Skin Deep

by Sung J. Woo

  “I remember you,” Wheeler said. She had an enviable voice, deeper than most women but still quite feminine. “As a reporter for a failed newspaper. Were you even a reporter? I vaguely recall you specialized in restaurant and movie reviews.”

  “Even those who write features and reviews are called reporters,” I said.

  “If you say so. And now you’re a private investigator. Goodness, aren’t you rather underqualified for that?”

  She’d just said this in such a way that it straddled concern and mockery. Did she practice in front of a mirror? Because she was really good at it.

  “I’m a quick learner.”

  “Like learning to sneak around my school, go into buildings you’re not supposed to go into.”

  “I’m not here to cause trouble.”

  “Now we both know that’s not true, Siobhan.”

  Wheeler gestured toward the chair in front of her desk. It was a modern-looking chair, all black and leather and possibly of Swedish origin. Wheeler sat behind her all-glass desk. She did the cross-and-lean thing that women with long legs did. Close up, her face was made-up perfection, from her trimmed eyebrows to the dark red lipstick that was drawn with painterly precision. For a woman in her fifth decade, there was not a single wrinkle, not even the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. Plastic surgery? She didn’t have the look, so maybe she had an expert dermatologist who knew his Botox and fillers. Wheeler and I were both human females, but sitting across this desk, I almost didn’t feel like one. Everything about her made me feel…less.

  As if reading my mind, she said, “Does my physical appearance make you uncomfortable?”

  “Is that the reaction you wish to elicit?”

  Head slightly pitched back, mouth open just enough to showcase two rows of bright white teeth, her polite laughter was a master class in grace.

  “Your reaction is of no consequence to me.”

  “I was hired by the Womyn of Llewellyn to look into Travers Hall.”

  “Ah yes, the girls who purposefully misspell their own gender. Well, let’s not waste any time. Let me tell you what Travers is all about so you can be on your merry way.” Wheeler rose and walked over to her filing cabinet. She rifled through the drawer and pulled out a folder, then returned to her seat. She took out a photo and pushed it across the desk.

  It took about five seconds for me to figure out I was staring at Faith, the leader of the Womyn.

  “What do you see when you look at that girl?” she asked.

  The photograph, an 8x10 black and white, was Faith behind a desk. Her hair was tied into a neat ponytail, and she wore round-rimmed glasses. Wearing a dark pantsuit and blazer, she looked like…

  “A lawyer,” I said.

  “Looks smart, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “And pretty.”

  “Very much so. When was this taken?”

  “Three years ago, her freshman year.”

  “Maybe what I should be asking is, how was this taken. Because the Faith I know now…”

  Wheeler tapped the photograph with the tip of a red-polished nail.

  “…wouldn’t touch lip gloss with a ten-foot pole. She and I were going to usher in a new paradigm for Llewellyn, or so I thought.”

  “What happened?”

  Wheeler smirked. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  37

  Jesus. Looking again at the fashionable lawyerly photo, there was no question. Faith wasn’t nearly as gorgeous as her mother, so the other half of her genes…

  “Her father and I have been divorced for fifteen years, hence her using his last name. I’m disappointed in you, Siobhan. Shouldn’t you have figured this out on your own? Maybe you need to have a little chat with this Womyn with a Y.”

  Wheeler slid another photograph toward me. Here was Faith as I knew her, her makeup-less face overshadowed by her green hair. It was a snapshot from some rally, because she was holding up a sign that read STOP THE TORTURE. In her sleeveless t-shirt, the dark patches of her underarm hair—well, let’s just say it wasn’t the most flattering shot.

  “Tell me, now what do you see?”

  “You want me to compare the two photos?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not a fair comparison.”

  “Oh, but it is. It is because how we present ourselves to the world is who we are. These Womyn of Llewellyn, and women like you, Siobhan—you can all be so much more, but you choose wrongly every time you walk outside looking like the way you do.”

  “So I should be putting on a full layer of foundation, hair extensions, fake eyelashes—because otherwise, I’m not fulfilling my full feminine potential?”

  Wheeler sat back in her chair and scanned me up and down. “All of those would be terrible choices. You’re short, so extensions would only make you look shorter. You have typical beady Asian eyes, so fake eyelashes would actually draw focus onto them. And foundation? Maybe a light layer, but I’d leave your skin tone natural. You are a private investigator. What would be the point of looking like me? You need to look like you, your real you.”

  I tried to brush off her words, but lord, did they sting. What was it about remarks that disparaged one’s physical appearance that hurt so much? There was something downright elemental about it. Maybe because it goes way back to our childhoods, when that was the way you hurt other people and other people hurt you.

  “You deal in superficialities, Wheeler,” I said, my best attempt at a rebuttal.

  She handed me a printout. A study of the Canadian federal elections found that attractive candidates received more than two and a half times as many votes as unattractive candidates. Despite such evidence of favoritism toward handsome politicians, follow-up research demonstrated that voters did not realize their bias. In fact, 73 percent of Canadian voters surveyed denied in the strongest possible terms that their votes had been influenced by physical appearance; only 14 percent even allowed for the possibility of such influence. In another study, good grooming of applicants in a simulated employment interview accounted for more favorable hiring decisions than did job qualifications—this, even though the interviewers claimed that appearance played only a small role in their choices.

  “I do deal in superficialities,” Wheeler continued. “Because the superficial is an integral part of life. There’s a reason why we were given eyes and ears and noses, so we could see and hear and smell, to distinguish, to categorize, to determine that one person is more valuable than another. This is my mission as an educator, that our human presentation layer matters, and matters greatly.”

  “So this is what you’re doing in Travers.”

  “The science of beauty. It is a science, and we here at Llewellyn will be at the forefront. Not only developing theories but real-world applications. We’ll have aesthetic philosophers redefine the very concept of beauty. Our chemists will partner with major cosmetics corporations to develop better materials, better molecules.”

  “But beauty doesn’t last.”

  “An athlete will age and lose her coordination and her stamina, will she say, ‘Why bother. It’s all going to pot anyway.’ No. The athlete will train, will develop, will cultivate her body so she’ll be the fastest, the strongest, the best she can be, for as long as she can.”

  I shook my head, but she was kind of getting to me. It was possible she had a point, even if it was one I didn’t agree with.

  Wheeler was on a roll now. “Youth comprises the greatest proportion of beauty, there is no question about that. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying. There is beauty at every stage of life. Take Catherine Deneuve or Julie Christie—they’ve been exquisite their whole lives.”

  “You’re asking everyday women to compare themselves to movie stars.”

  “Not compare, strive. Would it surprise you to hear me declare tha
t I am a bigger feminist than Gloria Steinem and Betty Freidan and, yes, even my beloved Faith? Because that’s what I am, Siobhan. Believe it or not, the Womyn of Llewellyn and I are on the same side. I want women to be beautiful because it is a great source of power. Use that power to get what we want, to rule who we want, because that’s what it takes to be victorious in this androcentric world. We can bring men to their knees, but only if we use all that was given to us, all that we have in our arsenal.”

  “You seem to have forgotten you’ve opened the doors to men in this college of yours. Are you going to disallow them from entering Travers?”

  “I may be a feminist, but I’m also an educator. If men want to attend these classes, that is their prerogative. I won’t cater to them, though, because they do not require this advantage as much as women do.”

  My phone buzzed. If not for the quiet of this room, Wheeler wouldn’t have heard it.

  “Your little app didn’t quite succeed in its illicit recording,” she said. “You’re on our network, Siobhan, using our authentication app. I know what your phone is running. Next time, you might want to go old school and use a real wire.”

  I’d gotten my butt kicked before, but this was one for the ages. Still, I had a job to do.

  “There’s a second reason why I’m here,” I said.

  “By all means, continue in your noble quest.”

  “Penny Sykes.”

  “Yes?”

  “You met with her before she disappeared.”

  “I met with her before she left the school on her own accord, yes.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Even if she told me, why would I tell you?”

  “Her mother hired me to find her.”

  Wheeler rose.

  “Maybe she should’ve hired someone more competent. Brent, would you show Ms. O’Brien the way out?”

  Brent Kim, who specialized in appearing out of nowhere, materialized behind me.

  “Are you kicking me off campus?” I asked her.

  Wheeler laughed again. “No, Siobhan. And I’ll give you two reasons because I’m feeling generous. One, there’s nothing here for you to see, so please, go right ahead and investigate your little heart out. Two, you’re a Llewellyn Women in Lifelong Learning. Why would I want a fellow female scholar to leave campus? No, all I want is for you to leave my office now, because our conversation is over.”

  I’d been thoroughly out-everythinged here, so I figured the best way to keep any sort of dignity was to leave without another word. Brent, being the gracious mobster strongman that he was, followed me out while keeping a respectable distance.

  38

  “Look,” Faith said. “Maybe I should have told you.”

  I was in Faith’s dorm room, which was such a disheveled mess that I had trouble concentrating. I had to fight the urge to pick up the mounds of clothes on the floor and chuck them into a hamper (if not a garbage bag), because they were literally everywhere—on the floor, on her bed, even on top of her bookshelves, a pair of sweatpants draped over a stack of hardcovers. She asked me to sit, but I couldn’t find a chair.

  “If by maybe you mean absolutely, then yes, you’re right.”

  “I just didn’t want to bias you, Siobhan.” Faith, sitting on her bed, pushed away her dirty clothes against the corner and lay down. “I’m sorry.”

  “Wheeler—your mom—shut down the recorder app on the phone, so I wasn’t able to get her on tape,” I said. “Not that it matters anyway. She’s got her vision for Llewellyn and she has every right to do what she wants.”

  “Jesus,” Faith said. She sounded not only defeated but young, like a little girl trying to stand up to her mother. “This is awful.”

  “She showed me a photograph of you, black and white, pantsuit and blazer. And declared herself a feminist.”

  Faith took her pillow, pressed it against her face, and screamed.

  “I’ve been hearing it my whole life. And you know, I just realized something. It wasn’t that I wanted to keep you unbiased. The real reason why I didn’t want to tell you was…”

  “…because you’re ashamed.”

  “Thank you for understanding.”

  “Your mother is a piece of work. She’s sharp, she’s ambitious, and I think she’s well on her way to turn Llewellyn into her well-Photoshopped image.”

  “I know.”

  There was a knock on the door: Molly.

  “Sister Siobhan! So nice to see you.”

  “Sister Molly,” I said, and didn’t quite know what else to say because there was a lot of purple on this girl. In fact, there was not a single place where there was no purple: purple hair, purple face and neck and hands, and in what could best be described as a purple onesie for adults.

  “Why aren’t you in your greens, Sister Faith?” Molly asked. “I was under the impression that we would dress in our class colors.”

  Faith hashed through her pile of tops on her bed and found a forest-green hoodie and held it up.

  The purple makeup was thick, but not thick enough to mask Molly’s mortification. “But…in our meeting, we talked about how we were going to support our college’s tradition in the boldest possible manner…”

  “…which is why I’m so thankful we have sisters like you, Molly,” Faith said. “Ones who will bravely continue the tradition of Llewellyn.”

  Molly scampered over to Faith and gave her a great big purple hug.

  “I’ll carry your words with me for the rest of my life, Sister Faith.”

  And with that, she was gone. I shot Faith a look.

  “A little hazing develops character,” Faith said.

  39

  There were so many students out and about on campus that it felt like another bomb threat. Except this time, people were way more color-coordinated. As promised, Hajira met me to take in the festivities.

  “Purple and yellow for the Oddline, those are the graduating classes that end in an odd year, and blue and green for the Evenline,” Hajira said. “It’s our biggest tradition. A way for the freshmen and juniors to bond against the sophomores and seniors.” She had changed her headscarf to a bright blue to signify her sophomore allegiance.

  Four big white tents were set up in the middle of the quad, the kind you might see at an outdoor wedding, string lights outlining the roofs and beams to add to the party atmosphere. I caught an intoxicating whiff of fried dough, and sure enough, that’s what was being churned out in one of the tents. There was also cotton candy, ice cream, popcorn—it was a regular carnival.

  A siren wailed in the distance, and that got the crowd clapping and whooping. The ringing grew louder as flashing red and blue lights cut through the darkness. Two fire trucks followed one another through the entrance of the college, slowly made their way up the hill and parked in front of the crowd. The first truck had long purple eyelashes attached to its headlights, and the second had a blue ribbon running the length of its body, ending with a giant bow on the rear fender.

  “The players have returned from their parade,” Hajira said. “The fire truck drives them through Selene, where the townsfolk clap and cheer them on the route.”

  “This is a big deal around here.”

  “There’s always been a close relationship between the town and the school.”

  “Like the town cops providing security.”

  “That actually started after President Wheeler’s car was defaced last year during graduation.”

  “What happened to it?”

  Hajira smiled. “Someone affixed a giant papier-mâché shell of male genitalia over her entire car.”

  “A super-sized penis.”

  “And testicles. Which were quite hairy.”

  The players were getting out of the trucks now, and there was only one Asian in a purple uniform. The elusive Grace Park, finally in the flesh. She was taller than I’d thought, and watching her make her way down, she was not quite earning he
r name. There was an awkwardness to the way she stepped onto the pavement, as if where she believed the ground to be and where the ground actually was were at odds. Hajira said she had a good jump shot, which seemed believable. I’d played JV basketball in my high school days, and there was always a girl or two on teams who were not athletic but had a set shot they could count on. Get them moving and they were toast, but they could still make a decent living throwing down one bomb after another from the perimeter. Those girls were the most determined of all the players, the ones who earned every shot. As I watched Grace follow her teammates into the gymnasium, I felt her gravity, her resolve.

  Hajira led me to the bleachers of the gymnasium. My high school gym had been twice as big as this one, but then again, we’d had four times the number of students as Llewellyn. Most of the spectators looked like they were from the town, older folks, men in plaid shirts and jeans and the women—also in plaid shirts—and jeans. Selene being still quite rural, it was the default uniform of the town. The place was hopping, loud and obnoxious techno music that was full of beeps and drums blaring out of the speakers.

  I had to scream into Hajira’s ear to ask if we could sit on the opposite side of the purple team. I wanted to observe Grace before the game started, and I figured it would be easier to see her face than to stare at the back of her head. We found seats in the third row, squeezing ourselves between two men in overalls. They literally looked like they came from working the field—and smelled like that, too, a mixture of hay and dirt and sweat that was surprisingly not unpleasant.

  After practicing for five minutes, the team coaches rounded up the players for a chat. Mercifully, the dance music fell silent. The purple team’s leader was a whistle-around-the-neck, pencil-behind-the-ear woman with a shock of short red hair.

  I watched Grace as she stood in the huddle, and there was something else I felt: loneliness. She stood slightly outside the circle, more so than the other girls. Big surprise. Special security people were always hovering around her, so how could she not feel like she didn’t belong? And then, it hit me. This whole time, I was thinking it was Grace who dumped Penny, but what if it was the other way around? It was a possibility I would be wise to consider.