Leggy Blonde: A Memoir (11 page)

“We need to make a change,” said Dad. “I can’t keep up anymore. I’m done with it. I am sick of New York City combat living.” If they got a good price for the New York apartment, they could live off the profit for the rest of their lives in Florida. The move wasn’t a complicated geographical calculation. It was basic math.

“You can live in the apartment until it’s sold,” Dad told me. “But
then you have to get your own place.” They left the city to search for a house in Miami. I stayed alone in my childhood home, soon to belong to someone else. I spent many nights by myself, knocking around that apartment. I’d lived there since I was six. Not all the memories were happy ones. But they were mine.

I’d left New York in part to get away from my parents and my old life. Those five years, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, were the only years I spent off the island of Manhattan. I had the college experience. I’d lived a Moulin Rouge fantasy in Paris. Being a flamingo out of water, as it were, had been exciting. But I was ready to start my adult life in my natural habitat, to make a nest and a name for myself.

I
n the grand tradition of overeducated, underemployed women who don’t know what to do with their lives, I went to law school.

I’d been working at a life insurance company for a couple of years, and talking about death all day long made we want to kill myself. I had a passion for criminal law and a big mouth, so pursuing a law degree seemed like the obvious career choice. I took the LSAT and went to Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in the West Village of Manhattan.

Part of me thought of law school as a cop-out. I had my bachelor’s degree and a master’s in French. Now a law degree? I’d become a perpetual student. But it was better than sitting in the office discussing life expectancy rates all day. The job was really starting to depress me.

In law school, I came back to life—my classes were fascinating. My favorite teacher was Barry Scheck, who taught while he was
working as one of OJ’s defense attorneys. I’d take a class, and then watch him talk about DNA evidence on TV that night. Now
that
was cool.

At the risk of sounding like a stupid girl, I defined eras of my life by my boyfriend at the time. When I was in law school, I met a man named Jonathan through a mutual friend of a friend. We were introduced at a party and Jonathan called to ask me out.

And so began the early Jonathan Period. I hadn’t had a serious boyfriend since Paris. Jonathan was the all-American antidote to Alexandre. He was funny, outgoing, tall, and tan. He wore his hair slicked back, like Leonardo DiCaprio in
The Great Gatsby
. The combo of athletic and intellectual was irresistibly sexy. He was a business student at Columbia University; I was a first-year law student. We were both native Manhattanites. At exactly the right moment, Jonathan reminded me what was incomparable about New York. Any day, around any corner, you could fall in love.

I fell just as hard for his kooky family. His mother, Edith, was a real downtown character. Super thin, she wore tight, short clothing and chunky ethnic jewelry. Her lips were extralarge, even in the bee-stung-lips nineties. Edith had to be in her fifties when I knew her, but she had the dewy soft skin of a newborn baby and her hair was jet black. Picture a skinny, older, stylish version of Veronica from the Archie comics, with huge lips. Edith was eccentric and superstitious. She threw salt over her shoulder, knocked wood, or kissed a mezuzah whenever something about the future was mentioned.

“Don’t have sex with my son,” she announced one day. “You have to wait until you’re married.”

At first, I wondered why she thought I hadn’t
already
had sex with Jonathan. We’d been together for a while by then. The fact was, despite
our serious attraction to each other, Jonathan and I hadn’t done “it” yet. I’d been thinking lately that we really should cross that Rubicon. And here she was telling me not to. Was it up to her? I wasn’t about to discuss what I had or hadn’t done with her son. It was just too weird. Edith might be that cool, but I wasn’t.

Dear God,
I thought,
was Jonathan telling his mom about our sex life?
(He wasn’t.)

“I won’t give away the milk,” I blurted.

“Good,” she said. “I like you, Aviva. I want you and Jonathan to get married. But if you have sex before the wedding, it won’t happen. Don’t ask me how I know. I just know.”

Edith spent a lot of time meditating with crystals and chanting. The incense she burned might’ve opened up a pathway to the great beyond, and she could see into our future. In her present, she was locked in an absolutely vicious tooth-and-nail divorce battle with Jonathan’s father. There was a lot of hatred, bitterness, resentment, and money involved. Edith distrusted men in general. To some extent, that included her own son.

Thus far, in my romantic history, I’d had a great relationship that ended amicably, a good relationship that ended in infidelity, and a tumultuous affair that ended in violence. I was on a downward trend. I believed I could turn that around with Jonathan.

Some of Edith’s superstitiousness must have rubbed off on me. I heeded her warning, and held Jonathan off. I wasn’t a prude or frigid. I loved sex and had a great time with Jonathan. But we didn’t go all the way. Something besides Edith’s prediction kept me from going for it. I’d been burned. I’d learned to be wary of throwing myself into an intense relationship that might make me lose sight of my personal goals. Long term, I wanted to be a hotshot attorney, as well as a wife and mother. If not having intercourse made that possible, I’d wait for
it. There was also something worthwhile about maintaining a little mystery in the relationship.

After a year of dating, Jonathan proposed. We were in the Hamptons at his dad’s house. We went for dinner in Sag Harbor at a restaurant in the American Hotel. At the end of the meal, Jonathan got on one knee in front of the whole restaurant and asked me to marry him. He presented a four-karat emerald-cut diamond with very elegant side stones. Of course, I said yes, and the restaurant applauded and cheered.

Edith was thrilled at the news. We told her in person. “Congratulations!” she said, hugging us. Jonathan left the room to make a phone call. She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Don’t forget. No cheating on the
rule
. Not before the wedding night.”

We hadn’t. Not even after that fairy-tale engagement dinner. We might’ve, but very soon after, sex had to be back burnered. I got an especially nasty abrasion on my stump. It was about two square inches of red, pulpy raw flesh. I was used to that, but this time, it just wouldn’t heal. It was puffy and really sensitive.

Jonathan urged me to see a plastic surgeon. I was long past due for a new, thicker skin graft. I made an appointment with yet another doctor. He took one look at my abrasion and visibly paled. “This is terribly infected,” he said. “You have to check into the hospital tonight.”

Not
again
.

The dreaded osteomyelitis, that potentially fatal bone infection, had finally come. It’d been looming like the sword of Damocles over my head (leg) for nineteen years. That was long enough, said Destiny. I checked into Beth Israel North Hospital right away, continuing on my tour of every Manhattan hospital on the grid, for a series of MRIs and other tests to confirm the diagnosis.

They put me on IV antibiotics. The drugs snatched me back
from the brink. I survived my third (fourth?) close call. You know, all those near-death experiences, and I had yet to see a white light or my beloved dogs Clever and Sandy panting at the entrance of heaven, beckoning me in. I was starting to feel a little resentful.

While I recovered in the hospital, I had a consult with a renowned hand surgeon. He said, “I’m going to give you a gift on a silver platter. If you amputate your leg below the knee, you’ll have a totally new, better life.”

I’d heard that before. Various experts over the years had suggested I get a BKA, a.k.a. a below-the-knee amputation. It would mean no more abrasions or pain, a slimmer prosthesis, and better mobility. I hadn’t opted for that surgery, though. It seemed insane. Why on earth would anyone elect to have her leg sawed off? I had horrific memories of my past surgeries. Missing a foot, I figured, was sexier than missing half a leg. I cared a lot about being sexy. Always had, always will. So much so that if a doctor had said years ago, “If you get rid of your leg below the knee, you’ll be way sexier,” I probably would have done it sooner.

Something about this hand surgeon broke through the wall I’d built against voluntary surgery. If it would really get rid of pain and those hateful abrasions, maybe it wasn’t such a crazy idea.

“Would you do it?” I asked my friend Sarah. I knew she’d be completely honest with me. Historically, she had zero filter.

“You would lose five pounds overnight,” she said. “Seriously, for quality of life, you should go for it. I’d do it in a second.”

“I’m getting married in six months,” I said.

“Which is why you should do it now.”

Sarah had no ulterior motive. She wasn’t a doctor looking for a job. She was only thinking of what was best for me. More than anyone, she knew how much I wanted to start my life with Jonathan
with my best foot—well, my only foot—forward. My worst fear was that the abrasions would prevent me from being a capable mother. I did
not
want to be a slave to my wounds when I had children to look after. I imagined myself failing to catch a child who dashed into traffic or ran ahead at the park. The abrasions had slowed me down for decades. I had to do whatever I could to be quick and strong before I committed to being Jonathan’s wife, and the mother of his children. I mustered my courage and scheduled the surgery.

During the four weeks between scheduling and having the procedure, my reservations faded completely. When I was six, and I had that first amputation, I remembered thinking, “If it stops the pain,
great
.” This new surgery brought up the same anticipation. I’d been in denial about the abrasions for so long. I’d refused to acknowledge the pain. Once I could imagine a life without it, it couldn’t come fast enough.

The surgery didn’t scare me. Anesthesia, however, was petrifying. As a child, being put under made me violently ill and disoriented. I’d developed a phobia about it, believing that if I were put to sleep (like Clever and Sandy), I would never wake up.
I’ll be the one healthy twenty-six-year-old who dies on the table,
I thought. The select few who knew about my panic attacks and hypochondria back then (pre–
Real Housewives
) called me “a blonde Woody Allen.” Actually, I made Woody Allen look chill. Here’s a running list of (some of) the things that freak me out:

Small planes

Heights

Driving on highways

Going over bridges

Anesthesia

Terrorists

Rapists coming in through the bedroom window

Factory-farmed meat

Aluminum foil

Teflon

Drugs! Recreational, prescription, over the counter, pain killers. You name it, I’m afraid of it.

Pesticides

Inflammation, which can cause cancer; which reminds me . . .

Cancer

ALS

Crossing against the light

Leaving a hat on the bed (this shit is deadly)

Some spiders (big ones are fine; it’s the little things that get me)

The dark

Prison

Being trapped on an elevator with Ramona Singer (oh, I kid, Ramona . . .)

Okay, several of those aren’t real sources of anxiety for me. But they could be. The point is, I don’t choose my anxieties. They choose me. If I could will them away, of course I would! But my neurological and psychological makeup can’t be changed. Medications would only work to a point, but it’s weirdly arbitrary how some things freak me out, and others don’t at all. The only way to handle it is to avoid panic attack triggers and be prepared with soothing strategies (like an iPod full of calming music). And laughing. I always joke about it, even mid-meltdown. Making light of a panic attack doesn’t cancel it out. But it does give me something to do in the meantime. One trick I’ve learned as a professional worrier is that you can’t feel fear and
love simultaneously. Just kissing Reid and/or the kids really helps.

In our presurgery consult, Dr. Elton Strauss, the orthopedic surgeon, and I talked about the procedure. He’d do the wet work, and then Dr. Chun, a plastic surgeon, would step in to make a special flap so I’d have extrathick skin on the bottom of the residual leg. I would never have another abrasion. It sounded
wonderful
. The surgery would take place back where I started, at Mount Sinai Hospital.

I asked Dr. Strauss, “Can I stay awake for the surgery with an epidural?” I didn’t want to be knocked out, just numb below the waist.

“You want to be awake for your amputation?” he asked. “Never heard that one before.”

I explained my fears, and he agreed to do the surgery with an epidural—an injection of anesthetic directly into my spinal cord, the same thing women get for C-sections. That was a relief. I skipped home from that appointment, actually looking forward to getting rid of the chronically infected leg that served no purpose except filling a bulky, ugly prosthesis.

I’d been researching a sleek upgrade. Prosthetics had made leaps and bounds since the seventies. I could get one with carved foam to match the shape of my right leg. I’d finally have a decent cushion that created more bounce and flexibility. My upgrade wouldn’t be cheap, but I still had plenty of insurance money. What better way to spend it?

Surgery Number Five: Elective Below-the-Knee Amputation of Left Leg

My presurgery bluster fizzled on the day of the operation. I was terrified about the whole anesthesia issue. As I was wheeled into the room, I badgered the anesthesiologist, a woman named Mary, with a million questions. She sized me up as an anxious basket case.