Lauren Baratz-Logsted - A Little Change of Face

Pam, of course, had never been narrow-minded about my career choice. No, in Pam’s case—Pam, who really was a lawyer—it was downright hostility.

“You have a great brain, Scarlett. So what if your breasts get in the way a little bit? You could do what I do.”

Duh.

(Sometimes, I can’t believe I’m thirty-nine and still saying “duh.”) “Okay, so maybe you couldn’t do exactly what I do— I mean, with those breasts, you could hardly be in litigation—but you could certainly be a tax attorney. Hell, if you became an entertainment lawyer, you’d probably clean up!”

I didn’t even want to know what she meant by that.

“Really, Scarlett, I’m sure that if you just put your mind to it, you could become one of us.” The “us” referring to Pam herself and T.B. and Delta, the two other women that made up our quadrangular friendship.

“I suppose I could,” I conceded, “except for one small fact.”

“That being?”

“I’m not one of an ‘us.’ I’m one of a ‘me.’”

“So you say. I just think it’s a shame that you feel the need to waste this brain that God gave you.”

I tried the same not-a-crack-dealer line I’d used on my mother, but Pam wasn’t having any.

“It’s a waste, Scarlett, I don’t care what you say, it’s a waste. Locking that mind of yours away in a library is like winning the lottery and then just putting it all in the bank for the rest of your life, it’s like some kind of brain-cell chastity or something.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t get defensive. But, I mean, come on. Wouldn’t you like to find out what you could really become in life, if you weren’t so downright weird about the career world taking you at breast-face value?” Then she’d given a heavy sigh. “You’ve always been so pretty, though, with everything handed to you because of it—why would you ever have to know what it’s like to have to maintain the drive to go after something in life and earn it on sheer merit alone?”

You’re probably wondering right around now just exactly why this woman, this woman who could be considerably more hostile than she’s being here, was considered by me to be my best friend. Well, I did feel sorry for her a lot, and she did have some endearing qualities that are perhaps not so easy to see.

Plus, when I’d first met her and T.B. and Delta, Pam had made a point of—no other word for it—courting me. Like a second-string center on the football team with broken black glasses held together by masking tape, Pam had called and e-mailed me virtually every day, as though hoping to win a date for the prom. Finally, the will in me crushed under a deluge of daily questions along the lines of “So, what are you making for dinner tonight,” I’d caved and, muttering “uncle” under my breath, conceded, “Okay. Fine. You can be my best friend.”

Actually, though, Pam was my default best friend. But, like my breasts, that would take a lot of explaining, far too much explaining for right now.

So there I was, on a lovely Wednesday in July, hiding in plain sight behind the reference desk at the Danbury Public Library. I’d just dispensed with a patron who wanted books on pursuing a writing career, having led her to the 888s, and was hoping to sneak in a couple of reviews in the latest Publishers Weekly, which had just arrived. Besides, all working and no sneak-reading make Scarlett a very dull librarian. But this was not to be…

“Excuse me?”

“Hmm…?” I stashed the PW away. Damn! I was never going to learn what it had to say about the latest Anne Perry.

The excuser was a harried-looking woman, around my age, with a toddler in a stroller and a girl in tow. The girl looked to be about ten years old, her black hair cut in an old-fashioned pageboy that would have been more suitable on a woman sixty years ago than on a young girl today. Despite that handicap, you could tell she had pretty-potential, what with her warm brown eyes and wide smile, whenever she forgot to be self-conscious and just let one rip. More hampering than the hair was a mild case of premature acne. Poor thing. She was probably going to get breasts early, which would lead to much teasing at school from both the nonbreasted girls and the prepubescent boys, something I knew much about. Any day now, she’d have too much hair on her legs, her mother wouldn’t let her shave yet, and the other kids would all start calling her Monkey. I was sure of it.

Harried Mom put her hand proprietarily on the girl’s shoulder. “Sarah here needs to get some books from the summer reading list.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Much better than waiting until the end of summer like so many of the kids and then having to cram it all in at the last minute. Just go upstairs to the Juvenile Library—”

“Oh, no.” Harried Mom cut me off. “I want you to recommend specific titles from the list.” She handed me the list. “I don’t want her reading just anything.”

“Yes, but upstairs—”

“Please?” she pressed, then she looked up at the sign over my head: Information Desk—Reference. “This is what you’re here for, isn’t it?”

Well, she kind of had me there. Although I still would have said that upstairs was where she should go for help.

I looked at the list. “Well,” I said, “you can never go wrong with A Separate Peace or The Great Gatsby.”

“She needs to read three,” Harried Mom said.

“Well, then, how about the Harry Potter, too? Might as well, if they’re going to put it on the list….”

“Thank you,” Harried Mom enthused, as though I’d just done her a great favor.

Just then, the girl coughed.

“Cover your mouth, Sarah,” Harried Mom admonished. Then she turned to me with an embarrassed smile. “Sarah’s just getting over the chicken pox, but she just can’t seem to shake that cough.”

“The chicken pox?” I took an involuntary step backward.

“Oh,” Harried Mom pooh-poohed as she headed off with her kids for the double doors that would lead her upstairs to the Juvenile Library, “she’s not contagious anymore. And, besides, hasn’t everybody had the chicken pox already?”

No. Not everybody.

About fourteen days after Sarah coughed in front of me, I developed a fever, along with an all-over achy feeling as though I’d spent the night in the ring with the WWF. At first, I thought it was the summer flu. Having not used any sick days yet that year, I called in three days straight at the library. That’s when the spots began to appear.

I’d never been troubled with acne when I was younger. And, yes, I do know that that’s another one of those statements that could make some people hate me. But it’s true. All through junior high and high school, I could barely buy a zit to save my life. Except for the occasional one or two around my period, I was blemish free. How odd then to suddenly be seeing spots at nearly forty. Could my period be due again so quickly? I wondered, studying the spot on my cheek, the one on my forehead.

But then, as the hours went on, and one day turned into the next, I developed more spots on my face…and a few on my neck…and then on my chest.

I called my doctor’s office in a bit of a panic; don’t ask me why, but I was certain I had the measles.

The receptionist at Dr. Berg’s office was very accommodating when I told her I thought I had the measles, saying that he could see me that afternoon. Since it was usually necessary to call two to three months in advance to get a regular visit with the most popular doctor in the city, and even the average garden-variety emergency complaint still required at least a one-day wait to get seen, I recognized how seriously she was taking my spots. The appointment slot I was given was the first after the lunch break, presumably so I wouldn’t infect a bunch of other patients in the waiting room.