Only a handful of the very famous ones lasted into their thirties. The others were considered old at twenty-five, and were competing on the runway with fourteen-and fifteen-year-olds who were hired because of their coltish looks and had no curves yet. It was an express train you couldn’t chase and still climb aboard. And when it was over, the editors and the agents and photographers were heartless.
Véronique wondered if maybe she had been spared the embarrassment of a career that would end suddenly one day when a line appeared somewhere and her body was no longer flawless. Hers was intensely flawed now, and battered and wounded beyond belief. She had been blown to bits by the bomb that had ended her career instantly. But the slow death of rejection because she was considered too old at twenty-six wouldn’t have been pleasant either.
It was a crazy business, and the standards they set weren’t human. Real humans and normal women didn’t look that way, they didn’t starve the way models had to, or take drugs to lose weight, have their feet superglued into shoes so they fit even if the size was wrong, and then have their feet bleed when the shoes were torn off. Véronique had lived through all of it in the early years at eighteen and nineteen, and then the rocket-ship ride to stardom at twenty, until she was the most successful model in the business. But at what price glory?
She hated the way her career had ended, and she would have gone back if she could have. But she wondered now when she would have tired of it, and how it would have felt when they stopped begging her agent for her for magazine covers and shoots in exotic places. It all seemed so ephemeral, and made her ponder again what she was going to do now. She needed some kind of job eventually, but with a face as severely damaged as hers, who would hire her, even for an office job? She had no experience with children and her face would terrify them. And unless Phillip Talbot could create a miracle in New York, she’d have to find a job hidden away somewhere, where no one would see her. She no longer met anyone’s standards for beauty.
She was feeling sorry for herself, crushed by her mother’s absence in the apartment that afternoon, when Doug called her. He wasn’t sure if she was back yet, but decided to try. He was still in Paris for a few more days.
“How was New York?” he asked when she answered the phone. “Did you see your father?”
She sounded peaceful. “He was amazing. He really is a nice man, and it’s too late now, but he says he regrets the choices he made. He never got where he wanted in politics. I guess he had his eye on the presidency when my mother was with him. He gave up everything for that, including the love of his life, and stayed in an empty marriage. He’s very old now, and he’s pretty sick. He was really nice to me, though, and we spent about three hours together.”
“I’m glad for you, Véro. At least you met him, and heard his side of the story.”
“My mother didn’t like to talk to me about him, but she always said nice things about him when she did. She didn’t hate him for leaving us. Maybe she figured that if he gave up his dreams to be with us, he’d wind up hating her for what he missed.”
“It’s amazing the shit choices we all make sometimes, and then end up paying for the mistakes forever. It’s why I think I’ll never get married. It’s too big a commitment. How the hell does anyone know at thirty what they’ll want or who they’ll be at fifty or sixty?”
“But if you don’t make the commitment, you wind up alone, and that’s not so great either.” She was getting a taste of it now and she was lonely.
“I think I like alone better,” he said. It was why she had never wanted to be involved with him romantically. Doug was never going to settle down or make a serious commitment. He claimed that he felt the same way about it at thirty-nine as he had at twenty. Nothing had changed.
“I met someone else, by the way.” She sounded brimming with excitement when she said it. “I called the doctor whose name you gave me, from your friend, Phillip Talbot, the plastic surgeon.”
“Now that is interesting. What did he say?”
“He said he thinks he can do some things to improve my scars. He can’t erase them completely, but he says he can soften them and make them look less extreme. It won’t be perfect, but it will be better. It sounds like a better version of what they were going to do in Brussels next time. I think his techniques are a lot more refined and sophisticated.”
“So is his clientele,” Doug said sensibly, and she agreed. “My friend’s face looks fabulous now, and it was a disaster before. She still has some slight scarring, but nothing like it was. She can cover hers with makeup,” which Véronique knew she couldn’t. Her scars were too deep.