Change Places with Me

by Lois Metzger

  Clara appreciated that he’d admitted it, didn’t try to cover it up. A few photos sat on his desk. Good-looking African American wife, really good-looking kids. In one of the pictures he had them in his arms like he couldn’t get enough of them.

  “Think of what happens to the body that is about to have an anxiety attack. The breathing becomes rapid. The blood pressure rises. The heart rate increases. The palms sweat. There is muscle tension in the head, neck, and back. Finally the body experiences a full-blown anxiety attack. Not a pretty picture, is it? But with the help of biofeedback, the body will be able to recognize and even anticipate these symptoms. The body will learn to relax and prevent the attack before it has a chance to happen.” He opened his arms. “It’s quite a wonderful thing.”

  “But not for me,” Clara said. “I don’t have anxiety attacks.”

  “Your stepmother believes you have something like an ‘adjustment disorder,’” Dr. Stone said, softening his voice, “which can be short-lived. In your case, not. It’s a kind of anxiety attack with its own set of brain signals. You could learn which signals are sending you the wrong messages and make the appropriate modifications.”

  Adjustment disorder. So, it had a name.

  “Your case requires more than biofeedback, however. Talk therapy, at the very least—conversations. It’s not something that happens overnight; it does take time: months, sometimes even years. But there’s steady progress along the way.” He was speaking even more quietly now, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear. But no one else was in the room. “You see, Clara, you are grieving as a child.”

  “I’m not a child,” Clara said sharply.

  “In life you are fifteen, but in your grief you are eight.”

  This made no sense. She was fifteen, not eight, and she didn’t want to listen to brain messages and she certainly didn’t want to talk. If she wanted to do anything at all, it was to change places with the girl in the jean jacket. How could biofeedback help her with that?

  “Are you all right?” Dr. Stone asked her. “You look a little shaky.”

  “I’m fine,” Clara said.

  “Why don’t you give it a try?” Dr. Stone said. “It’s remarkably easy—I hook you up to a machine, and your bodily reactions can be observed in real time on a screen. Seeing your physiological responses can begin the process of controlling them, which leads to reactive mastery, as we call it.”

  Clara shook her head.

  “It’s perfectly safe, a clinically proven method that’s been around for decades—unlike one of these fly-by-night, quick-fix neurological outfits with their memory additions and subtractions. It’s why Neuro Plus appealed to your stepmother so much.”

  “Then let her do it.”

  “This can help you,” Dr. Stone said—and sounded genuinely concerned, Clara noticed. “It’s already helped many others. But you must be invested. Positive results only come when a patient is invested.”

  Dr. Stone told Evil Lynn he was sorry he couldn’t refund her money, but he could arrange for credit should Clara ever change her mind.

  Clara was relieved to leave, and even more so that Selena wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  CHAPTER 19

  Friday afternoon was dark and blustery cold. Clara shivered as she and Kim walked to Belle Heights Tower, and her teeth were still chattering in the elevator that took them up to the fourteenth floor. “I’m sorry,” Kim said. “I should have brought you a coat.”

  Clara remembered that Kim never got cold, at least not until it was really freezing, and when they were kids had always brought a heavy jacket to school, just in case Clara wanted to borrow it. There was something so familiar about being with Kim, even if Clara didn’t really know what she was doing here.

  Kim pointed out that the floor numbers went directly from twelve to fourteen. “It’s really the thirteenth floor,” she said. “Who are they kidding?”

  Ha, Kim would live on a floor that didn’t actually exist.

  Once inside Kim’s apartment, Clara headed for the window and looked down at her own two-story apartment house, seeing its flat gray roof and redbrick chimney for the first time.

  “It’s always amazed me that you live so close,” Kim said. “You could’ve popped over anytime.”

  But to Clara it felt like an infinite distance, one that also stretched way back in time, as if she was peering out at something in the long-ago past.

  Clara looked around the living room and recognized some of the furniture that had followed Kim here from her old place near Belle Heights Bay, a couple of recliners, an old love seat with curvy legs that ended in lion’s feet, a big coffee table with a glass top, and lots of books.

  “Let’s work in the bathroom; I need the sink,” Kim said. “I’m really glad you’re here, Clara. You and that face of yours.” They went to the bathroom. “You mind washing up?”

  “You know I don’t have to wash any makeup off.”

  “I like to work on a clean slate.”

  Clara used the soap in the soap dish—it was the same kind Evil Lynn used, lavender, sticky sweet. When Clara was finished, Kim motioned for her to sit on top of the closed toilet seat, which had a fuzzy blue cover that matched the blue towels.

  “Okay, now for the ‘before’ pictures. This’ll help me see what I’ve done right and any stuff that’s not right. You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to.” Kim checked the photos and said, “Want to see?”

  Clara shook her head.

  Kim rummaged through a tote bag with several bottles, tubes, pencils, brushes, powders, and pastes before opening a small jar. “This stuff ate up nearly all my babysitting money,” she said, smearing some creamy goo on Clara’s face. “Last weekend I babysat this kid Mark, who lives down on the third floor. Do you know he asked me for cotton balls before he went to bed? And I gave him some. I mean, cotton balls, what’s the big deal? When his mother got home, she said, you didn’t give him cotton balls, did you, and I said, well, yeah, and she freaked. She said, I told you not to—Mark eats cotton balls! I said, you never told me, I would’ve remembered something weird like that, and she said, it’s not weird and I did tell you. I mean, if my kid did that, I’d put it on a sign on his bedroom door—Don’t Give This Kid Cotton Balls. Turns out Mark hadn’t eaten any, he just had them clumped in his fist, but the mom was so mad she didn’t want to pay me. And I’d been there six hours! Luckily, the dad slipped me some money.” Kim dusted Clara’s face with something that felt like snow without the cold. “So, let me tell you about yourself.”

  “There’s nothing to say, Kim.”

  “No, I mean, your character, the one I’m inventing for you. Makeup is all about make up, get it? The outside is supposed to show the inside.”

  Kim had it so exactly wrong. The outside was meant to protect and hide and deny the very existence of the inside, as she’d tried to explain to Mr. Slocum, whose only response had been to send her to the school psychologist.

  “Let’s see. You’re an old lady. Everything has passed you by. Friendship and love and success and happiness. Your whole life you waited for a bus, but it didn’t stop for you. Now give me a big smile.”

  And what kind of smile would there be after a life with no friendship or love or success or happiness? She smiled hesitantly.

  “Bigger. Eyebrows way up. That’s it. The purpose of a smile is to show where your eye wrinkles will be. I won’t do every one, or you’d look like a road map.” Kim filled in half a dozen feathery lines radiating out from the corners of the eyes. “Now make a mad face. Good! That way I can see your forehead wrinkles.” She used a gray-brown pencil, heavy in the middle of the forehead and fading at the ends. She colored in a few circles on the temples—these were age spots. Then she added dark smoky powder on the sides of the nose and the hollows of the eye sockets. “Your skin is incredible; it shows everything.” When Kim reached Clara’s neck, Clara tensed.

  “It tickles,” she said.

  “I’ll do it fast. I h
ave to do all your exposed skin. I could put a scarf on you, but that would be cheating. If you were really onstage, I’d do your hands, too, lots of showy veins and more age spots.”

  Clara clenched her teeth. It was really ticklish. “How do you even know how to do this?”

  “YouTube. There are tons of tutorials; I’ve seen every one. Couple of years ago, I saw a play where a man had this weird skin condition that turned him into a lizard. I’ve been fascinated by stage makeup ever since.” Finally, Kim finished her neck. “Now, it’s time for your hair. An old lady like you can’t have light-brown hair.”

  “You never said anything about dyeing my hair!” This was something Clara would never do. She trimmed her own hair with a few snips every six months or so, keeping her bangs just long enough so you couldn’t see her eyes.

  “Don’t worry; this stuff will wash right out.” Kim spread some thick paste on an old toothbrush. “It looks yellow out of the tube, but winds up looking gray in your hair.” She pushed Clara’s hair back off her forehead, flattening it, so she could get at the roots and work her way to the ends. It dried almost instantly and felt like cement.

  “I’d like to make your character’s life worse, if that’s okay with you.”

  “In for a penny, in for a pound.” One of those things Clara’s dad used to say. Basically, it meant go ahead.

  “Let’s say you got beaten for years. So you’ve got old scars and new bruises. Just to add insult to injury. Or is it injury to insult?” Kim applied a much darker shadow next to the nose and three colors to the curve under the right eye—gray-violet, slate gray, maroon red. “A little gloss, too—a shiner should always have some shine. Now for some scar liquid.”

  The skin near the right side of Clara’s mouth pinched and tightened, like she was permanently sneering. That side of her nose felt pulled in the wrong direction.

  Kim stepped back and picked up her phone again. “Time for the ‘after’ pictures,” she said, clicking away. She scrolled through the photos. “Hey, looks fantastic—even better than I’d hoped! Nothing to touch up. Want to take a good look at yourself?”

  There was a mirror over the sink.

  Clara stood and looked at her reflection. She saw an old, old woman, her face overtaken by wrinkles and age spots, with a broken nose, a black eye, and the remnants of a wound near her lower lip.

  The outside, Clara realized, no longer turned you away from the inside. It was exposing it, holding it up to the light, demanding that it be seen.

  “So, what do you think?” Kim asked cheerfully.

  That’s me; that’s what I am, Clara thought. The bus didn’t stop, and the whole rest of my life will be spent catching up to the image in the mirror until the outside matches the inside. And then I’ll die, simple as that.

  “Clara, I wish you’d say something.” Kim gave her shoulder a gentle nudge. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s exactly right,” Clara said. “Dead-on accurate.”

  Kim let out a little laugh. “I might do something like this for the witch in Into the Woods. But she’s supposed to be young and beautiful at the end—maybe it would be too hard to get all this stuff off between acts?”

  “It would be impossible,” Clara said with certainty.

  “You’re probably right.” Kim caught her breath. “Oh, Clara.”

  “What?”

  “You—you’re trembling.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Look at your hands.”

  Clara gazed at her hands, surprised they were still young looking.

  “Here, why don’t you wash up?” Kim handed her some wet wipes, the type for baby bottoms. “You may have to shampoo twice to get the gray out.”

  Forcefully, Clara used the wipes, every last one. “You have any more?”

  “I think you got it all off.”

  “I need a picture for my phone.”

  “From before or after?”

  “After.” The “before” pictures were meaningless.

  Clara got out her phone, received the photo, and slotted it in as her ID pic.

  “So,” Kim began, “do you maybe want to stay for dinner? My mom—”

  “I have to go,” Clara said without looking at Kim.

  Kim bit her lower lip. “Clara, what’s wrong? I don’t know what happened—c’mon, let’s just go to my room and—”

  “No, I really, really have to go.” It was too late already. It was over. Why couldn’t Kim see what was plain as day?

  At home Clara rushed to the shower. She washed her hair three separate times and practically scrubbed herself raw, getting rid of the gray, any last traces of makeup, and that smell of Kim’s lavender soap. And she was trying with all her might, as if it were even possible, to wash out the inside.

  No soap.

  CHAPTER 20

  It was late that same Friday. Clara sat in the big blue armchair in the living room, legs tucked beneath her. She had her phone open and was looking at the ID pic Kim had taken. How long had she been doing this? She had no idea.

  Evil Lynn swept into the room. She wore a plain off-white kimono. Earlier, Clara had seen her gazing in the mirror at her own glowing, youthful appearance, head to foot, the fairest in the land, scrutinizing every inch of herself as if she didn’t want to miss out on any of it. Such a different experience from Clara’s.

  “I spoke to a child-development specialist earlier,” she said.

  “I’m not a child.” If only Evil Lynn knew how old she really was.

  “She works with teenagers, too. I wish—I wish I knew what to do, Clara. I’m at the point—”

  “There’s nothing to be done.” Clara had seen her future. She was looking at it that very minute.

  “What is it, Clara, why are you shouting?”

  Was she? She could practically hear the echo of her words in the air. There’s nothing to be done.

  “What are you looking at?” Evil Lynn came closer, bringing with her the cloying scent of lavender, so sticky sweet.

  Clara handed over her phone.

  “Who is that poor woman? Where did you see her?”

  “Don’t you recognize her?”

  “I hope you called the police.”

  “Look closer,” Clara urged her.

  Evil Lynn stared at the picture, and at Clara, then back at the picture and back once more at Clara. “I don’t understand.”

  Clara grabbed her phone back.

  At three a.m. Clara woke from a nightmare.

  Clara hardly ever dreamed, or at least hardly ever remembered dreaming, maybe because she slept so fitfully. But this one had followed her into waking and still surrounded and clung to her.

  In the dream she was dressed as she was now, in a granny nightgown. There was an explosion. Clara wasn’t sure how she knew this, because there’d been no bright light or booming sound. She was standing at her bedroom window, looking out at Belle Heights Tower. It was on fire. Clara saw a flickering light in the window. And someone there. Was it Kim? In the dream, Clara grew desperate.

  Get out of there! Clara wanted to yell at the top of her voice. Now! But whoever it was only stared back.

  Clara looked more closely. It wasn’t Kim—but an old, old woman. What Clara was seeing was a reflection. Belle Heights Tower wasn’t on fire. Clara was in the burning building. The flames were at her back and coming closer.

  Clara had sat up then, fully awake, in the circle of light from the lamp near her bed.

  It was a dream, just a dream, she told herself. Again and again. But it could easily have happened. Even her nightgown felt hot, as if she’d stood too close to the fire.

  She went to the living room, back to the blue armchair. The gigantic dogs upstairs were chasing each other through the night, toenails scraping overhead. She opened her phone. Instantly, an ad came on. A gorgeous woman was getting her wrinkles removed with sound waves. “My husband says I look ten years younger,” she said. “Now he acts ten years younger, too!” She winked at Clara.
>
  Another video followed immediately, and another, and another. Spray-on jeans— “Never again fight with that zipper!” House-in-a-Can inflatable furniture, so you never had to worry about friends and loved ones showing up without warning. Fingernail pens you attached to your nails—“Right at your fingertips, or should we say write at your fingertips.” Write was spelled out in loopy cursive. Puffed Lips. Knives that never needed sharpening or your money back. An aid for insomnia—well, that was appropriate. “It works on the principle of opposites,” explained a bright-eyed woman who looked well rested. “You trick your brain into thinking you want to stay up, and then you fall asleep! You trick your brain,” she kept saying.

  Clara knew something about the principle of opposites. What appeared to be an ordinary fifteen-year-old girl could really be someone who was all beaten up and scarred and old, old.

  Then an ad came on that she’d never seen before. She tapped her phone to watch the whole thing. It was long. Pale light filled the sky.

  PART 3

  You Are Here

  

  CHAPTER 21

  Rose walked up steps steep as a ladder. The hall smelled of paint though the walls were dirty and peeling. It was Sunday, October 28, late afternoon. She’d gone to brunch and been to the zoo with Cooper, and now she was at Forget-Me-Not, with questions she didn’t even know how to ask.

  At the top of the stairs was a woman in a neon-green blouse and sharply creased black pants. She had long, rippling gray hair and eyes that matched her blouse, startlingly green.

  “I don’t know you,” Rose said as she climbed. “But your voice . . .”

  The lady sighed yet again. “Yes, the voice. That’s what people remember, in the cases when they do remember. Or so I’m told.”