Beautiful Girls (12 page)

“I’m the kind of person who’s on the quiet side. Why can’t I be quiet?”

“Rightly or wrongly, I’m the kind of person who’s highly opinionated.”

“Well, you’re ugly, Janet.”

Something flashed across Janet’s face, so quickly that Robin wasn’t sure she had seen anything at all. “Just plain ugly,” Robin said as a feeling like silk enveloped her. She took a long sip of beer, letting her eyes wander over to the window. “I’m not saying you’re not a good person underneath it all, but you’re a fault-finder and an extreme know-it-all.”

Janet lowered her eyes and then looked up at Robin, cowed. “I guess I am at times, and I can now see how that could be extremely annoying.”

“And what do you think my potential is exactly?” Robin asked.

“Well, you’re very pretty for starters.” Robin let Janet look deeply into her eyes. “And you have an interesting way of looking at the world. You’re mostly a loyal person and you’re always on time, and these things suggest a dependable person.”

Robin nodded. “That’s true, but that’s not all I am, Janet. You’re always talking so I think you miss some of my other qualities.” She wondered what some of those other qualities might be. “I hope you don’t think I’m being terrible or attacking you—”

Janet vigorously shook her head.

“I’m not. It’s just that I have to be straight with you, Janet, because I swear sometimes you act like
something that crawled out from under a rock.”

Janet rose from the table. She pulled a bowl from the dishwasher and poured the soup in it. She reached to turn off the burner, saw it was off and looked confused. “Something’s wrong with this soup!” she cried. She flung the pot into the sink. “My life is just retarded!” she blurted. “I hate calculus and world history. My bangs won’t grow. No boys like me. I go to stupid matinées with you on Saturdays. When I need beer for a party I have to ask that pimply-community-college-moron up the street. There’s nothing to look forward to ever!”

Robin assured her there were things to look forward to, and she rattled off some possibilities. “And some boys do like you—”

“Not the ones I like!”

“But still…and you’re going to have your jaw fixed one day.”

“Of course I am,” Janet said, coolly. She turned away and started emptying the dishwasher, stacking the clean pots and pans on the counter. “What do you think my potential is, Robin?”

Robin stared at the back of Janet’s head and gathered her thoughts. “You’re smart. You speak extremely well. You’re always able to come through with free movie tickets or wine coolers or Carvel coupons. You’re a real go-getter.”

“Uh-huh…I’m also savvy and enigmatic.”

“Uh-huh.”

Janet’s face was still and soft, like a child’s, when she turned to Robin. “My mom and dad left me pizza money.” She picked up a twenty-dollar bill and made it dance for Robin. “Would you like to get a good dinner somewhere?” She suggested The Pier. Robin often pedaled past the chic restaurant, where the billboard said “fine dining” and featured two lobsters doing the tango. They counted the money in their wallets and decided they could afford some fine dining.

Janet went upstairs to fix her hair. Robin sat in the warm kitchen, fidgeting and feeling exhilarated. She waited a long time, mesmerized by the whir of Janet’s hairdryer. Unable to keep still, she finally bounded out of her seat and wandered into the dining room, where she searched for her face in the glass doors of the breakfront. She studied her dark reflection, the curve of her cheekbone, and her long hair falling past her shoulders.

As she tried to find herself in the glass of the breakfront, she saw it. There among the plates and bowls and serving dishes was the gravy boat. It must have been the roast tenderloin lunch gravy boat. Robin took it out of the case and held it in her palm. It was very pleasing sitting on its own little plate. She turned it from side to side, admiring its ring of periwinkle flowers and its elegant curled lip. Such a fancy
thing—a gravy boat. She pictured it sitting on the dining room table among the plates of food and linen napkins. She imagined Nolan Fry holding it in one of his perfect hands, the same hand that had touched her hair, the same hand she’d held to her chest. She saw him pouring a smooth trail of gravy over his meat and potatoes—Nolan Fry, who would never know what it was to be anyone but Nolan Fry.

When Janet came downstairs Robin saw she had been crying. Janet had sprayed her hair several inches off her forehead and teased it. Her eyes were moist, but she stood on the staircase smiling brightly and jangling her keys. “Ready?” she asked.

“Janet!” Robin said, dashing toward her. Robin was struck hard with tangled feelings of tenderness and guilt. She needed to gush something, to gather up herself and Janet in some binding way.
Janet, I didn’t mean it. That’s not who I am. I’m sorry, so sorry, Janet. I like you, Janet. Janet, how pretty you look. Janet, you are a good friend
. But she just stood there, swelling up with the things she wanted to say, these things that weren’t true.

G
EORGEANN STANDS ON THE RIM OF THE BATHTUB
and peers through the little window, getting both a front and rear view of Sam Bailey’s house. His dusty pickup sits next to a barrel cactus in his yard the way it always does in the late afternoon. All’s quiet next door; his house is still, almost patient. “Don’t be,” she whispers.

As she steps down from the tub the lizard catches her eye, the same lizard she discovered a couple days ago, right after her night with Sam. While she’d brushed her teeth a movement had caught her eye and made her bend around the toilet to see the stricken lizard clinging to the bowl. “Damn,” she’d said with a foamy mouth, spitting into the sink. The lizards in the kitchen crawled under the stove or refrigerator
and that was the last of them, but this bathroom lizard would have to be dealt with.

And yesterday as she stepped from the shower it had darted from behind the wastebasket. “Lizard,” she’d said, crouching down naked, determined to move it outside to the rocks and sun. “Go out the way you came.” Two whole days in her bathroom, she thought.

Now it gazes up at her from the tiled floor. It seems paler. “What can I do?” she says. In the kitchen she spins the lazy susan and opens all the cabinets before finally grabbing a piece of rye bread and a paper bag. Back in the bathroom she waves the bread at the lizard, saying, “In the bag you go,” and she places the bread in the bag with the opening facing the lizard. It hesitates with one shy foot poised in the air. “Please,” Georgeann says. Three days without food or sunlight. “Eat some rye bread,” she instructs the lizard, “and when I come back I’ll take you outside to the yard. All right?” The little lizard arches its slender neck and then dashes behind the toilet bowl. Georgeann shakes her head and sighs.

She hurries to the car and before the air conditioner has a chance to kick in she pulls out of the driveway, watching Sam’s front door as if he might suddenly appear. Yesterday, as she hung the wash, he stood in his yard cooking hot dogs while his two beagles waited by the grill, wagging their tails and looking
up at Sam with a mixture of restraint and zeal. Georgeann said hello and stood with her back to him, feeling like a teenager as she emptied the washer and contemplated her underwear and bras and the grayed, stretched-out T-shirts. She rolled the wet pieces into a ball and then proceeded to hang the better-looking laundry when Sam, holding a paper plate, climbed the small fence and presented her with a hot dog in a bun, a handful of potato chips and a carrot stick.

“Oh, no thank you,” she said.

“Think about it.” He smiled and rested the plate on her washer.

“Really, no thanks.” A fly buzzed near the hot dog and she shooed it away. “I just ate,” she lied.

He shrugged and turned. “I like you,” she said, intending to infer a “but,” though the sentence ended cleanly, simply.

“Good.” Sam climbed the fence into his yard. “I’m over here,” he said, looking back at her.

Safeway is only two miles away, but Georgeann speeds along River Road with the windows wide open, and when she pulls into the parking lot she’s sweaty and windblown. It takes her a moment to realize something is wrong with Safeway. The grocery store is completely dark. The automatic doors are propped open with shopping carts, and behind the darkened storefront the cashiers use flashlights to
ring up customers, who lurch through the open doors and stare down into their bags, checking out their purchases. Yes, they seem to be thinking, I did get the Salisbury steak dinner and these oranges aren’t half-bad. The deli woman, a chunky woman with a Safeway smock and a bright beehive hairdo, stands on the curb smoking a cigarette. Georgeann drives up and lowers the passenger window.

“Transformer blew, hon,” the deli woman says.

“Can I shop?”

“Got a flashlight?”

“I think so.”

The beehive shrugs and places her hands on her wide hips. “Just be careful back by dairy. The floor is kind of wet and you could slip and land on your ass.”

Georgeann nods and swings the car into a parking space. In the trunk she finds a rusted, working flashlight. She then joins the deli woman on the curb and peers into the store, catching a glimpse of herself in the chrome of the doors; she sees her Levi’s and a sleeveless denim shirt, and her silvery shoulder-length hair tucked behind her ears. Flushed and dreamy-looking, she looks like a person who possesses a secret.

“Weird, huh?” beehive says, lighting another cigarette and offering the pack to Georgeann. It has been nearly thirty years since Georgeann has had a cigarette, but on impulse she accepts and gets lightheaded
from the first drag. She takes another drag and feels the churn and sink of her bowels.

“Go on, it’ll be an adventure.” The beehive touches her arm; for such a stout woman her touch is delicate. The store looks inviting, cavernous. Georgeann nods and unhooks a shopping cart from the line-up.

Inside the store it is hushed and calm, except for the chug of a generator next to a checkstand. The air heavy on Georgeann’s skin, and it no longer feels like a late afternoon. The cash registers make small dings and trills. Georgeann slowly pushes past the manager’s specials, her flashlight illuminating piñatas—a big-mouthed fish, a mariachi, a shaggy sun and the Swiss Miss girl, who winks at Georgeann. Georgeann flashes her light in the doll’s face, and the happy, braided head stares blandly back at her. She stands still and lets her eyes adjust to the low light.

In produce, water drips from the sprinklers onto the heads of lettuce and sprigs of parsley. The vegetables still look alert, almost hopeful under the beam of light. A skinny female shopper sticks a pineapple into her backpack, and Georgeann hears the zip of a zipper as the woman hurries past her with wide eyes. Georgeann, too, feels inspired to loot a little something, and she drops a ripe avocado into her purse.

“Tomatoes, corn-on-the-cob, honeydew,” she says, thinking about what she needs. She is now alone
among the fruits and vegetables. The arrangements seem just right under her yellow light, tomatoes next to assorted lettuces next to cucumbers next to peppers, all cousins together. She holds an eggplant, feeling its hollow bulk and wondering if she has ever really considered an eggplant—its purpleness, its prehistoric shape. She clicks off her light and stands holding the eggplant, feeling pleasantly immobile. I
love
, she thinks slowly, the words filling her head with the heaviness of sand…but what?

Georgeann tosses everything into her cart, loose and free—the perfect honeydew, several ears of corn, three rugged Idaho potatoes and a snarly turnip. She gazes into the cart, realizing this is all too much, but she can’t resist tossing in two tomatoes, a peach, a plum, a nectarine, half a watermelon. The romaine smells green, a deep earthy green. She bites into an expensive yellow bell pepper, spitting a seed from the side of her mouth. The pepper tastes sweet and cool. Here in the dark she allows herself to wonder what Sam is doing. Sam’s skin is bronzed and lined like the dry stream beds. He’s a cabinetmaker and one-quarter Cherokee. When his dinky clothesline is full he hangs his wet laundry in the pomegranate tree. Something slithers across the loose carrots. Lizards everywhere, she thinks.

When her son Aaron was home for spring break, he and Georgeann had sat on the front stoop one
night drinking margaritas. Aaron, newly in love with a freshman from Tennessee, had whispered, “Go for it, Mom,” as Sam Bailey and his two beagles climbed into the pickup. Sam was tall and broad with dirty blond hair hanging into one eye. He had moved into the adobe next to hers eight weeks before, around the time the prickly pear and ocotillo went into bloom. Since then Georgeann had watched him come and go so often she had decided things about him—that he was easy to be with and spirited in a low-key way, that he was a man of his word though sulky when hurt.

Slightly tipsy, Georgeann lifted her chin as she stared at her neighbor, pretending to have noticed him for the first time. “Hell, I don’t need my life turned upside down.”

“Yeah?” Aaron said. “And what’s so cool about right-side up?” Georgeann smiled and cupped Aaron’s knee, such a large knee. He’d become a good man, she knew. Sam Bailey waved to them as he backed into the street, his beagles looking expectantly over the dash.

Georgeann moves slowly out of produce, and the pleasing stillness of fruits and vegetables, to Aisle 10: cake mixes, puddings and crusts. Not now, she thinks, leaving her cart and rounding the bend to the bread aisle.

The store has an unusual hum today, a hum like a
pulse that matches her own slow, curious heartbeat. She seems to be the only human among the bread. For a moment she feels woozy, and she squeezes a loaf of sourdough, feeling the give of soft bread. She buries her nose in the bag and sniffs the comfort of dough.

Alone in the dark with her rusted flashlight and surrounded by assorted loaves, Georgeann becomes aware of her body—its age and how long she has lived in it, the feel of blood moving through veins and the steady pump of the heart. She knows that she’s going to die one day, just give out, no longer breathe and think thoughts, no longer see through these myopic eyes. She’s lived in this body for nearly half a century; it is hers and hers alone. It is what she possesses.