Writers & Lovers(31)

I’m proud of this card, though, and relieved that I can now afford to get a few things checked out. I have a mole that’s changed hue and my period is a lot heavier and more painful than it used to be. I haven’t seen a doctor in five years, since grad school when I last had coverage.

They make me see a GP first, to get the referrals.

Everything is pointy. When he looks in my eyes he says my eyeballs are pointy. And when he looks in my ears he says the bend in my ear canal is pointy.

‘I feel like a badly drawn cartoon,’ I tell Harry afterward.

Next is the dermatologist who has skin the color of quartz, without a freckle or a mole. I don’t understand how he has led such a sunless life. This makes me ashamed of my skin, which I burned and blistered religiously in the summers of high school, convinced that a tan would get me a boyfriend in the fall, which it never did. Golf didn’t help, either, all that time beneath a strong sun in Georgia or California in sleeveless shirts and no visor. I hated visors.

I thought I could just show him the mole on my arm, but he has me lie on my stomach beneath a series of hot bright lamps. He lifts the blue johnnie to my neck. He does not conceal his disapproval. He huffs and clucks and tsks. He picks at something on my shoulder blade and brings his magnifying cylinder down on it. He pokes at it again and moves on, down my back and legs, picking and scraping all the way. He has me roll over. He uncovers me again. It goes on for a long time, his examination of the front side. He puts his tool on my forehead, temple, chest, arms. He zooms right in on the weird mole and spends a while with it, then moves to my stomach and leg, taking great interest in my calves and even a big toe.

He gives me a lecture about SPFs and how I could never go out in the sun unprotected again. He tells me I should have listened to my mother when I was younger. I don’t tell him that my mother taught me everything I knew about frying my skin with baby oil and tinfoil reflection.

He says he needs to biopsy three moles and steps into the hallway to signal to his assistant.

‘Today?’ I ask when he comes back in.

But he is already laying scalpels on a tray.

I leave the office with three gouges, stitched up with stiff black wire. He’ll have the results by Friday, he tells me.

At the gynecologist, lying on the table is painful because two of the gouges are on my back. The doctor was listed on the printout as Fran Hubert, who I assumed would be a woman, but it was a typo. His name is Frank. Unsurprisingly, the Pilgrims don’t have many female doctors to choose from.

The doctor inserts the speculum slathered with a cold gel. He has a shiny bald head with big discolored moles that Dr. Dermatologist would not believe.

‘So, you’re a writer.’ He widens the speculum by turning some knob and it feels like a sudden period cramp. He peers in. I feel like a car being jacked up for a tire change. ‘What’ve you published?’

‘Nothing really. A short story in a small magazine a few years ago.’

He’s not really listening. He unwraps a long Q-tip and inserts it. ‘You have a pointy cervix.’

Fucking Pilgrims.

He pulls the Q-tip out and puts it in a plastic tube. ‘So, you gonna write the Great American Novel?’

I’m tired of that question. ‘You gonna cure ovarian cancer?’

He pulls the speculum out of me, and my insides deflate.

He sits back in his round swivel chair and looks me in the eye for the first time. ‘Touché.’

He tells me I’ll get the result of the pap in a few days. I forget to mention the heavy menstrual bleeding and the pain.

After dinner setup at Iris, Tony calls in an order to China Dragon, and Harry and I go to get it. They’re playing Duran Duran while we wait at the register and we do a little dancing and he spins me around and I wince and tell him about the wounds on my shoulder, my back, my leg.

‘You poor love,’ he says and gives me a gentle hug.

We belt out ‘My Name Is Rio’ on the way back, and when we get to the top of the stairs Marcus hands me a note that says: ‘Oscar called.’ No number. I’ve left his note back at home.

‘Did he say he’d call again?’

‘No.’

I head into the dining room, and Marcus calls me back. For some reason I think he’s going to tell me something more about Oscar, what he said or maybe what he’s like, tell me to stay away or go for it. Instead he says, ‘Whatever is going on under there needs to be covered up. It’s disgusting. You are officially on probation for grooming.’

In the wait station Harry has a look and explains that the Vaseline I have to put on my gouges has made greasy blotches on the back of my shirt through which you can see two bloody wounds and their black stitches. The dermatologist told me I could not cover them with Band-Aids, so we rig up a napkin under my shirt with some staples and eat our Chinese out on the deck. It’s only four thirty and the sun is high and warm, but you can tell it’s weakening, pulling away from us. We used to have to find shade out here at this hour.

Thomas opens the French doors. ‘Casey, line two.’

Harry trills, and Tony says, ‘What?’ And Harry says, ‘She’s got a man chasing her.’ And I say, ‘No, I don’t,’ and try to slow down my steps to the door. And Tony says, ‘I bet she has a hundred men chasing her.’ He’s a different guy without Dana around.