Part 6 - A Plastic Mom
To this day, I don't know if Nancy thought she fooled us about her plastic surgeries. Nancy would regularly get 'the flu' for a few weeks at a time which would miraculously leave her with smoother skin, skinnier thighs, a straight nose, tight eyes and fewer forehead wrinkles.
She had 'the flu' so many times that she was unrecognizable from pictures taken only a few years prior. Before the wedding I was paging through baby pictures of Peter at my Dad's house. I was considering displaying baby pictures of us on a table at our wedding. My Dad pointed out a cute picture of Peter as an infant and asked, "Who is that holding him?" Peter said, "That's my mom." Even I did not recognize her.
Nancy constantly talked about an ex-boyfriend named Paul. Paul was handsome, rich, brilliant, successful and clearly no longer interested in her. Even her ATM pin was 'Paul,' she could not get over him. They had not dated each other for over 5 years but she still sent him letters. I do not know if she actually believed that Paul might come to the wedding but she said that we must invite him and that she was getting her breasts enlarged in the same conversation.
She was having the surgery in Lexington and her friend was going to drive her down and stay with her overnight. However her friend decided to take off for the week with a guy she met on a plane and Nancy told us that we had to take her to her surgery. Peter tried to get out of it. Somehow it didn't seem right for him to have to help his mom enlarge her breasts, but we went anyway because she had no other friends.
The thing I could not figure out and what I still don't understand is why Nancy's 2 sisters didn't help her out. Her 2 sisters lived in Lexington and instead of staying in a hotel, she could have stayed with them.
Peter and I went in to see her and talk to the doctor after the surgery and her breasts were enormous. Dolly Parton would have been envious. The doctor explained that they would 'settle.' We took Nancy back to the hotel but she called out from the adjoining room because she could not get her clothes off. I told Peter to stay in the other room. She had worn skin-tight jeans and no underwear and I literally had to peel her pants off of her and help her to bed.
The next morning, we drove Nancy home and she informed me that she needed support bras but could not shop while she was in so much pain. She needed soft cotton, wide-strapped, fully supportive bras. I went to the department store and looked through everything, enlisting the help of the salesgirl, and found 3 different styles. I bought one of each and brought them to Nancy's apartment. She looked at them in disgust, declared them ugly and said to return them. She sneered at me, said she would just have to take care of this herself, and sent me away so she could rest. I was pretty aggravated at this point but I said nothing and returned the bras.
Two days later she appeared in the store wearing a front lace-up tank top (no bra in sight,) skin tight jeans and high-heeled boots. Her breasts had not 'settled' yet, they were up to her eyebrows and the employees were shooting each other looks across the store. I was mortified. She announced that Peter and I needed to go with her to the food court to talk about sales figures. As we descended the escalator, there were teenage boys poking each other, pointing to her and giggling, I was extremely embarrassed.
The sales in the store were pretty good but we were falling behind with expenses. Nancy kept insisting that the store was profitable until Peter and I were there. According to Nancy, every past manager had produced a profitable year and she wanted to know why the store wasn't profitable now. Peter and I really did not know why. If the sales volume was approximately the same, then it must be higher expenses. Nancy was taking double the 'loan' payment each month than she had originally told us she would take, but that couldn't be the only problem.
We left the meeting and I went home and opened up the boxes of records we had removed from the Lexington store during the snowstorm. I began going through bank statements, sales and financial records and tax returns to figure out what was going on with the store. I soon discovered that everything Nancy told us about the store was a lie.