We All Love the Beautiful Girls

by Joanne Proulx

  “Mia brought us some dinner,” Helen says. He glances at the dish in her hands, then back to Mia.

  “Get off my fucking property,” he says, and for a second Mia is too taken aback to react. “Stay away from my fucking wife.”

  Helen turns away from them both.

  Mia’s almost to the car when something heavy smashes onto the driveway—Helen’s casserole dish. Fresh mushrooms and heavy cream, puréed broccoli, garlic, lots of pepper and a half cup of shredded cheese. Three chicken breasts cut into cubes and cooked until the juices ran clear. A meal they used to share at the cabin after a day of skiing, comfort food now splattered across the asphalt and the backs of Mia’s legs.

  Twice in the past three days, Michael was sure he was having a heart attack. After recovering from the first, he looked up the symptoms online and ticked off every box. But when the next one hit—when his chest tightened and his jaw ached and he could not draw air into his lungs for the pressure—he could not bring himself to tell Mia or call 911. And both times when he lay down the symptoms slowly passed. While a spastic, blood-sputtering muscle would be one way out, lying on the bed sweaty and terrified as his heart rate fell back to normal, Michael is ashamed to admit that first and foremost, he was thankful to have survived.

  He keeps the radio on at all times now, his eye on news websites, the television, the front door, the windows, but so far, none of the boys have been found. Yesterday the descriptions came out. For the most part vague, heights and weights, skin and hair colour. There’d been nothing about perfect teeth or skinny ankles or puffy red running shoes, but from only a few brief words in the paper, Michael had known them all. Anyone who’d seen him would recognize the tattooed guy. If they’re caught, when they’re caught, Michael has no doubt he’ll be picked up and taken in for questioning. Charged with breaking and entering, destruction of property…and all the rest. He has an alibi, he was home with Mia that night thank god, but obviously none for the one he spent blowing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of glass from the victim’s riverside home.

  Frankie’s home. His son’s friend. His once friend’s daughter. A little kid wrestling him off the dock in a striped bikini. A teenager flashing him an après-ski peace sign. A beautiful broad-shouldered girl with her arms raised, sighting a ball into a glove.

  Michael tortures himself with the details. That’s what brings on the heart attacks.

  Rae Chan would have decided, his cold blue eyes upon her. His capable, paint-stained hands. His deep radio voice issuing impossible commands.

  He would have been first to rape her.

  Maybe when he was finished, he told the boy to go next.

  Take that, you bitch, he’d said, every time he nailed the pitching machine. No, no, no, yes. Pussy old man. All the little abuses Michael let slide; he would never have done that with Finn. Thinking his responsibilities ended at his own front door, looking out for himself and his family and to hell with everyone else. Thinking they lived in some bubble. Christ! There is no fucking bubble! Everything leaks out, everything seeps in. Give it time and the shit always rises to level on both sides of the divide.

  He should have made the kid pick up the beer bottle, given him hell about the pitching machine, told him to watch his goddamn mouth. Better yet, he should have called Peter on his bullshit the millisecond after the bookkeeper talked to him, demanded he sell the boat then and fucking there. Just that and none of this would have happened.

  What had he been thinking? Taking that kid to their house, throwing a stone in their little money war, too arrogant in that moment to acknowledge the likelihood of collateral damage. Pretending that glass broken, revenge exacted, all ripples would cease. But when has life ever been that simple or history writ a violence so neat? Twenty dollars, thirty-five thousand dollars, a million and a half dollars. Picture frame, dock chair, window. Stone, stone, stone.

  What had Frankie called him? Her second dad? With two hands he rips at his hair, bangs his head into his pillow. He can no longer claim to be a good man, worthy of a decent life. The worst has happened. He deserves every consequence coming his way.

  He gets out of bed. He no longer sleeps. The clock reads exactly 4 a.m. While Mia tosses under the covers, he dresses in the dark, then goes and gets the green duffle bag from the garage. Empty, except for two baseball gloves, one man-sized, one slightly smaller. He rummages through the front closet but cannot find the bat. He searches the house, the garage, the Jeep, under the seats, in the back. He goes over everything in his mind. Did he leave it in the shed? With the extension cord? Not that night, he didn’t. But before? He’s sure the bat’s not there, and he’s not going to check. When he pictures the shed, he pictures it staked out, a SWAT team horseshoed in the long grass beyond the outfield, boots and bellies and the butts of assault rifles pressing into the dirt.

  He knew. He fucking knew. Lugging the pitching machine out of the backyard with some white trash stoner boy, he’d seen the curtains wafting from Frankie’s window. Maybe his imagination was too narrow, too cinctured by privilege to ever take the real nightmare scenarios seriously or conjure the exact nature or extent of the horror—not him, not his kind—but he knew what he’d put at risk. And the missile that dropped him to his knees at the ball diamond? The hook that scratched at him from under the bed? It’s not like he hadn’t been warned.

  In the driveway, Michael’s bowels turn liquid. He barely makes it to the toilet to shit out his insides. After he cleans himself up, he carries the duffle bag to the river, the gloves bumping against his legs. The bat should be in the bag, too, but instead, it will be one more thing that keeps him up at night.

  Near the spot where the old men fished, Michael squats and begins filling the bag with rocks from the riverbank, wet and heavy and slick. Early August, the tang of spring rot has been replaced by the fragrance of summer. The air’s cool and fresh near the water and Michael is completely alone. It’s too late for anyone honourable to still be out, too early for anyone lucky to have risen.

  Reaching for another rock, his hand dips into the river. The water pushes warm against his palm. His fingers have to work to fight the downstream drift. Michael turns his hand sideways and the pressure eases, a dark, easy flow splitting around his wrist. He reaches deeper for a bigger rock and something—slippery, scaly—brushes against his fingers. He jerks his hand away as a clawed limb rises slowly from the water and slaps onto the rocky bank, inches from his foot. A leg. A lizard leg. Michael scrambles up onto the grass behind him as the thing drags itself from the river.

  Head like a prehistoric cock, thick, slit-eyed, breathing in and out of a wattled neck. A giant plated shell, green with algae, stuck with mud. At the lip of the bank, the snapping turtle reaches up a stumpy leg and a fleshy membrane stretches from its soft underbelly. Oblivious to Michael, it hulks onward, in the direction of the public dock, its dinosaur-spiked tail dragging slow over the grass. Twenty feet downriver, the turtle vanishes into the murk of a willow tree, under a long sway of dark branches.

  Quickly, before he loses his last wisp of courage or decides what he’s doing is insane, which it is, Michael lugs the duffle bag, bumpy with rocks, up onto the overpass. Six lanes of traffic and not a car in sight. In the middle of the span, he drops the bag into the deepest, fastest water, and in an instant it is gone.

  He forces himself across the road, onto the abandoned sidewalk. Grips the railing and presses his forehead to its concrete cap, like a man in desperate prayer. A minute, two minutes pass, before he lifts his head. The ball diamond is just beginning to lighten along with the sky, the chain link hinting at silver, mist weeping from the blue-black earth.

  Even now, even after everything, Michael thinks it’s beautiful, this perverted field of dreams. He longs to have stayed right there, tinkering with the pitching machine, slamming balls into the outfield, hurting no one, breaking nothing, just releasing steam until fall came, winter came, his anger cooled, the case settled, Mia forgave him, Finn got better, P
eter paid in full—the happy ending everyone thought was deserved.

  It could have happened. It was so easily possible. Better actions, better outcomes. Simple as that. The motivational posters aren’t always wrong. Brave now, because you don’t get to go back for another round.

  And Dirk. He could have stayed a lost boy, an outsider even among outsiders, stumbling around in his red high-tops, stoned and harmless, trying to catch balls in Finn’s old baseball glove. For a second, Michael lets himself wonder where he is. If he’s even still alive. He doesn’t know. He shouldn’t care. The boy has done unspeakable things. It’s better if he’s dead, if all of them are dead.

  The cabin where they’d been staying has been found. A search confirmed that the property across the lake from Peter’s was owned by an old widow, and that the boys who’d broken in really liked their porn and their booze and their drugs.

  From his bird’s-eye view on the bridge, it’s apparent there are no robocops in the grass field, no guns trained on the falling-down shed. Michael’s seen too many movies. When they come for him, it’ll be some old fart with a paunch who slaps on the cuffs. His will be a civilized takedown, as he gets yanked from his civilized world.

  Michael holds tight to the railing, the concrete cap cool beneath his palms. He narrows his eyes and sees her on the field, beneath an old floodlight he had no right to turn on. Cut-off shorts, a flowered top, a slip of skin anchored by bellybutton. She scowls up at him, shocked and indignant, as she shakes out her arm. Take it easy, Michael. We’re just two people tossing around a ball.

  If he weren’t such a coward, he’d go drag the Arm to the river and drown it alongside the bag. Burn down the shed. Pave over the ball diamond. Destroy that piece of himself. He imagines the graffiti grenade hanging high up on the main support column finally detonating, the whole bridge crumbling, his body crumbling along with it, dropping in dusty chunks into the water, the cast of a modern man, chipped from million-year-old stone.

  If he were a better man, he would do it. If he were a bigger man, he would jump.

  Birch trees pole past as I longboard up the driveway. In front of the house, a truck I don’t recognize. Humphrey’s Glass and Mirror—I read the name through the panes clamped along the side.

  No one’s really seen her since it happened, but we’ve been texting a lot. She knows I’m coming over. I’m not sure about her mom and dad. I pick up my board and the front door opens. Two guys in white overalls push past me, hustling for the truck. Then Helen is there, on the porch.

  Finn, she says, with a busted smile. It’s been a while. Frankie will be happy to see you. She keeps her eyes off my missing hand.

  I follow her into the house. A breeze blows up the hallway, flapping the sleeves of her blouse. At first I think the back door must be open. But then I see the big, empty rectangles framing the backyard. In the living room, a leaf, fresh and green, tumbles across the carpet.

  Helen doesn’t say anything about the missing windows, and I don’t ask. With one knuckle, she taps on Frankie’s door. Finn’s here, she says, poking her head into the room, the door tight to her shoulder. Okay? And then she lets me in.

  Frankie’s curled up on the bed, her hands tucked between her knees. The door clicks closed behind me. The curtains flap over her like the sleeves of her mother’s blouse. The wind and the sun and the river are inside the room, too.

  Frankie looks the same as she always has, only a fallen-over version of herself. She doesn’t move and for a long time I don’t move either. Finally I go and put one knee on the end of the bed, so I’m kind of kneeling, and I rest my hand on her ankle.

  Is this okay? I ask. She doesn’t say no, so I crawl up behind her, six inches behind her, and shape my body to hers, six inches of air between us. I have to tip my head back because of all her hair. Then we just lie there and listen to her parents fighting out in the hall.

  Her father wants me out of his goddamn house. Helen tells him to think about Frankie for a minute. She tells him to smarten up. She tells him over her dead body. Footsteps slam away, going in opposite directions up the hall.

  My father’s gone crazy, Frankie says.

  My father went crazy, too, for a while.

  My dad thinks your dad broke our windows.

  What? I lift my head. A piece of her hair tickles my nose. No way he’d smash up your house.

  I know, she whispers. But somebody did it.

  Somebody did it. Somebody did a lot of things. Maybe they blew out the windows first. Howling as the glass broke. Howling as they tore her open.

  I don’t want to be a coward. I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen. I’m sick of pretending things didn’t happen. And I want to tell her I’m sorry about what I did in the laundry room. That it was shitty and hurtful, and because it was shitty and hurtful it caused other shitty, hurtful things to happen.

  And then I want to tell her something about love. That it exists. That it’s real. That it’s what we’re really made of and who we really are. I want her to believe that. But I’m afraid that she won’t. That she can’t. Because sometimes when I think about what they did to her, I can barely believe it myself. Love. What they did to her. What they did.

  I’m tired, Frankie says. I just want to sleep.

  I go to get up, but she reaches back and takes my arm and pulls it around her. Then she knots up her hair so I can move in closer. So our bodies can touch, and we can lie together in the sun and the wind, listening to the river and the curtains flapping lazy into her room, and she can cup her hand over my stump and hold it to her chest so I realize, suddenly, that I am tired, too.

  My dad’s got his head in the fridge when I tell him Peter thinks he broke their windows. He pauses, his hand frozen in the veggie drawer. What?

  I explain about the windows, but he still doesn’t exit the fridge. He lets go of a tomato, shuffles containers of yogurt, a block of old cheddar, the milk. It takes a while before he swings the door closed.

  That’s awful, he says, giving me a grimace. But I don’t know a thing about it. You want some breakfast? he says, and holds up a carton of eggs.

  I can’t tell if he’s lying. The carton’s so steady in his hands.

  He fries the eggs, chewing on his lips and looking a little wrecked, which is pretty much his natural state now. My mom’s at her studio like usual, and there’s no bacon in the house, so I just do the toast.

  You’ve seen her? he says, so stiffly I can tell he had to make himself ask. And he knows I go over there.

  Yeah. Pretty much every day.

  How is she? He flips the eggs, breaks both yolks.

  Brutal, I tell him. Scared. Angry. Quiet. Tired all the time. I glance over, but he keeps staring into the pan. She told me you guys played baseball one night this summer. She said you had a good time.

  We did. He swipes hard at his nose, nudges the eggs around the pan.

  I don’t tell him that whenever we played together I always felt bad about myself after. Like I’d never make him happy. Like he was big and I would always be small.

  The toast pops. I go get the plates. When I turn back, my dad’s hunched over the counter, the spatula hanging limp in his hand.

  It takes me a while to ask. You okay?

  He turns his head, and I see he’s crying, just all these tears running down his face.

  Get her outside, he says. Get her out into the sun.

  David and Mia shake hands, rather formally, Michael thinks as the bell for the elevator dings. All business now, their lawyer holds open the door, thanks them for coming, offers reassurances that he’ll do all he can to fix another date for the mediation. He reaches inside his suit jacket, pulls a slim white envelope from his breast pocket and presses it into Mia’s hand. It’s an awkward exchange—his arm practically caught by the closing doors—but Michael doesn’t feel he has the right to ask any questions.

  “Last cheque,” Mia tells him, as if sensing his reluctance to pry. “For the condo.”

  “
It’s done, then?” He leans forward, thankful for a relatively neutral topic of discussion. The lobby button lights at his touch.

  “I’m done.” She slides the envelope into her purse and snaps the clasp shut. “David’s new girlfriend is finishing up. Tiffany. His twenty-six-year-old yoga instructor.” The elevator begins its descent from the thirty-sixth floor. “She bought some paintings at HomeSense,” she says. “They match the living room.”

  “Sounds awful.” Michael chuckles, in sympathy, pretending he is still half of the couple he and Mia once were, the one everybody believed in, the one everyone thought would last. He holds himself upright, squares his shoulders. He put a suit on for the meeting. Mia wore a dress.

  “The space was beautiful,” she says, with great seriousness, “and now there’s shitty art on the walls.”

  The elevator glides smoothly downward, 25, 24, 23 lighting up the panel. Michael experiences a moment of vertigo, the elevator dropping faster than he is, leaving the soles of his shoes light on the floor, his insides pulling upward by a false reversal of gravity. He rearranges his facial features in an attempt to look steady beside his wife.

  She’s been spending most nights at her studio. When he took lunch over for her the other day, he saw the bed she’d made for herself at the back. Their old toaster oven on the counter, her toothbrush in a glass by the sink. She’s leaving him, slowly, probably with Finn in mind. She is standing a foot to his left, falling along with him, and already she is gone.

  “We should have expected it,” Mia says.

  “Yes.”

  “That Peter wouldn’t come.”

  “Yes,” Michael says again, realigning his thoughts.

  “What he’s going through?” Mia says. “What they’re all going through? It’s no wonder he didn’t show up.” They conduct their conversation via the gleam on the elevator doors. They need not turn their heads to face one another directly. The ceiling is low, the walls panelled in dark wood, the lighting dim. In the doors, their reflections are blurred around the edges. “We’ll look ruthless if we push him into mediation now,” Mia says. “And no one’s going to have much sympathy for us if we take him to court. Nor should they.”