Cruel Beautiful World

by Caroline Leavitt

  “The school didn’t need it anymore,” William said. “It would have just been landfill if I left it, so I was really doing everyone a favor. And hey, I guess a little TV is fine. But why don’t you do some writing now first?”

  She looked at him, annoyed. “I will,” she said, just to appease him. But why wasn’t he doing any writing? The plan was always for William to finally have time to finish his novel. “When I get published, it’ll be easier for us to get you published,” he told her. When he talked about his plans, he got so excited his eyes lit up. But she had seen him writing only once, typing pages on his old turquoise Smith Corona manual, tearing them out, and throwing them into the trash. She fished the pages out the next day. One page was a grocery list: tomatoes, spinach, bread. But the other page was just a paragraph, about a fisherman who was after a marlin, and all she could think about was The Old Man and the Sea, and wasn’t this too similar? He didn’t really write like Hemingway, though. He used strings of adjectives, and she thought you weren’t supposed to do that. The wide, teeming, frothy sea. The biting, gentle cold. How could the cold be gentle and biting at the same time? She pushed the paper back into the trash can. He threw these pages out, so he must have known they were bad. Besides, he complained how the school took all his energy, so that he couldn’t write anything really meaningful. But sometimes he told her that even though it looked as if he wasn’t writing, he was crafting his novel in his head. He pointed to his temple. “I’m mapping out the scenes, fleshing out the characters. There’s still work going on,” he had told her.

  “Don’t you want to show me?” she had asked.

  “I will when it’s ready,” he had told her.

  Now he flicked off the set. “Come on, let’s work,” he said.

  She used to love his critiques of her work. She had felt that she couldn’t do it on her own, that she wasn’t smart enough. When he helped her, he noticed things for her that she’d never have thought about herself: A character who wasn’t revealing himself by his actions. A line of dialogue that sounded tinny. Working with William had felt as if she had caught the tail end of a comet, all that brightness catapulting her forward. But now she just got annoyed when he read her stories. None of his comments made sense. He wanted her to make a story about a drowning funnier. “You need more moral complexity,” he told her. “You’re swimming in the shallows here.” But he never really pointed out what he meant by that or how she could fix it.

  She went to the desk drawer and brought out some loose leaf pages she didn’t think would upset William and spread them on the table. William sat down, so close their shoulders were touching, making her want to move, but he was smiling at her. “This is what I always dreamed of,” he told her. “The two of us, working side by side.”

  She showed him a story she was working on, about a young woman on a train with an older man, anxious that he like it. He read it silently, and then he looked at her, pained. “You’re writing about a girl and a grown man?” he said. “Really?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “It’s a little close to home, isn’t it?”

  “You told me to write about what I know.”

  He told her the story might work if she changed it, if she made them an older couple living in Alaska. Or Detroit—now, that would be even better. She listened, numb, as he picked apart her story, the wrong storyline, the bad dialogue, the lack of emotion. “I’ll look at it after you rewrite,” he said.

  Later that night, when William was asleep, Lucy got up and went into the dining room and pulled out her blue journal, the one she now hid behind the bookshelf. She sat up all that night, writing. She wrote about a girl whose boyfriend took her way out into the country, and the girl fell out of love with him and deep in love with someone who ran a farm stand. Patrick. She used his real name, then crossed it out and wrote “Jason.” She wrote about a young girl’s wanting to break up with her older boyfriend, who controlled everything in her life. She embellished it so that the man wouldn’t even let her eat, watching her every bite. “Look at that little belly,” the boyfriend said. “Now we know what you’ll look like when you’re pregnant.” It felt true to her. Real. The boyfriend had William’s eyes. It was as if William had said those words to her. She felt her characters getting stronger, but what good was it if the only person who saw them was her? This will all change. She wrote it across one page, like a promise to herself. Here it was, the thing she was finally good at, but she had no idea where you sent out stories or how you did it, and if she asked William, would he actually help her? She needed a plan. More money. Maybe she could get another job, earn some money so she could get to California. Just enough so she wouldn’t have to sleep on the streets. She wished she knew where William kept the cash he made from the school.

  Meanwhile she was still only seventeen. She had seen how scared that made William. She could walk into any police station and tell them how she and William had run away, but then what would happen? She’d get to go home, but they’d put William in prison. And as much as she wanted to be away from him, did she really want that?

  Maybe Patrick would even change his mind about her when he saw how famous she was going to be. Maybe she could get a huge book deal. She was lost in thinking about it, how she might end up in New York City walking into a big publishing house. How she might get to be on TV, talking about her influences. How there might be parties and she would be glittering as tinsel, moving through the crowd in a spangly party dress. And then the lights dimmed on her fantasy and she was back in the farmhouse again. It was just she and William.

  She shut the journal and hid it. Then she went back to bed, trying to will sleep to come, though stories still flew around in her head.

  THE NEXT EVENING, William came in with paint spattered all over his good shirt, frowning. “What happened?” she said.

  “Art class didn’t go as planned.” He sighed. “It never goes as planned.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.” He looked over at the TV and then at the burgers. “Buckwheat burgers again?”

  She opened up the cupboards. “What else do you see for me to cook?”

  “We have chickens, honey. We could have omelets. Or fondue.”

  “What’s fondue?”

  William got that look again, the one she hated, his mouth opening as though he were remembering something painful.

  She didn’t tell him that she hated to take the eggs from the hens, especially Dorothy, who always gave her a brooding sort of cluck. She let the hens sit on the eggs as long as they wanted, because what else did they have that was their own? But despite the hens’ efforts, and hers, none of the eggs turned into chicks. Instead the eggs began to rot, and then pop, the smell forcing her out of the henhouse.

  She got the spatula, the sounds of the TV a backdrop. A newscaster on the local news was talking about a man who had robbed a store with a gun, killing an eighteen-year-old kid who was working the register as his after-school job. “Local residents have been told not to open their doors and to be cautious. This man is thought to be armed and dangerous,” the newscaster said.

  Lucy stood still. Most of the Manson Family was locked up in California, which had made her feel at least a little safe, but they weren’t sentenced yet, and what if they went free? She had seen a photo of Charlie Manson, his eyes wide and crazy, so much white showing above the pupils. She braced one hand on the wall. That book of William’s, You Are All Sanpaku, had said if you had too much white below your pupils, like she did, you were in danger. But if you showed too much white above, you were the one causing the mayhem. She felt nauseated. Both of those things were true. She had seen that photo of the dead body at Kent State, the girl wailing over it. And this gunman was right here. William turned up the sound. The newscaster said they thought that the gunman was hiding in the woods, that he was emerging to steal eggs from the local farms, or carrots. One of the guys they interviewed, a man in a hunting cap, said he was sure this guy had taken one
of his rabbits. Lucy turned off the burners and came into the other room.

  “I think the news is scary and I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to be in a city,” Lucy blurted out. “With people. And police.”

  “This again?” William said. “My job is here. Our home. And anyway, what makes you think a city is any safer? The worst sorts of crazies live there.” He shook his head. “Don’t you think I can keep you safe?”

  “Of course I do,” Lucy said doubtfully. “But keeping me out of sight isn’t being safe. What if he comes to the house and you aren’t here? What do I do then? I’m scared, William. I’m really scared.”

  “We’re not moving to a city,” he said. “I’ll figure something out.” He turned off the set, the picture growing smaller and smaller until it blinked and went dark.

  TWO DAYS LATER, William walked into the house looking like he had a secret he wanted her to know.

  “Look, I know you don’t like it out here. I know you’re afraid, especially with that crazy person on the loose,” William said. “But look.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out something slim and shining, and it took her a moment to realize it was a gun.

  She recoiled. “Oh my God, is that real?”

  “Of course it’s real,” he said. He ran his thumb over the barrel. “It’s sort of beautiful, isn’t it?”

  She put up her hands. “Are you crazy? A gun?”

  “You said you were scared.”

  She had fallen in love with William because he was a pacifist. He had his conscientious objector status. He didn’t believe in the death penalty, had never even been in a fight.

  He carefully set the gun on the table, pointed toward the window. “Relax,” he said. “I know how to use it. And I think if you know how to use it, too, you’ll feel better about being out here alone so much of the time.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I asked around and then bought it from a store.” He admired the gun. “Thirty-eight Special. Smith and Wesson.”

  “How do you know how to use it?” Her mouth was dry.

  “Some of the kids were talking about guns at the school, about what it would feel like to shoot, about responsibility. We all went to take lessons at a shooting range.”

  She drew back, astonished. “You taught those kids how to shoot a gun? I can’t believe you’d do that.”

  “We don’t censor curiosity,” he said. “We looked up a gun range, they gave us a deal, and a bunch of us went on a field trip and learned how to shoot, including me. There were housewives there. All sorts of people. All perfectly safe and legal.”

  She stared. “This is crazy.”

  “I told you, the kids wanted to learn. How could we stifle that, especially if we had a safe environment to do it in? The principal himself was on board. And the parents don’t dictate the kids’ education. The kids do. That’s the whole philosophy of the school. We took the kids there all week and they learned something, and so did I, and now we’re doing organic farming.”

  “Well, I don’t want it here.”

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll teach you how to use it. Knowledge is power, right?”

  “I don’t want to,” she said.

  “What if that guy the news was talking about shows up here?” he said quietly. “You said you were worried. What would you do?”

  “No one shows up here. Ever.”

  “But what would you do if he did and I wasn’t here?”

  “I’d run out the door. I’d run into the woods and hide. I’d kick him in the balls. I’d—”

  He looked at her with great pity. “You think you’re faster than a grown man? Stronger? You need to be able to protect yourself,” he said. “I want you not to worry and I want to not worry about you.”

  He picked up the gun again in one hand and with great tenderness took her arm with the other. “Come on,” he said.

  THEY WENT TO the backyard, William carrying five empty cans. They walked past the chickens, who clucked in their path. William set up the cans, perching them on the edge of the fence. He showed her how to aim the gun, how it wasn’t like the movies, where you just pointed and you hit the target all the time. It took practice and skill. “Always point it in a safe direction,” he said. He handed her the gun, a weight in her hands, and then he lowered her hand so that the gun was pointing at the ground. “Keep your finger off the trigger and the guard until you make a conscious decision to shoot,” he said.

  She put one hand on the gun, and he brought up her other hand. “Two hands. It’ll give you more leverage and help with recoil,” he said.

  He stood behind her. “Think of the gun as part of you. Like an extension of your whole body.”

  Lucy thought of how she and Charlotte used to play Wild West when they were little, using their water pistols, soaking each other until they were drenched. Lucy had loved those games, had loved being the sole playmate of her sister.

  He helped her place her hands around the gun, with her thumb pointing forward where the slide met the frame. Her hands fit together like puzzle pieces. William touched her hips. “Bend those knees. Stand with your legs apart and stretch those arms out. Now aim.”

  “I don’t want to do this.”

  “Aim.”

  Lucy squinted at the cans, shutting her left eye, trying to focus. How on earth would she ever hit anything? She was nearsighted and the cans blurred in front of her. And if she didn’t hit the cans, where would the bullet go? If she shot a bird or an animal, she would never forgive herself. Her hand shook. “Now, you don’t want to pull the trigger. You’re going to squeeze it gently. Otherwise you’ll fuck up your sight,” William said.

  She squinted harder.

  “Open your eyes,” William told her. “Don’t squinch them shut like that. You have to see what you’re doing. And be careful. It’s got a bit of a hair trigger, so you don’t need much pressure at all.”

  She took a breath, like a sharp little pant, and pulled the trigger. The gun roared. There were fireworks in her ears, a vibration that shoved her back like a fist. The shell of the bullet flew out, burning her wrist, so she yelped, dropping the gun into the grass. The air smelled like iron. She could hear the chickens clamoring. She had black ash on her hands, and her whole body was trembling. William was saying something to her, but she couldn’t hear him over the ringing in her ears. His voice was muffled as if he were underwater. “My ears!” she said, alarmed. She clapped her ears. He said something to her and she still couldn’t hear him, which made her panic even more.

  “I can’t hear!” she cried. “I can’t hear!”

  He nodded at her and took her back inside. She thought he’d get her a doctor, but instead he got a warm washcloth and gently cupped it around her ears. The water dripped into her collar and down the front of her shirt. He wrote down on a piece of paper: It will come back. I promise. I should have had you wear ear protection.

  All that evening he wrote her notes. Is it better? She always shook her head. She tried to read, but she kept worrying. What if her hearing didn’t come back? How would she live? “Maybe I should go to a doctor,” she said, and he wrote down: We will go tomorrow if it isn’t better, but I know it will be.

  That evening, he poured out two glasses of wine for her. “It’ll help you sleep,” he said, and she read his lips. She tilted her head back and drank the wine.

  IN THE MORNING the chickens woke her, the clucks like the tap of typewriter keys. She sprang out of bed, kicking back the covers, going to find William, who was in the kitchen. She could hear him before she even saw him, his low humming along with the music from the radio. He had been right, and now every sound was amplified: the creaking of the wood floors as she strode across them, the sound the refrigerator door made. She was so happy she could hear she wanted to cry, but when she went into the kitchen and saw William, her joy soured. He did this to her.

  “Your ears back?” he said, and she nodded and sat at the table.

  “Didn’t I t
ell you?” He beamed at her. He was cooking, something he almost never did. He flipped a pancake in the pan.

  “I’m never doing that again,” she said.

  “You’re being silly. It’s like writing. You have to practice if you want to get good.”

  “I don’t want to get good at shooting a gun. And having it in the house scares me more than not having it. Can’t we sell it? We could use the money.”

  “I worry about you, I want you to be protected.” He bent toward her, murmuring in her ear. “The gun is in the drawer by my side of the bed, a box of bullets right next to it.”

  La-la-la, she wanted to say. I’m not listening. I can’t hear you.

  “I don’t want to live here anymore,” she said, and he straightened, and for the first time she couldn’t read what was in his eyes. He put both hands on her shoulders and said quietly, “You listen to me now. Because this is what is going to happen. You are going to stay with me and we are going to live here. Do you understand? This is how it’s going to be. And I don’t want to have this discussion again.”

  He lifted his hands and smiled at her. “Now let’s eat,” he said.

  She picked at the pancakes, her appetite gone.

  Chapter 16

  When Brandeis had shut down for the student strike in May, Charlotte hadn’t known what to do. Suddenly there were kids thronging the campus with black armbands, handing out leaflets and working the phones at the national strike center, organizing teach-ins, and recruiting volunteers. The Black Panthers were supposedly on campus now, and, it was rumored, the FBI, and the whole campus felt tense.

  Though Charlotte hated the war as much as anyone, she was also terrified about her finals. When would they happen? Were they canceled, too? No one seemed to know, though everyone had theories. Some kids, the ones who weren’t political at all, had simply gone home. Others were paying to stay in the dorms. Of course she wanted to help with the strike, but she had to keep up her grades or she’d lose her scholarship. Plus, she hadn’t counted on school shutting down early. The woman she had sublet her summer apartment from said it was fine for Charlotte to move in in May. Charlotte had saved enough from her job at the information desk for three month’s rent, which meant she’d need money for August. She’d have to find something fast.