We Could Be Beautiful

by Swan Huntley

  Two million, I thought. Susan would offer me $2 million now.

  She pulled me through the door. “You’re going to sell your cards here.”

  Fuck cards, give me money! I tried to look appreciative. I didn’t say anything.

  “This will be your corner,” she said in a hushed tone, so as not to bother the twelve—yes, I counted—customers, who appeared to be browsing with the intention to buy. “I’ll ask Henry to clear it out.”

  “Did I hear my name?” Henry popped up into view—he was always popping up like that over the plants—with a turkey baster in his hand. He added a few droplets to the bonsai in front of him, a gnarled thing with yellow leaves.

  “You’re doing a great job, sweetheart,” Susan said, and kissed the air.

  “So put some cards here, okay? I’m worried if you don’t have something to do, you’ll get depressed and kill yourself,” she whispered into my cheek, her scent an overpowering mix of coffee and Gucci Rush.

  I coughed. “Thanks.”

  “Of course! I want to be a good friend!” She rubbed my arm. I smiled without teeth. And then Susan cocked her head and looked at me more closely. She was inspecting my face. “Why are you glowing? Did you call Dr. Butterworth?”

  “No.”

  “Oh my God.” She covered her mouth with her hand. Her nails were painted a teenage blue. Henry was making her young again, apparently. “Are you pregnant?”

  •

  I knew Susan was wrong, but I bought a pregnancy test at Duane Reade anyway. Yes, I hadn’t had my period for a while, but that was normal for me. My cycle had been irregular since my twenties.

  I went to a Duane Reade that was not my regular Duane Reade, because the guys at the regular one kind of knew me, and if I bought this and turned out not to be pregnant (which was what would happen), they’d feel sorry for me and I would be embarrassed.

  I added some magazines and a few packs of Mentos to the pile so the pregnancy test wouldn’t be alone on the counter. I thought the woman who rang me up gave me a look, though I might have imagined that. Tina Turner was playing. What’s love got to do with it? What’s love but a secondhand emotion?

  I put the test in my purse so Lucia wouldn’t see it when I got home. “Hello, how are you?” she said in her new phonetic way.

  “Fine,” I said, and went straight to the bathroom.

  I followed the directions. I played the same Tina Turner song that had been playing in Duane Reade on my phone. I’m not sure why I did that. Maybe so I could keep the experience just to Tina Turner. If it was a no, which it would be, I would avoid listening to Tina Turner for a while.

  I waited. I waited for a no, for a no, for a no. I was too old, I had fucked everything up with my abortions, there was no way.

  And then, as with everything else in my life I had been so sure about, I was wrong.

  In the tiny white square: POSITIVE.

  •

  After another trip to another Duane Reade (I had to walk a little farther, and I walked fast), I came home with five more tests and more magazines and Mentos and a strange key chain of a squealing dolphin. I’d been pretending to be interested in it so as to avoid eye contact with the clerk as she rang me up, and when she said, “You want that, too?” I said, “Sure, yeah, everyone needs a dolphin key chain, ha.”

  Lucia was vacuuming the bedroom when I got home. I gave her a no-talk-right-now smile and headed back to the bathroom, where I took all five tests with Tina Turner and all five said yes.

  I called Dr. Rose and said, “I think I’m pregnant.”

  “I have a cancellation. Can you be here in half an hour?”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  •

  Dr. Rose was a small, attractive Asian woman from Seattle who always wore spandex under her white doctor’s coat. I liked her a lot. She had walked me through the Fernando abortion with no judgment. Or if she had judgment, she hid it well. She was professional. We also had a history together outside of work, which was why she fit me into her schedule so easily. She had dated Fernando’s brother, Esteban, at Yale. In the past she’d said more than once, “You can call me Patricia. I know you socially.” But I didn’t want to call her Patricia. I wanted to think of my doctor as a doctor and not as a flawed human.

  Dr. Rose had me take yet another test. (I had planned for this. I had chugged water at the sink before walking over.) I waited in the room, my eyes lost in a diagram on the wall. Musculature of the Human Body. I thought about texting William, but this seemed premature.

  When Dr. Rose returned (there was a ruffle on the hem of her spandex crops today), she said, “The urine test came back positive. I don’t have time for an ultrasound, and I’m going on vacation. Ralph and I are going to Belize. So we’ll do the ultrasound when I come back, okay?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Yes. If you’ve been drinking, stop drinking. One cup of coffee a day, no more. Be wary of fish. I’ll give you some literature.”

  “I’m fucking pregnant.”

  She put her hands on my shoulders, looked right at me. “You need to start eating, Catherine. I’m serious.”

  “Okay. I know. I will.” I thought, For $10 million, I will eat cheeseburgers all day. Which was horrible. I told myself to delete that thought. Because I also truly wanted a child, I reminded myself of that. I had always wanted a child. The money was just a bonus, and it happened to be good timing.

  “Can I call you in Belize? What if something happens?”

  “You can call the office. Dr. Maslow is great. And listen, don’t worry too much.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Just eat. Three meals a day at least, okay?” She wrapped her slender arms around me, which was both nice and, I thought, slightly inappropriate. “I’m so happy for you.”

  •

  After it was confirmed, I walked through Midtown aimlessly in a tan Donna Karan dress, wondering about which day exactly the lucky sperm had made it. My breasts, which Dr. Rose had said would grow a lot in the next few weeks, suddenly did seem larger to me. And I had been hungrier. Was that true? Yes, I thought it was.

  I was about to call William, and then I decided not to. I wanted to tell him in person. I would tell him in person when he got home from work.

  I got myself a vanilla milkshake from Shake Shack and called Susan, who said she knew it, she was always right. And she was so, so, so happy for me. She also told me about something called pregnancy mask, which was a skin pigmentation that could happen during pregnancy. How had I never heard of that? Your face broke out in brown splotches. She’d seen it happen to a friend. But only one friend, only one out of a million, so I would probably be fine.

  Caroline was ecstatic, of course. She also said pregnancy mask was incredibly rare, and since it hadn’t happened to her and we were from the same gene pool, it probably wouldn’t happen to me either. She was feeling better. Bob was in Miami, and she was painting today. “An angry painting. No one will want it,” she said, “but I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about you. I’m so happy for you, sis.”

  I called my mother next, whose reaction was, “Good.” She sounded out of it, and distant, and disengaged. I imagined her sitting there in all the yellow, looking into space. “Are you happy for me?” I said. “Yes,” she said, flat. I asked her if she knew who she was talking to, and she did. “Catherine,” she said. I might have been hurt that she seemed to care so little, and sad that no matter how old I got, it seemed I would never stop needing my mother’s approval. I would never be adult enough to grow out of that need. She was so withholding. She left so much unsaid. There were so many things I wanted her to say, so much more to want. I told myself what every pregnant woman tells herself: With my baby, it will be different.

  •

  I made dinner that night. I had a clever idea: eggs. The main course was an afterthought; I threw a salad together. I added black beans for protein. The important part was the eggs, which I hard-b
oiled. I presented them on little egg holders.

  When William got home, I poured him a glass of wine.

  “You’re not having any?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “This is an interesting dinner.” He cracked the eggshell with his spoon, peeled the shell with ease. He dropped the egg on top of his salad and sliced it up into neat, uniform slices.

  I accepted that this clue might have been too obscure and said, “I have something to tell you. I made eggs for a reason.”

  William looked at his plate. “What reason is that?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  He swallowed quickly. I thought he might choke. “Truly?”

  “Can you believe it?”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  He got up and walked around the table, Herman skittering in tow, and wrapped his arms tight around me. “I can’t believe it. This is wonderful,” he said. “Oh, Catherine, this is wonderful. I’m so relieved.” He put his big hands on my stomach. “This is going to make everything right.”

  31

  South Portland Street was the West Village on steroids: the trees were bigger, the buildings were higher. Moms and dads pushed strollers toward the park at the end of the block. Number 79 was a tall brownstone like the others, with tattered Chinese take-out menus and bits of newspaper littering the front. The doorbell set off a familiar tune inside. It sounded like the background music from Pac-Man. Someone shouted “Door!” and then there was the sound of tramping down stairs.

  I might have been holding my breath as the huge door opened with a creak. “Kitty Cat!” said a dismembered voice, and then she was there: Mae Simon, my overweight hippie ex-nanny. Her round body and her twinkling fingers—she reminded me of a fairy godmother. Glasses with Glinda-pink lenses, a dress with Andy Warhol’s face on it, which was so short I wondered if it was actually supposed to be a long shirt, and dirty bare feet. Her toenails were painted a shimmering purple. She threw her arms around me before I could say anything. “I’m so glad you’re here! Oh my God! Your hair! It’s so long!” She smelled like garden mulch, especially near her neck. In the mornings Mae Simon probably dabbed her neck with garden mulch oil.

  “Let me look at your face,” she said, and squeezed both my arms as she looked me over. “Yep, wow, it’s definitely you.” She had gray-blue eyes and gray-yellow hair, colors wrapped in a smooth fog that dulled them. Her skin was luminous like pearls, and dewy. “This is unreal. Just a second ago I was thinking, It’s not going to be her, it’s going to be someone else. But no, it’s you. Do you remember me?”

  There was something familiar about her presence, maybe, but she didn’t look familiar. “I’m not sure.”

  “It’s fine if you don’t. You had so many people in that house all the time, it would be a trip if you remembered me.”

  “Yeah.” I pulled my sweater tighter around me—something to do with my hands.

  “Come in, come in.” She backed away and held the door open. “Careful of the bike,” she said about the bike that was hanging above the doorway. “Let’s go down to the kitchen first. I’m making bunnies! And then we can talk upstairs.”

  “Great,” I said, stepping into the big old house, which smelled deeply of yellow curry. A bookshelf was stuffed full of shoes—girly flip-flops and big construction boots—and then there were hats, too, and belts, crammed in and spilling out onto the rugs. Rugs of all different sizes and colors covered the wooden floors. Some were actual rugs. Some were just oversized pieces of felt.

  Through an open door—the doors must have been ten feet tall—a huge mirror reflected a chandelier that had been strangled in a flurry of Tibetan prayer flags. The ceiling was covered with them; they’d been strung from different points along the wall to meet at the chandelier in the center. In a gallery with a price tag, this might have been called artistic genius, but here, in the dense curry air, it seemed more like the work of a stoner on an ill-advised mission.

  “This house was built in 1892,” Mae said. “Everything’s original.”

  “Is it yours?”

  “I wish.” Mae laughed. “This is Philip’s house. He’s at work right now.”

  It was cooler in the kitchen, and dark. Pots and pans hung from a makeshift beam that was tied to the ceiling with thick, dirty ropes. At a large wooden table, two long-haired young men looked up from their tiny game of travel chess. The pieces were as small as fingernails.

  “Catherine, this is Carlo.” She pointed to the small one, whose spotty facial hair looked like continents on a map. “And this is Logan.”

  “What’s up?” Logan had a full beard and a full head of hair tucked beneath his beanie. There was a tennis ball–sized hole at the elbow of his flea-market sweater.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  Above them was a large piece of loosely hung cloth that said, in bubbly letters, Free Education for Everyone!

  “Come here, Kitty,” Mae said, waving me over to the kitchen island. “Do you remember these?”

  On a chipped dandelion-print plate were two pieces of toast cut into bunny shapes. Mae had spread them with peanut butter and covered them in banana slices.

  “Oh my gosh, I kind of do remember these.” I was pretty sure I was telling the truth, but the feeling of remembering them was so vague, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Groovy,” Mae said. “Take one.”

  I did and bit into it. Exactly what I thought: peanut butter and banana. But it did taste better because of the care Mae had taken in preparing it.

  “Mmm,” I said. Some peanut butter got onto my chin. Mae held out a smelly rag. I hesitated.

  “It’s clean, don’t worry,” she said.

  I wiped my chin quickly because she was waiting.

  “Did you make us bunnies?” Carlo said.

  “Yes!” Mae said. “There are more in the fridge.”

  “That is so thoughtful of you, Mae. You’re the best.” He looked at me. “Mae is the best.”

  “You guys!” Mae said, pulling out a chair at the table. “Come,” she said, “sit.”

  I sat. Logan retrieved the other plate of bunnies from the fridge.

  “So what do you do?” Carlo asked. A banana slice fell off his bunny onto the table. He picked it up and wiped the peanut butter residue from the table with his finger and licked it.

  “I owned a shop for a long time. We sold cards. Well, it was art in the form of greeting cards.”

  “Cool,” Logan said.

  “Catherine was a very creative child.”

  “I was?”

  “Are you kidding? You loved to draw. And you loved glue. You were obsessed with gluing things together.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I thought you might have been getting high sometimes.”

  I laughed.

  “But not really.”

  “How do you guys know each other?” Logan asked.

  “I was Catherine’s nanny when I was twenty.”

  “Incredible,” Carlo said. “That is the most amazing thing I have ever heard. Even though working as a nanny can be very difficult. My mother used to work as a nanny. Now she cleans houses in Florida. It’s very limited when you don’t have papers.”

  “Right,” I said. “How do you guys know each other?”

  “We all live here,” Logan said.

  “It’s a cooperative house,” Mae said. “There are seven of us. We cook for each other and do chores. It’s a community.”

  “It rocks.” Logan was smiling. Actually, he’d been smiling the whole time. He never stopped smiling. He was probably stoned.

  “Does everyone have their own room?”

  “Of course,” Carlo said.

  “Where do you live?” Logan asked.

  “The Village.”

  “If I were going to live in Manhattan, I would prefer to live in the Village,” Carlo said, stroking the continents on his face.

  “What do you guys do?”

  “
We’re artists,” Carlo said.

  “And Carlo is a great writer. He just hasn’t accepted it yet,” Mae said.

  “Mae is great paintress,” Carlo said.

  “Aw, thanks, Carlo,” Mae said to him. And then to me, “I’ll show you some of my paintings. Let’s go upstairs.”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, and Catherine, you should come back next week. We’re doing Fifteen Minutes of Doing Something Now in the living room,” Carlo said.

  “You can do whatever you want for fifteen minutes, or you can just watch.” Logan was still smiling.

  “Anything,” Carlo said, a serious look on his face. “You can do anything you want.”

  “You can even get naked,” Logan said.

  “Oh, please don’t scare her. Come on, Catherine, come with me.”

  Who were these friendly semidegenerates? And what were they talking about? Fifteen minutes of what? And it was three o’clock on a Wednesday and no one was at work? And this owner person, Philip—what was he getting in return for letting these people live in his huge, gorgeous, falling-apart house? And why was he letting it fall apart? As I followed Mae up three long flights of stairs, I made an extensive list of improvement projects for this house, starting with the stairs themselves. They made so much noise: we sounded like a wooden roller coaster going up them.

  “This is my room.” I followed Mae through the open door. The room was huge. It was the same size as mine. There was her bed, and couches, and an alcove where she’d laid out brightly colored afghans beside three tall white drippy candles and a well-used purple yoga mat. There was even a fireplace lined with Russian dolls, tallest to shortest, and Mae’s own personal chandelier, which was missing half its bulbs. I was skeptical of the rock crystals on the mantel.

  The room was painted bright green on one side and white on the other. In the yoga alcove was a big collage of the Buddha. “I made that out of cutouts from Yoga Journal,” Mae said. I thought that was clever. It also looked pretty good.