Pretty Is

by Mitchell, Maggie

  “Right. You never told me what kind of book, though. And he wasn’t middle-aged, by the way.”

  “Whatever. Close enough. And what do you mean, what kind of book? Like your book. A book book. Like we read in class, only better.”

  “Fiction, then.”

  “Yeah. Like a novel.”

  “But what does that have to do with me?”

  “I need to know what it was really like to have that happen. I mean, I can make it up, but how do I know I have it right? I don’t want it to be lame or, like—candy-assed. It has to be believable.” He takes a drink of his Coke, then wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’ll change stuff, obviously,” he reassures me. “Like you did. No one will guess where I got it. I just want it to be realistic. Unlike yours.”

  “As I already pointed out, my book wasn’t meant to be believed,” I remind him. “It was fiction. Genre fiction, at that. It was intended to be suspenseful, chilling. The narrative obeys certain conventions.”

  “Yeah, but how can it be chilling if it isn’t believable? Even in the eighteenth century people thought fiction had to be—what?—plausible, right, like you said in class.”

  His reference to the eighteenth century catches me off guard, and I find myself laughing. “You’re thinking of Henry Fielding’s argument that fiction should adhere to a standard of probability, rather than possibility. He was mostly objecting to the supernatural, and divine intervention. But even if we stick with your word, how do we determine what’s plausible, anyway? What’s plausible to me might not be plausible to you. What you’re willing to believe depends on how you see the world, to a certain extent, doesn’t it?”

  He hoists his coat up around his shoulders, suddenly restless. “Whatever. I feel like I’m in class. So are you gonna tell me the real story, or are you gonna pretend there isn’t one? Because I thought we had an arrangement, and if we don’t, then I’ve got better stuff to do.”

  “Fine.” I reach out and gingerly pick up his tortured straw with the tips of two fingers and place it on the table behind us. “Distracting,” I explain. I take a deep breath.

  “We weren’t the only girls,” I begin. “There were others. Lots of others.”

  I let my hair fall forward and look down at the scarred table. I haven’t really planned the story; I’m testing my powers of invention. I spin it as I go. After a few minutes, I stop and say pointedly: “Do you want to take notes or something? If this is research, as you called it?” He’s gazing out over my right shoulder. He looks attentive, but I can’t be sure; his face is less communicative than usual.

  “No,” he says. There’s a little contempt in his voice. “I remember everything.”

  Who says that? It is what I have always said; it’s my gift and also a source of torment, that I forget nothing. I don’t like the suggestion that Sean and I have something in common.

  “Fine.” I choose not to believe him; he’s boasting, as usual. His academic performance this semester has not supported his claim to a prodigious memory.

  What was his mother like? I wonder. Zed left her (or she left him, I suppose) not long after the child was born. Sean wouldn’t have seen much of him, most likely. Still, the mother interests me. What kind of woman would Zed have chosen? Did he love her?

  I have a story to tell, I remind myself. I sip my Coke and concentrate.

  “He brought them to us. He kept them in the cellar, a dark, dank, low-ceilinged place. We went down and read to them sometimes. A lot of them were younger—seven, eight. At night they came out to play with us. They were chained, of course, so they couldn’t escape, but they had plenty of room to run around. They could play hide-and-seek, dance around the fire … They weren’t always the same girls, though; sometimes there would be a new one, and one of the others would be gone. We thought they had gone home, or so we convinced ourselves. But later I realized that they couldn’t have been allowed to go home; it wouldn’t have been safe. We heard him go down there, sometimes, when he thought we were sleeping. But we knew better than to ask…” My voice trails off as if I am lost in my memory. I put a faraway look in my eyes, as if I am back in the past, hardly aware of the room around me.

  Sean looks rapt.

  I tell him about the traps Zed taught us to set. The deer we killed. The mournful cries that came sometimes from the woods, sometimes from the cellar. The time I awoke, strangely groggy, as if I had been drugged, and saw Carly May sleeping peacefully in the bed beside mine, her bloodstained hands curled against her chest. I am amazed by how easily the story flows. Maybe this is what the novel should have been like; maybe Deep in the Woods was, after all, too close to the truth. I list the herbs he taught us to look for in the woods, and their various properties. I describe cooking experiments and their effects on our guests in the cellar. I tell him about the garlands of flowers we wore in our hair when we danced naked in the moonlight and worry that I have gone too far, but Sean’s face shows no sign that this is the case. I tell him of the promises we made: eternal secrecy, unwavering loyalty. I say we kept them.

  Sean watches me closely, warily, his hands buried in his pockets. He is not by nature a trusting person, but I can see that he is inclined to believe me. And why not? It’s improbable, my story, but hardly impossible. I say the children are runaways that he picks up on the streets of New York, which is why no one misses them, why they were never part of the official story.

  After half an hour or so I cut myself off abruptly. “Is there more?” Sean demands.

  “Of course there’s more. We were there for six weeks, you know. Storytelling is about selection: what to tell, what not to tell. If I enumerate every single detail, it’s not a story, it’s a list.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t need you to tell me a story; I’m not a little kid. You’re not tucking me in. I’m interviewing you. I want information. I don’t have enough.” And it’s true, I think, jabbing at the ice at the bottom of my Coke with my straw; he looks hungry, as if I have unleashed some sort of unholy appetite. I’m amused by his smug assumption that he is the one in control here.

  “Well, that’s all for today, anyway,” I say, pretending to compromise. “We can meet again if you want.”

  He does want. We make a date. As we are walking out—not together, exactly, but simultaneously—I see a group of women descending on the bowling alley from the parking lot, and I am dismayed to recognize Delia among them. She is wearing a bowling jacket. She looks surprised to see me, and I think she’s about to speak when her glance flickers over to Sean. I see her decide to hold back whatever she had been about to say. She breezes past without acknowledging me.

  What is she thinking? I am certain that she has misconstrued the situation—how could she not?—but I can’t imagine what interpretation she has settled upon.

  I put her out of my mind as I drive home; the glimmer of interest I once felt in her seems to have faded, and I am no longer tempted to ask her advice about my disturbed student. I settle down at my computer with Gary, whose peculiar desires are clearer to me every day. My fingers dance happily across the keyboard. A prolific little jig. This is how it’s been going, lately. Gary is on the move at last, and he’s tracking down the actress first.

  Chloe

  When I got a real modeling contract, after a flurry of brief gigs in Omaha (which is not exactly the fashion capital of the universe, as I knew even then), I went out to the farm for the first time in months. They hadn’t invited me, and I hadn’t gone. I bypassed the house and set out on the four-wheeler to find Daddy in the fields. He was rounding up cattle with Henry, the hired man, when I found him. It was spring, chilly and wet, but I remember thinking how happy Daddy looked until he saw me. He waved, though, and I watched for a while until he could get away.

  From his expression as he came toward me through the muck, I could tell he assumed my unexpected appearance must mean trouble. Why else would I show up? That made me sad, as sad as anything that had happened yet. Fucking Gail had poisoned hi
m—taken away the one parent I had left, the one person who actually loved me.

  I told him about Chicago, the agency that had signed me, the work I had lined up. He listened for a minute, his gaze focused on the low hills in the distance, and then held up his hand, palm facing me, like he was a traffic cop and I was an oncoming truck. And then he said the worst thing of all: “Talk to your ma about that stuff. That’s her area of expertise, not mine.”

  “My ma?” I repeated. “My ma? Jesus Christ. Gail is not my mother. I’m telling you because I want you to know, because I actually care what you think—”

  “There’s no need to use that kind of language with me, young lady. And she’s the only mother you’ve got. I don’t see why you want to go to Chicago. Seems like you ought to graduate from high school first. Why else did you win all that scholarship money if you weren’t going to go to college? But then, what do I know? I don’t know why you want to hurt your little brothers, either, or why you want to run with those kids your grandma’s been telling me about. Seems I don’t know much about you anymore. But modeling? You want to talk to somebody about that, you talk to her, your ma. Now, I’ve got work to do. You go on back to the house.” I started to correct his terminology again, but he stopped me. “She’s my wife, Carly May, and she’s your brothers’ mother. As far as I’m concerned, that makes her your ma.” Even if he hadn’t already been moving away, kicking a small rock with the toe of one scuffed workboot, it would have been clear from his tone that this was final.

  I stood for a minute, the chilly spring wind whipping my hair in front of my face. A hot pressure deep inside my eyes made me afraid I was about to cry. I turned away. By then I felt a little numb. Daddy didn’t even watch me leave.

  I drove the four-wheeler back as fast as it would go, jolting over the rough ground, flying over ruts, thinking, This is the last time I will ever be a farm girl from Nebraska. I abandoned the ATV behind a shed, snuck around the barn closest to the house, and ran straight to the beat-up old Mustang I had borrowed from Scott, hoping like hell no one would see me. But Gail was watching for me at the kitchen door, and she got to me before I made it into the car.

  “What are you doing out here without letting us know, Carly May?” She was wearing a lavender pantsuit and had recently had her hair dyed a color she liked to call auburn. She had on full makeup, and she looked completely insane. While she was demanding what I was doing there, like it wasn’t the house I had grown up in, she looked up at the windows of my little brothers’ rooms, projecting fake fear. You’d have thought I was violating a restraining order.

  “I just wanted to talk to Daddy,” I said, politely enough. “I’m going now. See? Nothing to worry about.” I held up my empty hands. No tiaras.

  “There’s no need to trouble your dad when he’s working. You got a problem, missy, you come to me.” No one else was around, so she wasn’t even bothering to pretend to be nice. I got to see the true, unadulterated Gail. Lucky me. I watched the heels of her cheap pumps sinking into the mud in the yard, which cheered me up a little.

  “Like that’s going to happen,” I said, flicking my gaze up and down her gaudy form in a way I knew made her feel old and ugly and judged. “You are my problem, Gail.” I brushed past her, yanked the car door open, slammed it behind me. I rolled the window down as I turned the key. “Or you were my problem.” With that I stepped on the gas hard in reverse and quickly spun around, doing my best to peel out. It was a good car for that, though it wasn’t good for much else. Scott spent half his life fixing it. But I saw in the rearview mirror that the back tires had kicked up plenty of smelly spring mud, splattering Gail’s hideous pants. I couldn’t have planned it better.

  When I moved to Chicago I sent Gail a portfolio shot I had defaced (mustache, black teeth—very mature; I’m not even sure what point I wanted to make). I left an address with Grandma Mabel, but I knew it would only be temporary. For Daddy I left nothing. I didn’t know what to say, and I was hurt. He had given up on me, it seemed, which didn’t feel fair.

  Within a few weeks in Chicago, I moved again, into an apartment with a bunch of other girls. I didn’t let my family know, but at that point they could still have tracked me down pretty easily if they had really wanted to. Which apparently they didn’t. A few months after that, I left for New York, and I legally changed my name to Chloe Savage, which I’d already begun using professionally. I was done with Carly May. After a year in New York, I moved out to LA. I haven’t seen anyone from Nebraska or heard from them, not one of them, since I left.

  Until now. Looking out my back window at the tiny garden my neighbor planted out back, I hold the envelope like it might explode. In big, loopy, childish handwriting, the letter is addressed to Carly May “Chloe” Savage, and I wonder how Gail arrived at that particular hybrid. She wanted the letter to get to me, but she also wanted to make a point. “Fuck,” I say loudly to the empty apartment. “What the fuck.” It’s not a thick envelope; I guess there’s a single sheet of paper inside, folded into thirds.

  Whatever Gail has to say, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear it. But I can’t just throw away the envelope, either. I put it on my dresser, neatly in the center.

  Lois

  About two weeks after the rendezvous in the bowling alley, I’m in the coffee shop grading a stack of papers when Delia swoops down on me out of nowhere. And I do mean swoops, as if I have been chosen for dinner by a powerful bird of prey. There’s trippy, slightly eerie ambient music playing in the background. An appropriate soundtrack.

  She wastes no time. “I’ve seen you three times now with that student,” she says. “The one you originally told me was harassing you. What are you up to?”

  I put my pen down and take a sip of my coffee. There’s no pretense of friendship here. This is something else entirely. Which gives me permission to respond accordingly.

  “I’m not sure that’s any of your business.” I keep my voice as level and neutral as I can make it. She’s wearing a long Indian skirt of cheap printed cotton and lots of clunky jewelry; her face looks haggard. How could I ever have thought we would be friends?

  She sits opposite me, not waiting for an invitation, and fixes her big dark bird-eyes on me. “There’s something about you I don’t quite get. Something that doesn’t fit.” Is she talking to herself? I wonder. I lower my pen to the page in front of me and scribble a note.

  “You’ve been meeting with him alone,” she continues, undeterred by my rudeness. “You have to admit that it looks very strange. If he’s threatening you, you know, you have to tell someone. I mean, if you think you’re in any kind of danger, it would be a huge mistake to try to deal with him on your own. But honestly, what I find myself wondering is—who’s stalking who?—or should I say whom,” she adds, lightening her tone ever so slightly for the first time since she plunked herself down. “Who’s stalking whom.”

  “That’s a rather offensive thing to imply.” I wipe up a tiny coffee spill with my napkin.

  “I’m not implying anything. I’m asking you a direct question, which you aren’t answering. But I’ve seen a lot of crazy things in my line of work. And there’s something off about this. Something that worries me. And I do know that kid, actually. I didn’t want to say anything, but now I think maybe I should. A girl accused him of stalking her a few months back. Nothing ever happened—there was no proof, and eventually she said he just stopped. But he seriously creeped her out, with good reason. And I believed her, I might as well tell you. Also with good reason.”

  I make another mark on the essay I’m grading. It’s a hint she can’t possibly misinterpret, and I feel a twinge of guilt; I have nothing against Delia, after all, and I’m sure she means well. But I resent the earnestness of her tone. I am not enjoying this conversation, to the extent that it is a conversation.

  Delia is undaunted. “You know, I’ve worked with a lot of women who’ve experienced some sort of trauma. Often as children. If I had to guess … no, never mind. You’ll
just get pissed off. But remember: if you want to talk—or if you decide you need help—you know where I am. And I’d stay away from that kid if I were you. Seriously. He’s bad news.”

  She gives me another of her unnervingly penetrating looks, as if she can read something in my face that I’m not even aware of. Then she stalks out, the door jangling shut behind her. I don’t like the idea that she came into the coffee shop purely to deliver this warning. And how did she see me three times with Sean? I only noticed her the first time we met, at the bowling alley.

  As for the stalking bit? Sean has a skulking gait that makes him look like a stalker, and his customary attire doesn’t help. But it’s a small town, and girls can be paranoid; someone could easily have misconstrued multiple Sean sightings, however coincidental, as stalking. Nothing was proven, after all, as even Delia had to admit.

  Am I under surveillance?

  * * *

  I rent For Worse the day it comes out on DVD and invite Brad over to watch it. We get Chinese takeout.

  Brad lets himself in, and I hear him stomping up the stairs. He arrives smelling noticeably of beer. “Went out with some guys from History,” he says, taking his coat off and tossing it on an antique chair. I pick it up and hang it in the closet.

  “Have a seat,” I say soothingly. He seems riled up—or what counts as riled up in Brad terms. Visibly ruffled, shall we say. “You smell a bit like a frat boy.” I arrange the food on the table and bring him a small glass of wine. “Drink this. But not fast. You’ll want your wits about you. Tonight we have the final installment in the never-before-seen, soon-to-sweep-the-country, exhaustive Chloe Savage film series!”