The Story of Beautiful Girl

by Rachel Simon

  “Doreen’s not leaving.”

  “She hasn’t come around?”

  Kate said, “There are several residents who still wish we were staying open. Some parents, too.”

  Hannah sighed. “I’d hoped they’d changed their minds. I guess that’s asking a bit much. They sure had strong opinions at the meetings.”

  Lynnie remembered Hannah telling her about the meetings. First, the administrators wanted to make the School better, so the meetings were about fixing buildings, retraining staff, creating activities for residents. Then some parents said the School should just shut down, while other parents said the School was the safest place for their child. People began shouting at one another, and lawyers got involved. Lynnie knew this because Hannah went to all the meetings. “I’m on the side of the ones who want to close it,” Hannah would say. “That doesn’t mean I don’t worry about you being out there. You’re my sister, and I worry about you.” That was how Lynnie knew she could never tell Hannah what happened with the dogs and Buddy and the baby. That was also how Lynnie knew she would live somewhere else someday.

  “There’s nothing left in here,” Kate said, closing the cabinet drawer.

  “Then we’re done,” Hannah said.

  Lynnie wasn’t ready to leave this room so quickly. It had been a place of so much joy, how was it possible she’d never see it again? She took it in now: the radio, the typewriter, the plants. Buddy breaking a sugar cube on her drawing to show her the shapes in the stars.

  Hannah said, “I know this is hard. But you’ll like the new place.”

  Lynnie nodded.

  “Cheer up, sis.”

  Lynnie looked down. She remembered seeing Buddy’s feet on this floor. She’d drawn him a picture of when they got out, and how they’d wear nice clothes and good shoes. She remembered putting on the old lady’s slippers. They had made Lynnie feel like a bride.

  “Lynnie?”

  She looked up.

  “Hey, look. I made you a little present.” Hannah reached into her pocket. “I was going to wait until you got to your new home to give it to you, but maybe I should do it now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s something special you kept in this room. And I know this room was where you did your drawings. So it’s sort of a keepsake, you know?”

  Hannah raised her hand from her pocket and opened her fingers.

  She was holding a necklace with a silver chain and a glass locket. Inside the locket, preserved from air and time, was the red feather.

  Lynnie reached out and ran her finger over the glass case.

  “It’s an old monocle,” Hannah said. “I put a back on it and soldered it shut.”

  Kate said, “Hannah wanted to use something from your pouch. The feathers were the nicest.”

  “Why… why did you pick the red one?”

  “I hope it’s okay,” Hannah said, sounding worried.

  “Very okay.”

  Lynnie took the necklace from her sister and lowered it over her head. The feather came to rest on her chest right where she’d caught it with Buddy that day. “Why the red feather?” she asked again, glad Andrea wasn’t in this room. She knew her words had memory in them.

  “Because red feathers are rare,” Hannah said. “If you find one, you should keep it forever.”

  When they reached the path in front of the administrative cottage, the cameras were already running, and stout Mr. Pennington, wearing a suit, tie, and circus master hat, was standing on a platform. “This is a historic day,” he was saying into a microphone as Kate handed Lynnie a pole supporting a banner she’d made last week, a drawing of the School with the gate wide open. “The people of the Commonwealth have outgrown the Pennsylvania Residence for Gifted Children and Adults. It has served us well for eight decades, and now we will honor it one final time.”

  Lynnie looked around at the residents. Lined up in rows of two, three, or four, they were all ready for the parade. Here were the people she’d sat near in the dining cottage and watched movies with in the common cottage and folded clothes beside in the laundry. Here were residents who could walk on two feet, who wore leg braces, who held canes, who used wheelchairs. Here were so many individuals she knew, each wearing cool sunglasses or favorite baseball caps or new shirts to signify the importance of the occasion. Some were holding signs they’d made, others were holding horns, tambourines, maracas; and in front of them all stood the camels, horses, and elephant. John-Michael Malone was scribbling notes beside a cameraman, and the lens was pointing at the residents.

  Doreen was nowhere to be seen.

  Then Mr. Pennington stepped off the platform and got in front of the line. The elephant lifted his hat from his head, and everyone laughed. Mr. Pennington grabbed it back and called out, “Five, four, three”—and everyone joined in, even those who couldn’t speak—“two, one. Go!” And they marched, making noise on the instruments, cheering, waving to the staff, family, and reporters as they passed by.

  Lynnie peered into the crowd, hoping to see Doreen’s parents. She wouldn’t recognize them, so it seemed silly. But still, she looked as they headed toward the cottages. The crowd was sparse, and everyone watching just kept running ahead to the dining cottage, where the parade would end. So it was easy to see all the people along the route, and that’s how she saw Clarence. He was standing off to the side, in jeans and a jacket, seeming even skinnier than before. He was here, on her day. The day she’d thought she’d ask Kate to find her daughter.

  And if he was here today, he could be anywhere on any day.

  She grabbed the stick the man next to her was using to pound a drum and began beating it against her banner’s pole. This way she wouldn’t hear the dogs barking in her head, the bucket rolling away while she pleaded.

  Then she felt a presence beside her and turned. It was Doreen! Falling into line right beside her!

  Doreen didn’t look cheerful, though she didn’t look the way she had this morning, either. Instead, she was giving Lynnie a knowing look. “I saw him, too,” she said over the din from the marchers. “And I’m not gonna leave you alone out there, no matter how I feel.”

  “You coming with me, then?” Lynnie said.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  Lynnie shifted the banner so they could both hold the pole. They looked at each other and lifted it high into the air, and the cameras caught them smiling together.

  Second Chances

  MARTHA

  1983

  Pete took the call.

  Martha was afraid to listen across their tiny living room. She’d even been afraid to answer the phone, as she was every time it rang on evenings when Julia was out. Martha always hoped the caller would be the basketball coach or one of Julia’s more responsible friends. But since Julia had turned fourteen a few months ago, whenever the phone rang, Pete had lifted his gaze from his book to meet Martha’s worried eyes, then risen to pick up the receiver.

  Pete said nothing for a few seconds. Then: “Yes. This is where she lives.”

  Not again. She’s a good child. Whatever she’s done, it isn’t who she really is.

  “I’m her grandfather,” Pete said, his gaze now locked onto Martha’s. “Her stepgrandfather. She lives with us.”

  More silence while Pete listened. What could it be now? A few weeks ago, it was her report card. After an unbroken record of A’s, Julia had begun receiving B’s and even a C. She’d hidden the card from Martha, mumbling that her school hadn’t given them out yet, until Martha said, “I’m calling the principal tomorrow to find out what could possibly be causing this delay.” Julia suddenly remembered she’d received it that very afternoon, though Martha and Pete could hear Julia bang into her room, open her closet, and dig through who knew what to retrieve it.

  This was followed by a call from one of Julia’s teachers. It began with concern about her increasingly lackluster performance, then moved into more generalized distress. “She used to be friends with the studious
kids,” Mr. Yelinek said. “But since falling in with this new crowd…”

  “What new crowd?” Martha asked, the phone turning to ice.

  Apparently, Julia had gravitated toward a clique of girls who wore expensive clothes from the most exclusive shops and shunned almost anyone outside the soccer team. To ingratiate herself, Julia had been getting to school early, changing into the same kinds of sweaters worn by these girls, and joining them after school as they huddled together at the roller-skating rink or sashayed through Hyannis Mall. All while Martha thought Julia’s early arrivals were for basketball practice and late returns for drama club.

  Unproductive conversations ensued. To her credit, Julia did admit to her new habits, though to Martha’s—and Pete’s—dismay, her response to Martha’s insistence that she return to being conscientious and honest was to say, face stiff, eyes forcibly deadening themselves, “I’ll try.”

  Then the night calls began. Miranda’s mother, asking if Martha was aware that Julia had snuck out one night after they’d gone to bed, walked an hour from their modest Cape Cod cottage in Chatham to Miranda’s grand mansion on Sears Point, and, with Miranda’s mother seeing patients late, woken the neighbors with loud music. The manager of the movie theater, who’d caught Julia and her friends sneaking in the back door. The basketball coach, who’d found out she’d attended beer parties on Hardings Beach.

  “I see,” Pete said. “We appreciate this, Officer.”

  Officer. Martha’s insides flashed as if struck by lightning.

  “We’ll be there right away.”

  He hung up the phone and looked at Martha. “Shoplifting while drunk,” he said.

  Julia did not utter a word when Officer Williamson and the store’s head of security opened the door to the back room. She was bent over in a plastic chair at a metal table, arms around her waist, and when Martha stood in the doorway, Julia looked up through her brown curly hair, eyes dark with regret and anger. Martha felt sick, seeing lovely Julia beneath fluorescent lights, consumed by desires Martha could not understand, and maybe Julia could not, either. Her students had told Martha that teenage children were a test of one’s soul, though she’d believed she and Julia were too close for such troubles. Julia was also unusually earnest, as Pete pointed out soon after they’d gone to the justice of the peace and moved to his house in Chatham. She was seven then, and Martha had said that maybe with a stable home and the security of two adults, Julia would grow sunnier. Yet it was a sullen girl who rose to Officer Williamson’s request. She tottered on her feet, not saying a word, just reeking of alcohol.

  The silence persisted as Martha and Julia followed Officer Williamson down the bright corridor, passing employee lockers. Julia walked unsteadily, and Martha wrestled with what to do, wondering, as she had these last months, if parents who’d given birth to their child, or whose own adolescence had been only a decade or two earlier, were more skilled at handling bad behavior. Pete had laughed, saying he and Ann had improvised all the time. “Raising kids isn’t carpentry,” he’d said. “Forget measuring twice and cutting once. You measure over and over every day.”

  Officer Williamson opened the door to the loading dock. His car sat on one side of the lot, Pete’s Jeep idled on the other. Officer Williamson turned and said to Julia, “Like I said, no second chances.”

  When Julia made no reply, Martha chimed in, “She won’t need any.”

  Julia slid into the backseat while Martha let herself in the front. The car, though warm, did not instill a sense of comfort. Their two doors slammed at the same moment, and then Pete, nodding to Julia in the rearview mirror, put the car into gear.

  Martha wished Pete would speak up with a reprimand, a question, anything. But the precedent had been set long ago: Pete never took over or insisted Martha raise Julia his way.

  At last Martha said the one thing she could. “Why, Julia?”

  More silence. Another quarter mile.

  Martha added, “Where did you get the liquor?”

  “Miranda.”

  “She brought it to the mall?”

  “She had it in her house. We went to the mall later.”

  “And shoplifted.”

  Silence.

  “Why are you lowering yourself like this?”

  “You never shop at the mall,” Julia said. “You say it’s too expensive.”

  “That is no justification.”

  “I needed a pair of Jordaches!”

  Pete merged onto Route 6, heading toward Chatham.

  “You’re lucky Officer Williamson let you off. He could have arrested you.”

  “He probably would have if he’d known who I really am.”

  “And who is that?”

  “I just want to be like everyone else!” Her voice was slurred, yet her point was clear. “Everyone else wears Jordaches. Everyone else has color TVs, and pool tables, and big sailboats. Everyone else gets off Cape in the winter. Miranda goes to Florida!”

  “You can’t expect—”

  “And everyone else has parents.”

  The word echoed in the warm Jeep, which suddenly seemed smothering.

  “Maybe it’s time to say something,” Pete said.

  They were lying on their backs in bed, their books untouched, reading lamps still on.

  “I can’t.”

  “I won’t say she’s acting up because she doesn’t know. But it can’t be helping.”

  “She has us.” Martha looked over at him. “She has the aunties and uncles we used to visit. They come to see us every summer.”

  “She knows they’re your old students.”

  “She’s out of control already. What would she do if she knew? I can’t even imagine.”

  “She wants to know more.”

  “She’s too young.”

  “When will she be old enough?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Martha.” He looked at her tenderly. “Martha, Martha, Martha. I was so relieved when you told me you weren’t Matilda.” He rolled to his side and set his hand on her hip. “It explained all that coming and going. All the moments you’d turn away and get quiet.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “Yes. But I’m not sure I’ve told you this.” He nudged her with his hand, and she rolled to her side to face him. “When you told me the truth, I realized you trusted me.”

  She let herself smile. “You’ve said that before, too.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t tell you it also made me trust you.” He set his hand on her face. She felt, as she so often did in his arms, like a girl of twenty. He said, “Once I knew what you’d done—how you’d chucked everything on a moment’s notice because you gave your word to a desperate young woman—I thought you were the most incredible person I’d ever met.”

  “Anyone would have done it.”

  “No, they wouldn’t have.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

  “You don’t really think that.”

  “I just thought it was the right thing to do. Now I’m not so sure. I’m not very good at being a parent.”

  “Most parents feel that way. I pretty much think that’s what parenthood is.”

  She said nothing.

  “What’s going on now is temporary. Gary did it, too. Drank beer with his friends. Remember how he totaled my car in Falmouth? If you hadn’t done what you’d done, think of what Julia’s life would be like.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Think of what your life would be like. Or mine. We wouldn’t be here right now.”

  She draped her arm around his back. He was stockier than Earl, and he was warm and open and able to provide comfort. Lynnie hadn’t only given Martha a child. She’d given Martha a second chance.

  And Martha, calling on a former student to bring a story to the public, had given Lynnie a second chance, too.

  “You could tell Julia the basics. If she really wants to know more and you still don’t want to tell her, you could just give her the keepsak
e box. There are enough letters to her in there, and clippings, and whatnot. She’d come to understand.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sleep on it.”

  “I’ve been sleeping on it for fourteen years.”

  “This could be your last night,” he said.

  She lay beside Pete, looking out the window as clouds passed over the moon. Last fall she had taken away Julia’s allowance until her grades improved. After Miranda’s party, Martha announced that Julia had a curfew of nine o’clock every night. Yet she’d gotten in trouble again, and with alcohol, no less. Now Martha would insist that Julia was grounded at any time aside from school. Should Martha add a complicated truth, too?

  Maybe she should. The truth might show Julia there were people in the world less fortunate than she—and, had the storm been less turbulent that night, or her parents not hidden her before the police arrived, Julia would have been one of them. Though it might seem as if Martha were so angry about the shoplifting and drinking that she wanted to put Julia in her place. Julia might even accuse Martha of lying or, if Martha went so far as to open the keepsake box, seeking praise. And she wouldn’t be wrong; Martha dearly wanted Julia to look at her response to Lynnie’s request and feel, like Pete, admiration. Yet such a self-serving impulse seemed reason enough to stay silent.

  After these thoughts had swirled for hours, Martha got up. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well go downstairs and return to reading her book.

  She made her way out of the bedroom and closed the door. With the moon behind clouds, no light shone through the dormer of her sewing room or the bathroom, so she moved her palm along the dark corridor, feeling her way toward the stairs. Pete always told her to put on the lights to avoid falling, and she knew she should, having fractured a wrist last summer simply by breaking an egg against a bowl. They even planned to move their bed to the first floor. But for now Martha wanted to remain on this floor, risking a broken hip so Julia would mind the rules.

  So it was a surprise when Martha’s hand passed over Julia’s door only to find it ajar.

  Had Julia snuck away again? Was she out in the night right now, thinking herself so much worse than her friends that she would do anything to feel she belonged?