Turn of Mind - Alice LaPlante [82]
You have finished the food on your plate, and both glasses, the tall and the short one, are empty. The heavyset man is at the other end of the counter, talking to another man in a suit.
Do you know where the bathroom is? you ask. The girl points. There. Near the door where you came in.
You get off the stool, stumbling slightly. You feel your way across the crowded room, using the backs of chairs and sometimes people’s shoulders, as guides. You are unsteady and feel intense pressure on your bladder.
The door marked toilet is locked, so you wait, shifting from one foot to the other like a small child. You hear the toilet flush, water being run in the sink, and the click of the door as it finally opens. A woman emerges.
You stumble past her and barely make it to the toilet to relieve yourself. Even so, there is a wet patch on your pant leg. You take a paper towel and rinse it out, making it more prominent than before. At least it’s not as bad as blood. You think of all the times you locked yourself in public bathrooms like this, scrubbing at pants to rid them of bloodstains from tampon overflows. For a doctor you’ve had remarkably little insight into your own body. You secreted tampons everywhere: in your purse, in the glove compartment of the car, in your desk drawer, and yet you were continually caught short. Your body was always betraying you.
It got worse as you got older. There were days in your forties and early fifties when you hesitated to schedule surgeries because of brief, intense episodes of hemorrhaging that could happen any time. Your body defeated you in ways it had never in the past. You wore double tampons and pads underneath that. You’d go into the surgery wearing adult diapers, waddling slightly when you walked. But once the gushing started, there was no stopping it. You learned to live with the humiliation. Blood in the OR. You kept extra clothes in the office, in the car. Two years of that. You thought you might mourn the loss of fertility, but the trauma of perimenopause made you welcome it.
You look in the mirror as you wash your hands. What you see there startles you. The very short crinkly white hair. Your face covered with red blotches, liver spots on your forehead, and the slack skin over the jawbone. Too much sun.
You never did listen to the dermatologists, felt their cautions were old lady-ish. Now you are an old lady. Your life should be discussed in the past tense. You are suddenly tired. It’s time to go home. You exit the bathroom only to stop, disoriented.
Where are you? A crowded restaurant. Overwhelming smells of heavy garlicky sauces. The noise makes your head ache. Bodies press up against you, propel you back into the open door of the bathroom. As if from far away, you catch sight of a door marked exit. You start to make your way toward it.
Voices are shouting behind you. Hey! Lady! A man holding menus nods, opens the door for you. Stop her! The man sings a cheery Good evening! Evening? you ask, and then you are outside, a warm breeze caressing your face.
When did day turn to night? The heat into deliciousness? The streetlights are on, all the shops and restaurants are lit and welcoming, and bright lights shine amid the leaves of the trees, which are in full bloom. People everywhere, holding hands, linking arms, the warmth of human bodies in harmony. It is a party. It is a fairyland. You plunge deep into the festive night.
You have not lived until you have seen fish striving for the moon. By the dozens they burst out of the water, their silvery bodies flashing as they rise. The perfect shiny arc as they peak. The downward trajectory is lyrical: perfect dives back into the blue gray depths.
The air is balmy and tropical, but the lake water frigid. How it numbs your feet and ankles. Still, there are others who would not be dissuaded. You see heads just above the