Beautiful Girls Read online

  “Really?” Allie asks.

  “Who knows.” He shrugs.

  Allie feels like crying. A panic starts thumping through her. What is going on here, she thinks. Today a tooth, tomorrow an ear or a finger.

  “Where is it?” she yells.

  Her father is looking at her now, but he doesn’t seem to see her. Behind her the drapes billow in the breeze—it is a warm summer evening, an ordinary evening. There’s the smell of a barbecue not far away.

  “Your mother will come back to us, you know. It’s like she’s on a vacation, honey.” He rubs his eyes. “Come sit with me, Allie.”

  Allie sways from leg to leg. She does not want to sit; she will trace his tracks and find that tooth. “Tell me everywhere you went last night.”

  On the back porch the world seems much bigger and harder to weed through than it had looked from the living room. Allie will not search for the tooth. How do you find something fingernail-sized out there—where do you start?

  Besides, she’s lazy during the day. She rests on the sofa, falling in and out of dreamless sleep. Her bones seem to have curved and shifted. She feels like a smaller girl.

  She now slumps on the steps, eating potato chips and quietly reciting curses. She waits for the night, when her vision will sharpen, when her energy is up and her spirit yawns and stretches, standing up straight and taking her creaky bones with it.

  At midnight it is calm and starry. There is no wind as Allie sits on the front steps blowing bubbles through the wand. The yard is filled with translucent blue bubbles and the low hum of crickets. The phone rings.

  “I know it’s you,” Allie says, picking it up.

  “You’re a mind reader. How are you, sweets?”

  “Good.”

  “How come I always do all the talking? Lemme ask the eight ball something. Should the kid talk for a change? ‘Signs point to yes.’ Okay. Act alive; say something.”

  Allie crunches the phone cord in her hand, thinking fast. “If you had to have a pet snake, a pet rat, or a pet tarantula, which would you have?”

  “None! My god! Why would I want one of those things?” The woman is silent for a second. Then she says, “Your problem, kid, is that you take too much crap. You gotta learn to say ‘fuck off’ once in a while. Don’t let anyone push you around. Say it. Say ‘fuck off.’ For practice.”

  “Fuck off,” Allie says.

  “Like you’re mad, say it like you’re mad.”

  Allie says it again, louder.

  “Try ‘go piss up a rope.’ Say it with an attitude.”

  “I like the middle of the night. Do you?”

  “What are you interrupting me for? You show a lack of concentration, kid. Your problem—”

  Allie hangs up the phone and thinks this is the last straw. She doesn’t know what that means, but when she looks at her reflection in the oven window she looks like a person whose feelings have been hurt.

  Outside a few fireflies glimmer near the azalea bush. The moon is a toenail clipping, and a breeze blows back her hair.

  Allie wanders through the patch of woods behind her house and into the next development. The houses there are dark and quiet. She roams through the backyards like a spirit in a nightgown. On the back stoop of one house a long-necked watering can catches her eye and she waters her feet, leaving wet footprints on the concrete. The back door of the house is open, and Allie peers through the screen down the hallway to where a light shines. She steps inside, imagining a sleeping family there, a mother and father and a few children tucked in their beds. She walks down the hall as though she is invisible.

  In the darkened living room a man sits on a couch with a long-haired woman curled up next to him. Soft voices come from a small TV, which gives the room a bluish glow. Both the man and the woman look up at her standing in the doorway.

  “Who are you?” the man asks.

  “Is that a kid, Marshall?” The woman sneezes three times in a row. “God, I feel like shit,” she whispers in a raspy voice. “Am I hallucinating or is that a kid?”

  “It’s a kid.”

  The man gently pushes the woman off his lap. Standing, he runs his fingers through his hair as he looks from the woman on the couch to Allie. “This is kind of fucked up,” he says.

  The woman sneezes again and lets her head fall to the couch. “I must have a fever. Am I a hypochondriac, Marshall?”

  “You’re allowed,” he says. “Where are your parents?” he asks Allie.

  Allie leans against the wall. Something smells good in the kitchen, and she looks toward the smell.

  “Come here,” the man says. He’s very tall and slouchy in his body. He’s wearing faded jeans and flip-flops.

  Allie follows him into the kitchen, where soup boils on the stove. The can says “Chicken & Stars.” He stirs it.

  “I’m going to walk you home after she eats.”

  “Oh, I know the way.”

  “It wasn’t a question, it’s a statement.”

  Allie nervously pulls her hair. “Well, goodbye,” she says, losing her nerve. As she turns, he grabs her by the back of the nightgown.

  “It’s two o’clock in the morning. Just hold your horses.” He directs her to the stove, where he pours the soup into a bowl. It is steaming hot. He leans over and blows on it. This man smells like grass. “Can you pour that ginger ale into a glass?” he asks.

  Allie does. “You want some?” he says. She does not. But as if in a dream she remembers the book with the silhouette people, Correct Behavior for All Occasions. In the chapter on food it says to always accept a small offering of food or drink, it’s the polite thing to do. Allie takes a glass off the drainboard and pours herself some.

  The man takes a box of Saltines down from the cupboard. “Carry the drinks,” he says. Together they join the sick woman on the couch.

  “Oh, Marshall,” the woman says, in a high, pained voice. “I’m all clogged up.”

  The man sets up the food on a TV tray and puts his arm around the woman. Her hair is matted, and her face is shiny with sweat. In her feverish daze, she takes delicate sips of the soup.

  Allie sips her ginger ale with similar grace.

  “Give me something to wrap around my neck. My throat’s so sore,” she says to Marshall. He puts a sweatshirt over her and wraps the sleeves around her neck.

  “That’s much better, Marshall. Much better.” She eats steadily, daintily. Looking up at Marshall she says, “You’re all right, you know that.” Marshall kisses her lightly on the forehead.

  “What’s the kid doing here?” the woman says.

  Marshall studies Allie with kind, searching eyes. “What’s the deal with you?” he asks.

  Allie doesn’t know what to say, or what she might say if she could say something. Nothing feels certain to her.

  “Do you love each other very much?” Allie asks in a sleepy voice. She asks because she knows what the answer is and wants it confirmed, to know that she’s right.

  Marshall nods.

  Suddenly Allie needs to get home, to check and see that everything is all right there. She’s out the back door and into the woods before she realizes no one is following her. She is alone, it is the middle of the night, and her house is not far away.

  Her house is dark, even the attic. In the silence she can tell her father is inside, maybe in the den. Allie stands in the hallway, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light. The house is very still, there is no movement, no wind, no creaking floors, no life it seems except for her pounding heart, which is too loud to be hers alone and must really be three pounding hearts, the one in the den and the one in the attic and hers here in the hallway.

  WASH, RINSE, SPIN

  HER FATHER IS SPELLING WITH HIS FINGER. M-O-N and then the rest is gibberish. “Slow down,” Libby tells him. He slaps the bed sheets and mimics choking her. Without language he’s been reduced to bad acting: smirks, eye rolling, mugging. There’s no subtlety; even his eyes are luminous and bald. Some days
, like today, he’s just too tired to move a pen across paper. He blinks up at her and tries again, slicing his angry finger through the air. “Okay, M-O-N.” Her mind is as dull and heavy as a butter knife. “Monkey, monsoon, money.”

  For a second he looks truly helpless and closes his eyes on her, on everything. From the pillow he offers up a bored, calm face; is this the face he’ll wear when he’s dead? “Do it again. I’m sorry, Dad.” Libby tries a laugh. “Pretty please with sugar on top.” She’s become a moron.

  He continues to ignore her, and in their silence the room is kept alive with sound—the bleep of the heart monitor and the earnest, steady wheeze of the ventilator, poking out of his neck and pushing air into his lungs. Her dad then snaps open his eyes and slowly, as if she is brain-damaged, spells M-O-N-T-H.

  “Month, for godsakes,” Libby says. He rolls his eyes to the ceiling in exaggerated, delicious contempt. Bad moods now swoop down on him in an instant and leave him puzzled and disheveled, hair poking out, gown slipping off a thin shoulder. But as quick as they come, they leave.

  He looks at the slice of sky through the narrow window and patiently starts to mouth something, gesturing with his good hand, the one that isn’t large and soft as an inflatable paddle.

  “October,” Libby says. “It’s the middle of October.” He raises his eyebrows, surprised. They both stare at the little slice of blue sky—they could be looking into a chlorinated pool. Where has the time gone? Libby wonders. Where has her life gone?

  Libby’s dad has been in the hospital for weeks. Before then, he had a terrible cough that sounded as if he’d hack up a lung, and even though he spent hours in his garden the sun wouldn’t tan him. She remembers visiting one Saturday and watching him move unsteadily across the yard, his fingers reaching for the side of the house as the late-day sun cast his long and crooked shadow. After Labor Day he reluctantly went to the doctor and wound up here in the CCU. Each afternoon Libby takes the train from Manhattan, where she lives, to this small tree-lined town in New Jersey, the same town where she grew up, although it’s no longer familiar.

  While her dad sleeps, Libby rests her head against the chair back and instantly she dreams—dreams that are filled with unpleasant smells and involve public transportation. The infectious disease doctor, who runs, doesn’t walk, now flies into the room, waking her. He makes some preliminary pokes and prods before pressing his ear to her dad’s chest, as if using the stethoscope would take too long. Before a question forms in her mind, and she has many questions, he’s gone, out the door.

  Milling in the hall is the useless-though-energetic-and-good-looking oncologist, who won’t be treating the tumor clinging to her dad’s lung. This tumor, which isn’t the worst kind, she’s been informed, probably has some relatives that have taken up residence in his spine or liver. No one knows for sure since there’s nothing to be done. His heart, sorry to say, simply isn’t tough enough. Standing with the oncologist is her dad’s primary physician, a squat, morose man who delivers all news in the same monotone. Dumpy Downer—Libby’s name for him—is looking to wean her father from the ventilator, maybe send him home for a short while, bring in hospice.

  Libby eyes a small bag on the nightstand marked “Libby” and realizes it’s from one of her dad’s girlfriends. Inside is a jelly doughnut, and as she takes a big bite jelly oozes out the side and a glob lands on her suit. She wipes it off, but a dark, glossy stain remains. Something smells funky and she sniffs the air, wondering if it could be her; she can’t remember when she last cleaned her five suits.

  Libby stands on the platform waiting for the 8:18 to take her back to the city. Tonight her dad asked her to tell his girlfriends, who are actually all ex-girlfriends, not to visit anymore. They talk too much, was how he put it. She told him no. The girlfriends arrive in the mornings, often carpooling together, and stay for hours. They are excellent lip readers, excellent mind readers and excellent at charades. They’ve acquired the good grace that comes with age. They are a flurry of laughter and perfume. There must be people around him, she reasons to herself. She can’t imagine he’ll up and die in the face of all this activity. She boards the train and it moves swiftly through suburbia, cutting past trees and highways and people walking their dogs under a pale shine of moon. Libby’s head lolls against the dirty window as she fights sleep.

  Back in her apartment, she sniffs every suit she owns and dumps them into a pile by the door. Four are food-stained and a fifth has a jagged tear from a barb that pierced through the plastic couch in the CCU waiting room and stabbed her in the thigh. “Dry cleaners,” she says aloud. She walks around her apartment in a bra and underwear, watering the brown plants, eating a ham sandwich, and holding counsel with herself. “I want the morphine given every two hours, regardless of whether he asks for it. He’s not going to ask until it’s too late.” She nearly trips over a body bag of laundry in the middle of the floor. “Laundry,” she shouts. She’s almost out of clean clothes, but there’s no time to wash them. How can she be so weary and buzzed at the same time? “How am I coping?” she asks, cupping her face. She tosses herself onto the bed, finishes eating her sandwich and then curls up under the covers, blowing crumbs toward the wall.

  In the morning, she’s forced to put on the least sour and wrinkled of the suits, and unfortunately it’s the one with the tear in the butt. She stumbles down the stairs with the bag of dirty laundry, the suits piled on top, and lurches up Eighth Avenue to the laundromat. The suit on the top of the heap is the color of lime juice. Libby heads for the nearest trash can and dumps it, and she also dumps the purple one with the gold buttons because it too, she realizes for the first time, is butt ugly. Without thinking, she stuffs the remaining suits in with her dirty clothes. At the laundromat Hugh the laundry attendant tosses the bag into a giant bin and tells her it will be ready “pronto tonto.”

  Libby works at the end of a long wing in the semi-vacant legal department of a large corporation, where the air smells of whiskey and cigars and she has very little to do. Gautreaux, Bilox and Sodder, senior attorneys, arrive late each morning, take three-hour alcoholic lunches and return midafternoon, crocked. Each man weaves toward his office, shuts his door and falls asleep on his respective couch. Gautreaux, the most long-winded of the three, sometimes tells her boring stories after these lunches, always ending with a parable or lesson. “You see, girlie,” he’ll say, “you see where this is going?” Often he forgets Libby, too, is a lawyer and asks her to water his plants, as he lies helpless and drunken and gurgling on his couch. Once he asked her to call his tailor in Hong Kong and order him another pair of “those natty herringbone trousers.”

  There are two actual workers, who tirelessly seem to do the work of the whole department: Mr. Muskon and his trusted assistant Miss Perry. Apparently, there once was a departmental secretary, known as Imelda because she was always sneaking off to buy shoes, who disappeared and can’t be accounted for.

  Acquisition forms arrive midmorning each day in a wire cart pushed by Marianne Switzer. First Bilox, the one with the bowtie, initials the stack, then Libby, Gautreaux, and Sodder. Afterwards, Libby rings Marianne Switzer, who arrives twelve minutes later with her wire cart to whisk the forms to the third floor for further processing. In a nutshell, this is Libby’s job. When she asked Gautreaux about more work, he’d said, “All in good time, Pearl.” Who was Pearl? She’d started to look for something else, but then her dad got sick, and now she’s stuck in her no-job job.

  Growing up, Libby’s dad had been a good father from a distance. His attention never landed directly on her, but good energy radiated off him in all directions and she felt it as a kind of love.

  When Libby was small, her mother’s cousin’s kid Wilhelmina from New York City spent several summers with them. Wilhelmina was a sour girl, tough as a spike, whose favorite game was Choir Girl, a sadistic version of church in which Wilhelmina would play the plastic organ, and Libby, draped in a sheet and Amish bonnet, would solemnly descend the stairca
se and make her way behind her father’s recliner, which was the pew. When Libby got the speed of her descent right, which wasn’t often, they would take communion with the watery scotch left in the bottom of her father’s glass. Or if Wilhelmina was feeling chipper, the host might be a gumball, although chewing wasn’t allowed. Most times they didn’t get to communion because Libby didn’t descend the staircase slowly enough, and Wilhelmina would pinch Libby hard, hissing, “You’re not doing it right.”

  Once during these church services, Libby’s dad reclined in his chair with a copy of the Tribune held out in front of him as his bonneted and glum daughter worked her way to and from the pew. Perhaps because Wilhelmina was no relation of his, he caught Libby’s eye, pointed to the organ-playing girl, and twirled his finger next to his ear. At this, Libby dove onto his lap while he continued, humming a happy tune, to read the paper. Wilhelmina, sensing a conspiracy, lifted her bony fingers off the keys and glared at them.

  Libby’s parents divorced when she was twelve, and she divided her time between them, traveling from one end of town to the other with her ratty blue suitcase. Her mother sighed a lot during Libby’s teenage years while her dad threw himself into goodwill and charity. Each year he planted an enormous garden and went door-to-door distributing his eggplants and zucchinis, and it was in this way that he met his girlfriends.

  All the equipment in the hospital room gives off a smothering heat that leaves Libby and her dad sticky and soft-brained. A portable fan, precariously balanced atop a garbage can, makes a low, jumbly noise while Libby feeds him ice chips. She’s not doling them out fast enough and he snatches the cup, shoveling in three or four chips with his good hand before she grabs it back. “It’s gonna go right into your lung and you’ll turn blue,” she tells him.

  “Kiss my ass,” he mouths.