A Wife Who Wants Beauty - Part 5

The most daunting opponent in Lisa's War On Ugly was not her cheek or her third cervical nerve: it was money. Harold had proved a caring nurse and a devoted lover. If her repulsiveness had ever affected him (how could it not? she thought) he never showed it. He assured her that he loved her inward beauty; he loved her for who she was, not what she looked like.

He was lying.

Or at least she imagined he was. She doubled her gym visits and started to look for work. Harold was doing many good things, but he wasn't funding her War.

Lisa hadn't worked since their wedding, seven years before. They had intended to start a family right way, but that hadn't materialized. Somehow, she imagined, her body was broken on the inside before the accident scarred the outside. Maybe, in a way, it was poetic. Maybe it was time for everyone to see how ugly her empty womb looked.

The first job that came along was in bookkeeping. She answered a want ad in the newspaper, got a call the next day, an interview the next week, and an offer the week after that. She took it. She had a bachelor's degree in accounting, though she had been convinced she would never use it. Her new employer was a family-owned plastics company that manufactured the black caps on syringe plungers. The accounting department had three members. When her new boss, Oscar, walked her to her cubical on the first day, she immediately descended to a darker mood.

Her cube was in the back corner of an office bullpen, hidden by windowless walls and empty desks. She was two cubes removed from her nearest coworker. As if to explain, Oscar pointed out that this cubical was closest to the filing cabinets she would use most.

On Oscar's tour of the facility, they passed the sales department where shiny-haired girls in pencil skirts were zipping up a trade show booth. They shook her hand and smiled faintly, each whispering a silent prayer of gratitude, Lisa suspected, that they weren't deformed.

She worked there for six months and put all her earnings into a health savings account. She scheduled the second surgery before giving her notice. She was packing a cardboard box with the few personal items from her desk when she pondered that the surgery would require an injection. In the consultation with the surgeon the week before, she had learned that Botox would be used. She had worked for six months helping a company make little plastic discs for the right to use one of them on herself. She smirked crookedly, lifted the box, and walked away from her desk. She didn't look back.