Look at Me

by Jennifer Egan

We crashed through the corn, little Charlotte and I, my useless eyes squeezed shut, my mouth a gigantic O that dredged up from within me a sound unlike any I had ever made before, or even heard. We slipped, the girl dragging me along the wet, soggy bowl of the ditch; my legs buckling, folding under me as I fell against the bars of cornstalk. The journey felt endless, blind, doomed, but the girl kept me going, strong despite her thinness, apparently used to hauling people along rain-filled troughs between rows of corn, or so it seemed; lifting me, dragging me, heaving me through the mud. We’ll never arrive, I thought each time I paused to yank in breath. It will never end.

  And even when it had, when it was all over and people were around us, something still was wrong. I heard it in the panicky flicker of voices, in the fact that so many hands were touching me, soothing me. I felt heat coming from somewhere—the fire has leapt its moorings, I thought, there wasn’t enough sand, not enough rain, the fire has broken free and is raging somewhere, destroying the farmer’s fields.

  I was lying down. I heard mention of a doctor, an ambulance, all from a great distance, all muffled by some other, unrelenting sound; something was wrong, I knew (despite Thomas in the background, muttering, “Beautiful, gorgeous …”), I knew from the scamper of running feet, the welter of voices—Irene’s, Allison’s, Pammy’s, little Charlotte’s—and then Grace, my sister, louder than everyone, coming closer, crying shrilly, “What’s the matter? What’s the matter with her? What’s going on?”

  Someone answered from very nearby. A familiar voice. Yet strange, new. Old. A voice I hadn’t heard in many, many years surrounded me, now, familiar as my own. It was Ellen’s voice. Ellen Metcalf, my old friend.

  My old friend.

  She was holding my hand, I realized, and her voice sounded calm, calm and very near, so near that I wondered if I might be lying in her lap. I felt a warmth around me—yes, I thought, relieved, the Good Samaritan is here, the Good Samaritan has finally come.

  “Charlotte can’t stop screaming,” Ellen said.

  In near darkness, Moose lay in the mud and marveled at the silence. The thunder had faded, a bully moving on to other schoolyards, and the rain was a light patter now, a gentle dousing, warm and friendly. The whispering sounds of traffic might have been the sea.

  He was aware of a presence nearby, but for some time he waited, just feeling it there, trying to surmise its mass and weight, its goals and intentions and allegiances, before opening his eyes. He had no more strength for enemies.

  When finally he looked, he found Priscilla beside him. She sat hunched on the embankment, hugging her knees, dressed in blue shorts and a blouse with little red rosebuds on it. Her hair and clothing were wet. She was looking down at the traffic, crying.

  Moose sat upright. He felt confused, baffled, guilty, caught among the dregs of some unspeakable debauch. “Darling,” he said, and put his arms around Priscilla, his sodden arms around his slender wife, who smelled of wet carnations. She sobbed quietly, her smooth and lovely face reversed, showing its rough, nubbly underside. “Edmund, why?” she said.

  “I can’t explain.”

  She sniffled, wiping her eyes. “I know,” she said.

  She was calming down, Moose noted with relief. She was becoming visibly calmer. She was very nearly calm again, his Priscilla.

  “You didn’t come home,” she said. “I was scared.”

  “I’m sorry, baby.”

  He was sheepish, unsure himself what had happened exactly, why his pants were streaked with black ink. With Priscilla beside him, the paroxysms of the past several hours seemed already to have folded into something very small.

  “Did you take your medication?” she asked.

  He nodded, seizing her hand. His wife. It seemed impossible to Moose that she could really be his. The world felt so quiet, the traffic sounds hushed and sibilant as prayer. And amidst this stillness, Moose managed to assemble courage, peace of mind, reason, logic—those scattered, blinkered troops who for the past several hours had rampaged without a general—marshaled them into formation, took a long, very deep breath, and told his wife, as evenly as he could manage, “Charlotte doesn’t want to study with me anymore.”

  “Oh,” Priscilla said, her whole face parting in sympathy at this news. “Oh, that’s so disappointing. It must be.” Stroking his muddy head, and when Moose heard her reaction—disappointed for him, yes, but calm, presuming of both their continued survivals—he felt relief.

  “Let’s go home,” he said.

  It was dark. The lights of his car were still on, but dim. Moose flicked on the hazards, locked the car and climbed into Priscilla’s Capri. She drove, legs wet with rain. At home, she would call Triple A to pick up his car. She’d done it before.

  She would serve him Campbell’s tomato soup with saltines and put him to bed. For the next few days he would feel tired, peaceful.

  Yet even now, as they drove along the interstate toward home, sorrow clung to Priscilla, a veil so thin it was nearly transparent. A cobweb. She was sad, he had made her sad. Again.

  “Should we go to the movies tomorrow?” Moose asked, working to find some joviality in himself. “It’s Saturday.”

  “I have to work.”

  “The next day, then.”

  She nodded without conviction. A scrim had appeared between them, and it frightened Moose.

  “We need milk,” he said. “Should we stop at the Logli?”

  “I did.”

  Minutes passed. A terrible silence spun open.

  “When I’m feeling better,” Moose said at last, haltingly, “when all this is behind us, I—I’d like to take you on a vacation.”

  His wife said nothing.

  “Just the two of us, somewhere nice,” he forged on. “To unwind, to relax.”

  And as he blundered heedlessly, desperately into this disclosure, this secret plan he’d hoarded for more than a year, Moose recognized that in speaking it aloud to Priscilla he would make it real. There would be no possibility of retreat.

  “I was thinking of … of Hawaii,” he said, the very word a yelp of fear. Moose leapt, threw himself from this cliff. “How does that sound to you?”

  There was a long pause, during which he fell, fell, swiveling his limbs in the open air. But when Priscilla looked at him again, he saw renewal. Resurgence. A flame lighting her face. Faith returned to his wife like a soul reanimating a corpse. Moose sank back in his seat and shut his eyes.

  The world was saved, after all.

  Priscilla took his hand. “Hawaii would be wonderful,” she said.

  Part Three

  Afterlife

  Chapter Twenty

  That woman entertaining guests on her East River balcony in early summer, mixing rum drinks in such a way that the Bacardi and Coca-Cola labels blink at the viewer haphazardly in the dusty golden light—she isn’t me.

  That woman whose sponsors have included Doritos, Lean Cuisine, Frigidaire, Williams-Sonoma, O.B., Sea Breeze, Q-tips, Clairol, Mac Cosmetics, Lubriderm, Vidal Sassoon, Bayer, NyQuil, TV Guide, Calvin Klein, Johnson & Johnson, Panasonic, Goodyear, Raisinettes, Windex, Tide, Clorox, Pine-Sol, Dustbuster, CarpetClean, Mason Pearson, Dentine, See’s Candies, Scope, Nine West, Random House, General Electric, Tiffany, Flossrite, Crate & Barrel, Fruit of the Loom, Scotchgard, Apple, the New York Post, Hanes, Odoreaters, Frame-o-Rama, Kodak, Rubik’s Cube, Day Runner, FTD, Sam Flax, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Roach Motel, Reebok, Blistex, Braun, Levolor, Xerox, the Door Store, Right Guard, Panasonic, D’Agostino, Rubbermaid, K-Y jelly, and the services of Dr. Raymond Huff, obstetrician—that woman whose veins and stomach and intestines have opened their slippery corridors to small exploratory cameras; whose heart, with its yawning, shaggy caverns, is more recognizable to a majority of Americans (according to one recent study) than their spouses’ hands; the first woman in history to both conceive and deliver a child on-line, before an international audience more than double the size of those assembled for the finales of Cheers and Seinfeld combined�
�she isn’t me.

  I swear.

  The breach between myself and Charlotte Swenson had its antecedents well before Ordinary People’s now legendary debut and the attendant tsunami of controversy, hysteria, opprobrium from pundits who swore it would be the end of American life as we knew it, and of course, history-making numbers of subscribers; before the rocketing fame of the “Ordinary Thirty,” the original American subjects, many of whom, like Pluto, are brand names today—before any of that, I had begun to feel, as I went through the motions of my life, that I was someone other than that woman, Charlotte Swenson, in whose skin I had lived for so long.

  To be sure, public life widened the fissures between us. And in the year following the debut, my public life burgeoned exponentially: the development of the TV series, Accidental Charlotte, a situation comedy about a woman whose reconstructed face renders her unrecognizable, resulting in all sorts of complications and mishaps (“Mary Tyler Moore meets Sex and the City meets X-Files,” to quote Thomas Keene); the movie Eye of the Storm (“Thelma and Louise meets Fatal Attraction meets Face Off”), which I’m told was a disaster, though I never saw it; the doll “Charlotte of the Many Faces,” essentially Barbie with four interchangeable heads; the video game “Z,” in which players must spot and eliminate the terrorist impostor in an array of situations before he eliminates Charlotte; the release of my book (Faceless: A Diary of Recovery, Knopf, 199—) with accompanying shoots for Vogue and an assortment of other magazines I hadn’t gotten within spitting distance of for many years; my appearances on Letterman and The Today Show and Larry King; my appointment as honorary chair of an academic symposium, “The Semiotics of Physiognomy in Post-Deconstructive Visual Discourse” (of which I understood not a word)—during that period, a chasm developed within me, a sinkhole of massive proportions dividing me from Charlotte Swenson. I was someone else.

  In the second year after the debut, when my status as a pop cultural icon of personal transformation solidified, a second wave of projects began to break: an “unauthorized” biography (commissioned by Thomas) that dug up and printed my modeling pictures along with commentary from scores of old lovers (Hansen, to his credit, refused to talk); the development of “Metamorphosis,” my clothing and swimsuit line, now sold in Neiman Marcus stores around the country, and my perfume, “Incognito” (Bijan meets Poison); “Renaissance,” my skin-care line specializing in distressed, wrinkled, sun-damaged and posttraumatic skin (which the marketers cleverly figured would cover just about everyone) whose crown jewel, “Alibi Scar Erasure,” is sold in freestanding displays at gas stations around the country; my cameo roles in several motion pictures, usually enigmatic walk-ons that would prompt from the protagonists remarks like “She looks familiar … I’ve seen her somewhere before,” or “I thought she was someone I knew … but I guess not”; the so-called lifestyle projects, many of them cheapo book tie-ins to the TV show: Charlotte’s Pop-Tart Diet; Charlotte’s Cocktail Recipes for All Occasions; Charlotte’s Guide to Pleasing a Man … and Being Pleased; Burning Up the Dance Floor with Charlotte (a boxed set of my favorite club hits from the eighties and nineties); and of course, “The Charlotte,” a spillproof sectional couch sold exclusively at Crate & Barrel.

  The more notorious I became for my transformation, the more gapingly fraudulent this transformation began to feel. I hadn’t transformed; I had undergone a kind of fission, and the two resulting parts of me reviled each other. I was a ghost sealed within the body of a fame-obsessed former model from whom I had to strenuously guard my moods and thoughts, lest she find some way to cannibalize and sell them (Charlotte’s Anti-Suicide Techniques, Charlotte’s Poems for Depression). I crept through my life, hoarding my occasional dreams and what few memories she hadn’t already plundered, camouflaging my hopes and future aspirations in a palette of utter blandness lest they be caught in the restless beam of her overhead camera and broadcast to the world. Once or twice I swore her to secrecy, but Charlotte always betrayed me (“Public Star Weds Private Dick,” New York Post, July 199—), and her disclosures left me enraged, despondent, and bent on escape.

  It was during this period of subterfuge and treachery that I dug up the contract I’d signed for Thomas Keene and read it through for the very first time. On a page of attached clauses, I came upon one headed

  23. Transfer of Identity:

  Subject may at any time no less than thirty (30) days before expiration of the Term of this Agreement notify the Service of her election to sell her Identity Rights, as defined in Paragraph 7, to the Service. Notification shall be in accordance with Paragraph 11 of the Agreement. In consideration for the sale of the Subject’s Identity Rights, the Service will pay a mutually agreed upon lump sum payment due on the effective date of the sale. Subject will thereafter be released from her Subject’s Duties and Obligations under Paragraph 13. The Service will, as of seven (7) days following the date of sale (“Transfer Date”), retain exclusive rights to any and all property both tangible and intangible relating to the creation and maintenance of Subject’s Identity, including but not limited to her name, image, possessions, domicile, personal history, photographs, private correspondence, diaries, travelogues, financial records, medical records, and any and all additional data pertaining to Subject’s Identity.…

  As of the Transfer Date, defined herein, said transfer is irrevocable and any action by Subject or anyone acting under her direction to resume her Identity including but not limited to the use of her name or the retention or attempt to reclaim any personal property shall be deemed a breach of the Agreement subject to any and all recourse permitted under the Governing Law and Venue set forth in Paragraph 41.…

  I sold Charlotte Swenson for a sum that will keep myself and two or three others comfortable for the remainder of our lives, although not (I’m told) for nearly what she was worth. I dyed my hair, changed my name and walked out the door of my twenty-fifth floor apartment for the very last time. I stepped empty-handed onto East Fifty-second Street and hailed a cab, leaving closets, desk and kitchen cabinets full. I wriggled from inside my life like a sheep shorn of too many winters’ wool, pink skin tingling in the brusque, immediate air.

  All you need is a birth certificate.

  Now, a team of 3-D modelers and animators creates my likeness and superimposes her onto my balcony, my sectional couch, my kitchen, my bedroom. From the little I’ve seen, they’re miraculously good: That delivery scene at the hospital? Even I believed it!

  As for the text—diary entries, dreams and so on—I assume they’re still written by Irene, or one of her employees. As the first “new new journalist,” Irene Maitlock is something of a legend, though by now scores of others have followed her example. Her company, miglior/fabbro.com, has prospered unfathomably, and she’s a celebrity in her own right. I saw a picture of her recently on the arm of Richard Gere, which I guess means that her marriage didn’t last. She looks so different, thanks to her much chronicled makeover; without the name, I wouldn’t have recognized her.

  As for myself, I’d rather not say very much. When I breathe, the air feels good in my chest. And when I think of the mirrored room, as of course I still do, I understand now that it’s empty, filled with chimeras like Charlotte Swenson—the hard, beautiful seashells left behind long after the living creatures within have struggled free and swum away. Or died. Life can’t be sustained under the pressure of so many eyes. Even as we try to reveal the mystery of ourselves, to catch it unawares, expose its pulse and flinch and peristalsis, the truth has slipped away, burrowed further inside a dark, coiled privacy that replenishes itself like blood. It cannot be seen, much as one might wish to show it. It dies the instant it is touched by light.

  Once or twice a year I still call my old voice mail, just to see if the outgoing message is the one I recorded myself. My hand shakes as I dial the phone, and I wonder who will answer.

  “Hi, it’s me,” comes her childish, cigarette voice from the digital void. “Leave a message, but keep it short.”
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  “Hello,” I say. “It’s me.”

  Acknowledgments

  During the years I spent writing Look at Me, certain individuals and institutions provided me with a tincture containing one or more of the following essentials: editorial assistance verging on collaboration; encouragement when I lacked confidence to proceed; time and space in which to work; career advice; funds; some fleck of inspiration; access to a crucial area of knowledge or expertise. I am hugely indebted to all of them.

  David Herskovits, Kay Kimpton, Professor Barbara Mundy, Nan Talese, Amanda Urban, Lisa Fugard, David Rosenstock, Elizabeth Tippens, Ruth Danon, Monica Adler, Don Lee, Tom Jenks, Deirdre Fishel, Peter Mezan, Elisabeth Robinson, the Corporation of Yaddo, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Dr. Sarah E. Friebert, Dr. Jack Owsley, Dr. Bryant Toth, private detectives Jonathan Soroko and Lawrence Frost, attorneys Alexander Busansky and Christina Egan, the Frary family, two former FBI agents specializing in counterterrorism who shall remain nameless, Jon Lundin’s Rockford: An Illustrated History, and William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis.

  Afterword

  I wrote Look at Me over the course of six years. In that time the novel went through countless revisions, the last of which I completed in January 2001, when America, and certainly New York, were in some sense different places than they are today.

  In that final revision—a light one, since the book was scheduled for publication in September—I spent several days working on the character of Z. My editor felt that his humanity didn’t come through quite as strongly in the section describing his perambulations in New York City as it does later, after he has transformed into Michael West. I welcomed the chance to take another pass at him; of the many characters in Look at Me, Z had always worried me the most. I was afraid no one would find him credible.

  I’ve written elsewhere about the preoccupations that led me to develop such a character, and the research I did. My purpose here is to remind readers that, while it may be nearly impossible to read about Z outside the context of September 11th, 2001, I concocted his history and his actions at a time when the events of that day were still unthinkable. Had Look at Me been a work-in-progress last fall, I would have had to reconceive the novel in light of what happened. Instead, it remains an imaginative artifact of a more innocent time.