Because She Is Beautiful

by Cameron Dougan

  "Robert—" He raised a finger. "There's a lot he can give you."

  She bowed her head and was silent.

  "Don't go screwing it up, now."

  She leaned over quickly to kiss him, and again he put his hand on her shoulder to stop her and stared at her and made her look straight at him.

  "Before you were born, even, I did things," he said. "Anything to make the world a better place."

  He clutched her in a tight embrace, bumping her as he tried to steady himself.

  "You're a big girl now," he said.

  He turned and leaned against the door frame with his back to her.

  "Dad?"

  He seemed to be nodding.

  " 'Bye," she said.

  He closed the door behind him.

  Her heels echoed in the lobby and scraped against the sidewalk outside. She got in the car and Joseph eased out into traffic.

  "You made it," said Robert, putting his hand on her thigh.

  "How dare you bring up the subject of money with my father?"

  "Pardon me?"

  "What were you thinking?" she said, her voice rising.

  "I don't appreciate your tone. There's no reason—"

  "Fuck my tone. You had no right."

  Joseph watched in the mirror. A taxi careened past them and shot through a yellow light. Joseph stopped short. Garbage bags lined the street, piled high before dark store windows and pulled-down gates.

  "This dinner was for you," Robert mumbled. "It was your idea."

  He was quiet the rest of the drive. Only as they pulled up to her apartment did he turn to her.

  "Would you like me to come up?"

  He touched her leg again. When she didn't respond, he nodded to Joseph, who got out and opened the door.

  "Good night, Joseph," she said.

  She started to climb out. Robert grabbed her wrist.

  "What?" she said. She stared at him. "What?"

  He didn't move.

  "All that you know, and you still said those things. Now let go!"

  She threw his hand away. It lay dead on the seat. Joseph nodded to her and shut the door. She stood on the steps, watching, as he climbed back into the car and pulled away, the back of Robert's head in the rear window.

  She opened her evening bag for her keys and found an envelope. It hadn't been there before. She turned it over and peeled back the flap. There was a check. A note slipped out and fluttered to the sidewalk. She stooped to retrieve it and held it up to the lamplight.

  I know it's not much, it said in her father's hand, but—some walking-around money.

  The check was for two thousand dollars.

  PART III

  RESIGNATION

  As time went on, Kim heard more about Nicole's severe episodes. Like the time she broke fifty thousand dollars' worth of Ming porcelain, or when she doused Robert's favorite saddle with lighter fluid, nearly setting fire to their barn.

  Robert would call in the night and come over after Nicole had taken a Valium. Sometimes he showed up without notice. Once she woke to find his lips against her forehead. Gasping, she swatted him away, and he had to grab her flailing wrists to calm her.

  "It's me. It's only me," he said. After that, he made a point of always ringing the buzzer so as not to alarm her. It would sound like a gunshot, startling her awake. She would have seconds to ready herself as he climbed the stairs.

  He would omit the precipitating details of the evening and start mid-story, pacing at the foot of the bed as she shielded her eyes from the light.

  "What am I supposed to do?" he said. "Today she spent a hundred and fifty thousand dollars on a sports car."

  "I must look terrible. I hate it when you don't call."

  "You know her license was revoked four years ago? Well, today she drove the floor model out of the dealership and was stopped for speeding."

  Kim laughed.

  "It's not funny," he said.

  "I know."

  She took a clip that she kept by the bed and gripped it in her mouth as she gathered her hair and pulled it back and fixed it in a choppy ponytail.

  "The car was impounded. I had to get her out of jail." He sighed.

  "Should I make coffee?" she said, flattening the covers next to her, smoothing out the wrinkles. She slid over to give him room.

  "Did I tell you Davis quit his job?" he said, staring at the space she'd created on the bed. "He told us at dinner. I thought Nicole was going to stab him with a fork."

  "I'll fix us drinks."

  She climbed naked out of bed. He seemed not to notice. She wrapped herself in a silk robe and went to the side bar by the dresser. She poured a finger of scotch from a square crystal decanter and tipped the glass back, palming the heavy carved cap as the tingle spread through her body and rushed warm to her head.

  "He does these things to spite her," he said.

  She refilled her glass. The bedsprings squeaked. He was lying on his back, staring through framed fingers at some imaginary scene on the wall. Kim crawled onto the bed and sat cross-legged, sipping as she waited for him to continue.

  "You can't blame him," she said.

  "For what? For pouring gas on a fire?"

  "For crying out, I mean."

  "He knows I'll get him another job."

  "Don't."

  "I have to."

  "Silly."

  "No, I have to. I know he's crying out. Of course I know. I'm not the one holding back here, and I'm not about to start."

  "Well, he's rebelling against you too."

  "I can see I've caught you in one of your moods."

  "Robert, it's two in the morning."

  "Nicole's always commenting on how Christine's perfect."

  "Fine."

  "And all I can think about, all I can hear, are these endless tapes in my mind, these incessant conversations we had about just this sort of thing: before Davis was born, and then when Christine came along. Wasted breath. She thinks she's being constructive with her praise—healthy sibling competition. She's punishing him. I can't stop her. The least I can do is stick up for him."

  "The ways we ask for love," Kim said.

  His cheeks creased and his mouth bent as though he'd tasted something bitter. "Are you listening to me?"

  "It's not spite."

  "Christine's about to graduate summa cum laude. She's a shoe-in for the law school, I'm told. You know how many Harvard undergrads are accepted into the law school? Do you know how hard she works? Ten times harder than Davis ever did. You'd think it would be the other way around."

  "You're judging him, too."

  "Imagine a mother who's barely articulate half the time telling him he's a miserable failure. Why would he want to spite me?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "Sure you did."

  "Darling, you don't have to yell."

  "Tell me."

  "You're right. You're right. I was wrong."

  "Go on, tell me."

  "I said I was wrong."

  He lurched from the bed and went to the window and pulled up the blinds. She went to the bathroom, shut the door quietly behind her, and leaned against the sink. He was angry because she had intruded. But he had led her there. She knew one thing: Knowing and doing were completely different. Michael was right. She had to make herself useful. She'd cheated herself out of something long before she'd left her job. Perhaps she could go back to school. Was that too drastic? She might take a class just to try it, sit in on a summer course. Slowly, she began to outline her lips with a pencil. She thought back to her last years of schooling, the anxiety, the derision. Would it be different now? Would she feel stupid? She filled in with lipstick and kissed a Kleenex, then looked at herself more. She plucked an errant lash, turned side to side, then dabbed her neck with perfume.

  When she returned, Robert was pouring another drink.

  "I'm sorry," she said, going to his side.

  "I didn't come here to be rebuked."

  She pressed against
the length of his body.

  "Would you like another drink?" he said. He began to loosen his tie.

  They made love urgently that night. She took his penis in her fingers, coaxing him until his hips worked alone and he thrust into her hand, casting off the weight he carried to the bed. That wasn't enough. He wanted to hear her cries.

  At such times he would put his finger inside her and feel his way and study her. Her spasms made him forget, soothed, touched him someplace else. All this she saw in his face, a specific and definite hope. She would concentrate every muscle. She would focus on his finger and shut out the world and pray that she could. As his arm tired and lost rhythm he would brace it against her thigh. He would switch hands and begin again with renewed vigor, and she would encourage him, pleading for patience, telling herself as his hand fluttered that he had chosen her over others and what that signified. Fear made it difficult. Fear made it possible. Her body would fill and shudder, and she would cry sometimes with relief. She would look up and Robert's face would seem small, as though she were seeing it from far off, the sweaty satisfaction.

  They lay separately afterward. She imagined what it was like being married, sharing a bed night after night without escape. She listened to Robert's breathing as he drifted off to sleep.

  He woke a few hours later, fully exhilarated. He was brimming with news, as though he'd just returned from a long workday or trip. "You know that painting I bid on?" he said. "I got it for a hundred thousand under the asking price."

  He sauntered into the bathroom, whistling a Vivaldi concerto. She knew it was Vivaldi and not Bach because he'd made her listen to the difference many times. "It's more languid," he'd say. "Not as mechanical." Maybe it was Bach. It sounded familiar, and then it didn't.

  She got up and went to the closet and began to dig through clothes that she'd bundled on the floor, piles that she was too lazy to take to the cleaner. She pulled out single shoes that had become detached from their mates and tossed them aside. She sifted through folded-up overnight bags and more clothes until she finally found the shoe box she'd been looking for, which contained all her notes. She opened it nervously. It had been so long since she'd read any of her own writing. The bits of paper had yellowed and curled. Robert came out of the bathroom, still whistling.

  "Sorry about earlier," he said. "How do you put up with me?"

  He bent over her and pecked her cheek and noticed the box in her lap.

  "What are you doing?" he said.

  She read one of the slips to herself:

  A shell full of water can hold the sky.

  "What are those?" he said.

  "Writing."

  "Whose? Yours? Let me see."

  She shook her head.

  "Imagine," he said. "A little trove. What is it, sort of an old journal? You don't want me to see? How long have you been keeping a journal?"

  She sat on the floor and he kept asking questions, as though finding and opening the old box had opened some door in his mind, some dark room that began to fill with pits and torture devices.

  "My little secret one." He laughed. "My little brilliant one, writing away."

  He wondered what she'd written and he encouraged her now to expound on matters of her childhood as a means of guessing at the box's contents. Of course he wanted to know if she'd written about him. Did her writing contain information that didn't belong on record? He kept smiling, but she could see that he was worried, that knowing about these scraps, just knowing they existed, even locked away, conjured up feelings he hated to admit. The scraps were shameful, sometimes beautiful, maybe shameful because they were beautiful. They felt like lies. She couldn't take a course, she realized.

  "What if I told you you're not in them at all?" she said.

  His smile was full of confidence. "Of course I'm in them," he said, beaming like a child. "If your father's in there, then I am."

  "Why's that?"

  He shrugged as though the whole thing were of no matter, as though he'd been teasing her. She wondered whether he knew why he was right.

  "Now, now," he said. "Don't look so cross. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. It's only right that I should be curious. You've been holding out on me. What do you say we make a deal? I promise not to bring up reading your little private bits so long as from time to time you read me a few little parts that you feel comfortable sharing. How's that?"

  She took a slip of paper from the top of the pile, unfolded it, and stared.

  "He wishes he could turn back the clock. He wishes for even a small surprise."

  She looked up at him. There was an odd mix of hurt and pleasure in those blue, blue eyes. He smoothed his drying hair back.

  "You wrote that?" he said. "I'm not sure whether I should be flattered or ashamed."

  She held the piece of paper up and turned it over to reveal that it was blank. He nodded slowly.

  "I'm ashamed," he said.

  She put the lid back on the box and stood and set the box on the nightstand. "No, you're not."

  "I deserve to be."

  He reached out and touched her mouth and tried to draw a smile.

  "How do you put up with me?" he said.

  After he left, she took off her makeup and moisturized her face.

  Back in the bedroom the comforter was half on the floor. She straightened it and climbed under the sheets with the television on and the lights out. The sheets smelled faintly of sex. She hugged the pillows and kept to her side of the mattress. The relief that came at Robert's departure always faded.

  On the rare occasion that Michael wasn't invited to an important party, she couldn't resist teasing him. The public library was having a Black and Gold ball in the courtyard in Bryant Park. She called him a week before.

  "I'm sure your invitation got lost in the mail," she said. "It's okay. I put your name down as my guest."

  Then she had to beg him to join her.

  They had set up tents in case of rain, but the sky was clear. Gold spotlights nestled among the roots of trees, shining up the trunks and on the lowest limbs. The foliage above the illuminated canopy was dark, like a charcoal cloud hovering at the feet of the imposing chalk-lit skyscrapers that surrounded the park. Women in assorted gold gowns stepped delicately, slowly, careful not to catch a heel in the mossy cracks between stone slabs.

  Two giant draped boxes stood behind a carpeted platform atop which a man in a gold bow tie with wispy gray hair was delivering a speech. As he finished, he turned to one of the two boxes and threw up his arms. The covering dropped away to reveal a cage and two pacing lions. After the applause died, he extended his thanks to Ringling Brothers for loaning the animals. The circus was at Madison Square Garden that week. The second draped box sprang open, releasing hundreds of doves. For a moment the birds flew together, a swooping cloud of white beating wings above the guests. Then they dispersed and there were only pigeons left. The man climbed down from the platform to another round of applause, and a band began to play.

  "Can we leave now?" said Michael. "We're going to be late for Bertrand's party."

  Kim was watching Robert and Nicole from a distance. If he were to glance over, she wanted him to see her laughing.

  "Is he looking?" she said.

  "Yes," said Michael, and she emptied her glass and tossed back her head.

  When she glanced over, Nicole was pointing a gold silk-gloved finger at a dove that had settled on a park bench. Robert and the other guests were admiring the bird.

  "He's not looking," Kim said.

  "He was. Come, darling, let's go." He put out his hand.

  "Wait!"

  She brushed past him and started toward Robert's group. The first few steps were cautious as she crept from shadow into the glare of a spotlight. She wanted to see if Robert would notice her, but he didn't. She found her pace quickening until she was close, then beside them, reachable, an arm's length away. She stretched out a hand to touch Nicole's shoulder. Robert turned and almost dropped his glass. His eyes fla
red, strained for a beat in their sockets as though struggling to escape the body that had cemented very suddenly around them. As the leaves of a plant set too close to an intense heat, Kim's fingers seemed to curl and wilt.

  Nicole whipped around.

  "Your dress is beautiful," Kim said.

  Nicole nodded, a twitch of a thank-you. Anxiously she spun back to the conversation she'd left. "That's not what he said. That's not what he said at all."

  She was wagging a gloved hand.

  Kim walked away. She could feel Robert's stricken gaze following her.

  Michael had his arms crossed like a scolding nanny.

  "Pleased?" he said.

  She looked back to see Robert, his eyes now darting from her to Nicole.

  "I doubt she could pick me out of a lineup," Kim said. "Anyway, she looks terrible."

  "Only to you."

  "Those gloves are over the top."

  "They're fun. Can we please go? I'm afraid one of those birds is going to shit on me."

  "Now I'll have to see their photos and hear the comments."

  "What comments?"

  "In the magazines, from people."

  "You don't have to look at those photos, and you don't have to stand here watching. We could be downtown at Diva now, getting drunk with Bertrand. I think he turned a hundred and fifty today. You're being hard on yourself. On second thought, I take it back. It's me you're being hard on, keeping me here."

  "You don't get it."

  "Of course I do. That should be you over there by his side."

  "No."

  "And in the magazines."

  "No."

  He checked his watch. "You are torturing yourself, though."

  "Okay, we'll go."

  They steered clear of Robert. He had his arm hooked around Nicole's waist, an ear cocked to a man who was speaking. One laugh set off a series. They were all laughing, Nicole clutching her stomach, then dabbing a tissue to her tearing eyes.

  Michael tugged Kim's arm.

  "No dillydallying."

  She hesitated a moment longer—enough to see Robert lift his head and peer in the direction of where she and Michael had stood before. That was the image she clung to as they left.