Now I’m the one who’s silent. I finally say, “Gray and shiny?”
“Yeah . . . Kind of like silver.”
“Are you exaggerating?”
“Do I ever exaggerate?”
I think about it. “No.”
“I’m actually understating it,” she says. “Because then my hands became worse. They got shinier, until they were very reflective, like mirrors.” She is silent, as though waiting for me to react. But I don’t know what to say, so finally she asks, “You do believe me?”
“Yes,” I say, not technically lying. Sure, I believe that her hands were reflective—reflective of her mental state, a mental state which concerns me greatly. “And do you have any idea what triggered this?” I ask.
“I think my mood.”
“What was your mood, exactly?”
“I told you. Extremely sad.”
“Do you know what the reflectiveness was?”
“It felt like death. As though it was trying to take hold of me. And the worst part was, I was tempted to let it, because it was a welcome relief. But then I resisted it and it went away.”
THAT MAKES ME think of Gabriel, of course. I’m still thinking about him the next day when I check the mail and, to my surprise, I have another letter from him:
Dear Barb, Georgia, Lily, Penelope, and Jack,
One of you, in addition to Barb, was my very close friend. Our friendship was deeper than the rest of you suspected, even deeper than my friendship with you, Barb. This person knew about my love for you, Barb, and kept my secret, and for that, I’m grateful. During times when I was depressed over my unrequited love, this human being was my only source of comfort and knew that sometimes I wanted to end my life and that one day I might.
I will refer to this special friend as “KAY.” Eventually, I will tell you what this acronym stands for, but for now let me simply say that just because KAY is more popular as a girl’s name than a boy’s, do not assume KAY is female. Do not assume anything.
My closer level of friendship with KAY started one day when we were alone and confided in each other more deeply than we had with the rest of the group. We began meeting one on one without telling the group. We confessed more about our lives, our feelings, our opinions, our dreams.
We’d meet for walks. For coffees. It was strangely like having an affair, except that it was not sexual—just a very caring intimacy.
One day, KAY did something very bad and told me about it two weeks later and made the decision to do something very bad again, but not immediately; instead, KAY would do it exactly two years from then—which is now just a couple of weeks away.
You’ll have to prepare yourselves for the date (Friday, October 27), hopefully get through it, and then put it behind you, and try to forget.
In all honesty, you will never be able to forget. But with a little luck and my postmortem guidance, your group might be able to return to some semblance of what it is today. I know it’s asking a lot, but I hope you will see your way to forgiving KAY her/his folly.
Love,
Gabriel
I call Georgia.
“Hello?” she answers, sounding loud and excited and out of breath.
“I just got another letter from Gabriel.”
“Oh yeah? It’s so nice of him to stay in touch, isn’t it?”
I’m not in the mood. “Not funny.”
“Sorry. What does he say?”
I read her the letter.
She greets it with stunned silence, which jibes with my mood much better.
“How weird,” she finally says.
“Are you KAY?” I ask.
“Oh, I am more than okay.”
“Not O-KAY. KAY!”
“No.”
“You’re not making much effort to deny it.”
“If I don’t sound fully engaged, it’s because I was just about to call you with some news. I GOT MY LAPTOP BACK! Someone dropped it off at my building with a note that said, ‘Sorry for the delay. Been busy.’” She laughs.
“I’m so happy for you. That makes up a little for Gabriel’s letter.”
Her tone sobers up. “Oh, yeah. What a disturbing letter. He’s even weirder in death than in life.”
I decide I want to read the letter to the others in person when I see them tomorrow, in case their expressions reveal which one of them is KAY.
Peter Marrick
Sunday, 15 October
I had the intern return the laptop. That’s one thing off my plate.
I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to think of ways to meet Barb and her friends, other than the obvious way. I haven’t been able to come up with any ideas due to my damned lack of imagination—ironic and rather tragic in view of how much I crave to be creative. Which is one of many reasons why I need to meet these people.
I got a complaint at work that I look distracted.
I can’t obsess about this anymore. I will meet them the obvious way.
Chapter Six
On Sunday, I invite my friends over and read Gabriel’s letter out loud to them. They act surprised in appropriate ways (except for Georgia, who’s heard it already), and I can’t decipher which of them might be KAY.
While we work, Lily continues trying to beautify Jack through her piano playing, but without success. Upset and frustrated, she leaves abruptly.
Georgia says she doesn’t like her novel anymore, that it’s not as great as she thought it was when she believed it was lost forever. She says the memory of it took on monumental proportions, and now the reality of it is just a bit of a letdown. She attributes this to absence making the heart grow fonder, and it makes her sick.
Penelope says Georgia is probably simply suffering from some sort of post-traumatic reverse syndrome of taking something for granted as soon as she gets it back.
And I remind Georgia that she’s always told me this was her best novel yet, so it probably is.
LILY DOES NOT call that night even though I asked her to when she stormed out of my apartment earlier. I’m concerned about her. I know she’s upset that she hasn’t been able to beautify Jack through her music. I restrain myself from calling her, not wanting to be overly protective.
What dramatically increases my concern is that, at two o’clock in the afternoon the next day, movers show up at my apartment to take away Lily’s piano. They tell me those are her instructions. They show me a form she filled out requesting its removal. While they carry out the upright piano, I’m anxiously trying to reach Lily by phone. She’s not picking up. I curse myself for not calling her last night.
As I run out of my building to look for Lily, I pass Adam the doorman who says to me, “One day you’ll find yourself, and wish you hadn’t.”
I’m a bit unsettled by that comment as I jog the few blocks to Lily’s apartment, trying to refrain from holding my bouncing fake fat.
I ring Lily’s downstairs buzzer. There’s no answer. A tenant on his way out lets me in. I knock on Lily’s apartment door. No answer. I can’t stop my worry from mounting, though I know it may be irrational. I call Jack, Georgia, and Penelope. Within minutes, they have joined me. Jack gets the super to open her door. Lily’s not in her apartment.
We go to my place. We keep calling her.
At five p.m. we’re sitting on my couch, trying to reassure ourselves that she’s okay, but not doing a very good job of it. I mention to my friends that three days ago she seemed delusional, claiming her hands had turned to mirrors and that it felt like death was trying to take hold of her, but that she fought it and it went away.
“Yeah, she told me that too. Not reassuring.” Georgia pauses and takes a deep breath before adding, “But let’s be optimistic. I’m sure she is fine, and will be fine, and in fact will probably make all her dreams come true. I’ve noticed that in life there are three ingredients that, when present simultaneously, create a potent combination: talent, love, and lack of beauty. One’s love for someone, unrequited due to one’s insufficient beauty,
can motivate one to do great things to win that love, if one has the talent. Just look at what Lily’s achieved so far. And I bet it’s not stopping.”
Twenty minutes later, the doorman buzzes me. We brighten, gripped by hope.
But when I answer my doorman intercom, I hear Adam’s voice say softly in my ear, “Hi, piece of shit. There are some deliverymen here for you.”
My heart sinks. I was so hoping for Lily.
“What do they want?” I ask him.
“To deliver something, moron.”
“Deliver what?”
“I’ve only got one nerve left, and you’re getting on it.”
Ignoring him, I repeat, “Deliver what?”
“A piano.”
A piano is not as good as Lily herself, but it’s the next best thing. “Thanks, Adam. Send them up.”
We’re surprised that the upright piano the deliverymen carry into my apartment is made of mirror. We admire it, while they place it in the spot I indicate by the window.
Forty-five minutes later, Lily strolls into my apartment.
When she sees her new instrument, she says, “Ah. Good. It’s here.”
“We were worried to death!” I scream at her.
“I’m sorry. I was busy.”
“With what?”
“Same project. But I’ll be practicing on myself now instead of on Jack.” She sits at the piano and starts hitting single keys, listening to the sound quality. “I bought this piano thinking it might inspire me. My project is so insanely difficult. Impossible, probably. But I’ll work on it until I croak, if that’s what it takes.”
“Why don’t you just give up?” Penelope says.
“Because then life might not seem worth living.”
“See, that’s the project you should be working on—making life worth living for reasons other than Strad,” Jack says.
“I can’t. I need love.” Lily starts playing scales very rapidly, testing the piano. She stops, says, “Sounds good.”
We’re all standing around the musical instrument, our scowling expressions reflected back at us.
BEFORE BED, I call Lily at home to get a better sense of how she’s doing and ask if she’s had any more trouble with things like her hands becoming reflective.
“Yes. Yesterday I was in the pits of depression and then the hand thing happened again a couple of times while I was playing the piano. I stopped it each time from spreading, but I was so tempted not to.”
“It spreads?”
“Yes. Up my wrists and arms.”
“How do you stop it?”
“I will it to stop. I refuse to let it overtake me—out of fear, I guess. Even though it feels good. I mean, it feels good because it feels like nothing, which is good compared to how I feel, which is terrible. Death is the ultimate painkiller. When I will it to stop, it recedes, and the pain comes flooding back.”
“I’m glad,” I say quietly. “That you make it stop. And since yesterday, it hasn’t happened again?”
“No. So far it’s only happened when I hit bottom. But today I’m okay. Buying the mirrored piano cheered me up a bit.”
On Friday is the meeting of the Excess Weight Disorders Support Group, which I promised my mother I’d attend and have been dreading.
When I arrive I see there are about twenty people in the group, all overweight or obese, mostly women. And there is a leader, fitting the same description.
The meeting begins. A woman shares her story. A few people make comments. Another woman shares. More comments. I wait for an opening to tell them the truth about myself. I’m nervous.
For a long time, I see no opportunity until finally a woman says, “Ever since my first child was born I’ve been struggling with my weight. I gained a lot and then lost some and then gained back more than I lost, and then lost some again, but whenever I lose any weight, I gain back all of it and more.”
Another woman jumps in with: “I’m a total yo-yo dieter, too! I take the weight off in the summer and fill my closet with skinny clothes, and then I put all the weight back on in the winter.”
Heart pounding, I say, “Same here. I take the weight off at night and hang it in my closet and put it back on in the morning.”
No one seems to hear me.
Someone else says, “I guess I have a really slow metabolism. I gain weight so easily. And it gets worse as I get older. Anything I eat goes directly from my lips to my hips.”
“I totally know what you mean,” I say. “For me it’s even more direct. It bypasses the lips altogether.”
A couple of chuckles and puzzled looks, but the group doesn’t pause, keeps on talking. I’m not sure my mom would be satisfied with my efforts.
I finally see my opportunity when a woman says, “I mean, I know I’m thin on the inside.”
“Me too! See?” I spring up and flash the assembly. Everyone stares inside my fat jacket, gaping at my thin torso and shoulders.
“What are you doing? Why did you come here?” the leader asks, not looking happy.
“My therapist says I have a serious weight issue, like the rest of you, and that just because my way of getting fat is unusual doesn’t mean the source of the problem isn’t very typical.”
“You don’t belong here,” another woman says.
“But I’m fat.”
“Yours is removable.”
“So is yours. It just takes longer.”
“You’re a thin person.”
“So are you, on the inside. Like me.”
“I assume you don’t even have an eating disorder, right?”
“No, but I’ve got a weight disorder,” I insist. “I engage in unhealthy, compulsive behavior like everyone here. When you guys go to the store to buy your fatty things, I go to a store and buy a different kind of fatty thing. And then I go home, and instead of eating mine, I put it on my body. My brain and emotions have the same need as yours to be fat, but my body is unable to manufacture that fat for reasons of taste. I hate the taste of fattening foods. I hate overeating. And I hate being inactive. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a very serious weight problem. I can’t stop putting on the weight. When I take it off, I can’t keep it off. Either your way or my way, the fat ends up visible to everyone, and the result is the same in the eyes of the world.”
“Okay,” says the group leader. “Let’s move on . . . Sally? Would you like to share?”
I sit in silence for forty more minutes until the meeting finally ends.
GEORGIA TELLS US her agent wants to know if our whole group would be willing to appear on TV, on News with Peter Marrick, to be interviewed about our Nights of Creation and our creativity in general.
“They want us on Wednesday night at six,” Georgia explains. “They’re doing a segment on creativity. They read about our Nights of Creation in that Observer article last year.”
We agree to do it. We’re particularly excited that the great Peter Marrick himself, America’s favorite local news anchor, will be conducting the interview. Even if he weren’t so charismatic and charming on camera, the incident a few years ago when he ran into a burning building and saved three children would make him America’s sweetheart. His cameraman captured the spectacle of Peter running out of the burning house, his hair on fire, carrying a baby in one arm and dragging two small children in his other hand. The only injury he sustained was to his hair follicles. His decision to continue anchoring the news with singed hair and then with a shaved head drew even more viewers. And when his hair grew back nicer and more unusual than before, that didn’t hurt the ratings either. He looked angelic—almost ethereal with his hair floating around his head, light and airy, like a halo.
“You should all go on the show without me,” Georgia says. “I’ve got nothing to say about creativity anymore. When you lose your faith in your work, what have you got left as an artist? Nothing much.”
“Haven’t you done any writing in the last week since you got your laptop back?” Jack asks.
“I
tried.”
“And?”
“I’ve become an expert at backing up my laptop. I’ve set up three different backup systems. The first is manual. The second is automatic, hourly, wireless, in the apartment. And the third is automatic, daily, in the cloud, which means that all of America could blow up and I could still retrieve a backup from the Internet in Europe, assuming I wasn’t in America when it blew up.”
Chapter Seven
I discover a new letter from Gabriel waiting for me in my mailbox.
That letter shocks me so deeply that I’m not able to call my friends right away to tell them about it. I do research online for about an hour. Then I think. I spend the entire night thinking. I don’t even try to sleep.
IN THE MORNING, I call my friends. I tell them to come to my apartment at three. This way, I’ll still have a few hours to think more about the letter.
MY FRIENDS ARRIVE promptly. We settle ourselves on the couch.
Not beating around the bush, I unfold the letter.
I take a deep breath and begin reading—
Dear Barb, Georgia, Lily, Penelope, and Jack,
This is my final letter to you before October 27th. I didn’t want to upset you sooner than necessary, but now I must tell you the terrible thing one of you did, and I must issue an urgent warning that I hope is no longer necessary, but if it is, you must heed it.
On Lily’s birthday, we were all out at a bar. It was a great evening. We were in high spirits, having a wonderful time, laughing a lot. Lily was turning twenty-three, and we were teasing her about her youth, which we secretly envied but also cherished. She seemed to find it very amusing. Then she and Barb went to the restroom, and just when they had rejoined our table, we heard a guy a few feet away make a despicable and ludicrous comment about them to his buddy. We never talked about it, but we all heard it.
If you do not remember what the man said, I’ve written it down in the small envelope I’ve enclosed in this letter.
I stop reading and hold up, for my friends to see, a tiny, pale blue envelope on which are scribbled the words “Offensive Comment.” (I opened it last night, not because I didn’t remember the comment, but to check if Gabriel’s recollection matched mine. It did.)
The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty: A Novel Page 6