A Beauty

by Connie Gault

  Jean was setting two dripping Cokes in front of the Kulak brothers, and Jerry was polishing the far-end serviette holder when the woman walked in and turned an ordinary Friday into unusual. She was not from these parts, obviously, not in that stylish dress. Even her ash-blonde hair, with its fall and gleam and its casual upward flip, looked foreign to Charlesville, but her face was flushed from the stinging heat of the late-day sun on Main Street, or maybe from the four of them staring at her as she walked in, the brothers with their mouths gaping.

  “You want table?” Jerry asked her, but she was already seating herself at the closest table but one, the corner table next to the window. He brought her a menu, battling with himself about asking her to move. She thanked him solemnly, her eyes momentarily looking into his, and he couldn’t do it. She’d instinctively slipped to the most private spot they had, banked by the wall and the window and a row of snake plants in tall Chinese pots. He couldn’t ask her to move. Jean gave him a meaningful look when he came back to the counter, but he shrugged it off. They didn’t reserve tables at the Bluebird, no matter how regularly customers came, or how important that corner table was to them.

  Jerry fussed a bit before he took the woman her water, giving her time to settle and read the menu, and while he was fussing, the Thompsons arrived, bringing with them their usual hubbub, just the two of them and the two little kids, so far, but you’d think there was a dozen of them. “God, don’t tell me that bump in her blouse means another’s on the way,” Jean muttered as she hauled out the high chair for them and they ranged themselves near the back of the room. And then Dr. Pilgrim came in and drifted to his usual table, sitting facing the front so he wouldn’t have to talk constantly to the Thompsons. Jerry watched his surprise when he glanced up to find a strange woman sitting in the corner. The doctor was a thin, tired, nervous man, but not unattractive to women, Jerry had observed. He blinked a lot. He was blinking when Jerry came over with the menu. He was one of the few who pretended he didn’t know it by heart.

  In their division of duties, Jean took the orders since she remembered better than Jerry. He didn’t like hearing, “Not gravy, this time,” and it made Roy mad to throw out even a scoop of mashed potatoes. Jerry preferred the greeting, the cheering, the delivery of menus and water, the pouring of endless cups of coffee – shuffling back and forth as if he wore slippers and a gown and a pigtail.

  Besides the big table at the back that was meant for parties of eight or ten, there were now three tables open, all three in the exposed centre of the café, and when Albert Earle and his wife came in, a little later than their normal time, they stalled by the pop dispenser. Faltering, they made Jerry see them as they were going to look ten or twenty years from now. They were just sixty or so, but the smallest surprise could shock people into a kind of temporary old age. Jerry had observed that before. He’d noticed it in himself. And for people who relied on every day being much like every other day, maybe this wasn’t such a little surprise. It certainly wasn’t a pleasant one. Betty Earle, after that one look at the occupied corner table, seemed about to turn around and leave, but Albert cupped her elbow and guided her forward. She was a broad-backed woman, thick of shoulder and with almost no neck, and it was odd to see her being led anywhere, even across a room. Jean and Jerry stood back behind the counter and watched to see whether she’d sit beside the Thompsons or by Dr. Pilgrim. Either would pose a problem.

  When she finally chose the table next to the doctor, she sat on the chair that faced away from him. She stared up at Jerry for a belligerent moment and then transferred her annoyance to Jean. Well, it wasn’t the best seat in the house. Either side of Albert, she’d be looking at the Kulak brothers’ backs as they bent over their plates, forks in constant motion.

  “Betty Earle don’t like it,” Jean hissed in Jerry’s ear as she went by on her way to the kitchen. It was a little joke and on two counts. One, because everyone in Charlesville called Betty Earle by both her names. You never heard her called Mrs. Earle or Betty. It was as if people wanted to impress themselves and everyone else with her identity. And two, because Betty Earle didn’t like much that she came across and didn’t hesitate to let the world know when she didn’t. But it wasn’t a funny joke, because she could scare the pants off you if it was you on the receiving end of her anger.

  Jerry went over with the coffee pot. Right away, Albert Earle asked for the roast beef. “And veal cutlets?” Jerry asked Betty Earle. She was staring at the woman in the corner as if she knew her from a long time ago and had never liked her.

  “Betty?” Albert said.

  She looked down at the coffee in her cup and nodded.

  “Hot one, today, Jerry,” Albert said in his apologetic way.

  Jerry flinched. He wished Albert wouldn’t talk like that. He hovered over them, looking down on the man’s broad, pitted skull. The scars from the dripping tar had never faded. You could see them through the hair; they’d created odd little whorls in his hair like some people had at the backs of their necks. His head and forehead and nose were sprinkled with the black dots, indented into the flesh like inside-out moles. Couldn’t he see his wife’s scars were just as visible? He didn’t make things better by apologizing in advance for whatever she might do.

  “How’s it going?” Jean asked when he came back to the kitchen with the orders. She was catching a smoke while she could, leaning against the sink, watching Roy sling food around.

  “Scary,” Jerry said. “Mr. Earle apologizing already.”

  Jean popped a few smoke rings and watched them drift over the stove. “He can apologize for every word that comes out of her mouth,” she said. “It don’t make no difference.”

  “He’s scared what she might do if anybody say something to set her off.”

  “Nobody around here’s ever gonna speak two words to Betty Earle they don’t have to.”

  “She hasn’t hurt anybody,” Roy said.

  “Huh. You don’t get life in prison for teaching Sunday School.”

  “There were extenuating circumstances, with a baby like that,” Roy said. “You don’t know what she was going through.”

  Jean blew three perfect, fat doughnuts.

  “I gotta get out there,” Jerry said.

  “Don’t get your shirt in a knot. I’m going. She likes it, you know. She likes it that we’re scared of her.”

  Jerry thought she was right about that. Betty Earle seemed to want to frighten people. Sometimes Jerry thought she did it to punish Albert for living while she was in prison, or maybe she wanted to punish them all.

  Stranded in the open middle of the Bluebird Café, Albert decided coffee must have been invented as a substitute for talking. In their usual corner, sheltered by the snake plants, nobody noticed that he and his wife didn’t talk. They should have gone home, turned around and gone home. Betty had wanted to leave. He could have opened a can of soup (he could see the can opener and feel the key in his right hand; he could feel the tin’s resistance while he twisted it). Why should he care if everyone in the café was staring at them, wondering what they were going to do?

  The woman in the corner had his usual chair, facing the other tables, but she wasn’t looking at anyone. She had a calm, composed manner, almost an aura. She’d be a peaceful person to know, he thought. Jean was setting her meal down on her table, now, and the woman was looking up and chatting with her in a friendly way. Dr. Pilgrim was watching them, too, his eyes blinking away. Betty wouldn’t forget the doctor was behind her. He was new in Charlesville; he hadn’t been around back when she went on trial, but just the fact of his being in the medical profession made his presence intolerable to her, and not only because of the baby. Angela. Involuntarily, Albert shook his head. He knew before he looked up he’d find Betty glaring at him. She didn’t like head shaking. But Angela – the very thought of her demanded physical expression, just her name in his mind had to be shaken free, had to be gone as soon as he could make it go. At the trial they’d asked Betty wh
o had chosen the name and why, and she’d said she’d picked it because she’d thought the baby wouldn’t live long. Nothing but the truth, the stupid, stupid truth.

  The café had quieted. It was because it had this tension at its centre, the tension Betty created wherever she went. Made it seem like everyone was holding their breath. One of the Thompson kids started chattering. Albert tried to think it was a good thing the young family was here tonight, otherwise the occasional whine from the overhead fan and Jerry’s shuffling would be the only sounds to bridge them all. On the other hand, the children were sure to annoy Betty, and the louder they got, the more irritable she’d become. It wasn’t that kids weren’t afraid of her, but they’d forget she was nearby. Nobody else forgot her presence. He sure as hell didn’t. A day hadn’t gone by since her return that he hadn’t borne her like a burden on his back.

  People were staring at them and then trying not to stare. He should say something, anything. But what? Only misery words came to his mind. Drab. Dirty. Dull. Dumb. Well, he was certainly that in every way. He coughed. That earned him a glance of disdain. And then he couldn’t stop coughing. His face was getting red, he could tell, but he had something in his throat and he could not quit hacking. Betty pushed his water glass towards him. He picked it up and put it down again because he was in danger of spilling it, he was coughing so hard. He pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. Sometimes that worked. He blew and cleared his throat and coughed. He was sweating now. Everyone was trying not to look at him.

  Finally he got himself under control and was able to sip at his water. He coughed a lot lately. He often thought he had something caught in his throat. It reminded him of the days after the fire, when his larynx and bronchial tubes had swelled and he’d wheezed and gasped for breath and coughed up black phlegm full of soot and shreds of flesh from his seared lungs. Sometimes he thought he was losing his voice. He found himself speaking almost in a whisper, as he’d had to do right after the fire. He was pretty sure these were all symptoms of throat cancer. He did nothing about it, preferring to contemplate what people would say after he died, that he’d left it until it was too late.

  This was the world in which Elena found herself, that pressed on her. She picked at her sandwich, telling herself she had to eat, and tried to ignore the coughing man’s attempts to calm down. He’d been nearly beside himself, while the woman with him looked as if she was on a different planet, or wished she was. Elena could only sympathize with both of them. How many times had she watched couples like this, while she sat alone, quite sure she was less lonely than they were? Now the restaurant had gone so quiet she could hear her jaw click when she opened her mouth to take a bite.

  She thought about her favourite café in Helsinki, and how she’d anchored herself there her first days in Finland. Quite a few people in the city spoke English, but she hadn’t initiated any conversations, any more than she would do here, in Charlesville, and only the waiters and the hotel staff had talked to her. Once they’d got to know her a little, the question they all asked her was “Why did you come here?” They’d assumed, by her looks, that she’d come to visit relatives, yet she was obviously alone.

  And then she’d gone to Hattula, where she’d found some peace. Once again, thinking about Hattula, she thought about Ruth. Ah, Ruth, sitting there the whole time with that disbelieving expression on her face. They shouldn’t have talked about their fathers, about the past. That was wrong of him, Ruth said, but it was only to hear what she would answer.

  She remembered walking through the cemetery beside Hattula Church, on her way back to her car. Tears had sprung up in her eyes for no reason. The headstones swam, the entire graveyard shimmered, broken into bits. It was just because they were all dead, all those once-upon-a-time people; it would make anyone cry.

  “How are the cutlets coming?” Jerry asked.

  “As you see,” Roy said, pointing to the frying pan where syrupy pink blood was oozing on top of the meat.

  “Can’t be ready too soon,” Jerry said. He should have told Roy to leave off his rule of cooking the orders strictly in sequence. Just this once you’d think he could have made an exception.

  “Don’t I know it,” Roy said. After defending her earlier, he’d remembered how Betty Earle had once barged into the kitchen to tell him off when her meal had been late. “But you know, I don’t think she’s trying to scare us. I think she’s the one who’s scared.”

  Jerry threw his hands up. “I don’t know why it’s so bad tonight. We’re losing business. People come in, they see Betty Earle, and they leave.”

  “Usually the Earles come earlier.”

  “I should have kept the corner table for them.”

  “Yup. Keep ’em hidden away.”

  The problem with dying of cancer was that it could be painful. He was pretty sure it had to be painful – that pain was the essence of cancer. Albert was afraid of pain. He assumed most people were, if they’d experienced it once or twice. Even thinking about it made his throat burn. Maybe he should be making an appointment with Pilgrim instead of wondering what to say to him in a friendly way when either one of them got up to leave.

  Jean clattered out with fish and chips for the Thompson kids and the shrill tang of vinegar wafted over the restaurant. A few minutes later the parents got their burgers and fries. The Kulaks asked for the apple pie à la mode, and Albert watched Jean dig out the ice cream while Jerry sliced the pie. Till death do us part, he thought. Betty rolled her eyes. He was sure she could read his thoughts. Just get us through supper and get us home, he prayed to the impersonal no one he prayed to.

  Dr. Pilgrim got his meal. Betty turned to stare when Jean took it to him, but he wisely focussed on salting his omelette. The woman in the corner had finished her supper. She was trying to signal Jerry for the bill. Good. They could move to her table if she left before their food came. It wouldn’t matter what anyone thought. They could simply get up and move to the corner table, and Betty could sit in her usual spot facing the snake plants, and eat her supper and it would all be fine, it would be like any other Friday night. They’d be home by seven, seven-thirty at the latest; they’d watch TV, they’d go to bed.

  Something had changed in the room. For a few seconds he listened, conscious of the fan whirring above him, and then he realized that Jerry and Jean had gone to the kitchen. Both of them. They’d left the café at the same time, deserting them all, abandoning them to their little islands. Whir, whir. Nothing else. Not even the Thompson kids were talking. It was pathetic to be anxious just because Jerry and Jean weren’t among them, moving around the room, ministering to their imagined needs, and how contemptuously Betty regarded him, reading his thoughts. Why would he care what these people thought? The Kulaks eating like pigs, Dr. Pilgrim blinking like an advertisement for medical incompetence, all of them small-town people with small-town minds. Except for the woman in the corner. She definitely had a sophistication that set her apart from them, an urban gloss. She had absolutely no eccentricities, not that he could see. She’d done nothing untoward or odd, and he thought she never would. She could sit in the corner, facing them, where he usually sat, without intruding on them, without making anyone uneasy, somehow even seeming to imply she liked them all. He felt that she liked him, or would like him if she knew him. But he wasn’t going to spend any time looking at her. If Betty saw him – too late. She’d seen him. Oh no, now she had that cynical expression in her eyes, the one she got whenever anything made her think of Peg. His throat hurt. Maybe the pain wouldn’t be so bad, not much worse than this. And it would make no difference if he lost his voice completely. And if he couldn’t swallow, he’d heard starvation was not actually a bad death. He wondered if it would really take forty days. Not if he couldn’t take water. That would be much faster, as long as he told no one it was happening so he wasn’t put into the hospital. He would have to find some kind of personal ice floe, and then it would be a matter of days.

  Finally the kitchen door swung
back and Jerry came bearing roast beef and Jean came bearing veal cutlets. The Kulaks both turned around. Why did they turn around and stare, their big, wide faces open with wonder? Holding their forks aloft, dripping mangled pastry and soft, moist apples (dead apples – they had the discoloured and melting look of death, of decay and dissolution). Jerry and Jean set the plates down, one at either side of the table, and it was all happening as if it was a dream, or a dance; it was all choreographed with uncertain, unknowable meaning; and all the while he was seeing that, he was ticking each action off. There would only be the eating to get through. So move away, Jerry, don’t hover. We don’t need you now. See, Jean’s already escaped to the kitchen. You go too, and leave us to get this over with. Then he saw the knife, where Jerry had left it after cutting the pie, a long, sharp knife, gleaming silver on the turquoise countertop. He saw it because Betty was staring at it. He thought if he turned his gaze and looked at her now, their eyes would meet.

  His fingers found the Band-Aid on his chin and pressed, so he could feel the delicate pain that caused. He could smell his roast beef; it had a canned smell. His mother used to can beef. A nagging weight pulled his innards down. How could he eat? He couldn’t eat. He was sick. She wasn’t eating, either. They’d finally got their food and now they couldn’t eat. He didn’t know how much time had passed since their meals had arrived, or if any time had passed. Maybe he was in some dream state. Maybe she would do exactly what she was thinking. It would happen in slow motion. He wouldn’t feel a thing.