Because She Is Beautiful

by Cameron Dougan

  Joseph was more relaxed when Robert wasn't in the car. Not that he wasn't professional, but Robert imposed a speak-when-spoken-to rule that Kim disregarded.

  The traffic light changed and they barely moved. Then it turned red again. Kim was in no hurry. She gazed out the window at the Park Avenue drifters, residents on their way home from shopping, and the after-work herd stampeding from their midtown businesses, men with jackets slung over their shoulders, shirts wet under the arms from walking. A foreign family stood in front of Delmonico's posing for a photograph, four- and five-year-old children in topcoats. Doormen whistled for cabs, helped with bags, receded into limestone buildings.

  At night, driving home, the avenue would be empty. She'd see doormen standing sentinel under the glare of awnings, light spilling across green Prussian coats with brass buttons, and she wondered about their lives. Did they wear their coats home at night, like a costume, or change into something less noticeable, something plain for the ride out to the boroughs, eyelids heavy, beer in a bag?

  There was a solace she felt sometimes in the backseat of the car, the air on, a white noise that silenced the outside world, turning it into a silent picture: the flowers in the center divider streaming by, daffodils and tulips in spring, bending in unison from a voiceless wind, then straightening, blooms straining on their stems, drinking up light, shivering bushes. She'd see tipsy couples arriving home late after parties, elderly husbands and wives, shadowy clusters moving inward from the curb with the doorman assisting. It was easy to imagine the banter: the good-evenings and thank-yous; the doorman's name uttered several times as a reassurance, as if to say, We made it; conversations that ended at the elevators.

  "Good night, Joseph," she would say when they arrived home, because it was comforting to add the familiar. Then sometimes she would start a conversation and they'd sit in the car in front of her building, because she wasn't ready to be alone.

  A woman crossed in front of the car. She wore sunglasses and carried a briefcase. A blue and gold scarf draped across her shoulder. It rippled behind her as her hips swayed, floating on a sudden updraft, then settling against her back.

  Kim's father had given her a silk scarf once. Her mother had argued that it was too extravagant, too grown up, and it didn't really go with any of her clothes. He thought Kim didn't like it. Two days later at dinner, he made her bring it to the table. He took it to the stove and lit it with the burner and dropped it in a pot. The stench was foul, but they finished eating. Her mom didn't say anything. It took her ten minutes to get the pot clean later.

  Kim pointed to the woman.

  "Joseph, do you like what she's wearing?"

  He shrugged. "I don't see colors very good."

  "When I was a girl, my dad gave me a scarf like that."

  The light changed.

  "He should have given it to my mother," she said.

  Joseph eased forward, then stopped. The light changed and the car behind them honked.

  "Fifth will be just as bad," he said.

  "Where did Nicole lunch today?"

  "She didn't."

  "Shopping?"

  "She had a doctor's appointment."

  In front of six people at a dinner, Nicole had ground a lighted cigarette into the back of her hand. At the time, Robert was afraid she was nearing the edge again. So it was with a sense of urgency that Robert confided to Kim the history of Nicole's suicide attempts.

  "I want you to be prepared," he'd told Kim.

  "For what?"

  "I guess for how I'll feel."

  Both incidents involved pills and had occurred before Kim had come into Robert's life. Twice Nicole had locked herself in their bathroom. The paramedics who saved her the second time were the ones who'd broken down the door to rescue her the first time.

  "What's the probability of that?" Robert said. "I couldn't look them in the eyes."

  They found her clutching a torn note. Without you I am nothing, it read. Only the signature was another woman's. Robert had thrown the letter away. Nicole had dug it out of the garbage.

  He described how in the days preceding he would come home and find Nicole going through his dresser drawers. He didn't have the stomach to ask what she was looking for. One night he caught her on her hands and knees, sifting through the ashes in the fireplace.

  He could see the whole thing coming, like driving a car into a brick wall. He gripped an imaginary steering wheel, jerked his head forward, and flared his hands.

  "You made it through the wall," Kim told him.

  "The letter was careless."

  "I'll never write you."

  "The paramedics did such a number on the bathroom door we had to have a new frame put in. Then we couldn't match the paint. Three times and it still wasn't right. Finally we had the entire apartment repainted. It took weeks to air the place out."

  "What about Christine and Davis?"

  "I can't bear the smell of paint."

  "Do they know?"

  "Davis was away at school. Christine was with friends."

  "You never told them?"

  "They know."

  Robert tried to laugh when he told Kim about Nicole's first attempt.

  "You will think it's funny," he told her.

  Robert knew people in the film industry. They were always telling Nicole she should act. "Most people disregard such flattery," Robert said. Nicole dwelled on it. She begged Robert to allow her to try. After some time, it began to make sense. With Davis and Christine out of the apartment, she needed a constructive distraction. Her therapist even agreed it was a sound idea.

  "Of course as soon as I gave my consent, she dropped the notion. Like anything she sets her mind to, once she has my support, there's no romance in it."

  He continued to encourage her, though. At last she allowed him to hire a coach to come to the apartment.

  "She would never admit that she was enjoying herself," he said.

  Things went smoothly. Then Robert arranged a test for a small part in a film. Nicole didn't get the part. That ended the acting.

  She began telling everyone how Robert had forced her to take lessons to humiliate her. "Citizen Sanders," she was calling him. She wouldn't forgive him for the embarrassment she had suffered. Then, when the film opened, she dragged Robert to the screening. She insisted he take her so she could watch the actress play the part she'd failed to get.

  "After we got home, she locked herself in the bathroom," he said. "Pills don't leave scars."

  Kim leaned her head close to the window. There was little breeze. Noise flooded the cab.

  "Is she sick?" Kim said.

  Joseph shook his head. He was straining to see a light.

  "I probably shouldn't ask," she said.

  He shrugged.

  "She has many friends, doesn't she?"

  "She knows lots of people," he said.

  Kim took out a compact and looked at herself. Joseph had seen Robert's lovers come and go. She snapped the compact shut and slipped it back into its felt case. She wondered if he bragged, if he was proud of the secrets he knew. He didn't seem the type. He was more concerned with his daughters' education. One of them liked to write. She was going to be a famous journalist someday. The other loved animals and wanted to be a vet.

  "I think she should be a surgeon," Joseph said. "She's got steady hands." He jiggled the wheel and grinned. "They don't come from me."

  His toothy smile filled the mirror.

  The only time she could recall Joseph showing regard for Robert's affairs was the previous summer, when Davis, Robert's son, lost an internship at a New York law firm. There were rumors of drug use. That fall, he would have been a junior at Brown, but he didn't go. He took time off. Robert sent him abroad to stay with relatives. The following summer, Robert called in favors and found Davis another internship at a more prestigious law firm. He returned to Brown a full class behind. She remembered Joseph saying that the boy had no will, and she could see that he cared. He said nothing outwar
dly critical of Robert. His sympathy was his judgment.

  "Robert's last girlfriend—" She paused.

  Joseph looked over his shoulder to change lanes.

  "Monica Hartley—did you really have to drag her from the car once? Is Robert making that up?"

  Joseph looked over his shoulder again.

  "She wasn't very nice," he said.

  There was a line outside the theater. Joseph pulled up to the curb.

  "It gets out in two hours," she said, checking her watch, pausing. "Does she ever call?" Then, before he could answer: "Joseph, I don't want to know."

  She opened the door and got out. He rolled the passenger window down and leaned across the seat.

  "I'll be circling," he said.

  Robert had found ways for Kim to attend events. He gave money in her name to charities and introduced her to committee members so she would be involved. The first time Kim saw Nicole in the flesh was at a benefit at the Museum of Natural History.

  She met Michael at his apartment beforehand for cocktails, a small gathering of friends. He was anxious to introduce her to someone.

  "Be nice," he warned. "I really think I've fallen."

  He kissed her at the door.

  "Now quick," she said, "which one is he?"

  "Guess. No, don't. I might be devastated. There, in the corner."

  The man was olive-skin tan, dark at the chin and above the lips, and shadowed around the eyes as though he'd slept little. He was leaning against the wall, his jacket pulled back off one hip, a hand dangling, hook-thumbed from a gold-plate belt buckle.

  "Oscar—my black-haired Swede. What do you think?"

  "I think you're very handsome," she said.

  Michael pulled his money clip from his pocket and licked his thumb.

  "Now a little louder, so people can—"

  She pinched his arm.

  "You!" she said.

  "Think of me as a squirrel. Your kind words are like nuts stored away for my winter years. Some gargle, sweets?"

  Michael plucked a glass off a waiter's passing tray. Music started. Kim had to lean close for Michael to hear.

  "This is hardly a small gathering," she said.

  "Here." He served her caviar. "I made it myself."

  A woman grabbed him by the arm and introduced herself. She had on a blue and green hat with a long trailing peacock feather. Every time she nodded, the feather would graze the head of the man behind her. At first the man reached back casually, as though brushing at a mild itch. Then he began to swipe the air with his palm. People were laughing. Michael liberated himself and returned to Kim.

  "A rule of thumb," he said. "If it comes from a walking bird's ass, don't put it on your head. Shall we meet Oscar?"

  He took her by the hand and led her.

  When they left the apartment, they took caviar with them. They squeezed into the back of the sedan with the tin and a small spoon. Kim was trying not to spill her drink.

  "So decadent," she said, as Michael fed her.

  "It's fairy food, darling."

  "First time in a car."

  "Now we're in the club," said Oscar.

  Michael dipped his pinky into the dish. "Sometimes I eat it in the backs of taxis when I'm blue," he said, smacking his lips.

  The dinner itself was held in the cavernous marine-life room of the museum, beneath a life-sized model of a blue whale. The replica dangled from the ceiling like an immense chandelier, back arched, its tail fanned wide, chin ridged and flecked white. Kim stood by the rail of the mezzanine, watching couples file through the roped opening past photographers. The same faces appeared in print week after week. So many smiles, cut and tossed to the floor.

  Nicole arrived without Robert, swathed in a chartreuse velvet wrap. She greeted some photographers by name. Friends pushed toward her, a swell of faces and fleeting introductions, flashes flickering. She hesitated a moment at the head of the stairs, easing the wrap back off her bare shoulders. Then she descended, one hand tickling the broad silver rail, the length of her left leg exposed as she stepped and the dress slit parted. She was terribly thin, beautifully thin.

  Below Kim, a kaleidoscopic image of tables waited undisturbed, its settings and assorted wineglasses shimmering beneath the bulk of the whale. The band played "Take Five"—drummer and sax trading improvisations. People packed the bar. Curaçao margaritas were the specialty of the night. Guests held them up to the light.

  Glass cases lined the perimeter of the floor. They showed an evolution of marine life. A model white shark loomed above Michael and Oscar, its mouth a wide dagger-toothed leer. Michael bared his own teeth and snapped at Oscar's extended finger.

  "You two seem to be enjoying yourselves," she said.

  "He's hungry," said Oscar.

  Michael pressed his lips to her ear. "Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight? I could almost kiss you."

  "Tease."

  She pushed him away, and he nodded in Oscar's direction.

  "I'm putty," he said. "See you at the table."

  His hand brushed Oscar's hip as they moved away.

  The displays on the floor below showed marine life in its natural habitat: a killer whale bursting through a sheath of ice, the murky form of a sperm whale, a giant squid locked in its jaw.

  "The bottom dwellers," said a man, leaning over the rail.

  He caught Kim staring and smiled.

  "You weren't supposed to hear that," he said.

  "Right. We're above it all."

  He moved closer. "And you are?"

  She looked away. People were sitting. The photographers had dispersed. Roving flashes lit crescents of arm-locked guests.

  "Are you here alone?" the man said.

  Kim spotted Nicole. She was following her champagne glass to the bar, trailing the luminous wrap behind her like a train. People cleared to avoid stepping on it, leaving her a wide space that moved wherever she did like a personal stage. Heads turned in her wake, ears bent to mouths.

  "I'm with someone," she said.

  She descended the stairs and headed for the bar. She ordered a margarita and edged around for a clear view of Nicole. A waiter passed with a tray of salmon squares. He offered the platter to Nicole and her friends. They each tried one, except for Nicole, who declined with a demure smile. Instead, she set her drink on the bar and took a silver cigarette case from her evening bag. The bartender had a lighter out before the cigarette touched her lips. She shielded her hair from her face and leaned into the flame. A strand of almond-cut diamonds lifted from her pale chest, dangling yellow white, sparkling. She drew smoke and exhaled it toward the ceiling and thanked him. Her friend was telling a story. Nicole set the cigarette in an ashtray and, not taking her eyes from the friend, scooped up the velvet wrap, pulling it around her shoulders, adjusting it so that the ends hung evenly. She retrieved the cigarette and champagne and laughed when the others laughed. She held her glass delicately. The others seemed to squash theirs with chubby fists.

  Kim finished her drink and moved closer. She had to hear Nicole speak.

  "Darlings," she was saying, her voice smooth and accentless, "you know I love her to pieces, but half of Fifth Avenue's worked on that face."

  "Including the husband."

  "So they say."

  Instead of reaching the cigarette to her lips, Nicole turned to her hand and leaned gently, wrist bent, fingers straight. Her wrap didn't shift.

  Kim left the bar and hunted for her table. Michael and Oscar were seated. Appetizers were served.

  "Spying, are we?" said Michael, helping with her chair.

  "How's the food?" she said.

  "Downhill, I'm afraid."

  Robert didn't arrive until the end of the main course. Kim saw him on the stairs. He hesitated to survey the floor, and she stood. He started in her direction at first, but he wasn't looking at her. Then she saw Nicole. Robert was straightening his tie as he approached, palms out in greeting as the guests at his table noticed him coming, so
me rising. He put his hand on Nicole's shoulder, and she ripped her arm away.

  "Everything okay?" Michael said, handing Kim her napkin, which had slipped to the floor.

  A finger grazed her shoulder. She cringed. The finger belonged to the man from before. He kept walking, calling back, "I'm still trying to figure out who you're with."

  She settled into her chair and gazed up at the whale, silent and serene. It seemed even larger from below. What if it were not hollow? She imagined its gaping ribs and fatty flesh, its great gentle heart beating above so much frivolity: so many beautifully dressed couples, their hearts full of desire, expectation, hate, love. . . . How many of them, even the worst, still longed for that unspoken tenuous sentiment, fragile beneath fabricated layers of skin, surrounded by so much glass, so many animals, and all the while above, this unassuming creature staring down with lovely eyes. In a single breath it could exhale more love than a hundred men, and to them it was an ornament.

  "I'm helpless when she's like that," Robert said later. "She kept asking if you were there."

  "She knows?" said Kim.

  He shook his head. "Suspects. She's always suspecting. She doesn't know specifically."

  Kim described watching Nicole. "I felt horribly for you," she said.

  Robert took a photograph from her dresser top and wiped a smudge from the silver frame with his sleeve.

  "Sometimes I don't recognize her," he said. He ran a hand across his face. "It's not even the drink anymore, it's the excess of that cover-up she uses."

  "Come," Kim said, patting the bed and sliding over.

  He set the picture down. "If you'd seen her when we married, the difference . . ."

  "I used to wonder—"

  "When she was a little girl, her father would sneak her drinks at Christmas parties. What does he think now when he sees her?"

  "She's probably his little girl still."

  He shook his head. "In the beginning, I saw my future, right? I guess I still see my future when I look at her."

  "You used to hold back telling me things."

  "Am I disloyal because I want you?" He sat on the edge of the bed. "Are we ever more alive than when we're fucking?"

  "You need a drink," she said, half rising.

  He stilled her. "That didn't come out right. I mean—"