Alexandra Kleeman - You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

Whenever I had something nice to say about her or something mean, C would just shrug his shoulders and say I only thought that because we were too much alike. He had a chronic misunderstanding of me. B was fragile and sick and needed to be nursed. She looked underfed, she touched objects like someone who owned nothing in the world. Sympathy for her transported me out of myself, away from my own problems. She was cut to my shape and size like a trapdoor: similar enough that I could imagine myself into her, different enough to make that fantasy a form of escape.

This morning, though, as I listened to her voice on the other side of the door, I wished that I had worked harder to have our differences. B missed me more the more I saw her. Under her scrutiny I felt the weight of my own presence constantly and grew tired, irritated by myself, so that day by day I waited a little longer before coming out of my room in the morning, trying to postpone reentering the construct of my life. Her affection created in me the wish that she would stop loving me, would leave me alone, would let me feel affection for her the way I did when she first moved in, harmless and sad, when I could feel generous for trying to think about why she was sad and come up with ways to make her happy.

From the hallway outside my bedroom, her mouth close to the sliver of space between door and molding, B spoke— I wanted to make us some coffee, but we’re all out of coffee.

— I need your help to figure out what kind of juice I should drink. What juice has the least free radicals? Does juice have lead in it?

— Have you ever had one of those moles that sticks out? Can you feel with one of those moles that stick out? The way you feel with your fingers and other body parts?

— I had a dream last night that we were both birds with their wings missing, but we helped each other escape from a box. When we escaped we were so happy we wanted to celebrate, but we couldn’t show it. We didn’t have limbs.

THERE’S A COMMERCIAL ON TVwhere a woman using this new citrus-based facial scrub begins to scratch at the side of her face, discovering that it has edges, shriveled and curling slightly like old paper. Eyeing the camera, she grasps these edges and lifts up on them until she is peeling the whole surface of her face off with a filmy sound like plastic wrap unsticking from itself. Underneath is another face exactly like hers, but prettier. It’s younger and wearing better makeup. You’d think that she might want to stop here and start being happy with herself the way she newly is. But she doesn’t stop: instead, she clutches at the side of her face and begins to peel again, and this time the face underneath is even prettier and she’s smiling wildly at the camera, she’s so pleased. And she peels again, but this time what’s underneath is a video of the seashore crashing against a sandy beach, and her hand peels it all off again, and we stare into a deciduous forest filtered through by little blades of light and sunshine.

Then she turns straight toward the camera and peels her face off from the opposite direction, and the face that’s underneath belongs to the company’s famous actress spokesperson. It’s been her voice all along telling us about the hydrating effects and natural ingredients, the way you’ll love yourself remade. She doesn’t ask what happened to the other woman, the woman who came before her. She smiles beautifully with her hard white teeth.

Words appear on the screen: TRUBEAUTY. TRUSKIN. YOUR REAL SKIN IS WITHIN.

B wanted to try the product out, she said you could buy it anywhere. But B hated to buy anything herself. She preferred to borrow from someone else, even though her parents had three cars and a horse and sent her checks every month for the rent. If I asked her why she was always trying to need more than she needed, she’d say that borrowing brought you closer to other people, while buying mostly made you lonelier. That was how I ended up going out with B to the all-night Wally’s Supermarket fifteen minutes away on a night when dozens of teenagers hung inexplicably around the parking lot, posed darkly like crows, staring and not saying a thing.

There was no one inside the store except Wally employees in their weird uniforms: red polo shirt, khakis, and oversize foam head in the shape of the store’s teenage mascot. They seemed curious about us, or wary, or bored. As we wandered the aisles, I started to feel watched. There was a Wally about twenty feet behind me every time I looked back, sometimes rearranging product in the shelves, but sometimes just looking at me. I told B, but she was unfazed.

“Sure they’re watching. They probably think you’re going to steal something,” she said.

“Really?” I asked. I hadn’t known I was the type of person who could steal something.

“It’s what they do,” she said. “But they’re dumb. I’m much more likely to steal than you.” She smiled sweetly at me: this was my best friend. Then I bought the face scrub for B to borrow, even though I was nervous about what it might do to me.

When we got home I rubbed product all over my face and neck in the bathroom, feeling it froth away at my skin as B sat on the edge of the tub, taut and unblinking. When it was done I went to the mirror to see what I had become. I didn’t see the promised biotransformative subexfoliation, but I knew something had happened because my lips stung and I smelled like lemon-lime soda. B came over and placed a palm experimentally against one of my scrubbed cheeks, then the other, and asked me if I felt any different. I was in the middle of answering when I realized suddenly that she was not listening to me, was not even looking, was staring past me into the medicine cabinet mirror instead and touching the sides of her face, petting her cheek vacantly. She had something on her face that could be mistaken for a smile.

FOUR DAYS A WEEK Iwent to work as a proofreader for a local company that produced several magazines and newsletters. I could choose any four days that I liked, but everything else was chosen for me. Although proofreader implies reading, what was expected of me was somewhat less: see that everything was punctuated, see that words were in a sensical place, but avoid trying to make sense of them — meaning was an obstacle to efficient proofing that my supervisors hoped I would avoid. I proofed everything that came through the office, so if there were errors in Marine Hobbyist or New Age Plastics, it was my fault for letting them through.

Each morning I walked forty minutes to work along the side of the road, miles that could be driven in a few minutes. I passed eight gas stations and two different Wally’s Supermarkets, identical except for the garden center appended to the second one, a cordoned-off section of parking lot asphalt filled with pots of identically colored marigolds. On days when almost everyone was sick, I could have any cubicle I wanted, but I always chose my usual one, the one for freelancers. In the quiet of the empty office I could hear the slight hiss of air-conditioning coming through the vents. I felt that I was experiencing the world as only someone who did not exist in it could. There were three kinds of errors: of duplication, of substitution, of omission. By the time I got home, work seemed like a long, flat dream whose details I could not remember. I peeled the damp and dusty pants from my legs and lay on top of the bed, sweating. All I wanted to do was sleep.

Last Thursday had passed like every other, except that I had taken a nap during my lunch break, crawling beneath the desk to sleep for thirty minutes on short, stiff, office carpeting. I came home still sleepy and collapsed on top of my bedding to take a second nap. I had been there only a few minutes when I heard a knocking at my door. Standing there was B with an excited look on her face, eyes big and wet, mouth drawn up at the corners. She looked like a person who had betrayed a secret. Her hands clutched something dark. Against her thin white fingers, it looked like a coil of chain or a greased-down railroad spike — something old and exacting, designed to keep a thing in place.