We Want To Believe We

I'm At That Age Where I Notice Friends Checking Out My Face And Wondering, Has She Been Botoxed? There's A New Map There People That Are Trying To Read. I Think If I Did Get Any Kind Of Enhancement I Would Be Very Public About It. I Don't Want People Wondering - I Want Them To Know.

We Want To Believe We Couldn't Be Replaced, And That The People We Love Are Irreplaceable.

Like Semmering Academy, The Grove School Was A Gothic Pile Of Bricks Run By 1950s-era Chalk Drones, Which Maintained Its Cultural Viability By Perpetuating A Weirdly Seductive Anxiety Throughout Its Community. Mary Herself Was A Victim Of The Seduction; Despite The Trying And Repetitive Emotional Requirements Of Her Job, She Remained Eternally Fascinated By The Wicker-thin Girls And Their Wicker-thin Mothers, All Of Them Favoring Dark Wool Skirts And Macintoshes And Unreadably Far-away Expressions; If She Squinted, They Could Have Emerged Intact From Any Of The Last Seven Decades.

If, At Some Future Point, My Face Collapses Around My Eyes, I'd Probably Do Something About It. My Eyes Are Where I Live, And If People Couldn't See Them, No One Would Know Me.

When My Husband First Read A Draft, He Said, "you Spend Too Much Time Describing The Characters' Outfits." He Was Right. I Removed Much Of The Clothes Talk, But Quite A Bit Remained.