We Could Be Beautiful (2 page)

It was a warm Saturday in May, the first real warm day after what had felt like the longest winter of my life, and I was feeling alive, finally alive, and also kind of overstimulated. It was my bare exposed skin, which hadn’t seen light for so long—I felt almost naked in my summery dress—and it was the buzz from the coffee, and it was this man: this handsome, extremely tall, extremely independently wealthy man who was articulate and Old World in a way that didn’t seem contrived, and who knew me—not me personally, but he knew my family, and in this way we shared a history. We came from the same place. I trusted him immediately.

He had brought his dog, Herman, a long-haired dachshund with gold-brown hair that curled slightly at the ends, very cute. As we veered from the asphalt onto the curving dirt path, under the shadows of tree branches, their outstretched limbs begging for sun, children stopped to pet Herman, and William was very sweet with every one of them, lingering patiently, saying, “This is Herman, and what is your name?”

We passed a group of young boys building something with sticks, and a lesbian couple on a plaid blanket, eating scooped-out cantaloupe balls from a dewy Ziploc bag like they were really in the wilderness. A line of little preschoolers in bright white shirts moved like a twinkling diamond bracelet over the knoll. Someone far away was flying a kite shaped like a fish.

It smelled like grass and dirt, and in certain moments, when we walked closely enough together, there was the faint trace of William’s clean, salt-dipped scent. I would never figure out exactly what that scent was—maybe the combination of his hair products and his detergent and the aftershave he used, and the unique way it reacted with his skin. Vaguely it reminded me of a hotel where I’d stayed on the Amalfi coast when I was thirteen and still obsessed with pasta Bolognese.

We were talking, of course, about what he remembered. “Let’s see,” he said, sipping the last of his coffee and stepping in front of me (“Pardon me, Catherine”) to throw it in the wiry basket, which prompted me to do the same, even though my coffee was still basically full; I’d been too overstimulated to drink it. “I remember the stone lions by the door—not replicas because they were missing facial features—and of course the plants. There were so many plants.”

“Yes—oh my God. Those plants are what everyone remembers, it’s so funny.” My mother loved her plants—she could almost have been called a hoarder of them. Ferns lined the walls, succulents lined the windowsills, and roses (always roses) were a mandatory centerpiece on every table. She spent a good deal of time explaining to her assistants (she called them all assistants, whether they were housekeepers or nannies or decorators) what her plant visions were, and kept a list for the florist alongside a grocery list in the kitchen drawer. Her collection of plants was the one way in which my mother diverged from her typical Upper East Side existence. It may have been the only eccentric thing about herself she let people see.

“It was nearly a forest, wasn’t it?”

“It was. Especially in the fountain room. The running water made it more forestlike. Do you remember that?”

William squinted into the sun. His skin was so smooth. And his lips were just pink enough, just full enough. “Yes,” he said, nodding, “yes, of course, how could I have forgotten that? It was a stone fountain, wasn’t it? Like the lions, it was made of stone that had been worn away outside, by wind and rain. Do I correctly recall cherubs?”

“Yes! I thought they were so scary as a kid because they had no pupils.”

“I also remember the bathroom with the yellow walls,” he said. “I very distinctly recall its mustard color.”

“The mustard bathroom, yes!”

“And the reclining chair your father loved.”

“Yes. Oh my God, this is so crazy. You know so much about my life and I only just met you. It’s crazy.”

I probably said “It’s crazy” twenty times. Although as we kept talking, I realized that maybe it wasn’t so crazy. People in New York knew each other, and apparently not only had our mothers been involved in a lot of the same art organizations, our fathers had both been close to Pierre Mallet, the reclusive artist who lived in the Catskills with too many dogs. I remembered Pierre, of course, though not well because he rarely came to the city. What I remembered most clearly was that every time Pierre’s name came up, my mother said, “He needs to quit smoking. He is going to die.”

William’s father, Edward Stockton, had also been an artist, William told me, “though he never achieved fame or money, which was a shame—he wanted those things very badly.” He and Pierre had collaborated on many projects, including a series of orblike sculptures, one of which my parents had bought and put in the living room.

“I didn’t realize that was your father’s sculpture!” I remembered it exactly. It looked like a planetary system, with all white planets and one blue one, which bore a red
X
. I recalled many afternoons spent lazing on the couch, looking at that
X
and wondering what it meant.

“In part it was, yes,” William said. “I believe it was Pierre who introduced our fathers initially.”

“What happened to Pierre?”

“He passed away some years ago,” William said. “Lung cancer.”

Based on his choice of outfit for a weekend walk in the park (blue dress shirt buttoned to the neck, dark khaki pants, tight brown leather shoes), I was not surprised to find out William was a banker. He’d spent a long time at UBS and now worked at a small investment bank downtown, way downtown, south of Wall Street, at the very tip of the island. My initial response to this was: No. I had gone out of my way not to date finance guys because I didn’t want to end up marrying my father, who had worked too hard and died too young, and also because I just thought finance was boring. But William didn’t seem boring to me. The turquoise ring: he wasn’t a typical banker. It also helped when he said, “I enjoy my job very much,” and I actually believed him. The way he spoke—he was so charismatic. He could have sold water to the ocean.

“I sometimes wonder if it was your father who inspired me into this position,” he said. “In my youth I was surrounded by bohemians, and your father…well, he was different. He made an impression. He was so very powerful—the way he dressed and the way he spoke.”

I said, “Thank you. Yes, he was,” and I remember I got the feeling that William could have been describing himself just then. The shine of his Italian shoes reminded me of something my father said often: “A great man’s shoes should always be polished.”

We walked for a long time, going through the requisite first-date stuff. School, family, hobbies. Favorite foods, vacation spots, whether or not Starbucks had good coffee. I was so rapt by everything he said and by his cool way of saying it that I looked up at one point and realized I didn’t even know where we were in the park.

William did not like the coffee at Starbucks (“Too much acidity”). He had no siblings (“In fact, they hadn’t planned on having me either”). During his early childhood in the city, the Stocktons had lived just near the Met, and he had gone to Dalton. (“You
would
go to Dalton,” I teased, flipping my hair, to which he said, “Yes, my mother befriended the dean, and so I was allowed to attend for free.”) He had studied the violin “fairly seriously” during his youth, and it was still something he liked. He was even thinking of volunteering as a tutor now, if he could find any extra time to indulge in that.

His parents had inspired his love of folk art. His mother, who had grown up in Mexico City and then Santa Fe, was drawn to it as a Catholic, and particularly loved the works of Reverend Howard Finster and Sister Gertrude Morgan. She made art herself—“mostly crochet; she was very patient”—but didn’t consider herself a real artist. She was talented but lacked dedication. His father, who William thought possessed less natural talent, was dedicated enough for the both of them. Edward Stockton was extremely hardworking, almost obsessed. Every day—even on Sundays, which bothered William’s mother—he awoke at four o’clock in the morning to work. “Work was all that mattered to him, and my mother understood there could not be two stars in one family. My father was the star, and my mother, I suppose, was the sky. He wouldn’t have existed without her.”

William went on to explain that his father’s severe stutter made him self-conscious about speaking. “But when he began to stutter, my mother was there to finish his sentences.” She carried him through every party, every opening, every event. She had a knack for people, and people adored her. In the art world, in the supermarket, at church. Church was very important to her.

Yes, William was still a Catholic. “It’s a part of me. I hope you won’t judge me too harshly for it,” he said, and I blurted out, “Isn’t Catholicism all about judgment?” I immediately regretted this and backtracked. “Sorry, sorry,” I said, “I’m only kidding.” And he said, “It’s okay, I’m used to it, really. It’s not very à la mode to be Catholic these days, I understand.” In an attempt to appear kind and interested, and also because I wanted to know how serious he was about the whole thing, I asked him how often he went to church. He liked to “stop in every so often,” mostly to pay his respects to his parents. Both of them were gone now: a freak car accident on an unpaved road. It was recent—they’d died only months before. “I regret that I didn’t have the chance to say good-bye,” he said.

Now William had his own “modest collection” of folk art. I wondered how modestly he was defining
modest.
It included sculptures and tableaux in cross-stitch—he adored those, probably because they reminded him of his mother—plus all of his father’s work, of course, and a few Joseph Yoakum landscapes, which were his favorites. I didn’t know who that was but heard myself saying, “Oh yes, of course. I love his stuff.”

When I said, “I like your ring,” he explained that it was a family heirloom, dating back exactly one generation. His mother had bought it the day she arrived in the States, when she was ten. She had given it to William on his tenth birthday, and at some point in his life he would pass it on to his own child, if he was “lucky enough to have one.”

He had been married before, yes. At the age of thirty-six. Gwen had died four years later. Breast cancer. He’d dated since then but hadn’t found anyone he wanted to spend eternity with. I felt bad for thinking Gwen was a fake princess name, and then I felt bad for William that he had lost her. I couldn’t even imagine that, I told him. He said it was horrible, but at least, unlike with his parents, he had been given the chance to say good-bye.

On a lighter note, William enjoyed skiing and running. Stracciatella gelato was his preferred treat. He could eat it all night and all day. But not literally, of course. He’d briefly lived in Italy after university at Oxford. He spoke some Italian, and also French, German, and Spanish. He’d grown up speaking Spanish with his mother, whom he’d been very close to, unlike his father, who “gave the impression that he was a man simply out of reach.” His father was German (well, half German, really), though William had learned that language mostly at school. Despite their nearly identical looks (“typically Nordic—hard and pale, as though chiseled from ice”), William felt he and his father had had very little in common. He and his mother, on the other hand, had shared a “deep internal sameness.” She had passed on none of her physical features (“she looked Native American—everyone thought so”) except her very long limbs. When William said this, he extended the arm that wasn’t holding Herman’s leash. “See?”

“Wow,” I said, and imagined how good it was going to feel when I had that arm wrapped around my waist.

More seriously, he said, “My mother was a wonderful person. I miss her dearly.”

“I’m sure you do. I’m so sorry.”

I don’t know what it was that made us stop walking, or what made us look at each other then. His face was perfect, his body. The air was perfect. The electricity between us. Even Herman’s bark had a musical ring to it. I remember thinking, You look like you could be the one. Even then I knew. William Stockton and Catherine West. Those two names were going to look great on an invitation. And then, without acknowledging that we had stopped or why, which made it even more perfect because it implied we understood each other without the annoyance of finding words to speak our understanding, William began to walk again, and I followed.

“And your parents? Are they still at Eighty-Fourth?”

“No. My mother moved out recently. And Dad’s gone. He died of a heart attack.” It had been a while—ten years—so I didn’t feel completely devastated saying it anymore, but it still upset me, especially being here, so close to where we had lived. William also seemed upset to hear this news, and sighed heavily in a way that confirmed he hadn’t known.

“That’s terrible. I adored your father. I mean that—I truly adored him. Once he took me to an exhibit about the railroad system in America. No one would go with him—your mother certainly wasn’t interested.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“It’s odd to think of now. Where were my parents? I can’t recall. But I remember that day well. Your father tipped the waitress a hundred dollars. I was very impressed.”

“He did that all the time!” I wanted to tell William I was generous like that, too, but there was no humble way to say this.

We had gotten to the edge of the reservoir: joggers in their skintight Lululemons, a French couple taking pictures of each other, and the water, so still, a barely moving reflection of the sky.

“Shall we make the loop?”

“Let’s make the loop,” I said, as though making the loop had a much greater significance than just walking in a circle.

It had been about a year since I’d been up here, since we’d sold the apartment. My mother’s Alzheimer’s had progressed to the point where the task of living alone was beyond her. For a while she had caretakers, but my mother was a difficult person, and these people kept quitting. My sister thought we should put her in a home. At the time I thought it was so shitty of us, but it actually turned out to be the best thing. She had friends there, or at least other forgetful people her age who seemed friendly enough, and the interior of the place—the sofas, the walls, everything—was either cream or yellow or a combination of cream and yellow, which looked lame in the pamphlet but had a surprisingly uplifting effect in person. It was completely unlike the dark apartment on Eighty-Fourth Street, with its heavy velvet curtains and its stone animals and its long disturbing hallways filled with plants.