The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty (4 page)

“It’s okay,” I say softly, sorry that my presence didn’t protect Penelope from her dad’s obsession.

“I wish my daughter would follow your example. She has so many advantages and opportunities.”

No one responds.

Penelope’s father turns to her. “How’s your store going?”

“Quite well, thank you,” she says. I look at her, startled.

Her father does an auditory double take. “What do you mean, ‘quite well’?”

“Selling vigorously,” she articulates. “Compared to before.”

“Are you putting me on?”

“No.”

“Are you selling new merchandise?”

“No.”

“I can’t believe those pots are selling.”

“I’ll show you the sales records next time I see you.”

“No need. I can look at them today when we go to your store.”

“But we’re not going to my store.”

“Yes we are. I want to see the records. After lunch, we’re going back to your store with you.”

“Today’s not a good day. I’m not in the mood.”

“Nonsense. Your reticence is very suspicious, I hope you realize.”

When lunch is over I try to take my leave, but Penelope grabs my arm so tightly it hurts, even through the padding, and in a low voice says to me, “Please come with us.”

“I really need to get back to my work.”

“I beg you with every shred of my being. For moral support,” she says.

In the store, Penelope’s father examines her recent sales records. Appearing impressed and amused, he says, “It looks like you’ve indeed been selling these pots. Didn’t I say customers can be endlessly surprising?”

He gets up and gazes at the merchandise. “It’s beyond my comprehension why anyone would buy any of this pottery. It’s abominable.”

Penelope says, “That makes it art, more than craft.”

Her father reaches for a big, misshapen brown mug. To my surprise, the handle comes off in his hand while the rest of the mug stays on the shelf. Startled, he turns to his daughter, holding the handle.

“You broke the mug!” Penelope says. “That was my best piece.”

He picks up the rest of the mug and attempts to put mug and handle back together. “I’m sorry. The handle just lifted right off.”

“It was a fragile, delicate piece. Very refined and elegant.”

He looks down at the two pieces of mug in his hand. “You grew up in a house filled with refinement and delicacy. This mug is a big clunky chunk of mud, the farthest thing from elegant.”

“Absolutely, according to your narrow-minded and unsophisticated definition of elegance.”

Looking irritated, he puts the pieces back on the shelf and reaches for another item—a bowl. It breaks in two as soon as he’s touched it.

He looks at Penelope. “This bowl was broken,” he says.

He picks up a plate, but only half of it goes with him. “What’s going on? All these items are broken,” he says.

“I can see that. It’s a shame you broke them,” she says.

“Stop it.”

Penelope blushes fiercely.

“Stop the bullshit. I want an explanation,” he says.

In a voice that sounds so strangled I myself can barely breathe, Penelope says, “Customers have to pay for what they break.”

A chuckle escapes me. She has gall. She may not be a creative genius like Lily or Georgia, but nature was a genius in making her.

After a moment’s reflection, her father’s eyes open wide. “
That’s
how you’ve been selling your merchandise? You make people believe they broke a piece of crap, and you make them pay for it?”

“I was
kidnapped
,” Penelope says.

“Ah, here we go again.”

“I was kept in a coffin for three days.”

“SO
?” he screams. “Why do you always bring that up to defend your inadequacies?”

“Please don’t be so harsh,” Penelope’s mother finally says.

His tone softens. “Don’t you feel ashamed to do business this way?”

“It’s a selling technique,” Penelope says.

Feeling sorry for her, I jump in. “Positioning the broken pieces in such a way as to make them appear unbroken requires great skill. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the long run, the art of the deception becomes the true art of the piece.” I reach for an ugly mug that looks in perfect condition. The moment I raise it from the shelf, a piece of the rim falls inside the mug. “Wow,” I gasp. “It looked so undamaged. Your technique is remarkable, Penelope. Achieving this effect of false wholeness, this illusion of integrity, must take a lot of work. It’s a tough balancing act.”

“Yes,” she says.

Her father is not satisfied. “But don’t customers object to paying for something they didn’t break? How did you manage to get so many people to pay for the pieces?”

“I cry,” Penelope says.

“You
cry
to sell your broken merchandise?” her father screams.

“Yes, it helps! And I’m thinking of branching out and selling glassware, too.”

“I’m embarrassed by you.”

“I was
kidnapped!”
she exclaims again. “And don’t pretend you don’t see how that could possibly affect the rest of my life. I was kept in a
coffin
for three
days
and three
nights.
No food. No water. No physical movement. Hardly any air to breathe. No toilet. I should be
dead
right now.” She gives her father a searing look.

Her father turns to me. “You seem well balanced. Do you have a good therapist you could recommend?”

I stammer, “I have one . . . since yesterday . . . uh, I don’t know how good she is.”

Penelope says, “I didn’t go to a therapist when I came out of the coffin—I don’t see why I should go to one now.”

Her father takes her by the shoulders and stares deep into her eyes. “You’re the one who keeps using the coffin excuse to defend every poor choice you make and to justify your lack of . . . achievements—which I don’t say is invalid, but it tells me you might want to deal with your coffin issue. Face it, you never really got out of that coffin. Let a therapist free you.”

Seeing no reaction from her and unwilling to wait more than two seconds for one, he adds, “And anyway, if you don’t start contributing to your living in a legitimate way very soon, I’m going to stop supporting you. Then you’ll have no choice but to make money, honey.”

THE TENSION OF
the last couple of hours has exhausted me. I decide to go straight home instead of buying some more materials for my masks, as I’d intended.

By the time I arrive at my building, I have a blasting headache.

The doorman opens the door, saying, “Here you go, cunt.”

I cringe because I’m afraid he’ll be overheard by the other two doormen at the front desk. There are other staff members as well in this large lobby: porters, handymen, the super, one of the employees from the management office. What worries me is that he’ll get fired, end up homeless, kill himself, and it will be my fault because something about me—my kindness, my compassion, who knows—made him feel safe enough to drop his inhibitions and allow his mental problem to surface in my presence.

“Having a bad day, huh, Adam?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. Hope it gets better,” I say cheerfully, trying to make my tone raise his spirits. And I go up to my apartment.

Chapter Four

T
hat evening, Lily, Georgia, Jack, Penelope, and I go to a bar to blow off steam. We’re all upset. Lily’s shown us a postcard Strad sent her:

Hey Lily, Sorry I can’t make it to your concert. Hope it goes/went well. Last month I read that great article in Time Out about your new music’s powers. Congratulations on your success! Strad

When we meet up, Penelope gives me a gift to thank me for helping her deal with her parents at her store of ugly ceramic items. The gift is an ugly ceramic item: a hideous box with a beautiful metal clasp encrusted with a small green stone. But at least the gift is not broken.

“Sorry I didn’t wrap it,” she says. “I made it. Except for the clasp. Someone in the metal department at school created it for me in exchange for two pots.”

“Thank you!” I say, kissing her on the cheek. “I’m so touched. It’s wonderful. It has such character.”

We all make a show of admiring the box, though secretly we’re just admiring the clasp.

Penelope tells the others about the fight with her dad in her shop of broken pots and his threat to stop supporting her if she didn’t start contributing to her living in a way that wasn’t against the law. They’re astounded to hear about her selling technique.

I’m sad for Penelope, after the fight with her father, and I’m sad for Georgia over her lost novel. Mostly, though, I’m angry on Lily’s behalf. So I scan the bar, as has become my habit, for a possible scapegoat, for a shallow man to represent all shallow men.

At the same time, I’m also searching for an exception, for a man capable of falling in love with a woman for reasons other than her looks. That’s the only kind of man I could ever fall in love with.

While my friends huddle on a banquette and order drinks and snacks, I spot a man reading a stack of handsome books at the bar. He’s a bohemian type. Chin-length hair.

I approach him. The books are small, old editions with lovely bindings. The man himself is attractive, too—not that that matters. As I near, I glance at the spines of his volumes:
Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, Tom Thumb, The Princess in Disguise,
Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel,
and
Snow White.

Maybe this isn’t an occasion for my usual bar ritual. The presence of the books gives me hope that perhaps this guy isn’t as shallow as all the other strangers I’ve approached.

I stand behind him and look over his shoulder. The page he’s looking at has a beautiful illustration of Sleeping Beauty, with a few lines of text.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen a man reading fairy tales in a bar,” I tell him.

He looks me over and tersely replies, “I’m doing it for work.”

“Now I’m dying to know: what kind of work?” I sit down on the barstool next to him.

He closes his eyes wearily and says, “I’m a kindergarten teacher. I really have to focus right now.”

He has to focus, and yet I can’t help noticing him turning his head to look at several attractive women who have entered the room.

“Bringing fairy tales to a bar must be a great way to meet women, though I don’t think classic fairy tales are the best things to read to children,” I say.

“
Excuse me?
” he says, in a tone that conveys annoyance, not only at what I’m saying, but at the fact that I’m still talking.

I’m fully aware that I’m very annoying during my bar ritual. That’s the point.

“Haven’t you noticed how the heroines are always beautiful?” I say. “There are no ugly heroines, no ugly girls that are worthy to be loved. There are poor heroines, dirty heroines, like Cinderella, but never ugly heroines. That sends out a terrible message to kids.”

“I can see how that could make certain ugly women angry,” he says, not looking up from
The Sleeping Beauty.

I glance at my friends and hold my nose to indicate that this is a real stinker. Georgia mimes stabbing gestures toward the man, which startles me. That seems a bit excessive, even for her.

As for Penelope, she has been trying to gently break her empty water glass in such a way that it can be reassembled and held together with nothing but the glue of gravity. She told us it’s practice, for when she will make good on her promise to her dad to branch out into glassware.

I say to the kindergarten teacher, “Actually, you’d be surprised at how little it has to do with being ugly. I have plenty of female friends who look just like those beautiful heroines. They have hair that looks like this,” I say, taking off my wig. “They have the same kind of body, typically considered to be beautiful in our culture. Very similar to this,” I say, taking off my fake-fat jacket. “Some of them look remarkably like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and that whole classic bunch, and yet they still feel angry about the kind of message the fairy tales communicate to children.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Georgia’s whole body gesticulating. She invariably gets wired when I begin taking off my wig in front of a guy.

As for Lily, I always worry it might pain her to watch a man’s transformation from jerk to gentleman as I go through my own transformation from unattractive to attractive. The difference between how men treat an ugly woman, like herself, and one who is beautiful is not something she needs her face rubbed in, but my compulsion to go through the ritual overpowers my need to spare her the sad spectacle. If she is hurt, she never shows it.

The kindergarten teacher looks at me as I take out my fake teeth. To my amazement, he appears angry. I’m pleasantly surprised. It’s refreshing to meet a man who doesn’t become sweet and gooey when I unveil my looks. I’m about to compliment him on his consistency, when he says, “I feel robbed and violated.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“You deceived me. You stole . . .” he trails off.

“What did I steal?”

“My opportunity to make a good first impression.”

“I didn’t prevent you.”

“Yes you did, by misleading me into thinking you were—” He cuts himself off, but I know what he was about to say. I misled him into thinking I was ugly and fat, and thus not worth his time and attention.

“Ah, I think I get it,” I answer. “When you say I stole from you the opportunity to make a good first impression, you mean that in the same way as how you stole from every ugly woman you’ve ever laid eyes on the opportunity to impress you with something other than her looks.”

“You’re crazy, you know that?” He sweeps his fairy tales into his big bag and leaves the bar.

I go to the restroom, change back into my disguise, and rejoin my friends.

I scoot into their booth. The glass Penelope broke is now sitting in front of her, reassembled and looking intact except for the break lines running across it like scars. She is holding the postcard Strad sent to Lily, gazing at it grimly.

“May I?” I ask, taking it from her. As I look at it again, the slight relief my ritual gave me wears off. This postcard is soul-crushing. No one would understand why it’s soul-crushing unless they knew Lily’s story. And we know it well.