The Story of Beautiful Girl

by Rachel Simon

  She fell to her knees and prayed for forgiveness.

  She didn’t need to talk it over with Scott. She didn’t even need to go home.

  The moment Kate’s shift ended, she drove to the nearest pay phone. As she got out of her car in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven and hurried over, she thought about how she’d begun working at the School as an act of penance. Now she would be doing another.

  The phone rang five times before it was picked up.

  “ ’Lo?” a woman’s voice said on the other end.

  A television was playing loudly in the background.

  “I’m trying to reach Lynnie,” Kate said. “Please tell her Kate is calling.”

  The person walked away. It wasn’t Doreen anymore. Lynnie had moved twice into other group homes, and the roommates kept changing.

  “Kate!” Lynnie said when she grabbed the phone.

  “Lynnie,” Kate said, so relieved to hear the happiness in her voice. “I haven’t seen you in such a long time.”

  “Nine years,” Lynnie said.

  “That’s right. And guess what? I have something I need to do soon in Pennsylvania. Maybe even next week. Is it all right with you if I come visit?”

  Speaking for Herself

  LYNNIE

  1993

  Look up, Kate,” Lynnie said.

  They were standing inside the Capitol building in Harrisburg, in the enormous domed room whose name Lynnie still had trouble pronouncing: “rotunda.”

  Lynnie had first seen the rotunda five Octobers ago, when she attended a conference here in the State Capitol and learned about becoming a self-advocate. Since then, as she’d returned every year to the conference, she’d become familiar with this grand lobby and its marble floor, painted murals, sweeping staircase, stained glass, and jaw-droppingly high ceiling. Today she would finally get her chance to go deep inside the building to speak to legislators—another word Lynnie found difficult to say—when they held a hearing at three o’clock.

  Now, though, it was only nine thirty. Lynnie had brought Kate here early, leaving behind the conference at the hotel, because she and Kate were doing something else before the hearing.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Lynnie said to Kate as they stood in the entrance to the lobby, tilting their heads back to look up.

  “Yes. I can see why you wanted to come here first.”

  “Beautiful” was once the biggest word Lynnie had ever said. Her speech therapist, Andrea, had told her, After you master that, the sky’s the limit. She wasn’t quite right—Lynnie did not cross a language threshold with “beautiful.” She was still far from knowing all the words that could express her observations and insights, even in her own mind, and when she was able to say the ones that fit her modest vocabulary, her mouth still struggled. But Andrea was right that once Lynnie achieved “beautiful,” she’d develop a new confidence. Since then, she’d improved her enunciation and pace, grown bolder about the length and quantity of her sentences, and become more in control of her volume. She’d even learned some “add-ons,” as Andrea called them, like standing an “appropriate” distance from people when you’re in a conversation. So, incredibly, Lynnie had been able to get a job that required speaking, as a receptionist for BridgeWays, the agency that ran the group home where she lived.

  Kate said, “This place is amazing, Lynnie.”

  “It sounds beautiful, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Close your eyes.” Kate gave her a curious look, and Lynnie just squeezed her hand.

  She loved this aspect of the rotunda, too: When she closed her eyes, the clack of shoes, the whiffle of clothes, the clink of jewelry, and the buzz of voices expanded as wide as the room, making her aware of a world so much larger than herself.

  “It echoes,” Kate said.

  “And if you stand in the right spot, it’s even better.” Lynnie opened her eyes and added, “Keep your eyes closed and I’ll show you.”

  Then she guided Kate to the spot she’d discovered by accident, when Doreen had been talking to her their first time there, right under the highest point of the dome overhead, in the center of the rotunda. “Say something,” Lynnie whispered to Kate.

  Kate made a face, as if lining up all her words and trying to pick one out.

  Lynnie added, “And say it loud.”

  Kate nodded. “I’m so proud of you, Lynnie.”

  Lynnie smiled and almost wished Kate were looking at her. Instead she said, “Louder.”

  “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Louder!” Lynnie was giggling, her volume more than Andrea would call “appropriate.”

  “Lynnie makes me proud!” Kate shouted.

  That’s what it took. Kate’s voice became resonant, as voices did under the dome, turning so strong, it seemed to sweep beneath Kate’s and Lynnie’s feet and lift them into the air.

  Kate laughed and squeezed their hands together. People looked, but why should Lynnie mind? She was with one of her favorite people, in one of her favorite places, teaching something she’d figured out all on her own. What could be better than that?

  Actually, a few things could be better than that.

  Right now, for instance, Lynnie could be with Kate at the conference instead of sitting in Kate’s car as they drove into the countryside. Kate had never been to a conference of self-advocates, and she’d been flushed and giddy at the banquet last night. She kept waving to people across the ballroom, recognizing residents and staff from the School. She’d even gotten to catch up with Doreen just before the deejay started to spin records, when Doreen told her the story that happened a few years ago. One day, Doreen said, the mailman came to the group home with a letter that required Doreen’s signature. When Doreen tore open the envelope, they learned that her father had died and left her a lot of money. “Whoo-hoo!” Doreen had squealed, jumping around. “Disney World, here I come!” There was one glitch: It turned out Doreen wasn’t allowed to keep her government assistance after her windfall, so BridgeWays couldn’t help her anymore. Yet it had all worked out, as Doreen, shouting over “Everybody Dance Now,” told Kate. “I got my own place and I hire my own aides. Now I don’t have to put up with any dumb rules or people too big for their britches.” Kate said, “That’s really great,” and then Doreen, wearing a silver lamé dress, pulled Kate and Lynnie onto the dance floor. By the time they went to their rooms, laughing and sweaty, Lynnie almost wished she and Kate wouldn’t be busy during the conference the next day.

  But when Kate called last week and said she wanted to visit Pennsylvania as soon as possible, she told Lynnie about Clarence’s confession. “It was a long time ago,” Kate said, “but Smokes should be brought to justice.” It had been a long time too since the growl of a dog had returned Lynnie to that night, and Kate explained that justice would require her to get on a stand and go through it again. Lynnie told Kate she couldn’t bear the thought of doing that, and although Kate grew annoyed at first, she finally said that at the very least, she wanted to track down Smokes’s address outside Harrisburg and tell him to his face that she knew what he’d done. “I want to do that, too,” Lynnie said. She could even meet Kate right in Harrisburg, because she was going there anyway for the conference. That was why Kate waited until last night to fly here and why they were now driving through the Pennsylvania countryside.

  That’s one thing that would have been better about today.

  There was a second thing that would have been better, too, though Lynnie kept pushing it out of her mind. That wasn’t as hard as she’d imagined, because Kate had asked her to bring a tape of songs she liked, and they were playing it now on the tape recorder Lynnie bought for herself with her own money: Gloria Estefan, Jon Bon Jovi, Phil Collins, the Bangles. Kate had a tape of music she liked, too, and said they could listen to it on the way back, if Lynnie wanted.

  “Can I decide then? I might be upset.”

  “Sure. But remember, you can still change your mind. I can turn around rig
ht now.”

  “I want to do it.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause what he did was bad, and I want to tell him that.”

  They drove for a whole other song before either of them spoke. Then Kate turned to Lynnie. “Buddy would have been proud of you.”

  Lynnie smiled. When a jelly-bellied guy named Dave, from the BridgeWays workshop, had asked her over one evening, she’d gotten bored by how he just wanted to watch football. Then there was Miguel, who wore tie-dyed shirts and was with the Special Olympics bowling crowd she saw every Tuesday night. He took her out for ice cream three times and spent every one of them blabbing about himself. After those lousy dates, Lynnie told Doreen that no one was like Buddy. “You’re holding out for someone who let you down,” Doreen responded. “Buddy hasn’t let me down,” Lynnie said, feeling hurt. “What else would you call it after twenty-five years?” Doreen said. “Give it up. I mean, I’d be pissed as a hornet if I was you.”

  Last night, in her hotel room, Kate asked Lynnie if she wanted to find out what happened to the baby, and Lynnie nodded hard. Kate said she was so glad to hear this and picked up the phone to call someone named Eva. But Kate never mentioned Buddy.

  And that’s the other thing that could be better today. If Lynnie found out the baby was doing well—and that Doreen was as wrong as a person could be.

  “This can’t be the right address,” Kate said, pulling up to a curb.

  They were in front of a squat, run-down row house on a narrow dead end. Other streets were terraced above this one, with houses that looked less sorry. Here, a brook, littered with plastic bags, soda bottles, and shopping carts and surrounded by exposed tree roots, snaked along the side of their car. The houses on the block weren’t much better. They sat behind chain-link fences or overgrown bushes. Some were even boarded up, and mold covered several walls.

  Kate looked at the scrap paper in her hand, then up to the house. “The number matches,” she said. “But his family was so well-off. I can’t believe they’d allow him to live here.”

  “Maybe it’s wrong.”

  “Clarence said it was the last address he had.”

  “We could go see.”

  “Do you feel ready?”

  Lynnie looked at the house. Was she? Did she even need to do this? What if just seeing him silenced her all over again?

  She had to do it. She had to say, You did a terrible thing to me. Kate said that Clarence had found his conscience. “Some people,” she’d said with an extra blink to her eyes, “do eventually see their errors.” Lynnie had to do what she could so Smokes would finally see his.

  Yet just being here made her remember the stink of his breath. Who was she to think she could jolt his conscience, especially when she was tongue-tied so often? Sometimes in the bowling alley, kids walking by her team snickered, and though Lynnie fumed in her seat, it was Doreen who called out, “Hey, jackasses, you want this bowling ball bonking your head?” Once, when an aide named Carmen was training Lynnie and other BridgeWays consumers to buy groceries, a lady came up and said, “What are they doing here?” and all Lynnie could think to say was, “We’re shopping.” And one of the biggest reasons self-advocates spoke to legislators was that whenever a new group home was set to open, some neighbors would put up a fight, and Lynnie was always too shy to go to those meetings. It was as if lots of people wanted places like the School to open up again so people like Lynnie would just go away. So what made her think she could say anything that would shake up somebody’s conscience?

  Yet what made her think she couldn’t?

  Lynnie opened the car door and stepped out.

  The street had the stench of raw sewage, reminding her of the School. Kate came up beside her. “It must be awfully unpleasant to live here.”

  Together they marched up the short walkway, which was washed over with mud. Puddles also dotted the yard, coated with an iridescence that looked like oil. The porch was warped, and when they mounted it, Lynnie saw a big hole. Under the eaves was a bird’s nest.

  Lynnie rang the bell.

  “Do you want me to hold your hand?” Kate whispered.

  Lynnie shook her head no.

  She heard slow, shuffling footsteps. They came up to the door, but the door did not open.

  “Who’s that?” It was an old man, and his voice had no patience.

  “I want to see Smokes,” Lynnie said.

  “Who?”

  “Glen Collins,” Kate said.

  “He’s not here.”

  “We were told he lived at this address,” Kate said.

  “He lives in every bar in the county.”

  Kate looked at Lynnie.

  Lynnie asked, “All the time?”

  “He comes back when it damn well pleases him.”

  “Should we wait?” Kate asked.

  Laughter. “Why would you wait for him?”

  Lynnie said, “He owes us something.”

  Kate looked at her, impressed.

  “Fat chance you’ll ever see it.”

  “When will he be back?” Kate asked.

  “Anytime between now and tomorrow. You want to wait, be my guest.”

  “Can we wait in there?” Kate asked. “It’s cold out here.”

  “It’s bad enough I got to deal with him. You leave me in peace.”

  They heard a shuffle away from the door, followed by the sound of the television.

  “Let’s wait in the car,” Kate said. “We’ve got a few hours before we have to head back.”

  They sat in the front with the heat running. Kate offered to play her tape, but Lynnie didn’t want to hear music right now. “Let’s just talk,” she said.

  “Okay,” Kate replied, smiling. “Tell me how you spend your days.”

  Lynnie told her, not worrying, for a change, about her pacing or pronunciation. She talked about a friendly bus driver, Dale, who drove the route that took her from the group home outside Sunbury into town, where BridgeWays was located in a red brick building two blocks off the main street. She talked about the people who ran the office, Sarah and Dustin, and that they lived in houses with their families. She talked about the calls that came into the office and the visitors she directed to a conference room. She talked about bowling on Tuesday nights, and how, on Saturdays, she’d take Vince’s bus to Doreen’s apartment to watch videos.

  “What about when you’re at home? Do you like that?”

  “So-so. I stay in my room and do my drawings. Sometimes my roommates aren’t so nice. And the aides change all the time. You get used to someone and they leave.”

  Kate sighed. “So you’re not at the School anymore, but there’s room for improvement.”

  “It’s better.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And you send cards.”

  “I’ll be more regular about it now.”

  “That’ll be nice.”

  “And you know, some people live on their own. Does BridgeWays have an independent living program?”

  “I don’t want to live alone. Doreen’s lonely.”

  “She is? She didn’t say that.”

  “She doesn’t want you to know. She spends all day going to stores so she can hang out with the people working there till they need to get things done. Then she goes buying. She’s got so many videos and posters and sparkly jewelry and knickknacks, they take up her whole place. Then she sits around at night, eating and looking at what she got and calling me.”

  “It’s good you go bowling together, and visit her on Saturdays.”

  “It’s not enough. She’s alone too much. I don’t want that.”

  “What do you want?”

  Lynnie looked down. “I want to be with Buddy and my daughter.”

  Kate nodded.

  “We’re going to find out what happened to her, right?”

  “Yes. That woman I called, Eva, is coming to meet us in Harrisburg tonight. But I know a little already.”

  Lynnie’s heart reared up. “What
do you know?”

  Kate made a sad smile. “The old lady did what you asked. She hid her.”

  Lynnie’s heart spread across her chest.

  “She wanted to do well by you, Lynnie. She took the baby the very next day and they… moved around, from one place to another, so they wouldn’t be found.”

  “The old lady did that?”

  “For years. She felt it was the right thing to do.”

  Lynnie played with her fingers in her lap. “Some people know right from wrong.”

  “I don’t think it’s always that simple, Lynnie. But for her it was.”

  “What’s the baby’s name?”

  “Julia.”

  “Julia.” Lynnie looked down at the feather necklace. “That’s a beautiful name.”

  “For a long time they settled in Massachusetts. Julia was in school—a regular school. They were living a regular life.”

  Lynnie gazed out the windshield. The sky was gray and the houses broken. There was so much that was ugly in this world. Yet look. A blue jay was flying toward the house. It dove under the porch roof and tucked itself into the nest.

  “That was a really decent thing the old lady did.”

  “I still can’t believe it, Lynnie.”

  “What about Buddy?”

  Kate looked up at the car ceiling, and her eyes went back and forth as she bit her lip. Then she took Lynnie’s hands as if she were going to say something. Finally she pushed her lips together and shook her head.

  Lynnie said, “Doreen says to forget him. But he’s still trying to get back to me.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I know it. He’ll be back”—and this word she had to work at—“eventually.”

  Kate nodded and fiddled with the clasp of her purse. “Then I know he will, too.”

  “Hey,” Lynnie said, her eye catching a motion in the side mirror. “Someone’s coming.”

  A man had rounded the corner at the far end of the block. Lynnie turned and looked out the rear window. He was in a brown hoodie and baggy navy sweatpants and was stumbling so much, he kept steadying himself by grabbing on to the misshapen trees and chain-link fences separating the houses from the road. Lynnie recognized him not by sight, but by the hurried feeling she got inside, as though she had to breathe fast to get enough air, and she imagined in her chest a hundred jaws opening and closing, the teeth biting down while voices yelled. She felt the way she used to feel when someone around her was crying, only worse. She knew she couldn’t throw herself down and kick and scream. Instead, her breathing got harder until it stopped coming at all. She felt as if she were choking on a cloth.