We Could Be Beautiful

by Swan Huntley

  My lawyer said everything checked out. William agreed. I still wanted to sue Ted (I was so angry), but there was no basis for a lawsuit. I should have been opening my mail. I should have known. Especially if Caroline knew, I should have known. There was no excuse. How could I not have known? A quiet, gnawing voice in my head wondered what else I wasn’t knowing on purpose. Of course nothing came to mind. Another voice said, Stop it, you’re overreacting, this unfortunate scenario indicates nothing about a great fondness for denial—it’s just unfortunate.

  The situation seemed too far-fetched to happen to anyone in real life, and I couldn’t stop feeling like I was a character in a made-for-TV movie, or a bad headline on a gossip site: “Catherine West Loses Everything!” I didn’t know what I had done to deserve this. I was a good person. I was a good daughter. Why was our mother making us suffer?

  I kept her strange scrawl in my wallet, hoping that at some point I would understand it. That hadn’t happened yet. I had no idea what it meant, except that Mom was a person I didn’t truly know. I had always felt that way. It was something I’d thought about a lot when I was stoned at college. I even talked about it then. But as the years passed, I had stopped talking about it. It seemed dramatic. I was an adult now. But it was amazing how much this scrap of paper seemed to weigh in my purse. I thought about it all the time.

  •

  William looked over the financials for the shop. He said it wasn’t good. I could keep us afloat for one more month, but if things didn’t turn around, I would have to start thinking about selling. He reminded me that it wasn’t a failure. The market was simply not in an opportune place right now. He also said this might be something to pray about at church. I glossed over that with a noncommittal “Yeah” and asked him what the chances were that we would survive. He said, “The chances are fairly low, Catherine.” The look in his eye told me they were lower than “fairly.” He stood there, sweaty from his run, drinking water over the sink. “It might be a good idea to let your employees know.”

  I thought about what Vera’s face was going to look like and decided to write an e-mail. An e-mail made sense anyway. I was not avoiding anything. An e-mail also meant that I could tell Vera and Maya at the same time. That was the respectable and fair thing to do.

  But I didn’t write the e-mail.

  Instead I told Vera the money for the month had been deposited. And I wrote: PLEASE SELL A LOT THIS WEEK! You need to talk to everyone who comes in. EVERYONE.

  I didn’t write to Maya, because Maya was great at selling. Maybe if I had two Mayas and no Vera, this wouldn’t be happening. Or if our location were two stores down, a little closer to the corner, this wouldn’t be happening. Or if the cards weren’t blank. I lay awake at night scrolling through the list of reasons for my failure. I couldn’t stop. And it was impossible not to compare myself to Susan, who was flourishing on a block that got far less foot traffic than ours. I didn’t tell Susan what was happening. I didn’t tell anyone. Only William knew.

  •

  The next time we went to church, William reminded me about the praying. “It couldn’t hurt.” Just before we walked in—the organ had started its Halloween tune—he said, “I feel closest to you here.”

  I thought it was a waste of time, but since I had nothing else to do while I waited for church to end, I prayed. I sat in the pew and looked at William’s strong legs in those slacks and I thought, God, please keep me and William healthy and don’t let us get divorced and please let me keep the shop and I really, really, really want a baby. I’ll do anything. I’ll be so good. I’ll be perfect.

  This started me on a long list of all the other things I wanted. The service went on, and I kept adding things to the list. God, please don’t make me go gray too early, please let Caroline be less irritating, please make my knees hurt less after I work out, please think of something more permanent than Botox soon, please kill Herman. Okay, fine, no, I take that one back. Please let Herman run away to a meadow somewhere and never come back.

  When the priest said something about stealing, I added, And please don’t let anyone steal from me.

  When he said something about children, I added, And I really, really, really want a baby. Even if it’s only just one. And please don’t let it get any tattoos. But even if that happens, I’ll accept it. Please just let me be a mother. Please.

  Then the priest said, “I would like to share a story with you. It’s about my friend Catherine. One day Catherine called me. Catherine was a very successful lawyer at the top of her field. She had one child, a son. She told me she had recently been diagnosed with stage four uterine cancer. I told her, ‘Catherine, we are going to pray for you.’ Later she called me again. She said, ‘I feel that God is calling me. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m sick that I feel he is calling me, but I want to get closer.’ Catherine had not been to church in a while. She had become disconnected from her faith. I said, ‘Catherine, do you remember what your baptism meant? It meant you became an apostle. It meant God would never leave you. And then later, when you came into communion with God, do you know what that meant? That meant you received the body of Christ. That was the second milestone. Last, you received your confirmation. When the bishop placed his hands on your head, you were given the Holy Spirit.’ God’s gift to us is the Holy Spirit. All we need to do is take it. I said, ‘Catherine, God will take you into his loving arms when you are ready.’ Catherine got sicker every day, but she seemed more at peace every day, and less afraid of death. Like Catherine, we all have the Holy Spirit within us. It was given to us by Jesus. When we are in doubt, we ask the Holy Spirit to shine his light on us.”

  Of course it bothered me that the uterine cancer victim’s name was Catherine. And what had happened to her? Had she died or been miraculously saved by the Holy Spirit?

  Please, God, don’t let me get uterine cancer.

  On the way out (after a brief conversation with Father Ness; he was ecstatic that we would be married there and looked forward to learning more about us at our meeting), a homeless woman asked us for change by the gate. I decided this woman had been placed there by God, or the Holy Spirit, or the Lord (why did He have so many names?) just for me, maybe as an opportunity to avoid uterine cancer. I took a fifty out of my wallet and gave it to her slowly enough for us all to see the number on the bill.

  “God bless you, baby,” she said.

  Yes, of course I noticed she had used the word baby.

  Maybe William heard it too because he raised his eyebrows twice and said, “Shall we go home, darling?”

  “Sure,” I said, and we went home and made love for the sixth time that week. It had begun to feel like a job. Afterwards, I held my knees to my chest so the sperm would have a greater chance of survival. I felt like I was going through the motions, like I was performing. Like the actress I had seen do this in a movie once—that was where I’d learned about it. I didn’t know if it actually helped, and even if it did, we were probably beyond help. Maybe I did it for William. To show him I was trying. To pretend we had a chance. The truth was that I wanted to believe my own lie. I wanted to pretend we had a chance, too.

  •

  I didn’t have time to go to the shop. When I wasn’t busy having sex or recovering from sex—yes, it was still painful, and I’d started icing my lower back regularly—I was busy pouring every ounce of myself into the wedding. At one point Marty said, “You need to back off. You are micromanaging and I cannot take it. I will fire you.” I said, “Okay, sorry,” and then continued to text him at four o’clock in the morning about scalloped versus nonscalloped cutlery and where exactly the flowers would go inside the church. He worked for me. It wasn’t the other way around.

  We chose, unsurprisingly, simple white invitations embossed with an elegant floral trim. The Save the Date was printed on the same white stationery and included a picture of William and me from the engagement party.

  We chose David Burke for the rehearsal dinner and Marty’s friend�
��s SoHo space for the reception. Both were dangerously close to Canal Street, which meant close to Chinatown, which was not ideal, but David Burke was quality and it was also big enough, and when I saw Marty’s friend’s gallery space, I fell in love. Huge windows, expensive flooring, good acoustics. I commissioned Bird to paint a 360-degree mural of flowers, fields of them, human-sized in the foreground and tiny in the background, to give the impression we were standing, very small, on the ground among them. I had stolen this idea from one of my magazines and passed it off as my own. (“It just came to me, I’m not sure from where.”) The tables would be round—better for conversation—with white tablecloths and white orchid centerpieces.

  The wedding lunch—lunch, not dinner, since the ceremony was at ten a.m.—would be catered by Blue Hill. For starters, guests could choose a salad of baby field greens with goat cheese crostini or a cauliflower soup with truffle oil and crunchy glazed pears. The main course would include the following options: filet mignonette wrapped in bacon with balsamic-drizzled white asparagus, free-range rosemary lemon chicken with duchess potatoes, and a deconstructed ratatouille. Marty thought there should be a fish. I wanted only three options. William would want the filet, the free-range chicken from Blue Hill was supposed to be the best on earth, according to everyone on earth, and we had to have a vegetarian for the vegetarians. After a very long conversation, Marty won. We added an Atlantic salmon option.

  Marty insisted we go to cake tastings. I thought they were unnecessary—I only cared about what the cake looked like—but welcomed the filling of time slots in my schedule. I wasn’t avoiding the shop. No, I wasn’t avoiding it at all. I was planning my wedding.

  We went to five bakeries. Marty tasted cakes. I drank champagne. (“Have to fit into that dress!”) We decided on a five-tiered white number with light green flowers—the green was a major departure from what Marty called my “repressed virginal weddingscape”—from a new place that had been started by an important French dessert chef whose name was full of vowels and impossible to pronounce.

  Dress: that was easy. Monique Lhuillier. Chantilly lace V-neck, low open back, white silk with reembroidered lace appliqué detail. I had chosen different renditions of this dress for my other two nonweddings, and this one was even more exactly the dream.

  Our guest count was 182, which was extremely reasonable. It helped that William was inviting only people from the office plus Max and Stan and their parents and a few administrators from Dalton. I had learned not to push about people from Geneva. William clearly didn’t like to linger in the past, and I would continue to respect this. He was forward-thinking, he was about momentum. He was not into ruminating. Also, it was a long way to travel. William assured me that one day he would take me to Geneva and introduce me to everyone he knew, including the baker Gerard, who baked the most wondrous bread I would ever eat.

  The seating arrangements weren’t hard because I’d done them before for most of the same people. William’s people—they would stick together. The only problem was Mom. I didn’t know if I should put her at our table. She would be upset the whole time. But it would look bad if I banished her to another table. I couldn’t do that. The tables were large. They sat twelve. As long as she was as far away from William as possible, it would be bearable. I would make our centerpiece bigger, fuller. Not an orchid but a meaty bouquet. That would create a barrier.

  William didn’t want groomsmen, so I wouldn’t have bridesmaids. This upset me at first, but Marty assured me it was for the best. (“Bridesmaids equal drama.”)

  There were still tons of small details to figure out—a text to Marty, 5:32 a.m.: “We need something more unique than chocolate in the gift bag”—but we were okay. We had time.

  The people we met with—wine people, flower people—were unapologetically judgmental when I told them we were getting married in a Catholic church. One gangly sommelier had the audacity to say, “I wouldn’t have thought you were Catholic.” This may have been because I got a little drunk with Marty and started talking about my ex-girlfriend and the queer spectrum. Marty’s jittery leg—it never stopped jittering—vibrated under the table. I told the sommelier I was offended (jokingly, even though I was serious), and when he walked away, I told Marty we would not be using him, to which he said, “Fine, he looks like a grasshopper anyway.”

  •

  On a gloomy Thursday, after a hard workout with Chris, I finally went to the shop. I wanted to meet with Marty instead, but he wouldn’t have it. “I asked for this day off a month ago, Catherine. Do not text me today.”

  My feet felt like bricks as I walked through the door. I was ready to say, “You need to go talk to that customer, Vera,” but she was already doing that. She even looked engaged, nodding her head and smiling and then reaching up to grab a card and show it to the twenty-something girl in Louboutin heels.

  “Hi,” she said as I walked by her into the office. I responded with a tight smile. She should be talking to the customer.

  I had 1,084 e-mails. Fuck. Why hadn’t Vera been dealing with these?

  Everybody wanted something. The Village Voice wanted us to advertise with them. The people who cleaned the floor wanted more money for cleaning the floor with new, eco-friendly cleaning products. The artists wanted to know how their cards were selling.

  I watched Vera through the office window. Poor Vera, who shopped at T.J. Maxx and lived in New Jersey, looked uncomfortable in those shit-brown slacks. After she rang Louboutins up, I called her name.

  She stood in the doorway. I did not turn around. I looked at the computer. “It’s nice you came in,” she said. This felt backhanded.

  “Of course I came in. It’s my shop.”

  “Yes,” she said carefully. “It’s just been a little while.”

  “Why haven’t you answered these e-mails? There are over a thousand.”

  “I thought you told me you wanted to answer them yourself.”

  “How can I answer a thousand e-mails when I’m not here, Vera?”

  I knew what she was thinking: Can’t you open a computer anywhere, you tyrant?

  “After what happened with the toilet paper, you clearly stated that you did not want me making any major decisions.”

  “Well, you did order eighty rolls of toilet paper at the same time. Where did you think we were going to put all that? Out for people to see?”

  “I thought we would put them in here. I bought in bulk because it saved us money. It saved us twenty dollars.”

  I heard myself laugh. “Twenty dollars?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We are in dire straits financially.”

  The money would run out very soon. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her this. I convinced myself that protecting her was the kind thing to do. Right now, at this very moment, I was preventing Vera from having a heart attack.

  “So do you want me to answer the e-mails now?”

  “Yes, and you can answer the ones from the artists, too.”

  “Really?”

  I always dealt with the artists directly. So of course Vera was surprised. “Really.”

  “Okay.”

  “But sign my name.”

  I turned to look at her then. I thought her face would be full of judgment, but it wasn’t. She didn’t even flinch. That disturbed me. She wasn’t surprised. She expected me to be terrible. I turned to face the screen. “That will be all,” I heard myself say.

  18

  Leaf was just as appealing as Bonsai from the outside. A kitsch wooden sign hung above the door. Susan had made it herself. Somehow her chicken scratch had translated into homemade charm. Lucky. She was luckier than I was. Maybe I should have hired a reiki master to come balance the energy in my space before it opened. Maybe I should have made my sign myself, even if only as a gesture. (A sign company had made our sign.)

  I had to remind myself that the problem was not how we were running our shops, it was what we were selling. People wanted tiny plants. People did not want blank $10 cards. H
ow was I supposed to control what people wanted? I couldn’t control that. People were morons.

  It was very big of me to be here today, considering what was about to happen. I also might have been interested in checking out the space with new eyes: how could it be split between us?

  Bonsai was dark. It felt like being in a womb. The sound of running water from the fountain plants in the back was soothing. And it smelled delicious, like vanilla and orange and pine needles.

  “Hey girl.” Susan hugged me. Her face still looked amazing. Had she gotten another peel? She wore jeans and a white shirt and salmon-pink loafers. “Why are you here? You never come here. I always go to you.”

  “What’s the fragrance in here?”

  “Glade.”

  “No.”

  “It’s incense.” Susan pointed to the back, where some incense was burning.

  “So hippie of you.”

  “Henry found it.”

  “Did I hear my name?” Henry popped up so I could see him over the plants.

  “Hey Henry, nice to see you. Thanks for coming to the party.”

  “Thanks for inviting me.” Those cutoffs. He really did look like a gardener from a ’90s movie.

  “All right,” Susan said to him. “We’re going shopping. Don’t burn the place down.” She grabbed his head with passionate force and pressed into his lips and I couldn’t help but think maybe that’s what Leaf had been missing: love.

  •

  We went to Barneys. I bought a $3,000 bag. A gold Alexander McQueen. I had to have it. Susan got a snakeskin Fendi for $5,500. I hated that I even noticed these numbers. Was this going to be my life now? Was I going to start budgeting? Cutting coupons? Strangely, I thought, If things get really bad, I can sell my hair. For someone’s cancer wig. I had heard of people doing that.

  We took a cab to our favorite nail salon in the Village. We soaked our feet in the warm water, complimented each other’s purchases.

  “The snakeskin is nice,” I said.