Because She Is Beautiful

by Cameron Dougan

  "What if you give him the car and take it on a trip together? Do something with it. Make him drive you somewhere: up to Saratoga for the weekend or anywhere, so it's not just about the car. Let it be an excuse to spend time together."

  "It always comes back to that."

  "It's what matters."

  "What if he doesn't like the idea? What if he doesn't want to spend time together?"

  "Robert, he's going to love the car."

  "No."

  "He will."

  Robert faced her, startled by the urgency of her tone. "Are you okay?" he said.

  "Yes."

  He stared at her. "You're always telling me to spend time with Davis."

  "I know."

  "It's important to you."

  "He loves you."

  Robert nodded and looked back out the window. The lights in an apartment across the courtyard were on and the curtains were open. A man was washing dishes.

  "I remember when my father would take Mom and me on picnics," Kim said. "He'd pack the basket himself with sandwiches and iced tea and cherries and plums. I'd watch him spit the cherry seeds into his fist and he'd show me how to hold my hand to do it. He was so handsome. He'd pick dandelions and flick them at me and I'd try to run away, with Mother laughing. He caught me and tickled me and rubbed buttercups under my chin. Then he'd stick his chin out and let me do it to him, and ask if it was all yellow. 'Now let's get Mom,' he said. He would tuck me in at night and rub my back and sing me to sleep. He had the most beautiful voice. Sometimes we'd sing together. I used to know so many songs."

  Kim went to the window and stood next to Robert, watching the man across the way.

  "For some reason I'm remembering more and more good things about him. The presents—Dad would give me the best birthdays. I'd wake up and find gifts laid about the foot of my bed: fancy bows and brushes, white gloves for church, a music box once, and a stuffed bear we called Patton. One morning he brought me orange juice in bed, and ice cream—'Don't tell,' he said—and a little honey jar for Patton. Then he read to me about Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, all before Mother was even awake. I was his precious one those mornings. That was written on the cake every year. I should never have doubted. I guess I knew he loved me."

  "I love Davis," Robert said.

  "He's going to love the car."

  They watched the man across the way dry his hands on a rag and go to the refrigerator. He took out a can and popped the lid and reached for a light switch. The window went dark.

  "All those apartments," Robert said, "and I've never once seen anything exciting; not even a man and woman so much as kissing. Have you?"

  "Maybe if you were here more. . . ."

  He smiled.

  "So tell me about Christine," Kim said. "What's this guy like?"

  "He thinks Christine works too hard."

  "Good, he's old-fashioned."

  "He was genuinely concerned. I said, 'Son, she's always been that way. If you figure out how to slow my baby down you have my blessing.' "

  He took out his wallet and flipped it open. There was a small photo of Christine jumping a horse in riding pants and a velvet coat, the horse's mane blowing against her concentrated face and arched hands.

  "She was eleven then," Robert said.

  He'd shown Kim the photo before.

  There was another tiny black-and-white from the night of Christine's debut. She was standing between her mother and brother with a smile that made up for theirs.

  "Isn't she beautiful?" he said.

  Thursday morning arrived. At ten after eleven Kim crept into the volunteer office at Saint Vincent's. She waited in a plastic chair and filled out a form. When she'd finished, a nurse introduced her to the director. Hetty, the woman she'd spoken with on the phone, weighed two hundred pounds and looked like she could lift a bus to save someone.

  "You're late," Hetty said, scanning Kim's information sheet. "Have a seat."

  Kim sank into a tattered sofa and crossed her legs, watching nervously as the woman read.

  "New York Hospital's much closer to you," Hetty said.

  Kim said nothing.

  "You want to hold babies," she said.

  "Yes."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Well." Kim swallowed. "I heard about your program."

  "Okay, let me tell you what it means. You decided on an age group: toddlers. You will be assigned to a pod, a floor, looking after a constantly changing number of children with a variety of problems, soup to nuts, mostly respiratory and gastrointestinal. Responsibility is based on a baby's need. That could involve holding, changing, or just sitting. We ask for a commitment of time, a minimum of about four hours a week. You pick a day. Now, I see you don't work and that you're not married."

  Kim nodded.

  "You think you could honor this kind of commitment?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Parents—living, deceased?"

  "My father's alive."

  "Mother?"

  "Died of cancer."

  Hetty scribbled something on Kim's sheet.

  "Any history of mental illness?" she asked.

  Kim shook her head.

  "Other illness? Are you on any medications?"

  "No."

  "I have to ask these questions."

  "I understand."

  "Why children?"

  "They have their lives ahead of them."

  Hetty's brow dropped like a beam.

  "A lot of these infants will require primary care for the rest of their lives. Some of them will die." She took a sheet of paper from her desk and handed it to Kim. "That's a list of the tests you have to take," she said.

  The list was long.

  "If the results are clear, you come back and we'll get you started."

  "That's it?" said Kim.

  Hetty stared at Kim's Chanel jacket.

  "For now."

  Kim left the hospital holding the sheet and was still clutching it when she got back to her apartment. She stuck it on the refrigerator with a magnet and tried not to look at it. It bothered her to know it was even there, but she couldn't throw it out. She needed it to aggravate her.

  For Robert, words were never enough. Kim had accumulated presents from weekend trips, holidays, and the anniversary of their meeting, which he never forgot. There were artifacts from his travels: blue and pink Roman perfume bottles from the first century B.C., icons from Jerusalem, flat slit-eyed saints and supplicants, palms up with gold-leafed halos, ruby-star skies. He would surprise her with tickets to a show, or a messenger would drop off a book, another tragic romance that she'd put away. Everyone was talking about this at lunch, the note would read.

  He would ask her later what she thought. "You can always exchange it."

  No matter how small the gifts, they had meaning for Kim. She never considered returning anything, and she told him so. This contradicted with the nature of his upbringing—the rite of his privilege. No gift was too special that it couldn't be improved upon. Why settle for anything unwanted? But if the gift became irrelevant, the original thought did too. She tried to show him that.

  For her fortieth birthday, they flew up to Martha's Vineyard and stayed at the house of a friend. They walked on the beach and watched the sun go down. A kite was climbing steps of red cloud and then diving, climbing again and diving. A woman's voice carried on the breeze, calling her son in for dinner, away from the blackening sea. They went in themselves and popped a bottle of champagne and scrambled to the bedroom, their laughter echoing in the big empty house.

  "Sing to me," said Robert.

  She tossed her T-shirt to the floor and began to hum.

  "Do you know this?" she said.

  Robert shook his head and grinned. She undid the button on her shorts. Her voice was soft.

  "Please darling don't ask me to marry you yet . . ."

  The shorts dropped around her ankles and she stepped out of them, hiking her underwear up over her hips. She climbed onto the
bed. Robert laughed.

  She sang teasingly as she crawled catlike toward him, kneading the covers with arched fingers. She dipped her head so that her hair brushed his chest—a tickling touch for each pillow-talk promise, anticipating the risqué discovery of the song's last line:

  "I'll get up and get dressed and go home."

  She licked his stomach and reared back, smiling sideways at him with a final flourish.

  "Bravo." He clapped.

  He pulled her to him and hugged her and rolled her over, the sheets twisting around their feet.

  "This is for you," he said, reaching under the pillow.

  He produced a necklace: strands of diamonds woven to form intricate interlocking spiderwebs. She covered his face with kisses and jumped from the bed and ran to the bathroom.

  "Wait," he said.

  She closed the door behind her and rushed to the tub and turned on the water.

  "What are you doing?" he called. "The champagne's getting warm."

  She filled the tub with suds and put on the necklace and eased into the water and called to him. The door slid open, and he stood with his shoulder against the jamb looking down at her.

  "You're beautiful," he said.

  She splashed him, and he came over and knelt beside the tub and kissed her.

  "Sing some more," he said.

  His lips traced her neck. She closed her eyes.

  "The minstrel boy to the war is gone,

  In the ranks of death you'll find him.

  His father's sword he has girded on

  And his wild harp slung behind him."

  "It sounds Irish."

  "My father taught it to me."

  "Don't stop."

  He kissed her shoulder.

  " 'Land of song,' said the warrior bard,

  'Tho' all the world betrays thee,

  One sword at least thy rights shall guard,

  One faithful harp shall praise thee.' "

  "So beautiful."

  "There's more."

  "Sad."

  "The minstrel fell, but the foeman's chain

  Could not bring that proud soul under;

  The harp he loved ne'er spoke again

  For he tore its chords asunder."

  "I love you," said Robert.

  She kept singing:

  "Said, 'No chains shall sully thee,

  Thou soul of love and bravery.

  Thy songs were made for the pure and free,

  One faithful harp shall praise thee.' "

  He kissed her soapy breasts and took the necklace between his teeth like a horse's bit and brought it to her lips. It was tasteless and cool. He continued to kiss her as he swung his legs up over the edge of the tub and in, water slapping the sides and splashing onto the tiled floor, soaking the bath mat.

  For her forty-first birthday, they were to fly to London. Somehow he'd forgotten a dinner Nicole had planned for the Swiss ambassador and some recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He couldn't back out. He gave Kim an emerald parure worth twice the necklace from the year before. It was a less significant birthday, but he didn't think in those terms. Gifts dictated future gifts. He had to outdo himself. The extravagance should have lessened the sting of her age. Perhaps in London it might have. She wore the necklace and earrings while she unpacked, dumping the neatly folded contents of her suitcases onto the bed.

  She turned forty-two and forty-three.

  One Sunday afternoon, Robert was to join her at the movies. She bought tickets and waited outside. Finally, she went in and sat in the back row. Halfway through the picture she got up and left.

  When the doorman from the building next door saw her, he called out.

  "I've got something for you."

  She waited on the step as he ducked into his lobby and came out holding an envelope.

  "How was the movie?" he said, handing it to her.

  "Bad."

  She opened the envelope on her way up the stairs. There were two tickets to the opera and a note: Sorry—8 P.M. tomorrow.

  The following week they arranged to meet in the park. She bought a basket and some cheese and packed a bottle of wine and two glasses. She waited for him on a bench near the boathouse and watched couples line up to row out on the lake. After thirty minutes she unwrapped the cheese and cut herself a slice. A jazz band began to play and a crowd gathered. She could no longer see the players. During one loud crescendo, the trombonist's slide jutted above the dense wall of onlookers, the curved brass tip white in the light from between the trees. The slide poked at a low-hanging branch, disappeared, and then shot up again as though something were caught there and needed to be knocked free. She left the basket on the bench and walked away.

  "Miss," someone called.

  She didn't turn back.

  There was a message on the machine at home apologizing.

  "Be home between three and four," it said.

  At three-thirty a messenger arrived with a gown and an invitation to a party the following night.

  To see you in it, the card read.

  She went to the party the following night but didn't wear the gown.

  "It made my arms look funny," she told him.

  "Your arms? Never."

  She left a message with his secretary.

  "Odd," he said.

  "You didn't get it?"

  She left several messages with his secretary.

  She could not say if there were more canceled plans that year than before, but there were more gifts. Instead of Robert, a book. Instead of Robert, a ruby pin. The buzzer would ring, and it would be Joseph with a bouquet of roses. Robert was with Nicole.

  "Lunch tomorrow won't work," said Robert, as he kissed her good night.

  "Now you tell me?"

  "The wine auction's tomorrow. Perhaps I can send you a case."

  "It's only lunch."

  "I've pored through the catalog. There are some amazing years."

  The following afternoon, a case of Burgundy arrived.

  "From a Mr. Sanders."

  The deliveryman set the crate on the floor and handed her a form on a clipboard to sign. She stared at the blank line and tapped the pen.

  "I don't want it," she said.

  "Lady, I just carried it up four flights of stairs."

  "You can have it."

  "Are you trying to get me in trouble?"

  She signed the form and held out the clipboard.

  "There, now you can have it."

  "You're setting me up."

  "Now if you excuse me."

  She shut the door. He whistled. Through the peephole she could see him heft the crate back up over his shoulder. He looked at the door a second, whistled again, and started down the stairs.

  The next day Robert sent peonies. Two nights later, after a missed dinner, he sent a beaded bracelet from Africa.

  "What about yesterday?" she asked.

  His eyebrows shot up. "Did we have plans?"

  "No, I just wondered what you did. Were you free?"

  "I was so busy."

  "With Nicole?"

  He slipped off his shoes and put his feet up.

  "Among other things." He sighed.

  "Why don't you make us drinks."

  He went to the side bar. "I wish I could have seen you," he said.

  He came back to the bed and held out her drink.

  "New glasses?" he said, loosening his tie. She rolled onto her side, her back to him.

  "Did you hear the Dewesons were rejected from the board?" he said.

  "Do I know the Dewesons?"

  "Jane and Frank."

  "Of course—a pity."

  When he left, she listened to his footsteps on the stairs, then quiet, only the patter of rain against the window's thin glass. Could rain be patient? she wondered. The wind was always callous the way it blew hard-edged down First Avenue, like bracken whipping at the skin as one ran through woods, too intent to ward off scratches that would appear later, red-lined skin raised: that
delayed sting like a vodka burn, that muscle-tensing convulsion of the throat as it was poisoned and subdued in one gulp.

  In the living room, she stared at the poster of Garbo. It was the one poster she'd saved amid all the artwork. She remembered framing it years ago, those big watery eyes filled with despair. I'm not a recluse, she thought. She put on shoes and dragged the picture from the wall, flung open the front door, and left the poster in the hall to take down the next day. She poured herself another drink and got the vacuum from the closet and started to clean the apartment. The man from downstairs banged on his ceiling. She didn't care what time it was.

  For her forty-fourth birthday Robert planned a dinner.

  "Where's Robert?" she said to Joseph, when he picked her up.

  "He's going to be late."

  "I don't believe it."

  She sank back into the seat, then bolted upright.

  "Stop the car."

  He pulled over.

  She threw open the door, telling him to pop the trunk. It was empty.

  "I was afraid there might be something for me," she said when he came up beside her. "We'll go somewhere first."

  "I'm to take you straight away. It's a surprise."

  "A surprise? What is it?"

  "He doesn't tell me that."

  "Then it's his problem. We're stopping off first."

  Six blocks later, she pointed to a bar with a fake stone front and a blacked-out window.

  "Don't be on his side," she said. "Wait here."

  Joseph parked. "Not long."

  The bar was dark with a stained-glass light above the register and a jar crammed with tips. A man offered his bar stool.

  "Can I buy you something?" he said. He wore a baseball jersey half buttoned.

  She squeezed into the space he'd cleared.

  "Three double vodka-on-the-rocks," she said.

  The bartender slung a rag over his shoulder and put his hands on the bar as though he were about to lecture her. She held out a hundred-dollar bill, creased it, and laid it in front of him. He put it in his pocket, not the jar.

  "Rough day?" said the man in the jersey.

  "You can have your seat back in a second."

  The bartender's lips moved as he counted out shots.

  She snatched up the first glass, swirled it a little, and gulped it.

  "Where you gotta be in such a hurry?" said the man.