Skin Deep

4

“I’ve had it with this nose. It sits on my face like a damn dorsal fin.”

Dana stepped out of the bathroom with her hand cropping the top of her nose. She turned her profile to Steve, who was struggling to slide an air conditioner into the window. “What do you think?”

It was nearly nine that same day when Steve arrived to install the AC in their bedroom window. He was exhausted because they had reworked the Farina apartment for five more hours then scoured the neighborhood with the local police. Nobody had seen or heard anything. Her only known relatives—a sister and a brother—had been notified of her death. Pending the M.E.’s autopsy report, the Farina case was being treated as suspicious.

“Get rid of the bump and maybe narrow it down a little.”

“Shit!” Something jammed against the rear casing of the machine, leaving it suspended against his stomach and the windowsill edge while he stretched with his free hand to reach a hammer from his tool kit to bang in a nail head that was sitting too high on the slide track. “They can make computers that fit in your ear, but they can’t make an AC that won’t cause hernias.”

He glared at her with the unit against his stomach, the sharp underside edges cutting into his fingers, his lower lumbar screaming for relief. “Not to distract you, but would you please get the hammer and slam down that nail?”

She looked at him. “Why don’t you just put it down and do it yourself?”

“Because if I put it on the table, it’ll leave a scratch, and if I put it on the bedspread, it’ll leave a stain. And your vanity chair is piled with clothes. And if I put it on the floor, I’ll probably end up in traction trying to get it up again. And if I have to give any more explanations I’m going to hurl it out the window.”

“Nice how all those hours at the gym are paying off.”

“Deadlifting an AC is not part of my workout.”

She snapped up the hammer and whacked the nail head flat.

With a heave, he slid the machine onto the track and brought down the window to hold it in place. A breath exploded out of him. They had been separated for more than half a year, but he still came over to help with chores. It was how he hoped to stay connected.

“By the way, I thought you were going to do this yesterday.”

“I got tied up.”

“You could have called.” She turned back to the long floor mirror. “I also think I need a lid lift. What do you think?”

He lay flat-out on the bed. “I think I’ll never be straight again.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She turned toward him with her hands on the sides of her face and pulled back her skin.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m asking if you think I need a lid lift. They’re beginning to droop. In a couple years I’ll look like Salman Rushdie.”

“I think I had that at Legal Seafood once.”

“I’m being serious.” She was now looking in a hand mirror at her face.

“Dana, you don’t need a lid lift. What you need is to come down here and jump on my bones.” He looked at her and tried to flush his mind of the images of Terry Farina.

Dana made facial contortions in the mirror. “They also make my eyes look small.”

A few copies of Vogue and Glamour sat on her nightstand. “You might also want to stop subscribing to magazines that feature fourteen-year-olds.” The inside of her closet was covered with cutouts of anorexic waifs in outfits she admired.

“My mother had droopy eyelids,” she continued. “What luck! I got her eyelids and my father’s big fat Greek nose.” She put the mirror down, and with her middle fingers she pulled up her eyelids then turned to him as he stared up at her from her pillows. “What about this?”

“You look like you’ve been zapped with a cattle prod.”

She then held up her lids and with the sides of her hands stretched back the skin. “How about this?” And she turned her face toward him again.

“You just hit Mach five.”

“What does that mean?”

“Your face is all swept back, like a test pilot.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

“And you’re taking it too seriously. Your eyes are not small, plus your lids give you a sexy hooded gaze.”

“Hooded gaze? That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Okay, bad choice of words.”

“At least admit I need a nose job.” Her voice began to crack and she sat at the edge of the bed, fighting back tears.

In disbelief he said, “What’s the problem?”

“Every time I look in the mirror I see a tired woman with a potato nose looking back at me.”

This was not the Dana Zoukos Markarian that he knew. Although she had inherited her sandy blond hair from her Swedish mother, she did have an ethnic nose and occasionally joked about it. But she was also blessed with natural good looks—a high forehead, a smooth, porcelain complexion, and large green-gray eyes—that gave her a classic acropolis face. No doubt, with a nose job she’d be even more attractive. But Dana was not vain nor preoccupied with her appearance. Steve put his arm around her shoulders. “Aren’t you getting a little carried away?”

She wiped the tears with the back of her hand. “I didn’t get the job.”

“Aw, hell! I’m sorry.”

For the last fourteen years Dana had taught chemistry at Carleton High, but she had decided that she wanted to move on. She had grown tired of the routine and all the paperwork, tired of increasing class sizes and shrinking budgets, tired of feeling like an indentured servant to the Commonwealth. She wasn’t tired of the kids, however. On the contrary, she enjoyed them and they, in return, had voted her Teacher of the Year twice. They filled in for the children she and Steve never had. But her friend Lanie Walker had suggested that she consider pharmaceutical sales. It was intellectually stimulating and lucrative—with commission, six figures by her third year. And she didn’t need a selling background or a degree in pharmacology, since the company was looking for people with brains and a winning personality. Dana became interested, and over the past few months she had interviewed with four companies. Three passed her over, but the fourth, GEM Tech—where Lanie worked—which specialized in medication for dementia, had called her back for a third interview two weeks ago. “What happened?”

“What happened was they hired a younger woman.”

“How do you know that?”

“Lanie has a recruiter friend. The same with the others. Thirty-nine and too old to sell pills.”

“You’re talking age discrimination, which is against the law.”

“Yeah, but try to prove it. I didn’t include my date of birth on the applications or the year I graduated from college. Nothing. For all they know, I could be twenty-five or seventy-five. But the interviewer looked at me and thought, ‘Too old,’ but kept feeding me questions and let me prattle on while I’m thinking, ‘Gee, this is going great.’”

“You still get carded in restaurants.”

“Only because the lights are dim.”

“Dana, you look twenty-something.”

She turned her face toward him. “No, I don’t. Look at my eyelids. Look at the crow’s-feet. Look at the lines under my eyes. And this goddamn nose. I hate it.”

He looked into those large feline eyes and felt a warm rush. “I think you’re beautiful.”

“You’re blind. They would have turned down Cindy Crawford. I’m telling you they’re looking for youth, not beauty. What they want to send to doctors are healthy-looking kids.”

“But you’re a mature woman who’s taught science for years. You know how to work with people. You’ve got a great personality—”

“Yeah, yeah, but experience and credentials count for nothing. The recruits are twenty-two-year-olds with degrees in business and sociology. It’s pathetic. We live in a skin-deep culture that eats its old.”

“You’re not old.”

“No, but I’m starting to look old.” She got up and turned on the AC to see if it worked. It did and she turned it off. “Lanie knows a good doctor who did some work on her.”

Steve’s eyes fixed on the AC. “By the way, what was the temperature last night?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just wondering.”

“It was cool and rainy. Why?” She stared at him for a long moment. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t respond for a moment. “I had another spell yesterday.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. The last I remember was dropping off my grades at the Criminal Justice office. Then I think I grabbed a bite to eat near campus. It’s all blank after that.”

“You don’t remember going home?”

“No. Just waking up this morning when Reardon called.”

She gave him a long penetrating look. “Were you drinking?”

He saw that coming. “Maybe a beer.”

“Or two or three…on top of Ativan. You know the doc said that can screw you up.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t know what I drank. And I take the Ativan as needed.”

“Did you?”

He looked at her and shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

“So, where were you?”

“A restaurant across from the quadrangle.”

“And you don’t remember driving home? Taking a shower? Going to bed?”

“No.”

“You must have had your PDA turned off, too, because I tried calling a couple of times.”

“I guess.” He had to charge his PDA that morning while he showered and got ready to leave for the crime scene. He always did that at night. But he hadn’t.

She shook her head and was about to reprimand him when she stiffened. “Something’s burning.”

“The lamejunes.”

Steve had brought over some Armenian pizzas and other delicacies. Even when they were living with each other, he prepared many of the meals because Dana got no pleasure from cooking nor was she particularly creative. In fact, she overcooked everything. He, on the other hand, got lost in the creative process—a relief from the constant stress of his job.

He bolted down the stairs to find smoke billowing out of the oven. He had forgotten to set the timer. He pulled out the tray. The lamejunes were smoking disks of char. “They’re a tad well-done, but you might like them.”

“Very funny.”

He washed the remains into the garbage disposal while Dana snapped on the vent. On the kitchen island were platters of rolled grape leaves, pickled vegetables, and cheese and spinach turnovers plus a bowl of hummus with triangles of pita and Calamata olives. He started to pull more lamejunes out of the box, but Dana said she wasn’t hungry.

“The grape leaves are homemade. I rolled them with my feet the way you like them.”

She gave him a thin smile but shook her head and leaned against the sink.

Steve poured her a glass of Gewürztraminer and himself a club soda. She was quiet and stared into her glass. “Can I stay over?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I promise I won’t let you touch me.”

“No.”

“I miss you.” He missed coming home to her. He missed their conversations, her supple mind, her humor. He missed their marriage. He missed looking at her. Living his life without Dana was like trying to breathe on one lung.

The good news was that she was still wearing her wedding band. It was the first thing he checked when they got together. It made him feel safe still, but the expression on her face did not.

She took a sip of the wine and laid the glass down with a plink. “Then you should have thought of that before you decided to jump all over Sylvia Nevins’s bones, to use your eloquent turn of phrase.”

He sighed. There it was again—the old transgression that she kept rubbing his nose in.

Last year he had gotten high at a party and made a move on a foxy assistant medical examiner. One thing led to the next and he ended up in her bed. Then again the following week when Dana was away on a field trip. Unfortunately, Sylvia had picked up rumors that Steve and Dana were having marital problems and wanted more than a couple of one-nighters. But when he declared that their brief affair was over, that he was still working things out with his wife, she became ballistic. To get back she left Dana a telltale phone message. That was the turning point: Dana announced that she wanted a separation.

It was a turning point for him, too. When he learned that she had told Dana everything, Steve drove to Sylvia’s place. He had been drinking, and in a moment of rage he slapped her across the face, accusing her of trying to destroy his marriage. She shot back that he had made the move on her, and he counteraccused her of leading him on for months. None of that was important. But what pecked at his conscience was the knowledge that he had crossed a barrier—that in a weird half-conscious angry-drunk moment he had struck a woman. For weeks following that he had had disturbing dreams of violence—sometimes against Sylvia, sometimes against Dana. Dreams that mixed up nightmare details, leaching in from his casework. Dreams that had sent him to his doctor for stronger meds.

He had apologized to Sylvia.

He had apologized to Dana: “I feel rotten about it.”

“You mean you can’t live with the guilt.”

“Yeah, and I’m very sorry. It was stupid and wrong.”

“And vengeful.”

“Vengeful? What are you talking about?”

“Don’t go brain-dead on me. Vengeful because I want kids, and you can’t commit. So to get back for my pushing, you hop into bed with the first available bimbo.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit. You couldn’t commit to getting engaged. Then you couldn’t commit to getting married. And when you finally gave in, you declared you wanted to hold off on kids. Well, I’ve been holding off long enough. I told you it’s now or never. So, instead, you shack up with Sylvia Nevins because you don’t like ultimatums.”

“Stop throwing that up to my face.”

“And stop telling me you’re working on it. It’s been twelve goddamn years. Just how much longer do I have to wait?”

“You know the reasons.”

“Yeah, I know the reasons. Your parents had a rotten marriage and divorce was rampant in your family, blah, blah, blah. Well, I can’t change that, Stephen, nor the fact that I’m thirty-eight years old and want a family.”

“I’m sorry.” He had wanted to say more. He knew he should say more, but he couldn’t. And he heard the protest die in his throat because she was right—about all of it.

“I wish she had never told me,” she had said.

Yeah, me, too, he had thought. As he looked back, he was still amazed that he had the restraint to stop at a slap.

“Christ!” Dana had flared. “She’s nearly half your age.”

“Dana, she means nothing to me. She’s out of my life and moved to Florida.”

That was their exchange months ago, and since then Sylvia Nevins had taken a job in Pensacola and the last he had heard she was engaged to be married. But that was irrelevant. Dana could not forgive him despite his apologies and the fact that it was the first time in their twelve years of marriage that he had cheated on her.

Over the months he looked back on that night a thousand times and hated what he had done. Because friends and colleagues were at the party, he had been discreet for most of the evening, making beer talk with Sylvia. But when no one was looking, he arranged to meet later at her place, where he spent the night in boozy sex. Deep down he knew that their tryst had not arisen out of a bottle or Sylvia’s seductive wiles. Steve had let it happen on his own volition, driven by despair and mortal sadness that his life with Dana was at the edge because he could not bring himself to fulfill her ultimatum. About his love for her he was not uncertain. It was about his capacity to be a father that had created a blockage. She was right: out of desperation, he had acted upon a stupid, spiteful impulse to get back at Dana for his own failings. The old blame-the-victim shtick he heard all the time in interrogations.

Steve moved to the refrigerator and removed his service revolver from the overhead cabinet. He strapped it on as she walked him to the front door, trying to repress the anger. “Sorry about the job.”

“I’ll get over it.”

“Something else will come along.”

“Maybe.”

He looked at her across the kitchen. “Can we give this another chance?”

“I think we’re out of chances. We are who we are and that’s not going to change.”

The tired resignation in her manner caused a blister of petulance to rise. She was closing the door on him the way his parents had when he was a kid—abandoning him physically, mentally, emotionally, and every other goddamn way because they were too caught up in their own tormented egos to be a source of comfort and understanding. Too adamant to care enough.

“I can change,” he said. “So this need not be forever, right?”

“I just want to be on my own for a while.”

He nodded. And his eyes fell to her neck and the fine hairs that made a phosphorescent haze in the light. In a flash his head filled with distended blue-black tendons at the end of the stocking noose.

“Stephen, I want children. I want what my sister has, what our friends have. I want to have a family.” She opened the door.

The black air was thick with humidity.

She looked at him. “You get it, don’t you?”

“I do.” He stepped into the night, his wedding vows echoing through the fog in his head.