Girl in the Mirror (31 page)

Her heart sank and she slumped in the chair. Oh, God, no, she thought, bringing her hand to her jaw. Did that mean she’d have to go through still another surgery to fix up her face? She never wanted to go through that kind of pain again. Or to smell the inside of a hospital again, or to feel that groggy, nauseating dizziness of the recovery room. And how was she going to get the surgery done without telling Michael?

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this.”

“No, not at all,” she replied slowly, letting it all sink in. She was having a hard time articulating words beyond a whisper. “Thank you, Dr. Navarro. I’m—I’m grateful you found the cause of all my complaints. Really. I’ve been led to believe my symptoms were all in my head.”

“I admit, at first I was skeptical. Many of the illnesses and abnormalities reported with implants are anecdotal in nature. Nonspecific. In your case, it is clear the symptoms are real.”

“But—” she stroked her chin, putting together what she’d heard “—there’s one thing I don’t understand. If I’m having a rejection of these implants, what will they replace them with? I mean, are there several different kinds of implants?”

Dr. Navarro looked at her with a puzzled expression, then it changed, slowly, as his brows closed together. He drummed his fingertips together.

“I think perhaps you don’t understand,” he began, shaking his head regretfully. “The implants…They cannot be replaced.”

Charlotte blinked, uncomprehendingly. Surely she’d not heard right. “They can’t be replaced,” she echoed in a hoarse voice.

“No. It is most unfortunate.”

Her world was slowing, slowing, grinding to a halt. This wasn’t real. She was in shock. Numb. She looked around the room, moving her head with an effort.

“What if I don’t do it?”

He drew himself up in his chair and looked her straight in the eye.

“You must understand, Miss Godfrey. High titers of antipolymer antibodies seem to correlate with greater severity of immune disorders.”

“How severe?”

“These disorders get progressively worse.” He paused.

“They can be fatal.”

“No. There must be some mistake,” she said in a dazed voice.

“I’m sorry.” Navarro sighed with sympathy and shifted in his seat. “This reaction isn’t true for everyone. It is, in fact, rare. What you must understand is that in
you
it is clearly life threatening.” He cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Let me speak plainly. Miss Godfrey, if you don’t remove the implants, it is my opinion that you will get progressively ill. This is life threatening.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You aren’t even a plastic surgeon! I’m going to see Dr. Harmon.”

“You should. As soon as possible.”

“He’ll tell me you’re wrong. He’ll fix it.”

“Miss Godfrey,” he began, tapping his fingertips together. “I’ve run several tests. There is no doubt. Dr. Harmon, any doctor aware of the facts, will corroborate what I am saying to you. I know this is difficult to hear and even more difficult to accept. But I don’t want you to leave with any misunderstandings.”

Panic began to grow in her gut as the possibility that what Navarro was saying might be true. In his white coat, sitting back in his chair, steepling his fingers with authority, he sounded too sure.

“If they are removed…” she began, thinking the impossible. “What happens to my jaw? To my face? What will I look like?”

“I can’t really say.” He looked uncomfortable and shifted in his seat. “I don’t know the extent of your original surgery.”

“If the implants are removed, then what will happen to my face?” she repeated with urgency.

“You should really talk to Dr. Harmon about these details.”

“What…would…happen…to…my…face?”

“I…” He spread out his fingers and looked at them, and she felt as though her last shred of hope slipped through them. “I imagine your face, your jaw, would be as before the surgery.”

She felt as though he’d just dumped a bucket of cold water over her. No, it couldn’t be true. Her breath shortened. She felt a cold clutch in her heart, felt the little bird flutter and die, the breath squeezed out of it.

But death would have been too easy. She had to live through this.

B
obby drove home from Xavier Navarro’s office with none of his usual reckless speed. He took the numerous sharp curves and angled slopes of the mountain roads with care, not wishing to cause Charlotte any more discomfort than she already felt. He’d been worried about her even before they’d arrived for her appointment. Seeing her ashen face and wild-eyed stare as she walked out of his office however, he knew it was time for action.

He disguised his alarm with his customary detached humor, trying to bring Charlotte out of her desultory silence. Nothing was working. She stared ahead at the road with eyes that seemed to see nothing. Her responses were brief, noncommittal, strained. Finally, Bobby was at his wit’s end. His self-confidence was shattered. There was nothing left but to be honest.

“All right, Charlotte, I confess, I can’t stand this another moment. I’m a curious creature. I adore secrets and am very good at keeping them, especially if I like the person, and you know I’d do anything for you.” He was gushing; his hand was lifting from the steering wheel, punctuating his remarks. “You’ve obviously had some bad news and I want to help. No, make that I need to help. I simply can’t sit here and watch you suffer in silence a moment longer.”

Charlotte turned her head. Then to his surprise, she said, “Yes, I need to talk to someone, and I think, yes, you are the very one I should talk to.”

He felt momentarily giddy with self-satisfaction. A rush of gladness that not only would she confide in him, but that he was, for the first time in many months, needed by someone. He vowed he would not fail her.

“I know just the place to talk. It’s on our way home. A sorry little café. The food is simply awful, but it has marvelous views of the valley, and what harm can they do to a bottle of good champagne?”

“I don’t feel like celebrating.”

“Champagne is not just for celebrating,
querida.
The bubbles loosen the tongue and lift the spirits. We shall go, look at the mountains, have our drink, and then you will cry on brother Bobby’s shoulder.”

Charlotte smiled, albeit weakly. He turned his head quickly back to the road. He didn’t want her to know that he’d seen the sheen of tears glistening in her brilliant blue eyes.

Later in the café, they sat at a table by the window, watching the sun lower into the valley. As the shadows deepened in the darkening room, Bobby watched Charlotte’s face as she talked about her love for his brother Michael. A myriad of emotions flickered over her lovely features as rapidly and unpredictably as the light of the candle stuck in the wine bottle on the table. She talked on and on about how she had never, even in her most secret dreams, ever believed that someone like Michael would ever love someone like her.

While she talked, Bobby listened patiently, knowing that she had to get through this prologue before she began the heart of her story. As the sun disappeared and the candle sputtered lower, however, her story began to take a turn. She clutched the stem of her glass tightly, holding her lips tighter still as she paused and collected herself. Bobby sat up in his chair, moved his glass aside and leaned forward.

“When I was young,” she began, looking off into the distance, “they used to call me Charley Horse….”

She watched him while she told him about her childhood. His eyes widened when she described how she was chased home by boys with sticks and, later, ridiculed by strangers on the street. He sat back in his chair with astonishment while she described how Dr. Harmon had cracked her jaw and rebuilt it, using her own bone and the implants to extend her jaw and chin. When she told him what Dr. Navarro had just finished telling her, she knew he believed her.

She imagined she was telling the story to Michael, and gauged Bobby’s responses carefully. When she finished and his eyes softened with pity and total acceptance and love, she broke down. She didn’t dare hope for this much.

“Why me?” she cried, bringing her face to her hands.

“Why couldn’t this have happened when I was old? I wouldn’t care so much then.”

“Oh, sure you would have. Beauty is never something one wants to lose. At any age, darling.”

She dropped her hands and spread them on the table. Her anger flashed in her eyes. “What the hell does Navarro know? He’s just some small town doctor. He doesn’t even know what tests to order.”

“He’s very intelligent, Charlotte. He is well respected, does immense research at the medical school. If he’s told you to have the implants removed, then I’d believe him.”

“You’d believe anything he said because he’s your healer,” she shot back, cornered. “You’re too afraid to think that his herbs and treatments won’t heal you.”

Bobby fingered his wineglass. “I do think the herbs are helping,” he said softly. “But I know they won’t heal me.”

The guilt hit her full force. “I’m sorry, Bobby. Forgive me. I’m lashing out. I’m just so afraid.”

“Of course you are. So am I.” He leaned closer. “I love great art above all things,” he said slowly. “I understand what a master this Dr. Harmon must be, and what a disaster it will be to destroy his masterpiece.” He lifted his shoulders, draped in his raffish suit. “But you have to do it,” he said, raising his eyes to meet hers steadily. “It is, after all, only your face. It isn’t your life.”

“Isn’t it?”

“How can you ask that?” He appeared flustered, tapping his fingertips rapidly on the table in the same manner Michael might have.

“Michael,” she replied. “How can I tell him about this? He loves my face.”

“He loves
you,
” Bobby said fervently. “You can’t separate the two.”

“You don’t know how I looked. You can’t imagine.” She shook her head, bringing shaky fingers to her temples.

“I wasn’t just some lady looking for a chin-lift. I had a real deformity. Ugly, Bobby. There’s no other word for it. Ugly.”

He blinked slowly, trying to comprehend. “It’s hard to imagine. That under that gorgeous face…”

“Exactly. I see how you’re looking at me now. Trying to imagine. It’s like I’m wearing some kind of mask. I know, you see, because I did it, too. When I looked in the mirror. That’s how I know how hard it is not to feel that this face is something unreal. That I’m not real.”

“But you said yourself you got used to it.”

Her heart was in her throat, and she had to swallow hard. She suddenly remembered what it was like, when people at other tables stared at her, not with admiration as they did now, but with a perverse pity, as they would at any freak.

“You have no idea what it’s like to be grotesquely ugly, to suffer, and to somehow accept it. Then to be given a second chance. To suddenly be beautiful, more beautiful than you’d ever dared hope. Only to have it all taken away. In one day. To be told, Sorry, it’s all over now. It was just a dream after all—only now you don’t want to wake up. You don’t know what that’s like, Bobby. You can’t…”

“Charlotte, listen,” Bobby broke in, squeezing her hands. “Listen. Beauty isn’t about faces. People I’ve loved, handsome, healthy men…. I’ve seen them shrink before my eyes. Their beautiful faces scarred by disease, gnarled and pale. They were devastated. But to me, they were still beautiful. I didn’t desert them because their faces had changed.”

“Michael couldn’t love me like
that.
”

There. She’d said it. She’d voiced her worst fear. Losing her beauty was one thing. Losing Michael was far worse.

“He could. Loving someone, as Michael loves you, goes beyond the face.” He smiled gently now. “You won’t lose him. He understands how hard this will be for you, especially knowing all you’ve been through already.”

“He doesn’t know,” she said, feeling sheepish. “You see, I’ve never told him about the surgery. About all this. The time was never right. And then, well, it just became too late.”

Bobby’s brows gathered and he brought his coupled hands to his lips in thought. “He doesn’t know? Any of this? The surgery, the deformity…”

She shook her head. “None of it.”

Bobby’s enthusiasm wavered, striking new fear in her own resolve.

“He’ll be angry that you didn’t tell him.”

“Lied to him.”

“You didn’t lie.”

“Not telling the truth is a kind of lie.”

Bobby frowned and looked away. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make comparisons.”

“We both know that,” he said, brushing off the apology. He thought a moment longer, looking at the last of the candle sputter at the mouth of the wine bottle. Then he looked up again, full of resolve. “Tell him. Soon. Tonight. If you delay, it will make him even angrier. It will appear that you’ve held back because you didn’t trust him.”

“I’m so afraid.” Her eyes were wide. “If he rejects me, I couldn’t bear it. I’d die anyway.”

“He won’t. Look at how he’s been with me.” His voice trailed away. “He’s sold his condo in Chicago, given up everything, to pay for my medication. To stay with me. Sure, I’m his brother. And he loves me, unlovable as I may sometimes be.” He glanced at her sideways, a devilish humor in his eyes. Then the serious intensity returned and he leaned forward over the table.

“Would he do less for you? I ask you, Charlotte. Give Michael the respect he deserves, the trust. Allow him to show you how much he loves you. After all, every man likes to think of himself as a knight in shining armor. Let Michael be yours. Tell him the truth.”

Charlotte saw the light of appeal burning in his eyes, saw the light of the candle, shining brightly despite so little wax left to burn, and felt the first glimmerings of hope spark within her. Could it be possible that now, when all the other dreams—her beauty, her career as an actress—were crumbling around her, her greatest dream of all would be realized? That the dream, buried so deep she dared not even write it on a piece of paper, might come true. The one that she’d abandoned that fateful winter night in a Chicago garage.

That someday, someone could see beyond her face and love her for who she was inside.

Later that night, Michael returned home late from a site visit, his face flushed with excitement. He grabbed her close, swatted her behind and kissed her soundly.

“Made a big sale,” he said, pouring himself and her a glass of champagne from the bottle that he’d brought home.

“I sold not only a landscaping job, but an addition for the house as well, one that would overlook the garden I’m designing. It’s like everything is coming together for me, at last. The house and the garden, together. I can do both.
Both!
Do you see what that means to me? It’s like a great circle. I’m finally old enough to see all the work I’ve done in the different areas of my life merge together. It’s so much better. Ha! I’d never have believed that growing old could be so exciting.”

Her heart broke seeing him so happy. Please, God, she prayed. Please don’t let me ruin this. Let it be all right. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the pain of her prayer tight in her chest. She made a quick sign of the cross, then served her dinner.

She’d prepared his favorite meal especially for him—shrimp in a mole sauce, the way his mother taught her to make for him, a fine Montrachet wine, lemon ice to cool the palate.

While they ate, he leaned over the table to kiss her. He was feeling the wine, she knew. His eyes glassed over, his touches grew more frequent, more urgent. As the candles burned low, she was reminded of her conversation with Bobby earlier that afternoon.
Give Michael the respect he deserves, the trust. Tell him the truth.

The Mozart that Michael loved filled the room. They were like teenagers, necking at the table while the lemon ice melted in the bowls. In the heat of their passion, he grabbed her hand and led her to the next room, to their four-poster bed. Laying her down on the sheets, he began making sweet, gentle love to her. She moaned, exploding in a need one step removed from desperate. There was a blackness inside of her she was digging her way out from, a swirling darkness that she climbed steadily to escape. Kissing, clutching, they rolled back and forth on the crumpled sheets, growing so blinded by their individual passions that they lost sight of each other.

She pulled back then, climbing to her knees, drawing him up before her. Their arms around each other, she looked at him, a mere outline in the darkness. So she traced his face steadily with her fingertips, over his broad forehead, his high cheekbones, his straight nose, his full lips. Sharp, strong lines.

He imitated her movements, tracing her face. A calm settled on them and they hugged. They rocked gently now, back and forth. No kissing. No more caresses. Just a deep clinging. This was, she felt, what she needed most from Michael. This spiritual, ancient rocking.

The lovemaking that followed was tender, unusually sensitive and fulfilling. Afterward, she lay on his chest, feeling the lift and drop of his breathing, hearing the rumble of his body beneath her as they cooled.

“My dragon,” she whispered.

“My Charlotte,” he replied.

Her breath caught in her throat and she realized that all of her earlier intoxication was gone. She was completely sober now. She was Charlotte Godowski. That was who she had to tell Michael Mondragon all about.