Change Places with Me (10 page)

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 have 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.

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.

You Are Here

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.”

Rose reached the lady and stood opposite her. Rose was quite a bit taller.

“You’re disoriented. That’s to be expected too, I suppose.
Well, now that you’re here, you . . . might as well come on in.” Though this sounded like it was the last thing she wanted Rose to do.

Rose followed her through a narrow hall with a wooden bench. An enormous spider plant hung from a hook in the ceiling over the bench; if you were sitting there, it would be practically on top of you. The lady led Rose into an exact cube of a room and closed the door behind them. More spider plants were hanging from ceiling hooks. They looked like little alien invaders, just waiting for you to turn your back so they could land and finally take over. The smell of paint was everywhere, but these walls were peeling, too. An overhead light cast a dim yellow glow, but a tall standing lamp was turned off. The plain black letters on the window, Forget-Me-Not, were now backward, and curtains at either side billowed even though the windows were shut tight.

Somehow it seemed important to know more about this room. Rose pointed to the curtains. “Why are they blowing?”

“The radiator. This is a premillennial building with steam heating.”

“Where’s that paint smell coming from?”

“Upstairs. They’re converting office space into a dance studio.”

Of course,
Rose thought,
there are other businesses in the building.
But there was something so isolated about this place, like it was the only business on the planet.

“It’s dark,” Rose said. “Can I turn on the lamp?”

“Please, don’t touch anything! Especially that lamp.”

It was like being a kid again on the first day of school, doing everything wrong. There was a gray chair that looked hard, but as soon as Rose sat down, she felt like it could swallow her whole. “This chair,” she said, not sure what else to say about it.

“Elephant foam. Our company had it developed specially for our offices. Once you sit, it remembers your body and adjusts to suit your movements. It can handle thousands of customers, or passengers, as the company likes to call them, and it memorizes each one—elephants never forget, of course.” She paused. “That’s right, you didn’t find that so funny last week, either.”

“Last week?”

The lady sat in a swivel chair at a glass desk empty except for a wraparound screen and a nameplate that, oddly, was facing her. “Your mother came with you last time. I’m surprised she sent you alone today.”

“She doesn’t know where I am.”

“Isn’t she aware of your situation?”

“What situation?”

“That you’re here now, of course. That you remembered.”

Rose felt like they were going in circles. “Did something happen to me in this room?”

“Let’s take a step back.” The lady swiveled. “Have you had a blow to the head?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Don’t answer too quickly.”

Rose hesitated. “No,” she said again.

“How about an allergic reaction?”

Rose didn’t have allergies, but she gave that question a good, long pause. “No.”

“A sudden shock?” No. “Did you jump into a pool of icy water?” No. “Were you given anesthesia?” No. “Even some Novocaine at the dentist’s can trigger it.”

Rose said she hadn’t gone to the dentist, or done anything out of the ordinary.

The lady stopped swiveling. “Strange—it’s almost always caused by something external. You must’ve done it yourself, then. That shows an extraordinary amount of resistance.” She frowned at Rose, as if unconvinced that Rose had this in her.

“What have I done?” Rose asked.

“Breakthrough, it’s called.”

“Breakthrough,” Rose repeated. “Isn’t that something good?”

“Not in this instance.”

Rose pointed out the window. “I had to come here. I was having brunch. I looked up. I’d found a receipt. Of course, that was before.” She knew she wasn’t explaining it very well.

“But you rang the bell. You could’ve walked away. I suggested you do just that.”

Rose felt herself sink deeper into the chair. It immediately contorted to fit her in a sort of overfamiliar, off-putting way.

“We have many, many satisfied customers who don’t even know they’re satisfied customers,” the lady said. “Don’t believe everything you hear about the lawsuits. There are a few unsatisfied people, yes, but well over ninety-five percent of our clients
never experience breakthrough or other sort of complication. Even when the proof is right in front of their eyes—looking up and seeing our sign, or finding a receipt, as you say—they’ll still deny having it done. Even when they’ve spent weeks thinking about it, they’ll simply assume they’ve changed their minds. These people aren’t lying or crazy. They’re just proving it works.”

“
What
works?”

The lady widened those startlingly green eyes. “Memory Enhancement. What else are we talking about?”