The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty: A Novel

by Amanda Filipacchi

  Not everyone’s reasons for joining the trend are noble. A few are mercenary.

  Three high-ranking plastic surgeons report that there’s been a dramatic decrease in business. They say women are having second thoughts about getting rid of flaws that are now highly prized. When the three surgeons are asked if they are disappointed in this turn in fashion, two of them—possibly insincerely—say no. The third one, however, says yes he is disappointed but expects that women will start booking appointments to get flaws (now considered “improvements”) incorporated into their faces and bodies. He adds, “As long as women are dissatisfied with how they look, I’m satisfied. I don’t care what form their dissatisfaction takes, provided it requires me to fix it.”

  This comment fans the flames, causing more articles to come out condemning the fact that the basic underpinning of the fashion, beauty, and cosmetics industries is women’s dissatisfaction with themselves. I think that people getting this glimpse into the dark side of beauty has enabled them to see pulchritude for what it is: something as disgusting as it sounds—putrefaction; rot; another one of life’s necessary lunacies.

  Of course, not everyone hears about the new beauty, especially people who don’t keep up with fashion. That’s why I still get catcalls and come-ons from non-metrosexual men who are behind the times. I’m allergic to them, but I have to be patient, take it one day at a time.

  No longer ladylike or meticulously groomed, Penelope lives in sweat clothes and her hair is disheveled. She used to be the only one among us to wear makeup on a regular basis, and even though I think she’s much more attractive without it, we all know its absence is a bad sign about her mental state.

  She’s been rebuilding Lily for weeks with little progress, yet she’s showing no signs of letting up. Quite the opposite. Her focus is sharpening and her determination is acquiring a certain savagery.

  Not once since Lily broke has Penelope met us anywhere other than at her apartment, and her reluctance to let us visit increases each week. And she’s cranky, which I know is understandable given that as soon as she makes any progress, Lily falls apart again.

  In her desperate desire to bring Lily back to life, Penelope at first tries to rebuild her in the exact position she died in—standing up—but she quickly realizes it’s impossible. So she tries rebuilding her friend lying down. Penelope believes that horizontally the task will no longer be impossible—merely horrendously difficult.

  Even though Penelope does start making some progress, Lily still keeps collapsing. But Penelope continues working on Lily with as much passion and single-mindedness as Lily did when working on her musical pieces. Day after day, with infinite delicacy, Penelope balances Lily’s pieces on top of one another. No matter how careful she is, however, there always comes a time when she is not careful enough, when her hand shakes a little too much, when the mere fact of being human makes it impossible for her to place every single fragment with the exact degree of gentleness necessary at the precise angle required. She’s killing herself trying to attain perfection in all her gestures.

  And we don’t stop her.

  We don’t have the energy.

  Lily’s death has left us weak and despondent.

  Plus, we know it would be useless to try to stop her. Penelope would continue. And the truth is, we want her to continue because even though our minds know that her enterprise is hopeless, our hearts can’t stop hoping—stupidly and relentlessly.

  Jack is the last one to see Penelope.

  That was three days ago. He said she looked bad—haggard and pale—and that she’d lost weight. In the middle of her living room floor was Lily, close to being fully recomposed. But the same problem kept happening. Each time she was almost back together, she’d crumble.

  Jack was upset to discover that there was no food in Penelope’s fridge or cabinets. He bought her groceries and made her promise to eat.

  His account was so disturbing that each of us made concerted efforts to see her after that. But we failed; she was no longer receiving visitors, saying she needed to work on Lily without distractions.

  Thankfully, we don’t have to endure the situation much longer. Everything changes dramatically one evening when Jack’s phone rings while we’re gathered at my place, brooding over Lily’s recomposition and Penelope’s decomposition.

  Peter is not with us. As my cuts have been fading, so has his presence from my life. I still see him once or twice a week, but I sense his visits will grow farther apart. He’s been withdrawing because he feels that nothing has changed between us, that I’m still blocked, that we have no future beyond a friendship. And I can’t say I disagree. Lily’s ugliness as a new beauty trend has in no way touched the core of the beauty worship problem. Just because beauty’s been redefined doesn’t mean it has lost its importance. And I’m resigned to being stuck for as long as beauty rules—which I expect to be forever.

  This night, Jack almost doesn’t pick up his ringing phone. At the last minute he checks the caller ID. “It’s Penelope,” he says, and eagerly answers it.

  He listens for a few seconds and then snaps the phone shut.

  “What did she say?” Georgia asks.

  “It was her number, but it wasn’t Penelope,” he answers, in shock. “It was Lily. She said ‘Help us.’ And then the line went dead.”

  We rush to the elevator, out the building, hop in a cab, and reach Penelope’s apartment in under ten minutes.

  It takes us another ten minutes to persuade the doorman and the super to open Penelope’s door with the spare key they have.

  We find Penelope and Lily unconscious on the living room floor. We call 911, and while we wait for the ambulance to arrive, we’re able to find a pulse on each of our friends. We can’t believe Lily is alive again, and not only alive but not reflective.

  The superintendent, who is hovering over us, seems perplexed as to why Penelope’s unconscious state terrifies us while Lily’s delights us.

  The ambulance squad arrives within minutes and Lily regains consciousness on the way to the hospital but Penelope doesn’t. The doctors say she’s dehydrated and malnourished. Her vital signs are weak.

  Much of the ecstasy we feel over Lily’s resurrection is dampened by our worry for Penelope.

  NOW THAT WE’VE got Lily back and that Penelope possibly sacrificed her life to reassemble her, I want to place Lily on a shelf with a big sign that reads: “Fragile. If you break her you will pay.”

  When word gets out that Lily is back and alive, journalists start calling her incessantly, asking for interviews. She doesn’t give a single one, being in no mood to talk about herself when the friend who brought her back to life is in the hospital in a coma.

  In an effort to distract her from her crushing feelings of guilt, we show Lily how much the world of fashion has changed during the past few weeks. We want her to see that, at least for now, she’s beautiful in this world. But Lily doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about the many fashion magazines that use models who resemble her. She doesn’t care that on the streets, many women who, until last month, would have been considered unattractive are now carrying themselves with more confidence and self-appreciation. She doesn’t care that her physical appearance is now desired.

  And not only does she not care, she doesn’t believe it. She doesn’t feel beautiful. How can she, after years of being ignored, dismissed, avoided, insulted—insulted like she was by that man at the bar who ended up murdered. The damage to her self-esteem was far too great for her to feel beautiful now. As though all it would take would be for the whole world to find her beautiful.

  Lily is swamped by adoring fans and by men who want to date her. But she’s not interested in men who see the beauty in her ugliness only now that everyone else does.

  She is contacted by old schoolmates and acquaintances who never showed much interest in her before. Those are the worst. Extricating herself from having to meet up, catch up, or hook up is so awkward that she changes her phone number and b
ecomes a recluse within a week of coming back to life. This, of course, only increases her mystique and feeds the frenzy.

  She also hires a bodyguard (at our insistence), after Jack points out that she might be a tempting target for kidnappers, now that Georgia’s article has revealed the extent of Lily’s powers and her ability to beautify—and create a desire for—not only objects but people, and not only a desire for those objects and people who are present, but also for those who are not.

  It doesn’t take long for her fans, acquaintances, and old schoolmates to start approaching me and Georgia and Jack to try to get to Lily. We tell them she doesn’t want to talk to anybody. There is one old schoolmate who is not only persistent but evasive—a particularly annoying combination. He says his name is Derek Pearce. He has contacted all three of us multiple times but won’t tell us why he wants to reach Lily beyond saying it’s important.

  We give Lily everyone’s messages. She’s not in the mood to call back anyone, including Derek Pearce.

  Lily’s only regular daily outing is to visit the hospital where Penelope is languishing on life support, and play for her on her portable synthesizer. She composes music that she hopes will awaken Penelope from her coma. In vain. She keeps lamenting that her skills are nowhere near capable of achieving such a feat. She can tell she’s not even close.

  ONE RAINY AFTERNOON, after eleven days in the hospital, Penelope comes out of her coma. According to Lily, it has nothing to do with her music because nothing she composed had that kind of power.

  Penelope simply awakes on her own—as comatose patients sometimes do. We are euphoric and relieved.

  Physically, she looks okay except for several purple patches on her arms, legs, and torso where the doctors have been injecting her twice a day with a blood thinner.

  She’s released from the hospital the next day with instructions to get physical therapy three to five days a week until her strength returns.

  MY MOM CALLS and says, “You haven’t put your fat suit back on, have you?”

  “Not yet,” I reply, to torture her.

  “Seriously, Barb, please don’t wear your disguise to protect yourself from ending up like me. I know you think your father loved me for my beauty and had affairs when it faded. But it wasn’t as simple as that. I mean, yes he did become increasingly attracted to younger, more beautiful women as I aged, but that wasn’t our only problem. We also grew apart, we had different interests. In a lot of ways we simply weren’t compatible. I like not having to cater to a man anymore. And who knows, I may still meet another special man someday, but in the meantime I’m content, and often even happy—definitely happier than I was with your father at the end. I like my solitary life. I’m having a good time traveling. I have good friends. Don’t deny yourself happiness while you’re young. Ending up like me is not the worst thing that could happen to you.”

  AFTER BEING TAKEN care of by her mother for two days, Penelope is able to walk a little. Lily picks her up and brings her to my apartment so we can celebrate her recovery and—most importantly—thank her again for her phenomenal feat of bringing Lily back to life.

  When Penelope walks through my door, I’m taken aback by how weak and sickly she still looks. We are the opposite. We’re exuberant, bouncing off the walls. We settle her on the couch, prop her up with pillows and blankets, and call her our hero, our miracle worker.

  We shower her with attention, hugs, and gifts. Georgia models a long purple angora scarf she bought for her.

  Our only sorrow is that Peter isn’t here to share our happiness.

  In an effort to amuse us, Jack goes to the bookcase to demonstrate how attractive the bookends he just bought for Penelope will look with books between them. “Oh, God,” he says, laughing at something he sees tucked at the back of a high shelf. He grabs the object and faces us. He’s holding the ugly ceramic box Penelope gave me months ago to thank me for having lunch with her parents.

  Jack says, “Isn’t it amazing that the person who made this sorry-looking box is the same genius who put Lily’s million pieces back together?”

  My friends laugh—even Penelope, who seems to be enjoying the teasing.

  “It is astounding,” Georgia says, reaching for the box.

  Jack hands it to her.

  Studying the box, opening and closing it, Georgia says, “Wow, Penelope, you’ve come a long way, baby. Though the metal clasp is nice. Have you thought of going into metalsmithing?”

  Penelope chuckles. “I’ve told you before, the clasp is the one thing I can’t take credit for. I’m not the type to take credit for other people’s work. The clasp was made by a very talented girl who I always buy my clasps from.” The effort to speak seems to tire Penelope quickly.

  Then, in all innocence, Georgia makes a comment without realizing its implication until the words are out of her mouth and can never be taken back: “It’s unusual, the design of this clasp. I like how it’s encrusted with a stone, kind of like the clasp on that mirror-knife . . .” She puts down the box.

  As though wishing she could distract us and herself from what she just said, Georgia turns to the window and asks, “Is it supposed to rain today?”

  But it’s too late. Lily picks up the box and looks at the clasp. Her gaze meets Penelope’s. She puts down the box, not saying anything, but she seems deeply affected.

  I’m staring at Penelope. Could it be? Could it be that Penelope is the killer among us?

  Jack rolls his magazine into a tight tube. He uses it to turn the box around as he would use a stick to inspect a vile carcass. Once the clasp is facing him and he’s had a good look at it, he rests his elbows on his knees and buries his face in his hands without glancing at Penelope.

  “Yes, I’m the one who wanted to kill Strad,” Penelope says, blushing fiercely. “I’m the one who made the preparations, who sent the gifts with the hidden blades. I had those gifts custom-made by the same woman at school who makes the clasps for my boxes. It didn’t occur to me you’d recognize the clasp. I’m the one who arranged the phone calls to lure Strad away from the dinner. I did do all that. But when it came down to actually killing him, I couldn’t go through with it.”

  Georgia immediately voices what I’m thinking but am too stunned to articulate: “You couldn’t go through with it?” she exclaims. “We made it impossible for anyone to kill Strad that evening. Don’t make it sound like you had any choice in the matter. You did kill the guy from the bar, after all. You were able to go through with that, when no one was stopping you.”

  “No,” Penelope says, shaking her head, “I’m not the one who killed the man from the bar, even though I told Gabriel I was. What happened was, I saw in the paper that the guy had been murdered. I have to admit it made me happy. It seemed as though justice had swooped down and for once done something right in the world, performed this beautiful act, discreetly. My only quibble was: the wrong man had been murdered. If only it could have been Strad. The article made me realize I could kill him myself.”

  “You’re crazy,” Jack says.

  “Ever since I was kept in that coffin for three days, I’ve had a lust for vengeance. I never talked about it and never acted on it, but I can’t stand seeing bad guys get away with stuff, especially if a friend of mine is being hurt.”

  “You’re psychologically broken, like one of your pots,” Jack says. “You try to make yourself appear whole and sane, but you’re not.”

  Penelope goes on. “I knew that killing Strad would probably ruin my life, probably get me arrested, possibly even killed. But I felt I had nothing to lose, that I was a total failure, lacking any talent, so why not sacrifice myself by doing something noble and selfless? My own life was worthless—I’d be putting it to good use. I felt that if Strad were dead, Lily’s life would be saved, or at least her happiness would be saved, which, in my opinion, amounts to almost the same thing.”

  “You’re a lunatic,” Jack says.

  Teeth clenched, Georgia says, “Shut up, Jack. We kn
ow. Let her finish.”

  Penelope continues: “I wasn’t very comfortable with the idea of killing someone, even though I was determined to try. I had an easier time accepting the idea if I put time parameters on it and pushed it far into the future, so I could get used to it. I decided that if Lily was still miserable over Strad in two years, I would attempt to kill him between the hours of eight p.m. and midnight, on one particular day, and I picked the day randomly, October 27th, which was a little over two years away.”

  Lily says, “If it’s really true that you didn’t kill that guy from the bar, why would you tell Gabriel that you did?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Penelope says, gathering her thoughts and her strength before continuing. “Gabriel kept talking of killing himself. I desperately wanted to tell you guys of his frame of mind so that you could help me help him, but he’d made me promise not to tell. I did all I could to be comforting, caring, everything one’s supposed to be. It made no difference. So finally, one day, out of frustration, I decided to reveal to him my plan to kill Strad. I hoped it would freak him out and make him want to stay alive to stop me. He didn’t believe me at all, of course, which was something I’d expected, so I showed him the article about the first man’s murder and claimed I was the one who’d killed him and that now I was going to do the same thing to Strad. That cinched it. He believed me then. But it wasn’t enough to make him want to live.”

  We ask her a few more questions, but finally take pity on her. She looks exhausted. I fetch her a glass of water.

  She says, “Barb, there’s something you need to know. Gabriel saw a psychiatrist who told him he was clinically depressed and that all signs pointed to the likelihood that it was biological, not due to external circumstances such as his unrequited love for you. But Gabriel refused to take antidepressants. He thought it was just his love for you that was ruining his life. The shrink told him that was very unlikely, that even if you had loved him back he probably would still have been depressed and would simply have assumed the reason for his depression was some other frustration in his life. I believe the shrink. I’m convinced Gabriel had a mood disorder and couldn’t have been happy for any length of time unless treated.”