We All Love the Beautiful Girls

by Joanne Proulx

  —

  “I’M GOING NOW, DAD.”

  Michael looks up from the newspaper he’s been pretending to read: forcing himself to the end of a sentence, a paragraph, he couldn’t say what any of it’s about.

  Finn is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, holding tight to a suitcase.

  “Mom’s waiting outside.”

  Michael pushes his chair back and rises from the table. Once standing, he finds he has to pause. Whatever it is that strings him together, whatever it is that makes him a man, has come unbound. He is not certain he can walk the ten steps from the table to the doorway. He is not certain his body has anything to do with his mind. He is not standing paralyzed at his own kitchen table, but alone in a wind tunnel, the cords that tether soul to skeleton, skeleton to earth, flapping wild.

  His son sets down his suitcase. It is Finn who comes to his father, the boy who walks toward the man.

  Beneath the graffiti bridge, Michael nods at the kids circled around the old oil drum. He doesn’t recognize any of their faces. A new batch, huddled close to the fire. They barely acknowledge him. Still, he forces himself not to rush.

  As he plods into the field of wild grasses, bleached of colour, flattened by fall rains, he turns up the collar of his coat and jams his hands into his pockets. Not yet used to the idea of another winter, his gloves are still boxed away. He hadn’t bothered to look for a hat.

  Close to the ground, on either side of the path, the grass stalks have begun to rot, and despite the cold, there’s a swampy tinge to the air. The sky’s overcast, black, the moon and stars buried by clouds, yet as Michael steps onto the outfield, he feels spotlit. He glances over his shoulder. None of the kids are watching. Old man—he has already been forgotten.

  Spread before him, the ball diamond is little more than a dark clearing in the night. The backstop a flickery shadow, the shed a line drawing knocked askew. Michael’s told himself he came for the extension cord. That he’ll be damned if he doesn’t put lights up for the holidays. Finn’s made it clear he’s not crazy about living part-time above the laundromat. He and Mia haven’t discussed it, but Michael assumes they’ll spend Christmas Day together as a family, at the house, which will be properly decorated.

  Still, he had no good reason to come here. He’s working again, on a three-month probationary contract. He’s paying the bills, covering the mortgage, insisting Mia take enough to meet her next month’s rent. They haven’t made a dent in the legal bills, but David says the mediation will happen—sometime—and twenty bucks to plug in some Christmas lights wouldn’t have mattered a bit.

  Michael came to the diamond because he wanted to. On nights when Finn’s with Mia, he works late, happy to lose himself in the mundanity of his job—bids for snowplowing services for the apartment portfolio, a graffiti abatement proposal for the city’s public spaces. When he does go home, he eats microwaved burritos standing over the sink and drinks one too many beers. He gets out of bed in the middle of the night to piss and ends up roaming the house. He doesn’t even have to pull the chain on the bulb to see the left-behind hangers dangling on Mia’s side of the closet. He’ll push open Finn’s door and make a study of the empty bed.

  That’s why he’s standing on the edge of the outfield. He came because he needed to remind himself that he deserves his loneliness. That he’s right to be scared. That the details he imagines are real even if the tremors in his heart always pass. Sometimes he wishes they’d just come for him—the police, Peter, the guy with the tats—spare him another night of wandering a ghosted house. He’s tired of just holding on, of existing on love’s fringes.

  He has made a decision. A pledge, he might call it. A pledge not to get mad. No matter what. He’s prepared to do whatever it takes to excise that emotion from his repertoire. Anger management classes. Meditation. A sweat lodge. Whatever. He will send no more fury out into the world. He plans to get so Zen he’ll make Gandhi look like a thug.

  The padlock still hangs on the door of the shed. Like he has dozens of times before, Michael uses his nails to pry back the hinge, pulled loose from the rotting frame. He gives a shove and the door swings open. The pitching machine’s still there, a blackness in the dark interior, but the smell is what hits him first. Sharp and pissy, sour and unwashed. He turns his head away and steps back from the door, thinking coon, wolf, street person cloaked in duct tape and garbage bags.

  He pulls his phone from his pocket and slowly sweeps the shed. The extension cord lies just inside the door, moved from where he left it. He travels the beam up the Arm. The small round of light dissects the machine into a horror show of toothy gears and wire cages, well-oiled chains and trigger-tripped coils. Michael imagines the arm snapping back, springing forward, rocketing one last ball at his head. With his light, he follows the electrical cord across the floor. Unplugged. Nowhere near the outlet.

  He bends for the extension cord and something moves in the shed. He skitters the beam around until it grabs at a scrap of colour on the floor. Red. Red high-tops, the laces dark with dirt. No socks. Twigs for ankles. Skin filthy as the shoes. He travels the light up. Baggy jeans, chest concave, face…skeletal. There is no other word. All bone and teeth and eyes.

  “Cheerio.” The boy’s voice thin as the rest of him.

  Michael grabs hold of the door jamb. Glances back at the bridge—no one is watching—and steps inside. He fumbles his light off, lets the smell become familiar and his eyes adjust to the dark.

  A nest on the floor. The kid is standing in it. Pieces of flattened cardboard, a foul sleeping bag. Bottles of water. A box of Ritz crackers and a jar of no-name peanut butter set between two wall studs.

  “Where are the others?”

  “Gone,” the boy says.

  “Where?”

  “You think they’d tell me?” It’s so cold in the shed, the kid puffs smoke when he talks. His hair, longer now, is pulled back in a greasy knot. He leans up against the Arm, his forehead pressing into the hopper’s metal cage.

  “You never should have been with them,” Michael says. “You should have been with better people.”

  The boy snorts. “I don’t have better people.”

  “You have parents.”

  “I go home, my father kills me.”

  Michael picks up the extension cord and starts trying to organize it into some sort of coil. He forces himself to loop it carefully. He can’t let himself get soft. He puts words into his head. White trash. Animal. “I should kill you,” he says, but he’s shaky, shaken, there’s no heat to the threat.

  The kid manages a smirk. “I always said you were going to kill somebody.”

  Rapist. There. Rapist. “My friend’s daughter.”

  “Your friend.” A flash of teeth, still perfect and white. “Fuck you, your friend. He’s no friend of yours.” The boy folds skinny arms across skinny chest. “I need insulin. Food. Money.”

  Michael squeezes the extension cord, thick now across his palm. Here in the shed, with this kid, his pledge is unnecessary, without meaning. He doesn’t even have to struggle. Anger? Rage? Infantile emotions from a simpler broken place.

  “You have to get out of here,” he says. “Go somewhere else.”

  “I’ve got nowhere else.” The boy’s voice breaks. “I don’t even have a fucking coat.”

  Michael drops his head, steels himself, turns and opens the door.

  “The boat. Your partner’s boat.”

  Michael stalls. Past the frozen ball diamond, the field of rotting grasses, the river edge will be sculpted by fragile ice, layered and carved by the fast rush of water, frozen to a crystalline lace. Michael closes his eyes. He should have taken up fishing. Brought a pole down to the river instead of a bat. Befriended the old Asian men in their rubber boots and bucket hats. Even the fucking turtle knew enough to head for calmer waters.

  From behind him, mingled in with the sour, comes a whiff of fermenting fruit.

  “We floated it away from the dock,” the boy says
. “It was like something you’d see in a movie. Like the sweetest thing in the world. That boat burning on the water.” The air wobbly with heat, bright with flames. What Michael had wanted all along, a beautiful revenge, an exact and fiery justice that would just sink away. As if such a thing were possible. As if the scorch and smoke weren’t real and dangerous and the beginning of something else.

  Michael yanks his wallet from his pocket, throws all of his money, five twenties, to the floor. The boy scrambles up the cash, and when Michael hands him his coat, he scrambles it on—so big on his starving frame, he looks like a child playing dress-up in his father’s clothes.

  “Thanks, man,” the boy says. They are closer now, the pitching machine no longer between them, the sweet smell of fermenting fruit grown stronger. “Thanks for saving my life.”

  Michael steps away, closer again to the door. “I’m not coming back,” he tells him.

  “You have to man. I’m dying here.”

  “I’m not coming back.”

  Huddled inside Michael’s coat, the boy falls still. “We had no plan. We just looked up and she was standing in the window.”

  Now it’s Michael’s turn to freeze.

  “You know,” the boy says, his voice suddenly fierce. And the way he’s looking at him, his gaze so sure, turns the cold inside the shed to a chill that seeps through Michael’s sweater, into his bone marrow, his DNA, nipping away gene combinations that might allow him to recognize warmth in the future. Michael has to clamp his jaw shut to stop the clatter of tooth knocking against tooth.

  “That night at your buddy’s house? All that glass right there in front of us? No one watching.” The boy reaches sideways, threads his fingers through the mesh of the hopper. Michael’s hand follows. He clings to the caging, the metal biting his fingers. The boy’s eyes shine wet and bright above the dark hollows of his cheeks. His scent foul, his breath like rotting apples. “It felt like we were powerful. Like we had a right.”

  “You had no fucking right.”

  “Neither did you.”

  The boy is staring at Michael. “My name is Connor Tucker,” he says, holding tight to the cage. “I am sixteen years old.” The boy is staring at Michael, and he is crying. “I like playing baseball. Same as you, Michael,” he says. “Same as you.”

  My mom gave me the address. And the name’s right there on the board. KELLY 1634.

  When I reach for the button, my backpack digs into my shoulder.

  A second later—Hello?—Jess’s voice buzzy through the intercom.

  Hey. It’s Finn.

  Finn. Then a long stretch of nothing.

  Can I come up for a second?

  Sure, she says. Of course.

  The elevator rockets to the sixteenth floor. The doors fly open. When I get off, she’s in the hall, her arms crossed in front of her as if she’s protecting herself from the cold. Even though we’re pretty far apart I can’t really look at her. When I follow her into the apartment, I stare down at her feet—bare, of course.

  Inside, huge windows, a river view, a couple big couches out on the balcony, all ready to party.

  Wow, I say. Pretty sick.

  We still need to get more furniture and stuff.

  She looks around the room—a sectional, she says, a coffee table—and I risk it. She’s wearing skinny jeans and a big beige fisherman’s sweater, which might be his. She looks skinnier than before. And her hair looks shinier. In the craziest, most delusional part of my brain, I thought she might be wearing the ribbon. Maybe it’s stashed somewhere in the condo. Maybe not.

  How are you? she asks, when she’s done fantasy decorating the condo.

  Good. I fake a smile for one beat. Except my parents split.

  I know. I can’t believe it. You think they’ll, like, get back together?

  I clunk my backpack onto the kitchen island. Instead of collapsing, it stands up tall and green. My mom’s got the hydro bill pinned up with a Smash the Patriarchy button, I tell her, so, yeah, it’s not looking good.

  Shit. And Frankie, Jess says. Oh my god.

  Yeah. We’ve been hanging around a lot.

  That must be good for her.

  It’s good for both of us, I say, letting my voice get a bit hard.

  We’ve started a late-night texting routine, Frankie and me. It’s something to do when we’re lying awake at 2 a.m. After school we walk around. Out by her place, mostly, away from people, in the field across the road from her house, looking for wildlife—there’s a ton of rabbits. The other day we saw a wild turkey. Sometimes we go down to the river. Stomp on the shore ice. Scream along with the crunch and the crack, our voices echoing back across the water. Ice therapy, we call it. On bleak days I think about inviting Frankie over to work on my map, but yeah, that’s not going to help anyone, so we usually just watch movies in her room, lying on her bed, propped up by lots of pillows. Her mom brings us popcorn and grapefruit juice, which is actually a pretty good combination.

  Do you want something to drink? Jess heads for the fridge.

  No, thanks. I take off my jacket—still the life-saving blue—and hang it on the back of a kitchen stool. I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but it doesn’t totally cover my stump.

  I could make you something to—

  I didn’t know how to touch you with it, I say. I make myself say. The thing I came here to say. I didn’t want to touch you with it.

  Jess stops, kind of stranded half out of the living room, halfway into the kitchen. She reaches for the counter, but it’s too far away so her arm just kind of stretches in front of her. Her hand. The big, sparkly ring.

  And that’s all we really did, right? Touch each other. Hook up. Bang.

  It was more than that.

  Probably the closest she’ll ever come to saying it. She can’t say it. My father had to say it.

  You think it was easy? Her arm floats to her side. How could it be easy to walk away from you?

  Or maybe that’s the closest.

  I couldn’t wait for you to grow up, she says. And I didn’t want anyone else to have you. Her face is all serious. It was selfish. It was wrong.

  It wasn’t that bad, I say. I mean, all that sex and everything. I’m thinking she might laugh a bit or something, smile, whatever, I’m trying to cheer her up, which is kind of messed, but she just turns her head and stares out the windows. Across the water, a flat run of frozen farm fields and way in the distance the rise of the Hills, a dark, rolling line on the horizon.

  Nice view, I say.

  It is, she says. It really is. I feel lucky every time I look out. Against her leg, she spins the diamond. It appears, disappears, appears again.

  I’ve seen it, I tell her. Your fiancé showed it to me one night at a strip club. Right before he called me a fucking amputee.

  Jess’s eyebrows move closer together. Over the last year, I’ve pretended a lot of things, but I’ve never pretended I don’t hate that fucking guy.

  And Don? I say. He told me my arm gives people the heebie-jeebies. I spare her the details of how her soon-to-be brother-in-law tried to cull me from the pack. For now, forever, that’s staying between me and Eli and my mom. I see him at school. We are no longer friends.

  Costa Rica, right?

  Yeah. She nods. In May. First time seeing the ocean. And next fall we’re going to Bali. Kuta, actually, but no one’s ever heard of it.

  Show off the new husband?

  No, she says, I’m going with my mom.

  Oh, I say, feeling stupid again. Spoiled. Small. And then because it costs me almost nothing, I give her what my father gave me. That night at the strip club? Eric told me he loved you. Sounded like he meant it, too.

  He does. In his way. Please don’t worry about me, Finn. I’m happy. I know what I’m doing. She pulls the arms of her sweater down, so just the tips of her fingers are sticking out the ends. And I know they can be—she takes her time picking out the word—insensitive.

  But they’re right. I mean, I’m ki
nd of getting used to it, I say. And I lift up my arm and slide my sleeve back to reveal the stump. My stump. My nub. My unhand. I don’t want to be like this, I say. I mean, who wants to be like this? I can’t do anything like this.

  I pin my backpack to the counter and jerk open the zipper. The sleeve and hooks slide right out, but the cables and harness get caught up so I kind of have to wrestle with them a bit.

  Then I just hold it all in my hand. Except for the hooks, it’s pretty light. The sleeve’s plastic, and the harness is this kind of black-netted material that runners would probably love. The cable hangs off it like a depressed antenna. Sometimes I think it looks like something a complicated insect sloughed off. But right now, with Jess standing in front of me, all I think is that the hooks look really hard.

  Stainless steel, I say. To match your kitchen.

  She doesn’t even smile. She heard my voice shake. Sees the way the whole thing’s kind of shaking in my hand.

  I know it’s pretty brutal, but my doctor—I can’t say psychologist, not to her, although we talk about Jess a lot—tells me I have to get Zen with the Claw. Later, I say, I’ll get a better one.

  I could get Don to help pay for it. You got hurt in his backyard.

  That’s okay, I say, because seriously, I don’t want either Eli or his dad anywhere near my life. So I tell her about the guy who designed this 3D printer and how he makes these spare limbs and sends them over to Africa. I tell her I’m going to email him. Get him to print me one up.

  Then I hold the whole thing a little higher. I hold it out to her. You’re almost a nurse, right?

  Graduating next June, she says. Maybe I’ll look after you one day.

  I can’t wait to get sick.

  Finally she smiles. Motions at the stool. Sit, she says, and I do.

  I guess I was more fucked up than I realized.

  What happened to you? she says. It wasn’t small. And she comes and takes the prosthesis from me. Over or under your shirt?

  Over, I say. Although I’m not sure. I’ve never even put it on. But I can’t take off my shirt. Not in front of her.