Such a Pretty Face

by Gabrielle Goldsby

  “I’ve never seen her before in my life. And I wasn’t staring that hard.” Goody raised his eyebrow and I winced. “I hope she didn’t think I was being rude.”

  “Nah, I doubt she noticed.”

  I tugged the lapels of my suit jacket together and wondered if they had been gaping apart when I talked to her. “What were we talking about before?”

  “Brenda moving to Fiji.”

  “She isn’t moving. She’s working there for a while.”

  Goody shrugged. “Might as well be moving.”

  I hated that he was right. I hated the fact that my clients trusted me with a little over two hundred million dollars in assets, yet I was afraid to tell my partner that I didn’t want her to leave me for Þ ve months. I hated that she didn’t appear concerned about being away from me. And worst of all, I hated feeling like my life was teetering on the point of a pin and one false move could easily send it toppling into the unknown.

  I sighed and stood up. “You up for an early lunch? I could use a panini and fries with an ice-cream chaser.”

  v

  Sunday morning came faster than Brenda did after our good-bye sex. You would think good-bye sex would be the best ever, right? The thing is, the good-bye sex that morning was really no different than a lot of the sex Brenda and I had been having over the last few weeks, fast and vaguely unsatisfying.

  I was still lying in bed trying to Þ gure out what was bothering

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  SUCH A PRETTY FACE

  me besides the obvious, when Brenda got up, murmured something about a shower, and walked into the bathroom. I watched each languid step with detached admiration. Although she had purchased all of the exercise equipment currently gathering dust in our basement, she was genetically blessed with a slender yet feminine physique. Because I worried about hurting her, I always made sure that she ended up on top when we had sex.

  My mind slipped to the construction worker and the lean muscular arms ß exing beneath her T-shirt. I wouldn’t have to worry about hurting her at all. I felt an immediate tightening between my legs.

  Nice, Mia. I pulled the blankets up to my chin. Brenda was leaving and I was lying here thinking about a stranger. I should have been worrying about the fact that my partner was going to be on a tropical island working closely with supermodels for Þ ve months. Maybe I’ll put all that exercise equipment in the basement to good use. Who knows, she could come back to a slim and trim Mia. I turned over, wondering if I should go pick up bagels or just cook something for breakfast.

  The pipes squealed, groaned, and Þ nally released a gush of water.

  The house stopped protesting and the sound of running water lulled me into a half-sleep until a soft whine and a thumping noise wrenched me back to wakefulness.

  I leaned over and lifted the bed skirt. “Pepito, what are you doing down there?”

  I knew exactly what he was doing. Listening to the bed squeak while plotting revenge on my best high heels. Brenda had been given the Chihuahua mix six months ago, and since then, the dog and I had come to a kind of mutual understanding.

  We hated each other.

  I glanced at the clock. Ten past ten, which meant that we had just enough time to have breakfast and drive to the airport. The water stopped and the house moaned again. I was used to Brenda’s short showers, but this one had to be a record. She’s in a rush to get to her models. I dragged myself out of bed, quickly reached for my robe, and covered myself with it just as Brenda entered the room, naked except for the towel draped over her short, graying hair.

  “God, the water pressure sucks,” she said, for the umpteenth time since we had moved into the house.

  “I’ll try to get someone in to see about Þ xing it while you’re gone.”

  Of course I wouldn’t. Things like water pressure just didn’t concern

  • 17 •

  GABRIELLE GOLDSBY

  me. My father was fond of saying that Brenda was the perfect woman for me. She had practical sense. The implication being that I had none.

  Brenda shrugged and disappeared into the closet. She had been acting odd since Friday night. One moment she couldn’t keep her hands off me, the next she couldn’t string two words together. I went into the bathroom and was about to shut the door behind me when I heard her mufß ed voice from inside the closet.

  “I’m going to put some eggs on. You want something?”

  “Yeah, I’ll just have a croissant and some coffee.”

  “That’s not healthy,” was her standard automated response, but the racks of clothing made her sound farther away than she actually was.

  “Okay, I’ll have a croissant, some coffee, and two cigarettes.” The old joke dropped like a stone and I shut the door to the bathroom without hearing any response. I had smoked until about the second week of our relationship, when Brenda let me know, in no uncertain terms, that she had no interest in being with a smoker. So I quit. Brenda liked to say she was responsible for saving me from lung cancer.

  I took longer than I should have with my shower, but by the time I got out I had come to a decision. As much as our relationship felt off kilter, I didn’t want Brenda to know how upset I was. If being apart for Þ ve months didn’t bother her, I would try not to let it bother me. She was gone when I came out of the bathroom, so I walked downstairs in my robe. I found her sitting at the kitchen table, slumped forward, staring into her mug.

  “I haven’t told my parents that you’re leaving.” I walked over to the cabinet and pulled down a mug for myself. “I Þ gure I’ll just tell them when I go over there this afternoon. That way they don’t have time to come up with a bunch of questions.” I poured my coffee. Brenda was still looking down into her cup.

  “Mia, I need to tell you something.”

  Pepito’s claws clicked across the ß oor as he took his position beneath the table where Brenda, much to my annoyance, would feed him scraps.

  “What is it?” I bit into my croissant and sat down across from her.

  “I don’t think I’m in love with you anymore.”

  Her words hung in the air between us before reaching in, grabbing my throat, and closing off my esophagus. I swallowed hard. The bread hung for a few moments longer than was comfortable before making

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  SUCH A PRETTY FACE

  its way down my throat. I had been pushing her since Friday, poking for answers because I had already had a premonition that there would be no “us” in Þ ve months.

  I searched Brenda’s face. She met my eyes with the candor she always had. I wanted to believe I had misheard. Except that her ring, the one I had bought her when we got married at the Multnomah County Courthouse, was sitting on the table beside her coffee. She twirled it on the table as if it were a penny.

  “What are you saying?” My words came out cool, unemotional.

  I would have been proud of how composed I sounded if I hadn’t been in shock.

  “I don’t know what I’m trying to say. It’s…this has been on my mind for a while.” I heard a little whine followed by a sneeze from beneath the table. Brenda stopped spinning the ring long enough to pinch off a piece of her croissant. Her hand disappeared beneath the table. I pictured Pepito taking the bread from her Þ ngers and spearing her with one of his deformed front canines.

  “So is that why you took this assignment? Because you don’t…”

  I was unable to Þ nish the sentence. Is it possible to just stop loving someone?

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Last weekend I realized that it was time to do something about it.”

  “Last weekend?” I repeated and she looked away from me. I heard the ring spin two more times before it fell ß at on the table. Getting married had been Brenda’s idea. She’d said we should take advantage of the loophole that allowed gays to marry in the Multnomah County Courthouse.

  I still remember how the light had glinted off the ring when I Þ rst put it on her Þ nger. I remember how she
smiled at me, her eyes large and bewildered. How the kiss that pronounced us partners for life had been so chaste because we were both shocked by what we had done.

  The letter revoking our marital status was buried in a dresser drawer, but I still considered myself married. I thought we both did. Thirteen months ago that ring had stood for so much, but now it looked like how I felt. As if someone had leached all of the life out of it.

  “Mia, are you listening to me?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “I was saying that the trip will do us both good. Give us both some space.”

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  GABRIELLE GOLDSBY

  “I don’t need any space.”

  “I think you do. We’ve been together constantly for four years.”

  “We live together. You’re my partner. We’re supposed to be together constantly.” Tears prickled at the back of my eyes and I stood up, grabbed her plate along with mine, and set them on the counter. I ß ipped on the water and squeezed my eyes shut. Please, dear Lord, tell me this isn’t happening.

  “Mia, that can wait.” Brenda had to raise her voice over the rush of water from the faucet. I wiped my eyes, shut off the water, and returned to the kitchen table. Small claws scuttled on tile as Pepito tried to avoid my feet. Normally, he would have growled at being disturbed. This time he didn’t. Even the house was hushed. There were none of the usual groans and moans that accompanied turning off the water.

  “Say something,” she said. Frustration was evident in her voice.

  “What do you want me to say? I don’t think you should go anywhere before we Þ x this. If there’s a problem we should be able to work it out. It’s not like you have someone else, right?” Even as the words left my lips, I could see the answer in her eyes. She looked apologetic. Guilty. My heart sank.

  “Let’s not start accusing each other, Mia. I’m talking about our relationship. Things haven’t been good.”

  “Since when? Since when haven’t they been good? We’ve had sex more in the last few weeks than we’ve had—” I stopped because I had given myself the answer. It had been right there all along and I hadn’t noticed it. Although Brenda’s hours had been crazy over the last few weeks, we had found time to have sex at least three times in the past two weeks. A record for us. How had I missed it? The new clothes, the attention to grooming, the impromptu sex. Brenda had been cheating on me and I hadn’t had a clue.

  “Who is it?” I demanded.

  Brenda stood up and went to the counter to reÞ ll her coffee cup.

  She took so long to answer that I contemplated repeating my question.

  Her answer was not unexpected, but it was painful. “I’m not cheating on you.”

  “You’re lying to me now?”

  She went on as if she hadn’t heard me. “But even if I were, wouldn’t that tell you something? Don’t you always say that if a person cheats it means the relationship wasn’t strong to begin with?”

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  SUCH A PRETTY FACE

  “That’s not the point. If you’ve been cheating on me, I deserve to know who I’ve been sharing you with.” I hated the bitterness in my voice. I wanted to sound like she did, calm and sure of myself. But I couldn’t because my life was falling down around my ears and I was sitting in my kitchen wearing a terry cloth robe that had seen better days Þ ve years ago. I pulled the robe tight across my breasts. “I deserve more than ‘we need our space.’”

  Brenda’s mouth tightened. Finally, something more than that absent look of boredom. “I’m sorry you feel like this has come out of nowhere, but I’ve been trying to change things around here for a long time. You don’t want to go out. You don’t like doing any of the things I like to do. We don’t even have the same friends.”

  “I didn’t know it meant that much to you. We could have gone out more. I could have called—”

  “Who, Mia? There’s no one. Amy and Dominique can barely pull themselves away from playing mommy to play poker. All of our friends have either moved away or moved on with their lives. This is it.” Her voice was bitter, cutting. “Don’t you get it? I want more than just this.”

  She gestured at our surroundings.

  I looked around—at the brightly colored walls, the marble countertops, the Spanish tile that didn’t really Þ t the kitchen motif—

  and tried to determine what in it could have made her so unhappy. A cold moist nose tapped at my shin twice.

  “I’ve watched you avoid looking at yourself in the mirror for almost a year now,” Brenda said in an impatient tone. “Do you really believe you’re happy? How much weight have you gained this year?”

  “What does my weight have to do with anything?”

  “Everything. You eat when you’re not happy, and lately you’ve been eating twice what you used to. I asked you to run the marathon with me, but you refused. Hell, if you would just go downstairs once a week it would do you a world of good. You refuse. It’s like you’re scared to get yourself into shape because then…”

  “Because then what?” I was shaking my head. “Brenda, where the hell is all of this coming from? You just told me you didn’t know if you were in love with me anymore. You’re going to Fiji for Þ ve months in less than an hour. Why are you telling me this now? Why couldn’t this wait until you got back?”

  “Because I don’t know if I’m coming back.” The words were

  • 21 •

  GABRIELLE GOLDSBY

  softly spoken but I could hear the pain in them. If she hadn’t sounded like she understood what she was doing to me, it might not have hurt so much.

  I stood up without looking at her. “I better get dressed.”

  “I called a cab while you were in the shower. It’ll be here soon.”

  I turned her words over in my head. I studied her facial expression, her eyes. I was looking for a crack, some show of weakness or emotion. I found none.

  “I’m sorry I have to leave like this,” she said. “I’m sorry that I hurt you. I just didn’t want to drag this out until I got back, and I didn’t want to run the risk of telling you over the phone.”

  “So this is it, then? It’s over?” I don’t know why, but a small laugh left my mouth.

  Brenda’s eyes grew large as if she too had just begun to understand the ramiÞ cations of what she was saying. “I don’t know that we can end four years in Þ ve minutes of conversation, but I thought you had a right to know how I felt.”

  Anger warmed the chill in the pit of my stomach. “I had a right to know before you cheated on me!”

  “I never said I cheated on you, Mia.”

  “You didn’t have to. You forget that I know you. Now you’re just trying to make yourself feel better about the fact that you’re going to do it a lot more times. You know what’s sad? I would have never guessed in a million years that you would be this chicken shit.”

  Brenda didn’t answer me and I followed her out into the hall just as a car honked outside and she turned the knob. “I’ll call you, okay?”

  “I’m not going to wait for you to come back, Brenda.”

  She acted like she didn’t hear me. “Try to take better care of yourself.”

  She picked up her three bags and walked out the door, closing it Þ rmly behind her. I pulled my robe tight across my chest and stared at the door waiting for the pain to hit. There was a soft whine from behind me and the sound of tiny claws clicking across hardwood ß oors.

  Pepito sniffed at the front door, looked at me, whimpered, and settled down to wait for Brenda’s return.

  • 22 •

  SUCH A PRETTY FACE

  CHAPTER TWO

  Once a month I’m forced to suffer a special kind of hell that no woman should have to willingly deal with. No, not my period—Sunday brunch at my parents’ house.

  You would think my being a lesbian would have caused some strife for my family, but it didn’t. At least, not enough for them to disown me.

  If anything, it gave them more
reason to feel they had a right to run my life, since I obviously didn’t know what to do with it.

  Brenda had left and the pinging sound of the taxi’s engine had faded to nothing by the time I shook myself from my stupor and climbed the stairs to get dressed. While looking for something to wear that wouldn’t garner unwanted attention from my mother, I tried not to notice how empty the closet was. Brenda, normally a light packer no matter how long she planned to be gone, had shipped almost every piece of clothing she owned.

  I told myself that she would be gone for a long time. So what if Fiji was a tropical climate? It was possible that she might need long sleeves, sweaters, and jackets, wasn’t it? I grabbed the outÞ t I was going to wear and shut the door, my bottom lip caught Þ rmly between my teeth to keep it from trembling.

  I got ready for brunch just as I normally would: makeup, hair spray, and conservative clothing. Brenda’s last few words, though spoken twenty minutes before, had set off a painful resonance in the back of my mind. I didn’t want to go anywhere, least of all my parents’.

  I was tempted to make up an excuse about being sick. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but even the dull, empty feeling in my chest was not worth the

  • 23 •

  GABRIELLE GOLDSBY

  month of short telephone conversations and hints about the importance of family that I would endure from my mother.

  The woman did guilt as if she had written the manual. After a week of such treatment, not only would I have begged forgiveness for my transgression, I would no doubt have offered to drive ten stakes into my eye as I walked over hot coals, butt naked, while being Þ lmed for SportsCenter as penance.

  My parents’ place is four thousand square feet of house sitting on a half acre of the greenest grass you’d ever want to see. As I turned into the circular driveway, the owner of the landscaping company that took care of the massive lawn waved a greeting.

  “Hola, Hector. Cómo está?” I called as I stepped out of my Explorer, careful not to hike my leg up too high. I had decided to wear a dress that my sister, Christina, had helped pick out a few weeks earlier. Now I worried that the size fourteen should have been more like a sixteen.