The Story of Beautiful Girl

by Rachel Simon

  Homan, full of anger, darted to the car, opened the front door, and slid behind the wheel.

  Blue gave him a What you doing? look through the windshield.

  Homan smiled as if to say, You’ll see. Blue pounded on the hood. But Homan just went ahead and did what the McClintocks taught him to do. The car moved forward. He pressed his foot to the pedal, picked up speed, and jumped out. The driverless car drove up from the curb, across the lawn, and into the living room wall.

  He felt the ground shake. Blue’s eyes went wide with delight—and then horror. The front door was opening, Miss Velma was coming out in her robe, and Wayne was behind her.

  Blue made one of the only signs he knew. Run.

  Homan ran out of eyeshot of their house, feeling Blue at his feet. He ran to the end of the block. He knew Blue was lagging behind. He wanted him to run faster, faster—like me!

  He whipped around to make sure Blue was there.

  Blue was three houses back—lying on the ground. Not moving. A red hole in his chest. Wayne was nowhere near. It was Mr. Landis who was there, standing above. It looked as if he’d spent the night with Miss Velma and brought his shotgun. And was now turning the barrel from Blue, looking to the end of the street, seeing right into Homan’s eyes, raising his gun—

  Homan ran.

  He tore down the next block. He leapt one fence, two, five, yard to yard to yard. He ripped into groves of trees, through a lake, across tobacco farms, over streams. He ran as though his feet were on fire. Blue was gone. They would be after Homan. Mama would lose her job. Mama could never take him back. He had nothing left but running.

  He ran all day and all night. And the next day and night. He ran through towns and then across states whose names he didn’t know. He ran in rain and heat and snow. He ran long after he gave this time in his life a name. The Running. He ran and ran until they caught him in Well’s Bottom, a place where no one believed that hands could ever speak.

  He felt the car come to a stop. It was night now, but Homan wore no watch and did not know how to tell time. He tried to angle his head to see the stars. The sky was thick with haze.

  He felt the door open. There was Pudding, indicating with his thumb that Homan should get out.

  His leg still hurt, though he could stand. The day had grown cold, so as he looked around, he wrapped the sleeping bag over his shoulders. Brick buildings were pressed tight together, lining streets without trees. Stores were gated closed. A train bridge crossed overhead a few blocks off. It was a city, he understood. Why had they stopped here? And why was Dot sitting on the hood, fingering the ends of her hair, while Pudding was reaching into the trunk, pulling something out? Another fur coat, Homan saw as the trunk closed. Rabbit fur. He remembered finding a rabbit outside the barn once and holding it up so Beautiful Girl could stroke it. This made her smile.

  Pudding was acting so strange, patting the coat like someone was already in it and he was checking the fit. Then he handed the coat to Homan.

  It felt good, with a lining that was smooth against his skin and the softest fur on the outside. He’d never worn a fur coat, and he felt fancy and lucky, even though it was too small for the buttons to reach the holes. He held the front together.

  Then Pudding made a gesture toward something at the end of the street.

  It was a fenced-in lot, with gray-and-orange trucks parked in neat rows and a small building in the center. The fence was chain link with barbed wire on top.

  He looked at Pudding with a question on his face. Pudding just waved his hand, egging Homan forward. Homan shot a glance at Dot, who was still on the hood, gazing nowhere. Maybe they were saying he was free to leave, and he almost laughed with relief. But Dot had been nice to him, so he clapped his hands to signal a good-bye.

  Pudding threw his arms in the air. His nostrils grew wide, his eyebrows fierce, and he began speaking. Dot lowered her head, answering into her lap. Then she jumped off the hood and walked toward Homan.

  He couldn’t understand what was happening. Pudding was jabbing his finger at her, and she was turning to Homan, making eating gestures, pointing at the building. He didn’t want to laugh anymore. He wanted to run. Then he thought of Pudding’s knife. If Homan didn’t do what she wanted, what would happen to her?

  She took Homan’s arm and he allowed her to step them forward, toward the truck lot. Soon she picked up their pace, looking over her shoulder to see Pudding. Then she turned back and rubbed her belly, as if showing Homan how good the food inside the fence would be.

  At the gate, she reached up and turned a dial on a padlock. It sprang open. She walked inside the gate with Homan. The lot was not well lit, and he could smell no food. He felt her hand leave his arm and turned. She was running outside the gate, then locking it behind her.

  He lunged at the fence. But as much as he shook it, he could not get out.

  Pudding was leaning against the car, pointing to the building. Homan looked at Dot. She cut her gaze away from him, then wiped her cheeks. She turned and walked away.

  He could not believe, so soon after breaking out of the Snare, that he was in a lot with nothing except parked trucks and one lonely building. No food. Not even any lights.

  Then he saw a short man standing behind the glass door of the building. The man wore a vest and small glasses, and he opened the door and urged Homan to come in. If Homan did, he might have trouble. But what was he going to do out here? And the guy was more of a shrimp than the littlest guard at the Snare. If Homan could outwit the water below the dam, he could pin a pipsqueak like that to the floor. And maybe get something to eat, too.

  He went inside, entering a room with a counter and cash register. Without turning on a light, the man gestured toward a doorway, then a flight of stairs. Homan went first, glad there was a window in the staircase letting light from a streetlamp in. He glanced out the window as he passed. Between the trucks and the fence were weeds. In one spot there was just dirt.

  Upstairs was a room with a couch and table. A plate with a hot dog sat on the table.

  He stepped toward it. The man grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back, looking annoyed. Homan made a pleading motion. The man said something, and Homan shrugged. Finally, the man curled his fingertips in like spider legs. Homan realized he meant, Give me.

  Give him what? Homan was the one expecting something.

  The man snatched at Homan’s new coat.

  Homan backed up. The man narrowed his eyes. Homan backed up more.

  The man lunged, grabbing again at Homan’s coat, sliding his hands beneath. Homan felt the lining give and the man pull back. In his hands was a small package.

  Homan understood: The coat was like an envelope. The man just wanted what was inside.

  Then the man thrust a real envelope at Homan and shoved him toward the stairs. He tore down them as fast as he could, dashing through the office and into the lot.

  Dot was waiting outside the chain-link fence. He ran toward her, grinning, waving the envelope in his hands, ready to get going to Beautiful Girl at last.

  But now Dot was running away, and a flashing light caught his eye. He looked around. Three police cars were peeling down the street toward the lot.

  He ran. Freeing his arms, shoving the envelope into the jacket lining, he ran. Not toward the gate, where police were jumping out of cars. He ran to the rear of the lot, where he pulled himself to the top step of the biggest truck. He turned to look. Police were fanning over the lot. He could not let them send him to jail in Edgeville. Or send him back to the Snare. He could not let them arrest him for whatever was making Dot and Pudding drive off right now.

  The truck door was unlocked. It took nothing to turn on the engine. It took nothing to press the gas and steer for the chain-link fence. It wasn’t even hard to jump out the other side and watch the truck pass right through.

  The police tore after the truck. He tore the other way, around the side of the building. He ran to the dirt by the fence and fell to his knees a
nd dug wildly.

  Then he was in the hole. For a second he thought of Beautiful Girl, pushing the baby out. He scrabbled forward, thrust himself through, grabbed the ground on the other side.

  And he was out. Tearing down the streets, breath hard in his chest, skin sweaty.

  Ahead he saw a freight train passing on the bridge, just like so many he’d seen in the Running. He could do it, even though he was no longer fifteen.

  Up the train bridge he scrambled. You can’t let no one break you, Blue used to say when someone did them wrong. If you don’t let no one break you, you win. One last heave and he was over the train. One last jump and he slammed down onto a boxcar. He pressed his body to the roof.

  The train picked up speed until it was shooting through the city, high above the streets. He didn’t know where he was leaving. He didn’t know where he was going. He just knew he had to get back, and he had to do it soon.

  Inside Cinderella’s Coach

  MARTHA

  1968

  Martha heard a locomotive in the distance before she opened her eyes. The sound was soothing, so much like the breathing near her ear. The breathing, after all, must be Earl’s; and how content she felt being close to him again. Slowly, though, she remembered that Earl had not slept beside her for years, and her farmhouse was nowhere near a train. Then unfamiliar scents became apparent: a rustic cabin smell, floral soap, furniture polish. She turned over, groping across the sheets for Earl, tasting a candylike tartness. She kept no candy in her pantry—but then she recalled thumbing up two sourballs from a bowl at a hotel registration desk. Her arm arrived at the far edge of the sheets; the bed was empty. Yet someone was breathing. And suddenly she saw it again: the suitcase, the drive to Well’s Bottom, the journey north on Scheier Pike, the sign in front of her student Henry’s hotel, the bell on the registration desk.

  The baby.

  She sat up. Sunlight cast tree shadows on the window shades. The baby lay in the bassinet Eva Hansberry had given her and that Martha had set up when they’d reached the hotel last night at three a.m. As she’d assembled the bassinet at the foot of the bed, she’d thought about how she had never been up so late, much less while changing a baby. She’d inhaled the woody scent of a fireplace in the lobby two corridors away and listened to rustlings of the mountains outside. She’d peeked behind the shades, but night was too dark in this corner of New York State to see anything. Then, with the baby finally sleeping, Martha put on her nightie and turned back the quilt. Sleep came so swiftly that when the baby’s cries woke her later, she discovered she’d failed to draw the quilt over her body. The bedside clock said ten after five. She’d hurried to the baby, worried she’d failed with her, too, and was relieved the cries were only for a bottle. At the next feeding, six fifty, darkness was lifting and the scent of coffee and eggs was drifting in from the dining room; in no condition to make an appearance, she’d slept yet again. Now, although the sun was strong, she was no more ready to face the world.

  Saddened by the resurrection, then loss, of Earl, Martha glanced at the bedside clock. Nine fifteen! How was that possible? Martha had never enjoyed late risings; she agreed with Earl that “sleeping in” was synonymous with indolence. The hotel clock simply had to be in error. She glanced at her wrist. Incredibly, her watch matched the time on the clock.

  She moved to the foot of the bed and knelt beside the bassinet. Earl was gone—but the baby was already familiar. Martha cupped the little head and stroked the thin coating of hair. The baby’s face seemed more intricate each time Martha looked, much as books revealed new depths on each rereading. Now, in morning light muted by shades, the baby’s cheeks seemed more active, the lips in constant motion. Martha moved in closer. The tiny body invited infinite rereadings as well; for the first time, Martha noticed the baby place her fist to her lips, then suck as if her fist were a bottle. Martha recalled Eva saying the baby would need to feed every few hours; and slowly it occurred to her that she was not seeing overlooked eloquence in an oft-studied novel, but a simple request for a bottle. How about that. Babies asked to eat even in their sleep.

  Laughing at her own lofty thoughts, Martha opened the cooler Eva had packed with bottles and that Martha had, after check-in, filled with ice, leaving out one bottle after each feeding so it would be warm enough by the baby’s next meal. She retrieved a full bottle from the basin counter, worked her arms under the baby, and sat on the bed.

  While she slid the nipple between the pink lips and the baby sucked, Martha considered how, for all the depths she kept finding in this face, there was already much she could recite verbatim. The skin was pale; the face heart-shaped; the eyes set close together. The nose was turned up and slightly large, with a pronounced indentation beneath the nostrils. The lips rose like the crest of a wave; the chin was tiny as the tip of a triangle; the whorls in the ears were sinuous as streams. Martha had to talk herself through each step—patting the baby’s back until she burped, changing the diaper, setting the used diaper in the bin Eva had provided, putting on another. She was pleased she’d needed no instructions in contemplating a baby’s face.

  Holding the child on her shoulder, patting so she would fall back asleep, Martha opened the shades. Rays of light threaded between hemlocks and white pines, and she could make out a sliver of porcelain blue sky. She stood looking, telling herself she needed to decide what to do with the baby. The options seemed as foggy as her recollection of the registration desk. How long could she stay in this room? Should she give the baby to someone better suited to being a mother? As the child breathed back to sleep, Martha wrestled with the unanswerable. Then she returned her to the bassinet and, with relief, turned her attention to this face yet again. It was such a pleasure to gaze upon, and as she studied the fine details, she remembered a belief she’d held as a teacher. There were two kinds of students who liked the library: those who devoured one book after another and those who savored the same book repeatedly. Some teachers saw the former readers as intrepid, the latter tentative, while Martha had held the view that old comforts, by encouraging patience, prompted discoveries. Now, though, Martha understood those rereaders differently. Aware that she was about to behave uncharacteristically by climbing back under the quilt in midmorning, she realized it was not the rereading that led to fresh insights. It was the rereader—because when a person is changing inside, there are inevitably new things to see.

  A knock, not the baby, woke Martha the next morning.

  She drew herself up. The knock paused. She looked at the bassinet, which was bathed in dawn light. The baby was still sleeping. What an easy child, Martha thought, then laughed at herself for presuming she knew what she was talking about. The knock started up again.

  Through the door came a man’s voice: “Mrs. Zimmer?”

  “I’ll be right there,” she whispered.

  She put on her slippers and crossed the room, then realized she wore the same nightie she’d worn the day before and was hardly ready for visitors. Embarrassed, she pulled the door ajar and allowed only her head to be seen.

  Henry stood in the corridor. She still thought of him as her student, but he was not ten anymore. Henry was a man, barrel-chested and dark-haired. Even after the adventures she’d read about in his letters and heard firsthand last Christmas, when he and his wife told her they were purchasing a fixer-upper of a resort in New York State, Henry still resembled the energetic student he’d been. He stood before Martha, theatrically bearing a tray on his palm, grinning.

  “Room service,” Henry announced in a spirited tone. “Compliments of the house.”

  Martha smiled, though she made no move to open the door farther. She dearly wanted to; the scent of bacon, eggs, and toast, rising from a silver lid covering a plate, reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since she’d pocketed the sourballs when she’d checked in. She was, however, not accustomed to being seen in nightwear. “How very nice of you, Henry. But it’s not necessary.”

  “Au contraire,” Henry said. “Yo
ur favorite teacher shows up in the middle of the night, your kids get all enthused about plying her for info about Papa as a kid, she doesn’t show up for meals, she’s got her grandniece’s kid with her, she doesn’t crack the door for a day and a half—tell me you wouldn’t worry she’s starving to death.”

  How could Martha have crossed anyone’s mind when she hadn’t crossed her own? “You’re right. I suppose I lost track of time.”

  “I kept saying to Graciela, Let’s see how she’s doing, bring her a meal, blah, blah, Graciela kept saying let you be, I kept saying we gotta do something—”

  “I’m sorry to have caused any concern at all.”

  “Concern? This is the tastiest dish on the breakfast menu. Of course, you don’t have to stay all cooped up, you know. My kids are right down the hall”—he indicated with his head, and Martha heard giggling—“and what they wouldn’t give to sit next to you in the dining room.”

  “I’m hardly dressed for that.”

  “Come as you are. You could get anything off the menu, and Gracie would put your order in before all the others. Not that there’s competition. We’ve still got a ways to go to build up our clientele.” He made an endearing shrug. “We’ve got all kinds of attractions. My kids. The paint job I’m doing in the game room. My kids. The washing machine by the pool. I happen to be a liberated husband, and I know diapers pile up fast.”

  As if it wasn’t embarrassing enough to be caught in her nightie, here she hadn’t even considered laundering diapers. Certain the room must smell, she could say nothing.

  “Graciela asked me to tell you she’d be just as happy helping you out as doing her work around here. Painting’s not really her bag, you could say. So if you just want to stay put, give me those diapers, she’ll take care of them, and we’ll leave you alone. We know you have to get to your sister’s soon, but until you need to leave, we could practice our hospitality.”

  Martha was wordless again, though for a different reason. She’d almost missed the earlier reference to “grandniece,” but now she remembered. Two nights ago, when she’d pulled up to the sprawling hotel, she’d been so tired, so eager to settle the baby in, that when Graciela, her brown, waist-length hair askew, her dark eyes bleary, had answered the bell Martha tapped in the lobby, she’d made up a story on the spot, bristling at how readily a person could lie. She’d said her grandniece was having the kinds of problems young people were having these days—allowing vagueness to suggest discretion—and while her grandniece was receiving care, she was transporting the baby to her sister. Henry and Graciela didn’t know that Martha had no sister. They knew only that her husband had died and she herself had no children. From Graciela’s reaction—interest in the baby, assistance in them reaching room 119, no interrogations—Martha knew her dishonesty had sufficed.