Jackie’s mother came from the same era more or less…the “always look your best, even if you feel like crap” theory prevailing over all. She had once been on American Bandstand and closely resembled Annette Funicello while my mom was more the Natalie Wood type. About the third day after I had met my new pal in “lockdown”, her parents came to visit and drop off some clothes. Jackie’s attempt had been much more “serious” than most and had gone further than several others on the ward. She’d overdosed and lay comatose for over seventy-two hours while her family was on tenterhooks wondering if she did revive, would she be irreversibly brain damaged? Miraculously, she came out of it ok and was brought to the hospital where I’d already settled in a week earlier. The red-rimmed eyes I’d suffered as a side effect of the carbon monoxide had faded to a less alarming pink, so that my eyelids no longer resembled those of an albino rabbits. But Jackie’s skin still held a bluish tint that even careful makeup couldn’t camouflage. We made quite a ghoulish pair. After her parents left that first time, she was pawing through the stuff they’d brought her casually and came across a lacy thong spinning it around one finger asking me if her mother thought she’d be getting lucky? And in a smaller Ziploc bag were no fewer than four tubes of lipstick…all the better to look more schizophrenic with. We both “cracked up” laughing. Lipstick and thongs??!! Later she’d ask her mother what on God’s green earth she’d been thinking and her mother snapped irritably saying that she’d just grabbed things randomly and wasn’t exactly thinking lucidly after her daughter’s horrific dance with death thanks very much. Needless to say, she was not nearly as entertained as we were.
But I could definitely relate because my mother had packed me enough makeup to put on a Broadway show. (To be fair—I had asked for some foundation so I wouldn’t feel like such a hag under the less than flattering fluorescent lighting.) What kinds of subtle (or not so subtle messages) were our progenitors sending us at this, the lowest moments of our lives? It was the old “put on a happy face” and “fake it til you make it” school of thought and Jackie and I were both appalled and amused by the all-too-familiar sentiments.
