We All Love the Beautiful Girls

by Joanne Proulx

  “Big Bill Brown wanted to come one night, but Rae Chan wouldn’t let him.”

  “Big what?” Michael says. “Ray who?”

  The kid laughs. Michael laughs, he doesn’t really know who or what they’re talking about, what came before that, the kid’s mom, the school, that private school, Fern something. Ferncliff? Ferndale? He and Mia talked about sending Finn there, but then something happened…Does the kid actually have parents?…He met a teacher from Fern-fuck-whatever one night at some open house, blond, hot, she took off her sweater, her hair went up with it, out back by the barbecue, she had this little white tank top on and these huge tits—talk about instinct—he’s pretty sure every guy waiting in line for a burger wanted to fuck her.

  “Rae Chan.” The kid thumps Michael’s shoulder. “King of Paint.”

  “Is he the Asian one?”

  “No, man. There is no Asian one. You’re such a fucking lightweight.”

  The boy’s up, halfway to the Arm when he stops and turns around. “You wanna know the real reason I come here every night, Cheerio?”

  Michael stares at the kid, the amusing murk of him in the infield. “Tell me, Dirko.”

  “I wanna see what happens.”

  “What, what happens?”

  “Whether you kill the guy or not. You know. Big Yirkie. You can’t fool me. I’ve seen the way you slam those balls. I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Dirk,” Michael says, laughing. “I’m not going to kill anyone.”

  “We’ll see,” the boy says lightly, and Michael imagines him grinning, his sloppy stoner smile, but he can’t really see his face given the darkness and the distance between them.

  “You’re an asshole, Dirk.”

  “That’s what they all say.” He gives the on-off button a smack.

  When the first ball hits the fencing, Michael feels it in every part of his back. The impact thrums through the chain link, making the metal bite like a low-voltage shock. He leans forward, away from the fence, as the next ball sails toward the plate, but bat raised, the kid takes a smooth, easy swing, and the ball sails high and long.

  He drives ball after ball into the outfield. Even when he misses, which isn’t often, he misses well. Michael watches—stunned, mesmerized, stoned—and as he does, the ball becomes irrelevant.

  The kid now holds the bat perfect off his shoulder. His stance is rooted but light, he steps strong into the pitch, rotating hips, torso, shoulders, sighting ball onto bat, which he propels forward with surety and speed. At the point of contact, his arms are fully extended, his upper body pulled round by the centrifugal force of himself. The boy finishes each swing one-handed, with the bat high and behind, his chest and hips open to the field, his eyes locked on the ball as it flies into the night sky’s mandarin glow.

  “God,” Michael says. “You really are better when you’re stoned.”

  “I’m ADHD. Weed steadies me. Weed,” the kid says, “is my best friend.”

  The boy knocks another one into the night. The next ball rolls down the feed, drops, there’s a click, but no forward snap, no rocketing round of white, no shiver of freshly sprung metal.

  “I’ll go.” Michael pushes himself up and strides toward the machine, still marvelling at the kid’s swing. He’s never offered a word of direction, not a single piece of advi—

  The arm snaps forward, bullets a fifty-mile-an-hour hardball into Michael’s chest.

  He drops to his knees like a man shot, mouth fish-holed, lungs locked. The arm ticks smoothly back, reloads and nightmares a ball at his head.

  The kid hoots as he jogs past. Michael lies sideways in the dirt, the wind from the ball that would have killed him still shivering the delicate bones of his ear. Another couple fly past before the boy finally shuts the machine off.

  “That was fucking funny,” the kid says, standing over Michael, slapping his leg with a glove that once belonged to Finn. “You should have seen your face when that second ball dropped. I thought your eyes were going to pop out of your fucking head.”

  As the boy laughs over him, pitiless and mocking, Michael’s mind pumps blood and fury and thoughts of killing other men.

  —

  WILL YOU DO something for me? Jess says.

  Of course.

  Sit up, she says. And I do. She kneels in front of me, slips both hands inside my shirt, onto my shoulders, and waits for me to look at her. Take it off, she says.

  I stare up at the sky. Like I did that night. Instead of sliding trees and tripping stars, the big Thunderbird sign blocks out the moon.

  Come on, she says. I’m almost a nurse. Please, Finn, she says. Take off your shirt.

  I lean back. Anchor my good hand to the blanket. Work my stump into the gravel beneath the wool.

  Jess slides my shirt down my arms, so the sleeves are bunched around my wrists, all ready to disappear.

  Why are you doing this?

  I just think we have to, I don’t know, face up to things.

  We?

  Yeah, we.

  I shake off one sleeve, set my good hand in hers. She kisses each of my fingers, five little pops starbursting in my chest. She returns my hand to me. Show me, she says.

  Fuck, Jess.

  You know we have to stop.

  No. No, we don’t.

  This can’t be my life.

  Why?

  I can’t keep coming over. I’m coming over almost every night.

  Why?

  I don’t know. But Eric’s going to find out.

  So? So let him.

  She shakes her head. Finn…You’re seventeen. I’m almost twenty-three. We have to be practical. We have to be realistic.

  Realistic? You want realistic? I lift my stump from the ground. A net of severed nerve endings fires into nowhere, into nothing, electric and confused, always electric and confused. I lean forward. The puddled sleeve of my shirt falls away, that armour of plaid cotton, I move my right arm forward, it is lighter than my left, missing the weight of my hand, there has not been one minute since it happened that I am not aware that it is gone. The hand I used to touch her with. Everywhere, touch her. I don’t give a shit about pens or forks or hockey sticks. I don’t give a fuck about cutting up meat. This girl. This girl.

  I place my stump in her hands. The bones of my wrist sticking out a bit on each side. The fleshy ridge of Frankenstein stitches just starting to turn white. If I drew on a pair of eyes, it could star in a Tim Burton movie. My heart could play the drums.

  I want you to break up with him. I blurt it out. Even to me it sounds crazy. I want you to go out with me.

  Finn, she says. We can’t even go to the movies.

  I love you, okay? Does that even matter at all?

  She closes her eyes, a long blink. When she opens them again, it’s like we’re a million miles apart. Eric’s coming home tomorrow, she says, and sets my stump on the ground.

  I sacrificed for you, Jess. I fucking sacrificed.

  No, she says, you didn’t. You got wasted and passed out in the snow.

  —

  THE PROBLEM WITH making plans when you’re high: by the time David and Mia walk to the Market, the trendy part of downtown, all the stores are closed. After some haphazard window-shopping—he picks out a king-size bed, she a $13,000 couch—David buys them dinner. Grilled sausages from a street vendor followed by a Smoke’s poutine, eaten in the company of rowdy, alcohol-lit boys.

  Mia calls home just after eleven, but no one picks up. Her text to Finn goes unanswered. She has no idea where he is or who he’s with. Michael either for that matter, although she guesses he’s probably playing ball with that kid in the clown shorts. She tells herself that they’re okay, that tomorrow she’ll make a big breakfast and get everyone sitting at the table together instead of standing at odd angles at the kitchen counter eating toast off of mismatched plates.

  She and David end up riding along the canal on sturdy community-share bikes, something she’s wanted to do since the city install
ed them last summer. A well-treed greenbelt separates the canal from Queen Elizabeth Drive and the rest of downtown: low, tightly packed urban neighbourhoods backdropped by city skyline, a glitter of high-rise condos and glassy office towers in the distance. On the bike path, warm air sweeps Mia’s skin, soft along her arms, her shoulders, her neck. She skims along the band of twinkly water, beneath gracious branches, red oak, honey locust, cherry. Every push of the pedals raises a chant inside her—summer, summer, summer—like a blessing after winter’s bitter choke.

  “If you don’t stop smiling,” David says, coming alongside her, “you’re going to swallow a bug.”

  They reach the Canal Bridge, a perfect arc of light, the water below doubling the beauty. Up and over and they’re rolling down Main Street, its bohemian stretch, people streaming both ways across the bridge to enjoy their neighbouring territories. They pass the laundromat, Mia’s studio above it, the House of Targ, a newish hipster place specializing in pinball and perogies. The Wild Oat—good coffee, healthy vegetarian food, and Kettleman’s, its patio loud with kids. Closer to home, the Belmont, Von’s, 4th Avenue Wine Bar, some of the fancier restaurants. The Wag, a posh café for dogs—it says so right there on their sign. The Italian deli. The French Baker. The billboard that advertised beach vacations this winter—a bikinied girl stretched in front of a blue sea—now flaunts air conditioners: a bikinied girl—the same one?—in mittens and a pompom hat bent over a streamered unit, butt a perfect peach, golden hair blowing in the breeze, nipples hardened by Freon and a one-word tagline, HOT. Mia has no idea how the billboard, an abomination in Old Aberdeen, hasn’t been outlawed.

  They swing off Main, onto one of the leafy avenues. There they have the night to themselves. David and Mia could be riding through an abandoned movie set, their tires humming the soundtrack. She lazy-loops her bicycle around puddles of streetlight, rides straight and fast through the shadowy bands in between. They cruise the empty streets, glide past the silent houses. Mia risks a trip down Springfield, to marvel at Randolph’s tree. She glides to a stop under its majestic canopy. It would take a quartet to hug the trunk. An Olympian to scale its branches. A magician to map its root system, stretching two hundred years into the earth, connecting to every other tree on the block. Sharing nutrients! Sharing sap! A community of trees—like friends—nurturing each other!

  She tells all this to David. He convinces her not to lie down under the big maple. He convinces her to get back on her bike and keep riding, away from the tree, which is great, past her own house, silent and empty like all the others—she waves—everyone out doing their own thing. By the time they reach the river, Mia is in love with the night.

  They drop their bikes and stroll onto the public dock where she met up with Helen—was it only yesterday? It feels like some other life. The dock’s a little tippy, a reminder that they are floating. Tonight, there’s a perfect breeze and no swans honking, the water a dark, sensual slide holding the light of a half moon and a few determined stars. From the bank, a bullfrog croaks. Mia turns and—

  David’s yanking his shirt over his head. He tosses it onto the wooden decking. Kicks off his shoes and start unbuckling his belt.

  “You’re not,” Mia says. Apparently, it’s her turn to be the sensible one.

  “They swim a mile up.” His shorts drop down his legs. “And somehow that’s okay.”

  At Peter and Helen’s place, well upstream, they used to swim all the time. But several of the city’s old sewers overflow into the river between here and their property. Runoffs only happen after a major snowmelt or downpour, but this week it’s rained a couple of times. Mia mentions this to David.

  “People swim in the Ganges, for god’s sakes,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t think the Aberdeen River’s going to kill me.” He’s still wearing his boxers, a fitted pair of white Calvin Kleins.

  She has never seen David with so little on. His shoulders are broader than they look in a suit, his belly firmer, his legs leaner, but overall her impression is one of reduction, that there is less of him than she expected. She wonders what it would be like to press a hand to his chest, feel his heart beat beneath her palm.

  David dips in a toe. “Hmmm. Pretty good.”

  And what the hell, Mia bends and undoes her laces. In a mismatched bra and underwear, she stands beside David, her toes curled over the edge.

  He grins as he looks her up and down. “Good thing you didn’t get hit by a bus. ’Cause those are some pretty shabby duds.”

  Another night, she might have been embarrassed, but tonight she reaches round, unsnaps her bra and tosses it into the water.

  “Nice.” David laughs as she kicks off her underwear, a beige twist that flies into the sky before disappearing—no splash, no slow sinking away, just gone into the dark.

  For a moment Mia remains perched on the edge of the dock. It is a strange and glorious sensation to be standing naked in the city, on the river, never mind who’s watching. Her nipples harden at the brush of the wind. She is eager for the otherness of the water. She clasps her hands and pushes off. Airborne, she remembers what it is to feel lucky.

  Two gloves lie in the dirt beside Michael, and the field lights are on, but tonight, the kid hasn’t materialized—so much for his perfect attendance record. It’s hot, humid. Michael doesn’t want to wrestle the Arm out of the shed alone—if such a thing’s even possible. And after having had the machine pitching to him for the last month and a half, whacking at balls he tosses into the air holds zero appeal. He’s thinking about going home when he sees someone cutting through the grass field. At first he thinks it’s Dirk, but the figure’s wrongly proportioned, somehow both bigger and smaller than the boy. Michael’s not sure when he realizes it’s Frankie.

  She’s almost at second base when, with a low bend of the wrist, she waves. Her short, flowery top creeps up from the waist of her jean shorts, leaving her midriff exposed. “I thought it was you over here,” she says, plunking herself down a few feet to Michael’s right.

  None of Dirk’s buddies were under the bridge when Michael passed by a half-hour ago, but they easily could have been. They could be there now. Michael’s unsettled that Frankie’s out this late by herself, and that she’s showed up here, at his diamond in a short top, with a baseball in her hand.

  “You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he says gruffly.

  “Don’t get all parenty on me, okay? It would have been easier to just walk by.” Frankie slouches against the backstop, and the chain link shifts under Michael’s back. “I have to get home, you know.” She stretches her legs out in front of her, long, bare, her feet slipped into black Converse running shoes, a smaller version of a pair Finn’s given up on account of the laces.

  “People might think it looks bad,” Michael says.

  “What?”

  “Older guy. Younger girl.”

  “Whatever.” Frankie teases the ball’s curve of red stitching with her nail. “You’re like my second dad. Or you used to be anyway.”

  “Yeah. Sorry about all of that.”

  Frankie shrugs. “My father can be a jerk. So can you.”

  They both stare pensively across the diamond. The dark dirt, the cockeyed lights, the green of the outfield, the graffiti bridge in the distance, the city sprawling out beyond that. With traffic died down on the overpass and the pitching machine safely in the shed—no thunk of balls on metal sleeve, no snap of arm no crack of bat no bluster of boy—the soft burble of the river and the high beat of crickets act as accompaniment to the night.

  Being out here with Frankie isn’t as uncomfortable as Michael might have imagined. She’s so low-key, no matter the circumstances, no matter how blunt her truths—even tonight her mellowness mellows him out. He hasn’t seen her in months, and he realizes he’s happy to have her sitting beside him.

  Michael nods at the ball she’s worrying with her thumbnail. “Looking for a game?”

  “No.” She tells him she’s been at the Kellys’ and that
she found the ball in the field.

  “I just broke up with him,” she says, when he asks why Eli didn’t walk her home.

  “Oh. Sorry.” Michael doesn’t know what else to say. Teenage romance isn’t his forte.

  “It’s fine.” Frankie sets down the ball, picks up the smaller glove and starts slapping it gently against her leg.

  “Finn’s,” Michael says, clearing his throat roughly.

  “You waiting for him?”

  “No. He can’t play anymore. Not with…”

  She runs her fingers across the worn leather. “If you ask me, he just seems to be ignoring it.”

  “That’s what I think.” Finally, someone who agrees with him.

  “He’ll figure it out though. He’s an amazing person.”

  She’s right, of course, although it seems to be something Michael’s forgotten. Finn’s a great kid. And given time, he’ll be all right. It’s what Mia’s been saying all along. Still, hearing it from Frankie makes it feel real somehow.

  “You coming to his party tomorrow?”

  “Yup.” She rolls her eyes. “Eli, too.”

  Again, Michael doesn’t know what to say about that. He picks up the ball and tosses it into the air a couple of times. “Whaddaya think?” He gives Frankie a grin.

  “Do I have to get up?”

  “You feeling lazy?”

  “Always,” she says, slipping her hand inside Finn’s old glove.

  They stand centre field, thirty feet apart. Michael pulls back, and in one continuous motion swings his arm forward, steps onto his front foot, snaps his wrist and launches the ball. There’s a sharp thwack when it hits Frankie’s glove—“Ow!”—and she jumps her hips sideways.

  “God, Michael,” she says, shaking out her arm. “Take it easy. We’re just two people tossing around a ball.”

  When he throws a second time, he stays on both feet, puts little weight into the pitch. He throws to Frankie gently. And she’s a good catch. A good athlete. Back and forth, back and forth, a smooth rhythm of catch and toss.

  “I like being outside at night,” she tells him, after they’ve been throwing easy for a while.