The Sadness of Beautiful Things: Stories

by Simon Van Booy

  When they reached the end of the dining room, they found a staircase. An arrow and a pair of glasses had been drawn on the wall with a black felt pen, along with the word OPEN. They followed the sign up the stairs.

  The doctor’s office was no bigger than their kitchen, but seating had been set up around a tattered antique barber’s chair.

  A pink neon sign flashed, TAKE A SEAT!

  Stuck to the walls were photographs of people, postcards, Christmas cards, and handwritten letters, which said things like:

  YOU’RE THE GREATEST, DR. PING

  JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW HELEN HAS RECOVERED ENOUGH TO GO WAKEBOARDING!!!!

  THANKS AGAIN FOR HELPING LITTLE JOHNNY

  After ten minutes of waiting, Benedetta’s father pulled his beard down and stood up.

  “I want to go home,” he said. “I feel worse and want to go home.”

  But the neon sign flashed TAKE A SEAT! TAKE A SEAT! until he sat down again.

  “Just give it a few more minutes,” Benedetta said.

  But Mrs. Stucci was also losing steam. “We don’t even know who this person is.”

  At that moment, a young Chinese man with a chiseled, handsome face appeared from behind a bead curtain. He was staring at the screen of a cell phone. Mrs. Stucci tapped her daughter’s arm. “That must be him, Mr. Anthony’s friend.”

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” the doctor told them, setting the phone on a shelf, “but I was on an urgent call.”

  “That’s fine,” Mrs. Stucci said. “You look very young. May I ask where you went to eye-doctor school?”

  “Mom!”

  Dr. Ping smiled. “You don’t have to be embarrassed—I went to the International School of Insight, Beijing.”

  Mrs. Stucci looked at her daughter. “Sounds prestigious.”

  Then his phone buzzed and lit up. On the home screen was the photograph of a young, smiling blond man.

  “Is that your friend?” Mrs. Stucci asked. “What nice teeth he has.”

  “Yes, it’s my husband, Christopher.”

  “Congratulations,” Benedetta said, before her mother had a chance to speak.

  “Thanks, but let’s talk about you. Mr. Anthony telephoned yesterday to say you might be coming. Usually it’s best to call or text first. But rest assured, I have everything prepared for your husband.”

  Mr. Stucci stood up. “I don’t need eyeglasses,” he said. “I want to go home; it’s Christmas.”

  Dr. Ping led him to the barber’s chair.

  “You’re actually going home in a few minutes, Mr. Stucci, so please make yourself comfortable in the seat while we wait for the taxi.”

  Mr. Stucci seemed pleased.

  Dr. Ping opened a wooden cabinet and carefully removed a leather case with a gold combination lock. After rolling the correct numbers, he popped the clasp and raised the lid. Inside was a vast assortment of eyeglasses, sunglasses, reading glasses, and even a few monocles.

  After choosing a pair of small, red-framed children’s spectacles, Dr. Ping unfolded the arms and slipped them on Mr. Stucci’s head.

  “How do they feel?”

  Mr. Stucci was speechless.

  “Dad?”

  “What’s happening to me? What kind of eyeglasses are these?”

  “Do you want to keep them on for a moment?” Dr. Ping asked.

  “Yes, I would.” Then Mr. Stucci started to laugh.

  A few pieces broke off the Santa Claus beard and drifted to the floor. Mrs. Stucci stood with alarm, but Dr. Ping raised a finger to calm her.

  “I can’t believe it,” Mr. Stucci cried. “After all these years. There’s the gate and the baker coming because Uncle Pasquale ordered a cake and, my God in heaven! The ferry, and all those men in their uniforms back from the war . . . and there’s my bed and Giorgio’s bed, with the little hot air balloons on the blanket. I don’t remember them being so small. But there’s the giant Pan Am Airways poster of Hawaii, with the blue water and the girl in the coconut brassiere with flowers around her neck.”

  “Brassiere?” scoffed Mrs. Stucci. “Coconuts?”

  “Giorgio and I used to lie on our backs imagining we was there—in Hawaii, splashing around, having the time of our lives . . . we promised to go when we were men—take our wives, drink out of shells, eat tropical clams and octopus, the real deal.”

  Dr. Ping gently removed the tiny spectacles from Mr. Stucci’s head and put them back in the box.

  “That was unbelievable!” he said. “How much are those, Doctor? Can I buy those? Can I take them home?”

  “Let’s try on another pair.”

  After taking out several candidates and inspecting them, Dr. Ping finally settled on some very old, round tortoiseshell glasses.

  Mr. Stucci couldn’t wait to get them on.

  “Oh Jesus . . .” he said. “It’s him, standing right in front of me. It’s Giorgio! Caro mio! Giorgio!”

  Mrs. Stucci grabbed her daughter’s arm. “I don’t like this. I’m getting chills.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dr. Ping reassured them. “This is all part of his treatment, you’ll see.”

  “What treatment?”

  “Your husband has a severe case of opticus melancholia, which if not treated can become dangerous, even fatal in some cases.”

  He took some ginger chews from his pocket and offered them to Mrs. Stucci and her daughter.

  “The quality of a person’s life in old age,” Dr. Ping said, “often depends on how they see things that happened to them as children.”

  Mr. Stucci’s cheeks were wet as Dr. Ping removed the tortoiseshell frames and gave him a tissue.

  “That was a bit different, wasn’t it, Mr. Stucci?”

  The old man nodded. “Yes, it was, but it helped me not only remember—but feel things too. Without the feeling, memories don’t mean nothing, do they, Doc?”

  “Yes, I have heard that before, from other patients.”

  Then Mr. Stucci took off the Santa Claus beard and turned in the barber’s chair to face his wife.

  “Did I ever tell you that before Giorgio died, every summer, he used to sneak me into the movies? It was the only place with air-conditioning. We didn’t care what the movie was. It could have been anything.”

  Dr. Ping cleared his throat. “Shall we continue?”

  “I think he’s had enough,” Mrs. Stucci said.

  “You couldn’t possibly leave now,” Dr. Ping warned them. “The treatment’s only half complete.”

  Benedetta watched Dr. Ping search through the many pairs of glasses in his case. “How do you know which pair will fit with each patient?”

  “Training.”

  “You seem to be very exact.”

  Dr. Ping smiled. “My father was the same way.”

  The next set was a pair of sunglasses.

  “Whoa!” Mr. Stucci exclaimed. “Baby!”

  Mrs. Stucci squeezed the handles of her pocketbook.

  “I forgot how many guys were chasing you, Connie! And who can blame them when you put your hair up like that in a beehive?”

  Mrs. Stucci blushed and touched what was left of it.

  “And remember the last ferry, sweetheart? From Battery Park? The green blanket?”

  Mrs. Stucci sat straight up in her chair. “Victor! Please!” But then the edges of her mouth curled slightly. “I thought you’d forgotten about the green blanket.”

  “That was the summer I taught you how to ride a scooter. We took it all the way up to the Bronx and back.”

  “I remember your aftershave. You got it from the drugstore in those tall bottles.”

  “That’s right,” Mr. Stucci said. “The tall ones.”

  “That was when you were on the school buses,” Mrs. Stucci remembered, then she turned to Dr. Ping. “He was off
ered a promotion to management—but turned it down so he could drive Benedetta to school every morning.”

  * * *

  • • •

  It was late afternoon when they left Chinatown. Dr. Ping said his bill would come via email. When they got home, Benedetta put all the Christmas decorations back into their boxes, while Mrs. Stucci helped her husband take off the Santa Claus outfit.

  “What a day,” she said. “But at least you’re feeling better.”

  Her husband said that he was, but then an hour later they heard him moving about in the attic again.

  “Oh Gawd,” Mrs. Stucci said. “He probably thinks it’s Thanksgiving now.”

  Benedetta shouted up to her father. Asked what he was doing.

  “Tell your mother to pack her bags! You too!”

  “Why, Dad? What’s going on?”

  “We’re going to Hawaii.”

  “Who is?”

  “We are!”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know—tomorrow!”

  “Dad, we can’t go to Hawaii.”

  “But I promised my brother we’d go. It’s something we have to do. I know that now.”

  Benedetta sighed. “Dad, I have meetings in L.A.”

  “Don’t worry,” her father called down. “Stop worrying, your mother and I have savings—we’re going first-class to Honolulu in the morning! Do you think you’ll want your own room at the hotel?”

  “Dad, I’m thirty-seven.”

  Then Mrs. Stucci was standing there with her daughter, looking up through the dark opening that led to the attic.

  “At least he seems more like his old self, Mom?”

  “Too much like his old self!” her mother snapped; then she shouted through the square hole, “Victor, come down this instant before you get a heart attack.”

  “Is that you, Connie?”

  “Yes, this is your wife.”

  “Hiya, sweetcakes.”

  “What are you doing up there?”

  “I’m looking for something.”

  “Come down!”

  “I’m looking for something we need to take to Hawaii.”

  “We’re not going to Hawaii. I have to wash my hair on Thursday, and Benedetta has her job.”

  “What is it you’re looking for, Dad?”

  “A blanket,” he said, “a green blanket.”

  Playing with Dolls

  One.

  They pulled into the driveway. Seeing their small home washed away some fear of what was happening. The accident was behind them now and would not come again. Chelsea was lying in the backseat of the car and everything around them was dark.

  They helped their daughter through the cold air, supporting her arms in case she fell. Months ago, they had just been a small family living out their lives. Except they’d never imagined themselves like that, as if from above.

  In the house, it was as though nothing had changed. The hallway looked the same. It smelled the same. The kitchen was how they remembered it. The indifference of machines maintained the illusion. But underneath, below the surface of their lives, everything had been torn out, then set back down, rootless and numb at the point of severance.

  Helen used her phone to switch on the lights. She wanted it bright. Every room. Then they sat with their daughter. She had been able to undress and slip on her pajamas without help.

  “You’re home now,” said the woman, touching the girl’s hair, pushing it back with her hand. Encircling them were Chelsea’s things. A plastic cup of crayons, pretend jewelry, ticket stubs, a program from theater camp, and drawings.

  A test would be if Chelsea remembered which doll was her favorite, and which had not been touched for a long time. She had always played with dolls. They sat primly in a row, as if on display in a museum of childhood.

  When she was in bed, the new Chelsea finally spoke, her first full sentence. “I was in the hospital two days. Why are you making such a big deal?”

  Her parents looked at one another because it was exactly how Chelsea spoke. Maybe this was going to work after all, they thought.

  But it was just the beginning.

  “Don’t you feel tired from the medicine, Chelsea?” the woman asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Hungry then?”

  Chelsea looked around at her possessions. “Just confused.”

  Her father was sitting at the bottom of the girl’s bed, his fingers spread on the covers. “Can you tell us what you’re confused about?”

  She didn’t know, just that everything seemed different in a way she couldn’t understand.

  “Well, it is late,” said the woman sensibly. When no one responded, she looked out toward the garden, but was unable to see beyond a perfect square of night. She imagined where the plants and the trees were supposed to be—how darkness was simply the absence of something else; an emptiness to be filled with fear.

  “Are you sure you’re not thirsty?” said the mother, turning to her husband. “What did the doctor say she can drink?”

  “Mom,” Chelsea pleaded, “stop.”

  There was nothing else to do now but let her sleep.

  Tomorrow would be a different country. They would have to stay together, to find their way.

  The girl’s father tapped the covers out of habit, only realizing after what a risk he had taken. It was a gesture only Chelsea could have known. But slowly a foot appeared from under the comforter.

  “Thanks, Dad,” the girl said, as her father began to massage, mechanically at first, as though he were afraid. He couldn’t believe the foot was warm as though full of her blood.

  “Not too hard,” said the girl’s mother.

  They had made it home and their new lives had begun.

  Two.

  The official adjustment period was three months. On the morning of the first day home, the girl woke and found that John and Helen had cooked her favorite things. There were waffles, everything bagels, turkey bacon, and French toast. Even flowers in a vase of cold, still water. The woman must have gone out early.

  Her parents stopped talking when they saw her. They wanted to know if she had slept well.

  “Fine,” she said, but not coming any closer to them.

  “That’s good,” said her mother. “Your own bed, after all.”

  “That’s very good,” the father agreed. “We slept too.”

  “You’re home now,” said her mother, blinking her eyes. “Oh, I feel so blessed.”

  The girl just looked at them. “Why are you both here?”

  John and Helen had not anticipated direct questions. But it was just like Chelsea. Just like her. And that reassured them in a way her physical presence had failed to.

  In the end it was the mother that answered.

  “Your father and I have taken three months each off work.”

  Chelsea was barefoot and stepped over cool tiles to the refrigerator. “When do I go back to school?”

  “The doctor suggested it,” said her father. “So we could be together after what happened.”

  Chelsea fumbled with a large carton of juice. John and Helen resisted the urge to intervene as orange liquid plopped into a tall glass.

  “But I’m fine.”

  “Don’t you feel exhausted?” asked her mother. “I would.”

  “No,” Chelsea said, “I feel normal.”

  The woman studied the long, burned strips of turkey bacon on the plate before her.

  Chelsea frowned. “You seem disappointed, Mom. Do you want me to feel bad or something?”

  Her father had been studying her this whole time. “Don’t be silly. Last night you said you were confused.”

  “I’m fine now.”

  “You’ve been in the hospital,” said her mother. “There were mach
ines and tubes coming out of you.”

  “I am fine now.”

  “That’s for the doctors to decide,” her father said with forced calmness, “and they said three months.”

  The girl sat down with the man and woman at the table. They watched her eyes move across the landscape of things to eat.

  “When do I get friends?” the girl said, then corrected herself without hesitation. “When do I get to see my friends?”

  “Three months,” said her mother, looking now at the waffles. It was a lie, and her husband knew it was a lie. But there had been no time to discuss the future before she was ready to bring home.

  Chelsea slammed down her glass. “What?”

  Her mother reached out, but the girl pulled her hand back. “When can I have my phone and VR glasses?”

  The girl’s parents knew for sure now she didn’t remember the accident. They were hoping she would. It would help her understand why they were being so careful.

  “I’m sorry,” said her father, “but texting, video chat, and virtual reality are just not allowed.”

  “Even Movie-Me streaming?” said the girl, who had spent hours with her friends watching popular films with their own faces and bodies digitally traced over the faces and bodies of the original actors.

  “Even Movie-Me,” said her mother, “but you can stream as many regular films as you like, because for the next three months, you’ve got no homework or chores.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Isn’t that great?”

  “Why would I want to watch a film if I can’t put me or my friends in it? That’s the whole point.”

  “Sorry,” said her father, “but we’re serious—no contact with anyone but us for three months.”

  Another lie, but at least they’d have time to sort something out. The doctor had said there would be many things to organize and come to terms with.

  “But you can binge watch anything,” her mother said. “We can do it together.”

  The father picked up a piece of cut fruit. Examined it in his hands. “I can’t wait. It will be like old times.”

  But Chelsea’s mood was sour. “What old times?”

  “When you were young,” her father said brightly.