Such A Pretty Face

by Cathy Lamb

Genres: Family Life; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

In this warm, funny, thoroughly candid novel, acclaimed author Cathy Lamb introduces an unforgettable heroine who’s half the woman she used to be, and about to find herself for the first time… Two years and 170 pounds ago, Stevie Barrett was wheeled into an operating room for surgery that most likely saved her life. Since that day, a new Stevie has emerged, one who walks without wheezing, plants a garden for self-therapy, and builds and paints fantastical wooden chairs. At thirty-five, Stevie is the one thing she never thought she’d be: thin. But for everything that’s changed, some things remain the same. Stevie’s shyness refuses to melt away. She still can’t look her gorgeous neighbor in the eye. The Portland law office where she works remains utterly dysfunctional, as does her family—the aunt, uncle, and cousins who took her in when she was a child. To top it off, her once supportive best friend clearly resents her weight loss. By far the biggest challenge in Stevie’s new life lies in figuring out how to define her new self. Collaborating with her cousins to plan her aunt and uncle’s problematic fortieth anniversary party, Stevie starts to find some surprising answers—about who she is, who she wants to be, and how the old Stevie evolved in the first place. And with each revelation, she realizes the most important part of her transformation may not be what she’s lost, but the courage and confidence she’s gathering, day by day. As achingly honest as it is witty, Such A Pretty Face is a richly insightful novel of one woman’s search for love, family, and acceptance, of the pain we all carry—and the wonders that can happen when we let it go at last.

Release date: August 1, 2010

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 481

Sample

Ashville, Oregon—1980

I know when it started.

It was June 14th, two days after my tenth birthday. An eerie red-gold haze enshrouded the moon. Frothing gray and black clouds drifted across it, as if they were trying to hide its evilness, but couldn’t quite overpower that glowing white light.

I noticed the moon as we sped toward the river, our car careening back and forth over the yellow lines as she chanted and I clung to my terrified sister.

The rain drizzled down through the darkness, stopped, then pounded the top of the car, as if millions of tiny black cannonballs had been released from the bag of the devil himself.

“Momma, stop!” I cried as she barreled through a red light.

But she couldn’t hear me, not with the other voices clamoring in her head. She whispered, she raged, she yelled at her hallucinations. “Get out of here, Punk. This isn’t about you. I’m not getting tied down to that chair again! You won’t put your tentacles and ropes on me!”

I tried the other name. “Helen! Can you hear me, Helen?” She didn’t respond, smashing her floppy yellow hat down on her head with both hands.

I realized, almost ill with panic, that the voices had won. It had been a long, soul-crushing battle, but I tried to save us anyhow. There was nothing else left to do. “There’s no chair! I’ll tell Punk to leave and take the tentacles and ropes with him. I’ll get him for you!”

“Punk is bad; he’s chasing us with his red eyes and he won’t let us go. I’ll save you, girl kid!”

We swerved again, snaking all over the road, barely missing a truck.

“I scared, Stevie, I scared,” my sister whimpered, her little face tucked into my neck. She smelled of soap and lemon shampoo, her fingers sticky from an orange Popsicle.

I was scared, too—so scared my brain felt as if it were rattling in my head, my knees knocking together. “It’s okay, Sunshine. Grandma and Grandpa will be here soon.”

But I knew it wasn’t going to be soon enough.

I knew that.

We whipped around a corner and skidded onto a one-lane, wood bridge. Helen slammed on the brakes; the car fishtailed, and we crashed into the rail. She scrambled out, swearing at the “spying, bad Punk,” then wrenched open our door and tried to yank us out of the car. Sunshine clutched me, screaming, as I gripped the seat, trying to save us both, my charm bracelet cutting into my skin. When Helen grabbed my heels and my hands lost their white-knuckled grip, I grabbed the door handle, then the door.

But she was strong—the voices made her stronger—and my fingers were pried away, one by one, Sunshine clinging to my waist as she shook with fear. Helen half dragged, half carried us to the rail as the boiling clouds parted and that strange moon mocked us in the distance, the only witness to our dance with death.

She had wrapped tin foil around the waist of her black dress, and it ripped as we fought her, as we scratched and shrieked. She was wearing her best black heels, and they tapped on the wood of the bridge, the black line up her nylons perfectly straight, which was so unusual, so surreal, it scared me more than anything else.

“Now you’ve made Command Center mad!” Helen yelled, wrestling us over to the rail. “Don’t destroy the communications!”

We pleaded, we tried to run, and she punched both of us in the face, shooting us backward onto the bridge. “Shut up, girl kid! Shut up, Trash Heap!” She had never done that to us before, and it stunned me into silence, into obedience, for one shattered moment. “They’re spying on us! They can see everything!”

Dizziness sent my mind into a whirl and I wrapped my arms around Sunshine, who was gasping with fright and bleeding. Helen ripped us apart, and I knew that what was left of my momma, if there was anything gentle and kind left in her, was way, way back, at the end of a labyrinth of tunnels in her troubled mind, crisscrossing the lines of insanity.

Her arms banded across my chest and waist as heavy raindrops hit me, the wind lifting my skirt up. I didn’t recognize the raw, terrified scream that tore from my throat as I squeezed her neck and bony shoulders with my arms, my tears mixing with the rain, her floppy yellow hat flying off into the wind.

“No, Momma, don’t,” I begged. “Please, Momma! Stop!”

“Leave us alone, Punk,” she commanded the moon. “You can’t read my mind anymore. You’re done. It’s all done. Take Command Center with you down to hell.”

She heaved my struggling body up on the rail and briefly held me close, rocking me like a baby, then kissed me on the lips. I saw Sunshine fight to stand up, blood streaming from her head. She tugged on our mother’s arms, kicked her shins. “I hate you! I hate you! Let go of Stevie! Let go of sister!”

Her words flew into the churning sky, swirled around the moon, and then they were gone, making no impact on our mother.

“I am saving you,” Helen yelled at me, the stormy wind whipping her blond hair around her face. “I am saving you from them.” Then she dropped her head back and said, her voice edgy and guttural, “Save yourself. Do not save it. Don’t save that Trash Heap.” She shoved me over the rail of the bridge, then yanked my clinging hands from around her neck, our fingertips the last to touch before I tumbled and somersaulted into the rushing river.

It was freezing cold and pitch black, the water wrapping me up tight as I plunged through the silent darkness. My feet never hit, and I paddled to the top, choking, sputtering, knowing Sunshine would soon join me.

I have to save her. I have to save Sunshine.

I fought against the water as the current swirled me away, waves splashing against my face, surrounding my body like a wet vice, my head still reeling from pain. I twisted in the river’s grasp and saw Sunshine, her pink dress billowing out like a bell as she was thrown over the rail into the murkiness of the river. Her cry, high and thin, echoed under the bridge.

I swam toward her, my arms pinwheeling as hard as I could, but I was panicking, gasping for breath, the water dragging me away, my black hair covering my face.

Between the shifting shadows I saw Helen standing on the rail of the bridge, arms outstretched, head back. The red-gold haze parted and the moonlight illuminated her slim form. I couldn’t hear her, but I knew she was singing and I knew what song it was.

In a remote corner of my mind I noted her outfit again as she teetered on the rail. She was wearing her black cocktail dress, her best black heels, and her pearls. She got dressed up to kill us, I thought, as another wave swamped me. She got dressed up to kill us.

She curved her body, palms together over her head, then dove into the choppy water. I never saw her come up again. They did, however, find her best black heels later. Downriver.

I saw the pink dress but not for very long, as another current came, perhaps the sister current to mine, and swept Sunshine away. I heard her terror, I heard her sobbing my name, I hollered back at her, told her I was coming, I promised I would save her—but in the inky blackness, fighting off the chill of the water and the swirling waves, I lost her.

I heard her death in the rigid silence as soon my ragged voice was the only one left in that tragic, shattered night.

I have not saved her.

I have not saved my sister.

She is gone because of me.

Under that moon with the eerie red-gold haze and those frothing clouds, that’s where it all began.

I started inhaling food the next day. Mountains of it.

It continued for more than two decades.

And the song my momma was singing?

It was “Amazing Grace.”

My momma, after throwing her two daughters off a bridge, was singing “Amazing Grace.”

Portland, Oregon—2005

I am going to plant a garden this summer.

With the exception of two pink cherry trees, one white cherry tree, and one pink tulip tree, all huge, I have a barren, dry backyard and I’m tired of looking at it. I almost see it as a metaphor for my whole life, and I think if I can fix this, I can fix my life. Simplistic, silly, I know, but I can’t get past it.

So I’m going to garden even if my hands shake as if there are live circuits inside of them and a floppy yellow hat dances ominously through my mind.

I’m going to build upraised beds, a whole bunch of them, and fill them with tomatoes, squash, zucchini, radishes, lettuce, carrots, peas, and beans. But not corn.

I’m not emotionally able to do corn yet—too many memories—but I am going to plant marigolds around the borders, and pink and purple petunias, rose bushes and clematis and grapevines.

I’m going to stick two small crosses at the back fence, but not for who you think. I’m going to build a grape arbor with a deck beneath it, and then I’m going to add a table so I can paint there, as I used to, before my memories took that away. I’m also going to build three trellises for climbing roses over a rock pathway, one arch for me, Grandma, and Grandpa, which will lead to another garden, with cracked china plates in a mosaic pattern in the middle of a concrete circle, for Sunshine.

This may sound way too ambitious.

It is. But I see this as my last chance to get control of my mind before it blows.

I can wield any type of saw out there, and I have to do this, even if it takes me years. That I can even think in terms of a future, is a miracle.

Why? Because two and a half years ago, when I was thirty-two years old, I had a heart attack.

I used to be the size of a small, depressed cow.

The heart attack led to my stomach strangling operation, and I lost 170 pounds. Now I am less than half myself, in more ways than one.

My name is Stevie Barrett.

This is a story of why I was the way I was and how I am now me.

I am going to plant a garden.

 

Not even the glass walls muffled the screaming and shouting.

I leaned back in my swivel chair, away from my computer, and peeked into the conference room as the words “You are a cold, frigid snowwoman” echoed out after the words “I would rather remove my toes with pliers than sleep with you one more time!”

Two seconds later, high-pitched shrieking mixed with a baritone shout. “Living with you is like living with Antarctica…. I can’t stand seeing your pinched-up, wrinkly prune face…. Move out of my house; you have poisoned it with your venom long enough…. You and your yellow teeth can shove it…. It’s not your house; I’ll burn it before you get it…. You are a mean, dickheaded prick with a small prick!”

Then there was a crash, which was a drinking glass hitting the glass walls of the conference room. I was quite surprised it didn’t shatter. I sprinted into the conference room as my boss, and the owner of this law firm, Cherie Poitras, grabbed her client around the waist, a woman dressed to the nines in high heels and a cream suit. The woman had actually crawled up on the conference table and lunged for her husband. Cherie and I wrestled her off, but not before the husband’s attorney put him in a headlock to keep him from strangling his soon-to-be ex-wife.

Even in a headlock, the husband, a local politician who stressed the sanctity of marriage and traditional values, struggled to get at his wife, his arms and legs flailing around and about like a trapped octopus.

I work as a legal assistant at Poitras and Associates. I work for Cherie Poitras directly and sometimes another attorney. I work with clients and witnesses, do a ton of legal research, write up documents, organize mountains of paperwork, summarize depositions, etc.

Sounds boring, but it’s often exciting.

Cherie Poitras is five feet nine inches tall and wears cheetah patterned/striped/shiny four-inch heels and therefore towers over most of the male attorneys in town. She’s very private, but from what I know she had a lousy childhood, grew up in Trillium River here in Oregon, and adopted four kids who had been abused. She loves a good fight, thrives off the law, and runs her firm like an honest, compassionate pit bull who must win every legal case no matter how hard she must bite. She is single, not surprisingly. How many men could handle Cherie? Not many.

Simply put: They’re not enough for her.

We have a classy sign in the entrance of our elegant entry with gold lettering. It says, “WELCOME TO POITRAS AND ASSOCIATES. WE’LL KICK SOME ASS FOR YOU.

Anyhow, we handle a ton of different legal work. Personal injury. Environmental. Insurance. And we also handle many of the city’s most spectacular divorces.

People spewing obscenities at each other, throwing things, and storming out is normal for our firm. We had one divorcing wife grab a knife out of her purse, stomp across the conference table, and try to stab her ex-husband. We had a shooting, husband at wife. He missed because Cherie tackled the husband. We’ve had fistfights between attorneys. Pencils and legal pads have been thrown, as has, one time, a small dog (dog wasn’t happy), a designer purse (blackened an eye), and a shoe (it was a Manolo Blahnik).

You want to see ugly? Become a divorce attorney.

“Hello, Stevie. Good of you to come help,” Cherie called out, her voice melodious, mellow, as she dragged her wriggling, livid client off the table. I grabbed the client around the waist, too, but she was strong and rage made her a madwoman with superhuman strength.

“Come on, Mrs. Leod, let’s go, please, let’s take a break,” I said. My black curls fell out of the bun I’d had them in as her hand swooped over the back of my head. “How about some coffee with fresh vanilla cream?”

“I am not going to take a break!” she screamed. “I don’t want fresh vanilla cream. I am going to put my hands around his chicken neck and squeeze until his tongue falls out!”

I remember seeing Mrs. Leod on television, standing beside her husband, chin up, the feminine moral authority, talking about “the alarming erosion of family values in our state.”

“If I have to run through all of our money, Frank, with legal fees, I’ll do it,” Mrs. Leod yelled. “In fact, if you don’t back off I think I’ll hold myself a press conference and tell them about the account in the Bahamas and your little dalliances into leather and whips—”

“Shut up, you stupid, prudish, witchly woman….”

They continued shouting at each other, full throttle, full blast. We got her off the conference table, and I fell to the ground, on top of Mrs. Leod, but that did not stop her impressive tirade. Cherie and her short, leopard-print skirt fell on top of me. “She’s a slippery little thing, isn’t she?” Cherie panted. “Get her legs. I’ll get her shoulders.”

I gave Cherie an exasperated look. Why did I have to get her legs? They were more dangerous than the shoulders. A knee caught me in the gut and I said, “Ooof.”

“I’ll buy you perfume and pretty lotions, Stevie. Now, hop to it.”

“Fine,” I huffed. We both chuckled, couldn’t help it.

The husband’s face was becoming a darker red, stuck in his headlock, but he was fighting like a furious four-legged octopus. I knew his attorney, Scott Bills. Scott had been in the army reserves for decades. If he had wanted to snap Mr. Leod’s neck, he could have, but neck snapping wasn’t on the agenda that day.

“Hello, Stevie,” he said to me, calm and friendly.

“Hello, Scott,” I said, trying to grab at Mrs. Leod’s legs, which were flailing around, kicking me, one heel flying off into the glass wall. Cherie was on the top half of the woman, who had well and truly lost her mind.

“Don’t think I won’t tell everyone about your secret credit cards and precisely how you used them in Vegas!” Mrs. Leod said. “You big-nippled pervert!”

The woman was a psychiatrist. What would she make of herself, I wondered.

“If I could get it at home, I wouldn’t get it there,” Mr. Leod said, voice hoarse from the headlock. “And talk about big nipples! I could land a plane on yours.”

Now that set our tiny she-devil off.

“How’s Jae?” I asked Scott of his wife. The she-devil hit me in the chin with a knee. “Now, Mrs. Leod…take it easy.”

Mrs. Leod was not in the mood to take it easy. “Do you know why I don’t want to have sex with you? It’s the size of your dick. It’s so small it couldn’t make a banana slug come.”

“Maybe it’s because you’re dry as a desert,” Mr. Leod said, sinking lower in Scott’s arms, his breathing labored. “It’s like having sex with sand!”

“You can’t turn me on, sandman! Sweaty, sticky hands aren’t sexy, Frank—not sexy. And you would know what it’s like to have sex with sand, wouldn’t you, because of the Maui trip you went on when you were supposed to be visiting your mother, the old fart!”

“Jae’s doing pretty good, Stevie,” Scott said, as if we were at a dinner party. “I’m taking her and the kids down to Long Shore this weekend. There’s a kite festival.”

“That sounds fun. The weather is supposed to be beautiful.” I dodged a flying foot.

“Screw you!” Mrs. Leod said, arching in her fury. “Screw you forever!”

“I don’t want to screw you,” Mr. Leod squeaked out, his face now an even deeper red. “You are a sick sorceress.”

A sorceress? Now that was clever. Me and Cherie exchanged another look.

“Hey, when is your annual dinner, Cherie?” Scott asked.

Cherie had a dinner every year, complete with a barbeque and a band to raise money for foster kids.

“October.” She shoved Mrs. Leod’s swinging arms back down as the woman spit out bad words through clenched teeth. “You and Jae better be there. And you, too, Stevie.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” Scott’s octopus client was struggling but losing steam, because he was having a problem sucking in enough air, his arms flailing. “Can I say, Stevie, without getting slapped with a harassment suit, that you are simply gorgeous?”

I couldn’t help but smile, even though Mrs. Leod’s knee caught me in the chest.

“I hate you, you happiness-sucking prune!”

“I hate you, too. Your evil spell over me is gone. Vannnisshhhheed!”

A spell? Cherie winked at me. It was so witchly here today.

“Thank you, Scott,” I said. “I appreciate it. I’m trying. Walking every day.”

“Doesn’t she look fantastic?” Cherie gushed, her perfectly polished nails holding Mrs. Leod down. “Gorgeous. Stevie, you are an inspiration to all of us.”

“You won’t get a dime of my inheritance,” Mrs. Leod hissed, her voice not quite as shrieky. I lay across her legs. “I curse you!”

“I earned that inheritance being married to you,” Mr. Leod said, in a whisper voice, his face flushed. That headlock was good! Not too much, not too little!

“Let me up!” Mrs. Leod yelled. “I will not tolerate this for one second loooonger!”

“Release me,” Mr. Leod hissed out, his neck in truly a bad position. “Reeeeleeasse me.”

“Not unless you promise you won’t try to decapitate your husband,” Cherie said, tone so mild, sweet even.

“I’ll release you, Frank,” Scott said. “But I can’t have you mangling your wife. It’s impolite.”

“This is none of your business!” Mrs. Leod shot out. “We demand that you let us go at once!”

“Stay out of this, Scott,” Mr. Leod said, his voice tiny.

“This is my business,” Cherie said. “No killings in Poitras and Associates. It’s a rule we have here. The blood makes a mess, and I won’t have anyone staining these new wood floors.”

“I don’t think I’m an inspiration,” I said to Cherie and Scott, still holding onto Mrs. Leod’s kicking legs. “My stomach has been squeezed into something the size of an egg. Gorging is now impossible no matter how much I want to shovel in chocolate cake. Buying clothes has also been a problem.” I exhaled. Mrs. Leod finally relaxed her murderous self a bit.

“I’m sure,” Scott agreed. “Every month you’re skinnier.”

Mr. Leod had finally collapsed, so Scott let him sink down to the floor.

“Easy does it,” he said to his client. The client fell straight back. Scott made sure he was breathing, then said, “Jae said the same thing when we ran into you downtown last week. She said, ‘Stevie Barrett looks terrific.’”

“I’ve told her not to lose one more pound. Not a pound. This is enough,” Cherie said. “Now, everyone, take a breath, relax. Deep breath in, deep breath out, breathe in, out…We’re not going to talk any further unless you two promise not to try to kill each other.”

Mrs. Leod was trying to catch her breath, still lying splat on the floor. “I want him dead. I want him to be a corpse.”

“Over my dead body,” her husband wheezed. “Over my dead body, you wicked warlock woman.”

“You are the spawn of the devil,” she said.

“You are the devil.” He coughed, inhaled. Our octopus had had enough.

“Remember, no killing in Poitras and Associates,” Cherie said cheerfully.

I eyed Scott from the floor, where I still held Mrs. Leod. “Lovely to see you.”

“And you, Stevie.”

“Do tell Jae I said hello.”

“I’ll do that. Have a great day, you two.”

“See ya, Scott,” Cherie said, then smiled.

We hauled Mrs. Leod up and out the door. She tried to jam herself in the door frame, legs and arms splayed out, but we wrangled her away and down the hall. She still managed to call out, “I hope your pecker dissolves, I do, you ball-less wonder!”

“She’s sure clever,” I said to Cherie.

“Absolutely. Have to admire the vocabulary.”

“Good-bye, sand pit!” Mr. Leod called, his voice scratchy. “You barren wasteland!”

Scott would remove his octo-client from our law offices when Cherie’s office door slammed shut.

They would meet again another day, if neither had gutted the other. Mr. and Mrs. Leod were still living in the same mansion in the hills, so who knew.

We left Mrs. Leod in Cherie’s office to cool off. She kicked the door. Three times. We had a temper-tantrum-throwing kid.

“Nothing like an acrimonious divorce to get the blood pumping, is there, Stevie?” Cherie smiled at me. We’d gone rafting last year for our firm’s party and paintball shooting another time to “relieve the stress of warring spouses.”

I smiled back. She is the best boss ever. Ever. And she loves a good fight.

“Nothing like it,” I agreed.

When I got back to my desk and my computer, I noticed that my hands were shaking. They’d started shaking after I’d lost about thirty pounds and have gotten progressively worse these last six months. There is nothing medically wrong, we’ve checked that out.

It is, as they say, all in my head.

As the weight came off, the shaking started, the memories unearthed themselves, the visions grew, and the nightmares throttled my sleep. One problem solved, another problem stalking me.

The vision of myself in the mirror was truly the most alarming. Why? Because she was there.

She scared me to death.

 

I live in a one thousand square foot house built in 1940. I painted it emerald green with white trim and a burgundy-colored door. It has a huge backyard with a good-sized deck under a trellis. Because of my trees, and the neighbor’s trees, it’s quite private. My house is on a quiet street fifteen minutes from Portland, with a white picket fence that I built myself. That’s Portland, Oregon, not Portland, Maine.

My home also has a detached garage, green with white trim. I have an obsession in my garage. It’s rather an embarrassing, colorful obsession, but that is a story for later.

I bought this one-story, peaked-roof house about eighteen months ago after living in a dingy studio in a sketchy part of town for about a year after The Escape and all the new guilt. The studio came complete with occasional gunfire, domestic disturbances, and exciting carjackings. I was robbed once; all they took was my jean jacket and my pink robe. I have no idea why they wanted a pink robe. I think they took it to punish me for not having anything better.

During those dark months I tried to recover emotionally and physically from the heart attack, my operation, and a couple of other heart wrenching things I don’t want to speak about.

This house, here in a funky, older, classy-hippie neighborhood called Newport Village, three blocks from a street of eclectic stores and coffee shops, was in foreclosure. To buy it I sold my car for a clunker truck I named The Mobster, because the previous owner probably could have been in the Mob, only without the dashing facial features.

I also sold my TV and a ton of stuff online, including some fat clothes, and used my savings from the divorce settlement for the down payment.

My house was in a pretty poor state of disrepair, like me, although the structure was intact, sort of like me. The first thing I did was put my hope chest in the attic. All the women in my family line have hope chests where they hide their secrets and preserve their treasures. When the woman dies, they’re handed down to the next generation. Opening the chest would unleash too many emotional ghosts, so I’ve left it shut since I closed it with trembling hands twenty-four years ago.

The second thing I did was replace the two toilets. I would have had the EPA at my house if I hadn’t.

The third thing I did? I took a sledgehammer, after talking to a contractor so I didn’t bash any wires or pipes, and I smashed three walls down inside the house. The first wall I smashed out was between the kitchen and dining room. Another was between the kitchen and family room, the third between the family room and a bedroom. I am not embarrassed to say that I swung that sledgehammer again and again, and swore, and yelled and cried, the drywall dust and wood splinters covering me.

Have you ever smashed a wall down? You should try it. There’s something so…fulfilling about bashing something, especially if every time that sledgehammer hits the wall you think of something, or someone, deep in your memories who hurt you or set afire an anger in your stomach you thought would burn you straight through.

I pounded the heck out of those walls.

By the time I was done destroying those walls, I could breathe a little better and my house seemed three times bigger.

Funny that.

A contractor cleaned things up and I had myself a home.

 

After battling only two hours of insomnia, I dreamed.

I dreamed of the cornfield by the Schoolhouse House. It was golden and warm, and I was running through it, Sunshine behind me. The corn formed a path and we followed it. Our stream flowed through it and we jumped over it, pink and green fish swishing below. The sky was blue, and a willow tree on the property rose in the distance, a tree house built on its strong limbs. We climbed the steps on the trunk and entered the tree house, with its yellow curtains and pink and yellow furniture. At a table there were two teddy bears in chairs, chatting, and we sat down to have a tea party.

I ate three white-and-pink-striped cupcakes, and then a door opened and Helen stomped in. She was hollering and wearing a bat with red eyes on her head. She ripped the heads off the talking teddy bears, then threw Sunshine out the window. Finally, she turned to me and said, “You’re next,” and she sat on my stomach. In my dream I struggled for air. I kicked, I fought, but her expression didn’t change. It was blank.

I woke up tangled in my sheets and sweating, and peered through the window at the dirt outside my house.

I cannot plant corn. I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked back and forth, feeling the air constrict in my lungs, my body tightening.

I cannot plant corn.

 

“Pssst. Pssst!”

I stopped on the steps of our office building in downtown Portland.

“Stevie! Right here!” My head swiveled around, stiffly, as I had apparently pulled myself into a pretzel while I slept, at least that’s how it felt.

“Are you blind?” the voice asked, sarcastic, disbelieving.

Aha. I knew that voice. I saw her head poke out around a pillar.

“Peekaboo, Zena Loo!” I called. “Why are you hiding?”

She made a face at me, rolled her eyes, sooo impatient.

I laughed when I saw her. It was glaringly apparent why Zena was hiding like a skunk in a log.

Zena, an overgrown Tinkerbell at a size 4, with a voguely cut wedge of black hair, was not dressed in appropriate professional attire for work as a legal assistant at Poitras and Associates. Tinkerbell was wearing a tiny black, slinky dress, plunging in front to show full cleavage, with four-inch black heels; a variety of chains, including one with a skull on it; and a black leather dog collar type of necklace with spikes. On her wrists were matching black leather dog collar bracelets.

She was also wearing something that resembled a plastic black snake winding up her leg.

“By golly gee, I don’t think you’re ready for work, Zena. Nice snake, though.”

“Funny,” Zena snapped. “Perhaps you’d enjoy taking the snake home to play with?”

“Do you have a leash to go with that dog collar?”

“You’re a frickin’ barrel of laughs, Stevie.” Zena is twenty-five but has lived through enough to be eighty. Her mother died of a drug overdose, and her father was in jail for aggravated assault and drug dealing. Her brother and she were split up when she was seventeen and he was twelve. At eighteen, she went to court and got full custody. They lived together from then on out. The brother, Shane, is a huge science nerd. He won the state, then national competition for his experiments with genes and DNA and something I still can’t understand, then received a full-ride scholarship to Stanford where he is majoring in biology and minoring in French. He adores Zena and calls her every day.

“You haven’t been to bed yet, have you?” I asked my snake friend.

She made an impatient clicking sound with her tongue. “If I had, would I be hiding behind a pillar waiting for you? Haven’t you ever been out dancing all night and then you check your watch and go, oh, shit, I have to be at work in fifteen minutes?” She tapped her heel.

“No. Never. Remember, I was huge until a little while ago.”

Zena rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I remember. Can’t forget that.”

I didn’t take offense. Zena was probably the only person in my life besides my cousins who didn’t treat me any different pre-and post-fat. She was sarcastic before and sarcastic after.

Zena tossed back her head. “Help me get dressed. I don’t want to give all the male attorneys and Caroline a boner when I walk in.”

“Do I have to?” I whined, knowing I would. I had done it many times in the past.

“Yes. No boners. Give me your coat.”

“Nope. No can do. This is my favorite.”

She tugged, I tugged back, she tugged harder, and I let her win. I mean, she was wearing a plastic snake!

She stuck her arms through the sleeves and flipped up the collar. The coat came down to midthigh on her.

“Give me your scarf.”

I sighed, pulled off my blue sparkly scarf. If I didn’t, she’d take it, strangling me if she had to. She tied it at her waist.

“Voilà! You have a dress,” I drawled.

She took off her chains and the skull and the metallic earrings that hung to her shoulders and shoved them in her purse. She took off the black dog collar, the black leather bracelets on her wrists with spikes, and the snake. Then she reached under my coat, pulled on the black straps of her dress and gave it a yank. She got an extra six inches of material at the bottom. She took out a comb to brush her hair, swiped on lipstick, popped in breath mints, and said, “Thanks, Stevie. Here we go.”

I was disgusted. She took my dreary corduroy coat and my sparkly scarf and transformed them into chic style. “I think I hate you today, Zena. No one who has been out partying all night should look that good. It should be illegal. You should be arrested.”

What was funny about Zena is that though she danced into the wee hours, she did not “do men.” No boyfriends, no lovers. She wasn’t into women, either. As she explained it, “When I meet a man I’m dumb enough to fall in love with, that’s when I’ll do him. Until then, no. They just fuck with your brains.”

The elevator swooshed up and I glanced in the mirrored walls, then quickly away. My blue eyes appeared tired, my black curls messy. I still had a hard time recognizing myself without that extra 170 pounds. I still moved as if I were heavy, giving myself extra space I didn’t need. I automatically cringed at the thought of airline seats and seat belt extensions, movie theatre seats, and chairs in general. And then I’d remember.

Zena linked an arm around me and smiled. Her smile is huge and takes up half her face. “I love you, Stevie.”

Damn.

I wiped at my tears. Zena is such a cool friend, and I am falling apart.

“Your mascara is smeared, Stevie. You’re a mess,” she said. She whipped out a tissue and cleaned up my face.

Yes, indeed. I am a mess.

 

“Steve, my office.” Crystal Chen stood next to me, her sharp red talons slashing through the air. She flipped her stick straight black hair behind her. “Now.”

I hated the way she instantly made me feel so nervous.

“Hello, Crystal,” Zena drawled. “How’s the stick up your ass?”

I coughed.

Crystal narrowed her eyes. “Shut up, you skinny pole with a head.”

Zena said, “That’s a good one. Creative. Accurate. Bet you’ve been up nights thinking of that one.”

Crystal flushed. “At least I’m not up nights with a cigarette in my hand staring out my grimy apartment window. Steve, now.” She turned away.

“Excuse me,” Zena said, quite loud, when Crystal was halfway down the hallway. “I don’t smoke, I dance, and prunes will help constipation, Crystal, don’t you worry. You’ll feel better in no time. Your colon is probably bursting with defecation.”

Crystal checked for other attorneys, saw none, then flipped Zena off.

Zena laughed.

Crystal and Zena don’t care for each other much.

Poitras and Associates is located in the second tallest building in Portland on the next to the top floor. We have spectacular views of the city, the hills west of Portland, the river, and the whole east side. We have about thirty attorneys, of all ages, colors, and cultures. Half are women. Our attorneys cost between $200 and $600 an hour. The lower end is for the newbies who are worked about fifteen hours a day, six days a week, slobbering with stress into their cereal each morning.

Crystal has been with the firm for six months and brought The Case That Will Rip Your Heart Out with her. I have no idea what Cherie was thinking when she hired her. None. She’s the only attorney I don’t want around me.

“Are you coming, Steve? Follow me,” Crystal said.

I traipsed behind Crystal into her office, much as a young girl in trouble would, my head sort of down, shoulders slumped. She has a view of Mt. Hood, the river, and a bunch of Portland’s bridges.

She sat down behind her huge desk, did not invite me to sit down, crossed her arms, then crossed her legs, her black four-inch heel swinging back and forth, and glared at me. Crystal wears $1,000 suits. This one was gray.

“I need to talk to you about the Atherton case, Steve.”

She did not call me Stevie. I had corrected her several times, but she didn’t listen. Re: I’m a nonperson.

“I will smash them to bits,” she muttered.

The Atherton case is The Case That Will Rip Your Heart Out. I hated that case. A boy, Danny Atherton, had a congenital heart defect and had been hospitalized for surgery at Harborshore Hospital. Now, all heart operations are serious, I get that, but this one was routine. Very routine. The doctors were going to fix it; the kid would be in and out, and back to playing baseball and reading about dragons, which he loved doing.

The operation did not have the intended results. In fact, Danny now spent most of his time lying in a hospital bed, unable to eat, drink, or pee on his own.

This fact was not in dispute: Danny was on a heart–lung bypass machine during the operation. His parents and their attorneys were asserting that the breathing tube attached to the ventilator was not inserted correctly by the anesthesiologist, which deprived Danny of oxygen.

The hospital was claiming that this type of operation could have adverse results, it certainly wasn’t because the boy was deprived of oxygen, the parents signed off on the procedure with the pages and pages of teeny tiny print, they had done their best, they’re doctors, not God, didn’t Mr. and Mrs. Atherton know that, stupid people, and no, they owed the boy nothing. Too bad, kid. Too bad for your parents. Not our problem.

Unfortunately, we were not defending Danny, his life reduced to mush, who was fed through a tube and couldn’t even think about playing baseball. We were not trying to get money for the Athertons to care for Danny, who had three other sons and a maxed-out insurance plan.

Nope. We were defending the hospital. Aggressively. Mercilessly. Without morals or ethics, as far as I was concerned.

“We must win the Atherton case, Steve. Win. Win. Win.” Crystal pounded a fist against her desk with each word. “The family wants ten million dollars.” She laughed. “For a kid. They say they need nurses around the clock. Hell, the mother’s at home. She’s a housewife. Broom, mop, laundry, that sort of thing. Eww. She doesn’t have time to take care of her own kid? She’s a hard-core housewife. Come on!”

Crystal spat that word out as if she was spitting out: Slimy vermin. Lazy loser. Bottom-dwelling infected crab.

I didn’t say anything.

“How much does it take to take care of a kid? They think they’re gonna win the lottery. I already met Mom. She’s fat. Frumpy. Dumb hairstyle, probably hasn’t changed it since high school. Dad’s a plumber. A plumber! They want money for life, for life, for this kid. Stupid.”

“But isn’t he going to need care for the rest of his life? He needs nurses, caregivers, he won’t be able to work, his mother won’t be able to go back to being a teacher, they have enormous medical expenses—”

She glowered at me, then slammed a pile of documents on her desk. “That’s not our problem. It’s not the hospital’s problem. They’re not responsible for every kid who was born with a problem with their heart. Don’t you get that, Steve?”

“Uhhh…”

“Uhhh.” Crystal mocked me.

I rolled my lips in. I was so uncomfortable around Crystal. I knew it was me, it was my lack of self-esteem, I got it. But she was awful. Zena called her a walking sexually transmitted disease, which I would never repeat aloud, because it’s rude to say that Crystal is an STD. Quite rude. So I won’t say, “Crystal reminds me, too, of an STD.”

“I need people on my team who are with me on this case. Are you with me, or not?”

I didn’t say anything. Didn’t matter. She was suddenly swearing at her cell phone, which had rung. She silenced it.

“Where is the deposition of Dr. Shintoleva?” she spat out, suddenly angry.

“I’ll get it for you and bring it in,” I said.

“Right away. I also need the deposition of that nurse. You know. The blonde who seems to hate me?”

Everyone hates Crystal. I nodded. “I’ll get that to you as soon as possible as well.”

“Sooner than possible, Steve, sooner than possible. We’re going to screw this greedy, plumber family with the housewife momma who was head of the PTA.”

She shook her head and put her skinny ankles back up on her desk so her soles were facing me. “Are you up to this, Steve?”

“Yes, I’m up to it but, Crystal…”

“What? What is it?”

I squared my shoulders. “Shouldn’t we settle this case? If it goes to trial—”

“If it goes to trial, and it won’t, but if it does, we’ll win. Sure, people are going to feel for the poor kid, but it’s not the hospital’s fault.”

Not the hospital’s fault? I had read what had happened in there, and I did not believe the hospital’s claim of a lack of culpability. I thought they were lying. The boy’s current condition was in line with an operation going haywire because of a lack of oxygen.

“You can go, Steve.”

I turned to leave, feeling sick. I did not want to be a part of this.

“One more thing,” she snapped, standing up, suddenly agitated. “Now remember what I told you a couple of months ago. Any piece of paperwork you see that you don’t understand, hand to me. There might be one letter, from a Dr. Dornshire to Charles Winston, who is, as you know, the president of the hospital. I want that e-mail.”

“Why don’t you ask Dr. Dornshire for it?”

“Dr. Dornshire no longer works for the hospital.”

“He doesn’t?” Dr. Dornshire was a doctor who apparently had entered the surgical room at the end part of Danny’s operation.

“Dr. Dornshire is now in his own medical clinic in Africa attending to starving or beat-up or depressed kids or something like that. Yuck. I could not stand being around all those poor people and the snakes and bugs and lions. Too hot, too. Anyhow, we can’t reach him. We tried. Can’t find him. He’s in the jungles, gone.”

There was something not right here.

“If you see the letter, hand it over pronto. You don’t even need to read it. Got that, Steve?”

“Got it.”

The vast majority of our cases are legitimate cases. Who we are defending needs defending for valid reasons. Or, you can at least make an argument that they should not be forced to pay the amount they’re being sued for. However, not this time.

“Good. Not too complicated, is it? You fully understand?”

“Yes.” I wished I didn’t sound so meek. I turned to leave.

“You can go now. I have important people to talk to right this second.” She waved her hand in front of her. Off you go, shoo fly, shoo.

Zena saw my face when I returned to our shared cubicle, and called down toward Crystal’s office, “Have you found the stick, Crystal? Keep searching! You might have to bend over!”

Crystal slammed her door.

Zena laughed.

 

Zena has a job at Poitras and Associates for life. Lawyers are always stopping by our cubicle and asking her for help, sometimes with white, pasty, panicked expressions on their faces.

“Zena, I forgot to file those papers on the Hubernach case….” Inhale, exhale. Pant, pant. “Any chance you did?”

Zena would nod and say, “It’s gonna cost you, you brainless wonder. Fifty-dollar coffee card.”

Or, “Zena, the federal case, the water thing, I didn’t call, oh, my God!” Hands to head, sweat dripping off nose. “I’m dead. Any chance that you—”

Zena would nod and say, “I did it, you lame-duck loser. Fifty-dollar coffee card.”

Zena bought us coffee every day. She had piles of cards.

But her photographic memory was what stunned everyone. “Zena, remember the Thompson case in eastern Oregon four years ago? What was the name of the neighbor we deposed after the lady with the fluffy red hair?”

Zena would know who it was, first and last name.

Or, “Zena, remember that pollution case? What was the name of the attorney who was handling the small claim with that business in Grants Pass and who was his client?”

She knew the name of the attorney, she knew the firm he worked for and the location, she remembered the claim and client.

She is one wild gal, mouthy and opinionated, and Cherie thinks she’s great. Secretly, outside of the office, those two are fast friends. That’s why Zena doesn’t usually work for Cherie directly.

“I’m going to get a huge pile of sticks and dump them on Crystal’s desk,” Zena said. “Then I’ll use the copy machine to take a picture of my butt and put that picture on top of the sticks. I think she’ll get it, don’t you, Stevie?”

I nodded. She’d get it.

Zena’s so darn funny.

Ashville, Oregon

Helen’s face ended up in my birthday cake.

As incidences with her went, it was rather mild.

The lights were off, candles were lit and, singing as the ex-Broadway star she had been, Helen brought the cake in from the kitchen. Sunshine, next to me, held my hand. She had given me a charm bracelet with a clover, cross, flower, dog, cat, house, and heart, “because I wuv you.”

I heard the girls around me catch their breaths because Helen was so beautiful. She was wearing a red, silky dress over her slim figure, her golden hair swept up in a chignon, and her pearls. The only thing out of place was her boots.

“Happy birthday to you…”

Her black rubber gardening boots, which she always wore, were wrapped with chicken wire to “catch the voices” that spoke to her. “They’re so damn loud,” she’d told me. “I have to turn them down. They’re screaming at me on microphones. And they’re spying on me. Do you see them spying?”

Grandma and Grandpa watched Helen like hawks. She had insisted that she be the one who brought me my cake, in a treasure chest shape and filled with gumdrops. The day before the party she had a meltdown and told them she knew they were part of the “plot” to keep her from the cake.

“You’re spies. I know you are. Cake spies. Turn that Lerblomerbing off,” she’d commanded, pointing at the TV. “That’s how they get to me.”

Grandma turned the TV off, flicked her long white curls over her shoulder, and continued baking my cake in her cowboy boots, pausing only to help Helen readjust the tin foil crown she’d made herself.

“Happy birthday to you…” Helen’s voice soared and dipped.

Helen had sung so beautifully in high school that people from all over the state came to see our town’s musicals. She single-handedly funded the drama program, basketball, band, choir, track, volleyball, cross-country, cheerleading, soccer, and various clubs at school.

She had gone to an Ivy League college on full scholarship, then had spent four years on the stage in New York City, singing to packed houses in musicals that always had to extend their runs. As Grandma told it to me, Helen came back home when she walked onstage wearing her blue fuzzy pajamas. She had refused to get into her Egyptian costume. Her singing was incredible until Momma took her pajamas off onstage and sang naked.

Some would say the performance became better after that, but the newspaper reporters spoke of a “total nervous breakdown” and “the loss of one of America’s most promising singers,” and, less articulately, “She is outrageously crazy.”

The promising singer, who was pregnant at the time with me, ended up in a straitjacket that night. Weeks later, Grandma and Grandpa were able to take her home from the hospital with a nasty label attached to her: schizophrenia.

“Happy birthday, dear girl….”

Helen put the chocolate treasure chest right in front of me, the candles flickering. She sang full throttle, raucous, clear, with a long trill at the end, then burst into a Broadway song that had all my girlfriends giggling, but my smile froze on my face. Helen was on new medications but they sure weren’t helping, as u. . .