Lovely You

by Jamie Bennett

  “Scarlett, I’m sorry.”

  I stopped dead. “What?”

  “I’m sorry I came to your house, barged in yelling like that. I’m sorry I made it sound like there was something untoward going on between you and your boyfriend.” Brooks sighed. “I’m just sorry.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. He doesn’t even like me. Nothing ever happened, not like what you were thinking.” I twisted my fingers together.

  “In any case, it isn’t my concern what you do with men.” He looked a little nauseated.

  It reminded me. “Nate said you wouldn’t have come over like that unless you still loved me.”

  Brooks now looked shocked. “Of course I love you!”

  Thank God. Oh, thank God. I took a deep breath to try to steady myself as the flood of relief swamped me for a moment. “I’m sorry, too. About a lot of things.” I stared hard at my fingers, now in a big knot.

  “I talked to Bradley.”

  “I heard from Mom. You believed me about him?”

  “I had seen him looking at you, the…” He trailed off after glancing down the hall where our niece and nephew had trotted off. “He as much as admitted it to me. He seemed to think it was a good excuse that you were ‘hot,’ and asked me not to tell Zara. I guess he forgot that we were discussing my sisters.” Brooks looked furious. “He said that you led him on.”

  “I absolutely, one hundred percent did not,” I said evenly. “I find him repulsive and I would rather chew on broken glass than have anything to do with him.” I remembered the glass I had put in Bradley’s tire, and felt a small measure of satisfaction.

  “I believe you. Zara is insisting that you were just confused. She said it happened because Bradley is French. His great, great-grandfather, I think.”

  And suddenly, I had to laugh. “That’s what she said to me, too. As if we can punt this to another country.”

  Brooks laughed too, and it looked like it surprised him. “She and Mom never want to admit the truth about people.”

  “Not about the people they love.” I shrugged. “Another sibling down for me.”

  He wasn’t laughing anymore. “Scar, I just want to know that you’re all right.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m going to stay away from you and Lanie so we don’t fight, ok? I can be around and not cause problems for everyone.”

  Brooks took a step toward me. “Are you sure that’s how it has to be?”

  “Yes.” Because I couldn’t seem to control myself with people I loved. The familiar shame coursed through me, coming up into my throat and constricting it like a vice. All I did was treat them terribly: my mom who was afraid to invite me to her birthday party, my sister whose marriage I had almost ruined, my brother having to protect the woman he loved more than anyone from his vicious, empty sister.

  And Nate. I had tried to kiss him, again, forcing myself on him when he clearly didn’t want me. Suddenly I didn’t feel triumphant that I had made Mats’ fiancée upset, that I had made Mats come back to me. I just felt embarrassed.

  “Scarlett?” Brooks was waiting. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  He followed me down the steps into the living room. The lunch tables were set up outside on the stone patio surrounding the pool, and Juliette March called to me as I walked by one. She patted the seat next to her, and then she called to her daughter. Lanie walked up too, very slowly. I wondered if Juliette even noticed how reluctant her daughter was to sit with her and be near her, or maybe it was just because I was at the table. Lanie sat down across from us, looking like there was really no place she’d rather be less. But this wasn’t my fault, no one could pin it on me. I had been there first, I could point out, in case anyone got mad at me later.

  Juliette started right in after the salads were served. “Scarlett, I heard that you scored a major coup with an influencer.”

  I laughed shortly, again. It just sounded so stupid. “Yes, I guess it was a coup, if a coup means I got a woman to post pictures and captions that people looked at for a few seconds then forgot. It wasn’t a very big deal.”

  “Your boss seems to think that it was,” Juliette told me. “We have the same trainer and she tells him everything,” she explained. “Pascale is thrilled with how you’ve been doing. She thinks you’ll really go far. Because you picked a career that can take you places.” She looked sadly at her daughter, and I knew that Juliette had never been pleased with Lanie’s choice of profession, teaching kindergarten. We ate our salads, without dressing for everyone but Lanie. I didn’t have a lot to say about Klere and her posts, or about my job, which I seemed to like less and less on a daily basis.

  Juliette put her fork down, signaling that she was finished after two pieces of lettuce and a tomato. “I love how you’ve adopted this pendant as your signature piece,” she said, indicating the onyx necklace of my mom’s that I now wore all the time. My hand fisted it involuntarily as I thought of dark eyes with lines of grey in them. “You always have such a high taste level, Scarlett. You can make a white t-shirt look interesting.” Again, she glanced over at her daughter, who was wearing a white t-shirt that did not look interesting. In fact, it looked like it might have been one of my brother’s undershirts. I peered around for him now, but he was nowhere to be seen. Lanie looked like she was grinding her teeth together and the other people at the table squirmed a little.

  “I don’t think wearing pretty clothes is such a great skill,” I announced. “I don’t think getting a woman to take a topless picture of herself wearing a skirt from our summer line is really a coup, either. It’s all useless and pointless.”

  Juliette seemed shocked. “That’s an unusual thing to say about your job, Scarlett! And I hardly think that fashion is pointless.”

  Lanie shook her head. “Always being concerned about how things look, that’s what’s pointless,” she muttered.

  “What?” Juliette asked, tilting her head. “Honey, as much as you like to think it’s not true, people do judge by first impressions. How things look does matter,” she argued.

  “Juliette, why don’t you give your daughter a little break?” The words shot out of my mouth and everyone at the table turned to look at me. “After all these years of you carping at her, she still doesn’t dress well or have nice hair,” I continued.

  Lanie’s eyes blazed up. “Thank you, Scarlett!”

  I threw up my hands. “I’m trying to say that you don’t give a flying…you don’t care, because other things are more important. My brother, for example, who thinks you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. All the kids you teach to be good little people, my mom who can’t for a moment shut up about how wonderful you are. I’d say that’s more important than that weird shirt you’re wearing.”

  “Oh.” Lanie paused. “Then thank you, sincerely.”

  “I don’t know if you can see how much your mom loves you,” I told her. “She is actually trying to help you, and she always has been. She can’t understand that just because you choose something different from what she would have, it doesn’t mean it’s bad. But Juliette, you have to give it a rest. Lanie’s going to move to Texas and never speak to you again, and no one would blame her.”

  The table was dead quiet. Juliette had turned bright red with anger and Lanie was teary. I had done it again, making a scene at my mom’s house. I pressed my lips together, afraid that I would start to say more and make things worse. Entrees were served and still no one said anything, and not even the clink of forks interrupted the terrible silence at our table.

  Juliette stepped into the void. “I have been trying, Lanie. I’ve been watching what I say. But…”

  The heads of the other guests swiveled the other way to wait for Lanie’s response.

  “I know, Mom,” she said softly. “I appreciate that you try. I wish that you would appreciate that I’m not Scarlett. It’s very hard for me when you compare us. It would have been better if she was your daughter.”

  I snorted with laughter, loudly. I c
ouldn’t help it—as if I would be better for anyone. The heads all turned to me. “Sorry,” I gasped, but I laughed harder. Oh, God, this was so inappropriate—I knew it, but I couldn’t stop laughing. To the point that Lanie started to look concerned.

  “Scarlet…” Her eyes went past me, over my shoulder and the other tables to the pool. “Oh, no.”

  I turned too, and what I saw made my laughter stop. “Oh, no,” I echoed. Because my brother had Bradley by the lapels of his tangerine-colored blazer and was holding him over the edge of the water.

  “You son of a bitch,” I heard Brooks say, and everyone else at the party heard it too, because it was loud, and almost all the background talking and noise had died down while we watched him dangle my brother-in-law. “You’re cheating on Zara with her?”

  “What?” my sister screeched. She stood, and her chair tipped, the metal clanging loudly on the stone patio. “With who?” Then she turned and looked right at me, her finger slowly rising to point. Even from the distance, I could see her eyes fill with tears.

  I shook my head. “No!” I tried to tell her, but it came out like a hoarse croak.

  It was at this moment that my mom came out of the house, holding her grandkids by the hand and all three of them smiling. “Who is ready for cake?” she called to the crowd, then stopped dead when she caught sight of the scene at the pool. “Brooks? What are you doing?” she yelled, and at the same time, my niece said, “Daddy?”

  Brooks startled and let go of his hold on the fabric, and Bradley windmilled his arms and hit the water with a yell, the splash covering my brother with a wave of droplets. Bradley popped to the surface, sputtering and still yelling, his blazer darkening to safety orange as he flailed around in the water. Zara marched over, took her kids’ hands away from my mom, and left. Lanie jumped up and ran to Brooks and dragged him after Zara, my mom followed them into the house. The rest of the guests and I just stared at Bradley, bobbing around like a lifeguard’s orange rescue can. He made it back to the edge and dragged himself up onto the patio, gasping like a dying fish on the stones, his formerly crisp outfit plastered to his body and his formerly styled hair plastered to his face.

  “Well,” I said to my table. “That certainly was exciting.” They were all gaping, open-mouthed. Including Juliette, who usually liked to congratulate herself on her sangfroid. I did my best fake smile, like I hadn’t cared that my sister had just publicly accused me of fucking her husband. “Unfortunately, I need to be on my way.” I patted the air around my lipstick with my napkin as if I had actually consumed any food, still smiling at everyone. “So nice to see you all.”

  I walked carefully between the tables, the smile pinned on my face, my chin in the air, and stepped around my soggy brother-in-law. I went back out through the kitchen and got myself home to San Francisco, where I could hide beneath the blanket that now had a lot of dog hair on it and watch replays of curling.

  ∞

  It was just so quiet in my house. I got dressed in the guest bedroom, stepping over the neat rows of shoes and boots, glancing through all the clean clothes which hung on the racks along the walls. It no longer looked like a post-earthquake scene in there but it still didn’t feel any more comfortable to me. I started humming, tunelessly and off-key, to fill the silence of no dog, no Joey. No Nate.

  I couldn’t seem to find an outfit, either. Usually dressing wasn’t a problem for me. I generally started the selection process by thinking about the occasion. Well, ok, then: today was a brunch with my former fiancé, maybe my new boyfriend, surrounded by people who used to be my friends but whom I had dropped out of my life like burning coals. What was the appropriate look for that?

  I couldn’t begin to envision it, so I moved on. My next step would usually be to consider which of my assets I wanted to highlight at that occasion: breasts? Butt? Face? Legs? Hair? And then I would pick a dress, or sweater, skirt, or whatever, that called attention to that particular feature of mine through color, cut, or fabric.

  At this particular moment, I didn’t want to emphasize anything. I wanted to call ahead and find out what color the walls were painted so that I could dress to camouflage against them in order to to hide from Mats and my former friends and acquaintances. All in all, I just didn’t want to go. But I asked myself what else I had going on that Sunday. I had already gone to spin class and for a run, too. And stretched, and done sit-ups. I had also talked to my mom the night before about the scene at her birthday party.

  She had been mostly silent when I asked about Zara. “I can’t believe your brother did that,” she had finally said. “Zara is distraught.”

  “I don’t think that’s Brooks’ fault,” I defended my brother. “It goes right back on Bradley, Mom. What happened with him, um, falling into the pool, that was because he’s an asshole.”

  “That was what Lanie said too,” my mom had told me, and for once, Lanie and I were of one mind. “We told the kids that their father and Uncle Brooks were playing and they seemed fine with it. You know how Zayne always likes to get in the pool, whether he’s fully dressed or not, so it made sense to them.” My mom had paused. “Scarlett, it wasn’t…what Brooks said, about Bradley being unfaithful. Zara seemed to think…”

  “No. Absolutely not. I would never, ever, do that to Zara. And I wouldn’t touch him if he was the last man on Earth. Brooks believes that Bradley was harassing me. Do you?”

  My mom didn’t answer for a moment. “I just can’t imagine that Bradley would act like that, when he always was such a good husband and father,” she finally had sighed. She meant, he was always a good husband and father besides the alcoholism and sexual harassment issues, and now, according to Brooks, the cheating. And she couldn’t even think of an excuse for it this time. We had ended the call after I had lamely told her happy birthday, and after she told me that maybe we could celebrate it another time. Like next year.

  I looked at my phone now, to check the time, and saw that I was already running behind. Breasts, I decided. That would be the feature I would emphasize with my clothes. No, legs. If everyone was looking down at my legs, hopefully they would be distracted from looking at my face. Despite what Nate had said to me before, about all the bad inside not showing there, I thought he was probably wrong. He had admitted he had been wrong about me. He had thought that I was worth something maybe, like his time and effort, and how off had that been?

  To show him that I could improve, I drove slowly and carefully, even though I was late, and I didn’t look at my phone once, even when it was buzzing with new information. See, Nate? I thought as I circled and finally found a perfectly legal parking spot that my car mostly fit into. I can do this. I can be a good driver, I can follow the rules.

  It was only after I parked that I checked what I had been notified about. First, Pascale had called three times, and sent several messages telling me to get in touch, asking if I had I seen it, the news about Klere. I shook my head at the phone; I had no idea what Pascale was talking about. I opened Klere’s pages and there was a picture of her in front of the med room cabinet, the one with all the drugs. The cabinet doors were open and everything inside was in perfect focus in the shot. I gulped. She was pointing to it all with a serious expression, and the caption read, “See all this homies but now no going to reehab with my other boyfreind #sober #bestfreindsgetclean #cupelgoals”.

  I looked at it, a little stunned. I thought that it was possible that Klere meant she was going to rehab with the other guy she had mentioned, the one she had set up in an apartment in Canada, to our west. But the second possibility was that she was going with the boyfriend who had introduced himself to me as her “other:” Jerry, the dirty guy from Los Angeles. Maybe they were going to “reehab” to clean up together, #bestfreinds #cupelgoals. I hoped that was true, and I hoped for the best for her. Pascale’s later messages were all about how Klere hadn’t finished the cycle of posts for us, and how we were going to enforce the contract we had with her, about getting lawyers involved, an
d how bad would it make us look to go after a woman in rehab? I ignored all this and focused on the positive: Klere was making a good change.

  And if Klere could do it, well, maybe I could, too. I wrote to Pascale that I would look into it tomorrow at work, and that I was not going to be available for the rest of the weekend. Then I straightened the short skirt that showed my legs and went go to meet my former fiancé, who would maybe be my future boyfriend, and also see a lot of the people I used to know. Maybe I could return to being the woman I had been before it happened. I was going to try, and this was as good a place as any to start.

  Chapter 14

  “No. No!” The three women advanced on me so quickly as I stood in the doorway that all I could do was freeze in place. “Scarlett? Scarlett Wolfe?”

  I nodded slightly at them. “It’s me.” I swiveled back to our brunch host and tried to look happy to be at her apartment, even though I already felt like I was wilting inside. Never mind going back to the woman I had been—I just wanted to run and hide. I managed to finally force a smile. “Thanks for inviting me, Roberta,” I said to her. She said some nice things before turning to greet another incoming guest, and I made myself turn back to face the music.

  “Oh my God, it is you!” the women squealed in unison.

  “We haven’t seen you in forever. Have you been in hiding?”

  “Maybe it was hard, Mats calling off the wedding,” one cooed with false sympathy.

  “No, that was my—” I started to say, before I was interrupted with more conjecture.

  “I thought you were dead or had disfiguring plastic surgery.”

  I resisted the urge to put my hands over my face, the way Nate had called me out for doing. I put my chin high in the air and purposefully pushed past, looking around for Mats among the other guests. “I was the one who called off the wedding,” I corrected them over my shoulder, and then couldn’t help adding, “and Mats and I are here together today. I haven’t been around because I’ve been busy working and traveling. Nothing disfiguring.”