Beauty

by Christina Chiu

  “You’re my friend. Of course you’re going to say nice things.”

  “That is so not true,” Ben says. “When you came up with that jean fringy thing, I was the first person to tell you it should be contained in the zoo, wasn’t I?”

  “I guess.”

  “She’s jealous,” Ben says. “She’s just trying to spook you and any other competition she can scoop into her net. And you’re basically stupid enough to take the bait. Look, who are you going to listen to—Katrina? Or me?”

  Ben is as much a star as Katrina. He’s already been asked to write a column during Fashion Week, and when it comes to design, not only does he have a unique aesthetic, often incorporating recyclables into his work, his ideas are shockingly different and yet stunningly beautiful. “You,” I concede. Tears well up in my eyes. Without my designs propping me up, I’ve got nothing.

  “That’s right,” Ben says, using his 6-foot bulk to shield me from our peers. “Now, go see your shrink, get beautiful, and I’ll meet you at 8:30 for a quick bite.”

  “Zach is going to be there.” Zach is a guy I’m fucking. He’s the other Jeff Jones intern.

  “You like him, he likes you. That’s a good thing, right?” Ben fakes a smile. He doesn’t actually like Zach because I told him about the first date. Zach and I walked back to his place after dinner. I hung back, waiting to see if he would slow down and pace accordingly, and sized him up. He had a lean, muscular body. I was imagining my hands on his tight ass when he turned to me and said, “Why are you walking behind me? I would have thought a woman like you would have overcome such old world customs.” I let it go, figuring it would be one of those things we’d laugh about once we got to know one another better. “Remember that butthead comment you made,” I’d say.

  “Zach could have asked me to come with him tonight, but he didn’t,” I say.

  “You don’t know the politics around that, girl. Maybe it’s like, not the thing interns do there, you know?” Ben nudges me. “Surprise him. Show up gorgeous. It’s a done deal.”

  I pick at the callous on my finger. It’s from pressing sequins by hand to give them a distressed quality, then sewing them to leather. “I just—” Tears drain from my eyes. “I can’t,” I gasp.

  Ben takes my hand, draws me into the women’s bathroom and locks the door. “Keep crying, girl, and you’re going to be puffy like a goldfish.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You’re really going to let Katrina win this?” he says. “She spoke first so everyone followed her lead. You know how it goes in workshop.”

  “Well, maybe she’s right,” I say.

  “If you believe that, you’re wasting your time in this program,” he says sternly.

  A part of me knows Ben’s right; another part wants to give up. “I miss Rick.”

  “Girl, you better remember what you told me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Repeat after me,” he says. “I’m independent.”

  “I’m independent.”

  “I see who I want, when I want.”

  “I see who I want, when I want.”

  “I’m beautiful.”

  “I’m beautiful,” I sigh.

  “Say it like you feel it.”

  “But I don’t.”

  “Fake it, girl.”

  I think about Zach; how he looks at me sometimes. “I’m beautiful,” I say.

  “Good.” He nods. “Now, onto more important things—I’m hungry.”

  “Well I’m definitely not,” I say.

  “Matzo ball soup and french fries? Really, girl?” He unlocks the door. “8:30, sharp.”

  My shrink is located on the upper west side. I pause at the gate outside her office. It’s on the ground level of a red brick townhouse. The bay window is shuttered as always, but usually light shines through the slats. This afternoon, it’s dark inside. Dark and vacant. My mind drifts to Rick.

  “I need to write a screenplay,” he said, during brunch at his favorite restaurant. He was miserable going on thirty without having gotten a single play produced; even if he did, he’d still be broke. If he sold a screenplay, on the other hand, he’d at least have some money.

  “Okay,” I said, enjoying a bowl of chicken soup. I was used to his pronouncements. Last year, he booked gigs with his band every single weekend.

  Rick stared at me, his blue eyes bulging with seriousness.

  “Uh…Is this…” I set the spoon down. “Are we, like, breaking up or something?”

  “It’s just something I need to do,” he said.

  “Apart?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long does it take to write a screenplay?” I asked. “Couple weeks? Months?”

  “I can’t honestly say for sure, but yes, two months.”

  “Two months?” I thought about all his band’s gigs, many of which were out in Jersey and Long Island. I went to all but one due to the flu. I also walked his dog Monday and Thursday afternoons when he had double shifts at the restaurant. I didn’t even like the mutt.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  Fuck this, I thought. I don’t need this shit. I pushed the soup away from me. From now on, everything was going to be about me. I wasn’t going to waste my energy on men. It would go toward school. Design would come first. And I would see who I wanted, when I wanted. “You do realize I’m not exactly going to be sitting around waiting for you, right?” I said.

  “I take full responsibility,” he said.

  “Hello? Where are you?” Iggy, my psychiatrist asks, appearing beside me on the sidewalk.

  “Just thinking,” I say, following her back to the office. My stomach aches. It’s like I can still taste matzo ball soup from that stupid day with Rick.

  The room has two facing leather chairs with footrests, a sofa against the wall, and a desk by the window. Iggy knows about Rick. She’s also heard about the string of men, some way older than me, but who fuck like they’re twenty. It’s all the same shit. I should just stop. Why can’t I stop?

  “Amy?” Iggy leans toward me in her chair. “Hello?”

  My eyes refocus on her big, brown eyes. I feel myself come back to the room. Her office may be on 86th between Columbus and Amsterdam but it’s like I’m drifting in space. “We were together for almost two years,” I say.

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “Stupid. I mean, I went to all his gigs. Walked his fucking dog. It’s so damn humiliating.”

  “What is?”

  “I basically bent over backwards to support him—I mean, I molded my whole life around his—and here he is treating me like I’m the one who stands between him and his work.”

  “It sounds like you don’t feel appreciated.” She offers a compassionate smile.

  “I don’t,” I say. “I mean, maybe he should try doing what the rest of us do.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Work.”

  Iggy laughs, then in a more sober voice, says, “I’m wondering… you poured so much of yourself into Rick. Have you ever done that for yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Almost two months to the day, a 400-page screenplay from Rick arrived in my email.

  “Dear Amy, I wrote this for you,” Ben read aloud. “Love always, Rick.”

  “What should I do?” I asked.

  Ben trashed the email, then cleared the bin. “All done.”

  “Think he wrote it for me?”

  “Sweetheart, if he truly loved you, he would have edited that thing down to 120 pages before giving it to you.”

  “Hello?” Iggy calls. “Come back, Amy.”

  “Huh?” I blink. The room comes into focus.

  “Where’d you go again?” I
ggy asks.

  “I just don’t get it, you know?”

  “Get what?”

  “Anything. I mean, why?”

  “Why?”

  “I thought we were good together,” I gaze at my lap, unable to bear the weight of her wide-eyed stare. “I loved him. Love him.”

  She nods.

  “Do you think he’s right? I mean, if I truly love him, I’d give him the space he needs to do his work, right?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, her voice softening. “Do you think he’s right?”

  I shake my head. “Why can’t I stop thinking about him?”

  She sighs.

  “It’s all so pointless,” I say, a dagger of self-loathing sticking me in the heart.

  “You seem unusually fragile,” she says. “You look like you’ve lost more weight. Have you lost more weight?”

  I shrug. “Ben’s all over me about it. He makes like I’m turning into his anorexic sister.”

  “Have you lost your appetite?” she asks.

  “I try to eat, but I can’t. I just can’t.”

  “Have you experienced any sleep issues? Sleeping too much—”

  “No, I can’t sleep. Every night I go to bed and it just won’t stop.”

  “What won’t stop?”

  “This,” I say, pointing at my temple. “Everything just goes over and over inside my head. I read the songs he wrote me. His voice is stuck inside my head. It’s exhausting.”

  “What’s exhausting?”

  “I don’t know. Being alive?”

  “Well, we talked last week about taking SSRIs again, and I know I told you I’d like to hold off and see what happens—” She scribbles a prescription. “But I think I’d like for you to get started.”

  I take the paper. Zoloft. 25 mg.

  “One pill today, and if all goes well, we’ll increase tomorrow,” she says. “No alcohol.”

  “But I’ve got the party tonight. I’m seeing Zach, remember?“

  Iggy blinks. She knows I’m not into bars or partying. Unlike most people in the program, I have little design background; I don’t have time to waste. Iggy points the back end of the pen at me. “If you know you are going to drink, wait until tomorrow. Otherwise, start tonight.”

  “Will it work right away?” I ask.

  “Everyone reacts differently. Usually it needs to build up in someone’s system. But, yes, some people feel some relief almost immediately.”

  Relief? Oh, my god. There’s hope.

  A dress. I hop the train to Georgie’s apartment where I’ll borrow a dress of Ma’s. I fixate on Zach whenever I find myself thinking about Rick. The last time I was at Zach’s place, he asked me to fit model for him since he’d finished cutting the patterns for a new dress.

  “Sure.” I pulled the T-shirt over my head and stepped out of the skirt. Matching bra and thongs. Lizard skin sandals. “How’s this?” I asked. He was holding the front torso of the dress. “Fuck,” he rasped through a mouth of pins. I unhooked my bra and tossed it aside. He worked in a methodical, controlled manner, being careful to pin everything perfectly while not sticking me. Occasionally he stopped, stood back, and checked his work from different angles. He was intense, striving for perfection, and willing to accept redo’s for as long as it took. And yet, as I modeled in a thong, I could feel his heat, drawing me closer. His warm breath and the brush of his magic hands over the muslin made my nipples hard. They poked out from the white gauzelike fabric.

  “I hope my dress turns on every girl like this,” he whispered. I could barely move. The pins scratched at my skin, warning me not to shift too suddenly or swiftly. He ran the back end of the pin between my breasts and down my abdomen. He lifted the hem of the dress, ran the blue ball over the thong, his middle and forth fingers reaching down between my legs. He dropped the hem and moved behind me, unzipping his jeans and squeezing my buttocks with both hands, the sharp tip of a pin accidentally sticking me on the right side. I jerked forward, and he grabbed my hips, slipping all the way inside, the force of him shifting me several feet forward to the work table against the front window, where I braced myself on tip toes. He fucked with blind desperation. I was terrified of the pins, and yet, maybe because of them, I felt intensely aroused. “Yes,” I sighed because I was sure this was exactly what I wanted—who I wanted—and Zach came so hard, yelling so loudly that people in the street actually looked up and stared.

  The train arrives at 165th Street. I exit, climb the steps, and take a packed elevator to street level. Georgie lives a block away, directly across from the children’s hospital ER. Ma has lived with her ever since she sold the house. She would never admit it, but part of the reason she moved in, I believe, was to thwart any chance of Georgie getting back together with her boyfriend Mark. Ma thought it was bad enough that my college boyfriend at the time was white and Jewish. Mark was black.

  Luckily, tonight, neither Ma nor Georgie will be at the apartment. Georgie usually remains late at the hospital in order to check on patients, and Ma’s on a Caribbean cruise with her new boyfriend. Ma would flip if she knew I was raiding her closet, but I figure what Ma doesn’t know can’t hurt her.

  On the way, I drop off the prescription at the closest pharmacy. The pharmacist says it’ll take a couple of hours to fill, so I walk three blocks south on Broadway to get a manicure and pedicure, then go around the corner to have my hair blown. The entire time I’m getting beautified, I find myself thinking about workshop and my stupid sequined dress design, and then Rick’s there in my head, again. I’m a failure; a total fuck up. Always have been, always will be.

  Zach, I think, Zach. We’ll go back to his place. It’s time to move on.

  I work my way through Ma’s walk in closet. Each dress is in its own plastic sleeve. Psychedelic Pucci prints—a pinkish brown shift dress, matching bluish top and bell bottom pants. There’s a red bohemian gown. The upper body’s a simple bikini-strapped tank with a flowerlike motif and organza appliques, the lower is a mix-and-match assortment of transparent devorees layered softly like waves.

  I drape the dress on Ma’s bed and continue looking. Yves Saint Laurent shifts, Pierre Cardin dresses, one of which is a cream-colored car wash mini worth god knows how much. And oh—the Givenchy. It’s Ma’s go-to little black dress, one she’s had forever. It’s hard to believe it’s not traveling with her to the Caribbean. The first time Dad left, I was sixteen and in high school. Ma packed a suitcase with only three dresses, and this was one of them. I set it carefully beside the red Pucci and go back for more.

  Herve Leger. Dior. Chanel.

  Oh my god. Another Givenchy. This one a gown. Ma’s last boyfriend must have invited her to a black tie ball. Deep V neck. Sleeveless. Halter-like and with a fitted waist. Silk sheer-paneled netting, a floral macramé design elegantly hiding the breasts, and yet drawing the eye straight to it. There’s a rear central vent, cut from the same sheer panel netting as the front, embroidered with dots like a bride’s veil.

  Gaultier. Fendi. Miu Miu.

  Then, I see it. Tibetan floral brocade pattern recreated in a thin red lace layered over a silk, black mini dress. It’s a Jeff Jones, one of his earlier ’60s styles, which broke him into the industry. He is one of the first major designers to successfully incorporate East Asian patterns into Western women’s apparel; it became his signature. Ma’s kept it well. There’s only a touch of discoloration at the inner neckline.

  I try it on. The dress fits perfectly. It would be cheesy to wear a Jeff Jones to a Jeff Jones party, but it’s so unique, so perfect, so rare. I match it with Louboutins to give it a contemporary twist, but next to the dress, the red soles are like a loud, gaudy stepmother. That’s how I picture Dad’s new wife, though I’ve never actually met her. When Dad finally left, he left. No calls. No cards. No visits. He got a son, and that’s all that mattered. He gave Ma the settlement sh
e wanted, and it was like he clapped the dust from his hands and pronounced, “Done.”

  Didn’t he love me anymore? I wondered. Had he ever loved me? I felt like the loneliest person in the world. In the mirror, an ordinary Chinese girl stares back at me. She may be my reflection but it’s as if the real me is stuck on the other side of the glass.

  My energy drains. I sit at the edge of the bed and hold my head in my hands. What the hell am I doing? I can’t go to the party, yet I can’t stay here alone, either. Somewhere out there, Rick is moving on. Why can’t I? I’ve got Zach; it makes no sense.

  That person in the mirror. She’s everything and nothing; I’m here and yet not here. Is this what it feels like to be dead? Maybe I’d be better off that way. Ma has sleeping pills in the bathroom cabinet. It’s easy. It wouldn’t hurt. All of this could stop. Make it stop.

  Don’t. My body shakes. The Zoloft. I grope for it in my purse, tap a pill from the bottle, swallow it. There. No alcohol, tonight. I grab my purse and escape out the door.

  Ben and I arrive fashionably late at 10 PM, but not nearly late enough. Other than the catering staff, there are more students from Helena’s class than anyone else. The apartment’s a duplex. The living area is a large open space with a gold seated Buddha set into the wall. Beneath, an antique red opium bed. What’s strange is that it matches the one Dad had down to the floral, ruddy red pillows. There’s also a velvet sectional arranged in an open square configuration, a round glass table in the middle with purplish-white orchids and oversized coffee-table books. East meets West. The decor makes sense.

  “My dad had an opium bed exactly like that,” I say. “My mom hacked it to bits with a cleaver.”

  “No way,” Ben says. He’s wearing black jeans and a black leather bomber jacket he designed and embossed by hand. It’s interesting, yet casual, and more important, subtle.

  “Yep, grilled it up with the rest of his antiques in the back yard.”

  “Drama.”

  “Major when your husband takes a lover who gives him the boy he always wanted.” Outside of therapy, I try not to think too much about the divorce or Dad, but for a split second, I can see the dreamy look on his face and the longing in his voice when he recounted stories about his own dad. “My father,” he always said. Before they ran from the Communists, my grandfather was a scholar and a shipping tycoon, transporting peanut and soybean oil to the West. He had a Western advisor with whom he spoke English as well as some French. When they lost everything except for a briefcase containing US $200, Grandfather cashed in an old favor and took over a friend’s Hong Kong furniture business.