We Could Be Beautiful

by Swan Huntley

  33

  I moved around like I was caught in a thick and viscous gel. I was tired all the time. I wasn’t sleeping. I was overwhelmed by the thought of sleep and by the thought of being awake. I hated it when William came home. I hated it when he left in the morning and I was alone with my thoughts again. I was so tired that I became a little delusional. I thought my phone was ringing when it wasn’t. I thought I’d put toast in the toaster. I would run to the kitchen, expecting to find it burning, but there was nothing there. Just sparkling clean countertops and bright pink roses, huddled together in the vase, and me, alone, falling apart.

  I made sure I was in bed by the time he got home at night. I didn’t feel well, I needed rest. I held my breath, listened to the sound of his footsteps coming up the stairs. The doorknob would turn, the door would open soundlessly. I would keep my eyes closed. I would pretend to be asleep.

  When I finally did doze off, I had dreams. Dreams I was running after my father, but no matter how fast I ran, I could never catch up. Dreams of being trapped in smoke-filled hallways. Dreams of falling, but it was never-ending—there was no ground.

  When I woke up, I couldn’t remember why I was in the guest room. And then I did: I had told my fiancé I needed to sleep here because our mattress was bothering my back. I had told him Dr. Rose absolutely wouldn’t let me sleep on a Tempur-Pedic right now, with the pregnancy—it was out of the question. I invited him to move to the guest room with me because I knew he would say no, and he did say no. He was a bad sleeper, terrible. He needed the Tempur-Pedic; he needed rest.

  •

  William responded to my distance by moving closer. He saw “Dr. R” written on the kitchen calendar and insisted on going with me.

  “Dr. Rose, it’s so wonderful to meet you,” he said in his magnetic way. I could tell by the look on her face that she was smitten with him.

  “You, too,” she said, her Belize-bronzed skin glowing under the fluorescent lights.

  “How was your trip?”

  “It was great.” She opened her folder. “Okay, this is ten weeks, right?”

  “Right.”

  “How have you been feeling?”

  “Pretty bad,” I said.

  “Catherine’s been resting a lot,” William said. “On a non-Tempur-Pedic mattress, of course.”

  Dr. Rose, thank God, ignored this. “Rest is good,” she said. “And you’re eating?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Dr. Rose said. “Lie back for me and lift your gown please?”

  I did. I focused my eyes on a yellow stain on the ceiling. It always irked me when doctors’ offices weren’t as immaculate as I wanted them to be.

  Dr. Rose pushed around my pelvic bone with her fingers. William towered over me. His skin. It was perfectly smooth. There was no way he had ever been a smoker. “Now I’m going to insert this.” Dr. Rose held up a wand. It looked like a dildo. I thought of Shelly.

  “There.” Dr. Rose nodded to the screen. Black and white and yes, oh my God, the shape of a head, the shape of a tiny body, the static flicker of a heartbeat. “There’s your baby.”

  It wasn’t until this moment that my pregnancy felt completely real to me. It was hard to believe anything truly existed until you could see it for yourself. I thought, I can’t leave him. He is the father of my baby. We are meant to have a life together. Why would I let some hippie in Brooklyn ruin that?

  “Oh, my dear.” William was amazed. “This is incredible.”

  I was the kind of happy that is filled with sadness. Or I was just sad. I was pregnant, finally, and I had found a partner, finally, and all my money problems were about to be solved. I shouldn’t be sad. My eyes filled with tears. William and Dr. Rose looked at me, their eyes expectant. I didn’t know what to say, so I repeated the last word that had been said. “Incredible.”

  34

  But in the middle of the night I second-guessed everything.

  William Stockton. Mae had clearly said that name. If it were anyone else, I would have said, This is obvious. It’s him. Case closed. But because it was me, I Googled the name William Stockton instead, and felt better when the list was very long. There were many William Stocktons in the world. William Stockton was a very common name. It could have been any of them, or none of them. Not everyone was on the Internet. There was also the possibility that Mae had gotten confused. Maybe she had heard the name William Stockton around the house at some point during her year there—that made sense—and then she had transposed this name onto the guy. That was completely plausible. It could happen to anyone.

  The photo. Me and Mae Simon and the guy in the background. Was it William? There was no way to know. Even if I found another picture of William wearing a blue blazer and khakis and brown dress shoes just like this, that wouldn’t really matter. It was such a basic outfit.

  William said he had been thirteen when he left for Switzerland. The journal confirmed this. Four years later, on March 19, 1977, the Stocktons came to visit. And two days after that, Mom fired Mae. But the Stocktons’ visit may have included only Edward and Donna. Maybe William hadn’t come with them. Maybe he’d been in school. But then why had Mom cut off contact? What was the reason for that? And what did “Guilt is cancer” mean?

  •

  When William went to work, I went back to his desk. I was careful. I didn’t move the box. I lined the pictures up next to the picture Mae had given me. In none of William’s pictures did his hair have the consistency of sheep’s wool like the hair of the guy in the photo. Were their bodies of the same proportion? Maybe. It was hard to tell. Did William have a tendency to stand like this guy in the photo, with two feet on the ground? Yes, and so did most people.

  I took photos of the photos with my phone so I could look at them later and put them back in the box in the correct order. I moved quietly so I would hear him if he came home. I opened the desk drawers. None of their contents had changed. I almost had a heart attack when Lucia came in.

  “Miss Catherine, why are you here?” The sideways look she gave me implied that I was in the wrong. “Why are you no dressed today?” I was still wearing my robe, and it was ten o’clock in the morning. This was very out of character. “You sick?” She touched my forehead with the back of her hand. I let her. “No, you no sick. You pregnant. You tired. I see you very tired. You relax.”

  “Ugh,” I said, too tired for real words.

  She set her bucket of cleaning tools on the floor and began dusting the lamp.

  The doorbell rang.

  Lucia said, “The door rings.”

  It was the delivery of Chino’s punctured canvas. Two men in gray clothes from the Lower East Side gallery held the box with cautious hands. “Where would you like us to hang it, Mrs. Stockton?”

  I chose the wall in the entryway. William would want it somewhere visible. It would be the first thing people saw when they came over. What would they see when they saw it? Something that looked expensive and important. In the context of this house, that’s how it would appear. What I saw, besides an absurd piece of art, was rage—a violent outburst, silenced in a pretty frame.

  35

  My mother sat in her living room, draped in all the jewels she owned. When she moved, the sunlight made them blink. “The girl is stealing my jewelry,” she said, “so I will wear it. That is the answer.”

  Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Mrs. West, I am not stealing your jewels.” She looked at me. “Catherine, I swear to you.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s fine,” I said, and Evelyn looked relieved.

  My mother placed two firm hands on her necklaces. “Thief.”

  “I’ll see you later, Mrs. West.” Evelyn closed the door.

  “How are you today, Mom?”

  “Cold.”

  “Do you want a blanket?”

  “No.”

  “I’m pregnant, you know.”

  “Good,” she said. I waited for more, but there was nothing.

  “Okay,” I said, “
I’m going to show you something today.” My prickling armpits told me I was nervous.

  I handed her the photo without introduction and passed her the reading glasses from the coffee table. She put them on carefully, adjusting each side behind each ear. She held the photo up at a distance.

  “Catherine,” she said sweetly. “This is Catherine.”

  “That’s me, Mom, yeah. Do you recognize the girl with me?”

  Mom looked again. “No.”

  “That’s Mae, my nanny. Remember her?”

  “Mae Simon.”

  “Right.”

  “Your nanny.”

  “Do you remember this night? You had a party.”

  “There were many parties.”

  I pointed to the guy. “Is this William Stockton?”

  Mom’s nostrils flared. She put the photo down.

  “Mom, please answer me. Is this William Stockton?” I held the photo up for her, pointed to the guy.

  “How should I know? There is no face.”

  “Did you have affairs, Mom?”

  “I don’t believe in affairs.”

  “I know you don’t, but did you have them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Mom.” My shoulders tightened. I felt nauseous. “Did you have an affair with William Stockton?”

  Mom looked past me, out the window. After a very long time, she said, in a small and uncertain voice, “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t sound sure.”

  “Stop it right now, Catherine.” It was the chilling voice Mae had described. Even now that I was an adult, that voice had the power to unnerve me.

  She stroked her necklaces, looked away. Fine, we would move on.

  I handed her the journal. “Here.”

  She ran her fingertips along the front. Simple black leather, it could have been anything. She said, “I have seen this before.”

  “It’s yours. Open it.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Sorry.”

  She showed no signs of recognition as she flipped through the pages. I watched her. It was hard to pay attention. I thought about making tea. The peppermint would soothe my stomach, but I didn’t want to get up. Her jewels kept blinking. They looked very heavy around her small neck, her small wrists. I thought, Here is a woman who has so much, and who is suffering under the weight of it.

  “Do you recognize that, Mom?”

  “Does it belong to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t read the handwriting. It’s very bad.”

  “That’s true, your handwriting is hard to read.”

  She closed the journal, put it on the table. She took off her glasses. “Get me a blanket, please. I’m very cold.”

  I got her the blanket. I thought about leaving, but I wasn’t feeling well enough to leave. “Mom, do you remember being pregnant?”

  “It was awful. I got so fat.”

  “I’m worried about that.”

  “My mother ate red meat every day when she was pregnant. You should eat red meat.”

  I didn’t bother reminding her that I didn’t eat meat. “Okay.”

  “When they killed a steer on the farm, I was very upset. But I forgot about that when I got older.”

  “That sounds hard.”

  “I loved those animals.”

  “I thought you hated animals, Mom.”

  “I loved them. And then they were killed.” She lifted one necklace from the pile on her chest and let it go.

  “So you decided to buy plants instead.”

  “Yes. Plants can be brought back to life. A plant can be saved.”

  36

  On Saturday morning I heard him approach. I didn’t hear the door at all this time, but I felt him standing there, watching. His breath was smooth, steady. Why was he always watching me sleep? How much time had he spent doing this? When I felt myself blinking and knew my sleep didn’t look believable anymore, I opened my eyes.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” he said. He had never called me “sunshine” before. He was trying so hard. It was almost pathetic, and I kind of loved it. I wanted him to look shitty and sad, but he looked great. He looked better than ever. All chipper on a Saturday morning, wearing a white shirt and khakis, the same outfit he had worn in the picture with his mother. “Are you feeling well enough to accompany me to brunch?”

  I made my best nauseous face, touched my stomach. “I’m not sure.”

  “I can stay here with you all day instead if you’d like. I cook a mean chicken soup, you know. Which I can adapt to your needs, of course.”

  That sounded like hell. I was already antsy with the amount of time I was spending in bed.

  “No, I think I can manage brunch.”

  I took a long time to get ready. I rationed out the hours of the day. If it was ten now and I took an hour to get ready, that would be one hour less spent with William today. When I realized I was doing this, I told myself to stop it. Every time I went back over the facts, I reminded myself that Mae Simon was not a person to trust. What she had said was most likely an embellishment, and possibly a big one, given her overly emotional response to those cats. My mother, as expected, had given me nothing. I had found nothing in the journal and nothing in William’s desk. And punishing William for something I wasn’t sure he was guilty of—what country did they do that in? Not ours. These were the things I told myself in the shower, where I stayed for a full thirty-three minutes, not avoiding my fiancé.

  •

  “You look lovely,” he said when I appeared, wearing loose black jeans and a mint-green blouse. I half smiled in response. I had spent a lot of time straightening my hair and then I’d put it up in a messy bun. I wore makeup, but not as much as usual, and I moved around warily, like someone who still wasn’t feeling well but who was good enough and kind enough to accompany the love of her life to a restaurant because that’s what he wanted.

  William folded the newspaper he’d been reading on the couch with Herman and took the last sip of his espresso. He got up and kissed me. His espresso taste made me gag. “Oh no,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m just very sensitive to smells right now. The coffee. Maybe we shouldn’t kiss when you’ve had anything pungent.”

  “Of course.”

  He touched my stomach. We looked at it. I put my hand on his hand. In that moment, with the light pouring into our clean white apartment, things made sense. For a second. The next second I was looking at him, thinking, But who are you?

  And the next second: This is your fiancé, Catherine, and he’s fucking beautiful and look at everything you have.

  And the next: But really, who are you?

  The back-and-forth was exhausting, so I concentrated on the physical pain. It was a perfect sunny day, with happy people out shopping and eating, and here I was, hobbling down the street as if I were a hundred years old, clutching my belly like I might throw up at any moment.

  Our usual place had a too-long wait, so we went to the high-end diner around the corner. It was nice and cool inside, and didn’t have too many smells. I wanted to order four bacon cheeseburgers and scarf them all—I was insanely hungry all of a sudden—but I ordered an egg-white frittata instead, with extra toast.

  “You’re eating for two now,” William said. “Good girl.”

  The waitress with the penciled-on eyebrows scanned me for signs of pregnancy with a dulled interest and stuck her pen back in her bun.

  “Is this restaurant okay?” William asked. I knew that if I weren’t pregnant, he wouldn’t have asked me that. I loved that he was babying me. I felt special. I also deserved it. If anything terrible had happened to me in the past, then I was a victim and the world owed me now. This was how karma worked.

  “Yeah,” I said, in a way that was purposely unconvincing, “it’s fine.”

  William chose a sesame roll out of the basket. “Can I butter a piece of brea
d for you?”

  “Yes, please. I want rye though.”

  “Okay.” He poked through the choices. “Good, here is a piece of rye.” He took time to spread the butter into every corner. “There you are, my darling.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So what are we going to do about rearranging the house for the baby? Where should the baby’s room be?”

  “In the study, I think.”

  “The music room?”

  “Yeah. You guys can practice in your office, right?”

  “Sure, of course. Why not?” He bit into his roll.

  I put my bread down. The fennel was not agreeing with me. “I don’t like the rye. Can you butter me a different one, please?”

  “Of course. How about a multigrain option?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know”—he knifed the whipped butter out of the ramekin—“on the subject of offices, I’d like to say again that I feel autonomy in one’s home is paramount. I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable, my darling, but I must ask you once more not to go through my things.”

  I tried to keep my face expressionless. I clutched my stomach. How had he known? I’d been so careful. “I didn’t,” I said, and maintained eye contact because that was what you were supposed to do when you delivered a good lie.

  “Catherine,” he said, sighing.

  “What?”

  “Lucia told me.”

  “Lucia told you what?”

  “That you went through my desk recently, again, after I nicely asked you not to do so.”

  “Why would Lucia tell you that?”

  “She mentioned it in passing.” He tucked his napkin into his shirt. “We mustn’t lie to one another, Catherine.”

  “Is this why you gave Lucia that bonus? To keep tabs on me?”

  “I gave Lucia a bonus because she rightly deserved one. I feel we should treat our people well, don’t you?”

  “We do treat her well. Did you know she has health insurance?”