It was the only mirror in the apartment, other than the shiny surface of the wall oven, which provided a ghostly impression of her appearance from her shoulders to her knees. The bathroom mirror reflected her from the chest up. She’d just have to trust her own eyes in judging how her shins and ankles looked. The lip of the porcelain sink dug into her belly as she leaned in toward the mirror to get a closer view of her face. Not bad, she decided. Foundation couldn’t hide the faint lines that laced the outer edges of her eyes and crimped her upper lip, but she wasn’t one of those women who got “work” done, as they euphemistically put it. Her friend Myrna had undergone an eye lift a few years ago, and Ruth hadn’t even noticed. All that pain, the expense, the exposure to possible infection, and the procedure had left Myrna looking like the sixty-year-old woman she was. And Lenore from the B’nai Torah Sisterhood received regular injections of Botox. The thought of injecting poison into her forehead made Ruth ill.
