Reflections

I polish my face every morning. Sometimes I don’t even turn on the light in the bathroom, I don’t even draw the blinds. I can polish my face entirely in the dark now. I scrub, vigorously, starting at the top and circling right, down, and around, hands ticking around the face. Then I roll and buff, buff and roll in similar cycles. I repeat this three times; I can’t risk leaving even a blemish, even an imperceptible smudge. The end is my favorite: patting my face with a warm towel and misting with soft, delicate facial spray. Ocean breeze, I think.

As I’m ticking away at my face, circling and scrubbing and polishing, it’s almost as if I can feel time slipping between the slits of my fingers. I remind myself that I enjoy this. I enjoy tangibly touching time, almost. Someone—I can’t remember who—once mentioned the accumulation of time we spend on appearance, but that it’s fine, since we enjoy it. I was shocked. Wasn’t it enough that I made myself beautiful? I didn’t know we were supposed to enjoy it too!

I used to ask Pascal, every day, if I looked okay. He would always say I looked fine, pull four shots of espresso, and return to his prints. Sometimes I miss that ritual.

This morning, I draw the blinds and polish my face in the sunlight. I love to feel the natural light shine and reflect, love when the cold, pure, piercing rays reach my cold, pure, piercing face. This morning, I do miss our ritual, but probably only because I’m feeling a bit more reflective now.

I find my way out of my apartment: turn left from the door and walk twelve steps to the end of the hallway, turn right, walk twenty-two steps to the elevator, fumble to press the button, wait for the ding, ride the elevator down and walk through the lobby, wait for the swirling cold air to hit twice, enter the revolving door, and leave onto the auditory-intense street. This is either my favorite or least favorite part of my day.

Always, I’m hit with the endless horns hoping to announce their urgency over the hundreds of other urgent horns. Usually, I’m hit with incessant drilling, banging, sawing, for some perpetual renovation. That’s helpful, actually, so I’ll know to dodge the scaffolding. Sometimes, I’m hit with snippets of conversation spilling across the street.

Today, it sounds like someone is getting fired from a modeling shoot over the phone. I hear tears and pleas and she could have sworn that the time was an hour later, she was on her way now, please.

I would stay to listen, but it’s Thursday, and I’m already wearing my bright pink A-Line dress. I flutter between the contemporary art museum and random galleries and smaller exhibits, but on Thursday, I’m always at the city’s main art museum.

I’ve memorized the path to the Impressionist wing by now. When I used to give tours here, I would breeze through the other galleries to spend an hour doing close visual analysis of my favorite Monet paintings. Sometimes I wouldn’t even go to the other galleries; I would just head straight into the Impressionist wing. Which is actually challenging because you have to pass through so many other exhibits on the way, and everyone wanted to stop and go into each and every exhibit, and it was so exhausting to keep shepherding everyone along as they tried to root themselves in front of every inconsequential vase, dish, landscape.

But then I got to the 19th and Early 20th Century European Paintings and Sculptures section, and I could breathe. Rest. There, I was in complete control. Once, I spent forty-five minutes discussing The Four Trees and that didn’t even include time for questions, which are consistently disappointing. There was—is— just so much to discuss: the pastel sky behind the deeper purple shadowed trees, the duality through the reflection, the history of Monet bribing the lumber merchant so he wouldn’t cut down the trees until Monet was satisfied with his painting, and yes, I did talk about the brush strokes. It is Monet. I mean, he is simply genius, the beauty he portrays from afar and the chaos up close.

At some point I may have received some mildly degrading form of a verbal warning, but it turns out Monet is quite popular, so when more and more patrons started requesting the “Monet Tour,” the museum finally just let me do my own thing. Which was fine. I had written my undergraduate thesis on three Monet paintings, and the museum had one of them, so I had a lot to say. I think they were really upset when I stopped showing up to work.

To be fair, I did keep showing up; it was just that no one recognized me. And I couldn’t exactly lead tours anymore. It’s a bit funny now, everyone’s different impressions. It induces some internal chuckles, now and then. Most think I am part of the museum, like some sort of interactive art piece. A few people think I am some sort of commentary on how art is a mirror held up to society. Or to themselves.

A lot of people simply come up close, so close they’re breathing on my face, and adjust their hair or lipstick, which I learn through comments made by other people, giggling and tittering that they didn't think that was “the point.”

And what is the point? Why do I keep coming back? It’s annoying to have to stand and listen to insipid commentary on the paintings I can no longer see. Sometimes I simply can’t stand listening to one more spoiled teenager or snotty sixty-something or even some polished twenty-four year old talk about the brush strokes and debate the time of day and discuss how Impressionism is really just Expressionism, except for, like, these flower paintings. I mean, I feel like my face might actually explode.

But the Impressionist wing is and always will be primarily a place of serenity. Of comfort. Before, I could just stand planted in front of those golden frames for hours, allowing my mind to empty except for the image before me. I plunged into the pastel scene of four trees bursting out of the water, submerged myself in Monet’s Morning on the Seine and walked along his wavy, slightly blurry scene of the early light gently illuminating the muted trees.

Someone talked about the healing power of art and pretty things once, and how beautiful aesthetic experiences can produce happiness simply by looking. Maybe a part of me still wants to reflect that ideal.

Or perhaps the point of coming back here every Thursday is the weekly silly little hope that someone will remember me, will recognize me. That he’ll remember me, he’ll recognize me. I dream that he’ll walk into the Impressionism wing one Thursday and remember the girl in the bright pink A-line dress who knew more about Monet than he did. But not more about painting. Never more about painting.

Time in the morning always falls forward like a shot of espresso, one minute browning in the cup, the next jarring your taste buds, your nervous system, and then, swish, it’s gone. By noon, some middle-aged man is giving a watered-down analysis of The Water Lily Pond, barely brushing beyond the strokes. I mean, just admit that you haven’t had a critical thought since the turn of the century, please. I take that as my cue and float to the photography wing, the most transient collection, hoping to overhear something about any new pieces they’ve curated.

A voice discussing a photo captioned, Woman Seen from the Back causes me to pause, to become still. Every word falling into my ears creates a flash, and my mind is left with the afterimage. I see pictures upon pictures, still images swirling in the insides of my eyelids from my favorite photographer: Pascal.

Then I open my eyes, and I’m walking around a gallery filled with images of myself. I see myself frozen dancing on the rooftop in the rain, where the sunlight caught in the falling water drop right before it fell on my face. I see a candid of myself hiding my nose and mouth in a flower—a lilac—at the botanical gardens, looking up through my eyelashes. That one’s posed, though I thought it wouldn’t be so obvious. I see my face fixed mid-laugh at a joke told off camera in front of the fading sunlight. I think I hated that picture once. I wander through these images and realize there is no one else in the gallery. I turn and turn, looking for a window, a door, but all I can find are more and more images of myself—toasting at the hotel in his hometown, posing with a paintbrush at the little studio we dabbled in, on the steps of the museum where I gave the Monet tours.

But he always did have such an unremarkable voice. It really could be anyone, I realize, and this pulls me out of the imagined gallery, as if my memory is a film strip being rolled back and my vision is pushed forward into the darkness, becoming still.

I turn to go, to return to the comfort of the Impressionist wing. I will complete the afternoon there. Though the afternoon always lingers more languidly, each moment sticking up close to the next. Afternoon time is trying to squeeze crystalized honey out of the bottle, is the gelled sweetener resisting. But I will return, oscillating between hope for new, insightful commentary and annoyance at the derivative dialogue, an unchanging pendulum of anticipation and stoicism.

“Photographs are simply a desire to suspend time.”

The voice, Pascal’s voice, says, and images swirl from the first moment I knew he loved me, when he captured the most beautiful image of me and I knew he truly saw me, perhaps saw me even more clearly than I saw myself, and I said the same words that that voice says now because that’s what I wanted to do—I wanted to suspend myself in that beautiful, perfect moment in time. And in one beautiful, perfect moment, I believed someone understood.

He taps me on the shoulder. He says I seem familiar, he thinks he’s seen that dress before, once, from a girl who almost knew more about Monet than he did. He mutters that it’s probably a pretty standard dress. It isn’t. My friend got it for me at Paris Fashion Week.

He asks me about my face, and I shrug, and he takes my hand and leads me around the familiar museum. I’ve heard it all before from countless professors, patrons, dates, peers, children, grandparents. I’ve heard it all before from him.

I’m attentive, I’m reflective. On the borrowed Fabergé egg on display, the pearlescent pink enamel adorned in gold panels. On the pursuit of beauty: the perfect eye shadow palette, perfect shade of nail polish, perfect diet pill, perfect angle for the camera. On the costume gallery, the waves and ripples of fashion and beauty. On wanting to reflect the images in the magazines, on social media.

On Frederick William MacMonnies’ “Self-portrait,”: how he included a copy of another painting in the background, in reverse because he was copying it from the image in the mirror. On portraiture: how Pascal, convinced he was an artist, asked if he could paint me. He wanted to suspend time with a brush instead of a lens, and he said because I have such a deep appreciation for beauty and such a developed understanding of art, I would be perfect. So I agreed. I trusted him. I believed in his artistic eye, especially after he captured my silhouette so beautifully through his camera lens.

He posed me in such unpleasant stances: crouched down to pick a flower, or arms outstretched and on my tiptoes as if mid twirl, or suspended on a beam continually falling. Inevitably, the paintings looked horrible. I shouted, dropped tears, I couldn’t believe he had made me look so unattractive, was this how he really saw me, I thought he loved me.

“You just don’t understand my artistic lens. I have a vision. I’m trying to capture time,” he had said.

“No, you don’t understand artistic vision. Art is supposed to reflect beauty, not distort it.”

“If you’re such a genius, maybe you should try. Do your own portrait,”

“Maybe I will,” and I returned the next day with a freshly purchased designer ensemble beneath a fraying artist smock, my most precise makeup and curled hair, and lugged a big, beautiful golden mirror into his studio.

And now we’ve finished the tour and I must return to attention so Pascal can lead me out of the building. He asks if I want to see his studio. He tells me he’s an artist, which I know. An artist and an appreciator, a creator and a connoisseur. I nod.

We enter his studio, and I imagine it looks exactly the same—tall, white walls (no windows, it’s underground, or in the middle of the building, I can’t remember which), once almost blindingly white, abrasive, but covered with unfinished canvas and paint splotches. The walls were arranged by color scheme—the north wall his black and white scales, west wall variations of reds and sometimes pinks, south wall always greens with occasional yellows, the east wall a conglomeration of uncommissioned and unfinished works.

He tells me to watch my step, so I imagine the floor is the same—countless pads with color swatches, blending and mixing to obtain the perfect shade, opened tubes of paint strewn around, bundles of paint brushes in every size, in every level of disarray scattered by each wall.

Pascal asks what happened to me.

I want to tell him that I don’t even know. I don’t even remember at what point it happened. It was probably gradual. I mean I would have noticed. I’m quite observant, especially about, well, my own face. Anyway, one morning I looked in the brightly lit mirror, perfecting my face, and my nose had been completely rubbed off! Just like that! I was more careful for a few weeks, patting and polishing more like caresses, less like scrubs. But I found a blemish near my mouth, and I simply had to scrub at it, and as I dabbed at my mouth, it rubbed into the shiny surface too. The eyes went next, both of them blending, becoming reflective. And now all I’m left with is hair falling behind a circular golden frame reflecting the world around me.

It was an adjustment, to be sure. Especially when I lost my nose. I actually wore a Band-Aid over it, like I had gotten it done. Not that I ever would have. Everyone knew my nose was my favorite feature. Losing my mouth was pretty tragic too, but I made do. I never talked much before, beyond the Monet tours, having a silvery voice that seemed to get lost in crowds, even the silent ones. And then I lost my eyes and I became a walking reflection, and no one could recognize me anyway, and so I stopped caring.

Life was a little more fun for a while. A whole day I think. Sure, I ran around, bumping into everything, but the anonymity, the utter detachment from my appearance, was incredible. Everything was clear.

But no one could recognize me. No one even seemed to notice I was gone. And so I stopped answering phone calls, texts, stopped paying for a phone plan all together actually. I simply disappeared.

But I can’t tell him that. I shrug. I suppose it could happen to any of us if we aren’t careful.

We walked toward the east wall, and he stopped. “This is one of my favorites. Do you want to know the story behind this piece?”

I nodded.

“Once I knew a beautiful woman, and we fell in love, and she disappeared.” You loved someone else? Loved someone beautiful? But before she disappeared, she had started painting a self-portrait. Oh, please don’t tell this story. She would stand in front of the mirror for hours, begging her appearance not to change until she was finished, until she was satisfied. Okay, that is absolutely false. I wouldn’t talk to my appearance. And besides, how could I possibly be satisfied? I wasn’t an artist. You are the one who— She was obsessed, dancing against time, wanting to perfectly reflect her image. And then one day she just never came back. But I did! I did come back! I’m here!

“And because I had taken so many pictures of her, after she disappeared, I decided to finish her self-portrait, from photos, from memory, blending her original vision with my artistic lens. Look, here it is.”

He holds up a piece of artwork to my face, the shadow reflecting an image once mine, now flipped and mirrored, distorted through different perception, through memory. Am I supposed to smile, widen my eyes in excitement and surprise, exclaim that it’s perfect, complete, that I’m finally satisfied?

I sign thank you, it’s beautiful. I must imagine it is, because I was.

I’m back in my apartment now, standing in the bathroom, about to polish my face and go to sleep.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll take the transit somewhere new, somewhere entirely random, and I won’t even worry about getting lost or constantly bumping into things and looking silly, and maybe I’ll find my way to the ocean, and I’ll feel the shining, shimmering rays glint and glimmer as they ricochet from my face, and I’ll feel the sea mist brush around me, and I’ll walk to the edge of the sand and let the waves meet my toes and leave, tickle the edges of my body and retreat.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll stand somewhere and reflect, so everyone can see themselves shining back at them, and make it clear that that is “the point” because it’s whatever I decide the point is, and maybe tomorrow that’s what I’ll want it to be.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll stand in the bathroom at the end of the day, raise something sharp and hard, like a makeup brush or something, and crack the shiny reflective surface, just to see what would happen. I probably won’t bleed, probably won’t even feel a thing.

Tonight, I fall into bed and pull the silk sheets all the way up, up as far as they will go.