A Tale of Beauty

by Patrick Balzamo

  On the Thursday after the Sisterhood meeting at Chastity’s place, Belle calls me. “Hey,” she says. “Can I come over?”

  “Sure. Nothing’s going on here.”

  She gets here fifteen minutes later. When I let her in, she hugs me and locks the door behind her before setting her bag down. “Hi,” she says. “How are you doing?”

  I shrug. “Okay.” I go back to the couch and sit down. When I look back at her, she’s still standing at the door with one hand on her hip.

  “Don’t lie to me, Sue.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “And I’m not stupid.” Belle comes over to the couch and sits on the armrest. “I am your Sister, Sue. I know you best.”

  I snort. “Whatever.”

  She’s quiet for a second. “I’ve been concerned about you for some time now, but especially since the last meeting.”

  “Why?” I take the remote from the cushion next to me and channel-surf.

  “You’re not yourself. You’ve been under a lot of stress and I’m concerned that you’re isolating yourself.” When I don’t answer, she snaps: “Would you turn the TV off, please?”

  I glance at her. She’s annoyed, but not really pissed. Not yet, anyway. “You’ve never minded the TV before.”

  “You’ve never hidden behind it before.” She leans across the cushion separating us and grabs the remote out of my hand. I don’t try to grab it back, and she gives me a weird look before she turns the TV off. “Talk to me.”

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  “I don’t care. Just start talking.”

  I turn my face toward the window. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “If I ask you questions, will you answer them?”

  I shrug. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Okay.” I hear her moving. “When was the last time that you were outside?”

  “This morning.”

  “Really?”

  I turn to glare at her. “Look, if you’re just going to accuse me of lying to you again —”

  “I’m not. It’s just ... you’re not exactly dressed for going outdoors.” Her eyes flick over my faded shirt and jeans.

  “I changed.”

  “Ah.” She nods. “So what did you do?”

  “Choked down cheap coffee and looked through the classified ads. I’ve been doing that as much as I can, you know? Just to try to keep busy, keep some kind of routine going.”

  “Does it make you feel better?”

  I have to think about it. “Yeah, I guess, a bit. I don’t know why.”

  “Ritual is a comforting thing. More than that, it’s empowering. By going out every morning as though you were going to work, you bring yourself into closer accord with your desire to have a job to go out to.”

  What the hell is she talking about? “Fake it until I make it, huh?”

  “Exactly.” Belle goes to the table, where I’ve got a week’s worth of classified sections stacked up. “Would you like me to go through these with you?”

  “No. I’ve been through them already. There’s nothing there.”

  She looks back at me with her hand still on the pile. “Nothing at all?”

  I shrug. “Nothing I could live with.”

  “I see.” I hear her coming back, and see that she’s carrying my laptop. “How about online?”

  “Too much trouble.” I close my eyes. “Belle, I get you’re trying to help, but if you just came here to push me to find a job, you can stop wasting your time.”

  Belle blinks. “You need a job, Sue. You need to get your life in order. I’m just trying to help you do that.”

  “I know, but it’s just ... not helping.”

  She’s quiet again. I look around for the remote, but I can’t figure out where she put it. Quiet is bad. It makes you start thinking. “There’s no need to be so confrontational,” she says. “I’m not the enemy.”

  “I know, but Belle, I’m jobless and broke, for Christ’s sake. I’m not exactly thinking that logically right now.” I give up on the remote and wrap my arms around my chest.

  “It’s more than that, though, isn’t it? It started before you gave up that job.” She goes back to the armrest. “I can’t be sure, but I’ve looked through the Tale, and I believe that it goes back to the day that you broke up with Nick.”

  Hearing her say his name, complete with that little angry emphasis that she always puts on anything she says about my boyfriends, gives me a jolt of something like anxiety, or adrenaline. “You think something happened there?”

  “I don’t know. Did it?”

  I shake my head. “No. It went just like I planned. He didn’t even really pitch a fit, let alone take a swing at me or anything. He even stopped calling a couple of days after we broke up. It’s over.”

  “Good.” Belle looks off to the side, then back at me. “Do you still think about him?”

  I open my mouth to say something like, “Of course not,” but the words stick in my throat. I don’t want to lie to Belle, and I can’t lie to myself: Nick’s still in my head. I’ll be walking through a park where we had a couple of dates and remember his voice; I’ll see an expensive car and remember the way he used to talk about them, the horsepower and the engines and all kinds of other things I never understood.

  “I think I’ve got my answer,” Belle says.

  “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t think that matters.” Her eyes narrow. “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know.” I smirk. “Maybe it means you were right, I should have stopped it before? But it’s not like I’m in love with him, or anything. I don’t get it.”

  “Are you sure you’re not in love with him?”

  “Of all people, Belle, you think I’d know what love feels like.”

  “You would think.” She pauses. “What do you feel for him, then?”

  “Nothing big.” She opens her mouth to say something else, but I cut her off. “Look, you’re making too big a deal about this. Yeah, he’s still in my head, but it’s not controlling my life or anything. And even if it were, what would it matter to you?”

  Her eyes widen. I can almost see her struggling to decide whether to push me further or back off. “It would matter to me because I care about you. I don’t want to see you repeat your mistakes.”

  “Yeah, that makes two of us.”

  “Well, then we need to take steps to make sure that you don’t.” She looks at the TV, or maybe the clock. They’re both off that way someplace. “I should be going. There’s plenty of work to be done on that story, and that’s not counting the rest of my assignments.” She stands up, and I go to the door with her. “Will you be hosting the next meeting of the Sisterhood?”

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I? I’m always after Chastity, right?”

  “I thought it best to ask. Circumstances being what they are ...” She picks up her purse.

  I roll my eyes. “I’m unemployed and a bit out of it, but I think I can manage a tea party.”

  “It’s decidedly more than a simple tea party.” She hugs me, a bit too tightly. It’s an effort to hug her back. I’m so tired all of a sudden. “Take care of yourself, Sue.”

  “Thanks for coming,” I say, just because I think I should say something.

  “Anytime,” she says as she waves goodbye. I wave back, then close and lock the door behind her. For a couple of seconds, I just stand there and try to make sense of what’s going on, but give it up after a few seconds. That’s enough thinking for today. All the crap will still be there tomorrow.

  Diana

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE that I let you talk me into this.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” David says as he tries to work a hairnet over his shaggy mane. “A couple hours here for a few weekends or a couple months in the library trying to write a paper. No contest.”

  “Maybe not for you.” I fold my arms over my chest and look around the large kitchen. “I fail to see what volunteer work has to do with s
ociology.”

  “Something about getting involved with the community, social work in action?” David scratches the back of his neck. “I was sleeping for most of that lecture.”

  “Yes, I know. You were practically drooling on your textbook.”

  “Hey, give a guy a break. I pulled an all-nighter for the history mid-term.” He winks. “Passed, too.”

  “Congratulations. Did you scrape anything higher than a sixty?”

  “Oh, yeah. Seventy-two.”

  I shake my head as Chastity comes into the kitchen with her apron over her arm. “Chastity, this is David,” I say while he gives her a perfectly idiotic smile.

  “Of course. I’ve heard so much about you, David. It’s nice to finally meet you.” Chastity smiles back at him, then turns to me. “Could you give me a hand with this, please?” she says softly, like she’s ashamed.

  “Turn around,” I say. She does, and I tie the apron strings tightly at the small of her back.

  “Thank you,” she whispers, then gives David a much bigger smile as she makes her way to the sink. “It’s so lovely to have you both here today,” she says as she runs her hands under the water, then dries them on her apron.

  “Anything to get out of that research paper,” David says.

  I roll my eyes. “I would have thought there’d be more of us,” I say to steer the conversation away from David’s laziness.

  “Oh, no, I’m afraid that we’re it for right now,” Chastity says as she begins taking large pots from the cupboards under the sink. “It can be very difficult to find people to work on weekends: so many of our volunteers seem to have other responsibilities on Saturday afternoons.”

  “We should have tried to get some other guys from the class to come,” David says. “Maybe next week?”

  “Like who?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Should have our pick with the alternative being that paper.”

  “Our pick of the slackers, you mean.” I go over to Chastity and move some of the pots out of her way. “Where do we begin?” The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be done.

  “Oh, just fill the pots about three-quarters of the way with water and start them boiling. There should be a box of broth mix in the cabinet over there.” Chastity nods toward a row of three cabinets.

  “I got the water. It’s going to be heavy.” David comes forward and takes the pot out of my hands.

  I leave the manual labour to him and go to the cabinets. “Which one is it in, Chastity?” I ask when I open the rightmost one and find only plasticized tablecloths and cleaning products.

  “Try the middle one,” Chastity replies. “Yes, that should be enough,” she continues, but when I turn around to look at her, I see that she’s talking to David. “Be careful,” she adds as I turn back to the cabinets and open the centre one.

  “Hey, no problem,” David says, and I flinch at the scraping noise that he makes dragging the pot out of the sink. “Right here?”

  “Yes, anywhere on the stove is fine.”

  “Cool.” The pot strikes the stove with a crash so loud that it makes me jump, and I turn to glare at him.

  “Can’t you be a bit quieter?”

  Chastity and David both look at me; she’s frowning, and he’s chuckling idiotically. “Sorry. I scare you?”

  “Of course not.” I turn back to the cabinet, which at the very least contains edible items. On the shelf at eye level, there are large containers of spices, mostly salt and pepper; on the floor, there are a pair of immense bags, and it takes me a moment to figure out that they contain sugar and flour. They must buy everything in bulk here, I realize, and I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. How long does it take them to get through it all? Surely there can’t be that many people coming here for a meal, even if it is free.

  “How’s it coming over here?” Chastity says as she comes over, leaving David to fill up the other two pots with water. “Find that broth yet?”

  “No, but I’ve got enough spice and flour to choke a horse.” I prod the flour with my foot; it leaves a dent, but the bag doesn’t move. “What do they do with all of this?”

  Chastity laughs. “You’d be surprised at how fast it goes.” She reaches up to take a large box from the top shelf. “Here we go.” She puts it down on the counter and goes to help David with the last of the three pots.

  I close the cabinet door and glare at the box on the counter, as though it’s to blame for the fact that I couldn’t find it. “I really should have done that paper instead,” I mutter.

  “You say something, Diana?” David says as Chastity hands him a pot lid.

  “No. Nothing.”

  Over the next couple of hours, people begin to trickle into the main hall outside the kitchen. Chastity seems to know several of them, and every so often, she’ll call me over to the kitchen door and whisper something like: “That woman over there with the little boy? That’s Mina. Such a sad story.” In total, she points out four groups of people, but she never goes into the details of their sad stories, and I don’t ask.

  Eventually, the main hall starts to empty out again, and I begin counting down the minutes until David and I can leave as we work through a seemingly-endless stack of dishes. I’ve just passed the fifteen minute mark when Chastity comes into the kitchen and says: “Diana, David, there’s someone that I’d like you to meet, if you don’t mind?”

  “Sure thing,” David says.

  “Who is it?” I ask.

  Chastity gives me that little smile that I’ve noticed she uses when she’s not sure how well her suggestions will be received. “Her name is Jeanette. She comes in here regularly, and I’ve gotten to know her.” Her smile gets broader, more placatory. “I’ve told her about you, Diana, and I mentioned that you might be volunteering here for a few days. She’d like to meet you.”

  “So you go around talking to derelicts about me?”

  Chastity’s eyes widen, and her smile fades. “She is not a derelict. She’s a lovely woman who happens to be down on her luck at the moment.”

  “How long’s that moment lasted so far? Ten years?”

  “Wow, Diana, what the hell’s up with you?” David moves to stand beside Chastity.

  “What do you mean, what’s up with me? You can’t actually want to meet the homeless woman?”

  “She isn’t homeless!” Chastity gasps.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really! She has an apartment not far from here.”

  “Then what’s she doing in a soup kitchen?”

  “Well, it’s the end of the month and sometimes she has trouble making ends meet ...” Chastity puts one hand on her hip. “And this isn’t a soup kitchen, Diana. It’s a mission.”

  “What’s the difference? I’ve been making soup all day.”

  Chastity looks horrified. “A mission tends to the spiritual needs of the people. That’s why she comes here, really: she wants company.” She pauses, then adds: “We don’t just ladle out soup.”

  At least three retorts pass through my mind in the next few seconds, but I don’t say any of them. “Thank you for the lesson.” I turn the faucet back on. “I have work to do here, however, and I need to leave on time.”

  “C’mon, Diana —” David says, and I whirl on him, spraying water over the floor between us.

  “I said I’m not going!” I take a breath to steady myself. “I’m not going,” I repeat, much more steadily, and return to the dishes.

  “Alright,” Chastity says quietly. When the sound of the kitchen door closing behind them tells me that she and David are gone, I let my hands slow, then stop entirely under the warm water. Three deep breaths. Relax.

  A short while later, someone comes back into the kitchen. I don’t turn around, but from the sound of their steps, I guess it’s David. A moment later, his voice confirms it. “We told Jeanette that you were dealing with something here. She was disappointed.”

  “Fine.”

  “That all you have to say?”

&n
bsp; I turn off the water again. This pot’s not getting any cleaner. “What am I supposed to say about a stranger’s disappointment? It isn’t as though I promised her anything.”

  “You should have gone out there. She’s a nice woman.”

  “I’m glad that you think so.”

  He pauses. “You embarrassed Chastity, you know.”

  “Maybe she’ll learn not to speak for other people, then.”

  “Wow. You are completely unbelievable.”

  Now, I do turn, and find him staring at me incredulously. “Unbelievable? Because I declined an invitation to meet some vagrant?”

  “No, not exactly.” He shakes his head. “I’d have thought you’d do it for Chastity, though, you know?”

  For once, I don’t have an answer. “I have to go,” I say, looking at my watch, and I begin to untie my apron.

  “Yeah. Okay. See you later?”

  I nod, and turn away from him.

  Belle

  I ARRIVE AT the mall exactly five minutes before I’m scheduled to meet my Sisters. Diana expressed some concern as to whether choosing to spend our day together at a shopping mall would be a good idea considering Sue’s financial situation and the fact that she’s just left a retail job, but in the end she was overruled. “Even if it does upset Sue, she will never rise above this if she does not face the things that cause her to feel that way,” I told her. “What better opportunity to do that than with her Sisters at her side?”

  “So you’re going to throw her in the deep end and demand that she swim,” was her reply.

  “You’re being very dramatic. I’ve asked Sue already, you know, and she said that she couldn’t care less where we go.”

  “You’re right. It sounds like she’s absolutely thrilled about it.” My grip tightens on my purse strap as I walk across the parking lot. This is going to be a success. Nothing will go wrong. Nothing can go wrong; I will simply not allow it.

  Diana is already there, of course, standing as straight and still as a piece of the architecture; Chastity and Denise are sitting on a bench a short distance away from her. “Good afternoon, ladies,” I say. “How’s it going?”