbors. They looked totally normal, is what I am trying to say. Not like they were broken, or even that they were crazy and trying to fix things that did not need to be fixed. It made me feel a little bit better about my husband, like maybe he was not alone, and it was not so strange that he wanted to do this to himself.

“WELL, OF COURSE THEY’RE NORMAL, sweetheart,” said Valka. “Just because someone wants to get a little work done does not mean they are a complete freak.”

“I did not mean you were a freak. I knew when I was saying it you were going to think I was judging again. I am not judging you.” I swore. “I am trying to explain to you who I was, how I was thinking. What that time was like for me. I know more now. I am learning new things every day. But I want you to know why. Why I was so crazy.”

“Okay, okay.” She shushed me. “I understand.”

I thought maybe she did not, but it was the best I could do.

 

 

 

 

 

I SAT DOWN while Thomas checked in with the front desk, crossed my legs, crossed my arms, squeezed myself up into a little ball. I would be very quiet here, I decided. I would disappear. I felt like an intruder. Like I should not know who these people were, and what was wrong with them. And yet I could not help but look around me and try to imagine how they could be fixed.

Across from me were three girls, not much older than my sister, all reading celebrity magazines. Two of them had nice blond hair, though I thought neither was a natural blond like myself, and were dressed like me, denim skirt, tank top, flip-flops. The one on the right had short curly hair that clung to her face, and big blue bulgy eyes that were lined with bright blue mascara. The other girl was just a little mouse of a thing. She had all of her parts, but it was like she was waiting for someone to inflate them all, she was so thin. I could see the bones and veins through her skin.

They were surrounding another girl who had dramatic brown hair; it was long and feathered and had beautiful golden highlights, they almost dripped off her head. She must be from the city, I thought. Her clothes were a little bit nicer than her friends’ even though it was basically the same outfit. She was just a little bit more put together. The shirt had been dyed gorgeous red and orange, and there were tiny rhinestones sewn across the top of it. And she had matching red bracelets and a thin gold chain with a diamond hanging from the end around her neck, all of which glowed against her golden tan skin. She was holding a glossy magazine, and her two friends were peering over her shoulder and pointing. They chatted like birds in the trees right before sunset.

“I want hers,” said the girl on the left.

“No, hers,” said the girl on the right.

The girl in the middle flipped the page impatiently. “These are the ones,” she said, and she pointed. “Just that little scoop up,” she said. She leaned in close and peered greedily. “God, her bikini top hangs so perfectly.”

“She’s hot,” said the girl on the left.

“So hot,” said the girl on the right.

Chatter, chatter, I thought. There are some people who could talk all day and never say a thing.

My husband returned with a huge stack of papers attached to a clipboard, and I wondered if they were multiple choice or essay questions. You can never get away from schoolwork in your life. They are always going to get you. He sighed as he looked at it, and said, “It’s like they want your life story.” I gave him a little smirk out of the side of my mouth, and part of me hoped he saw it, and part of me hoped he did not.

Next to me was a girl, different from the girls across from us, even though she, too, had the same outfit, and also had long blond hair. Hers was parted in the middle and fell down below her shoulders, almost to her elbows. It was a pale, pale blond, as if the sun had been bleaching it for years. And her top was the color of an army tank, and it hung loosely around her. There were sprouts of dusty brown hair peeking out from her armpits. Her denim skirt had little drawings all over it in black ink. Little animals, birds mainly, and crazy swirls. I wondered what was wrong with her that could be fixed here, and I looked at her face, but she did not look any different from anyone else, personal grooming problems aside.

She pulled a notebook out from a dark green backpack that rested near her feet, and then I heard a woman say, “Must you do that here?” There was a woman sitting next to her, with her own gigantic stack of paperwork. It was her mother, I supposed. They looked enough alike—same flat nose, same smooth brown eyes with olive-shaped centers—though from the older woman’s clothes I thought she might make a better match with the girl with the shiny brown hair sitting across from us. She was all strapped into place: tight pink T-shirt with little metallic stars sewn across the collar, skinny blue jeans tucked tight around her thighs, long hair brushed neatly and curled at the ends. Her nails were painted the same pink as the pink that was on her T-shirt, and then I looked down and saw matching pink cowboy boots. Head to toe, she was ready to go.

The girl turned to her and stuck her tongue out and then slowly, deliberately, pulled her hands up to her hair and pulled it back behind her ears. When she faced forward, I could see the full effect of her act: holy mama, were those big ears. They started by her mouth and went up almost near her eyebrows. The girl had pierced them at least a dozen times, with hoops of all different sizes and crazy stones with little symbols all over them. I bet her mother
hated
that. But if you are going to have big ears, might as well do it up. A minute later I realized I was still looking at her ears. I could not stop myself. I wanted to tell her that I liked them, that if she was here to fix them, she was headed on the wrong path, that she was already going the right way, that she should get more earrings. I wanted to free her. Free her ears.

Thomas flipped another page and shook his writing hand, stretched and squeezed his fingers. I put my head on his shoulder and tried to take a peek at what he was writing, but Thomas covered it up with his forearm.

“There’s magazines on a table up near the front desk,” he said. “All the kinds you like.”

“There is not one thing about you I don’t know,” I said, but I got up anyway, straightened out my skirt, and walked toward the front desk. It was a strange feeling knowing I was probably the only person in the room who did not want to change something about themselves, on the outside anyway. And yet I did not feel superior in the slightest. I knew I was not perfect. I could write a long list of things about myself that could probably be fixed. But even if I fixed them all, another list would probably crop up in no time at all. And where would it end? How would I know when I was all fixed?

 

 

 

 

 

“WELL, THAT’S THE TRUTH,” said Valka. “You could keep on fixing forever.”

 

 

 

 

 

I PASSED A MAN with a gigantic nose—there was a hook and then a bump. His face was long and narrow and he had a sour look to him, spoiled and pinched. There was a man with gigantic folds of flesh around his chest, the rest of his body skinny and waiting for the top half to catch up. A woman with bright red hair in short spikes in sunglasses, ripples of lines waving out from around her narrow lips, which were dry and wrinkled. The aisle before the magazine rack I passed an older woman with a red scar down the side of her face, little digits of darkness around the edges. A slash mark, I thought. After that I stopped looking and kept my head down till I got to the magazine rack. I could no longer bear witness to these human frailties.