Stretch Marks

CW: allusions to domestic abuse

 No matter how desperately she searched, Arianne couldn’t find the right foundations to hide the purple blotch under her eye. She pulled her blonde hair in frustration, exposing candy cane earrings and more bruised skin.

“Jillian just made it,” her mom said from the other side of the bathroom door. “She put her stuff in your bedroom.” Arianne could almost hear her breathing, and the cracking of her knuckles as she wrung her hands. “We’re out here ready to open gifts when you come out.”

In the bathroom, the smell of iodine drowned out the aroma of butter on rolls and ham gravy. Using a cotton swab, Arianne dabbed a drop on her cheekbone where an old cut kept splitting open.

A streak of violet circled her left eye and reached all the way to her ear. The skin had turned magenta, speckled with broken blood vessels.

“Okay, be out in a minute,” she called in a thin voice, dumping her makeup bag. Tubes of foundations and highlighter creams rolled like dice on the countertop. Where was the “light tan?” The “F 26?” 

“She brought some cold medicine if you need it,” her mom continued.

“No, I already took something.”

“Arianne, we aren’t worried about getting sick… We came all the way here because we didn’t want you to miss out on the holiday.” When Arianne didn’t respond, her mom added, “So, you can come out.”

“I will.”

From down the hall, Arianne could hear Christmas tunes and a “I’m happy to meet you,” from her sister.

“Likewise,” Arianne’s boyfriend said, tapping into his astute bedside manner.

“I’ve been worried about her being so sick. I’ve hardly spoken to her and needed to make sure she was doing okay.”

“Things have been rough.”

“So… Where do the gifts and the casserole go?” she joked.

After days of declined calls and unanswered texts, her family had orchestrated a raid, more-or-less, inviting themselves to the house Arianne shared with her older boyfriend in rural New York to check in.

“Did he take you to the hospital?” her mom had asked through the bathroom door upon first arriving.

“I didn’t want to go.”

Her sister asked, “Where is Arianne? I want to say hello.”

“In the bathroom.”

“Is she feeling alright?”

“She said she took medicine.”

“This is exactly why she should have gotten the vaccine. I told her to do it.”

Staring at her reflection, Arianne tried to remember what her face had looked like before. But that version of herself seemed so distant. She’d gone from oval-shaped and radiant to an eggplant, pliable and dusky. Some girls wear makeup to look pretty. But nowadays, Arianne needs it just to make her look average.

Camden, cool and sophisticated, had told her mom, “Love at first sight.”

“What a fairy tale,” she’d crooned. And her dad had patted his shoulders, as if he were a king knighting him.

Then, Camden put the rolls in the oven.

“She must be so weak,” her mom had said when she’d presented the ham and the rest of the feast she’d brought.

After applying a thin layer of primer, Arianne used a pad to smooth “light beige” cream over the swollen spot under her eye. When she’d finished, the stiff patch of makeup, she worried, made her look as though she’d spread acrylic paint on canvas instead of foundation on her cheek. Too matte or something. She’d never known much about applying makeup until she started seeing Camden. First to attract him, second to protect him.

Someone knocked lightly on the door. “Hey, Arianne, I’m here. And my big ol’ tummy,” she laughed. Arianne had been so excited about the coming baby.

But she didn’t have the energy to gush. “Hey.”

Her sister leaned against the door, somehow out of breath. “Could I sneak in? I just need to put my band on. Long car ride.”

Arianne dismissed her. “I’ll be out soon.” With her finger, she smeared a dab of “medium ivory” on the side of her nose. She mumbled an expletive. Too white.

Flustered, Arianne twisted the cap off a jar of powder foundation. Using a fan brush, she dusted some around her eye and turned her head to see how it caught the light. Too sparkly.

She worried about the blame. Like, “Did you wash your hands?” Because there was no way that she could have just “not seen it coming,” as in not seen that person in the checkout line sneezing into their sleeve.

Using the tip of her finger, Arianne rubbed some “sand” color on her eyelid in choppy strokes. Too orange.

How would she answer the questions: “Why wouldn’t you go to the doctor?” and “Why wouldn’t you get a prescription?” and “Why wouldn’t you ask for help?”

Arianne daubed her skin with “peach” and “sunset.” Soon enough, the left side of her face looked like impasto, with wet, thick layers of makeup coating it.

Down the hall, intermixed with microwave beeps and the slamming of the oven door, she could hear her mom ask: “So, what do you do again?”

“I’m in my second year of residency.”

“Wow.”

“Oh, I mean… It’s just, I’ve always had a passion for helping people.”

Then, his voice appeared right outside the door: “Arianne, dear? Are you almost ready to come out?” he asked.

She shook her head at her reflection.

“Arianne?”

“How can I?” she choked.

“You got lightheaded, fell down the back steps. It happens.”

Arianne twisted the doorknob, so the spring made a ping sound.

He stood in front of her, tall like a pillar. His aftershave burnt her nose like poison. He lifted her chin. Not a “you look gorgeous, honey,” but he gave her a gentle, “Maybe you should just go to bed.”

“But—”

He squeezed her chin. “I’ll tell them you’re contagious.”

She nodded, and he let her go.

She stared down the hallway toward the commotion in the kitchen. Her sister promised ultrasound pictures. Camden’s shape blocked her view. “So, she…” he began when he rounded the corner, coughing into his fist.

Arianne tiptoed to the bedroom, looking over her shoulder to see if anyone would catch a glimpse of her retreating.

Her heart leapt in her throat when she found her sister standing in front of the bedroom wall mirror, rubbing lotion around the bottom of her pregnant stomach. Purple lines spanned the area beneath her belly button like streams.

Dread washed over the pair of them. Her sister dropped her shirt, too lost in Arianne’s complexion to apologize for startling her.

Sensing the oncoming questions, Arianne blubbered, “The steps were icy, and I fell and hit myself on the railing. I was feeling lightheaded.”

Jill raised an eyebrow. “I just came back here to put on my belly band.” She gestured to a black wrap lying across the bed.

Biting her thumb, Arianne said, “It’s just kind of embarrassing.”

Jill crossed her arms. “How bad has it been?”

“What?”

“How sick?”

Arianne cleared her throat and wiped hair off her forehead. “It gets better,” she started. “Then comes back a little worse.”

Jill nodded. “I see.”

Camden stepped in behind Arianne. A chill ran down her spine as though he were a gust of cold air. “Arianne, I thought you were lying down?”

Arianne flushed. “I was, but…” The left side of her face felt numb from the hill of foundation she’d applied.

Camden looked at Jill with an edge of malice.

“Arianne, we’d love to have you come out with us, just for a little while,” she insisted, her brow tenting.

Camden put a hand up as though warning Jill to stay back. “Really, I think I’m catching what she has, let’s—”

As he started to move between Arianne and her, Jill peeked around him and said, “Nobody’s going to make fun of you.”

Arianne bent her head to hide the surge of emotion passing over her impressionist face.

“Or shame you.”

Camden scowled. “I don’t know why you think it’s fine to imply that your sister looks anything less than beautiful."

“You don’t know?” Jill stepped as close as she could to Camden without letting her pregnancy touch him. “Maybe,” she spoke from between her teeth, “you should take a class.”

He pointed at the belly band. “Take your stuff out of here.”

Taking her belly band from the bedspread, Jill headed out, carrying it at her side like a whip. “Sorry for…intruding, I guess.”

Arianne watched her go feeling somehow safer after she’d left.

With Camden at her elbow, Arianne stepped into the living room, clouded in the rich aroma of peppermint candies, and illuminated by the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree. She felt as glamorous as a tarnished ornament.

The thick makeup around her eye cracked with every minute expression like a plaster mask.

“Feeling better, honey?” her dad asked. “Your, uh,” he ran his hand over his eye, “face looks a little puffy.”

She sniffled and took a seat on the couch. Smoothing her skirt over her tights, she said, “Yeah, still getting through it.”

“The food will help.”

Her mom took a place next to her on the couch. “These are for you,” she said, handing her a pair of envelopes. Before Arianne could slip a nail under the flap, Camden plopped down on the other side of her.

“Me, first,” Camden said, presenting a velvet jewelry box to Arianne, topped with a red bow.

Her stomach turned. Arianne held the box like a slug between her hands, oozing all over her skin.

“Don’t make us wait!” her mom hissed.

The room seemed to shrink around Arianne. When she cracked open the box, her family gaped at the silver necklace.

“Greg, when are you going to get Jill something like that?” her mom taunted Jill’s husband. “You should take notes.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.”

“It’s stunning.”

“You must have spent a pretty penny on that one.”

Camden tugged the necklace from the box. “Try it on,” he insisted. His hands took on all the delicacy they’d been lacking the night she’d “contracted the flu.”

While he laid the necklace around Arianne’s throat, her eyes fell on her sister tapping a nail rhythmically on a coffee mug by the arm of the recliner.

His finger grazed the spot under Arianne’s ear, and she jumped. He chuckled. “Are my fingers cold?”

“Yes.”

Her mom chuckled. “You’re getting goosebumps.”

In the light of the Christmas tree, nearly soft enough to blend the mixture of tones on her face, Camden clasped the necklace around her. Click.

Her mom grabbed Arianne by the tops of her arms and said, “Let me see you.”

Arianne turned, the jewelry suddenly biting at her skin like frost.

Her mom’s eyes traced the necklace lying along the shape of Arianne’s collarbone. She brought her fingers to her mouth in astonishment. “Oh, it looks so beautiful on you.”

Her gaze climbed until their eyes met. Arianne could feel tears rimming her lids. Her jaw trembled with all the things she wanted to admit. It was as though someone had dripped oil on rusty wheels. Things, somewhere, started moving again.

Seeing Arianne’s face close and square took away all her mom’s enthusiasm. Her expression twisted with disgust and subtle horror, like seeing the shadow of a knife on the wall.

“Here, here,” she said urgently, pulling Arianne into a hug. The tears dripped off her cheeks and soaked into her mom’s sweater. In the moment, she could remember being an infant, small and needy.

“Mom, I…”

Her mom whispered in her ear, “You put on a little too much, don’t you think?”

The tears dried up as quick as they’d fallen. Some pretenses are had to break.

Pulling away, her mom sifted through her purse. She took out some “light tan” compact foundation and slid it into Arianne’s palm. “Try this tone next time,” she murmured with a wink.