A Beauty Read online

  On the way home, Albert thought about her face in the doorway. He couldn’t quite decide what it was about her face, what showed in her face that put people off, put men off, anyway, even though she was still pretty. It was too confident or too knowing, or maybe it was too sexy. You could tell, just looking at her, that she liked it. She knew she scared most men away. It was good for him that she did.

  He checked on the kids when he got in, the three boys lying across their bed on top of the rumpled sheets, even the oldest, at fifteen, flush-faced, sweet-faced in sleep, and the little girls spooned together on their bed. He raised his hand over each in turn, could almost feel them in the air between. Thought of Betty, last thing, as always. Kind of strange, how that was. He didn’t imagine her, where she was now, or call to mind the image of her any time along their lives together. He thought of her being, her essence, the thing in the world that was her, and that was still tied to him.

  The Royal George at Charlesville, a three-storey brick box with the third floor closed off since the beginning of the Depression, boasted hallways wide enough to allow motor traffic. It really did boast about them, or the owners did; and they also extolled the fir woodwork and doors and floors, which were stained dark and varnished thickly, and the walls, which were calcimined a chalky mauve they thought looked regal. A bare light bulb hung in the centre of Bill and Elena’s ceiling, the first electricity Bill had seen since Calgary. There were cloths draped over both the chamber pot and the drinking water. There were two young kids called chambermaids who twice a day lugged water up from the kitchen pump and carried slops down to empty into the septic tank. They knocked on the doors with fresh hot water in the morning. The girl who entered Bill and Elena’s room blushed while she poured the water into the pitcher, and turned almost inside out when Bill tossed her a nickel from the bed.

  That morning Elena felt a bit sore here and there, while Bill appeared to have grown taller, stronger, and even happier. And he showed considerable efficiency, getting them up and going earlier than they had the morning before.

  “What is that for?” she wanted to know while she was dressing. She pointed to the rope coiled on the floor under the window. It was attached to the windowsill by a ring screwed into the wood.

  “For you. It’s easier than letting down your hair to a – lover,” he said. “Rapunzel,” he added when she didn’t respond.

  “Ah,” she said, still back on the word lover, liking him for his hesitation.

  “Fire regulations,” he said. “It’s easier on you than jumping, too.”

  He held his hand out to help her rise from the bed. He had excellent, natural manners, so natural he was probably unaware how agreeable it was to have doors held open for her, to have someone inquire in the morning how she was. She wondered if he knew he made people happy. Since she’d been with him, whole hours had gone by when she’d felt she could be any girl, living an ordinary life.

  They had breakfast at the Monarch Dining Room, situated at the front of the Royal George, just past the large rotunda. She asked if she could borrow some money to buy a few things. He fanned through his wallet and handed her a five-dollar bill.

  “That’s too much. I don’t need so much.”

  “Let’s go shopping,” he said, with that smile of his that made his eyes brighter. Then he was paying the bill, chatting with the waitress, making her laugh.

  At the Red and White store she bought toothpaste, a jar of Mum’s cream deodorant, a face-powder compact, and a lipstick. She showed it all to him afterwards, trying not to act excited. He could tell she was pleased about it, though. He’d have bet she’d never bought a thing for herself before. While she was in the store he’d smoked outside, leaning against the angle-parked Lincoln and nodding at all who stared – and that was everyone. Then he walked her down the sidewalk, past the bakery and the bank and the hardware store, in and out of those rectangular blocks of cool shade, heading for Peg’s Style House, where Peg’s name had been painted over somebody else’s. Elena fell behind and he turned to see why. His heart kind of skipped when he saw her standing alone on the sidewalk of that big, wide Main Street, with a mile of sky over her head, and looking shy for the first time, clutching her paper bag that she’d rolled at the top the way a kid would have. She was gazing across the street to the Capitol Theatre. She was peering at the poster in the window, trying to read it. He came back and took her elbow and guided her across the street, stopping the traffic – one farmer in an old truck – as if he represented the Red Sea in Charlesville today.

  It was a handsome couple, lying back, embracing, in a slice of yellow moon.

  “Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert,” she read aloud.

  “Col-bear,” Bill corrected. She only smiled. “How do you think I’d look with a moustache?” he said, and she smiled again, her standard almost-smile that he wouldn’t have registered as a smile at all until he’d got to know her.

  “It Happened One Night,” she read. “Just like us, eh? It happened one night.”

  “It?”

  “Yeah. It. It happened.”

  The way she spoke, with the accent not always where you expected it, and her voice falling softly in odd places, it seemed to Bill as if the words were melting and sinking down somewhere way below him. He knew what she meant, it was what people said in those days so they didn’t have to say the word sex out loud, but he hadn’t thought of the euphemism in connection with this motion picture and he said so.

  “You didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder if they did, the ones who made the movie. They must be smart, to make a movie. You’d think they could dream up a title that would say two things at once.” She reached out and touched the glass over Clark Gable’s face and traced his moustache. “Does it happen between these two, do you know?”

  “Listen, why don’t we stay over tonight and find out?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right,” she said. “I don’t mind if I do.”

  Peg hated herself for perking up when they walked in – a guy with money and a gal who could make any dress look like you wish you’d shopped at Peg’s. But you can’t stop hope once it jumps up and knocks against your breastbone.

  He picked out a couple of flashy numbers. The girl didn’t say no, but she kept on looking along the racks. Finally she pulled one out and held up the hanger.

  He said, “Brown? You’ve already got a brown dress.”

  She smiled, a secret half-smile. She knew herself and she was getting to know him – that’s what the smile said. The dress she held up was a light tan, and a whole lot more stylish than the faded old thing she was wearing. It was a demure little summer model, classy, with great lines, short sleeves, and a V-necked collar that would have looked too cute on the wrong girl.

  He strolled outside for a smoke while she tried it on. Peg held the curtain for her and she ducked into the little back room. “Call me,” Peg said. She had the shoes to match if only she had her size in stock, two-tone beige spectator pumps.

  The dress was perfect, as she’d known it would be. Peg joined her at the mirror and handed her the shoes. “Oh,” the girl said, and they fit like a pair of glass slippers. She was smooth as glass under the dress, too, wasn’t wearing any undergarments, and Peg didn’t suggest any. Even the guy she was with would understand the beauty of that dress was its modest cling.

  She said, “I might like to work in a place like this.” Peg was standing back, behind her, and she was talking to her through the mirror.

  “You got experience?” Not that it mattered one iota.

  “No, I haven’t worked before. I have my grade twelve,” she said.

  She saw Peg’s opinion of that in the mirror. If she’d looked either haughty or cowed, Peg would have left it there, but she looked sympathetic, and Peg really didn’t need sympathy from a raw kid. “Good luck getting a job of any kind, anywhere,” she told her. “Especially with no experience. Do you know wh
at the wage is, for a woman, right now? One dollar a week. One dollar. And even at that I can’t afford a clerk.”

  “Oh,” she said again. Not so enchanted with the whole business, now. Looking at herself, now, instead of at Peg, and looking pretty young and useless, too. A lot of good that did Peg, her own dream staring her in the face, the dream of getting out of Charlesville ever since she’d arrived, and setting up somewhere else, in some bigger centre where her ambition and her eye for the figure flaws of others could make her a decent living.

  Once they were back in the Monarch Dining Room, having their supper amid the tables of single salesmen, Bill talked about the importance of not getting taken. He went over the example of Peg, who had expected to make an unreasonable profit off that ridiculously priced dress Elena had chosen, and the shoes, too. She was asking way more than they were worth. He’d simply said they’d take both the dress and the shoes for half the price she’d named. She’d opened her mouth and closed it, and wrapped up Elena’s old things because she wore the new ones out of the shop. “You gotta know how people tick,” he said.

  “I wonder how she can make a living,” Elena said. Peg’s stock had been picked over and was outmoded, and she’d brightened too much when Bill and Elena walked in. She’d called Elena “Dear.” It hadn’t sounded natural.

  “That doesn’t take me in, that hangdog look, the whine in the voice,” Bill said. “It’s commerce. You shouldn’t be in it if you don’t know how to deal. Hell, most people don’t have a clue how the world works. Why, everyone trades for a profit. She still made some money, just not as much as she thought she could take me for. You don’t know people, living in isolation, where you were. You gotta look out for yourself.”

  Elena nodded. Bill paid for the meal and sent his compliments to the cook. The pork chops had been just the way he liked them.

  Clark Gable says she’ll never get away with it. He’s the big city reporter; she’s the heiress who ran away from her old man. The movies know what you like to hear. Even back then they knew, maybe especially back then. But running away, it appeals at any time. Elena snuggled down in her seat, her mouth open like a kid.

  Claudette Colbert says she wants to be alone, but everyone knows she doesn’t. She just hasn’t found the right man yet. In the meantime, her rich daddy has got everyone in the whole United States of America looking for her, and here she is – on a bus.

  Clark Gable calls her a spoiled brat. The slimy guy on the make calls her “Sister.” She falls asleep on Clark Gable’s shoulder. Pretty soon he’s looking after her, and it’s a good thing; she keeps forgetting she has no money. He tells her she’s on a budget, acting like he’s her husband. When they have to share a room overnight, the walls of Jericho go up – a blanket on a rope Clark Gable strings between the twin beds. He tells her not to worry; he has no trumpet. Hah! Take that one two ways.

  Off comes her nice little suit to reveal her pretty, lacy slip, the lace as delicate as the icy edge of a spring puddle. It suddenly occurs to her to ask his name. From behind the woollen wall. In the meantime, her rich father is in a plane, flying overhead. He’s employed a detective agency. No expense will be spared to find her. No expense. That’s how much he loves her. That’s how much a father is supposed to love a daughter.

  It’s time for Clark Gable to establish some male superiority. He’ll cook and he’ll press her clothes, but in return she has to do what he says. She’s fine with that. It’s give and take, isn’t it? And right then three detectives barge in, searching every room in the world, apparently, and why not, when money is no object? And now Clark and Claudette (a.k.a. Peter and Ellie) start acting a parody of a lower-class couple, haranguing one another in a lower-class way. That fools the dicks. Everyone knows an heiress wouldn’t have such a shrill, unpleasant voice, or fight with her man in public.

  Her father offers a $10,000 reward. Her picture appears on all the front pages. The whole bus sings “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.”

  “I know who she looks like. Betty Boop,” Bill whispers. Elena doesn’t know who Betty Boop is. He squeezes her. He has his arm around her. “Is this the first movie you’ve seen?” he asks. Somebody behind them leans forward and says, “Shhh!”

  Now they’re walking by a stream. Moonlight on water, you’ve never seen a stream sparkle like this, and he picks her up like baggage and carries her over his shoulder across the sparkling stream, the sound of wading beautiful under their banter. She’s such a brat, he gives her a spank on the bum. Bill laughs so hard he has to take his arm back for a bit. All the men in the audience are laughing with him. They’ve all been thinking she’s just too sassy for her own good, this little gal.

  Then it’s morning and he tells her they’ll have to hitch and she asks when the hitching comes in. Just like a woman, thinking of marriage because they’ve spent the night together, even if it hasn’t happened. She started out the movie on a hunger strike and now she knows what it is to be hungry. After a day without food, she’s so hungry she’s finally eating a raw carrot, which she turned her pretty nose up at before.

  It’s another night and up go the walls of Jericho again. “It’s not everybody who travels with rope,” Bill says and Elena laughs. Even the woman behind them laughs.

  Through the woollen wall, he tells her what he wants is someone who’s real, who’s alive, a girl who loves the moon and the stars and water. She says she loves him. But it can’t happen yet. Her father arrives with a police escort, sirens wailing, and takes her away. Hobos wave from a train, happy to be poor. The front pages say “Love Triumphs,” and after a while it does. In the nick of time, she bolts from the wrong man to the arms of the right one, her white veil flying out behind her.

  The walls of Jericho tumble, the trumpet blares. Bill squeezes her again.

  Walking back to the hotel afterwards, going over the movie’s highlights in his mind, Bill said, “We’ll have to get you a slip, sweetheart.”

  She just smiled, the way she did automatically, to get out of talking.

  “Funny old Peg didn’t sell you one today.” He waited. “I said, ‘Funny she didn’t sell you one today.’ ”

  “Oh,” she said. “Yes.”

  She might be walking alongside him, but she was in her own world, that was clear. He slipped his arm around her. When he thought about it, he was glad she was quiet; he had time to imagine the kind of conversation he’d like the two of them to have, him talking to her the way Clark Gable talked about the moon and stars and water and the kind of woman – yeah, the kind of woman – he wanted to share all that with him. Love-talk, the likes of which he could only imagine saying in a dream.

  Sometimes a terrible depression fell on Peg. Albert had seen it before. There she sat, on her sofa, not even pretending she could go on. He’d passed her shop after work and saw that she’d closed up early, so he’d stopped in at the house instead of going to his mother’s to collect the girls. On the way up the path to her door, he’d considered picking one of her own petunias and presenting it to her, hoping to make her smile. He was too much of a coward to do it. Someone might have seen him, and Peg herself might have thought it foolish.

  He sat beside her, smoothing her springy hair back from her forehead, and she didn’t shake him off. Then he took one of her hands in both of his. She nestled her head against him.

  She found herself thinking of telling him what she was going to do, but in the past tense, as if she had already done it, saying “I thought I’d put the kettle on and make a pot of tea,” imagining she’d already stood up and moved to the kitchen. But she hadn’t moved, she wasn’t moving; her head still rested on his shoulder. And she wasn’t standing at the counter with a can opener saying he must be hungry, because he had to go home and get supper for his kids.

  “You need to go. You need to pick up the girls at your mother’s,” she said.

  “She won’t mind if I’m late once in a while.”

  “No, go.” It sounded brusque, rude. She did
n’t care. He had a mother, the kids. She stood up, a formality, the only way to make him go now that she’d decided she wanted to be alone. She could already hear herself telling him, the next evening, “I went straight to bed after you left.” Saw him nod his head. Thought about banging hers against the bedroom wall.

  “It’s not enough,” she said aloud. It just slipped out. She was starting down the hall towards her bedroom, thinking he’d already gone. He hadn’t gone; he was standing by the sofa, watching her, but she turned away.

  VIRGINIA VALLEY

  Bill said she didn’t understand motion pictures. And there was nothing wrong with being rich.

  She said, “Well, there’s nothing so good about being poor, that’s for sure.”

  “Nothing interesting about it, either. That’s why nobody wants to see it when they go out for an evening.”

  “I don’t know why not. It’s a challenge just getting through the day when you have no money,” she said in her deliberate way, as if she’d figured it out like an arithmetic problem, and this was the solution. “And people have to co-operate, not just look out for themselves.”

  He didn’t bother pointing out that co-operation wasn’t exactly the engine of high drama. He wondered if she was going to turn out to have a great many opinions, and decided to try her trick and not bother answering at all. Just enjoy driving along with her beside him. That was what he liked, just having her beside him like she was, lolling back in the soft leather seat, her bare feet up on the dashboard. She was wearing his fedora to keep the sun off her face. With her tawny blonde hair she fit perfectly inside the gold Lincoln.