The Story of Beautiful Girl

by Rachel Simon

  Lynnie thought of Tonette. She thought of how, after it all happened, they told Lynnie she could go to the cemetery to tell Tonette good-bye. Lynnie had gone with a few attendants, and they’d stood in the cemetery, watching a man dig Tonette’s grave. Had Lynnie been able to read, she would have known the headstones around them had no names, only numbers, for the order in which people died, and that Tonette was the six hundred seventy-second person to die. But all Lynnie could understand, as working boys lowered Tonette into the ground and the blond, bearded pastor read a prayer and Lynnie couldn’t stop crying, was that Tonette tried to speak up and now she was here. Remembering what she and Nah-nah had done when their grandfather died, Lynnie wiped her eyes, bent down, and set a pebble on the grave.

  That’s when she’d made up her mind to stop speaking.

  They reached a doorway at the top of a ramp. “You can take your time deciding,” Kate said. “I’ll find you after lunch, okay?”

  Throughout lunch, Lynnie thought about what Kate wanted. The dining room was loud, as always. There had been a time when silence was enforced, but the staff had gotten too sparse for that, and besides, everyone was excited about the movie tonight. Usually movies were shown once a week. Today was a holiday, so they’d get one extra.

  The dining room was like usual in other ways, too. This pair of friends here, those three there. Lynnie sat with Doreen and Betty Lou, though she disliked Betty Lou, who had a hoarse voice and said rude things. Before Lynnie’s escape, she’d decided she’d had enough of Betty Lou, but Lynnie had not taken any action. She couldn’t risk having anyone think she was thinking.

  Now, though, thinking was all she could do. Should she let Kate know what happened? Kate felt strongly that Lynnie should, and Lynnie had never deliberately disappointed her. Lynnie also had endless proof that Kate acted in her best interests: Kate had never tattled about Lynnie’s drawings, or the treasure-laden pouch, or the secret hours in the office with Buddy. If Lynnie revealed the truth to anyone, it would be Kate.

  But Lynnie remembered the last time she saw Tonette. One day, when Lynnie was leaving the dayroom for dinner, another resident had given her a push. The bloody nose sent her to the hospital cottage, where she got to see Tonette. After Lynnie’s nose cleared up, Tonette came over and whispered, “See that nurse?” She pointed. Tonette said, “She just came over from the hospital in Scranton. She’s not sick in the soul like Clarence and them. I’m gonna tell her what I’ve seen.” This went against Tonette’s own advice. “Why?” Lynnie asked—a word long since lost to her lips. Tonette said, “ ’Cause things happen here that shouldn’t.” She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them. “I know I’m taking a chance, but it’s getting personal.” Lynnie had no idea what she meant. Tonette said, “After dinner tonight, I’m telling them I gotta go back here to work. Then I’ll sit her down and unburden myself.” Lynnie said, “Be careful.”

  That night, Lynnie fell asleep thinking about Tonette going to the nurse and wondering if the next day things would be different. And they were: The staff looked tense at breakfast. She didn’t hear anything more for two days, and then word spread. A resident named Wanda, who had a temper and who’d been throwing furniture around and beating anyone who got near, had been put in solitary. And when Tonette was caught talking to the nurse, she was put in solitary, too—in the same cell where Wanda was waiting to tear anything and anyone to pieces. The story made its way over the stone walls, and Uncle Luke told the papers it was an accident; the staff hadn’t known Wanda was inside that same cell. Police came to investigate, but no staff would talk, and Tonette couldn’t either. She was already in the cemetery.

  Now, Lynnie looked across the dining hall. Kate was wiping food off Gina’s face. Her touch was not rough, as with some of them, and she talked to Gina as she wiped. When Kate returned to feeding Gina, she looked up and caught Lynnie’s eye. Then she smiled. Not a happy-sad smile. A Kate-in-the-morning smile. A smile that said, I’m glad to see you.

  Lynnie said to herself, It’s only Kate. Then she stopped thinking of Tonette. Yet she knew, as she spooned up her lunch, that beneath her reasons for not wanting to tell was something even worse. She had not let herself think it since she made up the story she told Buddy. And with Kate’s smile across the room, she would not let herself think it now.

  So Lynnie drew.

  Kate kept busy at her desk. The radio was on low, with a man who sang, And I think to myself, what a wonderful world… Although Lynnie liked this song, today she barely heard it. She was too caught up in her blues and purples, which she used for the night sky, and too involved with her grays and whites, which she used for the wall. The ladder was brown. She and Buddy were black shapes, running away.

  “That’s what I thought,” Kate said when Lynnie finished. She looked at the picture a long time. Then she said, “What happened next?” She pushed a blank paper in front of Lynnie.

  Lynnie stared at the paper. She hadn’t realized Kate wanted more. There was more, but when she’d drawn memories for Buddy, she’d used single drawings. She’d never drawn “What happened next?”

  Kate waited. She turned off the radio to help Lynnie concentrate. Then she pulled a book off a shelf. Nah-nah had read books, and, like them, this one had pictures.

  Kate sat beside Lynnie at the desk. “This book tells a story using drawings,” she said, “and each one tells the next part of the story.” She turned page after page. The book was about a yellow duck named Ping, who lived on a boat with his duck family. One day he got tricked into going onto a stranger’s boat, where he got caged in an upside-down basket. He was upset, and it looked like he’d never escape. Then a little boy set him free, and Ping found his way home.

  Lynnie had not understood years ago what she saw now: A book wasn’t something you could open anywhere and then flip to anywhere else. You opened it at the front and went forward, and the pages went from one to the next, each adding to the last, and the story grew more exciting with each page. It was like the way corn grew from the seed that got planted in spring to the tall rows you hid inside in the fall. A story grew.

  Understanding something that had never been clear before, Lynnie drew. She drew the bomb shelter. She drew the baby being born. She drew them stealing the signs in the rain. She drew them running over Old Creamery Bridge. She drew them making their way along a road with many trees. She drew them stopping on the road with the mailbox with the lighthouse man. She drew the old lady letting them in.

  “And then?” Kate said. “What happened next?”

  Lynnie drew one more picture. The old lady was standing in her doorway. The baby—seen through the attic window—was sleeping in her basket. Number Forty-two was running into the woods. The sedan was driving away.

  Kate held up the last drawing and looked at it closely.

  Then she turned to Lynnie. “You left the baby there because you wanted to protect it.”

  Lynnie nodded.

  “Why? You didn’t know that woman at all.”

  Lynnie sorted through the drawings. She pulled out the one with the lighthouse man.

  Kate looked at her. “I don’t get it.”

  Lynnie wanted to tell Kate about the sea. About that time when she and Nah-nah were on a beach, far away from Mommy and Daddy and the party they were attending, where Daddy had said to Nah-nah, “It’s such a nice day, Hannah. Why don’t you take Lynnie for a walk.” She wanted to tell Kate about the storm coming up suddenly when they were far down the beach. About them running to the big tall tower and finding a door and climbing round and round and round. And coming into the top. And going over to the window. And looking out to the storm. And Nah-nah saying, “It can’t get to us now. We’re way up here, and you’re safe with me.”

  Lynnie had drawn that tower once for Buddy, perching it beside the sea. He’d stared at the water a long time, puzzling over what it was. She drew him another picture of a person crying and pointed back to the sea. He folded up the first drawing and put it i
n his pocket.

  But Lynnie could not tell any of these memories to Kate.

  Kate said, “Well, I don’t understand, but do you want me to report any of this?”

  Lynnie shook her head no.

  “I wish you’d say yes, Lynnie.”

  Lynnie shook her head harder.

  “Oh, Lynnie.” Kate made a sigh and looked out the window. “Why not?”

  Lynnie looked down at her pencils and rolled them between her hands.

  Kate said, “All right. I think I can guess why, and if I’m correct, then I’ll understand. I won’t like it, but I’ll understand.”

  Lynnie looked up.

  Kate said, “Did you think the baby might go through what happened to the other babies here? The ones in the nursery?”

  Lynnie looked at her a long time. Then she felt something happen inside. It had happened once before, right here in this office, when Buddy had rocked his arms as if he were rocking a baby in a cradle, then asked with his face, What happened? She’d paused a minute, then done exactly what she knew she’d do if Kate ever asked her the same question. Lynnie had pointed out the window to the boys’ cottage, the one that overran A-3 that night months before.

  Who? Buddy asked with his hands.

  Then she’d drawn boys swarming the cottage in the dark, the light too dim for her to see.

  Buddy had shaken the bars on the staff office windows, enraged. The next day he’d begun plotting their escape.

  Should she do it again? Once a page has been turned, can it be turned back? No. She was the new Lynnie. She knew how a lie felt.

  Kate said again, “That’s why you left the baby with her, right?”

  Lynnie cut her eyes away and nodded.

  But she’d had to lie, Lynnie thought when Kate brought her to the common cottage, where they showed the movies. The sun was setting, and Lynnie could see Clarence and Smokes and the dogs as the lights came on outside. Usually during a movie she sat far from the window, but she’d arrived late. She tried to concentrate on the movie, about a singing lady who could fly by holding an umbrella. Doreen sat across the room and kicked her feet back and forth. Betty Lou called out that it was stupid. But Lynnie kept turning to the window. It was hard not to, with it so dark in here and Smokes and Clarence standing under a lamp, Clarence puffing on his pipe, Smokes wrapping a dog chain around his wrist. Then she realized Smokes was making a dog jump at Clarence. Clarence was backing off, looking scared. Smokes was laughing. “Sissy,” she heard him taunt. “Sissssseeee.” Clarence froze, then stepped closer to the dog, which bared its teeth—and he whacked the dog in the head. The dog shrank back, whimpering. Clarence wiped his hands, showing his job was done. Smokes tipped an invisible hat in approval.

  She’d had to lie. She could not open an umbrella and let it carry her away.

  Soon it was routine. Listening to Doreen until she fell asleep, then looking to the tower clock in the window and thinking of Buddy coming and carrying her to the ladder. He would have to carry her, because as every day passed, she felt herself growing numb. Her legs did not want to move, her arms had trouble in the laundry, and she knew it was from the wanting. She remembered the same numbness after the first visit from Mommy, when Nah-nah wasn’t along and Mommy said she wouldn’t be coming, and that Uncle Luke said everyone would do better this way. Lynnie remembered more numbness later, when she caught on that Mommy was never returning. Ever since, Lynnie had wondered which was worse: the sudden good-bye you know is a good-bye or the long good-bye you have to guess. Now, after a sudden good-bye from the baby, she was beginning to worry, as the snows thickened and the stars sparkled with the clarity of deep winter, that Buddy was going to be a long good-bye that she would have to guess.

  Kate did something called praying, and Lynnie knew it was to ask for favors. Kate had once tried to explain Jesus Christ and Mary. Then Lynnie remembered hearing about God, who didn’t have a name. He had a tune, and her mother sang it when she lit candles every winter and they all ate chocolate coins in gold foil and Lynnie got a funny top to spin. But Kate did not sing this tune, and Lynnie did not know God’s name. So that meant she could not pray.

  Instead Lynnie thought about the pictures that came after the pages she already knew. She imagined drawings of the baby on the farm with the old lady. The baby would be sitting up, standing, someday even running. She tried to see the color of the baby’s eyes or hair. Would they be hers? Or would they—No. The child had to look like her. The child had to be happy. The child had to make friends who would hum with her, ride blue-and-green horses, play with Betsy Wetsys.

  She played this picture game with Buddy, too. Though she could only see him driving the tractor, fixing machines, handing her feathers. The pages would not draw themselves for him.

  So Lynnie worried when Doreen came to her one day in Kate’s office. Lynnie had just finished drawing—though not the future she could not see. She was drawing the past she could see. Feathers of all colors, curling in the air like smoke.

  Kate was locking the pictures in the drawer when Doreen came in, wearing her mail delivery sack across her shoulder, and said, “Someone’s looking for Lynnie.”

  Kate immediately shut the door. “What are you talking about?”

  Doreen explained she’d just been in the main office. A heavyset woman with brown hair in a ponytail had shown up and told Maude she wanted to visit with Lynnie. “Maude asked if she was your family, and she said no. Maude said that was against the rules, and she left.”

  “Lynnie,” Kate said, “do you know why this woman would want to see you?”

  Lynnie shook her head, but she knew it had something to do with her escape.

  Kate thanked Doreen, and when she left the room, Kate opened the file cabinet. She paged through the pictures. Nothing like this woman was in them.

  She sat down and folded her hands on the desk. She said, “I know you don’t want me to tell anyone, and I said I wouldn’t. But Lynnie, I’m terribly worried about the baby. You have a baby out there in the world. Your baby. This woman might know something about your baby.”

  Lynnie looked at Kate. Maybe this woman knew the old lady. Maybe Lynnie could find out about the baby. Maybe Lynnie could even learn the color of the baby’s hair.

  “And I’m asking you, I’m begging. Let me find out why she wants to talk to you.”

  Lynnie thought a long time. Even if she couldn’t be with the baby, she could know about the baby. She could draw the pages she would never see.

  No. She could not.

  She looked away.

  Kate set her fingers on Lynnie’s hand until Lynnie met her eyes. “I know you’re mourning the loss,” Kate said. “But I have to ask you something. Please be honest with me, and I’ll honor your wishes.” She took a deep breath. “Do you want me to go find your baby?”

  Lynnie had not considered this.

  “Just say I can do it,” Kate went on. “I’ll go find that old lady’s house and make sure the baby’s all right. I’ll tell you everything you want to know—and I’ll never tell another soul.”

  It would be so wonderful. Lynnie could draw the missing pages. She could know she’d saved the baby. She could know she’d saved her daughter.

  Except. If they found out, the pages would not look like what Lynnie envisioned at all. They would look like Tonette after Wanda finished with her. They would look like the animal after the dogs got through with it. They would look like what Lynnie saw in his eyes that night.

  Lynnie stared down at the lighthouse. With the old lady, the baby would be safe. She looked back up into Kate’s eyes. Then she turned another page, a page she so longed not to turn.

  “No,” she said.

  The Big Drawing

  HOMAN

  1969

  Finally, after five months: a hut where he might rest.

  Homan couldn’t believe his luck. A hut was jutting out from the bottom of a rock cliff. Standing in knee-high grass, freezing in a wind so strong that it
made young trees bow, he stared at it in the dusky light. One story high, with two windows and a chimney, the hut was startling in this place without people and buildings. For months he’d been sleeping outside, huddling under a blanket he’d snatched from a clothesline, wishing the buttons on the rabbit-fur jacket didn’t fall so far short of their holes. If only he were narrower in the chest. If only he hadn’t lost Roof Giver’s shirt and jacket in the river, when getting to Beautiful Girl was as simple as going east. But his chest was broad, those clothes were gone, and the train had taken him west.

  He’d had his first taste of luck after the initial forty nights, when he found a bag of old clothes in some woods. After that, though he still spent his days far from houses and shops and cars, looking over his shoulder for police and scrounging up anything to keep the hunger away, at least his teeth weren’t chattering, except at night. When the cold got too wicked, he’d venture into towns, staking out empty garages, houses with tucked-away places underneath porches. He hated sunrise, when his predicament would jolt him awake. Yet he loved sunrise, too, because that was when he’d see them, right there in his mind. Beautiful Girl standing in the cornfield, hair blowing in the breeze. Little One in a crib, able to reach up now and touch his face. Just before he’d jump up to start running again, he would lift his hands. Good morning, beautiful girls, he’d sign. I’ll be back soon as I’m able.

  Now he set his blanket-sack on the ground, along with all it contained—his lost-and-found wardrobe, berries, a fishing rod and spear he’d made for catching meals, a tent, pocketknife, and canteen left at a campsite—and made his way through the high grass.

  When he came up to the hut’s door, he pressed his palms flat against the wood, hoping that if anyone was inside, he’d feel vibrations. The door did not tremble beneath his hands, so he looked from one window to the other. There was no motion inside, just the reflection of the stars coming out like a crushed cube of sugar. He waited a moment, gathering courage. Then he reached for the knob and cautiously pushed the door open.