The Blue Cotton Gown (23 page)

Since my emotions are apparently in hibernation and not available for reflection, I put in the Grateful Dead CD and start to dance, swaying to the rhythm, using my arms and hips more than my feet.
We will get by. We will survive.

Then, since the cancer is apparently gone, I take my empty body to bed to see if it still works. I lie under the red and green quilt touching myself and am relieved to feel a faint motor purring. After another good long while, I’m able to climax. My female parts are gone, but I can still come! I’d feared the hysterectomy more for the loss of my sexuality than for potential complications. Tom had told me I would be okay, and he was right.

The sun shines down from the high window on my face. It lights the blue stained-glass mandala.

I sleep all afternoon, smiling.

chapter 12

aran

On my first day back to work after the holidays and my two weeks of sick leave, I see Aran is an add-on at the end of the day, the rea-son for her visit listed only as
gyn problems.
I sit at my desk, checking my mail. Donna stops by. “How you doing?” she asks.

I shrug. “Fine. I guess everyone has heard the cancer is gone. They just scooped out my insides, washed up my pelvis, and
poof

—no cancer!” Donna squints, unsure what my sarcasm means, then leaves quickly.

I’ve thought about this appointment with Aran all day, wondering how it will go, wondering if I’ll know what to say. Trish had called me at home three days ago to tell me Aran thinks she may have an STD. She also told me that Aran’s not coming home at night. The girl leaves her baby, doesn’t make any arrangements with Trish, and just disappears, doesn’t say where she’s going or when she’ll be back. When she’s not staying away from home she locks herself in her room. Trish is starting to wonder if her daughter is on drugs. I agree, this doesn’t sound right.

When I enter the exam room at four, I find Aran sitting in her exam gown, her hands folded in her lap, looking as proper as a girl in a church choir, her short sandy hair shiny and clean, her face pale and without makeup. She wears nothing but thick green wool socks and the blue cotton gown, but she’s thinner than I remember. Black combat boots are pushed under the guest chair. I decide to play in-nocent and see what she says.

“So how are
you?
I haven’t seen you for a few months.” I smile,

staring into the girl’s large blue eyes. It’s hard to tell if the pupils are constricted.

“Not so good.” The thin smile fades. “First of all, Jimmy and I broke up. I know we have before, but this is for real. I’m serious. For real. I took all my stuff and the baby’s stuff too, and moved home. Now he has chlamydia, and I’m afraid I might too. I want to be checked for everything. He’s such a dirtbag!” There are tears in her eyes, just floating on the edges, not flowing yet. She wipes them with a corner of the blue exam gown.

“So when did you last have sex with him?”

“Just a week ago. I thought we might get back together, but now it’s
never
going to happen. I’ll
never
forgive him! He’s such a liar, and I stood up for him all this time, stayed with him at the hospital. I feel like a fool.”

“You didn’t use condoms, by any chance, did you?” “No.” Her eyes dart away.

After the exam, I have Aran sit up. “I’ve checked you for gonorrhea and chlamydia,” I begin. “There’s no discharge or redness. There are blood tests we need to get for HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis.” Aran nods. “We’ll have to wait for the results, but I want to say very seriously,
from now on you need to use condoms.
It doesn’t matter how much you love a guy. It’s
your
body. The birth control pills will only protect you from one thing—babies! And as you know, they’re not even a hundred percent for that.” I’m glad to see the corners of Aran’s mouth turn up. The young woman got pregnant last time while taking the pill.

“I know,” Aran says. “I really do know. And I
will.
I promise I’ll use them. From now on, I will.”

“There’s something else,” I continue. “Trish says you’re staying out nights and not coming home. This concerns me, because I haven’t seen a new mother act like this before. I know you love Melody, and I wonder if you think you could have postpartum depression or something.” I’m winging it now.

“She
told
you?” Aran’s steamed.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m not using
drugs.
That’s what they all think. My dad assumes I’m a crackhead.” She laughs bitterly, the blue eyes blazing. “I’m practically the only one of my friends who isn’t. If they only knew . . .”

“So how come you stay out all night? Don’t you worry about the baby?”

“No, my mom will take care of her. She’s real good.”

I stop the questions for a minute, then go on. “So, do you think you could be
depressed?
You know, postpartum depression. Sometimes it starts months after the baby comes. Your life has changed dramatically, and there’s been a lot for you to cope with. So many changes can wear a person out. Stress can make a person feel like running away.”

Aran is staring at the posters on the bulletin board. “No, I’m okay. So long as I am with my friends, I’m fine.” She’s still turned away.

“What about when you’re alone?”

Aran picks at her nails, which I notice are not as clean as they once were, and lets out some air. “I feel like crying. I just feel like crying all the time . . .” There’s the
beep-beep
of the laser in the next room, but no other sound.

“So maybe it
is
some kind of postpartum depression.”

Aran nods slowly, thoughtfully. “I’ve been thinking of getting out of here. Just loading up with the baby and going to my grandma’s in Philly, but I don’t have the money for gas, and my Escort’s not in great shape.”

I roll my exam stool closer. “I had postpartum depression once. At the time I didn’t even know what it was, but I thought bad things. I even thought about
killing
myself. I don’t know why. It wasn’t like me. My life wasn’t that awful really. Do you ever have thoughts like that?”

Aran sits up straight. “Killing myself ?
No,
I could never do that. I think that this is the life God gave me and even if it hurts right now, everything happens for a purpose. I really believe that. I didn’t want

to have a baby. I never wanted to be a mom. I don’t even like little kids very much. But I got one, for whatever reason. I would never kill myself.
I would never.
”

“That’s good. I think everything has a purpose too, at least when you look at the
big picture.
Even if we can’t see what the purpose is.” We’re both silent, staring at the cream linoleum tiles with specks of dark green.

I stand up and fill out a lab slip for the STD blood tests and write a script for antibiotics. “Do you think an antidepressant might help, Aran? I could give you some samples.”

Aran shrugs. “I guess . . .” I can’t tell if the girl thinks medication is a good idea or is just going with the path of least resistance, but she takes the two weeks of samples I give her and shoves them into her purse.

In a way I’m reassured. Aran’s probably drinking more than she said and using
some
drugs, but maybe nothing heavier than grass. She may be depressed, but she’s not suicidal.

“Will you come back to see me in two weeks?”

“Sure,” Aran says, zipping up her pre-maternity size 3 jeans, “and thanks, Patsy.” There’s not a stretch mark on her beautiful body. “Thanks for seeing me. I was really upset.”

I give her a little hug. Just a small one around her waist.

I’m surprised when Aran smiles widely, exposing straight white teeth, the kind that probably cost Trish a fortune at the orthodon-tist, and gives me a big hug back.

Loss of Faith

This is the last straw. I swear it is! Rebecca Gorham has finally replied to my e-mail and says that we have unfortunately underpaid our fall taxes by around fifteen thousand dollars. Okay, by $15,239. Now it’s early January, for God’s sake, and she’s just figured that out! I’ve

been sick to my stomach all day. Where are we going to get that kind of money again? She knows we don’t have it. She should, any-way, she’s the accountant.

Each quarter I’ve asked Gorham to get the IRS reports done on time so we don’t end up short, and each time she has an excuse. Last spring she was dealing with her predecessor Robert Reed’s screwed-up tax forms from two years before, a huge job and not her mess, so we didn’t say anything when she was late. It’s been less than a year since we dug ourselves out of the hole our pal Bob left us in. Then in late November, Rebecca went to Europe to visit her sick mother. How can you criticize that? And for Christmas, she traveled to Boston to be with her kids.

“Getting an extension is no big deal,” she’d informed me back then. “Businesses do it all the time. I’ll just fill out a form.” Apparently the form never made it to the IRS office, and now there are additional penalties. This is not the most money we’ve owed, but the well’s running dry.

I suck in a heavy breath. Tom finally agrees with me that we need to get rid of Rebecca, but when is the right time, and how shall we do it? The woman, though a disappointment, did work her butt off through the earlier crisis. Still, we have to get a new accountant, and soon. The trouble is, I no longer have confidence we’ll make a good choice. We’ve been through this twice in the last three years.

It’s three in the morning and I’m walking the floor again, carrying my jam jar of scotch. I wish we knew someone in business to guide us. When we’d finally gotten wise to Reed’s shady deals, I received Gorham’s name from a friend in my meditation group. Despite the glowing recommendation, Rebecca’s been a bust; not as disastrous as Bob, but bad enough.

Tomorrow I’ll ask the secretaries to call other physicians’ groups in Torrington and find out who they use for accounting. If a name comes up twice, we’ll interview him or her. We’ll be expedient, but we won’t rush into a decision this time.

I stand near the corner windows, staring into the night. The snow

has drifted all day. Now the wind’s picking up and it’s coming down hard. And where will we get $15,239? There’s just enough in the account to make payroll. Tom has already borrowed from his retirement fund to pay the boys’ tuition.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Things will probably resolve happily.

Tom says they will, anyway.

I lean back in the big white chair and curl my feet up. For a long time I rest there in front of the big corner window, watching the clusters of snowflakes shoot like sparks through the night.

kasmar

As usual, I’m running behind in the clinic, but I stop short in the hall when a woman emerges from the restroom. She looks familiar, but for a minute I can’t place her. Then it comes to me. It’s Penny, the patient that picks.

The blonde’s cheeks have a healthy pink glow. The pancake makeup is gone and the scars on her face have smoothed. “Hi, Penny,” I say, studying the patient. She stands with her shoulders back, wearing a wine-colored sweater with slim black pants, but her blond hair is what strikes me. It’s been cut short and curled, and the dark roots are gone. I hadn’t seen her for months and I had truth-fully forgotten about giving her the free microderm treatments. For a while we’d done them every two weeks. “You look good,” I tell her.

Penny grins. “Thanks, I guess. I just saw the other nurse-practi- tioner for a yeast infection.”

I want to ask more:
Have you stopped picking? Does your husband tell

you how pretty you are? Who was the doctor that sexually molested you?
But the hallway isn’t the right place. Nor the right time. “Well, I got to keep moving. You take care,” I call out as I tap on the door of exam room 2.

“Hi, Kasmar.” I plunk down on the stool. Running late again. “You can call me Kaz.” The patient’s voice is lower now, and she

has five-o’clock shadow on her square-jawed, freckled face. “That’s new,” I say, meaning the name, not the beard.

“Yeah, like the sound of it? I introduce myself to colleagues and students now as Kaz Layton. Has a nice masculine ring.” Kasmar’s blue eyes twinkle and her voice goes up in a girlish way. I raise my eyebrows. She clears her throat and tries again. “Nice masculine ring,” she repeats, an octave lower. We both laugh. When we first started treatments I was worried how the nurses and secretaries would react to the idea of our assisting a woman in becoming a man, but Kasmar’s sense of humor has made her one of the staff ’s favorite patients.

“So, you feeling pretty good about everything, I take it.” “Yeah, I passed for the first time as a guy last weekend.”

I glance at the dark gray Dockers-style pants, gray plaid shirt, and a red tie thrown casually over the back of the guest chair. On the floor are new men’s hiking boots.

I push my stool back against the cool white wall and wait for the story. “Yeah?”

Kasmar turns sideways on the exam table and leans forward, her hands on her knees. Her brown hair is cut shorter each time I see her. This time it’s shorter than Tom’s. “So we were at that new seafood restaurant. You know the one by the mall? Jerry and I were having dinner.” I nod. “And when the waitress took our order she called me
sir.
We almost lost it but I kept my voice low and ordered ‘for the lady and I.’ Seemed like a nice macho touch. ‘Very good, sir,’ the waitress said. That cracked us up.

“So dinner went fine. Their food’s pretty good. But here’s the great part. I had to go to the restroom, so I stood up and walked to-ward the back. As I got close, I was nervous. I hadn’t given a thought to which john I would use.

“I just kept striding through the tables, wondering if anyone was watching me but trying to be cool. Finally, I saw the signs and al-

most turned back. There were two doors: one with a shark wearing a top hat and one with a dolphin wearing a dress.” Kaz widens his blue eyes, clearly a guy now, telling this story. He wiggles his eyebrows.