Cruel Beautiful World

by Caroline Leavitt

  “Wait until you see the house.”

  He told her how he had found it. One day he was sitting at a diner, and he had overheard the waitress talking about renting out her house with an option to buy, because she had had enough of the chilly weather. She was moving to California, where she was going to bread herself in beach sand and work on her tan. “Could I see the house?” he asked, and she turned, her hand on her hip, a smile spreading across her face. She drove him over after her shift, just another half hour. “This is it,” she said, and as soon as he saw it, a neat little Cape Cod with a yard and trees and a porch, he wanted it. The inside was even better. He loved the snug little bedroom, the way the light slanted into the dining room, and the kitchen was so big he could imagine cooking feasts. It felt like fate. He immediately signed the lease, and his fake name gained new importance, because now he knew he’d ask Lucy to come with him.

  “It’s cozy, set off from the road,” he told Lucy now. He talked about all the things he wouldn’t miss: Boston traffic, the crappy Waltham school system, the crowded Green Line subway. “Think about waking up hearing mockingbirds outside instead of honking cars,” he told Lucy. He stroked a rope of her hair. “I’ll teach you to drive,” he said.

  She brightened. She’d like that, learning to drive. She could go places, explore the towns nearby. Lucy gazed at the countryside stretching out on either side of the road. They seemed to be driving for miles down a road without any other houses. She was used to seeing people walking around, or at least hitching, but there were hardly any cars on the road, just thickets of trees. “Look, a deer!” William said, pointing, but all Lucy saw was the bob of its tail before it vanished. They passed a house with boarded-up windows, another with a mangy-looking goat tethered to a stick in the front yard. The goat raised its head and bleated. She could see its ribs poking through its hair. “Are we lost?” Lucy asked, gripping the armrest, craning her neck until the goat was gone from sight.

  “Not at all.”

  Lucy sank lower into her seat. White trash. That was what people who lived in such a place were called, and now it was where Lucy lived.

  William finally turned down a dirt road. There at the end was a one-story brown clapboard house, with a walk surrounded by yellow flowers. She liked the flowers, like little bobbing suns, and there was a big maple tree in the front. But all around the house were woods. She sat up straighter. “It’s nice, right?” William said. “Didn’t I tell you?” He looked so hopeful she didn’t dare say no.

  She got out of the car, her legs stiff as glass straws. William shut his door and took her hand. But the closer she got to the house, the worse it looked, and her hope faded. The paint was chipping along one side, the windows were cracked in places. She stumbled across the dry, patchy lawn. “We can fix it up,” William told her. He waved his hands, pointing out the wood shutters, which actually worked, the fireplace (“Imagine how comfy we’ll be in the winter!” he said), all the land in the back that they could use to plant a garden. He partitioned it out with his fingers. “This soil’s great for vegetables,” he promised. “Wait until you see how self-sufficient we can be.”

  Every direction she looked, there was nothing but land. Not even neighbors.

  She heard clucking and then what sounded like a scream from a pterodactyl. “What the heck is that?” she said, and William laughed. “You’ll see,” he said. “It’s a surprise for you. You’re going to love it.” He took her hand and led her around to the back. Then she saw the wire chicken coop, the little open wood henhouse with rafters, and three chickens, black, red, and orange, pecking at the dirt. A rooster strutted in front of them. “We have chickens?” she said.

  “The owner left them for us. She had someone else feeding them until we got here. Isn’t it great? We can have eggs. Real eggs, not the junk you buy in the supermarket.” He pointed to each hen. “Let me see if I remember. Dorothy. Lisa. Mabel. And the rooster is George.” Lucy felt the rooster staring her down, his eyes like BB pellets. “Shoo,” she said weakly, waving her hands, and George flew up against the coop, his wings flapping, his feet like spurs angled in front of him. He banged against the wire of the coop, making it thwang, and Lucy jumped back. The black chicken—Dorothy, was that her name?—made a sad, mournful sound, as if she were beseeching Lucy.

  “Jesus, do we need him?” She pointed to the rooster, who was back on the ground again, kicking fiercely at the dirt.

  “Of course we do. And he’s just being protective of the hens. He’ll get used to you.” William put an arm around Lucy. “Come on. Let me show you our house.” He led her away, but she took one look back. The rooster was standing perfectly still, glaring at her.

  THEY WENT IN through the front door. He had to be kidding, Lucy thought. The inside didn’t look much better than the outside. The kitchen had chipped, yellowing linoleum and an old-fashioned stove. The bedroom was so tiny the bed barely fit in it. “We can paint everything white and it will look larger,” William told her. He grabbed her hand and led her into the bathroom, all black tile and peach walls, but then she saw the stain in the bathtub, like the piece of a map, and when she tried to flush the toilet, it kept running. William waved his hand. “It’s nothing. I can get it to work. You’ll see.” She tried to feel hopeful, to count the good things about the house, ticking them off on her fingers. The floors were wide-plank oak, the ceilings were high, and there were tall windows in every room. The kitchen was large enough to eat in, and best of all, there was a skylight in the bedroom so she could look up at night and see the stars.

  “We’ll buy furniture cheap at yard sales,” William said. “We can really make this our home, Lucy.”

  “The TV could go here,” Lucy said, pointing to the far wall of the living room.

  “Do we really need a TV? Then you don’t read as much.”

  “We read a lot.”

  “You’ll read more without it. And anyway, we have a radio and my stereo system,” he said. “What more do we need?”

  “We could watch movies together. Cuddle up, drink some wine.”

  “Can you be happy here?” he asked her. “Are you telling me this isn’t a good idea, what I planned for us? Because if you are, well, I’ll figure something else out. I want you to be happy.”

  She walked over to him and rested her head along his chest. She could feel the thunk of his heart. “I’m with you,” she said. “Of course I can be happy.” She tucked the idea of a TV back in her mind. She could convince him later, or maybe she could find a cheap little black-and-white set and just surprise him with it. She’d turn on a movie and he’d see how easy it was to get caught up in someone else’s story.

  THE NEAREST GROCERY store was a forty-five-minute drive (she timed it) on a long, empty road. But when they pulled into the crowded parking lot of the Giant Eagle Market, she felt instantly better. There were people milling around their cars, packing grocery bags into trunks, tending to misbehaving children. Civilization, Lucy thought.

  Inside was even better, with more people. Anyone looking at them would think they were a married couple, she bet. She smiled at everyone who met her eyes, the girl in the plaid dress, the young woman with a blond baby on her hip, and when they smiled back, she felt a flush of warmth. She could meet people, make friends. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Within ten minutes, she decided she loved everything about the Giant Eagle. She bounced to the loud Muzak, a syrupy rendition of “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.” Lucy felt so grown up walking with William, her arm looped in his, deciding on laundry soap, macaroni, and fruit, even though she had no real idea what to get. The only time she felt sure was in the toiletries aisle, where she bought shampoo, conditioner, and soap and a new toothbrush and toothpaste. But when she reached for a small package of hamburgers, William took it out of her hands and put it back in the case.

  “No, no, honey, we’re vegetarians,” he said.

  “We are?” She remembered all the lunches they had shared at school, the late nights at the diner. He h
ad eaten meat. Both of them had taken bites from a roast beef sandwich, and she still could remember how sexy and intimate she had thought it was. “Since when?”

  “Since lately. Did you ever see a slaughterhouse? Do you know lobsters have nuclear families? Why shouldn’t they be allowed to live out their lives the same as we do?”

  “But I like burgers.”

  “Honey, we’ll have burgers. Buckwheat burgers. Wait until you taste how delicious they are, how great you’ll feel after you eat them.” He wheeled the cart away from the meat section. “Anyway, it’s really bad karma to eat meat,” he said. He tapped her nose gently. “And you and I, we need all the good karma we can get right now.” She glanced back at the burgers. For a moment, thinking about them, her mouth watered. “But we have chickens,” she said finally.

  “We’re not eating them. We’re just eating the eggs. That’s different.”

  “But what will we eat?” She knew only one vegetarian at school, a girl who had lived in a commune with her parents and then moved to Waltham, and every day she brought the same sad-looking packed lunch to school, brown rice and broccoli in a plastic tub. No one wanted to eat with her.

  “You’ll see. We’ll eat well.”

  Lucy reached for a pint of chocolate ice cream and then looked at William. “This meet with your approval?” she said.

  “Come on, don’t be like that,” he said. “Of course we can have ice cream, but it’s a long drive. It’ll melt. ” He took the pint and put it back on the freezer shelf. “We’ll learn to make our own,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” She wheeled the cart to the checkout line.

  The whole market was so crowded it seemed to hum. She wanted to just stay here, wandering up and down the aisles, looking at all the different kinds of cookies, the cheeses and candies. All this choice. She smiled happily at William.

  “Soon we won’t have to come here so much,” he said. “We’ll have our own eggs, our own vegetables. We’ll be growing all our own meals.”

  Lucy leaned against him. You couldn’t grow ice cream, you couldn’t grow every single vegetable. They’d still have to come to the market.

  They set their food on the conveyer alongside the register. A girl about Lucy’s age, with long blond hair, bangs brushing her eyes, was pushing the food through, and she smiled at Lucy and made circles in the air, like twirls. “I like your hair,” the girl said, and Lucy looked at her name tag. Freda. “I like yours better, Freda,” Lucy said. “Especially your bangs.”

  Freda laughed. “I razor-cut them myself.”

  “Do you live near here?” Lucy asked, and then William nudged her and looked at her meaningfully.

  “We can help you out and bag this quickly,” he said, and he began plucking up items and stuffing them into brown paper bags. “We need to get a move on,” he said to Freda, and then he handed a bag to Lucy.

  Lucy waited until they were outside. “How come I couldn’t talk to her? She doesn’t know anyone in Waltham. How is she a danger to us?”

  William opened the car door. “You never know,” he said. “That’s the thing. You never know. Besides, you can do better than a checkout girl for a friend.”

  She felt stung, but he drove to another store, with dresses and blue jeans in the window, and she looked at him curiously. “You didn’t bring very much,” he said. “Let’s get you what you need.”

  He bought her two pairs of bell-bottoms and six T-shirts that were on sale, underwear, socks, and a dress, pale blue with a flounce on the bottom. “For when we hit the town,” William said, and Lucy twirled around and hugged him.

  WILLIAM’S NEW JOB started immediately. Spirit Free School, just half an hour away, was a year-round school because, as the slogan said, “We are all lifelong learners.” When he had come down before to scope out jobs, this was the first place William had found, and he had instantly loved the vibes. The walls were festooned with colorful drawings and displayed fanciful essays the kids had written about what Robin Hood would do in retirement (William’s favorite was that Robin would open a muffin store). A special room had been set up just for clay, and another for blocks, with a big sign that said BLOCKS BUILD IMAGINATION. To William’s surprise, the principal didn’t ask for his credentials or want references but instead told him he’d like to watch him teach a class, spur of the moment. A class could have five-year-olds and ten-year-olds, because age had nothing to do with learning. Pictures books were set beside volumes of Shakespeare. William walked into this one big room. “No desk!” he said. “Not one in sight!” Instead there were comfortable old couches and pillows, armchairs and rugs, and kids were wandering all over the room, picking up books and musical instruments, talking to one another. William was fast on his feet, and he made all the kids stand up and then he taught them how to do the Charleston, all the while talking about the 1920s and the Jazz Age and throwing in something about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Just like that, the principal decided he was hired.

  The school was founded with a focus on living in the natural world. Every kindergartner would learn to make and play a recorder out of wood gathered from the local forest. Students would learn to paint, sew aprons, plant gardens, and cook a few simple dishes like baked apples or mashed potatoes. Girls could learn woodworking, and boys could learn needlepoint, because nothing was assigned by gender. He had free rein to do whatever he wanted. When William came home at night, he couldn’t stop talking about the kids: Rain and Flower and Jacobean, little sponges who would just soak up knowledge. “It’s busy and noisy and wonderful,” he said. Students were not subordinate to teachers, and everyone would go by their first names because the philosophy was that there needn’t be a hierarchy. “They all call me Billy,” William said. “No more Mr. this or Mr. that.” William could wear whatever he wanted, including T-shirts and jeans, and no one cared how long his hair was. When Lucy looked at him, she swore he had lopped off years from his age. And forget report cards. Instead, teachers were encouraged to write narratives about each child, telling the story of a student’s progress. Sure, there were sometimes tests, but kids could do them collaboratively, figuring it out together.

  “Isn’t that cheating?” Lucy said, and William shook his head.

  “Tests are to frighten you into studying things you may not want to study. You should learn what you want to learn, what’s practical for you. And who better to know that than you?”

  “Oh,” Lucy said doubtfully. “Do little kids always know what they need to learn?”

  “Jesus, Lucy. Of course they do.”

  She tried to think what had been useful to her in school, and all she could come up with was the Home Ec class all the girls had to take. She had loved making Hamburger Helper, frying it in a little metal pan, and wolfing it down when it was done. Still, now hamburgers were off the menu, so a whole lot of good that class was. And William would probably ban Hamburger Helper anyway.

  William was in charge of eight kids, all different ages (there were only forty students in the whole school), which William said was a plus because it meant he could really get to know each child.

  “What about the other teachers?” She hoped there weren’t any pretty young women. She couldn’t imagine anyone not falling in love with William.

  “Two other guys, one woman. They seem nice.”

  “What’s the woman like?”

  William sighed. “Lucy, she’s married and she’s pregnant.”

  “Can I come see the school?”

  “Let’s wait a bit. We want to be careful.”

  “What about my GED?” Lucy said. “When can I start that? And I should get a job, too. Help out.”

  “Luce, we have all the time in the world,” he said.

  WILLIAM LEFT THE house every morning by six, since parents could drop off their kids anytime between seven and nine. He slid out of bed, trying not to wake her, but Lucy always bolted up because she felt greedy for time with him. She poured them both juice. She scrambled eggs, which she had also learned fr
om Home Ec class, and when they came out fluffy and golden, she wished she had a camera so she could snap a picture of them. She thought, I’m the lady of the house. “Who knew I could cook so great?” she beamed, and William laughed, kissed her, and then was gone.

  Their house. How she loved saying that. Maybe it wasn’t much, maybe it was rundown and rural, but it was hers. Theirs. The whole world was spread out in front of them. Maybe they had to stay hidden here for a while, but this little place could be their oasis. She rearranged the furniture so the bookshelves were in the sunny part of the room. She found a can of paint out back and a brush, and she painted the bathroom deep blue. And she loved him. Oh, how she loved him. When she was eighteen, maybe they could even get married here. Then she could invite Iris and Charlotte to come see her. She could cook something delicious for them. She could show off how wonderful her life had turned out.

  When William came home, when he saw the painted room, his mouth dropped open. “Lucy, what you’ve done!” He told her everything about his day, the two of them sitting on the porch in the cooling evening, and then he took her hand. “It’s such a relief to have someone to talk to like this, isn’t it?” William said.

  Lucy thought of all the things she had ached to say when she was at home with Iris and Charlotte, how lonely she was, how scared that she’d never amount to anything. She looked at William, how handsome he was, his hair long and loose around his shoulders, that straight nose that she loved to kiss. Away from school, he looked younger to her, almost like a kid, and she leaned over and started unbuttoning his plaid shirt, tumbling him to the porch floor until he kissed her.

  One day she cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom, scrubbing the stove with steel wool, washing the floor by hand. The following week she dug a garden in the backyard, the sun beating on her back. It was hard work and she was exhausted by the time William came home, happy to sit on the porch with him. But by the third week, she was running out of things to do. William had surprised her with a pad of paper, brushes, and a box of watercolors in little tubes. She had grasped the box in her hands, pleased. “You have all this time to write now,” William had told her. She grabbed her blue journal and a pen and settled by the kitchen table and wrote a story about a young woman who goes to live on a farm and grows apples, but after a few hours, Lucy set the pen down. She had no idea where to take the story. She heard the house ticking around her.