Melusine

Tessa Dratt

About Face

On my fifty-seventh birthday in September of 2000, I announced to my husband that I wanted to have a face- lift.

“Oh please, Tessa. You don’t need it,” he said.

“Of course I need it!” I grimaced to emphasize my facial lines, pointing out one by one, and once again, all my imperfections.

“Sweetie, please. Don’t mess with nature.”

“People are always messing with nature. It’s part of life. Seriously, Arnie. I really want this.”

“I love the way you look.”

“Then you’ll love me even more when I look better.”

And that was that. The man didn’t have a chance.

Due Diligence

“If we knew what we were doing it wouldn’t be research.” – Albert Einstein

I began my research and it was thorough. From friends, acquaintances, doctors and other medical professionals, I gleaned the names of those plastic surgeons in the Chicago area with the best reputations and finally narrowed the list down to four. I booked appointments for one consultation a week during the month of October. The cost was generally $100 a visit.

The first doctor’s offices on Oak Street were shiny and slick. They reminded me of a set from the movie “The Matrix.” A middle-aged woman who, to judge by her unlikely figure and attractive if expressionless face, had left no body part untouched, led me from the sharp-edged reception area into a small private waiting room where I was shown a DVD. It consisted of a pretend doctor in a white lab coat talking at me from behind his pretend desk. I learned nothing from the experience that I hadn’t already read online.

A few moments later, the doctor came in. Short, smooth, dressed in designer black from head to toe and wearing several silver bracelets, he greeted me warmly, looked at my face – we were still in the little ante-room – and explained what he would do. A simple, garden variety face-lift. He wouldn’t touch my eyes, they were too deep-set. Just pull back the skin of my cheeks, tuck the chin flesh a bit, and voilà. Piece of cake. And I didn’t smoke – this was critical. I’d kicked the habit 25 years before. The cost, $10,000. Out in public in two weeks with special make-up to cover the bruises, ready for in-home entertaining in a month and good enough for a gala wedding in six weeks. (Fortunately, we had no gala wedding on our calendar.) He wouldn’t hospitalize me. For an additional charge I could spend the first night at The Four Seasons Hotel with a private nurse. I didn’t bother to ask how much.

The second doctor, head of Cosmetic Surgery at one of Chicago’s largest teaching hospitals and the tallest man I had ever met, came out of his office to greet me minutes after my arrival. He ushered me into his spacious wood and leather office. We sat opposite one another as he explained his view of my face. He splayed his fingers as he spoke. I pictured the wingspan of an enormous bird.

After a few moments of conversation, he got up and came over to me. He touched my features here and there, gently with a dry pleasant touch, remarking on where the incisions would be made, mostly on the scalp, behind and in front of each ear, how they would fade and never show. The doctor sat again, leaned back in his chair and crossed his stork-like legs revealing argyle socks, which somehow made me want to like him.

“Doctor, I worry because I’m so thin.… Does that factor in?”

He sighed and shook his head “no” as if to a child.

“Mrs. Dratt, Dear Mrs. Dratt, Tessa,” he said and lifted his hands, spreading the fingers wide the way Moses must have held the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai, “in these hands, in my hands, you will be the perfect candidate. And the results,” he said setting his palms down on his knees to my greatest relief, “the results will be so fine they will startle you.”

I was already startled by the thought of those oversized fingers sewing the skin of my undersized face. All the blood in my body rushed to my head. He asked if he had answered all my questions. I said yes, although I hadn’t even asked the cost. I hurried out of his office, then the building and practically ran into the nearby Neiman Marcus where I stopped and lingered and breathed deeply the dizzying scent of mixed fragrances that wafted through the air. It was only after I’d bought an overpriced lipstick I didn’t need that my pulse rate finally slowed.

The third doctor bored me. I was in and out in ten minutes and another $100.

The last week in October, I met with Dr. O. Like Goldilocks, I chose his office because it was not too pretty, but not too bare, his presentation intelligent but not smarmy, his patient approach practical but not routine. Harvard-trained, he headed the Department of Plastic Surgery at another teaching hospital. He wore a suit and crisp white shirt and a tightly-knotted tie. I’ve always tended to trust well-pressed men.

I sat in an office under unforgiving florescent lights, in a large examination chair. Dr. O. gave me a hand mirror to hold up as he drew imaginary lines where his incisions would be. I didn’t smoke. That was good. I was very thin. That would be no problem for the surgery, but I was still too thin. Had I always been this way? Yes. Well still, I should gain ten pounds. Yeah, yeah, okay, I’ll do my best, I said but I’ve never been good at holding weight. My health history, he remarked, was positive overall. By then I had already made up my mind.

“What should I do to prepare?” I asked, my hands gripping the hand mirror.

“Grow your hair longer, or change its color. Get new eyeglasses. Alter something subtle and no one will know for sure what has changed or why you look so good.”

Could we do it in December, I asked? No, in December he went to South America to fix the cleft palates of indigent children. Oh, wow, I thought, duly impressed. Okay, then January? January, yes. January 2, 2001. We had a date.

The Basement

“The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.” – Thomas Wolfe

Arnie’s face was the color of paste when I finally came out of surgery, my head wrapped in a turban of bandages, drains feeding from somewhere behind my ears into tubes taped to my arms.

“What took so long?” Arnie asked when Dr. O. came in behind me.

“It’s not an exact science, Mr. Dratt. Everything’s under control. You can take her home in an hour. I’ll see her tomorrow and we’ll remove the drains.”

The journey home, a mere three blocks from St. Joseph Hospital, was fraught with danger. I couldn’t see because my eyes were swollen shut, so Arnie held fast to my arm as I baby-stepped into the car and finally into our home. I was too addled by the “twilight” drugs used to keep me in the semi-conscious state required for surgery to do anything for myself. Arnie installed me in the bedroom in our finished basement, already set up with bandages, ice buckets and cotton swabs. He helped me into bed where I sat propped up on pillows.

“Do I look like an alien, Arnie?”

He smiled. “A bit, yes. How do you feel?”

“Odd.”

“Better tomorrow. Get some rest.”

Idle command. Who can rest in a seated position applying fresh ointment and iced cotton every hour? I sat up in bed, staring out of unseeing eyes and listened to the hum of the TV in the den next door where Arnie sat vigil, his fingers clicking rapidly against his laptop keyboard. The night went on forever.

The next morning, Arnie and I met Dr. O. at the hospital and he removed the drains and the bandages. Everything seemed to be in order. I was sent home with antibiotic creams and gauze pads and lists of instructions about keeping the incision sites moist around and behind my ears. For the first two weeks, I saw the doctor every few days. He removed stitches under on my lower lids (he hadn’t touched the uppers.) He said very little but then again I didn’t feel much like talking. Every morning I had to cleanse my face and reapply the ointments. I looked into the mirror as little as possible addressing myself to the task at hand but avoiding the queerly red, bruised and alarmed face that looked back at me. I had been told what to expect. I supposed this was what a face-lift looked like before it healed.

At the end of the second week the skin around my ears, along my cheekbones and down my cheeks began to burn and tingle. My neck felt as if it were being pulled taut as in fact it must have been. It wasn’t acute pain, but it was more than discomfort. It was unnerving as hell. I studied my face in the mirror, horrified. It looked as if a toddler had gotten hold of a black magic marker and scrawled uneven lines and marks down either side of my face from my hairline down and around and into my cheekbones. I pulled my hair away from my ears and saw the same dark discoloration stretching up from behind my lobes into my scalp and the naked patches where the doctor had had to remove hair for the procedure. This was not bruising. This was something else.

Arnie took me downtown to Dr. O.’s office. I fashioned a kind of burka out of an old cotton scarf and wore enormous sunglasses, willing myself to be invisible. This time, Dr. O. studied my face, ears and neck for a long time. He looked angry.

“What’s going on with me?” I asked. “This isn’t what you prepared me for.”

The doctor studied my skin again. Suddenly, his crisp appearance offended me.

“We’re looking at a necrosis.”

“The healing will take a little longer. Your skin is extremely sensitive.”

“But you knew that before! You didn’t seem concerned.”

“I did say, Tessa, that you were too thin.”

I looked at Arnie who stood off to one side in a corner of the small room. I could tell he wanted to speak, but was restraining himself.

“Yes, but that didn’t stand in your way, did it?” I went on. My voice sounded shrill inside my head. “What really happened, Doctor? Arnie told me the surgery went on a long time, far longer than you said. What happened that you’re not telling us?”

Dr. O. would not make eye contact. He addressed himself to my cheeks and hairline.

“The thinner the skin, the more time it takes. You were a challenge.”

Dr. O. finally stopped fingering my wounds and stepped back to look at me. I squinted back at him from my reddened, puffy face.

“It’s just a question of time, Tessa. And care. Whatever you do, you must keep these places lubricated. We have to treat these like burns. Bacitracin and Vaseline every four hours, day and night. I’ll give you Vicodin for the pain.”

“But you didn’t warn me! How could you not have warned me?”

“What we are looking at here is rare, very rare, but it happens.”

“No shit, it happens!”

Every muscle in my body tensed. How dare he? How dare he? How dare he take my money, bungle my surgery and now try to make this my fault? I wanted to scream at him but I was too abject, too frightened and in too much pain.

The first thing I did when I got home was to ask Arnie to look up the word necrosis. I couldn’t read because I couldn’t wear my glasses. I could tolerate no pressure against any part of my face.

“Necrosis,” Arnie read, “the name given to accidental death of cells and living tissue.”

“Oh great! Now what am I going to do?” I asked, but it was of course a rhetorical question. What could I do but wait and pray? I didn’t even dare to cry for fear of causing further damage. I felt sorry for myself. Sorry for Arnie. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

I settled in to my life in the basement. Arnie installed speakerphones in the house because I couldn’t hold anything to my face. TV was useless because I couldn’t really see well and the noise got on my nerves. The first two months, even books on tape didn’t hold my attention because of the incessant burning and pulling sensations in my cheeks and ears. Sleeping was a messy business as I had to lie on my back with my head held straight forward. If I turned to either side I awoke with a start of pain in my ear. Only music soothed me. Over the course of four months I listened endlessly to our classical discs mostly lying on my back on the floor in Yoga poses that didn’t stress my face.

My family and friends knew what had happened, but for three months I hid from everyone. I especially feared traumatizing my kids, a daughter, son and daughter-in-law, all of whom lived close by. The thought of having them see me in such a pitiable state was more than I could bear. Arnie looked at me without really focusing. His expression told me exactly how bad things were. There was no better mirror than my husband’s face. I saw the same look on the face of Virginia, our housekeeper, who came once a week to help me with the chores. She said she prayed for me.

The burn sites oozed, itched and pulled. No camouflage was available to me. No make-up, no hairdo as my hair was always coated with grease from the ointments. I designated certain scarves and hats, sweats and sweaters as survival garb and wore them again and again, washing, washing, endlessly washing out the grease slathered all over everything.

At the end of the second month, I began to go out to walk in the park. That winter was relatively forgiving. Wrapped in one of my disguises, I walked for miles along the lake until the endorphins finally kicked in and I felt the relief that only movement provides for me. For the most part, the days passed in a haze of unhappiness as I tended to my self-inflicted wounds.

How could I have been so vain, so reckless with my life, so willing to place myself at risk? To think about all the other women I knew who had undergone plastic surgery of every type with happy results only made me feel worse. What was wrong with me? Why me? I had become a statistic instead of a person. A dramatic exception. Dr. O. would turn me into a case study for his interns. Damn his eyes.

At this stage in my life, my father, mother and only brother had already died each under strange and painful circumstances. I had weathered those losses and become familiar with grief. To grieve now for the loss of my looks felt frivolous and illegitimate. I was still alive, after all. But what kind of life would it be? My reasoning and emotions were discolored by anger – anger at the doctor, at what he had or had not done correctly, anger at my body for sabotaging me, anger at my inability to do anything but wait and see. I sat like a lump, unproductive and uninteresting day after day after day, morally, physically, and spiritually bankrupt.

I saw Dr. O. every two weeks. He praised me for my efforts at keeping the wounds moist emphasizing that they must not crust over or I might be scarred. The skin would knit itself together over time. No, no, he said a few weeks later, he really didn’t think there would be scarring. The following visit he commented that the scarring would be minimal. By the fourth month, it was a question of how big the scars might be, scars down the sides of my face, behind each ear, down one side of my neck. In addition to the wounds, my skin tone was abnormally red as if all the cells of my face and neck were in a permanent state of fury. That too would diminish with time, Dr. O. said.

“How much time, Doctor?”

“The time it takes, Tessa.”

My sense of alienation was complete.

Also, I wanted to murder him.

Out Of Hiding

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington

By the end of April 2001, four months after surgery, it became clear to me that I could no longer bear the life I had been living, disfigurement notwithstanding. My writer’s life was stalled by the constant physical discomforts that curdled my imagination. To wear glasses more than an hour at a time created additional pressure around my nose and ears. I couldn’t work at the computer for more than thirty minutes.

I needed people, and I needed to make a contribution or else I would wither away.

I contacted The Ark, a Jewish social service organization on Chicago’s North Side and went in to meet with the Director. Hair fixed the best way I could and swept forward into my face, Vaseline kept to a minimum, a little lipstick and a sweep of mascara and I was off.

At the time, The Ark had become inundated with immigrants from the former Soviet Union. These people needed to be acculturated as quickly as possible so they could adjust, integrate and eventually earn a living. The Director quickly concluded that with my language and teaching background and half-Russian heritage, I would make a fine one-on-one tutor. By this they had in mind more of a mentor, a person who would adopt a family or a family member, teach them not only language skills, but introduce them to life in America in general, and Chicago in particular. A Jewish buddy system.

Liza and I got along very well. Like most of the immigrants from that part of the world whom I had met in the past, she had been a professional, in her case an engineer, in her native Moldova. But Jews were fleeing her country for the U.S., Israel, Canada and elsewhere because of rampant anti-Semitism. With help from the Jewish agency, Liza’s family lived in a building on Diversey just blocks from my home. We met at my house, or at her apartment. By May, we were taking long walks together in Lincoln Park. Long walks are conducive to the sharing of thoughts and ideas and movement shakes out the emotions. By spring I’d changed from burka-garb to wide-brimmed hats and sunglasses not inappropriate for walks in the sun.

There was something healing about being with a person who knew me only as I was that spring, 2001 – disheveled, disfigured, disgruntled. I liked Liza’s dark eyes, her fluffy short hair, the roundness of her. I responded to the obvious pleasure she took in my company. She led a complicated and difficult life. Sandwiched between elderly and infirm parents who had immigrated to Chicago with her, and a depressed husband and angry daughter-in-law who tried to prevent her from seeing her grandchildren, Liza had sorrows enough to help me put my own into better perspective. I began to feel useful again. Each week I helped her solve another problem in her daily life, sometimes involving a simple trip to the grocery store – she had no car – or taking her to a doctor. Mostly we walked and talked. Each week, I felt an easing of the pressure that had come to live in my chest.

I teased her. I made her laugh. She told me jokes. Sometimes, in her halting and heavily accented English, she took so long to get to the punch line that I had already forgotten the beginning of the story, focused as I was on correcting her English.

Here is one of Liza’s jokes that I do remember:

Man from Italy say: "I'm tirsty. I must have gless vine.” Man from Scotland say: "I'm tirsty. I must have gless visky.” Man from Moldova say: "I'm tirsty. I must have gless vodka.” Man from Germany say: "I'm tirsty. I must have gless beer.” Jewish mother say: "I'm tirsty. I must have diabetes.”

Little by little, I returned to the writing life I’d lived since I’d retired from the corporate world in 1992. Eyeglasses still presented a problem, but I devised a system involving cotton pads and special creams that made the pressure bearable. I began to see my friends again, albeit with an exquisite self-consciousness I had to work hard to overcome. In the effort to protect my children from unpleasantness that was me, I had sold them short. They treated me gently and with matter-of-factness. They were dear and funny and supportive. To re-immerse myself in the details of their lives in person and not over the phone lifted my spirits. I had kept to myself so long I’d forgotten that the love of my family and friends went far deeper than my skin no matter what its condition.

One of my friends persuaded me to see about joining her writers’ group in Glencoe. It would get me out. It might help, not only my writing but also my soul. With great trepidation I joined her at one of the summer meetings. The group inspired me. My writing passed muster, and in the fall when the official meetings began, I was thrilled to see that they were held in a darkened theater behind a bookstore in Glencoe where the spotlight was always on the moderator on stage. This suited me perfectly. I sensed the beginning of a spiritual recovery.

By mid-July, the wounds had finally closed and the scars began to take shape. The deadened tissue turned white and stood out in stark contrast to my cheeks and neck, which were still unnaturally red. The hypersensitivity in and around my ears had not subsided. I continued to see Dr. O. once a month. He didn’t do or add much, but it was included in the care I had paid for and, I believe he simply didn’t know what else to do for me. Part of me almost felt sorry for him – he looked stricken whenever we met – but it was only a teeny part and the feeling only lasted a few seconds. His error would affect the rest of my life. And I still hadn’t gotten an explanation that satisfied me. Necrosis. Fine. But why? He simply wouldn’t say. Maybe I should sue?

I talked to Arnie. We are neither of us contentious people, but I was in the eighth month of recovery, still in pain, still unsightly although this perception was undoubtedly more acute for me than for anyone else. Arnie and I determined that before seeing the attorney, I should have two more consults with two more doctors, show them the poor outcome of my procedure and see what they had to suggest.

Like thieves, there is honor among plastic surgeons. They protect one another from charges of malpractice. I booked the two appointments without specifying the reason for the consultation for fear I might not be seen. The first doctor suggested further surgery down the line to close up the inch-wide scar in my scalp behind each ear, as well as hair grafts from elsewhere to those locations. As to the scars on my face, it would take at least a year until they began to shrink, but more likely two years. He was sympathetic but evasive when I asked him about cause and effect. He mumbled something about possible allergic reaction to medication, but I couldn’t pin him down. I walked away minus another $120 having learned nothing of value except the realization that I would not undergo further elective surgery. Not for anything. Not on my face.

The second doctor, far older than all the others, looked appalled as he examined my face, ears and neck.

“I feel for you, Mrs. Dratt.”

“Any suggestions?” I asked.

“Time and patience. I wish I could help you, but I have nothing to offer.”

He shook his head and added. “I’m glad this didn’t happen in my practice.”

Coming to Terms

“Acceptance of what has happened is the first step in overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.” – William James

By the first week in September, I could wear minimal makeup and had some inkling of how to fix my hair, although there was a look of mild dementia about me.

I became a regular at the cosmetic counters of Bloomingdale’s, Saks and Neiman Marcus spending more money on expensive products said to promote healing than I had ever spent on such things. The cosmetic ladies became my friends. I showed them my scars. They clucked and examined and were not at all put off. They clustered around me and told me horror stories about other customers, claiming they’d seen far worse cases than mine. It didn’t make me feel better, exactly, but it was a mutually agreeable arrangement. I could vent and they could sell.

I finally met with a personal injury attorney at a highly respected downtown firm. Arnie had made the appointment for me through one of his colleagues. I seem to remember it was a professional courtesy.

The attorney, an attractive woman in her forties, listened to my story, came over to the visitor’s chair where I sat and looked long at my scars.

“Just how angry are you, Tessa?”

“I ... I’m really not sure anymore.”

“Well, we can sue. We can sue big time. But here’s the thing: It will cost you a ton of money, it will last a long time.”

“How much? How long?”

“Just to identify and retain a few plastic surgeons willing to testify to malpractice plus the legal fees would cost you a hundred, maybe two hundred thousand dollars, and the process could take a year, two years, maybe more.”

“I sort of figured as much.”

“Tessa. Tessa, listen. I had surgery on a breast some time ago. The doctors used an adhesive bandage. Turns out, I was allergic to this particular adhesive and I had a massive negative reaction. The scar under my left breast is a keloid scar – yeah, I know –- more common in African Americans –- but I’ve got one. It’s awful. It’s big. It’s scares me on a daily basis. But it’s hidden.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“So, Tessa. Listen. I’ll do whatever you want me to do, but here’s the thing: You are not really disfigured. I mean, you’re a nice-looking middle-aged woman. You’re not scary. You’re okay. And you haven’t even begun to really heal yet. It takes a year at least.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

I left the attorney’s office in the Loop and walked north. It was hot that day, but pleasant. The walk up LaSalle Street reminded me of all the evenings I’d walked home after work when my children were young and I needed to put a healthy distance between my working self and the “Mommy” persona I would assume the moment I stepped into the house. An hour later, I was surprised to find that I’d arrived at my front door. All the way home I had pondered anger, envisioned revenge, tried to get my blood moving, yet all I felt as I fumbled for my house keys was a little sadness mixed with relief. What had the attorney said? Oh, that I was okay. Maybe I was. Or would be.

Life Will Out

“Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but in the ability to start over.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Anger is the nemesis of healing. In my heart, I knew that whatever harm Dr. O. had done me, it had not been intentional, and while I might have subjected myself to unnecessary risk, my vanity in doing so had perhaps not been so sinful after all. Weak? Perhaps. Human? Certainly. Defiant of aging? Absolutely, but not worth punishment beyond the one I had already undergone. The time had come to let myself off my own hook.

I resumed my daily Yoga practice, which in itself heals better than all the expensive creams on the market. A few more of my essays and stories found their way to publication. I explored new friendships. I still met with Liza although less often because she had found work as a nanny. Before I knew it, I was planning my daughter’s wedding.

September is my birth month. For Jews, it is a season of self-examination, repentance and forgiveness. I was ready. Unwilling to lose out on life, which passes with such astonishing speed whether or not one is happy, I acknowledged that the time had come to climb out of the basement and into the light.

In a photo my son took at a family outing to the Lincoln Park Zoo that fall of 2001, I am sitting on a horse on the carousel, dressed in lavender, flanked by my daughter on one side and daughter-in-law on the other. I’m smiling underneath an enormous white hat looking red-faced and goofy. I treasure that photo. It shows me how far I’ve come.

From time to time, friends tell me they are going to “have some work done.” I wish them well and say little. We are vain creatures, a vanity that is hard-wired into our nature and constantly reinforced by the culture in which we live. Why not, I think? Everyone wants to look good. As for me, now, when I feel that familiar urge to beautify, I buy a new sweater.

Tessa Dratt’s personal essays and short fiction have been widely published and anthologized. She writes from Chicago, but still believes she lives in New York City. She is currently working on a memoir set in post-war Europe and Manhattan. Mother of two adults and still married to the same man after 42 years, she is awaiting the appearance of the next grandchild.