Skin Deep

But this dream had left his head feeling toxic. For more than an hour he tossed around in his bed until he broke down and popped two more Lorazepams to settle his mind to sleep, because what gnawed on his brain was the realization that the nightmare woman was Dana.

15

“Beauty doesn’t come cheap,” Steve said as they entered the office suite of Aaron Monks.

It was located on the top floor of a handsome four-story office building in Chestnut Hill set back from the highway and surrounded by trees. Dana’s first impression was light and air. They stepped through a glass wall entrance into a reception area backlit by windows and decorated in white, gray, and stainless steel, broken up with shocks of color from plants and artwork. Against one wall was a glass tank with elegant tropical fish, hanging in suspension like Christmas ornaments. The intention was to make patients feel relaxed and think clean and fresh. The kind of office where you’d like to have your face redone.

On the glass and chrome tables were brochures about the clinic and cosmetic surgery. Also a copy of About Face: Making Over, authored by Dr. Monks. In another corner was a large floor stand with shelves of various beauty creams. An attractive and exotic young woman sat behind the desk. Her nameplate said May Ann Madlansacay. She recognized Dana’s name and handed her a questionnaire. Steve sat beside her as she filled it out. He was in a glum mood which, she guessed, was resentment for her being here. But she couldn’t help that.

Across from them sat two women. The older one’s face was red, probably the result of microabrasion therapy. The other woman wore a patch over one eye, perhaps in for a checkup following reconstructive surgery. As Dana filled out her medical history, she felt the old Catholic schoolgirl guilt rise like a pimple. The older larger woman was about sixty and would probably kill to have Dana’s skin and size six figure.

And the other woman wanted a normal eye again. Dana’s own presence here was decadence driven by vanity, she told herself.

Maybe Steve was right: that she had let herself be duped by all the forces that made women discontent with their appearance—forces that commoditized flesh. But, she reminded herself, this may be the only way to get a job that favored youth. Like it or not, we do judge books by their covers. And we do vote for the cute kid politician. And we do let ourselves get conned by the baby-faced salesgirl with the nice nose.

Dana finished the form and returned it to the receptionist. After another ten minutes, out walked Dr. Aaron Monks, whom she recognized immediately from television. He was a pleasant-looking man in his late forties, dressed in a crisp white smock. About six feet tall, he had a lean athletic body. He had light brown eyes, dark closely cropped hair, and a small neat head like a cat.

“Nice to meet you both,” he said, and shook their hands.

He had cool lean hands—delicate instruments, she thought, that had probably refashioned the faces and bodies of thousands of women over the years. He led them down a bright corridor lined with black-and-white landscape photos. They passed several offices and procedure rooms before arriving at a spacious corner spread with large windows overlooking a pond and golf course in the distance. The windows gave the effect of floating in the sky.

“Can I get you some coffee or cold drinks?” Monks asked, and indicated for them to sit in the cushy armchairs around a glass coffee table.

Dana said she was fine and Steve agreed to water. While the doctor moved to a small refrigerator, Dana surveyed the office. On one wall hung some carved African masks. On another, several framed degrees and plaques from Yale Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania, the College of Cosmetic Surgeons, as well as several professional organizations—the American Board of Plastic Surgery and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Also certificates of membership to boards of various philanthropic organizations. Besides being a celebrity surgeon, he had been commended recently for pro bono work on female victims of violence and accidents, also street people lacking insurance and resources for corrective surgery. That impressed Dana.

On a table behind his desk was a photograph of a long white power boat with a palm tree island behind it. And isolated on the rear wall was a single sepia-and-white abstract, which looked Japanese and was probably rare and very expensive like the rest of the decor. Missing were photos of a wife and children. She also noticed that Monks was not wearing a wedding ring.

He handed Steve a bottle of water and sat down staring at Dana, probably calibrating how much work her face needed.

“So,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

“Well, I’m looking into the possibility of getting a lid lift. They’re starting to droop, something my mother had”—as Dana continued she could hear the feeble attempt at justifying her needs, her mind flashing on the two women in the waiting room—“I think they make me look older.”

Monks came over to her, pulled up a stool, and slipped on the pair of half-glasses. He studied her face, then pushed back her lids, smoothing back the skin around her eyes. As he did so, Dana couldn’t help but study him. Up close he did not appear so young as from across the room. His skin was dry and pocked as if he’d suffered from chicken pox as a child. Crow’s-feet crinkled at the corner of his eyes and small pouches and wrinkles underscored each. Also, there was a raised mole on his lower left cheek, looking as if a bug had crawled out of his mouth. His nose was nicely shaped and his lips were full. But frown lines etched his forehead. She wondered why a man who spent his life correcting other people’s faces had not had his own done. Do auto body shop owners drive around with dents and broken headlights? The more she ruminated, the more resentful she began to feel. Also the more foolish for being here. This man had built a dynasty on the exploitation of human vanity, but he was above his own craft.

“I’m also thinking of having my nose fixed.”

“Let’s talk about your nose first. What about it bothers you?”

“Everything. It’s a big, fat Greek nose and I hate it.”

He smiled and turned her in profile. “It does throw off your face.” He ran his finger across the bump. “Do you have any breathing problems?”

“No.”

“Ever break it?”

“No.”

“Then you probably don’t have a deviated septum. Should be easy enough to fix—remove the bump and narrow it down.”

“Well, that’s down the road a bit. My main question is what a lid lift would do.”

He studied her again, touching her cheekbones and chin, for some reason. Then he felt around her brow, stretching the skin around her eyes. “Upper bletharoplasty would open up your eyes more.” He handed her a hand mirror and with his fingers gently spread the offending skin and in the reflection her eyes did open up. He then smoothed a plane of skin above the brow, eliminating the crow’s-feet and the forbidding frown line above the bridge of her nose. “That’s with upper lids and Botox for the brow.”

Ten years disappeared from her face.

He pulled down a screen on one wall and from his desk computer projected before-and-after images. “This will give you a better idea. Each of these women had eyelid surgery.”

Several before-and-after images of women rolled down the screen, showing glaring differences as a rejuvenated freshness had been restored to their upper faces. Monks also showed split shots of women with other procedures—upper and lower bletharoplasty, brow lifts, Restylane treatment of the nasolabial folds, cheek implants, chin work, et cetera. Then before-and-after photos of women with rhinoplasty. As the images flicked by, Dana could not help but feel the seductive powers at work—which, of course, was the intended purpose.

“We cannot promise miracles, but you can see the improvement.”

“Some of those women looked pretty young,” Steve said.

“Yes, some are in their twenties in fact. That’s because people have begun to regard cosmetic surgery as a