But it really does feel like I’m a little scrambled, I said. For instance, I forgot that I couldn’t swim, if you can believe it. I ended up nearly drowning.
And they smiled with their eyes. Oh well, being a little scrambled, the woman in red said, is to be expected. Absolutely a normal side effect of the treatments. Memories are all connected, aren’t they?
They are, they are, Lord and Lady Vichy said.
If you extract one memory, the bad one, the absolutely unnecessary Free Radical of the Mind, the Comedo of the Soul, the one that’s dulling and creasing and darkening your visage so hideously, it’s bound to affect the others, isn’t it?
The others need a little time to adjust, so to speak, said the Lord.
They get a little turned around, that’s all, said the Lady.
But I’d happily be a little scrambled for this… Brightness. She pushed me closer to the giant mirror on the wall so that I could see for myself. There was mirror me. Synced and smiling with very red lips. Beaming at me with shining eyes. And my skin…
There is a whiteness, isn’t there? I whispered. Brightness, I meant to say. Not a whiteness, I told myself, call it a Brightness.
Oh yes. Like the moon if it had its own Light, is it not so, Lady Vichy?
The Lady smiled. Like if the moon were plugged in, she agreed, over my shoulder.
For a Glow like that, the woman in red said, I’d be willing to forget quite a few things, let me tell you. The day of the week, who needs to know it? Which breakfast tisane I favored, a chance to try a new one, n’est-ce pas?
You’ll find life is full of lovely little surprises this way, said the Lord.
The opportunity to live moment to moment, in the present tense, like never before, said the Lady.
They pushed me closer still to the mirror, so that I was inches from my reflection in the glass. And though I was afraid, I was smiling at myself the whole time. Of course, we’re not quite there yet, are we? the woman in red said, over my shoulder.
Not quite, not quite, the twins whispered, staring at my face in the mirror.
But that’s why you’re back here, isn’t it, Daughter? Because Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Or a treatment, offered the Lord.
It was built in three treatments, the Lady said.
But didn’t Rome fall? I heard myself ask. I recall it crumbling.
Look at our Daughter, recalling things! And they smiled at me with their eyes. Please don’t worry about a little mental reshuffling here and there. A little rearranging in your head.
I thought of that white hand arranging the roses in my head.
A small price to pay for this level of collagen regeneration, n’est-ce pas? Speaking of which…
And then the woman in silver came and ferried me down to the basement. In the waiting room, I drank the blood vessel water. The pomegranate seed water, I mean. It was very cold, vaguely sweet, with a bitter finish that surprised and delighted me. I stared up at the horrified white face masks on the red walls. Twisted in varying degrees of terror. As if each face had been frozen confronting its worst nightmare, really. It was lovely. The glowing woman I met last time was sitting there beneath them, reading her red magazine. The one who I thought might be mixed, like me. Ethnically ambivalent. Ambivalent, is that the word I mean? Hello again, I said. We must be on the same treatment schedule.
She looked up at me like she’d never seen me before. I’m sorry, she said, have we met? I didn’t want to confuse her, so I said, Sorry, maybe I have it wrong. I’ve been confusing names and faces lately.
And she said, Funny. I’m confusing them too. I’m told it’s a harmless psychotrope. Side effect.
I was also told that.
But worth it for the Glow. Don’t you think?
She looked in the infinity mirror and I looked there too. I stared at thousands of her. Between us, she really was the one to look at. Paler than last time. As if the color had been leached out of her skin a little. She had a whiteness. A Brightness, call it a Brightness. There was a Glow greater than before. I envied it.
I envy, I said.
And she smiled. Thank you.
* * *
Now in the Treatment Room, the black discs are on my temples, the cold white paste’s on my face. “Is this a marine algae mask?” I ask the whisper woman.
“You could call it that,” she whispers.
I’m strapped to the bed, why strapped this time?
“So you can relax. These extractions can be quite visceral,” she says. “Memory lives everywhere in the body. Down the back. In the neck and in the hands. Even the feet.”
The feet, I think, and then remember that it took a while to get down here to the Treatment Room. Because of my red shoes. Again, I had to take them off. I had to follow the woman in silver barefoot, with the red shoes gasping in my fingers. It was so silly. I really shouldn’t wear them to the house anymore. And yet if I didn’t wear them, I don’t know that I would know how to get here.