Mrs. Beast (7 page)

    
Croesus whimpers and Elora releases his jowls.
 
"Sorry, pup.
 
It makes my ass twitch.
 
Go to any beauty salon and you'll find women reading romance novels under the dryers, hoping to be transformed into a beauty who can get the prince and the castle, or at least a CPA and a house in the burbs.
 
Disnified damsels in distress, grown up girls who sat in darkened theaters, tasted the carrot of romance dangled before their wide eyes, and from that moment decided to hold out for Prince Charming.
 
Hell, half the world's women think Disney
wrote
Snow White. Can't blame Uncle Walt for the tres PC, '90's version of Beauty's tale where she's a feisty little bookworm, but dainty and full of song as Disney's Snow, and the Beast comes off as a cuddly Quasimodo, hammier than bacon . . ."

    
Croesus interrupts by poking Elora with his nose and pawing the crystal ball where Beauty has turned her chair toward the fire, hiding her tears from the dwarf women.

    
Elora shakes her head.
 
"Isn't it odd that a beauty will withstand a shit storm of abuse from relatives, but if another beauty ranks on her, she comes undone?
 
Beauty assumes Snow will empathize with her, but Beauty doesn't know Snow's history, nor does Snow know Beauty's. Will they open those keyed-up mouths and recognize what they share? Will they unlock the twin doors of guilt and shame?”
 

*
     
*
     
*

    
In response to Beauty’s insistence on helping with dinner preparations, Eva has set her up in the yard with a peck of peas. Beauty is happily running her thumb through the pods, popping green peas into a basket, when she hears the parting of branches, the tramp of boots, and masculine banter. Next she hears splashing and Hoo-hoos, and Hah-hah’s, glubs and gurgles from behind the house.

    
Being pathologically curious, as all fairy tale beauties are, she hobbles toward the ruckus. Peeking around a corner, she sees two of the dwarf men climbing a ladder that leads to an immense cedar wood tub. Steam rises from the water’s surface. The two jump in fully clothed and join the five others who are in various stages of peeling off, dousing, and wringing out their clothes. An iron pipe runs from a rock face into the tub, and a sluice box runs off the front. Even without the benefit of sunlight, Beauty catches the twinkle of gold dust drifting through the sluice water, which lands on a stretched sheep skin, literally a Golden Fleece.

    
Clothes thoroughly wrung, the men turn their attention to cleaning their bodies. From seven hooks mounted on a center pole, they remove seven long-handled brushes. The brushes are scrubbed into scalps, swabbed between toes, shoved bristle to bristle against beards.

    
“Uh-oh—bubbles. Who blew wind?”

    
Beauty recognizes the voice as Gunnard’s. Groans and disgusted utterances follow the question.

    
“Dog smells his own first.”

    
“I didn’t do it! Look at that grin on Herman’s pus.”

    
“Brother, what did you have for lunch?”

    
“Pressed possum, melt in your mouth.” Herman smacks his lips loudly.

    
“Gonna melt my eyebrows off, you pig.”

    
Beauty covers her mouth to stifle a giggle.

    
“I et a venison sandwich. Still got some left from the fourteen-point I bagged with my bow last October. Perfect shot, it was, the kind you see in your dreams.”

    
“How about Wolfgang’s shot at the turkey two years back? Bet Max still sees that one in his dreams. Show us your scar, Maxie.”

    
Beauty spies as Max shoves his head under the water and raises his behind like a diving duck. She can’t miss the red, V-shaped scar on his white globe cheek.

    
“You guys will never let me live that down. If I hadn’t been dozing off, if Max didn’t sound exactly like a turkey with those big lips and double chin . . .”

    
Max’s gobble now pierces the air, and from somewhere, far off in the fog-shrouded woods, a turkey hen sounds her plaintive reply. The men roar with laughter, and it’s contagious. Beauty laughs into her hands. How long has it been, she wonders, since I laughed joyfully?

    
She pictures the Beast tickling her feet with his shiny black talons, running his long, rough tongue along the length of her sole.

    
Slap-flap of wet feet striking wood and Beauty lifts her gaze just as Ojars shouts, “Look, Pieter’s got a stiffy.”

    
Beauty turns away, her cheeks crimson. A falling pebble cause her to look upward, and there, at the tower window is Snow White, her blue eyes veiled, her blood-red lips parted, her snowy breast heaving as the dwarfs scamper buck-naked to their seven doors.

*
     
*
     
*

    
Dinner is served in Snow White's cottage. The decor is Spartan: no crocheted doilies, no knick-knacks, and no rugs on the swept stone floor.
 
A circular staircase, which the Grimm psychologist claims, is symbol for sexual experience, leads to the tower room.

    
In contrast to the sparse furnishings, the lengthy dining table is heavily laid: twelve bowls brimming with vegetables and fruits, four loaves of oat bread, a pound of cottage cheese, two pitchers of goat's milk, two pitchers of beer, and a sizzling, twenty-pound roasted goose.

    
Snow White sits at the head of the table, Beauty at the opposite end.
 
She would have preferred a seat somewhere in the middle, but Snow White has set out place cards with names written in red ink.
 
In between the beauties are the seven dwarfs, their seven wives, and numerous children.
 
As Snow White ceremoniously hands the carving knife to Lars, a slice of light flashes from the blade across Beauty's eyes and she drifts in thought to another dining scene.

    
Each evening during her first week with the Beast, she entered the dining hall to find a table set for one with translucent china, a crystal goblet, gold serving pieces, and dishes the Beast had ordered.
 
Grimm dishes: Loffelerbsen, a stew of dried peas, onions, leeks, potatoes, pig's ears and snout; Blutwurst and Milzwurst, blood and veal spleen sausage; Eisbein, Sauerkraut, pickled pigs knuckles and cabbage.
 
Concealed behind an ornamental screen, the Beast watched Beauty eat to the accompaniment of Wagner's
Die Meistersinger Overture
. On the seventh evening, she invited him to join her.

    
"I'd ruin your appetite," he growled.

    
"Sir, I'd be glad for the company,” Beauty said honestly.

    
The Beast shuffled to the table.
 
"Chair!" he barked, and a chair appeared opposite Beauty. The initial face-to-face encounter with his peeled-grape eyes, purple cauliflower nose and jagged yellow teeth in bright blue gums made her stomach churn. The Beast asked, "Do you find me very ugly?"

    
"Yes, I do," Beauty had replied.
 
"However, I believe you are good. I have known men more monstrous than you. I prefer your face over pleasing ones that conceal false, ungrateful, and corrupt hearts."

    
"Will you be my wife?"

    
Beauty simply shook her head.

    
The Beast's roar shattered crystal in every castle room.
 
Beauty sat mute and white as the tablecloth, until the Beast spoke softly. "You don't eat enough.
 
Are you trying to die of starvation?

    
"No.
 
I'm not accustomed to this heavy fare."

    
"You don't fancy the food?
 
Woman, ask for whatever you want.
 
You are queen and mistress here."

    
"Poires au Roquefort," Beauty said hopefully, and two cheese-filled pear halves appeared on her plate.

    
She savored the tangy cheese and sweet pear, rolling it over her tongue.
 
"Radishes and chard, jeannots, Coquilles Saint Jacques," she chirped.
 
Vegetables, biscuits, and scallops materialized on the table.
  
Beauty was stabbing the last scallop when she remembered the Beast.

    
"Please excuse my rudeness.
 
Care to try some?"

    
The Beast sneered. "That's rabbit food.
 
Kalbskopf!" he shouted and a pair of calf's lungs sprawled over the table.
 
He swiped them up with his talons, sank his fangs into the meat and tore off a blood-dripping mass.
 
Beauty couldn't touch her Gateau de Riz au Caramel.

    
How those dinners changed
, Beauty muses at Snow White's table, recalling the night affaire d'amour began, when éclair custard plopped onto her décolletage and the Beast's tongue flicked out fast as a frog on a fly. And on succeeding nights, she remembers the truffles she'd slip from her open mouth to his, or one wild strawberry nibbled from her navel.
 
No matter how exhausted they might be après-dessert, he always asked, "Will you be my wife?"

    
On the fourteenth evening, Beauty wiped blanche mange from her chin and answered.
 
"I'll always be your friend.
 
Try to be content with that."

    
"I'll have to; I love you very much, and I'm happy that you want to stay.
 
Promise you'll never leave me."

    
I didn't keep my promise
, Beauty thinks and feels tears stinging her eyes
, maybe if I had
. . . Gerda nudges Beauty with a sharp little elbow and offers a platter of sliced goose.

    
"You've outdone yourself tonight, Snow," Pieter pipes up, rubbing his palms together.

    
After three failed attempts at cutting her slice of goose, Beauty lifts it with her fingers and discreetly pokes it into her mouth.
 
The flavor and texture remind her of when Violet recommended chewing hickory bark to cure Beauty’s toothache.
 
With a spasm of nausea she closes her eyes and breaths deeply through her nose until it passes. Silence falls over the table as thirty sets of jaws work over the goose: eyes squint, cheeks redden, heads and Adam's apples bob.
  
Snow White slams her fork on the table and cries, "It's horrid!"

    
The girl at Snow White's left swallows so hard her eyes water. "I think it's grand, Auntie Snow."

    
"Me too," Wolfgang adds, stabs a second potato, and turns to Beauty. "Snow used to cook our meals, did the sewing and cleaning too before we all were married."

    
"She'd never cooked, nor cleaned, nor sewn a stitch in her life, being born a princess," Max says. "That's something Snow White and Beauty have in common, they're both princesses."

    
Snow White settles her icy gaze on Beauty.
 
Because they watch and wait, fairy tale beauties are expert at the art of unmasking true feelings and hiding their own.

    
"By marriage," Beauty is quick to say noticing that Snow White's expression is similar to that peasant woman's before she yanked her daughter's hair.
 
"I was not born a princess.
 
I cooked and sewed and cleaned when I lived in the country with my father and sisters.
 
After I went to the Beast's . . . Prince Runyon's palace, magic provided everything I wished for."