We Could Be Beautiful (16 page)

At Magnolia Bakery he said, “What would you order here?”

“A cupcake?”

“Traditional.”

We went to Starbucks. I ordered a latte. “Wrong about that,” Marty said. “I was sure you were an Americano girl. But no, you like milk. Wholesome.”

“Okay.”

“You like this song?”

It was Sarah McLachlan. I felt like I was supposed to say no, and then I felt like I was supposed to say yes. It was so hard to know what the right answer was sometimes. I knew that if I said yes, I would have to say it with confidence. “Yes, I do, actually.”

“You have a soft side. That’s good.” Marty threw back his double espresso and slammed the paper cup on the bar. “I’ll walk you home now.”

“Great.”

“Catherine West and William Stockton. It sounds like a British fairy tale.”

“Thanks.”

“Where’d you meet?”

“At a museum.”

“Good. Oh, yes, that’s perfect for the announcement.”

Our announcement was going to squash Fernando’s announcement, not that I cared.

“Is this your first wedding?”

“It is.”

“What? You’re a tall drink of water, girl—what the hell have you been doing?”

“Dating the wrong people.”

“Honey,” he said, “tell me about it. Everyone’s got a weird mole and a yoga tote full of bullshit.” He checked his phone. “When am I meeting William?”

“Soon.”

“Better be.”

When we got to my door, he said, “This is going to be a good one, I can feel it.” He kissed me on both cheeks. “I’ll be in touch.”

•

With Xanax and Marty in my life, I was back to my fully functional self. Susan and I decided it had been a mutual falling off the face of the earth—we were both sorry—and agreed to meet for lunch at the Thai place. The music there reminded me of a spa: water droplets and a light techno beat. It smelled like limes. Susan was already at a table drinking a cosmo, eyes on her phone.

“Hi.” I hugged her. “You look rejuvenated.”

“You look skinny,” she said.

“Good skinny or scary skinny?”

She eyed my shoulders. I was wearing a new tank from Miu Miu.

“You want me to answer that?”

“No. But if I start to look like my sister, let me know.”

“Okay. You’re not there yet, but you might be on your way.”

“Rejuvenated,” I said again. “What did you have done?”

She touched her cheek as if it weren’t actually hers but some foreign surface. “Oh, just a little chemical peel. I can’t stop touching it.”

“I want one. It looks great.”

“Dr. Butterworth. I’ll text you her info right now.” She did. My phone beeped.

The waitress appeared. “Hello,” Susan said. “We would like a cosmo for this one. I’ll have another. And we’ll take two cucumber salads.” She looked at me. “Okay?”

“Perfect,” I said. It was always a relief to go to a restaurant with Susan because she made all the necessary decisions for me. I didn’t even have to think about what I wanted.

“So tell me. What the hell is going on?”

“You go first.”

“Fine.” She took a too-big sip, shook her head out from the shock of it. “I am still seeing Henry. Who is still twenty-four years old. I have nightmares his mother is going to come to the shop and shoot my head off. With a gun. You know he’s from Arkansas. They love guns down there. He told me he grew up killing deer. Isn’t that just vile? But I like him. He knows where the clit is, thank God. And he is a sweetheart. I just don’t know if I have time to be in love right now.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Susan sighed. “You wouldn’t get it. You’re a love junkie.”

“Why do you always call me that?”

“Because you’re addicted.”

“I’m not addicted.” I uncrossed and recrossed my legs under the table. They did feel skinny today.

Susan carefully brushed her yellow bangs out of her eyes and turned her hands in circles, either to stretch her wrists or to find her thoughts or both. Then she held up one finger. Her eyes were a little crazy.

“You and I”—she pointed to me and then to herself, clarifying—“have different definitions of love.”

“I’m going to need you to expand on that.”

“Okay, let me ask you this.” She tapped my diamond. “How many times have you been in love?”

I didn’t know if I was finding this conversation fun or stressful. On the one hand, I’d been in love many times. On the other hand, was it real? Maybe I’d never been in love at all. I went with the less complicated answer, the one Susan would expect. “I don’t know—five times, ten times?”

“See? That’s what I mean. I’ve been in love twice. Two times, that’s it. Just two.” She held up two fingers and then got distracted by something moving out the window. It was a bus. “You’re just—you
want
to be in love more than I do.”

Susan was in therapist mode. Which had the potential to be very amusing, because she’d be even more brutally honest than usual, but it backfired when she hurt your feelings.

“Susan, everybody wants to be in love. Come on.”

“Yeah, but you—you want, like, the little man with the little picket fence.” She said this in a wee little voice.

“I do not want a picket fence. And William isn’t my little man, he’s my fiancé.”

“No, William is a big man.” She said this in a big ogre voice.

“What do you think about him? Tell me the truth.”

Her eyes came unfocused, her bottom lip jutted out, she rocked her head back and forth. “He’s cool. Cool, cool, cool.” She touched her face again; she couldn’t stop. “I mean, no, he’s kind of cold. Isn’t he? Like a German colonel.”

“Well, he is German.”

“Well, so am I.”

“Okay.”

“He’s hard to read.”

“He can be at first. It’s called being mysterious. It’s a good thing.”

Susan made a face that said no.

“He grew up in Switzerland. People aren’t as expressive there.”

“I have many Swiss friends I would call expressive. Also, wasn’t he born here? Why does he have an accent?”

“He barely has an accent.”

“Listen, I’m happy for you, okay? I’m very, very happy for you.” She held my hand. “I am just saying, as your friend, okay? As your fah-riend.” She paused until she had my eyes. “I think he’s a little Talented Mr. Ripley, and I don’t want you to get hurt again, that’s all I’m saying.”

“You don’t even know him. You’ve met him twice.”

“I have a sixth sense.”

“Well, it’s off.”

The waitress, sensing tension, placed our drinks timidly on the table.

“Fine,” Susan said, hands up in surrender. “Agree to disagree.”

“Fine.”

“Are you upset?”

I didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry, baby. I’d be a shitty friend if I didn’t tell you how I felt, okay? But I’m done now. I’m done. I’ve said my piece. So tell me about the wedding. Let’s talk tablecloths.”

“Susan.” I was desperate. “I need you to like him.”

Susan nodded once. “Done—I like him. If anyone asks, I like him.”

She kissed my ass for the rest of lunch, asking all about Marty Williams and the color palette and what kind of food we were going to have. I ended up telling her about my mother and the vase, to which she simply said, “Interesting.”

“You know I have Dan coming over once a week now. Isn’t that hilarious?”

I set the fork on the plate. “Are you going to sleep with him?”

“Whoa.”

I laughed, and then I kept laughing. And then I was laughing uncontrollably.

“What is going on with you? And no, I have Henry.” She pronounced it Henri like he was French. “I have it all!” Susan fluttered her hands open. They looked like sea anemones on speed. Then she turned dramatically to face me, like a singer preparing to belt out a number. “That’s our job in the one percent. To look like we have it all.” She touched her raw cheek again. “My face feels like the ass of a babe.” She grabbed her glass. “Cheers,” she said. “To having it all!”

•

When William got home, I gave him notes about my day while he changed out of his suit. Lunch with Susan, workout with Chris. Marty Williams was great. October seventeenth was going to be the happy day.

“October seventeenth—I like it,” he said from inside the closet.

“You do?”

“It’s perfect.”

He reappeared in a tank top and those faded Adidas shorts he liked so much and sat on the bed to put on his sneakers. I was in bed, adding maybe/yes Post-its to
Brides
.

“I can’t wait to be married to you.”

I could feel my heart beating in my chest. I didn’t know what to say. I said, “Ha.” I just couldn’t believe it. This was what I had always wanted, and here it was, happening.

“I’m going to go for a quick run.”

“Okay.”

He put his ear buds in, stood up. From the doorway he blew a kiss.

“I love you,” I called after him, but he must not have heard me. The music was already playing.

14

A
t the end of every day, Vera or Maya sent me an e-mail about the shop. These e-mails contained information about foot traffic, the day’s clientele (anyone important/famous? any homeless interlopers?), what items had sold, what needed to be restocked, and our total sales.

Vera, next to the total sales number, often inserted an opinion about how little money we were making and how this worried her greatly. “This worries me greatly!” My honest reaction was, Poor Vera, who lives in New Jersey and cares so much about her little peon job.

Today she had written:
Catherine, unfortunately we made $135 today. This is not due to my lack of performance as your manager. There is only so much I can do. Our account balance is $1,233.67. This worries me greatly.

I wrote back:
Will transfer funds ASAP.

I’d been bailing the shop out for a few months with my personal funds. I hadn’t told anyone. Nothing had ever been this bad though. One hundred thirty-five dollars—even I knew that was a bad number.

Giving up the shop was simply not an option. I loved telling people I was a small-business owner. It made me relatable. It gave me substance. Without it, what was I doing with my life?

The trust my father had left dispersed money to the three of us every month. Caroline and I got $80,000 a month, our mother got more. One stipulation of the trust was that Caroline and I could buy real estate under $8 million. (We both got as close to that number as we could. My house cost $7.85, Caroline’s $7.82.) I also had some money saved, so there was no reason to pay close attention to these monthly deposits. Even without savings, I doubt I would have paid attention. I had never worried about money. My entire life, I had never worried about money. I had always had enough.

So when I went to the bank to make the transfer to the shop’s account (I liked to do this in person sometimes; I think it made me feel legit, not that the people who worked at the bank cared), I was surprised at the low balance. I assumed it was a clerical error. I assumed a few zeros had been lost in cyberspace. I would speak to someone and it would be resolved.

A hair-sprayed woman who looked like a flight attendant told me in her flight-attendant voice that no transfers had been made in the past three months. When I asked why, she said she had no way of knowing that information, ma’am.

I called the accountant, Ted, who’d been a family friend for years, and explained that a clerical error had occurred and he needed to fix it right now. I hadn’t spoken to Ted in a long time but had fond memories of him. He had come to our Christmas party every year and brought Caroline and me Peeps. Which, now that I thought about it, was unseasonably odd.

“What’s the problem? The trust contains $500 million. Which is enough for everyone forever!” I was sure about this number because my mother had said it so many times.

“Five hundred?” Ted sounded unsure.

“Is that wrong?”

“That is indeed wrong. Your father may have had that much at one time in stocks, but when the market fell, those funds were dissolved. The full amount at the time of your father’s death was closer to $100 million.”

“What about the money from Eighty-Fourth?” We had sold for $20.5.

“The house was left to your mother. What’s left remains in her name. But there isn’t much left. She donated nearly all of it to charity.”

“She donated $20 million to charity?” I laughed. “That’s insane, Ted. That has to be wrong.”

“Unfortunately, it is not wrong.”

“I’m coming to your office.”

“Okay, let’s set you up with an appointment. When would you like to come?”

“I’m coming right now.”

•

I had never been to Ted’s office. It was a big gold building on Fifty-Fourth Street, not far from the bank. I showed my ID, was given a badge. I took the wrong elevator up and had to come back down and go to the other elevator bank. “This,” I planned to say when I saw Ted, “has been an unnecessarily degrading experience.” When I found the office, finally, I was a total bitch to the headband-wearing receptionist, and I had every right to be. “Ted Adams,” I said. I didn’t take my sunglasses off.

“If you’ll just have a seat, I’ll call him.”

Why was everyone speaking like a flight attendant today? “Tell him to hurry up.”

I refused to sit down. I paced the waiting room. The plants were fake. How tacky. In a large conference room, with a view designed to impress (I was not impressed), two suits appeared to be having an unserious conversation. They were laughing. It was unprofessional.

“I’ll take you back now,” Headband said. I followed her through the cubicle maze, where people’s cat pictures were sadly tacked onto the sad blue fabric walls of their cubes, to the back, where the real offices were. Ted’s door was open.

“It’s nice to see you.” He stood behind his desk. “It’s been years.” He walked around, hugged me.

“Yeah.” I patted his back. He smelled strongly of Old Spice.

“Please, sit.”

I did, in a gaudy leather chair with too-high armrests. I looked out the window. Flying pigeons and I swore one of them was shitting.

Ted looked like he’d just stepped off the golf course: baby-blue polo, white pants (really?), the unnaturally orange skin pigmentation of an Oompa Loompa. As if I had given him a compliment on his tan, he said, “Just got back from Florida this morning.”