Beauty

by Sheri S. Tepper

  January 8, 1993

  Janice trusted me enough to leave me with the keys to the house, money to buy groceries, and the names of some comebacks I’m supposed to call and ask about jobs. She said she’d be back on the eighteenth.

  “When you came this time, when the team comes back this time, will they know about comebacks?” I asked her.

  “Oh yes,” she said, disapprovingly. “We even talked to one. Or rather. Bill did. I hardly saw her, but I remember, she gave Bill some clothes.” She sniffed. Even with Bill dead, she still disapproves of his clothes.

  January 12, 1993: Evening

  I saw them all. Jaybee, of course. Younger, but with that same red light of destruction burning in his eyes. Janice and Alice. Martin, the director. He and Janice were obviously in love, and that’s what she had remembered so longingly. The two of them had no eyes for anyone else. Janice was lovely, too, with a winsome fragility that could age very quickly and lose itself. Perhaps that evanescent beauty was all Martin had cared about.

  Bill was there. Young Bill. Much younger than when I first saw him.

  It had taken me most of the past several days to find the clothes I remembered Bill having. The sheepskin was the easiest part. I got that at a place they make sheepskin jackets. I finally found the skirt at the Salvation Army store. I took the tags off everything, put them in a paper bag and carried it with me when I went down to the dock, very early this morning, before it was even light. I found the Sally Ann, When the owner came along, he unlocked it, then went up on top, toward the front. While he was up there, I went down inside. A stowaway, I guess I was. Like Constanzia.

  I heard their voices on the dock, heard their feet as they came aboard, felt the surging as the boat left the dock, the heaving of the ocean. I prayed I wouldn’t be sick. After a while, when we were well out on the sea, I came up from inside. I pretended it was an accident. I’d gotten a migraine while fishing on the pier, I told them, so I’d borrowed the boat to lie down in for a moment, and fallen asleep. I apologized profusely and said I wouldn’t get in their way.

  Bill and Martin exchanged a look and shrugged. Their twenty-first cameras looked enough like twentieth cameras that they assumed I wouldn’t know the difference. They were doing shots to be used early in the whale documentary, shots of healthy creatures. The starving mother and calf that appeared in the final shots wouldn’t be photographed until later, sometime around 2025 or 2030, after Fidipur’s ocean farms had been built and all the krill and plankton was being used up by man.

  Bill and Alice and I talked. I told them I was a comeback. They asked what it was like. I told them it was far better than the twenty-first, the last good time. When Alice joined the others, I showed Bill the clothes in the paper bag, stockings, silk blouse, skirt, underthings. High-heeled shoes, the kind I never wear, never have worn. They were way too small for me, but I remembered them on Bill’s tiny feet. The fleece was in there, soft and new now, not the way it would be when I cut the boots out of it. I said I’d found the sack on the pier, and I guessed I’d throw them away. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the bag after that. I kept fighting down the urge to tell Bill I loved him. That would have confused him utterly.

  The day wore on. Janice clung to Martin, not even noticing me. The whales spewed and basked, and Jay-bee ran his cameras. He had one that went underwater, like a tiny submarine, guided from a little TV screen with controls. The man running the boat stayed up front and paid no attention to any of us.

  All the time I kept arguing with Puck in my head. He had chided me for wanting vengeance. Father Raymond would have said that vengeance belongs to God. I told myself it wasn’t vengeance, and it wasn’t for myself. It was for some other innocent person. Then I’d argue with myself some more. If Jaybee hadn’t been there, right in front of me, I might have talked myself out of it. Every time he looked up at me, though, it was with that dead-eyed, death-making arrogance, an expression that said he was above any law, outside any commandment. It made me hurt inside. Each time I fought down the notion of what I was going to do, he made it come back more strongly.

  Finally, I couldn’t fight it anymore. When the boat turned back toward land, I asked Bill to introduce me to Jaybee.

  Bill said, “Jaybee, here’s a comeback lady wants to meet you. She thinks you’re fascinating.”

  “I didn’t say that,” I bridled. “I said I thought his photography was fascinating.”

  Jaybee looked up at me and sneered. He didn’t care about old women. He was kneeling on the deck, busy packing up his cameras.

  “Be nice, Jaybee,” Martin said. He was a handsome man, a bit older than the others. He had that power that some men have, of being always center stage, no matter who else is there. He wore boots and a complicated jacket with many pockets. “Be nice.”

  “I’m busy,” Jaybee snarled. “No time for chitchat.”

  “Bill and Martin tell me you’re a fine photographer,” I said.

  “There’s never been a better one,” he said, peering at me, seeing nothing there to interest him, letting his eyes drop away. “I’m good. I’m very good.”

  “You use oculum root, then, I suppose.”

  “Never heard of it,” he snorted.

  “Oculum root?” Bill laughed. “Sounds like a sneeze. What is it?”

  I acted surprised. “You don’t know about it? Really? I thought all the really great photographers used it. Not that it isn’t a bit risky, but all the biggies seem willing to take the risk.”

  “Oculum root?” Martin frowned. “I think I’ve heard of it.” He hadn’t, of course, but he was that kind of man. He ran one hand along the side of a boot, polishing it. Janice put her hand on his and mooned at him.

  “For sharpness of vision,” I said. “Sometimes it’s called hawkeye root. It lets the human eye see things in a new, fresh way.”

  “I’d love to try something that did that,” Bill laughed. “But I confess I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Well, of course,” I said, as though surprised at my own stupidity. “Of course, you haven’t heard of it. It doesn’t exist in the twenty-first. Because of Fidipur.”

  “Oculum root,” he said.

  “It’s rare, even now,” I said, getting off the rail where I’d been perched and dusting my hands. “I understand the supply is extremely limited. Pity. With oculum root, you’d probably be exceptionally good.” Then I went off to look over the opposite rail, leaving Jaybee glaring after me. He might not remember. If he didn’t remember, well and good. If he didn’t remember, and if he gave up trying to find Beauty, nothing would happen. I’d go home. That’s the bargain I’d made with myself. It was really up to him.

  When we got back ashore, I went off up the pier empty-handed. I had already seen Bill wearing the clothes in the twenty-first, so I knew he would take them with him.

  I found an unoccupied alley nearby where I could put on the boots. I told them to take me to Faery. There was a whirling blackness that seemed to go on too long. Then it cleared, showing me the landscape under the evening sky. It was almost the same as I remembered, the blue sky, the spangled stars, the flower-sequined grass. It was more shadowy than before. There were no palaces. No people. From the woods against the mountains came a faroff howling, totally inhuman, with a tone to it that sent a shiver of pure terror up my back. I stayed just long enough to find two of the hairy-stemmed herbs Mama had squeezed into my eyes. They came up easily, soil clinging to their roots. I told the boots to take me to Wisdom Street. The same whirling darkness happened again.

  When I got back to the house on Wisdom Street, Puck was waiting for me.

  “That was foolish,” he whispered to me.

  “What was?” I asked him stupidly.

  “You went into Faery,” he said. “It doesn’t take much magic to get there, Beauty. Not now. There’s not much of Faery left, and what is left is very close, because it doesn’t belong to us anymore. It belongs to him, and he is bringing it close to man. Close as he can.”<
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  I shuddered.

  “I told you he had taken over,” he accused me. “Carabosse is wild with grief over this. She says you’ve risked so much, and for what? For vengeance. I told you to let it go.”

  “I could not let him go on!” I said, suddenly angrier than I have ever been. “Who are you, or Carabosse, to tell me to let it go? It wasn’t you he did it to!”

  He sighed. He turned pale. He looked at the floor, at his bare toes. I was sorry I had spoken so. “Tell Carabosse I’m sorry,” I said. “No harm done.”

  He shook his head. “That may not be so,” he said. “Something saw you while you were there. Carabosse doesn’t know who or what it was, but something saw you. She wants you to come home.”

  “I’ll come home,” I said. “Soon.”

  “Now,” he begged.

  “Soon,” I said tiredly, looking at the plant in my hands. Evidently my tone of voice was final. I looked up and he was gone.

  I went into the kitchen where I’d already put a sack of potting soil and a flowerpot. I planted the herbs, watered them carefully and labeled them with a large, white plastic plant label. If Jaybee has given up trying to find Beauty, he will never see the plant and I will go home. If he hasn’t given up, it is likely he will show up here, at Janice’s house, within the next three or four days.

  January 17, 1993

  Several days ago I went to the optometrist and got glasses, bifocals. I hate them. Whenever I eat the line is right where the food is, and I keep spilling things down my front. I went to the beauty shop, too, and had a cut and set to make me look different from the woman Jaybee met on the boat. Younger, a little, though perhaps it is really only neater.

  Jaybee showed up this afternoon, drove up with a squeal of tires, parked by the curb, stepped over the picket fence. I was raking the lawn. A kind of memorial for Bill. Jaybee asked me where Janice was, and I told him she’d had to go out of town. He knew that. He’d been out of town himself. That’s why he hadn’t been here earlier. He asked me where “Dorothy” was, and I told him she’d moved. He asked me where, and I told him I had it written down somewhere in the house. He followed me into the kitchen where I made quite a drama of searching for the address everywhere but where I’d put it.

  The flowerpot was sitting on the counter with its huge label. He couldn’t miss it: black felt-tipped block letters on white. “Oculum Root,” it said. His eyes flicked around the room, looking at everything, as they always did. Photographer’s eyes. Always seeing. They came to the plant, flicked away and returned, fascinated, remembering something that had happened a long time ago, something someone had said.

  By the time I found the address and gave it to him, his eyes were firmly fixed on the plant label.

  “What is this?” he asked, putting one finger on a leaf, as though to be sure it was real.

  “Oh, it’s a very rare herb,” I told him. “Janice learned about it in her research. It’s extremely hard to obtain. She’s been wanting some of it for a long time, and she located a man who grows it just before she left.”

  I handed him the scrap of paper with the address on it. He glanced at it and saw it was the address of the college “Dorothy” had been attending. “I’ve been there,” he said. “She didn’t come back there after the holidays. She must be somewhere else.”

  I pretended to be puzzled. “Janice did say something about another address. Maybe it’s in Janice’s bedroom.” I went out into the hall and around the corner into the back bedroom, leaving him alone in the kitchen. I sat down on my bed and waited, stroking Grumpkin, my mind totally empty. Some time went by. Long enough. I heard footsteps, then his car leaving. When I went back to the kitchen, the plant was gone.

  I have not done anything. I have not injured him. I have not met violence with violence. All I have done is to put something where he could steal it if he came hunting for a woman he had abused. Now, perhaps, I will not need to do anything else at all.

  Am I revenged? It’s very strange, but I don’t know. Except for the tiny furnace behind my breast bone, I don’t feel anything at all.

  January 18, 1993

  Janice returned from her trip with word of a job for me. The university needs a part time librarian to work evenings who reads enough Latin and medieval English and French to help students. I thanked her, not telling her I won’t be here long enough to bother. I was going to leave last night, but my conversation with Puck had reminded me of something I wanted to find out from her.

  “Janice,” I said, “Dorothy told me how she met you and the others.”

  “Did she,” sniffed Janice, suddenly suspicious once more.

  “She told me you were doing a documentary on the last of the fairies, the last magic. You were the researcher on that, weren’t you?”

  She relaxed. “I was, yes. Piles of old books I had to plow through to find the answers to that one!”

  “Where did all the magic go, Janice?”

  “The Church took most of it,” she said, giving me this strange, wild-eyed glare.

  “The Church?” I asked stupidly. It was what Puck had said, but somehow I hadn’t believed it.

  “Making magic,” she said. “All their sacraments are magical. Turning this into that. Making spells to forgive sins. They don’t admit it’s magic, but that’s what it is! ‘The recitation of formulae by an elect, resulting in a condition contrary to reality, is magic.’ But there was only so much of it around. The fairies had it, then the Church took it, and now the Church is losing it to something else. The last days are coming. It’s been foretold. It’s been revealed….”

  And she went off into a tirade about the last days, leaving me sitting there with my mouth open, remembering the smell in the chapel at Westfaire. It had been the smell of magic. The same smell as in Faery.

  Something she was ranting about caught my attention. “What was that, Janice?” I asked.

  “We never finished it,” she said. “We never finished that documentary. We tried, later, but they wouldn’t let us.”

  LATER

  Our conversation was interrupted by a phone call. It was someone in the comeback network, and Janice talked to them for quite some time. I went in my room and took a nap. When I woke up, hours later, it was evening. She was waiting for me when I went into the kitchen.

  “I’ve had some news of Jaybee,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “He’s blind. Blind and crazy. He can’t see anything, but he thinks he does.”

  I shook my head at her, saying nothing. Janice drew her face into the expression I call her holy martyr look.

  “At least we can take this opportunity to cleanse ourselves of hate,” she said, staring me straight in the eye. “We are being given a chance to forgive. We must figure out some way to take care of him.”

  “We? Take care of him!”

  “We comebacks must care for him. He is one of us and we can’t afford to have him talking about us.”

  “Talking about what?” I laughed, a little hysterically, certainly not amused. “If he’s crazy, surely no one is going to believe him.”

  “We’d rather he doesn’t talk about us at all,” she said. She gave me a sidelong look, that judging, weighing look. “When they called this afternoon, I told them we’ll take him in for the time being.”

  I couldn’t believe her. “He killed Bill! He raped Dorothy. You can’t be serious!”

  She pursed her mouth and folded her hands. That pious, martyred, holier-than-anybody pose. “It’s just for the time being. We have Bill’s room downstairs that he can stay in. You’ll be working evenings and I’m working days. The network will pay you to look after him while I’m at work. If you’re going to pay your share of the expenses here, you’ll need more pay than the part-time work the library will give you.”

  “I can’t be party to this,” I said. “I saw what he did, and I can’t be party to it.”

  Janice wrung her hands, rolled her eyes, became St. Janice facing the lions. “Eith
er someone has to take charge of him or we have to get rid of him. I can’t even consider that! I’m a religious woman. I couldn’t kill him. We have to forgive him. If he was crazy, he wasn’t really responsible for what he did.”

  “What makes you think I could control him,” I said. “He’s a hell of a lot bigger than I am.”

  “They have him on drugs,” she admitted. “Enough to keep him quiet. He can take care of himself. It won’t be like nursing him, or anything like that.”

  “I see,” I said, sickened. I couldn’t stay in this place if Jaybee were here. I’d end up killing him. Maybe that’s what she wanted. I gave her a look, almost understanding her in that instant. Did she know what she was doing? “Give me a few days to think about it.”

  “No time,” she commented. “I think they just drove up outside.”

  They had, indeed, just driven up outside, two men I had met when I was young Beauty, friends of Janice’s and Bill’s, with Jaybee between them, being dragged along. I was reminded of the way he had hauled Bill’s body away, carelessly, dumping it in his car, driving off. I had been huddled on the floor, my clothes in shreds around me, blood on my face, blood on my hands, blood leaking between my legs, still able to see him out of the corner of the window. So I saw him now, out of the corner of the window, being dragged along. There was a bandage over his eyes.

  I went to my room and got my robe on. I put Grumpkin in the pocket. Poor old cat. He was almost used to it. I put my things in the other pocket, the ones I needed. I put the boots on my feet. I heard Janice open the front door, heard her speaking in her pious, all-forgiving voice. “Poor man. Bring him in.”

  He came in. I went out.

  Puck found me in the hotel where I had taken a room. He was panting, and he looked pale.

  I asked him what was the matter.