A Little Change of Face Read Free Page B

“All these red spots—it just seemed to me like this is what the measles would look like.”
    â€œNo,” he said, sitting down on the stool next to the examining table, pen already flying across his page, “you don’t have the measles. I’m pretty sure what you have is the chicken pox.”
    â€œThe chicken pox?”
    â€œYes,” he said, starting to write a prescription. “Have you been exposed to anyone recently that may have been infected?”
    I told him about Sarah, the girl with the list in the library two weeks ago.
    â€œYup,” he said, doing the math on the dates, “that’s the incubation period.”
    That damned precocious little reader, I thought. Why couldn’t she have waited until later in the season, just like the rest of the kids, to come in for her books? Or at least have waited until she really wasn’t contagious. I suppose that’s Harried Mom’s fault….
    â€œHere,” he said, handing me the prescription he’d written. “Now, I want to warn you. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”
    â€œYou mean I’m going to feel even worse than I do now?”
    â€œI’m afraid so. Chicken pox when you’re a kid is pretty easy. But as an adult? The older you get, the harder it is. You’re also going to be contagious for another seven to ten days, so no going out in public places until all the pocks scab over.”
    Great.
    â€œNow, I want you to call the office every day to let meknow how you’re doing.” There was my reassuring Dr. Berg again. With all that talk of worse pain and the need to be quarantined, I’d wondered where he’d gone to. “This isn’t going to be easy for you and I’m going to want to keep a close eye on you until you start feeling better.”
    â€œThanks,” I said, glancing up and catching sight of myself in the mirror on the wall. Damn! I already had more spots than I had when I’d first come in there. “Um…can I ask you a question?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œAm I going to look like this forever? I feel like that animal in Put Me in the Zoo. ”
    â€œPut me in the zoo?” he asked, puzzled.
    I sighed the sigh of the long-suffering librarian. It’s amazing how often people don’t get book references.
    â€œKids’ book,” I elaborated. “Animal keeps changing his spots. Big spots. Little spots. Red, blue, all the colors, really. Am I going to wind up like that?”
    I felt strange, exposing myself that way. Over the years, we’d often talked about socio-cultural issues and he knew that I was big on saying that I didn’t think that appearances were as important as people made them out to be, that most women would be a lot happier if they stopped worrying about the outer so much and just focused on the inner. And I’d even backed it up by being the kind of woman who usually dressed casually, almost never bothered with makeup. Would he think now that all that had just been a sham? Would he think me shallow for being so concerned?
    But he laughed, that reassuring sound. “Of course not. Provided you don’t scratch, before you know it, you’ll be just as beautiful as you’ve always been. Even with the spots, you still look good, Scarlett.”
    It really was too bad about that wife and those grandchildren.
    â€œCan I ask you a question now?” he said.
    â€œSure.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you get the chicken pox as a kid, just like everybody else?”

4
    (A nd now for a little station break, as we talk about my breasts…)
    It’s really bothering you, isn’t it? I mean, like, you’re not going to let me go any further until I tell you about those breasts?
    Am I right? Come on, I’m right, aren’t I?
    Fine. You asked for it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
    It all started when I was ten years old….
    Hard to