Because She Is Beautiful

by Cameron Dougan

  Sometimes her mother would stop outside the church to talk. Kim would tug at her dress.

  "Be patient," her mom would say.

  Kim would balance along the curb, watching the women squeeze each other's gloved hands, their faces hidden beneath hat brims.

  Her mother talked to these women on the phone, stretching the cord across the kitchen while she cooked. Kim would duck under.

  "Pay with a kiss," her mom would say.

  Kim would kneel on warm linoleum peeking through the dark window of the stove; three potatoes wrapped in foil, a meat loaf heating. "He said what?" her mother said, or "That's not what I would do, Love," or "I'll tell you later."

  "It's ready," Kim would say. Her mother would give her a cookie and shoo her from the kitchen.

  "Don't let your father see."

  When Kim returned from the chapel, her mother's face was tipped away from the door.

  "You're a good girl," she mumbled.

  Kim opened her book and pretended to pick up reading where she'd left off. A round-faced nurse pointed to the clock. Her mother strained to turn.

  "One minute more?" she said.

  The nurse walked away.

  Kim saved her place with a folded piece of paper and gathered the other books. She thought of all the lists her mother had forced her to write. She had read once that sacrifice was just a lighter shade of fear.

  Her mother's hand crept out, exposing a bracelet of tape and gauze, tubes trailing away. She touched Kim's shoulder.

  "Now go home and cook your father a nice dinner."

  Kim baked a meat loaf. At seven o'clock he still wasn't home. At seven-thirty he walked in with a mustard stain on his uniform, his breath smelling of scotch. He went to the cabinet and took down his bottle and poured three fingers in a glass.

  "What?" he said. "I saw her this morning."

  "Bullshit."

  "Where'd you get such a stinking mouth?"

  "You've eaten already."

  "Yes."

  She put on a hot glove and opened the oven. She held out the meat loaf to show him.

  "Mom wanted me to cook you dinner. This is from her."

  "Put it in the fridge. I'll have it tomorrow."

  He tipped back his glass. His cheeks bulged alternately as he swirled the whisky in his mouth. She went to the garbage pail and stepped on the metal pedal. The lid popped open. She flipped the pan, and the meat loaf dropped in. The lid banged shut.

  "Do what you want," he said, and stomped from the kitchen.

  She ran water in the pan and left it to soak. She put away the hot glove and cleared the table and went to her room to change into a sweater and pants. At nine the doorbell rang.

  "Who's that?" her father called.

  "Vincent," she said, coming out of her room. "He's helping me study for a test."

  Her father stood in the entrance to the living room. The doorbell rang again.

  "You've got a wop helping you study for a test?"

  She opened the door.

  "Hey, Kim—"

  Vincent leaned toward her, then saw her father. Kim pulled him in.

  "Dad, this is Vincent Lorenzo. His father's an engineer on the base. He's helping me with trigonometry."

  "Hello, Mr. Reilly."

  He put out a hand. Her father took it and squeezed.

  "Are you a decent man, Vincent?"

  "Sir?"

  "I said, are you a decent man?"

  "C'mon," said Kim.

  She pried Vincent free and pushed him out the door.

  "No dating on a week night," said her father. "That's the rule."

  "This isn't a date."

  "I want to see you studying, then."

  "I'm going over to Vincent's."

  "Like hell you are."

  "Vincent, get the car started."

  He turned, and she scooped her books up off the stand by the door.

  "I'm warning you," said her father.

  She got in the car and they drove to a place called the Point: a small clearing in the woods where the kids in her class would have bonfires on weekends and drink. A fallen tree concealed the dirt road that led to the clearing.

  Vincent jumped from the car and ran ahead and lifted the trunk out of the way. He stood in the headlights waving and she waved back.

  "So strong," she said, sliding across the bench seat to feel his arm when he got back in.

  They parked and he took a six-pack from under the seat and opened a bottle of beer with his teeth and chugged it. He offered her one, which she sipped. She was too busy talking. She told him about her mother, how she seemed to fade in and out now, and how her father lied about going to the hospital, at least she thought he did. She almost cried between sips of beer, apologizing for the way her father had acted back at the house and for being emotional.

  "I swear he didn't mean it," she said.

  Theirs was the only car in the clearing. Vincent chucked the empty bottles out the window and started to kiss her, his mouth opening and closing, sucking on her lip. His hand snuck under her sweater.

  "He gets that way," she said.

  "It's okay." He pushed on her breast. "You shouldn't worry. You're so hot."

  "You're lying."

  "You're the foxiest girl on the base."

  He was unbuttoning her pants.

  "Here," she said.

  She slapped his hand away and did it herself. He unzipped his fly. He pulled her toward him, twisting her so that her back was to the door. At first they were only kissing. Then he slipped his finger under the elastic of her cotton panties. He pushed against her, rubbing back and forth. Her head bumped the armrest. Her knee scraped the dash. There were tears in her eyes. Suddenly his finger was inside her, wriggling. There came a smacking noise, like a wet kiss.

  "Sorry," she gulped. "I—"

  "Che bella."

  He seemed not to have heard the sound, or he didn't care.

  "Are you?" he said.

  She could feel him, a pulse beating against her thigh.

  "You want this?" he said.

  She wanted him to hold her tighter and tighter and not let go. His breathing came in bursts.

  He saw her nod and then he was inside her, ripping her with sudden shocking thrusts that burned and soothed. His face vanished. There was hair in her mouth and eyes. She didn't see his face again until the moment he jerked himself free, the moment he rolled his head back and howled and wet her thighs.

  "So fucking beautiful," he said.

  He reached back to open the door and scrambled out. He stood in the headlights with his back to the car, peeing. She looked down at her stretched underwear, the hot wet running down the inside of her thigh.

  When he got back in the car she'd pulled her pants up. He drove her home.

  "You'll pass trigonometry," he said.

  She didn't say good-bye.

  The lights in the house were off. She opened the front door and closed it quietly. Her father stood in the hall. His hand shot out and caught her on the cheek, snapping her head around. She staggered back against the door and clutched her face.

  "Don't ever embarrass me in front of your friends."

  She ran to the bathroom and locked the door. In the mirror, her one cheek glowed. She undid her pants and sat on the toilet. It stung and she didn't know how to stop it. There was no fleeting cool, only the burn, and a rust-colored stain like a splinter in her white underwear.

  She heard cupboard doors opening and closing in the kitchen. A kettle began to whistle. There was a clank and scrape, the sound of one of the stove grills coming out of its notch and being put back. She pulled up her pants and left the bathroom. She went to the kitchen and saw that he'd filled two cups with steaming water. He was dipping in tea bags.

  She watched with her arms crossed. He opened and closed a drawer, opened another, and took out spoons and set them on the table. He had a brown bathrobe on over his old faded blue pajamas, and he untied the belt and retied it, tightening the
knot. He pushed up the sleeves and pulled back a chair.

  "I talked to your mother," he said.

  Kim turned and started back down the dim hall.

  He called after her, his voice rising to a shout. "I told her what a fine meat loaf you made. Not as good as hers, of course, but right up there. Figured a little competition might give her some incentive to get better. I didn't mention your throwing it out."

  She went to her room and took a pocket mirror from her handbag. Her cheek was darkening. She stared at the bruise, willing it to fade, thinking that it wasn't even there, how when she turned from the mirror she would no longer see it, and it would be gone. Then she pressed it to see if it hurt—to remind herself of the feeling.

  Kim saw her mother folded in a coffin. Her father had picked out the wig, shaking off the saleswoman until finally he saw something in one of them. He provided a photograph so it could be styled correctly. They did a good job, except that the wig looked new and her mother was dead.

  Kim's father sat in the front pew of the small empty church. A pockmark-faced sergeant she'd never seen before sat next to him. Two officers were in the pew behind.

  Her father's parents had died long ago. He was the end of the line. Her mother's parents were living, although her grandfather was ill, supposedly too sick to make the trip. And there was the issue of expense. Certainly the military would have paid to fly the body back. Her grandparents couldn't understand why her father wouldn't want her mother buried in the United States. Now they called all the time.

  "Is that you, Kimberly?"

  Her grandmother sounded young on the phone.

  "Kim?" Then, after a long silence, "Is your father there?"

  "Raw almonds."

  "What?"

  "A long time ago, Mom wanted me to tell you my eyes—they're like raw almonds."

  There was a thump as though the receiver had been dropped. Kim heard the muffled sound of sobs and a male voice growing louder, suddenly at the phone.

  "What did you say to my wife?"

  "Nothing."

  "Kim?" Her father walked into the room. "Who is it?"

  "Young lady," said her grandpa, "you listen to me—"

  "I'll get Dad."

  "Wait! Are you listening?"

  Her dad put out a hand. "What's he saying?"

  "That bastard stole your mother from us. You remember that, Kim."

  "Feel better soon, Grandpa," said Kim, and handed the phone over.

  She listened to her father becoming more steely as she imagined them pleading. His position in Germany was temporary, and it was only a matter of time before he was transferred back to the States. No matter, he wanted her buried there, near him. Period.

  Now her father sat as if at attention, chest out, back as straight as the dark plank behind him. The priest rose. She took one last look at her mother, the frills around the wrists, gray fingers, now in death, unswollen. One hand was laid over the other, clutching a plain metal rosary Kim had never seen before. She looked appealingly at her father. He was staring at some point on the wall. She turned her back to the priest and reached into the coffin, trying not to touch her mother's flesh, clasping the small crucifix. She jiggled it once, then tugged. Her mother's hands broke apart. The loop snapped free, beads clicking. Kim stuffed the rosary in her pocket like a used tissue and tried to lodge her own in the gap between her mother's unjoined hands, racing because she could feel the priest approaching. The beads caught around a finger, and Kim let go.

  "Come now," said the priest, peering over her shoulder.

  She sat beside her father. He did not move through the entire service, did not breathe, it seemed. His face was taut, skin stretched thin over sharp-edged bones.

  Afterward, her father talked to the priest. The men stood outside the church smoking, the butts glowing red in the gloaming. The two officers were younger than her father. One was ruddy-cheeked and impatient. His lip kept twitching. The other had curly sideburns and began to cough.

  "I was supposed to pick her up ten minutes ago."

  The other wiped his lips and drew on the cigarette.

  "Charlene."

  The sergeant blew smoke, a gray petal that curled into his nose and vanished.

  "Want one?" he said, holding out the pack to Kim. "What are you, sixteen?"

  "Seventeen."

  Her father appeared at the door. The men flicked their cigarettes to the ground, and they all shook hands. Her father thanked them.

  That night he wanted a drink. She watched him open all the cabinets, his movements becoming desperate until he looked at her, and she threw the bottle at him. He jerked his hands up. The bottle missed his head and shattered against the wall. Instead of lunging at her, he dropped to his knees and began to sob.

  "You should be dead," she said.

  He cried with his balled-up fists covering his eyes. Scotch dripped down the wall, thin tendrils of liquor seeping from one broad smear. A dog began to bark outside. She went to the sink for a rag and watched her father groaning on the floor, his Sunday suit rumpled and loose. She could feel her mother's presence then. She could sense her in the absence, the empty space at the sink, and she tried to see some sacrifice in her father's spasms of grief.

  Her mother was buried a foreigner.

  PART II

  WORK

  After high school, Kim became a stewardess. She rented an apartment in New York City but couldn't stay in one place. The earth was spinning. Some people hugged the ground; she wanted to fly. She would touch down in cities for the shortest pause and then take off again—no fences, no ties, always new faces. On one trip she sent a note to her father on a piece of hotel stationery. It gave her address but no phone number. Her number was unlisted. She dyed her hair blond.

  Two months passed, two rent checks, but her belongings were still in boxes. On her first full weekend off, she put on a T-shirt and jeans and opened the windows wide. Air crept through the narrow living room and hall and escaped through the bathroom window, which looked out on an air shaft. She filled a bucket with soapy water and scrubbed the walls and the floor and threw the sponge away when it was black on both sides. No amount of cleaning could take the age out of the walls. She'd bought paint for the kitchen and set to mixing it, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. She'd picked yellow, not lemon or sunflower or daisy-heart, or the famous brick road that moved the story along, ending at the beginning, or whichever way one looked at it. It was the shade of a mango, sticky-finger sunshine that made her feel tall, made her want to stretch even at four in the morning when all the city still lay in its own shadow.

  She ate pizza from a flat carton on the living room floor and boiled water for tea. The four boxes contained everything she owned. She took out bundled stacks of fashion magazines and piled them against the wall. She took the remains of her clothes—the pants and shirts she had no use for now because all she ever wore was her uniform for work—and hung them in the tiny closet in the bedroom. The other two boxes held books, the scattered volumes her mother had left her: Little House in the Big Woods, The Magical Land of Noom. She'd pored over the pictures so many times as a child that the plates were loose: the wooden box with wings that could fly all the way to the back side of the moon; and her favorite, the swarm of boxing gloves like a thousand bees and the man valiantly beating them off with his cane. She could shut her eyes and hear the smack of the stick warding off blows, knocking phantom gloves to the ground. Children's stories, she thought, all had their heroes. There were history textbooks from school that her father had forced her to save. She put them on the bottom and stacked the others on top, leaning towers that climbed the walls. Sticking out of the books were scraps of yellowing paper, some neatly folded, some torn. They were the lists her mother had forced her to make, lists that grew shorter as she grew older until they were just scattered ideas, memories, the closest she ever came to keeping a journal. She took one from a copy of Charlotte's Web and read:

  Spiders can make w
ebs when they are upside down.

  Another read:

  The bathroom sink smells like shaving cream.

  She grabbed another, not paying attention to which book it came from:

  Beth Steuben won't accept that we're all concealing something. Insisted three times that she believes in people. After class Jim Doherty asked if he could borrow her notes 'cause he'd been sick a lot. She told him to leech off someone else.

  Not one of the lists was dated. Kim plucked them out rapidly one by one, not looking at them, piling them on the floor. She found a shoe box and gathered the bits of paper into it, trying not to care that she had just erased whatever connection there'd been between the lists and the books that had been their homes, telling herself it was best to forget, she would be happy if she could rid herself of the past. She stuck the box on the floor in the back of her closet and shut the door. Her thoughts were not meant for the light.

  On short flights she was always too busy, racing against the clock to complete a regimen of tasks. But sometimes on longer flights she would meet men.

  It was funny how they caught her eye: the businessman with his folded suit jacket in his lap, looking up from a paper as though to ask a question and then just smiling; the vacationer in Bermuda shorts and sneakers, looking to the aft of the plane to check the lavatories, then turning back, stretching, smiling, his wife asleep next to him—a whole production, to what end? Just to stare at her? There were no false smiles, though. She could see honesty in each of them.

  Chaz had sideburns and listened to Chet Baker. He'd grown up on the California beaches and smoked and surfed and stared at the sun. He drove a pickup truck and wore sandals, even at night, with jeans and a sweater. She would look down and see his bare feet.

  "Just breathing," he would say, wiggling his toes.

  They'd walk on the beach and he'd teach her about waves, the ones to look for and the ones to let pass.