“Have you spoken to Sue, Belle?” Denise asks. “I’ve been meaning to call her, but I’ve been so busy.”
“She hasn’t been answering her phone, but I did go see her on Monday. She wasn’t doing well.” Belle glances out the window again, and I roll my eyes. “I simply can’t believe that she would miss a meeting, though.”
“Why not? She barely showed up to the one at her own place.” I begin pouring out the tea. “Let’s get started, unless you’d prefer to stare out the window until the pastries dry out and the tea goes cold?”
Even hearing it phrased like that, Belle is torn: she turns toward the window, then to the coffee table, and back again. After several cycles of this, she exhales heavily and reaches for the closest filled teacup. “Alright,” she says softly. “I call this meeting of the Ugly Sisterhood to order.”
About time. “Chastity, I’m told that the one with the pink icing has raspberry filling. I got it for you; raspberry is your favourite flavour, isn’t it?”
Chastity’s eyes light up. “Oh, yes, it is.” She takes the small cake off the plate and sets it on her napkin immediately. “How did you know?”
“You made a point of asking for raspberry when we went for ice cream this summer. I figured that you must really like it if you couldn’t settle for any of the twenty flavours that they actually had on display.”
Denise laughs. “It’s not exactly the sort of thing that comes up in ordinary conversation, is it?”
“No, unless some sub-moronic man decides to approach you at an ice cream parlour.” Belle doesn’t even smile at her own joke. It’s obvious that she’s still thinking about Sue, and that annoys me. I’ve gone to all this trouble to host the meeting properly, Denise and Chastity have taken the time to show up, and all she can think about is poor, depressed Sue. Why can’t she just leave her alone?
“Does that happen to you often, Belle?” I ask.
Belle’s mouth twists into a lopsided, utterly insincere smile. “It hasn’t yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.” She reaches for the cinnamon roll at the centre of the plate of pastries, but deposits it on her napkin without taking a bite. “Any new business?”
Is there ever? Why does she keep asking? Is she that attached to the script? Of course, no one says anything, and so Belle nods to Chastity. “Chastity. How have you been?”
“Alright, I suppose.” Chastity takes a small bite of her pastry. “Do you remember that girl, Lucy? Matthew’s friend?”
“Yes, of course,” Belle replies. Denise nods, and I notice that she hasn’t taken a pastry yet. What is she waiting for? There’s more than enough to go around, and I know for a fact she’ll eat anything with enough sugar in it.
“She called me last Sunday, and asked me to meet her.”
“Did you tell her where to go?” I ask.
Chastity shakes her head. “No. I felt that it would be more productive to hear her out. She said ...” She pushes her hair back from her face. “She said that my efforts to save Matthew have been hurting him. That he would be better off without me, and that if she had her way, she’d cut me out of his life.”
“That isn’t her place,” Belle says. “I hope you’re going to tell Matthew. If he’s got any sense, she’ll be the one he casts aside.”
“No.” Chastity sets her pastry down and stares at it. “I promised her that I wouldn’t.”
“Who cares what you promised her? Matthew should know that she’s a duplicitous cow.”
Chastity doesn’t respond, but I think I understand. “It’s not that simple,” I say, and Belle and Denise turn to me. “Think about it. Lucy might have gone behind Matthew’s back in talking to Chastity, but she was probably repeating things that Matthew told her.”
“Yes,” Chastity says. “If I thought she was lying, I might bring it up with Matthew, but if it’s true ...”
“He’d feel betrayed by Lucy, for one thing,” Denise says.
“Yes. But he might also start feeling uncomfortable with me again, and we’ve been doing so well until now ...” Chastity lifts her teacup in both hands and stares into that. “I don’t want to keep things from him either, though. I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ve done enough.” Chastity looks up in shock, and Belle gives me a warning glare, but I will not be silenced. Someone has to say what needs to be said around here. “Lucy’s right. You need to learn to have a relationship with your brother, or leave him alone.”
“And what about his soul?” There’s a hard edge to Chastity’s voice, a far cry from her usual meekness.
“That’s his affair. Let him and God sort it out.”
“I can’t. It’s up to me.”
I shrug. “Fine. Don’t cry to me when you ruin everything.” I turn to the plate of pastries and select a strawberry tart. A bit over-glazed. I’ll have to have a discussion with the manager the next time I visit.
There’s a silence as I take a bite of the tart. “I think that what Diana means to say, Chastity —” Belle begins, but I cut her off as soon as I’ve swallowed.
“I meant to say what I said. You don’t do anyone any favours by sugar-coating their mistakes for them.”
“‘Correct a wise man, and he will love you forever, but a rod for the back of the fool’,” Chastity murmurs, and both Belle and I turn to look at her. She’s staring straight ahead, but her eyes aren’t focused on anything. “Thank you, both of you. Could we move on, please?”
“I don’t think —” Belle starts up.
“Please.” Chastity’s voice is sharp again, and I cover my smile by taking a sip of tea.
“Very well,” Belle eventually says, and the glare that she levels at me is almost murderous. “Diana? I believe it’s your turn next, since Sue’s not here.”
“Yes.” I take my time putting my teacup down. “I don’t have much to say. School is keeping me busy, and I’ll be glad when the volunteer work is over.”
“That’s too bad,” Chastity says. “I was hoping that you might stay on a few months longer, actually. At least through the winter?”
I stare at her. “No, thank you. I don’t think that I’m cut out for it.”
“On the contrary, I think that you’ve been doing excellent work.”
It’s pretty hard to screw up making soup for the homeless. I could probably use sewage and none of them would complain. “Maybe, but I’m not enjoying it at all.”
“Oh.” Chastity’s face falls, but she nods resignedly. “Well, we’ll be sad to lose you, but if that’s how you feel, I suppose there’s nothing to be done.” Her tone becomes just a bit more hopeful. “If you ever change your mind, of course, you’re always welcome to come back.”
“Thanks,” I say briskly, then add: “You could always ask David.”
Chastity frowns. “I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable approaching him directly. We haven’t known each other very long, and I wouldn’t want him to feel pressured.”
It’s alright to pressure me, though? “If you asked him, I’m sure he’d do it.”
“What makes you say that? We have an especially terrible retention rate with the male volunteers.”
That’s not surprising if you’re too scared to talk to them. “He asked me whether you have a boyfriend a week ago. If he’s still attracted to you, odds are that he’ll do anything he thinks might score him points with you.”
Chastity turns red and looks around the room uneasily. Belle is watching us intently; Denise seems a bit more concerned with wiping apple jelly off the table. “Wow,” Chastity says, and I turn away from Denise’s vigorous scrubbing to face her. “I wasn’t expecting that. I don’t know what to say.”
“Of course you weren’t.” Even a blind girl would have noticed.
“Well, I certainly can’t ask him now. It would be taking advantage of him.”
I shrug. “Suit yourself.” To Belle, I say: “I’m done.”
Belle clears her throat. “Chastity?”
“Yes?” Chastity l
ooks around, then laughs. “Oh, I’m fine. Just a bit surprised.” She smiles at Belle. “You can go on. Thank you.”
“Alright. Denise?”
Denise abandons her efforts to clean the table. “Nothing new with me. I’m afraid I’m as boring as ever.” She smiles as she turns to the rest of us, but I have a feeling that she’s holding something back. Not that I can blame her for not wanting to say anything. She might as well talk to a wall for all that Belle’s listening. And speaking of Belle ...
“It’s your turn then, isn’t it?” I say to her.
“Yes, I suppose it is.” Belle leans forward to take a sip of tea. “School has been keeping me busy too. I’m having some difficulty with that creative writing assignment, but Denise has been very helpful in ironing out some of the details.” She glances at Denise and smiles; Denise nods. “The trouble is that I don’t have any time or energy left over after working on that to write anything of my own.”
“Tell me about it,” Denise says.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Chastity says. “I still remember having to write a short story for English class in high school, and it took me weeks. I can’t imagine doing anything like that now, much less along with a full-time job or studying.”
“It is a struggle,” Belle says in her best martyr voice, and I roll my eyes. “But when you have a passion, you can’t help but pursue it. Wouldn’t you agree, Denise?”
Denise hesitates. “Definitely on the struggle part. It’s got to be a passion.”
Chastity’s hand goes to her cross. “A calling,” she says in that breathy, entranced voice of hers.
“Exactly,” Belle says, though I catch her looking disapprovingly at the hand around Chastity’s cross. “Is that everything, then?”
Chastity nods slowly; Denise looks around, then nods as well. “Looks like it,” I say.
“Very well, then.” Belle sets her teacup down, but not before looking out the window one last time. Give it up. “Meeting adjourned.”
After Chastity and Denise leave, Belle confronts me, exactly as I expected she would. “You need to apologize to Sue.”
“No, I don’t.” I dump the leftover tea into the sink and the teabags into the trash. “I haven’t done anything I need to apologize for.”
“Sue isn’t well. She needs our support, not our contempt.”
“If we support her, or what you call support, she’ll never get any better.” I turn to face her. “Why can’t you understand that?”
“If we all rally around her, Sue will find the strength she needs to overcome this.”
“How? Through the power of friendship? The power of the Sisterhood?” I pause, but she doesn’t reply. “This isn’t one of your silly novels. Sue is a real person with real problems, and like most real people with real problems, she’s brought it on herself. There’s no monster to kill, no final scene where we all join hands and a shower of sparkles makes her okay again. Whatever we do, she’s either going to get herself back together or let herself rot in that dump.”
Belle presses her lips into a thin line. “Don’t make fun of me. I understand the lines between fiction and reality perfectly.”
Could have fooled me. “Fine. Then leave Sue alone.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
“No, I won’t.” Belle’s gaze is hard, stubborn. “I have a plan. I can fix everything.”
“Why are you badgering me, then?”
“Because I could use your help, and I wasn’t expecting you to be so selfish.” Her upper lip curls into something like a sneer. “Is being right really so important to you, that you would put it over easing the suffering of your Sister?”
“There’s no point answering that.” I take the teapot from the sink and begin drying it. “You don’t understand my position, and I don’t agree with yours. Just leave it.”
“I can’t,” Belle repeats, and this time, her voice is much more strained. I look up from the teapot in time to see her storm out of the kitchen; a few seconds later, the front door slams behind her.
I stand there in front of the sink and count down the clicking of the clock for exactly fifteen seconds. Then, very calmly, I set the teapot down, go lock the door, and continue clearing up the dishes and dirty napkins. Will I need the furniture polish for Denise’s stain? I swipe at it with one of the clean napkins, and decide that it couldn’t hurt. As I go back into the kitchen, I wonder briefly what plan Belle has, but the thought leaves my mind almost immediately. Let her play her games. I have things to do.
Belle
IT’S BEEN FIFTEEN minutes, and I still haven’t achieved a deep trance. That’s not good: when I don’t get my morning meditation done, things don’t go well. Today, of all days, I can’t afford to have anything go wrong. In a few hours, I go to war to save my Sister’s life.
“Gertrude,” I whisper. I can feel her presence immediately, wrapped comfortingly around me like a shawl against the autumn wind. “He has taken the bait. He comes to feast on it, as a devil to a blood sacrifice.” Gertrude never believed in devils; she had other names for those entities. I know, however, that she’ll understand what I mean.
“He haunts her, Gertrude. Somehow, he has gotten through her armour and my protection, and imprinted himself on her heart. I can’t erase him. I can’t drive him out, and the longer that he remains there, the weaker she’ll become.” I look at my phone, but Sue has not called. “She won’t answer the phone. She can’t get out of bed.” I reach for my purse and check to see that I haven’t forgotten to pack anything; I add a piece of citrine from the altar, just in case. “The best I can do is give her a chance to pull herself out of it.” Through the veil of incense, Gertrude’s lips seem to move, but I can’t understand what she’s trying to tell me.
“Gertrude, be with me,” I finally say.
I’m meeting Nick at a food court in a large mall around lunchtime. The most public place I could think of, and not too close to where I live. He didn’t seem as psychotic as some of Sue’s other playthings, but I’m not going to take any unnecessary chances.
Jeans, dark green jacket, black shirt. He’s got dark hair and eyes. That’s how he described himself, and the man before me fits the description. “Nick?”
“Belle?”
“Yes.” I hold out my hand, but he doesn’t take it.
“Say what you came to say. I’ve got stuff to do today.”
Straight to business? Fine with me. “I know that things between you and Sue haven’t been going so well.”
“There’s nothin’ between me and Sue.”
“As her friend, I beg to differ.”
“Yeah? Well, beg to differ all you want. She broke up with me. Wasn’t workin’ out, or whatever.”
“Yes, I know.” And thank all the goddesses for that. “Sue might have made that decision a bit hastily. I have reason to believe that she’s come to regret it.”
“Is that what she told you to say? If she’s that sorry, she can get off her ass and pick up a damn phone.”
“Sue did not send me to say or do anything,” I say. “She doesn’t know that I’m here.” Under any other circumstance, I wouldn’t be. “I called you because she isn’t doing well.”
“What, you mean she’s sick?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“If you’ll let me speak, I’ll tell you,” I snap. “After breaking up with you, Sue lost her job. She’s been very depressed ever since, and I’ve heard her say that she feels the entire mess started with leaving you.” There’s the truth. Now for the lies. “She expressed a wish to take it all back. She told me that it was a terrible mistake on her part.”
“She really said that?”
“Of course she did. Why would I lie?”
“But ... Why not just talk to me about it? If she’s that upset, I mean ... she could’ve called me at least.”
“You must know by now just how proud Sue can be
. She broke up with you; she said that things weren’t working out. To call you now and admit that she might have made a mistake?” I meet his eyes. “She wouldn’t even consider it.”
“That does kind of sound like her, I guess,” he says eventually.
“Of course.”
Another, much shorter pause. “So, what then? You want me to call her, or ...?”
“No, that would be a waste of time. She’s not answering her phone.”
He winces, as though this upsets him. As though he cares. “It’s that bad?”
“Yes, it’s that bad.” I’m beginning to see why Sue enjoys playing with his kind so much. It’s surprisingly pleasant.
“Okay.” He exhales heavily. “What do you want from me?”
I reach into my purse and take out a small envelope; its contents click together as I set it down on the table between us. “These are Sue’s house keys,” I tell him. “Her address is on the front.”
“You want me to go there?” I nod. “Without telling her first? She’ll call the damn cops.”
“No, she won’t.”
“Then she’ll just throw me out.” He looks at the envelope as though he expects it to maim him. “How is this supposed to help her? It’s just gonna upset her.”
“That is a possibility.” In fact, I’m counting on it. “I’m hoping, however, that you can make her listen to you, if only for long enough to begin to work out your differences.”
“What, you think we’re gonna just kiss and make up?”
Goddess, no. “Truthfully, I don’t know what will happen. That’s between you and Sue. At the very least, I would say that she needs closure on your relationship.”
“Hey, she’s the one that broke it off.”
“Listen to me,” I say firmly as I stand up and glare at him. “I really don’t give a damn about you. But Sue is suffering, and this is the best plan that I have. If you care about her, you’ll either come up with something better or do as I say; if you don’t care, then I won’t waste any more of my time.”
A Tale of Beauty Page 15