The Story of Beautiful Girl

by Rachel Simon

  He felt his face fall. No.

  “I’ll be honest with you, sir. We occasionally get people like you stopping in. Usually they learned late in life they had a relative here, or decided to find a long-lost son or sister. I give them the list of agencies, but their search often proves fruitless. The institution closed before computers, and many files were deficient to begin with. Some families gave only first names, or used false names. Some residents didn’t even have names.”

  Sam, looking at Homan, asked, “They didn’t have names?”

  “No one knew who they were. They just ended up here one way or another, and if they didn’t arrive with records and lacked verbal abilities, they had no identity.”

  Homan signed, What were they called in the files?

  “They were given numbers for the order in which they entered the system. John Doe Number One, John Doe Number Two. Like that.”

  Homan looked out the window to a tall maple tree. Beautiful Girl hadn’t known his name, either. He remembered her name sign for him. He was sure it wasn’t a number.

  A squirrel scampered along a branch, and he realized with a start that he’d seen this view from this very location. Mrs. Raja’s office was where Chubby Redhead’s office had been. This building had replaced the staff cottage. Beautiful Girl had drawn her pictures right here.

  He turned back. Mrs. Raja was already rising. “Wish I could be more helpful,” she said.

  We’re sorry, Jean signed when Homan turned on the ignition and glanced over at her.

  He pulled the van out of the lot. With his hands on the wheel, Homan was at least in control of something. This way he could forget any impulse to kick trees and could kick himself instead. You knew nothing good come outta this, he berated himself, dialing his mind back to who he’d been then. Why you need to find her anyhow? So she accepted you just the way you was. That nice, but Sam do that now, too. And Jean and King and Queen and all them new friends. Ain’t that good enough? Your guilt so bad you can’t make your peace with that?

  Sam tapped the back of his arm with his stick.

  We just passed the off-ramp, Jean signed.

  Homan shook his head back to the road. Sure enough, he’d missed the turn. The road had become a bypass, cutting through hills. He looked to either side and saw nothing except box stores and chain restaurants where there used to be trees. Well, ain’t that just the way of the world. Everything come to an end, whether you wants it to or not. All that nature out there: over. The Snare: dead and gone. Even a love that make a man giddy and romantic, that give him a hope and joy he never known, that brave him into taking a slingshot to the impossible and bringing it almost complete to its knees—even a love like that come to an end. Life just ashes to ashes and dust to dust. And there nothing you can do about it neither.

  Jean banged on the steering wheel.

  I know you’re feeling bad, but we have to turn around.

  You’re right, he signed.

  He had to get a grip. He had to be on the lookout for a road sign to get them off the bypass and back in the opposite direction. But they were on a bridge now, and he wasn’t about to do a U-turn here. That was something movie heroes did—and he was no hero. He was just a man who’d loved. A man who’d felt so treasured by a beautiful girl that he’d become more than he’d known he could be. A man who’d, yes, gotten loads of acceptance and respect from friends and employers, but—Tell yourself the truth—had never felt that treasured again.

  After the bridge, the road narrowed to two lanes, with farms and woods on either side. It took a few miles until he finally saw a place to turn at a gap in the trees. He put on his turn signal, and as he neared the gap he saw it was a dirt road, and beside it was a sign: RIVERSIDE BOY SCOUT CAMP. And something tumbled into place inside him.

  It was the place where he’d run that night. Where he dove off the dock to cross the river.

  He was on the road. The same road.

  He signed before Sam and Jean could react: I know where I am. I have one more thing to see. He turned off the turn signal and sped up.

  Yeah, it was ridiculous, he thought, hitting 50 mph, 60 mph, passing pokey cars, farms, woods. He wouldn’t find her there. He couldn’t imagine Roof Giver would still be alive. And it was impossible that Little One would still be in the farmhouse.

  Yet he had to do it. If he didn’t, his search would never feel complete.

  He reached the turnoff to the other road so much faster than they had that rainy night. Now he could read the signs, though he knew to stay where he was, on Old Creamery Road. That night, they hadn’t known what to do. It was a random choice to stay straight. What more you need to know there ain’t no big drawing? You go straight on one road just because. You pick up a trash lid with water just because.

  The woods flew fast. He wondered if he’d recognize it.

  He knew he’d recognize it.

  There was the white house they’d almost gone up to. But she’d shaken her head no, so they’d pressed on.

  There were other houses they’d passed, older and more weathered. Maybe, against all odds, the old lady would be there. Maybe she’d know the answers he was seeking.

  He reached the bend in the road and knew he was almost there. It was coming up on the left, after the road straightened out, only a few hundred yards away.

  The road straightened, and as it did, the trees hugging the asphalt gave way to houses. Hundreds of them, all split levels, spreading up the rise to his left, marching toward the horizon on his right.

  He slowed the van, staring to his left. The ground rose at a grade he remembered. He’d rushed up it with Beautiful Girl. He’d run down it through the woods.

  The entrance to the development was easy to see up ahead, flanked as it was by two low brick walls. In front of the walls, he saw as the van neared, grew crisply trimmed shrubs and ornamental grasses, the display on the left matching the one on the right. The only difference was that the right side also displayed a sign with gilded letters: THE ESTATES AT MEADOW HILLS.

  He turned into the development. The main road was wide, with narrower streets snaking off across the hillside. He parked at the curb. Then he opened the door and got out.

  The air smelled of cut grass and mulch and gas-powered leaf blowers. A few home owners were riding lawn mowers or washing cars in their driveways. Mostly he just saw houses, none of which resembled the old lady’s. It had stood on top of this very hill, and now it—like the office where Beautiful Girl had placed a radio in his pocket, then held him close, and they’d moved together in a slow dance—was gone.

  No one would ever know the joy and pain of here.

  He wanted to stay where he was a long time, but soon he realized he’d done what he’d planned to do and also what he hadn’t planned. And it all amounted to zero.

  He got back in the car and angled himself to be seen by both friends.

  Sorry for the detour. I’m ready to get out of here now.

  What is this place? Jean asked.

  It’s… it was the place where I last saw her. Saw them.

  This was it? Sam asked through Jean.

  The very place.

  How can you be sure? Sam asked.

  I know it.

  I thought it was a farm.

  It was.

  We’ve heard that story so many times, Jean signed. It’s a whole other thing to actually be here.

  Except you aren’t really here, Homan replied. It’s gone.

  When you tell the story of that night, she signed, you make it sound like Beautiful Girl knew just where to go.

  She didn’t. She just decided this place would be safe, and she was right.

  Until you got busted, Sam added.

  No, she was right. That old lady treated us with kindness. How many other people would have done that?

  But why do you think she picked this place? Jean signed. Why this one?

  Homan looked from one face to the other, and the night played back in his mind. Holding on t
o each other in the pounding rain. Turning the corner in the road. Seeing the mailbox up ahead.

  The mailbox up ahead.

  With the lighthouse man.

  Who’d been in her drawing of the sea.

  He threw open the van door and ran to the entrance for the development.

  Nothing was there except the well-maintained plantings and low, decorative brick walls. He shot a look up the street, back toward the houses. Every one of them had a simple curbside mailbox mounted on a post. It was gone, long, long gone. But memory is stronger than dust.

  He threw his arms open and spun around, tossing his head back, laughing and laughing, looking up at the sky. He knew why he needed to be here—and he knew what he had to do now!

  Maybe that Big Artist, he thought as the sky swirled above, need me just as much as I need him.

  The Second Kind of Hope

  LYNNIE

  2000

  Doreen went quickly. Lynnie, listening to the minister in the funeral home, couldn’t believe how quickly.

  The trouble began only last year. One Saturday when Lynnie showed up for their regular visit, expecting to settle in to watch Doreen’s new videos, Doreen said, “Do you know where they are?” They hunted around, and when they found them in the closet with the toilet paper, Doreen said, “What a goofball,” and they laughed it off. But then she started forgetting her bus pass, and one day when she left Wal-Mart, she couldn’t remember where she was.

  Only a week later, Doreen called Lynnie in tears: She’d gone to the bank and they said she had only twenty dollars left. Lynnie and Carmen went over to Doreen’s, who said her aide hadn’t been there for “I don’t know how long.” Carmen made calls and figured out the aide had drained Doreen’s account.

  “I wish I could say this never happens,” the police detective told them when she came to make a report.

  “What about my rent?” Doreen said. “My heat?”

  Carmen said, “Let me see if I can jump the waiting list and get you back with BridgeWays.”

  She did, to a group home across town from Lynnie, but Doreen just spun down faster. She stopped going out because “they’ve been making these streets too confusing.” She couldn’t get through meals without snapping at someone. Then she’d just look out the window, saying, “You know, there’s diamonds in those hills.”

  Lynnie would cry after every visit, yet she didn’t stop going. Carmen would say, “That’s so nice. You’re the best friend a person could have.”

  The funeral was not the first Lynnie had attended. That had been for her grandfather, in the days before the School, and many mourners had come. In the cemetery, she’d seen small rocks resting on some headstones, and Hannah told her, “Mommy said when you visit people you care about who are buried, you place a stone at the grave. Then everyone knows the person was remembered.” The second funeral Lynnie went to was for Tonette. Only a handful of people came, and Lynnie wanted Tonette to know she was remembered, so she found a small rock and placed it on the grave.

  Here, at Doreen’s funeral, most of the seats were empty. The only ones who’d come were Lynnie, Carmen, two of Doreen’s neighbors at her apartment building, her bus drivers Vince and Dale, and three of the salespeople Doreen had visited for years.

  The minister spoke politely about Doreen, calling her “pure at heart” and “a breath of fresh air to all who knew her,” rather than funny, outspoken, stubborn, or, as Lynnie knew all too well, “pissed as a hornet” that her family had never come to see her. But the minister had met Doreen only at the end, and when he moved on to talk about her finding eternal happiness now that she was home with the Lord, Lynnie stopped listening. Doreen had never said a word about God, and Lynnie was far from certain she believed in God herself. People who did talk about God, like Kate, said they felt His presence deep in their heart. In Lynnie’s heart, she felt nothing. If there was a God, why did Doreen have to die to go home? If there was a God, why did Doreen’s father give her money but never visit? If there was a God, why could Lynnie barely see Buddy and Julia in her mind?

  As the minister finished up, Lynnie had no new feelings about God, though she did have a realization about something else. For so long, she’d believed Buddy would return. She’d even told Kate it would happen—eventually. She’d learned that word when she was little, when she and Hannah played their very own version of hide-and-go-seek, where no one was designated “it” and no spot was declared “home.” Instead, the two of them would hide from Mommy, Daddy, and each other, testing how long they could go before they missed each other too much. Then they’d try to find each other, and when they did, Hannah would yell, “Safe!” The game ended eventually.

  Now, as Doreen’s casket was borne out to the hearse and the small gathering followed behind, Lynnie realized there might not be eventually for her and Buddy. Look at Doreen. If there was a God, her parents would have come—eventually. But never had come first.

  Over the next few weeks, whenever Lynnie got dressed in the morning, she wondered if she should stop wearing the red feather necklace. She had worn it every day since Hannah gave it to her, and when she slipped the chain over her head in the morning and the glass circle came to rest on her chest, she felt as if Buddy were pressing his hand right there, feeling her vibrations as she spoke; and whenever she was aware of her breath making it rise and fall, she would think that somewhere under the sky, Julia was breathing, too. Yet now she wondered if wearing it was only making her sad. She would hear people talking in the office at BridgeWays, saying a colleague needed to “get over it” when a boyfriend broke off a romance. At home she’d see people on TV shows say, “You need to move on,” or, “Face it—she’s history.”

  Doreen had been right: He was never coming back. After thirty-two years of hoping, it was well past time to move on.

  So one night a few months after Doreen died, Lynnie opened her closet, lifted up her extra blanket, and pulled out the carved wooden box that Eva and Don Hansberry had given her years ago. She’d looked through it with Kate that very night, right after Lynnie had spoken for the legislators. She and Kate had sat in the hotel room sighing at the pictures of Julia, who was truly beautiful. Kate had asked if Lynnie wanted her to untie the yellow ribbon that held a packet of the old lady’s letters and read them aloud, and for the next two days, they’d stayed in the hotel, learning about Julia and Martha. Wonderful Martha, who’d been the parent Lynnie wished she’d had and wished she’d been able to be. The final letter in the packet was from the man Martha had married, Pete. He wrote about how Martha had died one night in her sleep when Julia was fourteen. He wrote about how much he loved them both, and he promised to raise Julia just as Martha wanted. What a good man—just like Buddy. Kate had retied the ribbon, and Lynnie had put everything back in the box, then brought it to her group home and stored it away.

  It was the perfect place to put her necklace. She set it inside and closed the closet door.

  Winter thawed. Spring blossoms opened. Summer came in with its hot breath and turned the grass brown. Then, one morning, as the wind began once again shaking the leaves from the trees, on a day when Hannah was coming to visit, Lynnie woke with a new thought. For a long time, Hannah had wanted a baby, but she and her husband, John, hadn’t been able to have one. Lynnie knew this made Hannah unhappy; she looked away whenever she saw a pregnant woman. Yet she called Lynnie with a bright voice whenever they held a show in her gallery and it was a hit. Then there was Kate. Kate had wanted her first marriage to last, though her husband had different ideas. But Kate met Scott, and when she got married she said, “Scott’s worth all the trouble I went through before I found him.” And don’t forget Doreen. Although Doreen never got her parents, she got the best friend a person could have.

  And Lynnie understood. There were two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn’t do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn’t what you’d originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy d
ay is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.

  So as Lynnie dressed for the visit—really, the meeting with Hannah and all Lynnie’s aides, which happened once a year—she made a decision. She knew it would surprise everyone in the room, yet it was what she wanted. Actually, she’d wanted it a long time.

  She opened the closet, and pulled out the wooden box, and slipped the necklace back over her head.

  “How’s it going, Lynnie?” Carmen asked.

  They had all just taken their seats in the conference room, Carmen, Sharona, Antoine, Hannah, and Lynnie. Everyone was wearing one of the sweatshirts Hannah had just handed out, each decorated with a drawing of Lynnie’s.

  “Better,” Lynnie said.

  Carmen said, “You getting more used to Doreen not being around?”

  Lynnie knew Carmen was aware of the answer and was just prompting her to respond. “Yeah. And it’ll get better.”

  “That’s a good attitude,” Antoine said, a smile on his round face. He made a note on some paper in front of him. He was Lynnie’s case manager, Carmen her residential team coordinator, Sharona her direct support professional.

  Hannah said, “And didn’t your bowling team just win for the third time in a row?”

  “We did.”

  “Isn’t that great?” Carmen said to the group. Carmen was from Puerto Rico, where there were sandy beaches and palm trees; and her voice, Lynnie thought, sounded like ocean waves.

  Then they began the official meeting. Doreen had hated these meetings when she’d been with BridgeWays. Lynnie didn’t mind, even though it was the same every year: Sit around the table with aides and answer questions about things they already knew. Doreen had said, “Regular people don’t have to do this,” but Lynnie liked that she could invite anyone she wanted. Kate lived too far away, though Hannah always came, every time with mugs or key chains or stationery decorated with Lynnie’s art, and gave one to everybody. It was like a party that way. So why not tell them how much money she got every month from Social Security, and when she’d seen the dentist, and if she remembered what to do at a fire drill. “It’s not a big deal,” Lynnie had told Doreen, even though, she had to admit, the meetings made her feel like a kid.