“It’ll fade over time. You won’t even notice it.” He moved his hands to my breasts, pushing them up, cupping them in his hands. “You’ll need your breasts lifted. I would also suggest implants to give you more fullness.” He drew on my breasts with the marker, showing me where he’d cut and stitch me back up. He traced around my nipples; in the mirror they looked like eyes, the wide outer rim of my stomach at the bottom a smiling mouth. “You’re not ever planning to breastfeed, are you? You probably won’t be able to after this procedure.” He showed me where my new nipples would be positioned, in a place higher than they’d ever been.
Next he asked me to hold my arms straight out. “Your batwings are pretty significant, so there will be a lot of hanging skin we’ll need to remove.” He drew on the flab hanging down from my upper arms. “We’ll do an arm lift. The scar will be in your armpit, so no one will see it.” I stood frozen with my arms outstretched as the doctor drew on me. He moved behind me and placed his hands on my butt. “The last big thing you’ll need is a complete lower body lift. We’ll remove the sagging skin from your thighs and your behind and then lift everything, giving you a smoother, tighter appearance.” He turned me around and gave me a handheld mirror so I could see my reflection in the larger mirror behind me. He bent over and continued to draw on my skin with the marker, long smooth lines and smaller dotted lines all over the back of me. I pictured him with a pair of scissors, cutting my flesh as if it were cloth.
He stood up and told me to put my arms down. He maneuvered me back slightly so my face was directly under the bright light above the mirror. “You’re probably too young for a facelift, but we’ll see how it goes with the surgery. Be prepared for the fact that you’ll look older when you’re thinner. Fat is like a natural collagen, so without it you’ll wrinkle more.” He turned my face to one side. “Your nose is a bit big. I could fix that.” Big compared to what? I wanted to ask. Not compared to a Volkswagen.
Dr. Ahmad put the cap back on the marker and smiled at me. “That’s it,” he said. “You may need some lipo if you have small pockets of fat here and there, but we won’t know that until you’ve had the bypass. You look worried. Don’t worry. You’re in good hands. I do this all the time. Several times a week, in fact. In about a year from now, you could be a whole new person.”
He left me to get dressed and I looked at myself in the mirror, full on. There was Plum’s body with black lines showing how Alicia would be carved out. I’d look like Frankenstein by the time it was over. I turned full circle, trying to take in all the black marks. No matter what I did, there was no escaping the body that trapped me. I could see that now.
In the taxi on the way back to Calliope House, I didn’t say anything to Marlowe. She congratulated me on finishing the makeover and handed me a copy of Fuckability Theory, which she’d signed For Plum Alicia, love Marlowe xo. I noticed the book’s dedication: To the 3 Stus and Sharlene.
“What’s wrong?” Verena asked when we walked into Calliope House.
“Nothing, I’m just tired.”
“Making yourself fuckable is a lot of work,” said Marlowe.
“I’m not fuckable,” I said. I’m Frankenstein.
Verena told me to go to her office at the top of the stairs, that there was a present for me. Hanging on the back of the door was a new version of the white poplin shirtdress with purple trim, along with a pair of purple tights. More than double the size of the original, this duplicate dress was like a cartoon. I set down my bag and Marlowe’s book and held the dress in my hands. For some reason, I wanted to put it on.
I locked myself in the bathroom, where there was a pubic hair on the toilet seat, as black and spindly as a spider’s leg. I took off my clothes and replaced the black control-top tights with the purple ones. There was a brief flash in my mind of Leeta, she of the colorful tights. I stepped into the dress and then stood before the mirror. Seeing Plum wearing Alicia’s dress was like looking in a funhouse mirror. Alicia, blown up twice the size she should have been. The dress was sleeveless, so my upper arms were visible, with the pattern outlined by the doctor’s black marker. The pattern of Alicia.
Thankfully I couldn’t see my whole body in the bathroom mirror, but what I saw reminded me of Janine, the outcast from the Baptist clinic, with her bright and colorful wardrobe. What if it were my fate to look like Janine forever? What if this is your real life? What if you’re already living it? Only a month earlier that had seemed impossible.
“Plum, are you all right?” Verena called up the stairs.
“Coming,” I said. I turned away from the Plum-Alicia hybrid in the mirror and returned to Verena’s office to collect my things. I didn’t bother to change into my regular clothes—I wanted to leave the red-walled house as quickly as possible. As I was about to walk out of Verena’s office, I saw the bottle of so-called Dabsitaf, the French diet pills, on her desk. I stuffed the bottle into my bra, in the space between my breasts. I was downstairs and out the door before Verena and Marlowe realized it, heading toward the subway in the dress, my legs bulbous and grapelike in the purple tights, which didn’t press in my stomach.