We All Love the Beautiful Girls

by Joanne Proulx

  “We’ll have to wait it out. Like David said.”

  She shakes her head, unconvinced.

  “We can’t walk away with nothing.”

  “We owe sixty-eight thousand in legal fees,” she says flatly. “With the mediation delayed indefinitely, the partners will be looking for payment. Our credit line’s up to thirty-nine thousand. The property taxes are due.”

  Jesus. “I’m meeting Clint Sheppard Friday about a job.”

  “Clint Sheppard? I thought you couldn’t stand him.”

  “He’s looking for a VP of sales and marketing.”

  “ ‘Drop the n and even the dykes love me.’ That’s how he introduced himself at one of those industry parties.”

  “Witty,” Michael says. “A real charmer.”

  “I’ve put out feelers,” Mia says. “To see if I can get some consulting work for the bank.”

  “What about your photography?”

  “A hobby,” she says dismissively. “No money in it. Besides, I can’t take pictures of people right now.”

  “Don’t lose heart, Mia.”

  She turns so she is no longer conversing with his reflection. “How can I not?”

  He would pull her to him if she’d allow it. He would hold her in the elevator. Remind her how simple it can feel. “I’m telling you,” he says. “Do not lose heart. Leave that for other people.”

  “I’ve been shooting outside. Trees mostly. We live in a ridiculously beautiful neighbourhood.” She adjusts the strap of her purse so it sits squarely on her shoulder. “I’m better when Finn’s around.”

  A smooth upward pull glides the elevator to a stop. Michael steps disoriented into the lobby, sunshine pouring in through the atrium’s glass, business people rushing by, suit jackets slung over their arms, highheels clacking. He and Mia move against the crowds returning from lunch.

  “You want a lift? The car’s parked downstairs.”

  “I brought my bike,” she says.

  “How about grabbing a bite?”

  “We probably shouldn’t spend the money.”

  Through the revolving doors, Michael follows Mia onto the sidewalk. He watches as she works the lock on her fancy Dutch bike. Pale yellow with an internal hub so the gears never slip and the chain never falls off, the bike had been her fortieth-birthday present. He’d filled the front basket with flowers, set it up on the deck for the party, hired a band, a caterer, they kicked off their shoes and danced in the living room after all the guests had left.

  She steps over the crossbar and is about to prop herself on the seat, she is about to ride off—Michael grabs hold of her handlebars. “Will you just talk to me for a minute?”

  “About what? The boy you played baseball with all summer? The one who fits the description in the papers?”

  Michael’s knees go weak, his grip on her bike all that’s holding him up.

  “What? Did you think I wouldn’t worry? Sneaking out of the house every night with that goddamn bat?” She leans in a little closer, so her face is not far from his. “Did you take him over there? Tell him about their cottage? Talk to him about their daughter?”

  He squeezes her handlebars. “All we ever did was play baseball. I swear to God, that’s it.”

  She raises her arm, shielding her eyes from the sun. “So it was just you, then, breaking all those windows?”

  Michael looks up the sidewalk, into the madding crowd. He might have fooled Finn the other day in the kitchen, but he stands no chance with his wife.

  “We have been so careless. Such careless, selfish people.” She lifts his hand and returns it to him. “Chasing after money. Being stingy with love.” She slides the strap off her shoulder and sets her purse carefully in the front basket. “I feel like I have failed her,” she says.

  “Mia. No. Listen, Peter—”

  “I’m telling you how I feel, Michael. At the deepest, most fundamental level, I feel like I have failed her. That we have all failed her. You maybe most of all.” She kicks her pedal into place and settles onto the seat. “In her most intimate moments, I believe it will be hard for her not to be scared.”

  He stares down at the sidewalk. His polished black shoes. His navy suit pants. The front tire of Mia’s bike. It’s my fault. He should say it. I got mad. I wanted to get even. I took that boy to her house. I didn’t know who he was. We smashed all the windows. What happened? What happened to Frankie? It was my fault. He lifts the toe of first one shoe and then the other. If he says these things, who will he be? Who will he be to Mia? The man that he is, for the rest of his life.

  He glances up. Mia’s holding tight to her handlebars, looking sad in her pretty dress. “We’re not that different,” he says.

  “I know, but we’re different enough.” She pushes off. “For one thing, I’m a better talker.”

  She is a block away when a driver in a parked car throws open his door. She shrieks as she swerves to avoid it, in front of a minivan, brakes screech—Michael loses sight of her—she wobbles across the yellow line, heading straight into oncoming traffic. Horns blast, Mia steadies the bike, swings back into the proper lane, pedalling away, on the far side of the street.

  Mia is pushing her shopping cart up the aisle at Metro when she sees Dr. Sullivan coming toward her. In sharply creased khakis, a white golf shirt and a matching cap, he looks decidedly more relaxed than he did when he was caring for Finn. He moves slowly down the aisle, carefully reading labels, adding a can of something to his basket, a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. Like hers, his cart is small. When he is close enough, Mia says hello. He nods formally, ready to push on, then his eyes light. He parks his cart next to hers, so the romaine lettuce and the roast chicken in his upper basket are jockeying with her giant box of Frosted Flakes.

  “Your son…” he says, uncertainly. She is about to jump in but he holds up a hand. “No, wait,” he says. “I’m picturing his chart.” He closes his eyes and rolls his wrist, as if wafting the bouquet of a fine wine toward him. One roll. Two rolls. “Slate!” he says. “Finley Slate.” He beams at her, those old, crooked teeth and behind his heavy glasses, his sharp brown eyes.

  “The BE amputation,” Mia says. “We call him Finn.”

  “Yes. Of course. Finn. The Slates. The modern Stone Age family.”

  “That’s us,” she says. “Mia.”

  “August.” He dips his head at the introduction. “Gus to my friends. You reminded me to be polite that day in my office.”

  “I don’t know where I got the nerve,” she tells him truthfully.

  “I appreciated it.”

  “And I appreciated the cookies. You gave me three, if I recall.”

  “Arrowroots,” he says. “They’re practically calorie-free.” Then his face grows serious. “So, how is he, then? Your boy.”

  “He healed well. Like you said he would. And it took a while, but he finally found that prosthesis.”

  Dr. Sullivan, August, Gus lowers his voice to a gossipy register. “God almighty! We tore the hospital apart. He was so convincing about it having been taken.”

  Mia almost laughs, something she hasn’t done in a while. But this escaped-from-the-hospital version of the doctor is so animated. She’d judged him so harshly that day in his office, had been unable to imagine him young. She leans in, as if she’s about to share a ripe secret. This man does not know Frankie, or how they are connected. “Stashed under a friend’s bed,” she says, and for the first time since it happened, she sees Frankie as just that. A friend helping Finn out.

  “Well,” Dr. Sullivan says, “it had to be somewhere.”

  “He’s not wearing it yet. But he’s seeing his psychologist.”

  “Dr. Zappia? She’s really something, isn’t she? With her pink hair and her hula hoops and whatnot.”

  “She calls me dude.”

  “Me, too!” he says, delighted.

  “Finn seems to like her.”

  “That’s the important thing.”

  They shake their heads
and then stare off down the aisle as if expecting a familiar face to call them away. They barely know one another. And yet, they linger.

  Mia inches her cart closer to his, giving a man with a seated toddler—elbow-deep in a box of Goldfish—room to get by. “You’ve retired,” she says. “That’s why you’re so relaxed.”

  “After thirty-two years, I finally have the luxury of sleeping nights. And my replacement is an excellent surgeon. And so much younger than me. Good with names, proper bedside manners and all that. Dr. Whetung. I feel very good about having left things in her competent hands.” Mia was right; he was in no hurry to get away. “My partner and I are living up at the lake full time now.”

  “Big Yirkie,” Mia says, her voice weighted.

  “You heard what happened, of course.” The furrows in Dr. Sullivan’s forehead that Mia remembers so well return. “A horrible thing,” he says. “It makes one wonder. It really does.”

  The story has slipped to the middle of the local papers, been relegated to the edges of the screen. Last week Mia saw a headline that read, “Cottage Community Still Shaken by Sexual Assault.” As if it were the community that had been attacked, the cottagers victims for having to lock their doors at night and install alarm systems. Frankie’s become a footnote to the story, the assailants’ descriptions unworthy of mention. It’s only been eight weeks. Eight weeks because she’s a rich white man’s daughter and a rich white man’s boat got burned. If she’d been otherwise, if it had happened to Jess, the story might never have made the front page.

  The furrows on Dr. Sullivan’s forehead smooth. His face brightens. Mia can almost see him shaking off the horrible thing that she will carry with her—forever, she believes—like a water sack sloshing inside her, upsetting her balance, making it difficult to draw breath. She imagines the doctor’s resilience is what allowed him to carry on as a trauma surgeon for so long. All those nights, and all those boys, and all that damage done, right here in good Old Aberdeen.

  He is an old man now. Past seventy, she guesses, and only just retiring. I hurt no one, he’d told her in his office. I compromised nothing in myself.

  Mia cannot say the same. She hasn’t even called the police about the boy.

  People always said she was strong, but in truth she needed to be stronger.

  Dr. Sullivan gives his black hipster glasses a push. “If all that hasn’t scared you off cottaging completely, and it isn’t too bold of me to ask, perhaps you and your husband would like to come up to the lake for a sail sometime. Finn, too, of course.”

  “That’s a lovely offer.” Mia’s cheeks warm. “But unfortunately my husband and I have separated.”

  “Ahh,” Dr. Sullivan says, as if the news, sad as it is, comes as no surprise. “Trauma to a child can be hard on a marriage.”

  “Life can be hard on a marriage. And I am an unforgiving person.” She is surprised at the bitterness in her voice. In her studio, she moves from settee to table, from table to bed, from bed to settee, lost in one room, adrift on a second floor. Missing him, a man who offers her a pair of socks warmed by his own body or ferries her safely home in the rain with just one. Kisses her gently on the lips. Makes gifts of river flowers. Not missing the dark shadow of that love. Unaccustomed to real difficulty, God forbid anything go wrong; all the people burned to the ground and the houses still standing, an old dream turned to a nightmare.

  “There are things that are difficult to forgive,” the doctor says, softly. “Differences we cannot easily reconcile. I guess we’ve been lucky in that regard.”

  Lucky. Mia used to think they were lucky. But things changed so quickly, like a mountain range erupting around them, and she and Michael faltered on the climb. They forgot they loved each other. They failed to take care, made mistakes, got tired, got greedy, got mad, did damage, so much damage that when they tried to find the path back to the lucky times the path was gone.

  They could have done so much better. They had every opportunity. Every privilege. Lose a bit of money, a bit of compassion, a little piece of yourself and someone’s going to get hurt. Someone vulnerable, someone they helped make vulnerable, hiding in plain sight.

  “I have an apartment,” Mia says, clearing her throat. “Finn’s slowly moving in.”

  August taps the box of Frosted Flakes. “That explains the sugar cereal.”

  Mia has to smile. “It’s across the hall from my studio. You should come by. I’ll take your retirement photo.”

  “Oh, this old face,” he says.

  Mia remembers how unkindly she’d first framed him, and is again embarrassed by how vindictive her thoughts had been that day. “You should mark the occasion,” she says. “I’ll make you look good.”

  “I suppose we could staple my lips shut,” he says. “And Jay. He might like a photograph.”

  Mia had wondered. Perhaps it’s another reason the doctor had sidestepped the draft, that culture of manly men harnessed to fight. “I could take his picture as well. Take the two of you together.”

  “Beauty and the beast—well, I’ll think about it.” But he’s stiffened up, drawn back, and she can see that he won’t. Two women turn into their aisle and glide quickly toward them, their shopping carts loaded. Big families, Mia thinks. Lots of children. She wants to reach out and seize their arms as they pass, tell them to pay attention, to be diligent, to never stop talking to their sons, to teach their girls to roar. No quitting, she wants to tell them. No quitting on the kids.

  Dr. Sullivan edges his cart forward and says a polite goodbye. He negotiates his way smoothly past the women and their rolling hillocks of food while Mia remains rooted in place, in front of the canned vegetables. She glances at her watch. Finn will be waiting for her.

  His new bedroom overlooks a parking lot, complete with dumpsters and a teetering stack of tires. Mia’s bleached the mould from the bathroom tiles, but there wasn’t much she could do with the banged-up cupboards or the yeasty smell in the kitchen. She’s been keeping the doors open between the apartment and the studio so the upstairs feels better connected, more like a home. Still, at some point she’ll have to look for something more suitable—she knows Finn’s going to hate it—and cheaper, unless her new consulting business takes off, which she half hopes it doesn’t.

  One thing is certain: she doesn’t want to be dependent on Michael in any way. She will not go back to what they had. They’ll sell the house. She’ll take her half of the equity and use it to move on. Find a place she feels good in, a space just big enough for herself and Finn—that cabin on the edge of a forest, a motel room with two clean beds.

  But why? Why should she creep away to the margins, dragging her son along? Why can’t she find a way to be new here? Crack open the centre, create more space, so it’s safe in the shade of the old trees, surrounded by fresh water. Isn’t that what everyone wants? She’ll volunteer at the women’s shelter, work up her own burlesque act—a slow-motion striptease to Billie Holiday—befriend the Bosnian widow, take photographs of kids climbing trees, say hello to Jess’s mom next time she’s hanging out laundry.

  And what about Frankie? What if instead of telling her amusing anecdotes about falling in love, Mia had told her other stories? About the boy who threw her on the couch and wouldn’t take no for an answer. How she’d had to fight her arm free and punch him not once, but twice in the mouth. How at fourteen, she’d had to draw blood to make him stop. How her head hit the taxi window when a colleague wrestled her onto the back seat after a friendly night at a pub. How next day at work, they said a stiff hello and then for years acted like nothing had happened. What if she’d told her about the Saturday night at university when four guys she didn’t know walked drunk into her boyfriend’s dorm room and tried to pull her, naked, from his bed. How that time it had taken both of them to save her.

  Would those stories have changed anything for Frankie? Or just made her unnecessarily afraid? Mia doesn’t know. The love stories should have been enough.

  When she was growin
g up, no one talked about any of it. There were no trophy pictures posted online. Now legions of women tweet out the details of their assaults, and still the questions get asked: what was she wearing, how much did she drink, how many guys has she slept with? Good swimmers are released after serving a couple of months in prison, if they’re white, if the girl even goes to the police, if the guy gets charged, sees trial, ever gets convicted. Keep your knees together. Wear a longer skirt.

  She should have toughed it out at the bank. Clawed her way to the presidency, just to prove she could do it. Used her new-found power to give every customer a rebate, her microphone to discuss the currency of radical kindness.

  Dr. Sullivan has almost disappeared from the aisle. Mia surprises herself by calling out. “You still killing the planet with that capsule coffee?”

  He turns, one hand holding on to his cart. “We’ve found a good bean at Wild Oat,” he hollers back. “Grinding our own. We have the time now.”

  She swings around. The front wheel of her shopping cart pulls hard to the right; she has to fight to keep it moving in a straight line. “Maybe Finn and I can come up to the cottage sometime for a cup.” She doesn’t have to shout now, although she feels a little desperate, chasing after him like this.

  “That would be wonderful. To tell you the truth,” he says when she reaches him, “we’re a little lonely up there by ourselves. We’ll have lunch. And afterwards I’ll take you for a sail.” He fishes into his shirt pocket and comes up with a pen and a neatly folded square of paper. Using her cereal box as a table, he writes down a rural address and phone number.

  “I’ll call you,” she says.

  “Do. And tell Finn his surgeon is very pleased he found that damn hand.”

  Mia slots the paper into her purse. Into the zippered pocket, where hopefully it won’t get lost.