We Could Be Beautiful

by Swan Huntley

  His parents had inspired his love of folk art. His mother, who had grown up in Mexico City and then Santa Fe, was drawn to it as a Catholic, and particularly loved the works of Reverend Howard Finster and Sister Gertrude Morgan. She made art herself—“mostly crochet; she was very patient”—but didn’t consider herself a real artist. She was talented but lacked dedication. His father, who William thought possessed less natural talent, was dedicated enough for the both of them. Edward Stockton was extremely hardworking, almost obsessed. Every day—even on Sundays, which bothered William’s mother—he awoke at four o’clock in the morning to work. “Work was all that mattered to him, and my mother understood there could not be two stars in one family. My father was the star, and my mother, I suppose, was the sky. He wouldn’t have existed without her.”

  William went on to explain that his father’s severe stutter made him self-conscious about speaking. “But when he began to stutter, my mother was there to finish his sentences.” She carried him through every party, every opening, every event. She had a knack for people, and people adored her. In the art world, in the supermarket, at church. Church was very important to her.

  Yes, William was still a Catholic. “It’s a part of me. I hope you won’t judge me too harshly for it,” he said, and I blurted out, “Isn’t Catholicism all about judgment?” I immediately regretted this and backtracked. “Sorry, sorry,” I said, “I’m only kidding.” And he said, “It’s okay, I’m used to it, really. It’s not very à la mode to be Catholic these days, I understand.” In an attempt to appear kind and interested, and also because I wanted to know how serious he was about the whole thing, I asked him how often he went to church. He liked to “stop in every so often,” mostly to pay his respects to his parents. Both of them were gone now: a freak car accident on an unpaved road. It was recent—they’d died only months before. “I regret that I didn’t have the chance to say good-bye,” he said.

  Now William had his own “modest collection” of folk art. I wondered how modestly he was defining modest. It included sculptures and tableaux in cross-stitch—he adored those, probably because they reminded him of his mother—plus all of his father’s work, of course, and a few Joseph Yoakum landscapes, which were his favorites. I didn’t know who that was but heard myself saying, “Oh yes, of course. I love his stuff.”

  When I said, “I like your ring,” he explained that it was a family heirloom, dating back exactly one generation. His mother had bought it the day she arrived in the States, when she was ten. She had given it to William on his tenth birthday, and at some point in his life he would pass it on to his own child, if he was “lucky enough to have one.”

  He had been married before, yes. At the age of thirty-six. Gwen had died four years later. Breast cancer. He’d dated since then but hadn’t found anyone he wanted to spend eternity with. I felt bad for thinking Gwen was a fake princess name, and then I felt bad for William that he had lost her. I couldn’t even imagine that, I told him. He said it was horrible, but at least, unlike with his parents, he had been given the chance to say good-bye.

  On a lighter note, William enjoyed skiing and running. Stracciatella gelato was his preferred treat. He could eat it all night and all day. But not literally, of course. He’d briefly lived in Italy after university at Oxford. He spoke some Italian, and also French, German, and Spanish. He’d grown up speaking Spanish with his mother, whom he’d been very close to, unlike his father, who “gave the impression that he was a man simply out of reach.” His father was German (well, half German, really), though William had learned that language mostly at school. Despite their nearly identical looks (“typically Nordic—hard and pale, as though chiseled from ice”), William felt he and his father had had very little in common. He and his mother, on the other hand, had shared a “deep internal sameness.” She had passed on none of her physical features (“she looked Native American—everyone thought so”) except her very long limbs. When William said this, he extended the arm that wasn’t holding Herman’s leash. “See?”

  “Wow,” I said, and imagined how good it was going to feel when I had that arm wrapped around my waist.

  More seriously, he said, “My mother was a wonderful person. I miss her dearly.”

  “I’m sure you do. I’m so sorry.”

  I don’t know what it was that made us stop walking, or what made us look at each other then. His face was perfect, his body. The air was perfect. The electricity between us. Even Herman’s bark had a musical ring to it. I remember thinking, You look like you could be the one. Even then I knew. William Stockton and Catherine West. Those two names were going to look great on an invitation. And then, without acknowledging that we had stopped or why, which made it even more perfect because it implied we understood each other without the annoyance of finding words to speak our understanding, William began to walk again, and I followed.

  “And your parents? Are they still at Eighty-Fourth?”

  “No. My mother moved out recently. And Dad’s gone. He died of a heart attack.” It had been a while—ten years—so I didn’t feel completely devastated saying it anymore, but it still upset me, especially being here, so close to where we had lived. William also seemed upset to hear this news, and sighed heavily in a way that confirmed he hadn’t known.

  “That’s terrible. I adored your father. I mean that—I truly adored him. Once he took me to an exhibit about the railroad system in America. No one would go with him—your mother certainly wasn’t interested.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “It’s odd to think of now. Where were my parents? I can’t recall. But I remember that day well. Your father tipped the waitress a hundred dollars. I was very impressed.”

  “He did that all the time!” I wanted to tell William I was generous like that, too, but there was no humble way to say this.

  We had gotten to the edge of the reservoir: joggers in their skintight Lululemons, a French couple taking pictures of each other, and the water, so still, a barely moving reflection of the sky.

  “Shall we make the loop?”

  “Let’s make the loop,” I said, as though making the loop had a much greater significance than just walking in a circle.

  It had been about a year since I’d been up here, since we’d sold the apartment. My mother’s Alzheimer’s had progressed to the point where the task of living alone was beyond her. For a while she had caretakers, but my mother was a difficult person, and these people kept quitting. My sister thought we should put her in a home. At the time I thought it was so shitty of us, but it actually turned out to be the best thing. She had friends there, or at least other forgetful people her age who seemed friendly enough, and the interior of the place—the sofas, the walls, everything—was either cream or yellow or a combination of cream and yellow, which looked lame in the pamphlet but had a surprisingly uplifting effect in person. It was completely unlike the dark apartment on Eighty-Fourth Street, with its heavy velvet curtains and its stone animals and its long disturbing hallways filled with plants.

  Even though it had been the right thing to do, I still hated it that we had sold. It felt like my father was preserved in that apartment, and without it there was no palpable evidence of him: nothing to remind me of his peppery smell, or of the particular way the air rushed in through the window of his study sometimes, blowing apart all his papers. Besides a few trips to the dentist and exactly two baby showers (bane of my existence), I had managed to avoid the Upper East Side completely since Mom had left. Which hadn’t been hard. Especially since my sister, in a move that surprised everyone—everyone being me because I was the only one left, at least the only consistently coherent one—had relocated all the way across town to the Upper West Side to be near her doctor husband’s practice, and now lived conveniently within blocks of our mother.

  Walking with William now, I felt surprisingly at ease being here. I wasn’t as pissed off or as sad as I’d expected to be. The reservoir reminded me of so many things, and I actually f
elt like sharing them. It was out of character for me to open up so easily. I took this as a good sign.

  “We used to drink vermouth on those rocks in high school.” I pointed to the gray boulders. “And, oh my God, one day, walking here with my dad—maybe I was five, six?—I threw my stuffed panda bear into the water, over this gate.” I touched the metal. It was warm. Herman circled back because we had stopped. He sniffed my toes.

  “Did you?” William said thoughtfully. He was a good listener. He paid attention. He understood how to draw people out of themselves. He put a hand on the metal next to mine. “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, trying to remember, but nothing came to mind. “I became difficult around that age.”

  “Really?”

  “My dad said I changed when my sister was born. I was jealous.”

  A pause. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

  “Caroline. She’s younger, so you wouldn’t have known her, I guess.”

  “No,” he said. “Our families must have lost touch by then.”

  “Why, do you think? Did something happen?”

  In a lower voice, he said, “I think people simply lose touch sometimes.” He looked at the water. His nose in profile was long, dignified. He had the strong jaw of a warrior. I couldn’t see his eyes.

  Then, without words, he took my hand and led me to the street, which wasn’t far. We walked over the cobblestones to the curb. We had spent almost two hours together, and I had assumed for some reason that our date would include dinner. I thought the next words out of his mouth would be, “Catherine, I would love the pleasure of having dinner with you,” or at least “How do you feel about sushi?” But instead he said, “I have an appointment for a haircut,” and looked at his watch—a Patek Philippe with roman numerals and a simple black band—“at four o’clock.” This seemed like a too-abrupt ending (had I done something wrong?), and his hair looked great, but I said, “Okay, right, haircuts are important,” and smiled (too enthusiastically; I was overcompensating), and reminded myself that two hours was a very long time and that I had to stop being unrealistic with men. It was unrealistic to think you would meet a man for coffee and then never leave his side. We weren’t teenagers.

  He raised his long, elegant arm for a cab. “Perfect,” he said in his cool, even way. I got the impression then that William was a person who wouldn’t show you what he didn’t want you to see. Because it was four-fifteen and he didn’t seem stressed at all that he was late. He was serene, the flat surface of unmoving water, liquid that appeared solid. I remember thinking, He must be great at his job.

  Looking back, this might have been my first little warning. A haircut, now? It felt like a lie. What was he hiding? At the time this warning registered in only the vaguest way—a slight constriction in my chest, maybe, a tiny pang that disappeared, a single skipped beat I told myself didn’t matter. It was just a haircut. It was nothing.

  A cab stopped. He stepped forward and opened the door in one fluid movement. The way he moved had a naturally sensual quality to it. We watched Herman jump in and then jump back out. Was it odd that we said nothing about that? Was it odd that we hadn’t been speaking? Then William put his fingers below my chin like my face was something delicate, and he kissed me. His lips were perfect. And his taste: of mint dipped in sea salt. He was careful, confident, familiar, strange. He was exactly what I’d been waiting for.

  3

  The next day Susan made a circle with her finger on the couch and said, “Is this new?”

  “Do you like it?” I had bought two new couches. We sat on one and looked at the other. White, downy fabric that reminded me of clouds (who doesn’t want a couch like a cloud?) paired with a low-backed, contemporary body that was long and near to the floor.

  I had been redecorating. I was going through a phase of wanting everything in the house to be white. It felt cleaner to me, and softer, and, as my architect had rightly pointed out, white didn’t compete with the art.

  “It’s good,” she said, in her absolute way. Susan spoke only in absolutes. She was the most decisive person I knew. She also had good taste, so her opinion mattered to me. I was relieved she approved of the couch.

  Today Susan wore a giant yellow scarf that looked more like a blanket and was feeling a lot better after her episode with the flu, though she still wanted to baby herself, which was why she was swaddled, drinking tea, and which was also why she had conveniently planned this visit to coincide with Dan the masseur’s usual Sunday appointment. Dan loved me, so he usually didn’t mind adding another body to the roster, especially if it was Susan.

  Susan was my closest friend. We had gone to Deerfield together and now basically led parallel lives—same gym, same hairdresser, same magazines in the bathroom. Physically we were total opposites, which was annoying only because it disproved my theory that short people and tall people didn’t mix in meaningful ways, though this theory still held up with everyone in my life besides Susan. I was tall, Susan was short. I had brown hair, Susan had blond hair. Susan was fair-skinned, I was olive-skinned. Our color themes even extended to the tea we were drinking right now. Me: Earl Grey. Susan: chamomile.

  “I think one of my people got me sick,” she said, curling her small legs underneath her blanket/scarf.

  “Who? Henry?”

  “Please, don’t say his name.” She mock-cringed. “Oh, I need to text him. Thanks for reminding me.” She rummaged around her giant salmon-pink purse until she found her phone. I was surprised it wasn’t in her hand already. Susan was a little addicted to the screen.

  By “her people,” Susan (lovingly) meant the people who worked at her shop, Bonsai, an adorable little boutique that sold, obviously, bonsai trees. It turned out Susan had landed on a gold mine with this very niche market that combined artistry and minifauna, and she was killing it. Henry was her manager. He was also twenty-four and wanted to fuck her. He’d made this obvious through the many doting cards he left around the shop for her to find. With his spirited curly hair and the cutoffs he wore in summer, Henry looked like a gardener from a ’90s movie. (“I half expect to find him singing into a hose every time I go in there,” she said once.) But as much as she thought sleeping with Henry would be “wholly entertaining,” he was too young, and he was her employee. Susan had self-respect, or at least she wanted it to appear that way. So her approach was to dismiss the cards entirely—she didn’t mention them to Henry at all. Yes, of course she kept them. She kept them in a box at home, and that was no one’s business.

  Working was a big thing Susan and I had in common. Most of our friends didn’t work, especially the ones from Deerfield. They were too busy raising kids (or paying people to do that) and taking care of the household (or telling their assistants how to do that) and going to Pilates and lunch and dotingly removing their husbands’ coats at night after long moneymaking days at the office.

  Susan and I, both still childless (she didn’t want them) and unmarried (which bothered me more than it bothered her), owned small businesses within a few blocks of each other in the West Village, where we both also lived. Mine was a handmade stationery shop. The goal in starting it was to promote new artists and give them a way to make some extra cash while giving people cool, original, not-Hallmark cards. Susan had actually named the shop for me: Leaf. First we thought Paper, but that was taken, and Leaf—ha—went with the bonsai theme. As in bonsai trees had leaves, most of the time. (Yes, we may have come up with this idea while tipsy on pink champagne one late afternoon at Le Gigot.)

  Although neither of us actually needed to work, we often did. It was nice to have something tangible and straightforward to do during the day. I hated to be such a cliché, but if I had nothing to do, I shopped. Which was bad, but better than drugs. Of course I was grateful to have the luxury to buy whatever I wanted, but I also knew I didn’t fully understand gratitude for material things like other people did. By “other people” I obviously meant poorer people, which also happ
ened to be most people. I knew I was lucky because people told me I was lucky. I knew it to the extent that I could know it. But I actually resented my good fortune sometimes—I may have had distorted, oversimplified notions that romanticized a hunter-gatherer, stranded-on-a-desert-island-in-a-good-way(?)-type life—and this, the resenting, proved that I didn’t get it at all, because, as Susan pointed out, “Only trust-fund babies have the audacity to resent money.” She was allowed to say this because she was a trust-fund baby, too.

  I watched her beady little blue eyes scan the screen. Susan was pretty in sort of a pinched way. She had small features: a button nose and the itty-bitty mouth of a pocket-sized fairy. As a child she had been adorable. Now she was what people usually called “cute.” She hated that—no one called tall people “cute.” But, she argued, she did get more leg room where tall people didn’t, though this would have been more advantageous if she flew coach, which would never happen.

  She chuckled to herself, said, “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  In a way Susan and I were still the skinny, naive girls we’d been at Deerfield. When she said “Nothing” now, I saw her saying “Nothing” at age fourteen, when she’d had a crush on Tommy Charles and didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Um.” She looked up. She had forgotten what she was going to say. And then she remembered. “Oh, should we get sandwiches?”

  “I don’t know. Do you want a sandwich?”

  “I wouldn’t be asking you if I didn’t want one.”

  “Okay, but let’s order in.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m not walking anywhere.”

  So I called the sandwich place and ordered our sandwiches. I got a veggie hummus wrap and a Coke for Dan, like a real Coca-Cola, which no adult except Dan actually drank, and which was hilariously not in sync with his holistic approach to life at all.