We Could Be Beautiful (21 page)

I watched Vera through the office window. Poor Vera, who shopped at T.J. Maxx and lived in New Jersey, looked uncomfortable in those shit-brown slacks. After she rang Louboutins up, I called her name.

She stood in the doorway. I did not turn around. I looked at the computer. “It’s nice you came in,” she said. This felt backhanded.

“Of course I came in. It’s my shop.”

“Yes,” she said carefully. “It’s just been a little while.”

“Why haven’t you answered these e-mails? There are over a thousand.”

“I thought you told me you wanted to answer them yourself.”

“How can I answer a thousand e-mails when I’m not here, Vera?”

I knew what she was thinking: Can’t you open a computer anywhere, you tyrant?

“After what happened with the toilet paper, you clearly stated that you did not want me making any major decisions.”

“Well, you did order eighty rolls of toilet paper at the same time. Where did you think we were going to put all that? Out for people to see?”

“I thought we would put them in here. I bought in bulk because it saved us money. It saved us twenty dollars.”

I heard myself laugh. “Twenty dollars?”

“Yes,” she said. “We are in dire straits financially.”

The money would run out very soon. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her this. I convinced myself that protecting her was the kind thing to do. Right now, at this very moment, I was preventing Vera from having a heart attack.

“So do you want me to answer the e-mails now?”

“Yes, and you can answer the ones from the artists, too.”

“Really?”

I always dealt with the artists directly. So of course Vera was surprised. “Really.”

“Okay.”

“But sign my name.”

I turned to look at her then. I thought her face would be full of judgment, but it wasn’t. She didn’t even flinch. That disturbed me. She wasn’t surprised. She expected me to be terrible. I turned to face the screen. “That will be all,” I heard myself say.

18

L
eaf was just as appealing as Bonsai from the outside. A kitsch wooden sign hung above the door. Susan had made it herself. Somehow her chicken scratch had translated into homemade charm. Lucky. She was luckier than I was. Maybe I should have hired a reiki master to come balance the energy in my space before it opened. Maybe I should have made my sign myself, even if only as a gesture. (A sign company had made our sign.)

I had to remind myself that the problem was not how we were running our shops, it was what we were selling. People wanted tiny plants. People did not want blank $10 cards. How was I supposed to control what people wanted? I couldn’t control that. People were morons.

It was very big of me to be here today, considering what was about to happen. I also might have been interested in checking out the space with new eyes: how could it be split between us?

Bonsai was dark. It felt like being in a womb. The sound of running water from the fountain plants in the back was soothing. And it smelled delicious, like vanilla and orange and pine needles.

“Hey girl.” Susan hugged me. Her face still looked amazing. Had she gotten another peel? She wore jeans and a white shirt and salmon-pink loafers. “Why are you here? You never come here. I always go to you.”

“What’s the fragrance in here?”

“Glade.”

“No.”

“It’s incense.” Susan pointed to the back, where some incense was burning.

“So hippie of you.”

“Henry found it.”

“Did I hear my name?” Henry popped up so I could see him over the plants.

“Hey Henry, nice to see you. Thanks for coming to the party.”

“Thanks for inviting me.” Those cutoffs. He really did look like a gardener from a ’90s movie.

“All right,” Susan said to him. “We’re going shopping. Don’t burn the place down.” She grabbed his head with passionate force and pressed into his lips and I couldn’t help but think maybe that’s what Leaf had been missing: love.

•

We went to Barneys. I bought a $3,000 bag. A gold Alexander McQueen. I had to have it. Susan got a snakeskin Fendi for $5,500. I hated that I even noticed these numbers. Was this going to be my life now? Was I going to start budgeting? Cutting coupons? Strangely, I thought, If things get really bad, I can sell my hair. For someone’s cancer wig. I had heard of people doing that.

We took a cab to our favorite nail salon in the Village. We soaked our feet in the warm water, complimented each other’s purchases.

“The snakeskin is nice,” I said.

“Yours is perfect for summer,” she said.

We told the technicians we wanted our nails round, not square. We chose colors to match our new bags. “Matchy-matchy today,” Susan said.

I told Susan about how my mother was ruining my life and about the baby clause, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the shop. I felt physically incapable of saying the words. I was so ashamed.

“Do you think you can get pregnant again? The clock is ticking pretty loud.”

“I know.”

“Remember that abortion in your twenties? What was his name?”

I could never remember if it was Jim Stanwick or Jim Stanhope. “Jim.”

“Right. Your eyelashes looked so good after that.”

“I remember. You told me.”

But I didn’t remember much more than that. Both my abortions were blurry when I thought of them now. With Fernando, I’d had it done at eight weeks. That was terrible, because I found out he was leaving me at six and then had to wait. I was so angry at the time. I hated him so much. There was no way I was going to keep it. That thought didn’t even cross my mind. If I felt symptoms then, I drank them away. I’d done the same thing in my twenties. I barely remembered that pregnancy, even though it had lasted sixteen or seventeen weeks. I do remember the abortion was painful. I took painkillers and watched
Who’s the Boss?
reruns for a week straight. The only good part about it was that I didn’t apply mascara that whole week, and my lashes looked very plentiful and healthy by the end. I probably wouldn’t have noticed this unless Susan had told me. She stood at the end of the couch and said, “I should take a week off mascara! Your eyelashes look so plentiful and healthy!”

“What are you going to do if you can’t have a baby?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s a lot of money.”

“I know.”

“And, holy shit, your mother,” Susan said. “Money to charity is one thing, but when you don’t have enough for yourself?”

“Thank you. Exactly.”

“And she did this right after your dad died? What does that mean?”

“I have no idea.”

“There’s missing information here. And she said nothing when you asked her?”

“Nothing. She’s too out of it now, she won’t tell me.”

“She wouldn’t have told you before either. That woman is a steel fortress.”

This was not the first time Susan had called my mother a steel fortress. “I know.”

“You want me to go and talk to her?”

“No.”

“Why not? It couldn’t hurt.”

“Did I tell you about this piece of paper I found in her bathroom? Look, I’ll show it to you.”

I grabbed my wallet from my purse, handed Susan the scrawl.

Susan read it like she was in grade school, learning to read. “Guilt. Is. Cancer. Your mother wrote this?”

“It’s her handwriting.”

“There’s a skeleton in the closet here.”

“You think?”

“Obviously. Have you looked through her stuff? Where’s her stuff? Where’s all the stuff from the house?”

“In storage.”

“That’s where I would go if I were you.”

I imagined us breaking into the storage unit with flashlights, a pair of caricature Nancy Drews. We would hold the flashlights like dirty foreign objects, trying not to break a nail. “That seems crazy.”

“It’s not crazy. And don’t you want to know what art is left? You might need to sell some of it, if things get bad. Those could be some pricey pieces.”

I watched the technicians silently painting our toes. They were so patient.

“Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

“Let’s go tomorrow. I think I’m free in the afternoon.” Susan looked at the calendar on her phone. “Yes, free. Let’s do it.”

“I need to figure out how to get in.”

“That shouldn’t be hard.”

“You know,” Susan said, “it’s true.” She was doing her therapist eyes. “Guilt is cancer.”

•

Caroline would have one of the nannies drop off the key to the storage unit in the morning. Spencer had art class in the Village. They would stop by on the way.

“Thanks, Caroline.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Old photos.”

“We already went through that stuff, I thought.”

“I want to go through it again.”

“Catherine.” Her voice sounded heavy.

“What?”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

I heard movement. I heard a door close. She whispered, “I think Bob’s cheating on me.”

“Really?”

“I think he’s punishing me for not wanting another child.”

“Oh.”

“As if three isn’t enough.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“No. But it’s probably someone I know. It’s usually someone you know, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. Why do you think he’s cheating on you?”

“I don’t have any proof. It’s just a feeling. Do you think I should bring it up?”

“I don’t know.”

Caroline sighed. She sounded desperate. And I was pretty sure she was hiding in her closet.

I had to say something comforting, so I said, “Why don’t you wait and see how you feel in a few weeks?”

“You’re right.” She sounded very happy to receive this action item. “Okay, I’ll wait. Thanks, sis, you’re the best.”

19

W
e showed our IDs to the drowsy security guard and took the elevator up to the fifteenth floor. Susan had worn jeans and a tactile vest for the occasion. I had worn $300 athletic pants.

As we made our way down the windowless hall, I said, “Caroline thinks Bob’s cheating on her.”

“Gross,” Susan said. “Does she know who it is?”

“No.”

“It’s probably one of his nurses.”

“What?”

“Or the secretary.”

“They’re called administrative assistants now. I told her not to say anything yet.”

“She should find someone for herself.”

“Is that what you would do?”

“Probably.”

We kept walking. “It’s spooky in here,” Susan said. “And it smells rank.”

“I think it’s this one.” I put the key in the lock. The door opened to a large, dark room. I flicked the light.

“Thank God it’s organized.”

It was very organized. The movers had done a good job. Caroline must have tipped them well. She had dealt with the move because I’d been too busy planning my future with Fernando.

“Wow, she got rid of a lot. Did she auction it? There’s barely anything here.”

“Yeah, and gave the proceeds to fucking charity.”

“Fucking charity,” Susan said, stepping past me into the room.

I didn’t recognize much because it was all wrapped in light-blue mover’s blankets, except for the baby grand piano—the shape of that made it obvious. Other than mummified furniture, there was mummified art: tableau after tableau, stacked vertically like records in a record store. In the back were a bunch of clear Rubbermaid bins stacked tall in two columns. Each was diligently labeled. “Elizabeth’s Bells”—that contained Mom’s eccentric aunt’s collection of, obviously, bells, all of which were wrapped in beige packing paper that made them look like just trash. “Elizabeth’s Flowers”—that box contained stacks of pictures Mom had taken of flowers. Someone had inserted wax paper between each one to keep them from sticking together.

“ ‘Bruce Legal’—that looks good,” Susan said. It was at the very bottom of the stack. “Let’s take everything into the hall.”

“Great idea.”

We stood there, hands on our hips, looking at the towers of boxes and not moving.

“Yeah,” Susan said, “you have to get the ones on top. You’re the tall one. God, it smells like a thrift store in here.”

We moved all the Rubbermaids into the hallway. It turned out there were more behind the ones we had initially seen. We moved those, too. We were sweaty by the end. Susan got us waters from the vending machine, and we started opening the boxes.

“Bruce Legal” contained nothing of interest. It was filled with old contracts from his job. “Someone should scan this stuff,” I said.

“If it’s worth scanning. Look at this.” She didn’t hold it up, and I was too far away to see it anyway. “It’s your birth certificate. You weighed nine pounds and two ounces.”

“Is Caroline’s there?”

“No.”

“She must have taken it.”

I moved on to one of the “Miscellaneous” boxes. Seven of the fifteen boxes were labeled “Miscellaneous.”

I found Caroline’s first tooth in a vial, old report cards, notes from Grandma Jane, tons of Christmas cards. At first I lingered. I wanted to take a lot of this stuff home with me. I started making a pile. An hour later I said, “We might have to come back another day to finish.”

“No way,” Susan said. “I’m not coming back here.”

Next I opened “
Miscellaneous
.” I had a feeling the underline meant something. Mom liked uniformity. There must be a reason one was underlined and the rest were not.

Inside was a black lockbox. Cards and letters had been placed around the box so that from the outside it looked like a paper mess. Of course there was no key.

“Have you seen keys in any of your boxes?”

“No,” Susan said. “What is that?”

“I don’t know.”

I handed her the box. She shook it. Sounded like more papers. She grabbed her keys out of her bag. She inserted a small one, probably her mail key. The box opened.

On the top was a note:

Dear Viewer,

Kindly do not read the contents of this box unless I am dead.

ELIZABETH R. WEST

“This is going to be good.”

Under the note was a journal. Susan opened it and read aloud. “ ‘February 16, 1980. The Harrisons for dinner tonight. We will have lamb. Carmen and I practiced. Better be good. Mrs. Harrison is a food snob.’ ”