The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [54]
“Then she’d cut along the lines,” Ivy says, “and she’d vacuum out the fat to make room for the silicone bags. Slurp slurp slurp. Just like that.” She snorts. “That was the funniest part, watching her stuff those bags into the women’s boobs with her fingers. The bags were so funny, but at the same time it was very serious because our mom was making girls into grown-up women with her Magic Marker and her knife and her little bags of Jell-O.”
The doors open. The doctor remains where he is, letting them shut again. Perhaps by now he’s figured out who this woman is. Perhaps he’s heard the stories.
“ ‘Girls into women,’ ” he says, playing the psychiatrist. “That’s interesting.”
“Urse and me used to play plastic surgeon together.”
The doctor looks at Ursula, and she looks at the floor and nods, embarrassed. It’s all true.
“Urse was always the surgeon because she was the oldest. She gave me nose jobs and tummy tucks and face-lifts and boob jobs. She’d draw lines on me with a red Magic Marker, and then she’d pretend to cut and snip. She’d pinch me to make it seem real. I think sometimes I really thought it was real. I think I was a schizo even then. But I’m better now.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” the doctor says. His voice is soothing. He sounds genuinely glad for her, as though he actually believed her. Ursula wonders about these doctors, wonders about Dr. Shivamurti, who told her this morning that Ivy is almost ready to be released. Ursula isn’t so sure. Maybe she’s hopelessly cynical, but recently she’s gotten the feeling that Ivy is only pretending to be better. This entire conversation taking place on the elevator seems to Ursula to be a case in point, just one more way Ivy has learned to play the game, confessing anything that smacks of childhood trauma to anyone in a white jacket.
“I’m going back to work soon,” she boasts.
“That’s excellent,” the doctor says.
The doors open again. They’ve reached the top floor.
“Come on, Urse,” says Ivy.
She steps out into the lobby and Ursula follows. The doctor remains inside.
“Good luck to you,” he says as the doors close in front of him. Ivy leans over and presses the Down button.
“Is that where you got the idea?” Ursula asks.
“What idea?”
Ursula points to one of her scars, the one running along her left arm. Ivy looks at it as though seeing it for the first time. She looks up at her sister, worried.
“Do you think they make me too ugly?”
Ursula knows what she means: too ugly to model, the only thing Ivy cares about these days. All her delusionary talk of trendspotters has been replaced by an ongoing obsessive monologue about being a model again—inarguably a more socially acceptable turn of mind, but almost as troubling to Ursula, because she really doesn’t think Ivy stands much of a chance of working as a model now. It’s not just the scars on her body; her face, too, is not what it was. If her expression had become merely affectless, it wouldn’t be so bad, Ursula thinks—blankness is probably more of an asset than a liability to a model anyway. No, the problem is that her face isn’t blank enough. Its muscles behave strangely. Her jaw is a little squarer and more pronounced than before. And her mouth turns down at the corners when she isn’t smiling. And when she is smiling, the muscles around her eyes remain serious, making the smile look oddly haunted. When she smiles like that, Ursula gets the feeling that her sister really does know what it feels like to be all hollowed-out inside. She hopes the end of Ivy’s modeling career will mark the beginning of a more fulfilling existence. As Ivy recovers and gets readjusted to the world, Ursula plans to guide her interests in some new direction—something with a future, something down-to-earth that will give her a sense of her real worth.
“You don’t look ugly at all,” Ursula assures her. “But remember, Ivy, you’ve got to take this whole going-back-to-work thing slow. You’ve got to rest, and go to the group sessions,