Younger

by Suzanne Munshower

  “Lisa, can you hear me? Time to wake up.” Marianne was gently shaking her shoulder.

  “When’s the doctor coming?” she mumbled.

  “Oh, he’s been and gone. All done! Now, don’t touch your face, okay? Just for today, he’s put bandages on to make the creams absorb faster, so don’t be scared when you see a mummy in the mirror. Don’t worry about your hands and arms. No laser there. Just some dermabrasion, and you’ll have extra cream on them today but no bandages. I’m coming back with you to your house. In the morning, I’ll show you how to use the treatments.”

  “My house? Oh, oh, yeah, the house. You’re going to stay? Maybe we can watch a DVD later . . . Can I have a drink of water now?” Woozily, she tried to move, but Marianne’s firm hand stopped her.

  “Just relax for a few minutes. I’m going to strap on this oxygen mask, okay? It will clear your head so you’ll be able to get up and not feel dizzy or have a headache. Okay?”

  Anna nodded, thinking how strange it would be to be a nurse and have to keep adding “okay?” at the end of everything you said. She wondered if she’d ever see the doctor, whoever he or she was. Secrets, she thought. So many secrets, and I don’t even know which ones I need to keep. Then she was asleep.

  By the time they got back to the house, she could walk, as long as she held on to Marianne’s arm. She was led straight to her bedroom, where no sooner had the nurse helped her put on her pajamas than there was a tap at the door, and Mrs. McCallum entered with a bowl of broth and glass of ginger ale. “We’re not eating together?” she asked Marianne, feeling childishly disappointed.

  “Oh, no, we can’t do that.” Marianne grinned, but the smile was impersonal. “After all, you’re the patient, and I’m the staff. I’ll check on you later.” She fluffed up the pillows on the bed. “Sleep only on your back, propped up, okay?”

  Marianne’s idea of checking on her seemed confined to stopping by before dinner and asking, “Everything okay, Lisa? Want something to help you sleep? No? Let me just put some cream on your arms then, and I’ll pop in to see you in the morning.”

  Alone again, Anna sighed and blinked back tears that might run into the gauze on her face. She should be thrilled—she was going to be a millionaire, look better than she had in years, and have interesting and challenging work—but that didn’t make her feel any less lonely. Her physical isolation matched the sense of psychic isolation she felt. She missed her friends and her home. She didn’t, she realized, miss her leased Mercedes, her expensive wardrobe, her things.

  Before going to sleep, Anna watched the latest top-grossing vampire movie that wasn’t George’s, figuring if she actually were twentywhatever, she would have seen it.

  It wasn’t bad. Well, other than its premise, which as far as she could tell was that life wasn’t worth living after about thirty.

  That part really sucked.

  Anna was still in her pajamas when Marianne “popped in” the next day after breakfast. The nurse had brought her backpack, from which she took a camera, some jars, and a pair of blunt-edged surgical scissors. “Now, let’s have a look at you. Might be a bit pink, so don’t be shocked.”

  As she heard the scissors snip-snip-snipping through gauze and tape, Anna anxiously wondered what was beneath. Would the same old face be staring back at her? Would the changes be minimal? Would she be scabby and burnt? Would it be like a horror film, in which a face like Madame Barton’s had replaced her own?

  “There we go! Very good. Look straight at me, and we’ll get some photos.”

  Anna let herself be annoyed at how nurses talked to patients as if they were toddlers. But when Marianne coyly asked, “Shall we have a look?” her heart leapt in anticipation.

  She hurried into the bathroom. In the mirror over the sink, her face stared back.

  Her skin was pink, yes, though no worse than a bad sunburn. There were still lines, and it could be just wishful thinking making them seem fainter. But the texture, the tone! Overnight, her skin seemed to have plumped up. It was dewy. It was radiant.

  She saw Marianne’s reflection appear behind her. “So? What’s the verdict?”

  “I think it’s good.” Anna leaned forward and peered at herself. “My neck feels a little tight.”

  “That’s because you stretch the skin when you move. You want to avoid jerking your head around for a day or two as it heals. It will loosen up. And that puffiness will go down. Now, let me get the products and show you how to use them. You need to do it religiously, Lisa. Just as I say, or the results won’t last and won’t accelerate. Understand?”

  Anna nodded, and Marianne fetched the jars from the other room, then explained in detail how and when to use each one. “No workout today, and it’s best if you stay indoors and take it easy. You can resume exercise—but no heavy lifting—and your normal life tomorrow,” she said. “Just stay out of the pool and out of the sun, and wear sunblock and a hat outdoors in the daytime even if it’s cloudy. Follow the regimen until Friday night, but do nothing Saturday, no breakfast again and just water on your face, and I’ll see you at the clinic, okay?”

  Alone, Anna stayed in front of the mirror. It was almost as if she were being born again, as if the old Anna Wallingham were being erased, replaced by . . . what? Who would be looking back at her from this mirror next week? Would it be Anna? Or Lisa? Or some new, unknown person younger than both?

  Sunday, June 26

  Being brainwashed must be like this. I made the transition to Lisa so quickly that I’m not sure I’d respond to Anna’s name anymore. Pavlov’s dog, that’s me.

  Can’t wait to get out, though, to meet people who aren’t being paid to speak to me. Of course, the retail Youngskin client wouldn’t be dropping so many years in appearance and having to drop out of real life as I’ve had to, so she wouldn’t feel cut off like this, would she? Will the woman who goes to her doctor for the stronger formula be able to regress this much? (Pierre, this is a question for you. Why thirty years?)

  Anyhow, the big news is the face I saw in the mirror this morning. It looked fantastic. Pink and puffy, but I could see the difference. Even without laser, my hands and arms look more youthful, too. I’m actually looking forward to the next treatment, and I’m eager for my reentry as the new, younger Anna . . . or, whoops, Lisa.

  I went for a walk outdoors today, and I felt a new spring in my step. Suddenly I felt, oh, I guess I’d say “viable.” For the first time in ages, I envisioned a world filled with possibilities for me, as if the IV in that operating room had been dripping in optimism with the sedative.

  I think this is the key to promoting the line: bringing not just a new look but a new outlook. And now I can see why you wanted me to experience it for myself, rather than just telling potential buyers how great they’d feel.

  Tomorrow means new coaches and another new beginning. Bring it on, I say. Bring it on!

  Chapter 8

  The next days passed quickly. The nights remained long and dull, but Anna filled them with books and movies. One evening, she tried reading aloud the tweets of some women in their twenties, repeating them in her new higher voice, biting the words off as they spilled from her lips. “I look so hawt tonight! Imma rock my jeans and go—” She stopped. Did people really talk like that? Whatever. She wouldn’t, and that was all there was to it.

  This week’s Movement classes were with a young actress named Joy, who thought Anna’s walk was fine and flat heels would do most of the time. “The main thing to keep in mind is that the twenties are a transitional age, so you wouldn’t be all over the place like an eighteen-year-old, but you still want plenty of movement, more than I can see you have naturally. You probably worked hard to develop poise, but you don’t want to be too poised now.”

  As she felt and saw her movements grow looser under Joy’s tutelage, Anna realized the coach was right—she had worked very hard to acquire poise—and wonde
red if she had lost some of her youthful spontaneity along the way. If so, she was prepared to welcome it back.

  Speech was replaced by Vocabulary, with a blogger named Rick, who was a veritable trend thesaurus. He taught her all sorts of silly words like momo, cramazing, and mega ace that would never again issue from between her lips. When she got answers right, he’d yell, “Rock star!” Rick was amusing, but Anna pretty much ignored anything he said, deciding her own slang expressions were so old, they might pass for trendily retro.

  The most exciting events of the week were her haircut and “wardrobe call” on Tuesday. A multiply pierced guy named Milo came to cut her hair in a short asymmetric crop, which he referred to as “the style you showed your producer,” so she figured it had been chosen for her by Fleur. “It’s convertible, see?” he said when he was finished. “Go low-key by sticking the longer bits behind your ears and brushing it smooth except to pouf it up a bit on top. When you’re ready to rock ’n’ roll, piece it out with gel and pomade, then push the sides forward and spike it.”

  “Gotcha,” Anna fired back, astonished at what a difference a hairstyle could make. She looked funky and sassy. The twice-daily applications of Youngskin were paying off, too. In dim light, she could probably pass for late thirties.

  Wendi, a photo shoot fashion stylist who looked about twelve and even wore Mary Janes with her minidress, arrived in the afternoon with bags and a rack of clothes. “Your producer says you’ll need four to six outfits?” she said, her voice rising at the end questioningly. This, Anna soon discovered, was how she said everything, Valley Girl Meets Brit. “So, I brought, like, pieces you can wear alone or mix up? And I have shoes and bags and all, too?”

  Anna wondered if Wendi thought she was weird for taking each outfit into the bathroom to change, but, while she was in great shape for her real age, she worried that the discrepancy between her face and body was growing. She found herself looking at that body below the neckline less often, unwilling to see a mutant. Only the thought of a million pounds, and the prospect of her face returning to a somewhat younger version of her old self in a year, plus her vow to keep working out until her body looked fantastic, kept her calm.

  She ended up with a collection of things she wouldn’t have looked at twice two months before: a brown-and-red tribal print pencil skirt to wear with the cream fringed crocheted vest (hadn’t she bought something similar at Sears in junior high?) and red jersey top; green treggings, a cross between leggings and tights; and the indigo stretchy “skinnies” that were tight as the treggings but heavier and more jeans-ish and seemed also to be called “jeggings.” She also picked out an oversized white shirt, cropped jacket, long black cardigan, another skirt, some tops with three-quarter sleeves to cover her jiggly upper arms, and what Wendi termed “the most awesome LBD” (little black dress)—a tight micromini with shawl collar and gauzy sleeves. That would be enough until whenever she could go shopping on her own.

  Then there were the shoes. She refused to try on sky-high platforms or multibuckle stilettos that looked like torture chambers, opting instead to totter just slightly in somewhat lower black-and-silver peep-toes that would work all right with the LBD. She lunged at black UGGs and brown low-heeled ankle boots. When she tried on the latter, she did it all wrong, of course, and Wendi looked at her as if she’d fallen off a turnip truck. “But nobody wears ankle boots laced, Lisa!” she giggled. She undid them halfway. “This is better.”

  “I just wanted to make sure they fit right,” Anna bluffed.

  She also took a pair of red “flatforms” and some standard-issue black Vans. For bags, she chose a big and busy Desigual tote pieced from clashing prints and with all sorts of chains and coin purses and purposeless bits and pieces hanging from it. It was a bag no woman over forty would carry, and that’s what she wanted. Its frankly fake pleather trim made her shiver in horror, but it was big enough for a laptop or whatever else she might have to drag around. She also took an oversized black fake-snakeskin clutch and a black backpack.

  Wendi meticulously mixed and matched tights and socks for her. At the end, Anna had to ask for a list of what went with what, saying she needed it for the woman who would be her dresser for her show rather than admitting she never would have thought of wearing the lace-cuffed ankle socks with the peep-toes.

  “Smalls?” Wendi asked.

  “Small whats?”

  Wendi giggled. “Sorry. That’s what we call undies here, our smalls.”

  “Really? I’ve heard knickers, but never smalls.”

  “Well, it’s a laundry thing? You know, the smalls are the smaller bits of washing? I guess you won’t be stripping down onstage?” She giggled again at her own joke. “I’ll make that list for you and then I think we’ve got it.”

  She’d need outerwear, too, Anna knew, but it was warm now so the jacket and sweater would do. Still, it was England, where seasons knew no boundaries, rain could go on for days, and it could sleet in the summer. She would shop for a leather jacket and get a heavier coat later. What I should be buying is a lambskin jacket, she thought. After all, she was about to become what the British scathingly called older women who didn’t dress their age—mutton dressed as lamb. Of course, in her case, no one would know.

  After Wendi had left, Anna ate lunch at the desk, wishing the week were almost over rather than just started. She wanted to get on with it. She was bored with reading Twitter and Facebook, sick of scanning gossip columns, weary of watching movies with women in their midtwenties cast as comic-book vixens. The films were never memorable; the gossip was cattier than she remembered from thirty years ago. What happened to actresses as role models? Now, the rage was mocking them for tight pants that showed their “camel toe,” exposing their pimples or cellulite as if they were scandals, and rating reality starlets’ sex tapes. She was almost relieved this wasn’t her first shot at being young.

  Still, she had to admit she wouldn’t have minded if the treatments literally had been able to turn back the clock. She liked the person she was becoming; she even suspected having to act like someone half her age was going to be the most fun she’d had in years.

  Pierre emailed to chide her for not sending enough diary entries. “I don’t really have much to write about yet. The people interacting with me are afraid to give away anything so they don’t speak unless spoken to,” she responded pointedly. “I’ll be able to connect more when I can mingle with the real world and not just those you pay to deal with me.”

  She didn’t see much of any of them. Her coaches showed up by appointment only. Mrs. McCallum drifted in and out bearing trays, as unforthcoming as the housekeepers in old horror films. Anna supposed it was Mrs. McCallum who cleaned her bedroom—it was always shipshape when she returned after her morning lessons or a walk.

  She wasn’t walking much, though. Mikal was more an unseen presence than a butler, and when once she’d walked as far as the front gate, she found it locked. She turned to find him coming up behind her. “Mr. Barton says please stay on the property,” he rumbled. She had nodded and scurried off, unsettled and convinced he was more guard than manservant. But was he her protector or her jailer? She pushed the question from her mind. As for Aleksei, she expected to see him only two more times, when he drove her to the clinic for her second procedure and when he took her to where she’d be living in London, and that would be just fine with her.

  The solitude was making her think too much, wondering if she should have been more careful before signing any piece of paper Barton waved under her nose. Why hadn’t she asked about having to keep her older body covered up or demanded documentation regarding any side effects? But she knew the answer. If she had stayed in California, sold her house to escape the mortgage, and rented a little apartment, she would be at a dead end. That wasn’t her life. This was her life. She’d been given a second chance. She had proof of that: in her folder from Barton she’d found a receipt for the first q
uarterly deposit from a Swiss bank into her account in LA—£250,000. Almost $400,000! When anxiety pulled her down, she just conjured up the image of her bank balance.

  In spite of missing her friends, the time between emails back home was growing longer; she found herself copying and pasting and personalizing the first and last lines. She pasted in photos she found online. So far, she had journeyed to Hong Kong and Tokyo and was thinking about Kuala Lumpur and Bali. She kept everything brief lest anyone guess her adventures were straight out of a travel blog. She didn’t go into detail since keeping her stories straight could get complicated, and she couldn’t help but feel guilty at Richard’s and Allie’s enthusiastic responses, at their joy in her supposed freedom.

  That evening, Barton emailed to say he would see her after her workout the next day. Was he coming to read her the riot act about not writing her every thought in the damned diary, or did he actually have something to discuss?

  As soon as they were seated in the dining room, Barton produced a manila folder. “Here’s what we have thus far on the UK launch of Madame X,” he said. “I want you to go ahead and start with some ideas for the campaign. You’ll find a study done last year on the cosmetics-buying habits of British women over forty, with some variations from the US statistics. The folder also has information on the in-house staff you’ll be working with. Becca and Chas are used to dealing with pharmaceuticals, but they’re both creative and should work out fine. Becca’s a solid copywriter and publicist. Chas is more junior. An ambitious dogsbody and nobody’s fool. He’ll handle administrative tasks and whatever else you need doing. Nominally, you’ll report to our marketing VP, but he’s going to let you run with it.”

  “Terrific. I miss working.”

  “You’re familiar with the Dropbox app to share documents?” When she nodded, he said, “Good. Download it. I’ve set you up with a new email address. It’s tanyaavery@barpharm.co.uk.” When she opened her mouth, about to ask who Tanya Avery was, he shook his head. “Later.” He handed her a slip of paper with a short line of letters and numbers scrawled on it under the email address. “Log in with this, then change your password so it’s yours alone.”