I was eight years old when my mother bustled me halfway across town to a high-end department store, where the cosmetics counter, stocked with mysterious vials and decanters, resembled an alchemist’s workshop.
I offered this observation to my mother who, already believing me too fanciful, placed a finger on my lips. Not here, she mouthed.
An hour later, she had bought a large pot of eye cream, two jars of revitalizing lotion, and a small bottle labeled “Elixir of Youth” which did little to relieve my original suspicions.
That evening, unable to fall asleep, I sought out and found my mother in the master bedroom, staring into her oval vanity mirror as she applied the various ointments to her face.
The sight made me frown. “Why are you doing that?” I asked, startling her in the process.
“Kartika!” she said severely, glaring at me in the mirror. “What are you doing out of bed?”
I stared at my feet. “You said we’d finish reading Hugo Cabret.”
“One of these nights, you’re going to have to fall asleep on your own,” she huffed.
I repeated myself. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Because I’m getting old,” she replied sternly, returning her attention to the revitalizing lotion, “and I don’t want to look any older.”
“Why not?”
She paused for a moment, then put down the jar and turned in her chair to face me.
“You’ll understand when you’re my age,” she said. “Come. Let’s go read.”
“Still consulting?” Dr. Pinski asks while he examines the moles on my face.
He sees me every two months. I am thirty now and have not yet gone under the needle but apply skincare and sunscreen diligently with the same small, stubborn hope my mother once did. Some of my friends insist botox makes you look ageless. I think it makes them all look the same.
“For now,” I reply. “I should be promoted soon. We’ll see what happens after that.”
“Look at you,” he declares proudly.
I can’t make out if he’s praising my success or his own.
“The tretinoin’s helped,” he says. “Those elevens are already a thing of the past.”
He tosses his gloves into the bin and leans against the counter, surveying me with a practiced, clinical eye. “If you really want to be proactive, we should talk about microneedling.”
The fluorescent light buzzes overhead, harsh and unflinching. “Is maximum strength tretinoin not proactive enough?” I ask.
“Think of it as maintenance,” he assures me. “We create thousands of tiny micro-injuries to the dermis. Your body notices and rushes new collagen to the surface of your face, rebuilding it from the inside out. You do it now, you buy yourself a decade before things really start to fall apart.”
Really start to fall apart. As though everything up until now has been held together perfectly.
“Sure,” I say, mustering a smile. “Why not.”
I arrive early to the bar and order a martini, which I seldom drink even though I like how dense and viscous the gin looks inside the glass.
Maya arrives a few minutes later in an off-white suit and silver collar necklace. She is a tall, slender woman of about fifty-five and one of the managing directors and partners where I am employed.
I study her as she inspects the drink menu. Her skin is furrowed and tobacco-tarnished, and she has wrecked what was once considerable beauty, now only discernible in her eyes – immense, dark, sparkling – and in the pure lines of her corrugated face.
“Have you ever had work done?” I ask her, regretting the question immediately.
She looks up, her liquid eyes seeming to gaze right through me. “I’ve worked my whole life,” she says.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – ”
A smoker’s laugh escapes her, cutting through the low hum of the music overhead. “I know what you meant. No, I haven’t had work done.”
“I scheduled a microneedling session,” I tell her. “Nothing dramatic. Just hundreds of tiny needles stabbing my face.”
Her expressions hardens, and she looks abruptly serious. “What on earth for?”
I pause, suddenly confronted with the weight of my own vanity. What are my reasons? I tell myself I am different from the women who freeze their foreheads and fill their lips. But am I? Or are all of us distributed along the same self-deceiving spectrum?
“Go on,” she prods, scrutinizing me in a not unfriendly way.
I am caught between telling her everything or falling silent. I plunge into the telling.
“I guess I’d like to be beautiful longer. Better. Younger, even. I fail at life and love often, and a youthful face might buy me more time to get it right.”
She thinks on my words carefully, then lifts her glass to her lips and takes a long, slow sip, the ice shifting with a soft clink.
“Do you always think about these things?” she asks, setting the glass back down.
“Yes,” I say, meeting her eyes. “Don’t you?”
“Sometimes.” She leans back in her chair a little. “I grew up on a farm. My mother didn’t know much about beauty, and I inherited what little wisdom she had. I do my best to look well, but the years keep coming regardless.”
I think back to my mother at her oval mirror, waging her private, nightly war against time.
“Do you mind it?” I ask. “The getting older.”
“No.” she says, her smile hinting at a life well lived. “I don’t mind it at all.”
Kartika Upadhyaya 