From the WSJ Opinion Archives
AMANDA.BRIGHT@HOME
Chapter 5
Plastic surgery? Never! But then again Amanda's only 33.
Click here to read Chapter 4.
"Why don't we take ourselves into the family room?"
Christine led the delegation of mothers into an enormous, vaulted room filled with enough slipcovered sofas and chintz armchairs to seat 20. On the mammoth coffee table, Christine's housekeeper had laid an elegant tray of crackers, cheese and grapes and beside it, a pinwheel of folded paper cocktail napkins. A chilled bottle of Christine's favorite California Chardonnay rested in a silver ice bucket.
"My mother always warned me to avoid 'drinking' playgroups," Christine said, eyebrows raised, as she poured each of her guests a glass of wine. "She knew one. Half the women in it got divorced and the other half got cancer. Cheers."
The women tittered and raised their glasses. Their toast was broken by a shrill scream from somewhere in the nether regions of the house.
Amanda instantly knew that the scream did not belong to Ben or Emily, but the knowledge did not console her. If a child screamed beyond the parental perimeter, Ben was the odds-on favorite to have caused it. Sure enough, within seconds, a little girl came running into the room wailing, "Ben did it! Ben did it!"
"Meredith, honey!" The girl's mother rose anxiously. "Ben did what, sweetie?"
"Hit me with a truck!"
"Oh Meredith, let me see." The mother shot an accusing look at Amanda. Christine sighed and topped up Amanda's already full glass.
"Now you're in trouble," Christine whispered sympathetically. "Your boy has injured the $100,000 child."
Christine's private nickname for Meredith Ripley was her best estimate of the cost of the fertility treatments that had been required to conceive the girl. Meredith's mother, Patricia, was a well-groomed, weary-faced woman in her late 40s. Until the miraculous birth of her only child, Patricia Ripley had worked as an executive of an international consulting firm. She described motherhood as "the hardest multitask job I've ever held."
Meredith gulped and sobbed while Patricia inspected a bump on the side of her head. Even with a wet, red face and disarranged blond pigtails, Meredith looked as if she had just tumbled from a Victorian etching. Her mother dressed her in exquisite pinafores and Peter Pan-collared blouses bought at an expensive boutique specializing in European clothing. Whenever anyone complimented Patricia on one of these outfits, she would smile with satisfaction and reply, "I can't stand to see my child in poor-quality clothes."
Amanda had entered this lavish store once, shortly before Ben was born. She spent $75 on a tiny white-linen sun suit for the ride home from the hospital. The doctor neglected to warn Amanda that Ben's first venture into the outside world would probably be marked by another milestone achievement: his first bowel movement. "Good God, it's leaking out the collar!" gagged Bob as he raced to their front door holding Ben as far away from him as a proud father's arms could reach. No amount of soaking or scrubbing would remove the slimy, blackish-green stain. That was the end of the sun suit--and of Amanda's romantic excursions into pricey French children's shops.
"There, there, you're not broken darling, but it is a bad bump."
The other women exchanged awkward glances. Amanda murmured that she would go fetch Ben, but at that moment her son arrived, pulling fiercely against the hand of the nanny who had dragged him upstairs. Dressed in his sale-rack baggy shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with a ferocious dinosaur, Ben could not have appeared more guilty.
"Mommy!" he cried at the sight of his lone ally, freeing himself and charging head-on into Amanda's stomach. "I didn't do it!"
Ben's denial provoked a fresh round of outraged screams from Meredith. The women all looked to Christine's nanny, a slight, nervous woman from the Philippines, who addressed herself to her employer. "This boy hit little girl with truck, ma'am. I tell him to say sorry but he say no."
"I didn't!" came Ben's muffled voice as he buried his face deeper into Amanda's lap.
"Ben," Amanda insisted, gently tugging on him until she'd gotten Ben to look up at her. "Tell Mommy what happened."
"Meredith's head," Ben said indignantly, "got in the way of my truck."
Patricia snorted. "I think a time-out is in order. At least, that's what I'd do."
"Ben," Amanda continued, ignoring her. "If you don't say sorry to Meredith right now, we are going home. Do you understand?"
"No!"
"Ben!"
The little boy walked glumly over to Meredith. "Sorry," he spat out with as much contempt as a five-year-old can muster, and shambled past her back to the basement.
Meredith looked helplessly at her mother. "You stay away from that boy," Patricia warned in a hushed--but not hushed enough--tone. "He's violent."
The girl, still sniffling, clutched the nanny's hand and was meekly led away.
"Well," Christina declared. "Boys will be boys, won't they? Who needs some more wine?"
Ben's teacher expressed concerns over the boy's desire to turn everyday civilian objects--pencils, toy brooms, shoes--into guns. Lately, he had taken to entering rooms by diving through the doorway and rolling across the floor shouting, "Attack!" Ben's most beloved toy was a combat figure given to him at Christmas by Bob's father. It was a plastic "collectible" figure of Gen. George Patton in his cavalry uniform, equipped with two miniature pearl-handled revolvers. Ben understood at once that this was exactly the kind of toy his parents would never have bought for him, and he kept constant watch over it lest it "vanish" like the previous Christmas present from his paternal grandparents: a commando costume complete with a machine gun that lit up and made electronic zapping noises when fired.
"We don't let Ben play with toys that encourage violence," Amanda reproached her father-in-law as Ben eagerly ripped the doll from its cardboard packaging. "We don't want him to grow up into a criminal."
"Or a war hero," muttered the old man.
Amanda's objection to the plastic general had softened recently. Most of the time, Patton played the nonviolent role of husband to Emily's Princess Barbie (another resented gift from Amanda's in-laws). Occasionally Ben would manage to prevail on Emily to permit Barbie to be captured by marauding stuffed animals, thus necessitating a dramatic rescue. (Amanda praised Emily when she gave Barbie the pluck to rescue herself.)
It exasperated Amanda that the parents of Ben's classmates refused to see the sweet and accommodating boy who cheerfully played house for hours to please his little sister. She didn't know what set Ben off at other children's houses. Indeed, Amanda's friendship with Christine was almost entirely based on the tight friendship Ben had formed with Christine's boy, Austen. Christine was unrattled by her own son's fascination with armed combat. She scandalized the other mothers at the school by permitting Austen and his tomboyish little sister to watch action cartoons and play video battle games. But such was the Saunders' social clout that no parent ever turned down an invitation for their children to play at Christine's house or in her pool or at her club.
Amanda, who disliked these games and cartoons as intensely as anyone else, was nonetheless relieved that Ben had found a playmate, and her relief obliterated her disapproval. Amanda was grateful to Christine, too, for inviting her to join this Tuesday afternoon mothers' group. Amanda was well aware that if it had been up to Patricia--or even Ellen and Kim, the other mothers in the group--neither she nor Ben would be welcome. It was strange, Amanda thought idly, how so many of her friendships now depended upon those of her children.
"I may as well tell you all," she said matter-of-factly. "You probably would have noticed anyway. I decided it would be my 40th-birthday present to myself. When Brian asked what did I want--diamonds? a trip to Venice?--I told him, 'Honey, I want my 30-year-old face back.' "
"That's fabulous, Christine!" exclaimed Ellen, hooting with enthusiasm. "Whoa! Way to go sister!"
"What are you going to get done?" Kim asked eagerly. Kim was their resident beauty expert: Every week she seemed to be undergoing some new treatment that promised to shave a year off her looks. Kim had arrived at the last meeting of the group with a burnt, swollen face. Amanda thought she had been in some terrible car accident, but Kim explained that she had received a "chemical peel"--a facial procedure that scorched the top layer of her skin. Kim swore the angry red blisters would peel away, exposing the soft, youthful layer of skin below. The blisters disappeared as Kim predicted, but Amanda could not detect any difference in Kim's appearance. She gleamed as any surface would, given regular and attentive polishing.
"Everything," replied Christine. "Thighs, neck, chin, eyes. It won't be a full face-lift--not yet, only a tweaking."
Only Patricia reacted indifferently to Christine's news. "Thank goodness I don't need anything done," she said smugly, patting her sagging cheeks.
"Christine's not doing it because she needs to," Ellen retorted. "She's doing it because she wants to. Right, Christine?"
"Well, I do need to--sort of," Christine conceded. "My tummy's never been right since Victoria was born. Leg lifts can't get rid of those little pockets on my thighs. So what the hell? I think of this as offensive, rather than defensive, action. I don't want to turn into an old potato and then reappear one day with my face stretched tight like cellophane."
Amanda could hardly swallow, let alone react. Plastic surgery? Why? Christine barely had a wrinkle. Was there something up in Christine's marriage, perhaps?
"Does Brian approve?" Amanda asked, recovering her voice. "Is he making you do this?"
Christine laughed. "Oh no way. You know, Brian is always so sweet and supportive of whatever I do. He thinks I look great now. He'll be happy when I look even better. No, I'm doing this for me."
Amanda was thoroughly perplexed. Christine spoke about surgery the way Amanda's mother used to talk about her feminism--as something that was personally empowering. Yet how could cutting yourself to fit some beauty magazine's ideal be "empowering"? It was more like . . . genital mutilation: something foisted upon women by a male-dominated society. Amanda took pride in her own resistance to the beauty culture. She was immune to the siren calls of cosmetic salesclerks and bustled by their long mirrored counters, ignoring their offers to "try the latest Seduction." It was all shamanism, she thought, propagated by the high priests of the makeup industry; simply another way to part insecure women from their money. Amanda bought the few creams she needed at a specialty shop that sold organic products not tested on animals. At 33, her skin required little more than a daily rubbing of cleanser and moisturizer to make it glow. As for her figure, it was naturally reedy and had bounced right back after both her children. True, it lacked the fine honing of Christina's gym-sculpted physique, and her rear end had begun to hang a bit (she'd only noticed this the other day in the bathroom mirror), but Bob had never complained. She assumed he hadn't noticed, or if he had, he didn't much care. But what if he did care? What if he had been quietly charting her decline but was too kind to say anything to her about it? That would be Bob, all right. Yet where would it lead? One day--and one day soon--she might become no more sexually attractive to him than his baggy pajamas; comfortable and familiar, yes, but hardly exciting.
Amanda drew in her breath. She knew she meant more to Bob than this. But how much more?
"I'm thinking of getting my eyes done too," Ellen revealed, pointing to a slight sagging of skin below her eyebrows that she insisted made her "look like a lizard."
"Gosh, we should all go together. Make a field trip of it," giggled Kim. "I've always hated my nose."
"You're serious about this?" Amanda persisted. She was still rattled by Christine's announcement. "You look fantastic the way you are."
"Thanks, but I am serious."
They returned to the family room, and Christine rooted around the stereo for a CD.
"Is Brian truly not pushing you to do this? I mean, if you didn't do it, would you still feel . . . secure?"
"Ha! Of course I'm secure," Christine replied. "Who do you think does the bookkeeping in our family? Look, Brian may be good at managing a hedge fund, but I manage our family accounts. And believe me, if he left me, I'd be secure. I've taken care of that. C'mon, Amanda. This is the '90s. We don't go into this situation as blindly as our mothers did. I've seen enough divorces not to be a naive fool.
"This surgery is my choice, just as quitting my job was my choice. Brian can't say a damn thing about it."
Amanda considered her own choice to be a naive fool and wondered how careless she must look to Christine. She had known when she gave up her job that she was surrendering what her feminist professors might have described as her "economic power." But somehow it hadn't felt that way. She and Bob divided everything 50-50. They kept a joint bank account, not separate ones. Bob assiduously refrained from making Amanda feel that she ought to ask him before spending money--except on large purchases, which they both agreed upon together. She had always thought of their marriage as a relationship based on love and trust. Suddenly, Amanda felt like a tightrope walker who notices for the first time that she has been crossing without a net.
"It seems a lot to put yourself through--surgery," Amanda said weakly. Christine sighed. "Spoken like a 33-year-old. You don't have to worry yet. You have great skin." She cast her eyes over Amanda appraisingly. "Have you ever thought about doing something with your hair?"
Amanda was taken further aback. "Not really. I mean, I put it up sometimes."
"I think you'd look fabulous with shorter hair, and maybe a few highlights. It would bring out your cheekbones. I can give you the number of my hairdresser if you like."
Amanda had last worn her hair short when she was six years old. She touched her long curls uncertainly.
"Just look at me," said Christine sinking into an armchair, having found some soothing jazz to play in the background. "I'm about to turn 40. In 10 years, I'll be 50. I may look good at 50, but I'll still be a woman 'who looks good for 50.' This is my last chance to feel sexy. Call it my Indian summer. I'm simply not prepared to let myself go to hell like some of those mothers you see in carpool--you know, the ones whose hair is a mess and who throw on absolutely anything, letting everyone know their husbands can lust after the secretary for all they care, they have soccer practice to get to."
Amanda gave up. "When do you go in?"
"Two weeks. I'm counting the days."
"C-plus," Amanda concluded. "Right now I'm a C-plus, but I could be a B, or a B-plus."
The vanity of the exercise unnerved and embarrassed her. She wrapped herself in her robe and padded into the bedroom, where Bob was lying in his boxer shorts reading legal briefs. He didn't glance up when she entered.
"Do I look OK?" she asked him.
"Huh?"
"Do I look OK?"
He peered over the top of his papers. "Do you not feel well?"
"No, I don't mean that," Amanda said impatiently. "I mean, do I look--well, you know--attractive?"
Bob adjusted his expression to one of lawyerly inscrutability, as he always did when he suspected Amanda of asking him a trick question. "Of course you do. Why do you ask?"
She sat down beside him. "Really. I really want to know."
Amanda could see the files whizzing behind Bob's eyes as his brain searched for the correct answer to his wife's blunt question.
"I think you look beautiful," he said finally, but not altogether convincingly. "I always have. Really."
She lay her head on his bare, prickly chest. He put his papers down and stroked her hair.
"Do you think we could afford a nice outfit for the cocktail party next week?"
Bob began to chuckle. "Is this what this is all about?"
"No." She pulled away, offended.
"C'mon, Amanda, stop it." He grasped her wrist and tugged her close. "I like it when you lie next to me. You don't do it enough. Around here I come third in the cuddling department."
She softened and rested her head upon him again. "I feel, I don't know, kind of old and unattractive. And maybe if I looked nice for that party . . ."
"Amanda, you know how much money we have. We can't afford a dress, for God's sake." He paused. "How much are you planning on spending?"
"Not a lot." Amanda was aware that her answer was intentionally evasive. Her evasion sickened her, but she didn't correct it. She had no idea what she was going to spend, but she suspected it would be more than Bob would like.
"Fine." He kissed her forehead. "Will you come to bed now?"
"In a minute." She got up to brush her teeth.
In front of the mirror again, under the glare of the strong light, Amanda recoiled from the reflection: a drab woman with blue-circled eyes, her brush listlessly marking time between bared lips. She spat and turned away.
There was a candle and a book of matches on the dresser. Amanda's fingers moved toward them, hesitated, and then flicked off the overhead light instead. As she edged towards the bed in darkness, she again experienced that dizzying feeling of crossing a thin, precarious wire with nothing below her to catch her if she fell. Bob was waiting for her. She could sense his eagerness even before he touched her: It had been--how long? She couldn't remember. His breath and body radiated heat--for her, his wife.
Would that always be true? Miss Crittenden, a Washington resident, is the author of "What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman." You can write to her at dcrittenden@amandabright.com. Illustration by Ned Crabb.
To read Chapter 6, click here.
Click here to read National Review Online's interview with Miss Crittenden.
