Skin Deep

8

“Look, there are dozens of good plastic docs in this town, but Carl says he’s the best: ‘Cosmetic surgeon of the rich and the wrinkled.’”

Dana had met Lanie at a bistro on Newbury Street, Boston’s Rodeo Drive. The curb was lined with Porsches, Mercedes, and BMWs and behind them were designer clothiers, designer hair salons, designer florists, designer galleries, and designer people sporting big shiny shopping bags with names like Armani, Chanel, DKNY, and Rodier of Paris. Because it was a warm spring day, they sat outside at faux Parisian marble café tables under red Cinzano umbrellas.

Lanie Walker, an administrator at GEM Pharmaceuticals, was ten years older than Dana and married to a pediatrician. Because the tables were packed closely to each other, she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Aaron Monks. You can’t do better than him.”

“I think I’ve heard of him.”

“Of course you’ve heard of him. He’s on all the morning talk shows. Boston Magazine listed him in the top twenty-five most eligible bachelors in town. In fact, today’s Globe has a story about his getting an award Saturday night at the Westin Hotel for inventing some transplant procedures.”

“I’m just thinking of a lid lift, maybe a nose job if I can afford it.”

“Then start at the top. I think he’s done everybody who’s anybody in Boston, not to mention a lot of movie people who don’t want to be outed by the Hollywood paparazzi.”

“Yeah, and I’ll probably be sixty-five before I can get an appointment.”

“Use my name.”

The waitress came to take their orders, and they each asked for a glass of Chardonnay. Dana ordered a Caesar salad topped with grilled shrimp, and Lanie ordered a grilled fillet of arctic char. “Isn’t that an endangered species?” Dana asked.

“Probably, because this is Newbury Street not Harvard Square.”

They were surrounded by young suburbanites in town for lunch and people-gazing, young professionals off from work, and chain-smoking Euro college kids, most dressed in tight black. “Ever notice that the older you get the more you’re aware of all the twenty-somethings inhabiting the world?”

“Yeah, and I hate them.” The waitress returned with their drinks. “To makeovers,” Lanie said, raising her glass.

“But I haven’t decided anything.”

“You will.”

Dana took a sip of wine then removed her sunglasses and surreptitiously pulled up her eyelids. “What do you think?”

Lanie lowered her own sunglasses. “You just took ten years off your face. Go for it.”

“And the nose?”

Lanie whispered, “You want the God’s honest truth?”

“Maybe not.”

“Well, that’s all I see. You’ve got a beautiful face and this distraction in the middle of it. Sorry, but it doesn’t belong on your face. Period. Get rid of it and you’ll be drop-dead gorgeous.”

Lanie’s brutal honesty was part of her carpe diem charm. Unlike Dana, she was not conflicted over cosmetic augmentation. Over the last eight years she had had a brow lift, upper and lower lid lifts, and a lower face-lift that tightened her jawline. She also had regular Botox treatments and microabrasion therapy, giving her skin a fresh suppleness.

“I’m thinking of getting lipo on my belly.”

Lipo, not liposuction. Already the procedures had nickname familiarity. “You think you really need it?”

Lanie dropped her hands below table level and grabbed a handful of flesh. “At least two inches.”

Dana’s head filled with TV images of masked doctors ramming large suction tubes into women’s bellies. It looked so violent. “Didn’t you just get an elliptical machine?”

“That was Carl’s idea. I hate the thing. In five minutes I’m exhausted.”

“What about your treadmill?”

“Terminal boredom. Look, I’m not like you. I hate jogging, I hate working out. I admit I’m weak, going for the quick fix and all. But, screw it.” Then she leaned forward again. “I bet you half the women at this place—and maybe some men—have had cosmetic work, including the Euro and Latin club kids. In fact, where they come from they start in their teens—nose jobs, boob jobs, butt jobs, tummy tucks, lipo, you name it. It’s like going to the hair salon for them.”

“That’s insane.”

“I agree, but it’s happening. Look, for four thousand bucks you get a simple lid lift. Another six or seven you get the nose you’ve always wanted. If you have the money, it’s a no-brainer, because you’ll be happy. Even if you don’t have it. Get a loan. You owe it to yourself. And do it now while you’re still young, while your skin is still elastic.”

“Young enough for preventive surgery but too old to get a job. There is a God, and She doesn’t own a mirror.”

“It’s not just the job thing. I think you have a moral obligation to yourself.”

“You’re making aging sound like a sin.”

“Well, if you can do something about it and don’t, it is a sin. The point is you want to be as youthfully attractive as possible, right? Right! You don’t like your nose, right? Right! So you owe it to yourself…and others.”

“What others?”

“Look, I don’t have a crystal ball, but if things don’t work out with Steve, you’ll be entering a new phase of your life.” She leaned close again. “Look at these gorgeous hunks.” She put her knuckles in her mouth and moaned. “Check out the kid in black to your left.”

Casually Dana looked left to a table of three young men and a woman. The male in a loose black shirt opened at the neck had thick shiny black hair pushed back and a tanned Adonis face. Perhaps he saw Dana out of the corner of his eye because he smiled. Dana smiled back, having difficulty thinking that she had a moral obligation to get a lid lift for him.

“Look what’s out there for you.”

“Yeah, me and Demi Moore.”

“You know what I’m saying. You’d be jump-starting your life with a new you and all sorts of possibilities.”

“We’re only separated, not divorced.”

The waitress came with their lunch.

Through the window Dana saw a print of a painting she recognized as Renoir’s Nude on a Couch. “Some things never change,” she said, and she nodded to the painting.

Lanie squinted. “What never changes?”

“Women never stop posing and men never stop re-creating them.”

“I guess.”

“Instead of a couch, today it’s an operating table. Instead of a paintbrush, he uses a scalpel. Meanwhile, the woman is nothing more than material to be refashioned.”

“Aren’t we getting a little deep?”

“Nothing deep about it. It’s the same old, same old sexist pressure on women to look good.”

“And it’s not going to change, sweetie. We live in a culture that reveres youth. You’re not old, but you don’t look young enough for the job. And that’s what you want. So get real, kiddo, and do something about it.”

Dana nodded. “I wonder if anybody knows her name?”

“Who?”

“The model in that painting. She’s just another nude woman on a couch, but the artist is world-famous. And today they’re plastic surgeons on TV.”

“I see your point, I think.”

After a few minutes, Lanie said, “I saw Steve’s name in the paper—the murder of some health club instructor. You see the photo of her? She was a knockout. They have any suspects yet?”

“I’m not sure. He doesn’t talk about his cases.”

Lanie took a sip of wine. “So what’s happening with you two?”

“I don’t know. I just want to be on my own for a while. It’s a trial separation.”

“There’s no such thing. And you’re only fooling yourselves if you think so. I’ve known two dozen people who had trial separations, and each one ended in divorce.”

“We’ll see. But I need time to reassess things.”

“Do you love him?”

“That’s not the issue.”

“It’s the bottom line. If you don’t love him, then get out and get on with your life. There’s too much you’re missing.”

Yes, Dana still loved Steve. And she still had a sexual yen for him. But even before his infidelity, they had begun pulling apart. He was content to remain just the two of them, a streamlined childless couple for the rest of their days. And she wanted kids.

But there was more. Because of the stress of the job, the mounting pressures due to the increased crime rate, and their squabbling over his commitment problems, Steve had taken to alcohol, made worse because he also took antidepressants.

In his adolescence, he had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder that apparently grew out of the guilt he had carried over his parents’ unhappy marriage and their untimely deaths. He spoke very little about his childhood; eventually he had outgrown the disorder. But he still had little rituals. If stress built up, he’d take to cleaning the cellar, rearranging all the tools at the workbench, straightening out his office upstairs, squaring books on the shelves, lining up knickknacks. And he’d do it repeatedly, and in the same fashion, worried that if he didn’t follow the rituals something bad would happen.

The problem was not the rituals and annoying repetitions. It was his drinking on top of the meds. One night he had come home stressed-out. They had a fight over something, and in a fit of rage Steve smashed a lamp against the wall. What scared her was not just the violence, but that he had completely blacked out at the time, recalling none of it. Only later did she discover that he had taken a double dosage of the antianxiety medication Ativan on top of several drinks—a forbidden combination.

Perhaps they should have consulted a marriage counselor. Perhaps they should have worked on it before it had reached critical mass. But they were separated now, and she was beginning to enjoy her freedom, her own space, her sense of renewal, corny as that sounded.

“How are you and Carl doing?”

“The same. It’s more of a habit than a marriage, but it works.”

They finished eating and paid the check. In leaving, Dana shuffled around the tables and glanced at the kid in the black shirt. He was gorgeous—lean tan face, large black eyes, thick shiny hair, cupid-bow lips. He looked up at her and smiled as she moved by. “Goodbye,” he said with a slightly foreign lilt.

She felt a gurgling sensation in her chest. “Goodbye,” she said, trying to make a cool and graceful departure.

When she got home, Dana called Dr. Aaron Monks’s office to make an appointment. Because of his busy schedule, the secretary said that the doctor could see her in two weeks. When Dana said that she was really hoping to have the procedures done before returning to school in September, the secretary said she’d see what she could do.

An hour later she called back to say that because of a last-minute cancellation, the doctor had an opening the first thing tomorrow morning if she wanted to book it. Dana did.