Rise Read Free Page B

greet her, but she stayed in her spot by the window. His face was like a mirror, and it was better not to look.

Galatea
    S he used arnica and bromelain to minimize the swelling. Vitamin K and quercetin and silicone dressings. As soon as she’d healed from one procedure she went back for another. The doctors tightened up her neck by cutting downward through her chin. They cut her eyelids, too, and they used thread to lift the muscles in her cheeks. It was strong as fishing line, and sometimes she felt it above her jaw. This tiny filament that kept her face from falling. Every month there were advances. Lasers to burn away spider veins and brown spots and injectable filler. She wanted all these things. She lurked on message boards, and the women there talked like lovers about their surgeons. She wrote down all the names.
    Her mother said she was starting to look a little Slavic. She stood at the stove with a wooden spoon. “It’s not natural what you’re doing,” she said. “Just look how your eyes are slanting.” Her mother’s face was spotted from all those years in the garden. She hadn’t worn a sunhat back then because nobody did, and she didn’t wear one now because what did it matter. She was almost eighty, and her hair was white around her face and soft as cotton balls. You were a good girl growing up, Carol. That’s what she always said. Don’t make me worry now.
    They sat together when the eggs were ready. Carol went to visit every Sunday. She wore sunglasses because her eyes were still sore from the needle. The doctor had massaged the droplets once they were inside. He kneaded her skin like dough. She told her motherabout the new doctors up in Denver. They had offices in Aspen and California, too. They were always taking planes. “They’re the best in the country,” she said. The light was starting to come through the café curtains, and they were the same ones from when Carol was in college more than thirty years before. The sun had bleached them a paler yellow. The Little Red Riding Hood cookie jar was the same, too, and the refrigerator magnets with faded columbines. A picture of Jenny from the second grade. Her hair was tied up in ribbons. She looked just like Carol had when Carol was a girl. “They specialize in veins.”
    â€œYou could see the pyramids if you wanted or those volcanoes in Hawaii.” Her mother stirred Splenda into her coffee. Her hands were spotted just like her cheeks. They were speckled as robin eggs.
    â€œThey worked on Sharon Stone.”
    â€œCan’t you take your glasses off? I can hardly see your face.”
    Carol shook her head. The sun was really shining now. Another windy December day, and she didn’t want to squint. The room smelled of coffee and eggs overcooked in butter. Her mother always overheated the frying pan because eggs carry diseases. Five hundred people a year died from salmonella, and probably more the news won’t tell us. Her mother knew the numbers. She spent hours on WebMD.
    â€œSomeday they won’t need scalpels. They’ll go straight to the genes.”
    â€œGod help us then,” her mother said, and she took the remote from the table. It was almost nine o’clock, and she never missed Dr. Dyer. He talked about how the spirit is all around us, how it fills us from inside and we can find it if we look.
    Carol pushed her plate away before it was empty. Aging was a disease, and they were working on a cure. There were entire villages in Japan where people lived to a hundred and twenty. All they ate was fish. “Those scientists at Berkeley were just on TV again. If we starve ourselves we can live forever. That’s what they were saying.”
    â€œNone of it will bring them back.” Her mother shifted in her chair. She winced a little because her right hip was bad. The socket was starting to fail. “Be grateful for what you have.” She raised the