Wanting to brighten the light in front of the mirror, Rita slowly read the instructions on how to control the lamp. Her apartment was littered with little pieces of paper taped to devices that she simply could not figure out. Truth be told, Rita didn’t really try that hard. Some things, she believed, need not be made simpler. She missed what cooking used to be. After hours spent in the kitchen, she would present a beautiful meal to her guests and glisten with pride as a steady flow of compliments rained down upon her. The perfectly crisp skin of the chicken, the fork tender potatoes, the asparagus with just enough bite…all served at exactly the same moment, despite having been prepared at multiple temperatures and in multiple vessels. Not everyone could pull this off, she would think to herself as she took the perfect picture to share with her many followers. Something like this would not be worthy of praise now. All you need is the right gadget. A person with no skills or dedication can do all the things that used to be reserved for true artists and practiced craftsmen.
Rita managed to brighten the light and laughed at herself. It was worse than she thought. She wondered how her vanity, which had controlled most of her life, had not been stronger than her general disapproval with how things had changed. When mirrors were just glass, she spent hours in front of them. She sought them out in public, determined to know exactly what others saw when they looked at her. Now she could hardly stomach the picture of herself reflected in a stranger’s pitying eyes. How is it possible that that proud, conceited girl had grown into this pathetic, helpless woman? She hadn’t grown into anything, she thought, glaring at herself with disgust. She deteriorated into this. Her life had been nothing but the burning of a match. Bright and vibrant, leaving cracked, charred wood in its wake. A beautiful light consuming its host. No one warns you that the very act of living is merely slow decay. But there was a procedure that could correct it. It could restore her splintered skin to a pristine state of freshness. Then, like the world around her, she would be shiny and new.
She cursed herself for not having spent the last month learning how everything worked. About six weeks ago, she had her first appointment at the International Institute of Restorative Care and Preservation. They told her very clearly that if she wanted the procedure, she had to familiarize herself with the technology of the day. If she could not perform tasks that most first graders could manage, it wouldn’t matter how young she looked. And as she over-heard the nurses whispering as she left the office, she wouldn’t want to “fool people into thinking she is a real part of society.”
They sent Rita home with a promotional tote bag filled with beauty products. A small sample of anti-wrinkle cream had promises on the packaging that she could not resist. She put it on the moment she walked in her door and watched the mirror in amazement as her skin tightened before her eyes. The single use pack only lasted for a few hours, but it was enough to make her giddy with anticipation. It was a short preview of what it would be like after the procedure. Today, she finally looked at what else was in the bag. There was some lovely scented soap, two vitamin E capsules and a compact of pressed powder. The powder was impressive too. She put it on and was astounded by the difference it made. It felt like butter on her skin and if she didn’t smile too much, the powder sat right on top of her smaller wrinkles. It sunk a bit into the deeper lines, so she just kept piling it on like she was grouting a tiled floor. Down at the bottom of the blue, company issued goodie bag was their most important parting gift: a list of everyday devices that Rita must master before her next appointment.
She had waited an unbearable six months before her initial consultation and was surprised and disappointed that she didn’t meet the requirements. She was (and looked) more than old enough, they assured her. But they would not make her fit in with the world until she committed to fitting in with the world. Her second and third appointments were only a week or so apart, and the doctors were not pleased with her. She told them she was determined to have the procedure, so they agreed to let her come back in four weeks. They instructed her to spend that time getting an education. To that end, Rita asked a young neighbor girl to write step-by-step instructions for everything in the apartment. The girl was not interested, but her mother, who remembered who Rita used to be, insisted she help the old woman. While she did what was asked of her, the girl’s task was underscored by snarky remarks and disrespectful sighs. Rita tried to teach her about respecting one’s elders and how things were done back in “her day.” Both arguments were met with a condescending laugh and a reminder of exactly what year it was. In those moments, Rita hated the way of the world. Maybe pride had decayed into indignation. Maybe it was principle that stopped her from studying the instructions left by the unwilling and unwrinkled girl. But now, faced with her face as she stuffed the powder into its lines, she was overcome with the desire to reap the benefits of this new world that she refused to participate in.
Rita could not pretend that she hated all the newest developments. She wasn’t one of those people. She loved how recorded music sounded and she was quite taken with the speed of travel. The common cold was almost completely eradicated, and air quality had greatly improved. But the treatment of age impressed her more than anything. What the medical world had come up with was astonishing. Rita knew people years older than her who had the skin of a twenty-something after the procedure. They didn’t merely turn the clock back. It was if the clock never existed. Unfortunately, you could not have your age treated unless you treated your age. The laws would not allow it. If you acted your age, you might as well look it. As a result, wrinkles had become their own Scarlet Letter; an outward sign of one’s refusal to get on board. Rita was treated like someone less. She remembered going out of her way to hold doors and smile at old people when she was younger. Now, the general greeting she received was a rolling of the eyes and the occasional begrudged assistance. If she was going into one of the newer buildings, she had to hope that someone who knew how to work the door controls would take the time to help her. On this most important day of this most important appointment, Rita was preparing to leave her house two hours early. She generally avoided public transportation, since she still hadn’t figured out how the Commuter’s Wristbands worked. The walk to the IIRCP building would be about forty-five minutes, leaving her over an hour to wait for help to get through the three fancy and exclusive doors that led to the doctor’s office. She had her own code to get in, it came with her first appointment. But she had already forgotten the neighbor’s explanation of the door systems.
Rita took one more look at herself before heading out and wished she had saved the anti-wrinkle cream for today. She had the powder though, so she gave her whole face a once-over. After some thought, she decided it would be best to leave the compact at home. She knew she would be tempted to keep applying the forgiving powder and she could not bear it if any of the doctors saw her putting it on. While she couldn’t stop them from knowing exactly how old she was, she could certainly stop them from knowing exactly how vain she was. She threw the compact back into the bag along with all the other products. Part of her wished she hadn’t used any of it, but a bigger part of her wished they had given her more. She carefully read the instructions for the lock on her door, put the paper in her pocket for when she came home, and left the apartment.
During her walk, Rita tried to work out what she would say to the doctors. She could say that it was in fact the look of her age that prevented her from learning more about the world around her. That if she could look like a respectable citizen, people wouldn’t mind taking the time to teach her things. Maybe if they could just give her more of the temporary cream, she could see what it was like for a few days. That would doubtlessly be all the incentive she would need to get on track. She could come back in another month, completely changed on the inside. Then they could completely change her on the outside and count her as a success. She considered crying but reminded herself that these were not the doctors of her youth. Doctors now were merely laboratory scientists obligated to have actual conversations with their test subjects. Crying would no doubt result in a marking on her file including her in two of the least desirable castes: the overtly emotional and the overtly old.
She told herself the best bet was to keep it simple. She would tell them that she had mastered the kitchen gadgets, which was only half true, and that she had figured out all the mirror and lighting controls in her home, which was even less true. But they couldn’t really test her on those things. She was mostly banking on her powers of persuasion. The confidence of her younger days came flooding back during the walk. Her ability to effectively speak on her own behalf had been a formidable weapon at one time. If she could wield it now, maybe she could convince them of her worthiness. This was her fourth appointment, after all. They had to know how much she wanted this. As she waited for someone to help her at the first door, the passing of time and the passing of smirking faces deflated her a little. More people than usual laughed at her. The wrinkles on her face and what they said about her were often amusing to passersby, but today was worse. It was as if everyone knew how monumental this day was and they had all conspired to stop her from succeeding. But Rita puffed her chest out and walked on to the giant glass building, refusing to be derailed. She waited by the doors, with her resolve becoming more and more counterfeit by the second. Eventually, a very young girl took pity on her and helped her into the building.
Rita’s caseworker at the institute was already waiting for her at the second door. The moment Rita’s eyes met his, he chortled and shook his head. Surprised by this greeting, she walked slowly through the door making a point smile at him directly. As she attempted to add a youthful pep to her step, she couldn’t help but notice that he was barely looking at her. His eyes bounced around as she thanked him, and her battered confidence told her that he must be disappointed to see her there for some reason. His indifferent and stoic way with her confirmed it. Every other time she had been to his office, he was personable and invested. He wanted her to have the procedure as much as she did. He was welcoming and supportive and undiscriminating. This time, he was different. He was just as polite as before, but somehow impersonal and disconnected at the same time. His robotic kindness stung more than blatant rudeness would have. In her day, Rita was a regular at all the most fashionable parties and hallow niceties were generally reserved for people who were desperately trying to gain entrance where they were not welcome. Aware of how fitting that seemed in her current situation, Rita bore the hits with as much grace as she could muster. He took her through a small hallway that she hadn’t seen before and left her alone in the doctor’s small, beige office. She sat up straight in her chair, hoping that self-assuredness would support her claims of what she had learned. She waited for no more than three minutes before two lab coats came in, rejected her application for the treatment of her age, and told her the official notice would be waiting in her inbox at home. They promptly turned around and left, leaving Rita in silent disbelief. They hadn’t given her a chance to say a single word, let alone plead her case. She was ushered out with little to no care and informed that her door code was now obsolete. The walk home felt three times longer than the walk there. Thankfully by then it was dark, so she was alone with herself, unmolested by youth.
When Rita got back up to her apartment, she sat down at her desk and read the instructions left by her neighbor to get to her mail. She opened her inbox and found the letter from the International Institute of Restorative Care and Preservation:
Patient 0877113126-RDF,
As of today, please consider your application for treatment at the IIRCP denied. This denial is both final and without condition.
Please note that as per the signed agreement presented at your consultation, we have taken liberties in testing your commitment to the prerequisites for our program. Within forty-five seconds of opening this message, any and all changes to your home will be restored to their original default settings.
Any attempt to contact the IIRCP, physically or electronically, will be considered an act of aggression and will result in your immediate arrest.
Thank you for your time.
Rita sat at her desk in crushed silence as her eyes jetted around the room wondering what they had altered. Nothing seemed different to her. She dropped her head and cried into her hands like little girl. As she wept, her wrinkled, tired hands pressed into her wrinkled, powdered face…the face that she hated and was now stuck with. Just then, something dawned on her. She quickly sat straight up and winced as her tear-filled eyes were struck by the light. How could they have known that she hadn’t learned anything new? They must have been watching her! She thought hard about the paper she had signed. There was nothing that would allow them to spy on her. She slapped her lap and laughed triumphantly.
Another development in the world that Rita was pleased with was privacy laws. As people’s internet privacy continued to diminish, their personal privacy became more and more precious. The government answered by implementing strict laws called the “Behind Closed Doors Policies.” In her own home, no one could spy on her, no matter what she had signed. Any stipulation allowing for it would have been itself illegal, making the whole contract null and void. She had beaten them at their own game! Rita may not have been able to start her dishwasher, but she knew the laws. She would go back there, wrinkled head held high, and tell them that if they were not willing to perform the procedure on her, she would tell the police and the news and anyone who would listen about their flagrant disregard of the strictly enforced privacy regulations. You simply cannot pick and choose what laws you respect, she would tell them. You cannot wield the laws of medical care and treatment while you disregard all the others! She bounded for the door and then stopped dead in her tracks.
Staring straight ahead, Rita stood motionless for a moment, just beyond the mirror by the front door. Something blue had caught the corner of her eye. It must have been the bag from the doctors, she told herself, both unconvinced of the explanation and unwilling to confirm it just yet. The bag was blue, but she was sure she had thrown it on the floor as she left. Sick with embarrassment and indignation, she knew it was not the bag that caught her eye. After what felt like an hour of standing completely still by her front door, utterly terrified of what she knew she was about to see, Rita took a few steps back until she was centered in the mirror. She took a deep breath and first looked down at her pants. Two faint blue handprints marked the spots still stinging from her victory slap. She turned her palms up. A blue, powdery residue filled every aged crease that she had pressed onto her crying face. Finally, she turned to face herself.
The shock of what she saw took her breath away for only a moment before she became determined to challenge the reflection before her. She frantically read through the instructions for the mirror, which controlled the lighting in her whole home. She followed each step pressing the almost invisible buttons on the touch screen at the bottom left corner of the mirror. She pressed menu, then mirror settings, then filter settings. She was overwhelmed as she scrolled through all the filters. Each had a different silly name, and each made her look a different kind of silly. She didn’t find what she was looking for here. It wasn’t the mirror doing this. She backed out of the mirror settings and found her way to the advanced lighting settings. The mirror in front of her became filled with buttons and value bars for all the color levels that could be controlled within the lights of her home. She put her finger on the red bar and dragged it up and down and watched the tone of her face change. That wasn’t it. Her eyes darted from one bar to the next, searching for a culprit, until she noticed a small button on the top left corner of the mirror that said Restore Previous Settings.
Rita tapped the button and suddenly the reflection of her face looked as it did before she left the house. Not perfect, but unvarying and even a little youthful. The same spot in the mirror now said Restore Default Settings. She tapped it and her face was a cerulean joke again. She stood at the mirror, tapping the top left corner over and over, watching her face go from wonderfully fresh and soft to terribly old and ridiculous. Back and forth, from normal to absurd, from smooth to caked. Her case worker was right to avert his eyes. She was too ludicrous to behold without and explosion of pitiful laughter. He was at least trying to spare her that. She opened the compact of pressed powder from the institute under the restored default settings and laughed at herself through her sobs. Had she actually figured out how to work the lighting settings in her home, like she had planned on telling the doctors, she would have seen the pressed powder for what it actually was…she would have seen her face for what it actually was.
Standing in front of the mirror in the home that she had no idea how to operate, Rita could truly see herself for the first time in years. She carefully inspected her face. It was timeworn, old and defeated. It had been that way for years. But now, running down below her cloudy, old eyes were two wet lines of glistening new skin.
Alicia Nicoletti is a writer from Long Island, New York who has been disabled for almost 10 years. Alicia received a crushing heart failure diagnosis at the age of thirty-one after years of surgeries and procedures (including three open heart surgeries) following a devastating car accident when she was twenty-two. Alicia has since become an active patient advocate and frequent public speaker for a major global medical device company. She is also a contributing patient representative on multiple councils for the largest Healthcare system in New York. Alicia writes short stories, and her work was included in the 2019 edition of the Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Museum and Library.
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