We Could Be Beautiful (25 page)

The last picture was of William lying next to his mother. It was more recent: 1996. He appeared to be dozing off. Her long arm was draped over his shoulder. They weren’t posing; it was a candid shot. His mother wore a white tunic and sunglasses on top of her head, her hair in a loose bun. William also wore white. Their white shirts and the bright, bare glow of the sun gave the impression of Africa, or the Mediterranean. Her skin was the exact color of a Starbucks Caramel Frappuccino. She had long, sloping features, and her face was like the mold of a face set in clay and left to drip: nose stretched and thin, downturned mouth, the wide, sad eyes of a basset hound, drooping at the corners. Just as he had said, they looked nothing alike.

That was it—the box was empty. I put the photos side by side on the desk, and I began to string a story together. William had had a happy, well-groomed childhood. His dad had been a total asshole. I was sure that that fish had died three days after that photo was taken, or had lived an incredibly long time, as goldfish won at carnivals tend to do, or so people claim. He had been very good at the violin if they’d let him play a solo. This suggested greatness, which his asshole father demanded of him at every turn. He had excelled academically. He was the best in the class. He was the valedictorian, or the runner-up. He did this both to spite his father and to please him. His teenage years had not been miserable, or at least not outwardly. No acne, no braces. And he and his mother were obviously very, very close.

I hadn’t known what I was looking for when I started looking through his things that morning, but when I found these pictures, I understood. I had been looking for a way in: something to make me feel like I knew William beyond the surface of what he presented. I reminded myself it wasn’t William’s fault that he was a private person. That was his nature. I would not try to change him. I would respect his need for privacy. Also, even if he had described these moments to me, he wouldn’t have fully been able to. The deficiency of language—words could never fully capture a moment. Maybe images couldn’t fully capture moments either, but they certainly helped. I now had a sense of his past. The photos filled in the blanks. They provided a picture of William’s innocence. William, the innocent boy. William, the innocent teenager. William, the innocent man. I would hold on to this for a long time.

23

S
unday morning I skipped church, despite what William had said: “It would be nice for you to go and keep Marge company.” I didn’t like church enough to go there alone. I worked out with Chris and went to the shop instead. Maybe I should have canceled my massage—we had only a few days left at the shop, I should be there all the time—but Chris assured me I would need it after the workout we’d had, and also I was stressed. (Was I ever not stressed? Was anyone?)

At three I opened the door, expecting Dan, but there was Max, holding his violin.

“Hi Mrs. West.” He shifted the case from one hand to the other as though it weighed a thousand pounds.

I looked down the street on both sides. No sign of his mother. “Did your mom leave already?”

“Yeah, she has errands,” he said, in a rote way that made it clear he said this a lot.

“Okay, well, come in. Maybe we can call her and ask her to come back. William’s not here. He’s out of town.”

“Really?” He widened his honey-colored eyes, flushed with a new energy, so excited he wouldn’t have to practice today. He even did a little jump.

My automatic response to this was not leniency. I said, “Maybe you can practice here anyway, in the study.” God, I sounded like my drill-sergeant mother. When had I gotten so old? I was not old. I backtracked. “Or we can just eat cookies.”

“Cookies,” he said eagerly. Then, in a serious tone, “Cookies.”

In the kitchen I gave him a Coke and in the pantry found a bag of cookies I’d never seen before. I grabbed a Pellegrino for myself and sat on the couch with him, thinking, If you drop a chocolate chip on my white couch, I will murder you. But he was careful, or well bred, or both. He held an upturned palm under his chin to catch the crumbs. I was impressed.

“Okay,” I said, “what’s your mom’s number?”

He told me. I dialed. “What’s your mom’s name?”

“Doreen.”

That was an unfortunate name. Doreen didn’t pick up. I left a message. “Hello, this is Catherine West, William Stockton’s fiancée. William is out of town, so there won’t be a session today. If you could come back and pick Max up, that would be great.”

“She never checks her voice mail.” Max chewed his cookie, looked around. He was bouncing a little on the couch. Sugar high. “I’m glad William isn’t here.”

“Because you don’t have to practice today?”

He tapped his Tevas. They looked oddly clean. Maybe they were new. “Yeah.”

“Do you like coming here and practicing with William?” God, did I sound like my mother again? What was happening to me? Also, why was I talking to Max like he was four? He was nine.

“No.”

“No? Why not?”

“Ummmm…” He took another cookie from the bag and inspected both sides before biting. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Can I have another soda?”

He’d finished that one already? “Sure.” I went to the fridge, hoping two sodas and cookies weren’t enough to induce heart palpitations in a young child.

“Thanks.” He opened the can easily, like an adult, no fumbling.

“So why don’t you like practicing with William?”

“He’s weird.”

Yeah, okay, I could see how a child would think William was weird. He was so tall and so strangely articulate, with his heightened dictionary way of speaking. That would be weird to a kid.

“Why is he weird?”

Max bounced on the couch. “I don’t knoooooow.”

“Is he weird because he’s so tall?”

“No.”

“Why then?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

Being around Max made me uneasy. I didn’t really know how to act with kids that age, because they were little versions of actual people. They knew things, but not everything. How much were you supposed to tell them? What were you supposed to say?

I thought of the picture of William playing the violin. That was a good segue.

“Have you ever played a solo?”

“No.”

“Do you like the violin?”

“I hate it.”

“Do you want to see a picture of William playing the violin when he was younger?”

“No.”

Well, at least he was decisive.

“Can I watch TV?”

“Sure.”

He took the remote from the coffee table, turned it on. He knew how to use that remote better than I did. Was I supposed to pick a channel for him? Tell him what he could and couldn’t watch? He found the Disney Channel and set the remote down. Okay, Disney seemed appropriate.

“Can I have more cookies?”

I almost said, You’re going to have to watch it. Once you stop growing vertically, you will start growing horizontally if you keep eating like this. That was one of my mother’s favorite lines. “Of course,” I said, and got up to find more cookies. These were some artisanal chocolate-dipped wafers wrapped in a bow that I had also never seen before.

“These look weird,” he said when I handed him the bag.

Good, he used the word
weird
for everything. This meant that William being weird held no weight.

“Try one,” I said, impressed by the solid combination of sweetness and firmness in my voice.

I was nervous as he undid the bow and looked at one of the wafers like it was going to taste bad. But then he ate one and said, “It’s good.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Thank you, Mrs. West,” he said, like a machine.

“You can call me Catherine.”

Eyes on the screen, mouth full of wafer, he said, again like a machine, “Thank you, Catherine.”

“You’re welcome.”

The Disney sitcom tackled the issue of school bullying. That seemed useful. The bully pressed the nerd into a row of lockers and hissed, “I don’t like
kids,
” and the whimpering nerd said, “But you’re a kid, too, Tony. Please don’t hurt me.” During the commercial break—Go-Gurt, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Legos—I asked Max, “Are people nice to you at school?”

“I guess.”

“Are you nice to the other kids?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you and Stan hang out at school?”

“Only in Music.”

“Why only in Music?”

“I don’t know.”

The answer was obvious: Stan was a nerd and Max was a cool kid. But at least he wasn’t a bully like Tony, who wore a puffy duck-hunting vest and had a mullet. He’d also grown up in a trailer park. He was troubled, we should understand.

I tried Doreen one more time. No answer.

I took a picture of Max laid out on the couch (he’d taken off his shoes now and was petting Herman) and sent it to William. I wrote, “Hanging out with Max!” After I pressed Send, I worried this would be interpreted as passive-aggressive, so I added: “And having fun!”

•

Dan smelled like lavender. He wore a new necklace that appeared to be made of hemp or twine or something earthy and his usual massage uniform. I explained about Max.

“No worries,” he said. “I can hang out.”

I got him a Coke and we all sat on the couch. A new episode of the same Disney show had started.

“Can I have one of those cookies, man?” Dan asked Max.

“They’re wafers,” Max said, and tossed him the bag.

I felt awkward. What were we supposed to be doing right now? I was bad at unstructured time. I texted Marty. Facebook. Still no word from Mae.

“Where do you live?” Max asked Dan during a commercial break.

“In Brooklyn,” Dan said. “Where do you live?”

“Two-twenty-nine East Seventy-Ninth Street, apartment four.” His eyes went back and forth between Dan and me. “Are you guys brother and sister?”

“No man, we’re friends.”

As we sat there, I thought two things. One: Am I having fun right now? And two: I want to put my legs on Dan’s knees. Which was strange. But it meant nothing. No. All it meant was that I missed my fiancé.

•

Doreen arrived late, disheveled and out of breath. Every time I saw this woman she appeared to have just escaped some traumatic event, which may or may not have taken place on a boat. Her wardrobe had a consistent nautical flair. Today she wore brown tasseled loafers, cream linen Ralph Lauren pants, a navy blouse, and a matching navy hat with an oversized brim. Unless she was on her way to the Hamptons right now, this outfit was out of place. She looked like a distorted, weathered version of Max: same brown eyes, but darker; same nose, but wider; same thin lips. Her face was freckled like Max’s, but much more heavily, and her skin had the yamlike quality of someone who had spent a childhood in direct sunlight without protection. Maybe the hat was an attempt to reduce further damage.

She petted Max’s fine black hair roughly, like he was a horse. “So sorry I’m late,” she said. I placed her accent somewhere north of here, maybe Boston; it was the way she said “Saw-ry.” I wondered if she’d been born into money—a shipping family, a lobster dynasty—or come into it later. Did she carry that blue Birkin with a guilt-ridden pride, knowing how much it could be replaced for?

I explained about William being gone. “We watched some TV and had a snack,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask me exactly what the snack was, but something about Doreen told me she wouldn’t care that much.

“Max, what do you say?”

“Thanks, Mrs. West.”

“Catherine,” I said, reminding him.

Thanks, Catherine.”

Max slogged down the stairs with his heavy violin. Doreen followed. Her walk was like a prance, like an Aerosoles commercial: look at that spring! “Would you rather come with me to get my glasses fixed or go home and watch TV?” she said, stepping onto the sidewalk.

“I’ll come with you,” he said, excited he’d been given this option. As they walked off, I thought it was sad that Max wanted to hang out with his mom more than he wanted to watch TV. I thought, If it were me, we’d go to the park, not to LensCrafters. I thought, Life is so unfair. Doreen gets to be a mother and I don’t?

•

Dan and I meditated again. I was better at it this time, though I did keep opening my eyes to make sure he wasn’t opening his. He wasn’t. The timer on his phone went off—the ding of a gong that reverberated—and we Om’d. He bowed. I copied him, unsure, feeling silly. He opened his eyes.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Were you always so calm, Dan?”

Dan laughed. “You think I’m calm?”

“Are you kidding? Compared to me, yes.”

“That’s funny. Most of the time I feel completely crazy inside.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think everyone feels like that?”

“Some more than others. But yes, overall, I’d say we’re all crazier than we let on.”

“Interesting.”

The massage started. We kept talking. About his roommate, Florence, a mixed-media artist who was interested in photographing the insides of convenient stores, and his dog, a Lab named Gandolf. We ended up on the subject of the Counting Crows. What had happened to them? “If they’re still touring, we should go see them,” I said.

“Definitely,” Dan said.

“I think William would love to come. I know he likes them, too.” This was a complete lie. I’d never heard William listen to any music besides Berlioz. Even on his runs I think he listened to Berlioz.

“Great. We should all go.”

“How are you doing with your breakup?”

“It’s hard to say. We’re still friends, but I’m not sure we should be seeing each other so much. At least not right now.”

“Right.”

“It must feel wonderful to have met someone you want to spend the rest of your life with.”

“It does, yeah.”

A long pause.

“What are you doing on Wednesday?”

“I’m not sure. Do you have a referral?”

“No, I’m wondering if you want to come to the shop for dinner. It’s a good-bye dinner.”

“I’d love to,” he said, and of course I immediately assumed he was using me. He thought the party would be a good place to get more clients.