She barks out more instructions to move my arms up, down, to the side, this way, that way, behind my head, behind my back. She speaks fast, moves fast, shows impatience if I don’t understand or fail to obey immediately. I wonder if she treats all her patients so brusquely, and if the elderly man with the cane whom I saw in the waiting room will be subjected to this attitude. Why is she like this? What has annoyed her? Isn’t she too young to be burned out by the frustrations of treating recalcitrant patients? Hell, at her age, I still worked in a big architectural firm and dealt with office politics on top of a slate of difficult clients. I also developed a twitch in my eye and sleeping problems. Maybe she isn’t too young to be fed up.
When she sees how little mobility I have in my right arm, she says, “That’s a frozen shoulder, all right. Common in perimenopausal women. Are you doing stretching exercises for this at home?”
I have been stretching, though not as often as I should. When I admit this, Dr. Joan says, “You must do the exercises. I’ll give you a cortisone shot today, but you’re not going to get better unless you aggressively exercise that arm. Do that and your shoulder might be fully functional in a year. Don’t, and you won’t be able to unhook your bra with your right hand for two years. Got it?”
What I’ve got is a need to tell her to fuck off and drop the condescending tone. But I say, “I’ll sure try!” in the tone of a character from a Mickey Rooney–Judy Garland musical. Sure that Dr. Joan won’t recognize the reference or the sarcasm.
She prepares the needle, inserts the syringe into the vial of cortisone. “This may increase the pain over the next few days, but an over-the-counter pain reliever will help you manage as needed.”
If my life were a movie, Dr. Joan would prescribe me prescription painkillers that I would become addicted to over the next year until I screwed up the drawings for a project and caused the accidental death of a labourer on a contractor’s renovation crew. I would then be led off to rehab, if not also to jail for criminal negligence. With my career and life in ruins, my custody of Jesse would be handed over to my ex-husband, Henry, who would make him come live in New York, where Jesse would get lost in the big-city shuffle and not realize his promise as, as, well, as whatever it is he will become. All signs currently point to unemployed disc jockey, but if he lived with Henry, he wouldn’t even become that.
Dr. Joan swabs my shoulder, I look away, she pricks me with the needle. I grimace, not at the sting of the needle’s penetration, but at the drag when she pushes down on the syringe, when the tip stays under my skin and too slowly deposits its load. I want to bat the needle away, pull it out, make it leave. I want to expel it like I used to — in the dim past, when I was still having sex — want to expel a penis that had ejaculated inside me and lay there afterwards, heavy and still and unwanted. Or like a tampon. Out, out, damned anything and everything.
When I arrive home after the cortisone shot, my across-the-street neighbour, Vera, is in her front garden in full gardening garb, rubber clogs, wide-brimmed hat, and all, kneeling on a garden mat. Like all the lots in our downtown neighbourhood, on our narrow street, hers is on the small side, but over the five decades she has lived here, she has transformed the fenced-in plot into a lovely English garden, a profusion of colourful flowers.
Since Vera’s husband died five years ago, she’s forged on alone, filled her days gardening, walking, doing volunteer work at a hospital, and hosting family get-togethers on holidays for her far-flung adult children and her grandchildren. I admire her bravery and pluck, and she’s a good neighbour, so when she halloos me, I go over to make social pleasantries of the sort I generally try to avoid.
A minute into our chat, she says, “Remember that real estate agent I told you about a while back, the one who was pestering me about listing my house? He came around to see me again today. His clients have their hearts set on moving into the area, and he wanted to know if I’d thought any further about selling.”
“Have you?” I don’t want Vera to move away — I like having a pillar of the block nearby, a reliable source of neighbourhood memory, someone who can recall the year that the hundred-year-old elm tree that once graced my property fell down and crushed two cars parked on the street, someone who refers to the twenty-year-old maple planted in its place as a sapling.
“I hadn’t, not seriously,” she says, “not until he showed up today with a bouquet of flowers.”
I gesture to her garden. “That was a bit of coal to Newcastle, wasn’t it?” One of my mother’s old expressions, that one, that I wouldn’t use with anyone but Vera.
“I suppose so, but he meant well. And he brought me spring flowers — tulips, which made me think about how long and cold the winter will be.”
“The winter will be long and cold, but moving away — and where, to a condo? — would be such a radical step. You’d have no garden then. And I’d have no nice neighbour to call when the power is out or I’ve lost my keys.”
“I’d miss you too, dear,” she says, a little perfunctorily. “But every so often, radical steps need to be taken in life, don’t you find? Why, twenty years ago, when I started menopause, I was hit so hard with the hot flashes and the insomnia and the night sweats and the mood swings that I had to develop a whole new daily routine to cope. I had to change everything!” She eyes my sallow skin and slouched posture. “You must be about menopausal age now. Has yours started yet?”
I stand up straight. “Not yet.” Except, possibly, for the mood swings.
“Well, good luck with it when it comes. Menopause will make moving house look like a piece of cake.”
Yeah, I can’t wait.
I go inside my house and spend an hour at my office desk doing paperwork. I would like to stay put and eat my usual salad for lunch, have my usual nap, but at twelve-thirty I force myself to put on my architect attire (dressy daytime version) and drive off to a luncheon at the home of a client named Suzanne.
The full-scale restoration of Suzanne’s Queen Anne Revival house in midtown was completed a few weeks ago, Suzanne is still speaking to me, and she has invited me and her socialite/charity volunteer friends over to lunch to celebrate. My lack of keenness to attend is due to my nap longings, my disinclination to small talk, and because Suzanne is a young (early thirties), sophisticated, wealthy, and unfailingly nice woman who has so far proven herself incapable of an honest or discouraging word. Throughout our working relationship, from her mouth came a string of platitudes and graciously worded comments that were awe-inspiring in their consistency and in their apparent — because who can talk like that all the time and mean it? — falsity. Our professional time together was smooth and stress-free, but I don’t trust her sincerity for a second. I’m waiting for the real Suzanne to emerge, when she decides that the ground floor flow is off, or the stair riser height too high.
I’ll endure this lunch in order to maintain good customer relations in the hope of future referrals. Also because the other guests are potential clients, the food will be precious and tasty, and my interior designer friend and collaborator Danny will be there, to deflect attention from me and rightfully take praise for the way the house now looks — classy, elegant, and accessible. Like Suzanne, except for the accessible part. She moves in the rather restricted circles in which she met her husband, a junior scion of a wealthy family whose surname is known even to allergic-to-society me. A surname Suzanne has, of course, taken as her own.
I ring the bell and am admitted by Suzanne’s eldest child, a tow-headed girl of about age five, name of Tory, dressed in a balletic getup, complete with dollar-store tiara on her head. Tory is louder in voice and plumper of body than I imagine stick-thin, perfect-complexioned, artfully highlighted blonde Suzanne would like her to be, though I am impugning Suzanne to say so. She has never given me any indication of dissatisfaction with Tory’s look and attitude, has always spoken to her and of her in loving and affectionate tones. Maybe she’ll slip up today.
Within my immediate view on entry is an arty and lavish flower arrangement — sent