Because She Is Beautiful

by Cameron Dougan

  "You're loyal, Robert. There are things I wanted to know that I don't need to know anymore."

  "Because you don't care?"

  "We're past them."

  "You can't care. Just as there are things I want to tell you but can't."

  "There's nothing you can't tell me, darling."

  "There are more wicked transgressions than infidelity."

  "Yes, there are."

  "Still, no matter how good or caring, or what one accomplishes over the years, all that is snuffed when—"

  He rubbed his temples with his thumb and middle finger.

  "Everything I say makes me sound like an ass."

  "You don't have to say anything."

  "I'm a bad person," he said. "I know it. You know it. There's no way I can prove otherwise. Imagine what it's like to sit down at a bar and have people get up and leave, because they know, because they're her friends . . . people you've never met, who hate you. Joseph Kennedy said, 'It's not who you are, it's who people think you are.' They're right to hate me."

  "Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

  "Kim, I'm still with her. The only way I can redeem myself is to deny my own desires. I don't want that. You deserve more. You deserve everything. I want to prove to you that I'm good."

  "You never have to. Actions don't always mean what they're supposed to. I believe in intentions. I know you're good. I know you want me to be happy. Cheer up."

  She could see he didn't believe her. He kissed her forehead and lay back. They listened to footsteps from the apartment above.

  "Do you wish it were different?" he said. "Do you ever think about having children?"

  She stroked his arm and pressed her cheek to his chest. She listened to his breathing, the rustling of his shirt. She listened for his heartbeat.

  "I never want children," she said.

  For Robert's fiftieth birthday, she bought him a new town car. It cost more than she had to spend, so she sold a painting that Robert had advised her to buy the previous year. The car was black with black leather seats and a silver Tiffany frame to mount the license plate. She had their initials engraved on the underside of the frame like a smitten teenager and didn't tell him. It would be her secret, just as the origin of the car would be a secret from Nicole. Robert would say he'd bought it for himself. It thrilled Kim to think Nicole would be riding in it. Her perfume might get into the seats, but they would be Kim's seats and that made the difference.

  She did not expect to see Robert on his birthday. Nicole had planned a dinner. The day before was hers, though. He'd promised to be free. He had a cocktail party to go to early, but after that Nicole was attending a dinner he had long ago declined.

  "Come here before drinks," she said.

  "That doesn't make sense."

  "It will. Don't ask questions."

  At five-thirty he arrived. He was breathing heavily from the walk up.

  "Those stairs are killing me."

  "You said you needed more exercise."

  "I was delusional."

  She'd given Joseph a ticket stub to the garage around the corner so he could exchange the old car for the new. She'd left a huge red bow in the trunk for him to stick on the roof. He was to wait downstairs.

  "I'm going to be late now," said Robert. "What's the surprise? Aren't we meeting in two hours?"

  "You're right. I don't want you to be late. Come on, I'll walk you down."

  They opened the door of the building and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Joseph had parked the car in front. The bow was two feet tall. Long curling ends dangled down over the windows, reaching nearly to the curb.

  "Happy fiftieth," she said.

  "Oh, darling!"

  He walked a circle around it, running a finger along the silver trim.

  "How did you know?" he said. "I was going to get a new one."

  "Don't be late."

  "It's marvelous, just marvelous."

  "Joseph, you better get that bow off so you can get going."

  Robert came over and put his hand on her cheek.

  "I don't want to leave now," he said.

  "Don't."

  He kissed her.

  "I've made reservations for dinner," she said.

  "I'll cut out as soon as I can."

  He looked at the car, smiling, and then back at her.

  "I can't wait to kiss you in it."

  "I have to start getting ready."

  "I never would have guessed. How did—"

  "I sold a painting."

  "Not the—"

  "Yes."

  He shook his head. "Do you know what that would have been worth in fifteen years?"

  "This is now."

  "Ma petite folle. It's perfect."

  "Pick me up when you can."

  "Where are we going?"

  "You'll see."

  Joseph called before she even made it to the shower.

  "It was a surprise party," he said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "She's here. He can't leave now."

  "Sure he can."

  "He didn't know."

  "Put him on."

  "He got the message out to me."

  "Joseph, where are you?"

  "I don't think—"

  She insisted. "He owes me, Joseph."

  "Miss Reilly—"

  "He owes me."

  He was parked around the corner from the Sherry on 59th Street. She threw on sneakers and a coat.

  The liar, she thought. That fucking liar.

  She cursed as she walked, willing herself to action, to do something he would regret, anything instead of nothing—the usual gift of her inaction, which he took for granted or which he relied on. Not this time, she thought. She would go into the club and disrupt the party. She would confront Nicole finally. She would demand—what, her fair share? Was that what she was asking for?

  She walked straight across town and reached the car. Joseph came toward her, patting the air with his hands.

  "Don't go in," he was saying.

  "I'm not. Give me the keys."

  He halted and she put out her hand.

  "It's my car, Joseph."

  He reached into his coat and took them out. She snatched them.

  "He deserves this," she said.

  Joseph backed away, turning his head as though afraid to watch. A man passed. He didn't stop. Kim stood over the hood of the car with the key wedged between her fingers.

  "It's a beautiful car, Miss Reilly."

  She looked at Joseph and then back at the car, the gleaming black reflecting light from the building across the street. She knew what to write. He did deserve this, something to make him regret. Still, she stood poised with the key. She had every right, didn't she? She had every right to humiliate him. . . .

  Joseph came closer. She dropped the keys and covered her ears, as though the car horns were suddenly unbearable, taxis and limousines fighting to make the turn.

  Joseph stooped to retrieve the keys. She couldn't stand to see the relief in his face and turned and walked. He followed to the corner to see if she would go into the building after all, but she didn't stop. She walked past the revolving door, the men in their green coats and the clock on its post like a captured moon, lighting the curb. She walked to Michael's building and went into the lobby.

  "He's out at the moment," said the doorman.

  "Can I wait?"

  He shrugged.

  She sat in a leather chair and folded her hands. The doorman checked on her periodically and, when his shift ended, asked if she wanted coffee.

  "I'll bring it back," he said.

  "No, thanks."

  She counted the seconds and gradually found her head nodding, her eyelids wanting to close. Michael startled her, putting a hand on her knee.

  "What's wrong?"

  She looked at him and didn't say anything.

  "Do you need a good cry?"

  "No," she said.

  "I gather it didn't go well."
r />   "Do I look bad?"

  "Of course not."

  "I need a drink."

  "Darling, I'm afraid I have company."

  "Oh."

  She looked over his shoulder. The lobby was empty.

  "He's upstairs already."

  "Oscar?"

  He didn't answer. She looked at her hands. The knuckles were chapped and she rubbed them and let them fall again to her lap.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I'll go. This can wait."

  "Are you sure? I can ask him to leave."

  She shook her head.

  "Darling," he said, taking hold of her arm.

  "Michael, am I that awful? What did I do?"

  "Don't think like that."

  "At the charity where I help—they look at me sometimes. . . . He says it's him. It's me they hate, and they don't even know me. Everyone hates me."

  "That's not—"

  "They don't even hate me for the right reasons."

  "Come now, you're talking crazy."

  "I just wish it could be different," she said.

  "That's not what you usually say."

  "Tonight, I felt so . . . seeing you, I'm better."

  "If I say something, promise not to be mad?"

  "Yes."

  "You made the decision to leave your job. Perhaps you shouldn't have."

  She looked down.

  "But then I wouldn't have met you," she said.

  The envelope contained another envelope: an old yellowing letter from her father, addressed to her mother care of Kim's grandparents. There was no accompanying note saying where he'd found it or what it was. The postmark was smeared. The edge had been cut carefully with an opener. She slipped it out and unfolded it and read:

  Tommy Gillespie lost his arm yesterday. Before the medics got him on a stretcher, his flailing had carved out a section of the grass like some kind of deformed angel. We raked the ground a bit, thinking we might turn up something. The arm was just plain gone. He was a quarterback at Michigan before the draft. Now he's heading back there. A month before a letter had arrived from his fiancée saying she'd left him. "I don't know which I miss more," he said, when I went to see him off. Wanted to know if he should get word to her. About the arm, he meant. If you tell her, I said, and she comes back to you, it's on account of the arm. You want that hanging over you the rest of your life? You may have lost a part of you, but you're still a marine. That seemed to buck him up.

  Why am I telling you this? I'm wondering myself. Couple days ago Sam Tucho got his Dear John. Billy Dilesio's gal quit writing back. Twenty-six men died yesterday. I knew twenty-four of them. There's sand in my eye that feels like it won't ever come out. I know I'm asking a lot. I just gotta know somehow. Is there any way I can beg you to stick by me that won't sound like old Tommy with his arm? Say you won't leave me, that you'll wait, and by God's grace I'll make it back.

  She tried to imagine what it must have felt like, thousands of miles away, fighting, not knowing if your love back home still cared, finding out that she didn't. To be in the middle of a war, she thought, and find oneself completely alone, and then continue to fight. All those brave hearts. But then on the home front, wasn't that too a battle? She wondered whether Robert considered his marriage a home front or war. Was Kim the front line? Had she ever not been a part of some conflict? Could love exist without war? Perhaps her father was not trying to confess anything but, rather, warn her?

  She called him, and the first thing she asked was where he'd found the letter.

  "How's the weather there, cold?" he said.

  "You just thought to send it?"

  "Warm here, but then you wouldn't know."

  "It's raining here."

  "Rained this morning, but now it's sunny."

  "Don't go out without sunblock," she said.

  "Suddenly you're concerned?"

  "The letter, Dad—it didn't sound like you."

  "How am I supposed to sound?"

  "I could imagine you writing it."

  "She'd want you to see."

  "It was beautiful."

  "Seeing my boys die was not beautiful."

  "Is Tommy still alive? Did you stay in touch?"

  "He got shot holding up a liquor store."

  "I'm glad you sent it, Dad. Thank you. And hey, you got your wish, didn't you? Mom stuck by you."

  "And never let me forget it," he said.

  She counted the years since she'd last seen him: twenty, more than half her lifetime, old enough to go to war but not old enough to drink. And so she told him finally that she'd left her job.

  She had imagined the moment many times, playing out the dialogue, the reaction she'd been avoiding for so long. In part, she told him because she thought he'd caught on, that his seeming apathy was a concession to accept her lies.

  "So you're finally getting married?" he replied.

  "Robert doesn't believe in marriage."

  She tried to explain. So much time had passed since she'd actually left her job. She couldn't remember the rationalizations. She could hear herself rambling about commitment and promises. Her father said nothing.

  "Honestly, Dad, I'm not afraid. I know I've made the right decision."

  On the table by the phone were framed photographs, crystal column candlesticks with silver Corinthian caps, a bronze figurine of a ballerina that she used as a jewelry stand, necklaces draped over its shoulders, bracelets around the feet. The towers of books virtually covered the walls now. Posters had long ago been replaced with artwork: a blue and pink pastel of Fred Astaire dancing with his shadow, a life-sized charcoal of a woman, her head reared back in ecstasy, hair, thick like an Egyptian headdress, sweeping her shoulders. She could not justify over the phone what a hidden life had proven over time.

  Having told him, she volunteered to fly to San Francisco. He insisted on coming to New York. He wanted to meet Robert, to see what she'd forfeited her life for.

  "He knows no other way," Robert said.

  She refused to believe he was defending her father. Her past was so alien to him, like a play unfolding. He was attracted to the drama.

  "You were never in the war," she said.

  "I didn't have to be."

  "How can you say he's the way he is because he fought? How do you know he wasn't a bastard to begin with and would have been no matter what?"

  "I know that fighting makes men hurt inside."

  "Then you're okay with this?" she said.

  Robert agreed, almost too willingly. "Just tell me what to do."

  He listened in as she made reservations.

  "You put him where?" he said.

  "Then what about—"

  "Too grand."

  "I want grand."

  "He wouldn't like it. Have him stay with you."

  "Are you crazy? That's my—no, that's . . . he's not going to even see my apartment."

  She suggested three other hotels, all of which Robert rejected. Either the rooms were poorly furnished or the service was inadequate or the location was inconvenient.

  "Inconvenient to what?" she said.

  "I'm excited to finally meet the man. I want it to be right."

  As the day grew closer, her father began to call with regularity. He asked the same questions again and again, checking the flight numbers and times, rechecking where they were to meet.

  "Dad, you have the tickets. All that information is on the tickets."

  "Not where we're meeting."

  He had always prided himself in his ability to commit such details to memory—an entire week's schedule in his head. "Never write anything down," he'd tell her. It was just one of many military precautions that spilled over into life and had lost its usefulness; like pinpointing a position on a map.

  "The gate," she said. "I'll be at the gate."

  Kim arrived at Kennedy early. Three flight attendants glided past in navy suits, chatting happily and wheeling their overnight bags behind them. They moved at a fast clip and disappeared into the sh
ifting crowd. Kim flattened her hand over a jeweled strawberry brooch that was pinned to her lapel. Ruby flakes prickled her palm reassuringly. She leaned against the window, looking out over the tarmac and the retractable tunnel that would connect to the plane.

  Once when her father was due back from a trip, Kim's mother insisted that she sit on the front steps of the house to greet him.

  "He'll be here any minute," her mother said. "It will mean so much."

  The minutes piled up and Kim remained sitting like a prop in the twilight, a welcome-home mat. When he finally arrived, he jumped out of the car with the engine running and bolted up to the step.

  "This makes it worthwhile," he said, scooping her up and holding her above his head. Her mother was watching from the doorway, like a director standing in the wings.

  Once after a big fight, when he was leaving, she was forced to put on an even greater production. First she had to stand in the kitchen door, waving as he idled the car. Then, as he backed out, she had to run through the house to the living room window and wave again. He waited at the foot of the drive until he saw her.

  "He won't leave unless you're there," her mother said, holding the curtains to one side, beckoning. "You're making him late."

  She jumped up and waved, broad sweeps of the hand as though she were cleaning the window.

  "Fine," her mother said. "Now frown all you want to."

  The plane nosed right up to the window, the deafening accordion blast of its engines screeching through the glass, sustained for a beat, then cut off. The sudden silence was immediately filled with the faraway roar of a plane taking off, the familiar rush and ripping of air. She watched the tunnel navigate its way to the hatch, hydraulics pumping it higher as it adjusted to the opening.

  An attendant wedged the gate doors open, and the first passengers appeared. She wished her father would hurry. Then she saw him, caught in the shuffle, narrow eyes locked ahead as if he knew where he was going. She called, and he didn't hear at first. He stopped. She waved and he saw her.

  He cut back against the flow, blocking people. His face and scalp were red from the sun, the skin on his neck even darker, thick as animal hide. What hair remained was razor-cut—stubble salted around the ears. He stopped in front of her. The shoulder pad of his jacket had caught under the strap of his bag. She reached out to fix it and he clenched the strap.