Beauty

by Christina Chiu

  It’s the crown over the implant. Click, click. The porcelain nugget bounces over the marble, then drops into the basin. With the precision of a hawk going in for its kill, I slam my palm down, catching it on the concave rim of the basin. I drag it up, then grab it with my fingers.

  In the mirror, I smile at myself to assess the damage. There’s a gap where the cap once was. In that blank space, all that’s left is a spade-like post sticking out of the gum. My stomach wrenches into a knot. When the original tooth had broken—it snapped almost a year ago to the day—I’d been eating an ice cream cone while driving to pick up Alex from school. I heard the crack, and my initial thought was: Oh, shit, I’ve chipped my tooth! But when I glanced in the rear view mirror, what stared back at me was a gaping hole. The person I’d always thought of as me was gone. In her place, there sat a much-older, hick version Ma would have referred to as a xiang wu nging. Peasant.

  If I were alone with no one to witness such raw, uncompromising disgust and fear, I’d probably be screaming. But I’m not. A toilet flushes. A blond with a slender, willowy quality that screams yoga, appears next to me. I calmly push the tooth back into place and rush outdoors to call my dentist. My hands are shaking so badly it takes three tries to call up the correct number on my phone. The secretary answers. I explain the situation, and it takes every ounce of self-control not to get hysterical. She tells me he’s with a patient; he’ll have to call me back. I hang up, contemplate returning to the room, packing all of our belongings, and leaving for the airport as soon as the van returns. The boys will pitch a fit because I promised them one of the water parks for being good. Ben will be disappointed, too, but, friend or no friend, there is no possible way I can allow anyone to see me with a missing front tooth. I need home.

  On the way to the elevator, I encounter Tim, the guy from last night.

  He acknowledges me with a nod. How unlucky can I get? He’s with one of his buddies, too. Doesn’t that break some kind of guy code? The stranger you meet in a hotel and have sex with should remain just that—a stranger you had sex with. He’s not supposed to be nice, nor good, nor considerate. And he should not—absolutely not—acknowledge you. In this kind of situation, you should both ignore one another and pretend nothing ever happened. Why doesn’t he know this? Whatever happened to the good old fashioned asshole? You just can’t count on American products anymore.

  I stare down at my phone, as if to check email, but sense him coming closer. No it’s worse. He’s staring. I’m so sick with dread it’s like I’ve been dunked head first into a pool full of ice. I look up and lock eyes with him, smiling just enough, afraid if I open my mouth the tooth might fall out.

  Luckily, my phone rings. Saved! Haha, I’m saved! It’s the doc, too, oh my god, it’s the doc. I indicate by pointing at the screen that I need to take this, we’ll catch up later. Tim nods, again, says something to his friend, and disappears into the restaurant. I hurry out of the lobby to the hotel van because the dentist suggests Polident cream, which can be obtained at any pharmacy. “Not the pink, but the white kind,” he stresses.

  “I can drop you off, but you’ll need to walk back,” the driver informs me. In fact, the pharmacy is less than a ten-minute walk, door to door, and is located directly across and five-minutes down the street.

  “No problem,” I say.

  At the pharmacy, I pick out the correct dental glue, re-reading the box three times to be certain I have white and not pink. Since there’s a mirror at the makeup counter, I purchase the cream and glue the tooth right on the spot. My hands are still shaking; it takes three tries, and one of the times, the tooth slips and nearly bounces off the counter onto the floor. I’m finally successful gluing the crown in, but I use a little too much. The tooth refuses to slide all the way up to the gumline, and sets crookedly. It’s noticeable and I’m not exactly thrilled about it, but at least the tooth is in.

  I walk back toward the hotel. I should feel relieved; happy, even. But I feel strangely dazed. Numb.

  Random, disconnected memories and emotions flood back to me. Ma telling her friend that Georgie was the smart one who’d become a doctor one day while I was the social one who’d get married and have kids. I needed to look perfect, cash in on my beauty the way she had because I’d gotten it from her, after all, and I owed it to her now. And yet, once I was beautiful in my own right, on my own terms, Ma told me, “What’s beauty, anyway? It fades with age.”

  There was Dad, who’d cheated on Ma, had a child out of wedlock—a boy!—and so left us for his other family in China.

  I think about my first real pair of boots; what happened with Bootman all those years ago. The grit on the floor sticking to my back.

  And, William. The mind games and manipulation. Luring me in and turning me on, only to withhold sex. Or having sex so rough it caused me to bleed.

  Nothing makes any sense. Why does nothing make sense?

  I’m choking on emotions. The shakes manifest even harder. I make it to a thicket of trees off the side of the road and cry. Maybe I’m there ten minutes. Maybe it’s twenty. The sorrow. Regret. Dad stuck a knife into the very heart of Ma’s confidence. She never got over the divorce. Is it my fault that Ma feels like a total failure? Because it’s bad enough that Georgie remains unmarried, a spinster. Now, her other daughter is a serial divorcee.

  When I finally calm down and notice where I am, I suddenly realize nothing seems familiar. There’s construction across the street, a row of new houses going up, which I didn’t pass on the way to the pharmacy. Or, did I, but was too freaked out to notice?

  How long have I been walking? It’s been more than ten minutes. Hasn’t it? Did I pass the hotel? Take a wrong turn? Shit, I’m lost.

  By the time I return to the conference room, I’m dripping sweat and hyperventilating. I’m intercepted on my way to Ben by a Master and accompanied to a line outside the course room until Ben is able to finally join me. The Big Master at the front of this particular line happens to be Chinese, and older, possibly in her sixties or seventies. She lived through the tail end of the Cultural Revolution. Unlike the stereotypical Asian woman, she’s fat and aged; she’s got a lot to be bitter about. I ask Ben if we can change lines to speak with a different Master.

  “Effy’s hilarious,” Ben says. “I love her.”

  “You’re not Chinese,” I say.

  “You’re not really, either.”

  “That’s exactly the problem. I look it but can’t speak it.” If there’s anything a Chinese of that generation disdains more, it’s the Hua Ciao, overseas Chinese, who can’t speak the “home” language.

  “That’s an interesting belief you have,” he says.

  “It’s not a belief. It’s a fact.” I go on to tell him about the time I went to the Taiwan consulate and was denied a visa because I couldn’t write my Chinese name. Never mind that the guy in front of me didn’t have to do it; he was white. When I pointed this out, in English, the clerk informed me that I would need my mother to return with my completed application. I was 21; I never had issues getting visas at any other consulate. Only Taiwan.

  “Interesting creation,” he says, nodding. “Very interesting.”

  My patience is wearing thin with this psychobabble. I’m almost relieved to find I’m at the front of the line. “She looks terrible,” Effy says to Ben. Ben explains that I’ve been out of the course room for most of the afternoon. Effy demands to know why. I explain the chain of events that precipitated my getting so lost inside my head that I walked straight past the hotel for another fifteen minutes. I try to have a sense of humor about it.

  “You don’t speak Chinese?”

  I glance at Ben. See?

  “No, when I was growing up, the idea of melting pot was pretty big,” I explain. “My parents were told by our teachers to speak English at home.”

  “You’re lucky your parents raised you here.”

&nb
sp; “Uh, I guess.”

  “Guess?”

  Uh, oh. I’m standing in a minefield.

  “My parents have their issues,” I say, cautiously, “but they really tried their best.”

  “There’s the problem,” she says.

  “Problem?” I ask.

  “You don’t have gratitude,” Effy says, and she stares at me in a harsh judgmental way. It’s strange. You’d think it would be the number one cardinal sin at a personal development course. As one of the Big Masters, shouldn’t Effy know better?

  “I have plenty of gratitude,” I say, trying to control my voice. “I said they tried their best.”

  “That’s not gratitude.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

  “I want you to recognize how much your parents did for you.”

  “Look, it wasn’t easy growing up here. We weren’t exactly American, and we weren’t exactly Chinese, either. It wasn’t both worlds, it was neither.”

  Effy turns to a table of Chinese several yards from us. “You see all those people there? Do you realize how much they have had to go through?”

  My body starts to shake. “Let me guess, their fathers beat the shit out of them.”

  “They got beat up at home,” she states, “and then they got beat up at school, too.”

  I bite my lip and wait for her to have her diatribe. I recognize exactly what’s going on. It doesn’t matter what I say. It’s lose/lose any way you look at it. I watch her a moment, steam whirring from my ears, and turn to Ben. Is he going to help me out here? Or is he going to stand there and let this bitch go at me like this?

  “You have no idea,” she says. “Your parents gave you an easy life. You can’t appreciate?”

  “My father is a narcissist of the highest order.”

  “Why can’t you appreciate?” Effy repeats.

  “For one, my father cheated on my mom.”

  “So?”

  “He left because his lover gave him a boy.”

  “So?”

  “He divorced my mom and started a new family. It was like we didn’t exist anymore.”

  “So you blame him.”

  “Yes, I fucking blame him, okay? I blame him.”

  “You live in blame instead of appreciation. Can you see that?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.

  “You’re making a choice,” she says. “You’re creating blame.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “You have to choose appreciation to have appreciation,” she says.

  “I do have appreciation,” I sob. “I appreciate a lot.”

  “You need to start with your parents. They gave you life.”

  “Life?” I retort. “My dad destroyed me!”

  Silence. Maybe it’s a sound coming from inside my own head.

  “What do you mean destroyed you?” Effy asks.

  “I don’t know.” I get this feeling like I want to die. “I’m just a girl.”

  “What was that?” Emmy asks, watching me with her shrewd eyes.

  “I’m just a girl,” I repeat, suddenly overwhelmed by emotion. Within those five words lie a prison of other beliefs: Who do you think you are? Accept your place. You’re nothing; nobody. Your job is to nurture. Be a wife, a mother. Others’ desires come first. Yours don’t matter. You don’t matter. Your career doesn’t matter. What have you done? You’re selfish. Not good enough. Be grateful for what you get.

  Oh my god. It’s everything I shouldn’t believe and have told myself I don’t believe, and yet, deep down I have believed.

  Ben hands me a box of Kleenex. I dry my eyes, blow my nose, and compose myself. Effy asks Ben what drill I was working on before I left, then gives the okay for me to come back into the course room and start the next exercise.

  As soon as I arrive at my floor, the elevator doors open and I hear the boys in the room, beating the shit out of each other and screaming “You’re an asshole!”, “No, you’re the asshole!” The sitter tries to intervene. “Boys!” she says. “Stop this or I’ll have to call your mother.”

  I rush down the hallway. But once I get to our room, I stop outside the door. Stop because I know as soon as I get inside, I’ll have to pull them apart, assign “chill” spots, and then scream at whichever one won’t remain in his designated zone. They’ll do whatever they can to antagonize the other, I’ll be forced to ref, and for some reason, this time, I can see how ridiculously serious I get about it all, and it seems funny now, like part of a larger, more elaborate joke.

  “It’s my turn!” Toby says.

  “No, it’s mine!” Alexander yells.

  I tap a finger at Tim’s door. A part of me hopes he’s inside. Another prays he’s not. Desire; resist. I need him; I don’t need him. Past lovers. Former husbands.

  “Who is it?” Tim calls from inside.

  “Amy,” I say.

  The door opens. I step inside.

  Toby

  Me, Amy Wong, 45, divorced again, and at the precipice of my new life.

  William signed. Five long, tortured years of waiting, and then, out of the blue, he finally signed. I kiss the documents and hug them to my chest. Thank you, God. A warm feeling of gratitude moves through me. It expands in my chest. I lay back on the chaise and shut my eyes. It’s in the low 70s, warm for New York in February. I just returned from Florida this morning, so it seems cold, even with a down coat. Yet, it doesn’t bother me. I’m free. This is what freedom feels like. Melting ice from the gutters drips. Otherwise, it’s quiet, almost forgivingly so, as if time has stopped to be experienced fully.

  Yes, I can feel it now. All the decisions I ever made, either consciously or by default, that led me to this one singular moment. The happiest day of my life. How many times, as a child, had I prayed for the happiest, the best, the most beautiful? Now, here it is. Earned. Appreciated.

  I hear the neighbor leave her house. The back door shuts. Footsteps. I realize it must be the daughter. It’s not necessary to open my eyes to look. I can feel her, the youth and lightness of being. When the car starts and the radio comes on, the sound of Coldplay confirms I’m correct. The car pulls out of our shared gravel driveway, the pebbles crunching beneath the rubber tires and pecking against the ground. The sun warms my face. Wisps of hair tickle my cheeks. I could lie here all day without a care in the world. In fact, Alex doesn’t get home for another day. Right now, he’s with Jeff in Vermont. And Toby—well, ever since the separation, he lives with William.

  Despite that, Toby and I still see each other pretty much every week. I take him to lunch or the movies, sometimes with Alex, and other times without. Occasionally, his girlfriend, a debate champion and the mightiest of blushers, comes along. William sold his house and moved to a condo a town over and less than a mile away, which means Toby goes to a different school now. It’s William’s way of keeping Toby from Alex and me while also remaining close enough to maintain a menacing presence. His plan is backfiring, though. At 16, Toby is bigger, more mature, and unwilling to stand down during disagreements. This causes them to butt heads. Twice since September, Toby walked the mile and appeared at my door. When William arrived to claim him, I could tell the depth of his rage by how carefree and jovial he seemed to be, and it worried me that he might take it out on Toby all the more.

  Three weeks ago, Ben called. He was going to Florida for another Master Class workshop, was I? I told him no, and when he asked why, I thought a moment, and said, “I’m worried about Toby. What if he shows up and I’m not here?”

  A couple days later, though, I met Toby at the bookstore, bought him a sci-fi novel he wanted, and took him to lunch. He seemed to be in a good place, and he told me William was spending more and more time at his new girlfriend’s apartment. “He bought her a ring,” Toby
said. This was the most hopeful news I’d had since I started the divorce process.

  “Ah hah,” I said, since he’d been dragging it out for years. William evaded the issue of divorce, and when push came to shove, outright refused. His actions weren’t necessarily aligned with what would actually be best for him, but he was spiteful; he’d rather create a jail so that I would be sitting in it, even if it meant he would be, too. For this reason, I tried not to get too hopeful.

  Toby didn’t express many warm fuzzy feelings for Mandy, but when I asked how he felt about the possibility of his father getting married again, and if he was okay with it, he said, “Yeah, someone else can deal with his shit from now on.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “It’s true.”

  “Shit, it really is.”

  We both laughed. Since things were better, I told Toby I was going to be gone for a week, and booked myself a flight. One of the days I was on course, working with Ben on one of the exercises, I realized that as much as I wanted the divorce, there was a part of me that didn’t want it as well.

  The reason, I realized, was Toby. I’m going to lose him. The belief itself was irrational. Toby didn’t live with me anymore. More important, though William and I were separated, it had not kept Toby and me from spending time together.

  Yet, it was there. Once I became aware of the conflict within, once I could experience the fear and sadness fully, I worked with Ben to release it, using one of The Masters Class techniques, and then actively created what I wanted. It was similar to an exercise we learned from a book called The Artist’s Way, which was a self-help book for blocked creatives. I hadn’t worked on any design projects since I got married and started a family; Ben felt burnt out by his professional career as a magazine writer and editor. We worked together through this ten week course, and found an exercise called “blurts” especially helpful. Basically, it worked like this: if I gave myself a compliment like “Amy has incredible talent as a designer!” Something blurted back: “Oh, pa-lease.” Or, “You suck.” So the idea was to repeat the compliment, dig out all the blurts you have hidden away inside until you came away “clean.” In the book, it was a written exercise, but Ben and I found we could run blurts back and forth out loud, in a fun way that made us laugh. We found the technique worked for things we wanted to create in our lives, too, because blurts dug out all the insecurities, limiting beliefs and negative voices that held us back. In fact, since the Master Course broke for lunch before we had a chance to work on a new exercise, I asked Ben to run blurts during lunch.