Lost and found

by Sarah Hilary

“Will you talk to Matt?” Pippa was wearing a new suit in shades of purple, fixing gold clips to her ears. “I’ve tried, you know that, but all he does is agree with everything I say and then ignore it.”

She directed a frown at the filter between Sam’s fingers then corrected the expression in accordance with whatever rules her surgeon had given her after the most recent round of fillers – a solution of something like 97 parts water to three parts synthetic reticulate polymer. Under this regime, Pippa’s forehead had acquired the glassy smoothness of a starched sheet.

Sam focused on her face, allowing a familiar thought to flit in and out of his head: this woman, his wife of twenty-nine years, had been hijacked by Botox. Where were the lines, the wrinkles? He had seen her select rusty, chipped garden ornaments from catalogues specialising in the vintage look. “For their character,” she said. What of her character? Was it being held ransom by Mr Hooper-Harris, the man with the magic syringe? Would Sam one day receive a note, laying out the terms for its safe return?

Pippa put both forefingers behind her new earlobes, their gold hoops hanging in place. “How do I look?”

Always her smartest clothes, her best jewellery, for an appointment with these face pirates. Between treatments she wouldn’t leave the house, nursing her injuries until the last bruise had faded and she was fit to be seen in public again.

“You look very nice,” Sam said. “What is it today?”

Pippa twitched her jacket into shape at the waist, looking thin and content. “Lasers.”

“Ah,” said Sam. “The raw, weeping, uncomfortable burn.”

It was beyond her powers to pull a face at him. Thanks to the attentions of Mr Hooper-Harris, she was obliged to wear an expression of contentment day and night. The look seemed a little more credible than usual this morning. Unassailable, was the word for his wife.

Since going private for a face-lift three years ago, Pippa had been in her element. It occurred to Sam that his wife was an addict. Each time she underwent a course of cosmetic surgery, Pippa became a little more dependent on the cycle of anticipation, pain and elation. Each high had its corresponding low; every freshly flawless area only serving to throw into relief those parts yet to be perfected. It was these parts which, perversely, Sam loved best. He would have liked to erect scaffolding around them, serve protection orders against their renovation.

Pippa pooh-poohed his sentimental attachment to what she called her “target areas.”

Laser treatment was the current compulsion. Sam had read the patient information at Pippa’s request, despite telling her that being an ophthalmologist did not qualify him to comment on the art of the cosmetic facial surgeon.

The leaflet on Laser Treatment said, “Although carbon dioxide lasers have been in medical use since the ‘60s as cutting tools it is only in the last few years that technological advances in laser design have allowed the laser beam to hit the skin surface for less than the ‘thermal relaxation time of skin’ i.e. 695 microseconds allowing controlled vaporisation of skin with minimal unwanted ‘collateral’ heat damage.” A little further down, in block capitals, it said,

“All patients will have a raw, weeping, uncomfortable superficial burn for about one week.”

“You really must give up smoking,” Pippa said. “It’ll age you like nothing else.”

“I’m down to one a day.”

“Matt would have more respect for you.”

Sam found that hard to believe. He glanced up at the window of his son’s bedroom. The curtains were drawn, of course. Whether awake or asleep, Matt scorned daylight as he scorned most things. Sam didn’t mind his son’s lack of respect for his parents. It was Matt’s lack of respect for himself which worried Sam. Three times Matt had left home, always returning and never happily. He would be twenty-three in a few weeks’ time.

There was no failure, Sam felt, which came close to that of failing to raise a happy child. Not that Matt would admit to being unhappy. Matt and Pippa had entered into an unspoken pact: he was a waster; a slob. Depression was never mentioned. Sam sometimes wished it would be. Without a diagnosis, what hope had Matt of getting better?

“We used to be so close,” Pippa said with a sigh in the direction of her son’s room. “Now look at him. He may as well be on another planet.”

Sam glanced at his watch. In a couple of hours he would be in theatre, operating on a detached retina. A delicate operation, but a piece of cake compared with attempting to reconnect with his only child.

In the darkened bedroom, Matt sat at his computer, headphones plugged in his ears so he didn’t hear Sam’s knock on the door.

He took a couple of steps into the room, weighing up the speech he was meant to deliver, the latest in a long line of appeals to a better nature his son gave no sign of possessing.

There was an image on the screen of the computer. At first Sam could make no sense of it. Then, drawing closer, he saw it was a picture of a body half-buried in the bonnet of a car.

The body must have fallen from a great height, or at tremendous speed. It was hanging facedown, stripped half-bare by the impact of its landing. The torso was elongated by the angle, the body twisted into an elegant and unnatural shape, not quite a question mark. Clothes were caught in the corrugated clutches of the car’s bonnet, blue jeans hauled down to reveal narrow hips, a green t-shirt rucked up around a slender neck. Both knees were lying in the deep vee of the indented steel, pale toes pointing upwards at the sky. The head was hanging over the side, black hair spilling, filling the gutter. It was the hair that told Sam the body was female. Her torso was stretched flat by the angle of the impact and might have been a boy’s. Then he saw her left breast, its nipple convex, and he realised it was a girl. A young girl, no older than Matt. Appalled by the intimacy, Sam took two steps backwards.

He could hear the tinny whine of music from Matt’s headphones. He reached out an arm and tapped his son on the shoulder.

Matt didn’t jump. He just looked up, his face angular and unfriendly. “What?”

Sam forgot all about the speech he was meant to be making. He pointed at the computer and said, “What – what is that?”

“What does it look like? It’s a suicide.”

Sam tore his eyes from the dead girl to the gaggle of spectators captured in the background, the buildings framing the shot. “Is that… Tokyo?”

“Guess so. It’s called Japanese Jumper.”

“Is this a… website of some sort?”

“It’s rotten.”

“Yes.” Sam nodded. “I should say it is.”

Matt clicked at the mouse. “Wanna see?”

He summoned a series of pictures to the screen, each one worse than the last – a grisly roll-call of ruined flesh and recent death. Pictures of deformed animals and babies. Of horrific accidents, bodies impaled on spikes or with limbs hanging off. Body piercings gone wrong, lurid with infection. Atrocities and tragedies – people’s most private moments made public; global.

“Stop it,” Sam said after the first few seconds.

Matt shrugged and continued scrolling through the pictures.

“Where do the pictures come from?”

“Everywhere. People take them – upload them. It’s all anonymous. I suppose some of it’s illegal.”

“Wait. Wait a minute! Go – back three pictures –”

Matt gave a ghoulish, conspiratorial chuckle and fiddled with the mouse. “This one?”

“Yes.” Sam drew close, unconsciously putting a palm on his son’s shoulder as they peered at the screen together.

“That one.”

It was the picture of a face in the process of being skinned. That, at least, was Sam’s first impression. The eyes were closed with strips of sticky tape and more tape held a tube at one corner of the slack mouth. The face was red with black lines drawn around the eyes and the edges of the lips. Marker pen, Sam realised. It was like looking at a joint of meat in a cold cabinet – raw and bloody – traces of yellow fat revealed beneath the butchered surface.

“Plastic surgery,” Matt said, sounding bored. “So this is what mum gets up to.”

“That is your mother.”

“Come off it.” Matt made a scoffing sound. He squinted up at his father. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Right.” Sam nodded. “Just kidding.”

Matt double-clicked the mouse. The screen went blank then started spiralling stars. Sam felt foolish, standing there, staring into space. But he couldn’t move away.

The butchered face was Pippa’s. He’d recognised, with a pang, her old earlobes.

 

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~ This piece was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 and was filed under Blog, Featured, Short Story, Writing. You can make comments on it below. ~