1986
Out of the shadows and into the light of new loveliness!
—CAMAY SOAP
It was early still, and dark. I turned my radio off and sat in the quiet of the studio parking lot waiting for call time.
I studied the factory, lit up even at night, the smokestack that read brEMEN, Bertie’s maiden name.
At the Earthshine Grand Re-Opening Ceremony I had stood next to Bertie in that dress she bought me.
My mother watched from the crowd. She was thin and square-shouldered in that same beige coat she wore for every occasion.
When I was younger, I’d read in my science textbook about spontaneous combustion.
A man was dining with a woman at an Italian restaurant, and midbite he simply combusted.
“Talk About a Hot Date,” read the title of that section, and I remember how terrified I’d been, how my mother set a fire extinguisher next to my bed, just so I could get some sleep.
Only now do I consider that fire extinguisher could have been more for her than for me, a way of saving herself if I burst into flames.
Does your husband know?
What would my mother think of me now?
Someone knocked on my window, and I jumped. “Get away,” I yelled. “I have Mace.” I had taken a self-defense class at the local YWCA. I’d learned to use my voice, to “yell and tell,” my instructor explained, to make myself out as a difficult target.
“It’s just me, Nona. Jesus.”
The glass squeaked as I rolled the window down. The car was old, but Wyatt claimed the engine would run forever.
“Hello, gorgeous,” he said. John Dale Fox. The collar of his coat flipped up. His hair was slicked back. Makeup caked his skin. “I heard they might make you a regular.”
“Was it you?” I asked.
“Maybe. Depends. Was it good?”
“Spooking me into giving you an interview? Threatening me? A fax? Really? And then you just happen to show up here? It won’t work.” I was overtired. I had slept only ninety minutes. Maybe I’d hallucinated the whole thing. Does your husband know?
“Really, I have no—”
“And does she know? Your wife?” I asked.
Halley once swore all you needed to do to bed a man was touch his thigh to signal interest, like Hitchcock’s strangers tapping shoes on a train.
The first night it happened, John Dale stopped by the green room to check on me after the fund drive ended.
I acted first. I touched his thigh. My closest friends call me J.D.
, he’d said, and moments later we were kissing. Men are not that difficult.
“I could tell her,” I said.
“Cliché, don’t you think?” he asked. “The wounded mistress.”
“‘Call me J.D. Only my closest friends call me J.D.,’” I said.
“My close friends do call me J.D. I mean, look, it’s like this: When a guy goes out to a bar, do you think he’s looking for the most attractive woman he can find?
No. He’s looking for the most attractive flawed woman.
The hottest woman will be a pain in the ass; she can afford to be choosy.
It’s the hot chicks with flaws who are the real prize.
I think it’s game theory, or something.”
“So I’m a hot chick with a flaw?” I was seething, but at the same time I wondered what my flaw was—what weakness John Dale might have perceived in me.
I thought the whole thing had been my idea.
I touched his thigh! Exhaust trailed from my car’s tailpipe, and I could hear what Wyatt would say about atmospheric pollution.
He was principled, the kind of man who’d never cheat.
Other cars were pulling into the parking lot now.
Their headlights washed over John Dale. He had a mole on his cheek, colored taupe from foundation.
“What I’m saying is this: Flaws aren’t inherently bad. They’re ratings gold. Viewers love to believe they hold the power of forgiveness. It’s the story of redemption. Look at Noah’s Ark.”
“Suddenly you’re quoting scripture?”
“Did you see the last Inquisitor? Twenty Jane Does now. A huge class-action lawsuit is coming. I mean, holy shit, Nona. You were the Earthshine Girl. You need to speak out. Defend these women or something.”
“It was you.”
“At least acknowledge them. That’s all they want. The Tuttles own this town. The Jane Does just want to know you’re on their side.”
“Look at you, the moral mayor. Reverend J.D. himself.”
“The Tuttles won’t talk. Bertie Tuttle is ancient. She’ll be dead before this thing goes to trial, and now her granddaughter swallowed a bottle of—”
“Halley,” I said. I felt sick. I heard car doors slamming, footsteps on concrete. The sky was lightening into an overcast morning, and already the protesters were beginning to line up. I could make out their yellow visors and the rectangular shapes of their signs. “They’re grieving.”
“Even the media wouldn’t stoop that low,” John Dale said.
“But it’s not a good look for the family.
Now those women are blaming the Earthshine Girl.
They’re coming for you, Nona.” I could see Halley’s handwriting.
For you, Nona. I wondered when she’d written it.
For how long had she kept her own plans a secret?
“I don’t know anything,” I said, and even though I didn’t, not really, the words sat heavy inside me, like a lie.
I knew Halley well enough to know she didn’t trust Bertie Tuttle.
I knew Halley well enough to know she’d felt what she left me was important, especially if she’d kept it in a safe-deposit box.
“A detail. Something that seemed off. You’ve got to know something. You’ve been friends with the family for years.”
“Bertie’s hardy. She might outlive us all.”
“That interview—come on. Let’s do it. You and me. Who can deny our on-air chemistry?” He opened my car door, then stepped aside.
The first evening we slept together—I hate calling it that because we didn’t sleep; sleep requires greater intimacy than what we did—we’d cohosted the WLAX Action 13 News annual Christmas in July Fund Drive to support the local children’s hospital.
My agent encouraged me to do it, said it’d be good for my recognition value.
They had me wear elf ears, a curved hat, and a shiny sequined vest with a Christmas tree on it.
In the final segment, the director asked me to hold a five-month-old baby—not a patient, but the infant daughter of the meteorologist. They thought the shot would be tender and authentic.
When John Dale set the baby in my arms, the baby’s demeanor shifted.
By which I mean, the child screamed. The entire live segment.
The entire time I held her. To deliver my lines, I had to raise my voice, which made me sound angry.
The baby, in her fit of temper, tugged off one of my felt ears. I was elfish Van Gogh.
“I’m going to be late,” I said.
“So it’s a maybe?” John Dale said. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m an asshole. That was your flaw—you couldn’t see it.”
“You never even called me,” I said.
“You wanted me to?”
“No. Hell no. My husband can’t find out. He can’t. Do you understand me?”
“I thought he’d left you already.”
“We’re taking a break. That’s all. Just for a little bit. How do you even know that?”
“Word on the street.”
“A real investigative reporter.”
We were quiet for a moment. A group of women now headed for the studio door—extras who played the Port Middleton nursing staff.
“This is big, Nona. Bigger than you. Bigger than us,” John Dale said. “Think about it. You can redeem yourself. A redemption story is the greatest kind of story there is.”
He leaned against my car as I stepped out and passed him. I felt nothing when our bodies brushed, two objects in time and space.
THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE AGAIN. FLUORESCENT lights.
Plastic diorama of a uterus that looked like a bull’s head.
Pamphlets about menopause. A jar of oversize wooden tongue depressor things that were not for depressing tongues.
I sat on the exam table, fully dressed. The doctor came in, same inky birthmark.
His mood was jovial; he walked on his toes.
From his body language, I expected good news.
He whistled and bounced. He flipped a light switch with his elbow, and a wall-mounted box illuminated.
Then he placed a film up against it. “Here,” he said.
“And here. And here.” The film looked like the deep ocean.
I tried to make out a fish. “Tumors,” he said.
I sucked in my breath, but he held up a palm like he was taking an oath. “Calm it. Not cancer.”
I exhaled. Still, I felt dizzy. “That’s good,” I said. “Right?”
“Good? No, I wouldn’t call it good. No tumors at all would be good.”
“Then what?”
The tumors were the size of kiwi fruits, he told me, and I thought of the week-by-week pregnancy book I’d read, how every stage of the baby’s life is compared to a fruit or vegetable. Why think of the uterus as containing food at all? It leads one to believe the mother will eat whatever’s inside.
The tumors had a name that sounded astral, like something you’d find in outer space. But this wasn’t outer space we were talking about. This was my body. This was me.
“There is some good news,” he said. “A hysterectomy. The science has advanced. We’ll take the whole thing out. Three days in the hospital. Six-week recovery. Boom.”
“No boom,” I said. “No boom.” The back of my knees stuck to the pleather exam table. The doctor turned off the box light, and the picture of my uterus went dark. “What are my other options?” I asked.
The doctor spun on his stool, then pushed himself up. Small tufts of hair poked above the V-neck of his scrubs. “This is a relatively common procedure for women like you.”
“Like me?”
I touched my stomach protectively, as though the doctor would attempt to yank my insides from me right then and there. I imagined the scene, the two of us in some anatomical tug-of-war.
“Middle-aged,” he added.
Middle-aged. That’s what my agent had called me, Elliot, too—middle-aged. The term is never not an insult.