Chapter Ten

" Think of how gorgeous we're going to be when you wake up. "

" Mom, it's me doing this, not you. "

" Susan Colgate, I shucked a helluva lot of bunnies to correct that jaw of yours, and now is not the time to be ungrateful about it. Now hold on to my finger and count back from one hundred. "

Susan held on to Marilyn's finger and retro-counted: " A hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven. . . " and closed her eyes. When she opened them, it was to find herself inside a cool, dimly lit gray room. Marilyn was in the corner smoking exactly half a Salem, extinguishing the remains and then lighting another (" Butts are coarse, dear" ), all the while avoiding the more intimate questions contained in a magazine quiz about the reader's interior life. She looked up and caught Susan's now open eyes: " Oh sweetie! We look fabulous, " and then she rushed over to proudly beam at Susan's face, stained from within by lost and dying blood cells—blue, olive and yellow—her broken and reset jaw stitched and swaddled.

Susan touched her face, which felt disconnected to her, like a rubber Halloween mask. She found her nose was set in a splint. " My 'ose! Wha' 'appened? "

" Happy birthday! I had the doctor throw in a new nose at the same time. We're gonna look sensational. " " You let 'em mangle my 'ose? " Her voice felt muffled, as though she were speaking from within a pile of carpets.

" Mangle? Hardly. You now have the nose of JenniLu Wheeler, Mrs. Arkansas America. "

" Id's... my 'ose. " She felt nauseous. Her jaws ached.

" Don't get so exercised, sweetie. "

Susan tried to move her body, which seemed to weigh as much as a house. She'd never felt gravity's pull so strongly. Marilyn said, " We have to stay here in the recuperation room for six more hours. How do you feel? "

" Woozy. " Eavy. "

" It's the painkillers. I had them give you a double prescription with two refills. You know how Don the Swan's back can act up. " Don, Susan's stepfather had, over the years, evolved into a whisky-sunburnt, perpetually incapacitated repairman.

" Don seems to be able to lift his SeaDoo and his bowling balls from the bed of his pickup 'enever he needs to. "

" Susan! We're selling the SeaDoo to move to Wyoming, or are you conveniently choosing to forget this? "

" I don't wont to go to Wyoming, Mom. It was your idea. I'm fifteen. Like I 'ave legal say in the matter. "

Marilyn smiled. " Oh! The treachery! "

" Mom, I'm too 'ired to fight. Go get me a mirror. " Marilyn paused upon hearing this. Susan said, " I look 'at bad, huh? "

" It's not a matter of good or bad, dear. I speak from experience. You're covered in bandages. You'll look like hell no matter what. "

" Mom, just show me the stupid mirror. "

Marilyn brought a yellow-handled mirror from the coffee table. Outside in the hallway bandaged figures were being trolleyed by on gurneys. Marilyn held the mirror up for Susan to see her face.

8-4 " Ee-yuuu. I 'ook like a used Pampers balled up and stuffed in a trash can. "

" Such an imagination, young woman, " said Marilyn, whisking away the mirror. " In three weeks it is going to be scientifically impossible for you to take a bad picture. Do you have any idea what that means? I've already lined up a photographer to come up from Mount Hood. An ex-hippie. Ex-hippies make the best photographers. I don't know why. But they do. " She lit up a Salem. " Speaking of JenniLu Wheeler, I heard that the night before the Miss Dixie contest, her eyes puffed up from too many cocktails with a handful of senators, and they put leeches under her eyes to suck out the puffiness. I never told you that one, did I? "

" No. You 'idn't. "

" She bled like a pig for two days, and she missed the title because of it. Or so the story goes. "

" Lovely, Mom. " Susan relaxed and sunk into the mattress. A nurse stepped into the room and asked Marilyn to extinguish her cigarette.

" Excuse me, young lady, but are we in Moscow right now? "

" It's rules, Mrs. Colgate. "

" Where's your manager? " Marilyn asked.

" This is a hospital, not a McDonald's, Mrs. Colgate. We don't have managers. "

" Mom, this is a 'ospital, not the Black Angus. Stub it out. "

" No, Susan—no, I won't stub it out. Not until I get an apology from this insultress. "

" It's rules, Mrs. Colgate. " But the nurse lost her will to push the issue, and walked away.

Marilyn took a deep victorious inhale. " I always win, don't I, Susan? "

" Yes, Mom. You always do. You're the queen of drama. "

" And that's a compliment? "

Susan decided the smartest course of action was to shut her eyes and feign sleep. It worked. Marilyn returned to her magazine's personality quiz and smoked her victory cigarette. Susan mentally flipped through a catalog of Marilyn's seamless dramas, such as the time in the changing room she spritzed a tightly aimed spray bottle of canola oil at the swimsuit of Miss Orlando Pre-Teene after a close call in the talent contest. Susan played her Beethoven Fur Elise, but Miss Orlando had played a Bach Goldberg variation, which could sway even the most musically nai've listener in her favor. As a result of the canola oil (to which Marilyn was never linked), Miss Orlando was forced to borrow Miss Chattanooga's one-piece and lost the pageant.

Susan won a mink coat and a Waikiki weekend, both of which were exchanged for cash, and used to cover travel expenses and the household bills. The money was nice, but it was by no means the sole reason for pageantry. " Susan, there is no price tag that can be placed on accomplishment and superiority. Even if you were the richest girl on earth, do you think you could simply buy yourself a crown? Winners have an inner glow that cannot even be dreamt of in the soul of a nonwinner. "

Marilyn called the pageant business " shucking bunnies, " even though the hutches in which she once bred rabbits to raise money for gowns were long a thing of the past—since Susan integrated Barbie into her essence and began winning solidly around age seven in the Young American Lady, West Coast Division.

" Hey, sweetie, looks like rabbit pelting season sure did start today. The bunnies are hopping for their lives tonight! "

When things were good, when both Marilyn and Susan were on the road, stoked to win, their systems charged with the smell of hair products, Susan could imagine no other mother more

wonderful or more giving than Marilyn, and no childhood more exotic or desirable. School was a joke. Marilyn regularly phoned in and lied that Susan was sick. In lieu of school, she made Susan read three books a week as well as take lessons in elocution, modern dance, piano, deportment and French. " School is for losers, " Marilyn told Susan after spinning another yarn about kidney infections to yet another concerned vice-principal. " Trust me on this one, sweetie—you'll never lose if you learn the tricks I'm teaching you. "

And Susan didn't lose. She reassured herself with this thought as her false sleep faded into real dreams.

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