We All Love the Beautiful Girls

by Joanne Proulx

  Ahh, Eric says, poor Finn.

  I think about hiding the hand with the ribbon, but I don’t. I let it hang there between my knees. He’ll see it if he looks. I want him to see it.

  I thought maybe you could drive him home.

  Yeah, I say, in the Porsche. Or the Caddy. Jess and I’ll sit in the back.

  In your dreams, he says, glaring at me, glaring so he looks like some kind of animal, a wolf maybe, a wolf that trots sideways from the woods, kills more than its share, disappears back into its piss-marked territory, panting, with blood on its teeth. Just one of the Kelly boys.

  When he grabs Jess’s hand, a sting of vomit hits the back of my throat. Come on, he says, I want to show you something. He pushes past me, his knee slamming into my shoulder. She slips by like I’m not even there. They climb the stairs together. The one I’m sitting on quakes.

  Even then, I can’t help myself. I’m a fucking masochist. I look up. I watch. They round the banister and start down the hall, he’s in front, she’s one step behind, her hand wrapped in his and my glove on her other hand and her ribbon wound round my fingers and his room, his room at the end of the hall.

  —

  MICHAEL’S IPAD CLATTERS onto his bedside table. “You mad?”

  Mia opens one eye. All she wants is to sleep, but Michael is staring down at her, double-chinned from this angle, and still weirdly pale. He looks like he needs a transfusion, although she’s the one who spent most of the night alone in the kitchen, going through the financial statements, tracking the money from company to company, drawing up a cash flow statement, finishing off the wine.

  “Mad?” Mia considers his question. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I am.”

  “If it’s true, I’m going to kill him.”

  “Who?”

  “Peter,” he says. “Who else would I be talking about?”

  “Oh. Well, it’s true.”

  “And you’re not mad about it?”

  Michael might be asking the question, but he’s the one who’s furious. She wouldn’t have expected anything else. For a normally well-balanced human being, Michael does not do well when things go wrong. Whenever a hockey coach yelled at Finn, or Finn got hurt, or wasn’t where he was supposed to be at the allotted hour, Michael’s temper would flare. Once when Mia was rear-ended on her bike and ended up sprawled on the pavement, Michael had raged at the driver, an older man, close to seventy, who’d been as shaken as she was. Mia had limped over and calmed Michael down, but once she’d separated him from the driver, he’d started in on himself. He should have been riding behind her, he should have seen the car coming, he should have warned her about narrow roads and careless drivers, he should have, he should have, he should have.

  Tonight his anger tires her. She has no desire to placate him. A stubbornness settles over her. And it’s probably just the wine, but she’s having a hard time taking the whole thing seriously. She knows it’s serious, a million and a half dollars is serious, but money, Peter, his greed—at the moment it all feels so cliché and melodramatic. “I guess I’m mad at myself for being too lazy or unwilling or complacent or complicit or whatever I was to look at the books before. I mean, in retrospect, it seems negligent.”

  “We all agreed you’d stay out of it.”

  “Which seems stupid now. I mean, we know what kind of man Peter is. In some ways, he was just being true to his nature.”

  “Jesus Christ, Mia. I’m glad you can be so philosophical about it.”

  “It’s business,” she says. “He had no duty to protect us.”

  “No duty to protect us? He lied to us, Mia. He stole from us. They’re our best friends, for Christ’s sake.” Michael yanks one of the pillows out from behind his back and throws it to the floor.

  “Men who lust after money. They’ll screw over their own mothers for a buck. We were naive to think friendship would change that.”

  “So it’s our fault, then? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying.” Mia sits up, cross-legged on top of the covers, her sleepshirt hammocked over her knees. “But we probably should have expected something like this. We have a fairly lax attitude toward money, and we’ve climbed into bed with a man who doesn’t. Hoping his greed would be big enough to keep us all living in style.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “No,” she says bluntly. “I’m not fucking kidding you.”

  “I worked my ass off for fifteen years building that business. I brought in every client. I closed every deal.”

  “I know. And every successful company needs men who work their asses off and one sick, greedy bastard to make sure the focus of all that work is directed toward one thing and one thing only. Making money. Peter’s that guy.” She catches the swoop of cotton T-shirt stretched over her knees and pins it to the mattress, covering her fleshy folds, the dark points of entry. “You don’t care enough about money to be a successful entrepreneur.”

  “Oh, fuck. Is that your professional opinion?”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  “You’re such a hard-ass, aren’t you?” Michael is now sitting fully upright in bed.

  “You don’t last ten years in corporate banking by being soft. I’m a much kinder photographer.”

  “Are you?”

  Mia snorts disdainfully and flails her way under the covers. Michael knows it bothers her that no one would ever describe her as kind. Smart, yes. Honest, yes. Moral, yes. But her opinions can be harsh. She has high expectations of herself and the people around her. She does not easily forgive. When she had Finn, she surprised herself by being such a loving mother. She’d never babysat, never even liked kids. But she’s always adored Finn and is her best self when she’s with him. She gets along well with teenagers in general, loves their energy and their unrest, the possibilities, so many different lives they might live. She is patient with the elderly and almost no one else. Most women find her intimidating: too confident, too assertive, too much. Other than Helen, whom she fell in with so easily—their husbands’ partnership, kids the same age, Helen’s sweet nature—Mia doesn’t claim many women as friends.

  “You want to know what I’m mad about, Michael? You signing that amendment to the shareholder agreement without consulting a lawyer. Writing yourself out of the companies. You want to tell me how that happened?”

  Michael collapses back onto his pillow as if he’s just been deflated. They lie side by side in a heavy quiet, interrupted only by the soft thump of Michael banging his own forehead. Mia snaps off her light. Turns on her side so her back is to him and stares into the darkness, letting herself hate him just a little.

  “It was probably on a Friday,” he says, finally. “At lunch. We used to do paperwork then.”

  “Your famous Friday lunches at the Mekong. Peter getting you drunk and taking advantage.” Like a fucking schoolgirl, she thinks. Nineteen years. Nineteen years of marriage to this man. Mia reminds herself most of them have been happy. That on good days, they love being together. That every day, they love Finn. That the last word she said before Stanley showed up was lucky.

  “I’ll call David on Monday,” she says. “He’s the best lawyer I know. And the kindest.” Behind her, Michael sighs heavily. “He’ll work it out. What you have to do is…Michael? Are you listening?” With the slow roll of his body the mattress gives, then his breath warms the back of her neck, a disturbance she does her best to ignore. “What you have to do is find every document that directly states or implies that you and Peter are partners in the business. Preferably documents that he signed. That way we can probably get him on fraud.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, after another long pause. His hand slides up her thigh, under her shirt, and settles on her hip. She slaps it away, more forcefully than intended. With a frustrated huff, Michael lurches to his side of the bed. Ten seconds later his iPad grey-glows the room. Mia closes her eyes, but still finds the light annoying. A common complaint, an old argument,
one she has no energy for now.

  “What about Finn?” Michael asks. “When’s he coming home?”

  “His curfew’s one thirty. You know that.” She should get up and find her phone in case he tries to get in touch. It’s downstairs—somewhere. The front hall table? The pocket of her coat? She can never keep track of the damn thing. “I’m tired.” And she is, suddenly and desperately so, every thought sluggish, every bone heavy. “You wait up for a change. I worked all night. I’m off duty.”

  —

  FUCK YOU, ELI, my friend, fuck you who pulled up a stool and pushed the bong toward me even though you know I don’t, and I did, I put the chamber between my lips and inhaled, and the drunken freakoid rage receded like you said it would when you found me smacking my head against the wall. I inhaled again, I coughed, it was funny, everyone laughing, everything funny, hey, Finn’s finally partaking, the bong reappeared, reappeared, and I laughed when she slipped her hand in my back pocket. I turned and she was like, whoa, right there, aren’t you hot in that jacket, Finn? and I was, I was so hot, my blood like rocket fuel, and fuck it, I leaned in and kissed her like I knew she wanted me to, wanted me to for the last five years. And I got so into kissing her, my hands on her butt, one glove on, my other glove upstairs, gone, shit I didn’t want to think about that, so I kept kissing her, people guffawing, get a room…Who were those people, Eli? I didn’t know, I didn’t care, I wanted to go and she knew it. Then you, all loud, like ground control to Major Tom, Where are you going, Finn? Hey, Finn! as she pulled me up off the stool and led me out of the kitchen and into the laundry room and closed the door and dropped to her knees and it was so mind-fuckingly amazing I let her do it, sweat running down my back, and my hand in her hair, it felt so good, I didn’t care who she was, I didn’t want her to stop.

  —

  MICHAEL LISTENS AS Mia’s breathing slows and deepens, feels her body fall still on the bed. The chart of hockey standings he’s been feigning interest in for the last five minutes—the Canadiens are in second place in the East—blurs on the screen in his hands. He relaxes back against his pillows, exhales, thankful Mia’s finally asleep. With her awake, he’d been holding himself motionless, too tense to even risk a sideways glance.

  Michael rotates his head on the pillow to loosen up his neck. Fucking Stanley. Fucking Peter. And Mia, his lovely wife, turned into a complete banker bitch. He lets his iPad drop to his stomach and closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them again, it’s quarter after two.

  Christ.

  Sleepy and disoriented, he stalks through the house flipping on one light after another. Finn’s bedroom is empty. His bathroom. TV room, living room, kitchen, shit, shit, shit. By the time he reaches the basement, he’s wide awake and the house is lit like summer.

  He yanks his phone from its charger on the hall table, tries calling. No answer. He texts him. Where are you? It’s late. No answer.

  Finn. You should be home. Come home NOW. In the chill blaze of their front hall, it takes Michael half a dozen tries to get the capitalization right. He stares at the small screen in the palm of his hand, waiting for three small dots to tell him that Finn is responding, willing a text bubble to bloom a reply.

  Where are you can you answer me

  Come home.

  A current of cold air sweeps across Michael’s ankles; the fire’s off, the thermostat programmed to drop at night. He should probably go back upstairs and wake Mia. She has everyone’s number. She’ll know where he is. Some party somewhere. But the disdain in her voice when she’d told him to wait up for Finn, as if it was something he could actually manage, still rankles. Not to mention the way she slapped away his hand.

  Finn?

  I’m not mad. Just come home

  Can you get in touch please

  Finn? Are you okay?

  Finn?

  —

  I AM A SPOTLIGHT, spotlit, the only thing that’s glowing. My eyelids a radioactive blood orange, a pink-jelly sunset snapped to black, everything quiet and calm. I exhale and open my eyes and whoa! like, just whoa! Above me the pale city stars, I have never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life. Except for the moon, fuck! the moon, a sickle of pure silver light, all the stars switching places, the trees sliding across the sky. The whole yard spinning, then faster so I press my heels into the snow and turn my head and hold on to the moon. And I’m scared—get up—but also sort of laughing, feeling my body heat reflected back by the snow, amplified, so warm it’s keeping me safe, Inuit and igloos, I am one with my northern brethren in their homes of ice, I totally get it, the insulating properties of snow and I know there’s probably an equation for it, Mr. Elms could write it on the board, It’s simple, kids, it’s Physics 101, why my fist burns in a hotspot of snow, my hand melting into the snow and the snow melting into my hand, the boundary between snow and flesh disappearing, the boundary between everything beautiful and everything beautiful melting away, my body gone, my heartbeat floating…slow…slow…slow…into the universe…and everywhere, everything love.

  Love.

  I feel it. I am it. Every neuron fires into that awe.

  From some great distance I see myself getting up to build an igloo, but it’s so nice here, so nice being so cold and so fearless, I was so hot before.

  —

  THREE A.M. MICHAEL grabs his hat and coat, shoves his feet into a bulky pair of Sorels and stomps out the front door. He has no patience for scraping the tough web of ice from the windshield or letting the Jeep idle to warm. He sinks into the collar of his coat and hustles up Springfield on foot, like the last man on Earth, shadowed by darkened homes and naked maples—one on every patch of lawn. Icicles big as children hang from the corners of the roofs, giant daggers of ice; one fell and sheared the side mirror off Mia’s Jetta before Christmas, leaving a stump of shattered plastic in its wake.

  The spongy creak of packed snow, the grind of sidewalk grit marking time, Michael trudges up the snowy street, in the heart of Old Aberdeen. A neighbourhood of good schools and decked-out parks—tennis courts, soccer fields, speed skating ovals, baseball diamonds—and of course, gracious avenues of red brick homes with leaded windows and big wraparound front porches. Kids riding bikes in summer, ringing friends’ doorbells, playing pickup in the winter, and regardless of season, the streetlights their cue to get home. Like the old days. Like it was when Michael was a kid, growing up in Beaconsfield, an anglo enclave in Montreal. Only nicer. And pretty much a hundred percent English.

  Although Michael doesn’t often think in these terms, Old Aberdeen is actually an island, a long, narrow strip of land only a ten-minute drive to downtown. The western tip—where his buddy Peter lives, on an estate-sized lot in a house overlooking the water—cleaves the Aberdeen River into two streams. The northern passage is man-made, a stone-walled canal that in fact created the island a hundred and seventy years back. The canal ferries boats safely past a rough section of the river, although along the island’s southern shore, not all the water runs fast. Interspersed with the rapids are long stretches of slow, sliding calm that freeze every winter, although even this far north, it’s not something you can count on anymore. The canal is still usually solid enough for skating—city crews monitor the conditions carefully—but it’s gentlemanly, real Hans Christian Andersen, and sticks and pucks aren’t allowed. So far the winter has been a bitter one—tonight is no exception—and Old Aberdeen is well surrounded by hand-shovelled rinks and foot-thick ice.

  Michael pauses when he reaches Main Street, empty at this dead hour. His thin leather gloves were a bad choice—two minutes outside and his fingers are already aching. He pinwheels his arms, like a speed swimmer warming up for a race, encouraging blood back to the tips. He looks left up Main. The bagel shop. Past the bagel shop, a few new hipster bars and restaurants serving craft beers and questionable cuts of meat—places Finn couldn’t get in and would have no reason to visit. To the right, Eli Kelly’s riverside home. Eli’s father, Don, slapping Michael on th
e back at the door, sloppy drunk, insisting on a nightcap. And his wife, Dorothy, worn down but still flirty, a dark, leathery tan.

  Michael turns left. Across the street, sun and sand shine from a bright-lit billboard, the undulating taunt—legs hip waist breasts—of a bikinied girl against a blue Cuban sea. All-inclusive. All yours for only $999.

  He could buy a lot of that with half a million dollars. Or a million and a half—Stanley said it’s been going on for the last three years. So to hell with a week in the sun. A loop through Southeast Asia would be nice. Thailand, Vietnam, Japan. A dip down under to Australia. He and Mia have always talked about showing Finn a bit of the world.

  Christ, Finn. It’s so unlike him not to check in. He’s always been a thoughtful kid. Confident, but laid-back. Rarely gets mad, rarely raises his voice. Doesn’t do drugs, if what Mia’s told him is right. He’s come home noticeably drunk only once. Fighting a slur, he’d tried to tell her about his night, but she sent him to his room, said she didn’t like talking to him when he was in that condition. “Aw Mom,” he’d said. Michael had been lying in bed, the door open to the hall, and he’d heard the shame in Finn’s voice, how much he hated disappointing his mother.

  Michael begins to jog, awkwardly. His boots are clunky beasts, tough leather and felted wool, footwear pried from an unearthed Neanderthal’s desiccated feet. He jogs past boutiques and coffee shops, a pet store pushing hand-knit sweaters and rubber booties for dogs, the Italian deli where an organic tomato can set you back three bucks. The air sears his lungs—it’s like breathing dry ice—but he keeps on running, suffering the hard ache in his chest, deserved punishment for anyone without enough sense or luck to stay inside so deep on a winter’s night.

  What else? He distracts himself with everyone’s favourite game. What to Do with the Money? A ski chalet in the Eastern Townships. Definitely a cottage, nothing big, nothing fancy, just a wedge of pine-scented forest, a couple hundred feet of frontage, lake water like warm velvet at midnight, a million stars overhead.