Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

The Nose Has It!

8:03 AM

The next morning when Norma woke up, Macky had already left for work. She yawned and went to the bathroom and was reading her “Good morning, this is God” message when she happened to glance at herself in the mirror. “MY GOD!” There were bright red spots all over her nose! Oh God. Well, here it was. The day had finally come, she had nose cancer. She immediately sat down on the floor of the bathroom, so she wouldn’t faint and hit her head. Oh no, they would probably have to remove her entire nose. She was going to be disfigured. “Why me, dear God? Why my face?” Norma thought. In high school Norma had never had a hint of acne, not one bump. Now she was being punished for it. She pulled herself up and looked again. They were still there! Not only was she going to lose her nose, it probably meant chemotherapy. There went all her hair! Oh God. “Be brave,” she thought. In times like this she tried to remember little Frieda Pushnik, who had been born with no arms and legs and had been carried around all her life on a pillow, but it did not help. She was terrified as she called the dermatologist, made an appointment, got dressed, and drove over to the beauty parlor and ran in. “Tot, give me one of those Xanax. I may have to have my nose removed!”

Later, as Dr. Steward the dermatologist stared at her nose with a magnifying glass, Norma felt as if she were going to throw up. As she continued to look, the doctor asked, “Tell me, Mrs. Warren, do you blush easily?”

“What? Oh, yes.”

“Uh-huh,” said the doctor as Norma’s heart pounded away. “And do you have any allergies that you know of?”

“No, other than maybe Chinese food…. My face gets sort of hot and red, but…”

The doctor turned around to wash her hands, and Norma heard herself ask in a raspy voice, “Is it cancer, Doctor?”

The doctor looked at her. “No, what you have is rosacea.”

“What?”

“Rosacea. It’s very common with English and Irish or other light-skinned people. Blushing easily is one of the symptoms.”

“It is? I thought I was always just embarrassed or shy. But what are these bumps?”

“You’re having a break-out.”

“But why?”

“It could have been triggered by a number of things…heat, sun, or stress. Have you been under any unusual stress lately?”

Norma said, “Yes, I have. My aunt just fell out of a tree and…well, I won’t go into detail, but, yes.”

As Norma drove to the drugstore, she realized that her entire image of herself had been wrong. Whenever someone told a dirty joke or she had been embarrassed, she had always thought it was because she was shy, but it had just been a skin condition all along.

Norma stood at the counter waiting for her prescription for Finacea, and was convinced that the stress of worrying about her aunt had caused her nose to break out. It was no telling what would be happening to her next. She looked over at the blood pressure machine in the corner of the drugstore and she thought about going over and seeing if hers had rocketed sky-high in the last week, but decided against it. If it had, she didn’t want to know. Hopefully she would just drop dead in her tracks, without having to be scared to death by all kinds of tests, and maybe before she had to undergo a complete heart transplant and wind up in a power chair herself. This was all the more reason why Elner should go to Happy Acres, where professionals could keep an eye on her, and Norma wouldn’t have to worry herself into the grave about her. Norma would wait until after Easter and then have a serious talk with Elner.

“Here you go, Norma,” said Hattie Smith, a cousin of Dorothy Smith’s late husband, Robert Smith. But of course, according to Aunt Elner, Dorothy was now married to a man named Raymond. “Rub a thin layer on your nose, twice a day, and that should do it.”

As Norma walked out with her ointment, Irene Goodnight walked in, and said to Hattie, as she held out her hands, “Hattie, look, are these freckles or old-age spots.”

Hattie looked at the seventy-three-year-old woman’s hands and lied.

“Honey, those are freckles.”

“Well, good,” said Irene. She turned around and left, happier than when she came in.

Hattie had knocked herself out of a sale, but “What the heck,” she thought, “old age is hard enough. What Irene doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”