We Could Be Beautiful (7 page)

When I said “I love you,” it might have been more for me than for her. I was making a serious effort to become softer. I was practicing. It made me so uncomfortable to utter these words that I actually felt dizzy for a second, and distractedly reached for my water glass to avoid eye contact.

Caroline looked surprised (this was only the third time I had said “I love you” to her; yes, I was counting), and then she looked exhilarated. This felt like too much responsibility. In the mirror behind Mom, I could see that my cheeks had turned pink. Mom looked disgusted.

“I love you, too,” Caroline gushed. Of course the actress among us could say those words the most easily. But I sometimes wondered if it was Caroline’s imitations of a cinematic existence that had gotten her so far in her real life. Because after all, she was the married one. She was the one with babies.

Our plates arrived at the table, followed by a moment of worrying about an unexpected reaction from Mom. Sometimes she suddenly hated the thing she usually liked. But today she picked up the fork and twirled her pasta with the rhythm of her old self.

“She’s in a good mood,” Caroline whispered.

“I know.”

“What are you two saying?”

“We’re saying this is good food, Mom.”

Mom looked suspicious, and then her face melted into calm. Her emotions changed so quickly. It was hard to keep up, and there was no real point in trying.

Alzheimer’s, we had learned, was a progressive disease. The longer it went on, the more Mom’s memories would go further and further into the past, replacing the memories of the things that had just happened. “So that by the end,” one doctor explained, “she will have settled on the earliest memories, things from childhood that make her happiest to talk about.” Mom had never liked to talk about the past, especially her early past. She’d grown up without money and she was ashamed of it. She had a stock answer for people who asked her questions about her childhood: “I have lived nine lives—how can I remember them all?”

For now, what Mom liked talking about was our father. How they’d met in Greece (“Ios, fabulous place”) and moved to the Upper East Side (“I thought we had become stiff, but your father assured me it was the only place we belonged”), and their marriage (“Thank God I was pretty, or he wouldn’t have stayed”). Sometimes she called out for him—“Bruuuuuce!”—but most of the time she remembered he was dead.

Mom’s other favorite subject was how her caretakers were thieves. Evelyn had stolen her comb, “the fat one” wouldn’t give her “the good shampoo,” they were all trying to pinch her purse, even though she no longer carried one.

I took a few halfhearted bites and moved the food around my plate. Of course I was thinking about William. I didn’t want to ask in front of Caroline, but I also didn’t know when Mom would be feeling this good again. I started slowly.

“Mom, I met someone you used to know.”

“Yes?” Her eyes focused on me. Sauce dribbled down her chin. I was happy she noticed and wiped it with her napkin.

“Do you remember the Stocktons?”

“Edward and Donna,” she said automatically.

“Who’s that?” Caroline asked.

“Donna and I served on the New York City Children’s Art Fund. It was very successful. We raised a lot of money.” It was obvious she’d said this many times before. She sipped her prosecco. She was almost fooling me into thinking she was back to her normal self. “Edward and your father were great drinking buddies,” she said. “Scotch.”

“When did you meet?”

“Long ago. Your father and I were still”—Mom paused, looking for specifics, and, when she found none, chose something general (Alzheimer’s pointed out how crafty the sufferer could be)—“at the beginning.”

“Do you remember their son, William?”

My mother’s eyes went fiery, then blank. She stopped chewing. She spit the food from her mouth into her napkin and pushed her plate away.

“Mom?”

She wouldn’t look at me.

“Mom.”

She took her prosecco glass by the stem and lifted it, looking out the window at the rain because it was raining now, hard. The sound of the water beating on the pavement drowned out all other sounds in that moment.

It was important to be clear. “Mom, do you remember William Stockton?”

“Who
is
that?” Caroline asked again.

My mother’s nostrils flared involuntarily.

Caroline said, “Well, whoever it is, Mom’s not a fan.”

“Mom, please.”

“Drop it,” Mom said.

“Whoa,” Caroline said.

“I won’t drop it,” I said.

“Oh my God, are you serious? She’s having a good day, Catherine!”

“Mom,” I said.

“Catherine!” Caroline yelled.

“Mom!” I yelled.

But my mother was done. She was putting her coat on. She was putting it on backwards, but she was still putting it on. “I am ready to leave,” she said.

Caroline was signaling to the waiter for the check.

“Fine, I give up, I give up.” I dropped my napkin on top of my uneaten salad, maybe a little too dramatically. To Caroline I said, “I can’t take this sometimes.”

“I know, I know.” She rubbed my back with the eagerness of a clawing animal.

“Stop.” I moved her hand off me. Where was my phone? No matter what time it was, I would say I was running late. I had to go. This was too much. When I found my phone, I saw that I actually was running late. “I have to go. Caroline, do you—”

“Go.”

“Thanks.” I kissed her sticky face and stood up to kiss my mother, who still wouldn’t look at me. When I said, “Mom,” she held her palm up and turned her face farther away. What else was there to do? I said good-bye and walked out of the restaurant (what was that couple by the window thinking now?) and got into a cab heading back downtown. My driver’s name was Sadat.

•

Of course Mom’s reaction bothered me, but I couldn’t trust it either. Even pre-Alzheimer’s, she’d had a tendency to hate people for no apparent reason, or for reasons that were insignificant and unfair. Growing up, I loathed the moment my mother would meet a new friend. She was extremely judgmental, and if the person fell short of her impossible standards, it was bad. Sophia, for example, my roommate at Sarah Lawrence, was pretty and smart and the kind of person who was hard to dislike. But she chewed gum. Constantly. There was always a piece of gum in that girl’s mouth. The day she came over for the first (and last) time, Sophia was midsentence about her love of soccer when my mother said, “I’m sorry, I can’t hear what you’re saying over the smacking of that gum in your mouth,” and left the room. After that, whenever I mentioned Sophia, Mom gave me the silent treatment. Sophia the gum chewer was dead to her.

So. If she didn’t like William (if she even knew who he was; maybe she was confused about that), it was probably for a very stupid reason.

I got worked up and pissed off in the cab, thinking about my mother and cataloguing all the things in my life she had ruined. She had barely raised us herself, and then she had sent us to boarding school. She had alienated us. No, I wasn’t a victim. I was simply taking note of the facts.

We were stuck in traffic again. I called Jeff and left a terse message about the blinds. I called Vera to ask her where she had put the flowers. “At the front, Catherine.” She sounded defiant. “Good,” I said, and hung up.

I inhaled deeply, told myself to relax. I noticed I wasn’t breathing, which was something I’d been noticing a lot lately.

When I finally got to Equinox, I waved at the desk person, who tried to stop me. “Excuse me, ma’am, can you scan please?”

I kept walking as I said, “I’m in a hurry. Can I do it later?” I had no intention of doing it later. That girl should have known who I was by now.

In the locker room I wondered yet again why these women sauntered around so sexually. Were we in a porno? Did the tween-looking model with the belly-button ring really need to sashay to her locker like that? It wasn’t jealousy. Even when I had had that body, I had walked like a normal person.

Sex with William was going to be great. I may have had a history of being nonsexual (this had been a big problem between me and horny Fernando), but I was so attracted to William. I wasn’t worried at all.

I changed into my workout gear—all black Lululemon, purple Nikes—and met Chris by the treadmill. Chris was a gorgeous gay black man with crystal studs and the most defined quads I had ever seen. He liked to put his hands on his hips to air out his biceps, which looked like perfect dunes on a postcard horizon. I loved Chris—he never failed to put me in a better mood. When he saw me coming, he said, “Hey baby!” and gave me a kiss. “Get on up here!”

“I’m so sorry I’m late.”

“No problem,” he said.

“Ugh, I’m never on time, I just have so much to do.” I put my hair in a ponytail with a sigh and stepped onto the treadmill. Maybe I was being a brat, but I was stressed. I was allowed to be stressed. My life was stressful. Even though I was richer and luckier than most people, that didn’t mean I couldn’t be stressed. It was all relative. Wasn’t it? If I were making minimum wage and living in a bad apartment, I’d be stressed about that. Was that stress equal to the stress I felt today about my family? I asked myself this type of question a lot, and I always answered in the same way: probably. It was probably relative, which meant there was nothing to feel guilty about.

Chris put me at level three and the track started moving. “We’ll start you slow today, baby, don’t worry.”

“I am just so stressed out!” Complaining made me feel better. And then I smiled. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a sense of humor.

“Yeah? What’s wrong?”

I didn’t feel like talking about my mother. “My legs are killing me.”

“Woman, smile,” he said, which made me smile. “Happy face!”

Chris was big on happy face. If you made a face like you were in pain, then you
were
in pain, and it made your workout a lot harder. I thought that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard, but it also worked.

It felt good to walk it off. Working out made me happier; it always did. I didn’t have a therapist because the gym was my therapist. That’s what I said to people all the time.

I looked at Chris. I should ask him a question. So I asked the question I always asked. “How are auditions going?” Of course Chris was an actor. Every personal trainer I’d ever met was an actor.

“Good,” he said. “I’m working it.”

I was breathing harder now. “Remind me to give you my friend’s number.”

“Yeah,” Chris said, “for sure. I’ll give you my card.”

“Okay.” I wiped my face with the towel. “Didn’t you already give it to me? I must have lost it. Sorry.”

“No worries, baby, no worries. All right.” He reached over. “Moving you up to six now. Keep it going, you’re doing great.”

I had been meaning to hook Chris up with my friend who was a casting director. It was the least I could do to help someone who was really struggling. Chris had moved to New York from Ohio or somewhere, not knowing anyone. I couldn’t even imagine how hard that must be. And he lived in Queens, which was so depressing. I had barely been to Queens, but I knew there were a total of four trees in the whole borough.

After the treadmill, we did burpees and weights. My anger was making this a great workout. Chris and I talked about food. That was sort of our bonding thing. We had decided the carrot cake at Whole Foods was the best on earth. We couldn’t believe Jamba Juice (“the McDonald’s of smoothie places”) was still in business. Organic Avenue was obviously the best juice place. We voted Juice Generation “most innovative.” Today Chris was praising the nuances of their Coco Açai smoothie. “It is an ugly color, but girl, it tastes like heaven.”

We did our final stretches on the mat by the window. The air outside was gray, foggy, one big puff of smoke. As I reached for my toes, Chris pushed my back. We had our routine down; I knew what to expect. This was the part where I felt relaxed and accomplished. I had worked hard. I was a hard worker. Good things would come to me because of this hard work.

5

H
e sat there with such confidence, his arm hanging easily over the chair, telling me the funniest things I had ever heard. His shorter hair was an improvement—he looked even better. He wore a navy-blue suit that angled his body in all the right ways. I wore the cream dress with the super-deep V-neck I’d picked up at Alice + Olivia after my workout. It appeared to be stitched from large silken petals that flowed around me when I walked. The lingering eyes of other people told me we looked good. We looked like we belonged together.

William wasn’t funny funny, but he was so charming. It was his vague Europeanness and his overly articulate way of speaking—the way he never said “Yeah” but always “Yes,” and how he constantly said my name. Catherine. Yes, Catherine. That’s incredible, Catherine. I had the lamest smile plastered on my face. My cheeks were sore already.

We ordered martinis and looked at the menu, sort of. He looked at the menu while I looked at him. “What strikes you, Catherine?” he asked.

I scanned quickly. In yet another opportunity to be my clichéd self, I was exactly that. “The salad looks good.”

When the waiter reappeared, William said, with such assurance, and also like it was 1952, “The kale salad for the lady, please, and I will have the Hudson Valley duck confit.”

We smiled dumbly at each other across the table.

“So tell me about what you do all day,” I said.

“Specifically, you want to know? Are you interested in banking?”

“No.” I flipped my hair. “Not at all.”

He smiled and studied me for a long moment. He looked at my hands on the table. I thought he might touch them. I wove my fingers together, keeping his interest there.

“Tell me more about you, Catherine. Tell me more about your shop.”

I took a sip, preparing. “It’s right near here. It’s called Leaf.”

“Yes, right. What a clever name. And you sell greeting cards?”

“Original prints. We have some great artists.”

“Anyone I would know?”

I thought of P.J., and Bird, and Dorothy—ugh, that e-mail. “Probably not.”