Pretty Is (25 page)

This is all to be expected. We shoot a new ad every few months, and he’s always like this. At first I thought it meant he would ditch me, but no, it’s just how he operates. At least with women; I’ve heard he’s different with men. Most of the other people on the set are ignoring him. Occasionally someone snickers.

We’re shooting blue screen. Later I will appear in front of footage of wild animals I have never seen. Lions, mostly, with flowing manes. Originally there was talk of shooting on location—jetting off to Africa or wherever to frolic with actual lions. But in the end they scaled back the budget, and I stuck with them anyway. I am well paid to put up with Sebastian’s abuse. “Send me a goddamned model,” he keeps muttering. “Fucking actresses. You take a model, she knows it’s all about the product. Even third-rate actresses cherish the misguided notion that they matter.”

“Fuck you,” I say sweetly, smiling vacantly at my shampoo bottle. “Sauvage,” I whisper at the end, as my swishing hair settles back into place. I whisper “sauvage” dozens of times. Savage shampoo? It doesn’t even fucking make sense. I don’t knock it, though; if it helps people remember who I am, it’s okay with me. They pulse my name at the bottom of the screen toward the end of the spot; the assumption is that your average viewer might think I look kind of vaguely familiar but will need help remembering my name. Savage, Sauvage
. Get it
?

Sometimes this is what being an actress is like.

“Prick,” I say, when I finally stalk off the set, and he smacks me on the ass with his clipboard. He likes me well enough, when all is said and done.

“Pervert,” I add, and he lets me have the last word.

Lois

Brad persuades me to attend the end-of-the-semester English department faculty party as we’re walking to the parking lot after work one evening. I would have been happy to skip it, but he says that isn’t an option. “We’re new faculty. Parties are like meetings—they’re mandatory.”

“Which makes them, by definition, not fun. And therefore not really parties.” My defeat is a foregone conclusion, but I can’t help putting up a bit of a fight. I don’t see the logic of coerced socialization with my colleagues. Surely we see one another quite enough.

“They’ve hired a bartender,” Brad points out as we reach my car. “At least there’ll be real drinks.”

“Oh, good. Now it sounds like a frat party.”

“Oh, come on. You know you love a good frat party as much as the next girl.”

I scowl at Brad. Our relationship hasn’t changed, at least not on the surface. But there’s been a dark undercurrent ever since the night we watched
For Worse
. We might have established a truce by the end of the evening, but Brad had already thrown down a sort of gauntlet, and there it still lies. The gauntlet, that is—which is, of course, a glove. We are ignoring it, but we know it’s there; how could we fail to?
Gauntlet: gaucherie, gesneriad, gemmule, gendarmerie.

I ignore the gauntlet, rehearse
G
words, and agree to go to the party.

*   *   *

It’s true that Sean has taken to loitering in this part of town. I’d noticed his shadowy lurking before Brad brought it up, and I tried to intuit his motivation. The better I come to understand Gary (who is currently stalking a lovely actress who is, as yet, unaware of his presence), the more insight I think I have into Sean, and vice versa. Sean’s behavior worries me a little more than I am willing to admit. Still, I believe that I can keep unfurling stories for him for as long as he needs them, and I do not think he would risk jeopardizing the stories. They’re all he has—all he will ever have—of
him
.

A few days ago I sat with Sean in a Pizza Hut on the outskirts of town. The restaurant seemed old and faded, and it was almost empty; a couple of families squeezed into booths could not have been less interested in us, and they made enough noise to cover anything odd that we might have said. Both of us were mashing our Cokes, choked with crushed ice, with our straws.

“Sometimes he invited us to sleep in his bed,” I told him, keeping my voice low. Sean crossed his arms over his chest and slouched into the corner of the booth, listening without comment. “We wore long, old-fashioned white nightgowns. He gave us knives with which to defend ourselves. He said he wouldn’t touch us, not in a bad way, but that if we felt threatened it was only right that we should protect ourselves. We curled up on either side of him like kittens. He took showers all the time, several times a day, and always smelled like soap and shampoo, but the bed itself was a little musty. We liked it, though. He slept flat on his back and never snored, although sometimes he talked in his sleep. I used to lie awake listening to him, trying to make sense of his ramblings. ‘The wolves are here,’ he would say. ‘The squirrels in the attic are dead. Soon we’ll ride the ferris wheel—we have tickets.’ I always meant to write down his words, but in the morning I would forget.

“One night I heard something different from the usual sounds and jolted awake. Carly was sitting up, and she had her knife in her hand. She was holding it out in front of her. He was awake, too, still lying down, and their eyes sparkled at each other. I wondered if my eyes sparkled too, if my eyes were as pretty as theirs. Carly stretched out her arm and brought the point of the knife to his chest. Although it was dark, the moon shone into the room that night, and so I could see his flesh yield to the blade. She pressed harder and drew the blade downward. Blood sprang gently from his chest, amid the sparse curling dark hairs. Just the slightest trickle. After a while Carly lay down again and as far as I know they went back to sleep, but I was still awake, listening to their breathing. I’ve never slept well.”

I don’t plan these stories in advance; I tell them as they come to me. They come with such startling ease that they almost feel true. They frighten me, and I wonder which of us gets more pleasure from them.

Sean suddenly reached into his pocket, startling me, as if a spell had been broken. He opened his hand to reveal a knife—not a jackknife, exactly, though similarly constructed. It looked meaner; less … domestic. “Was it this kind of knife?” he asked.

“No,” I said sternly, taken aback. This was not in the script. “It wasn’t like that.”

“I wish I could see what kind of knife it was,” he said, wistfully.

“We’ll see.”
Maybe I can find a plausible picture,
I thought. I don’t know very much about knives.

“I’d really like to see it,” he repeated.

“The knife doesn’t really matter. That’s not the point. A knife is a knife. What matters is that he gave them to us. What matters is what she did with hers.”

“A knife is a knife?” he scoffed, as if no one had ever said anything more ridiculous. “Spoken by someone who knows
nothing
about knives.”

Most likely he was posturing. But I didn’t like this talk of knives. Even though, arguably, I was the one who started it.

There’s a knife store in town. Guns and Knives. It’s next door to a shoe repair shop and across from a bakery. The next day I went for a walk and made a point of cruising past the window of Guns and Knives. I glanced at the displays, feeling too exposed to enter. This would require a field trip. I was thinking of Gary; Gary would have a knife, and I would need to find an appropriate knife for him. I considered doing my research on the Internet, but I didn’t want to trigger offers from crazy white supremacist militia groups or get myself on an FBI list.

Which is why, the Saturday after Pizza Hut, I find myself in a huge sporting goods store in Binghamton, an hour’s drive from campus. It’s possible to shop for perfectly harmless things here—tents and sleeping bags, baseball gloves, fishing tackle, camouflage outerwear—but the deadly weapons section dominates the store. There’s one wall of guns, another of bows and arrows, and several cases full of knives. Neatly dressed young men stand behind the counters, looking comically incongruous. As I approach a knife case, one of them offers to help me. He calls me ma’am. “Just looking,” I mutter, as if I’m perusing a display of watches or cupcakes rather than assessing the merits of five-inch blades as opposed to four inches, serrated versus straight, fixed or folding. I’m attracted to a set of throwing knives, which look a lot like daggers and seem to belong more to the world of ornate costume dramas than a contemporary world in which people actually find things to
do
with these malevolent objects. I might have been inclined to argue, until now, that an object in itself cannot be malevolent. Looking at the weapons before me, though, I am convinced otherwise. These aren’t neutral instruments, equally useful in the service of good or evil depending upon the disposition of their possessors. No. Despite their neat classifications—camping, tactical, hunting, military, the vague “outdoors”—these are designed to rip, pierce, skin, sever, disembowel. These are cruel instruments. I force myself to inspect them all. What disturbs me most is their aesthetic pretension: their graceful curves, sleek handles, tooled sheaths.

Eventually I withdraw my phone from my purse, pretend I am texting someone, and surreptitiously take a picture of a sleek black bowie knife that costs over two hundred dollars. In the back of my mind is the comforting thought that Sean would be unable to afford such a knife. I can visualize it tucked in Gary’s back pocket. It is perfect.

The nice young man at the register is watching me, frankly curious. I replace my phone in my purse and drift out of the store.

From there I drive to the nearby mall, feeling as though I have earned some form of indulgence. It’s not the world’s most impressive mall, but today I don’t care. I wander aimlessly through the Gap, Bath & Body Works, Victoria’s Secret, awash in colors and textures and mall smells and piped-in music, thinking desperately about nothing at all. Trying to shut down the part of my mind that insists that this behavior is alarmingly irrational, that perhaps Delia is right to be concerned.
I know what I’m doing
, I argue, trying on dresses.
I’m a writer; it’s research.
The dresses are all too big.

*   *   *

Brad comes to pick me up the night of the party. I invite him in for a pre-party drink, an absolutely necessary preliminary for departmental social gatherings. He comes in, removes his jacket, and drapes it across the back of my plum-colored sofa. He accepts my offer of a gin and tonic and then looks around, clearly disconcerted. “Looks like you’ve had your nose to the grindstone,” he remarks, and I detect an odd note of caution in his voice. “Grading? Some new research project?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ah … the clutter? Disarray? I’ve never seen so much as a decorative pillow out of place here. I always feel like I should take my shoes off and be careful not to touch anything. But this is—a slightly different aesthetic.”

I glance around my apartment, my eyes registering all of the familiar shapes and colors, the imperfections in the woodwork, the soft lamplight. For a moment I don’t even know what he means. Then, for a flash—not more—I see the room as he sees it: stacks of papers, books facedown on the floor, mugs here and there with tea bag strings drooping from their mouths, a sweatshirt on one chair. Crooked paintings. Dust. General untidiness.

“I’ve been busy.” Since when is it acceptable to walk into someone’s house and criticize her housekeeping? I imagine my mother’s disapproval. (My mother, whom I haven’t called in—how long?) “I’ve been working on all sorts of things,” I say. “If you must know.” My moment of clarity has passed; the apartment looks fine to me again. “How do I look? You haven’t complimented me yet.” I’m wearing a new dress, courtesy of my visit to the mall, and heels, which elevate me to Brad’s shoulder. I’ve made an effort, in other words.

Brad stands back and surveys me mock-critically. “Stunning,” he pronounces. “Except … just a second. Stand still.” With an index finger he gently brushes the skin beneath one eye, then smudges it a little harder. I can feel his breath on my face. Finally I can’t help taking a step backward. “What?” I hear the sharpness in my voice.

He shows me the blackened tip of his finger. “Just a little mascara,” he explains apologetically. “You’re good now.”

I go into the bathroom to make sure, and touch up my face while I’m at it. “Let’s get going,” I call, dabbing my nose with powder, wondering if it’s a trick of the light or if my face really does look sharper than usual, almost gaunt. Surely not. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we can leave.”

“You have such a positive attitude,” Brad grumbles. “It’s what I love about you, of course.”

We down our half-drunk drinks and go.

*   *   *

Although Brad’s tone has been gently mocking, his eyes are worried; I resolve to behave so impeccably at the party that he will stop looking at me that way. Fortified with cocktails, I work the periphery of the gathering, holding intense conversations about the relevance of eighteenth-century literature to present-day undergraduates, the danger of regarding students as consumers and education as a product like any other, the evils of the Greek system, and the delights of camping in the Catskills (which I have not done and have no intention of doing). I converse animatedly with Will Duncan, the fiery chair of the department, a Miltonist; Allan Pearson, a hippie throwback who so worships Melville that he talks of little else; Jonathan Meredith, our lone African American prof, who is so wary of being regarded as a token hire that he will talk about absolutely anything but race, politics, or black writers; and Ellen Van Alstyne, a doddering romanticist and the first woman to be tenured at this institution. I drift out to the back patio (the house is a suburban monstrosity belonging to the chair), where the smokers have congregated. I don’t smoke, but I gulp the cool spring night air and try to relax a little.

And that’s when Kate sidles up to me. I love the word
sidles,
but you don’t often see it in action. She sidles up alongside me and exclaims with surprise that she hasn’t seen me for the longest time, that she’s so sorry she hasn’t had a chance to congratulate me on my book contract. This is ridiculous, since her office is down the hall from mine and we teach on the same days, but I respond pleasantly anyway. This is what it must be like to be Chloe: managing people so gracefully, moving effortlessly from one sparkling conversation to the next, distributing dazzling smiles like candy … but what is Kate saying? “I’m so pleased that you’ve resolved your difficulties with Sean McDougal,” she remarks. “I saw you two downtown, deep in conversation. At first I couldn’t believe it, but then I realized that you must have taken my comment about his needing extra help quite seriously, which is wonderful. In fact, I want to ask if you’d be willing to speak at one of our lunchtime faculty colloquia. I thought you might do an interesting presentation on the ‘difficult’ student. You could talk a little, for instance, about strategies for adapting your pedagogy to a particular student’s needs—in this case, being willing to take it off campus … I really think it would be a fascinating discussion. And of course as a new faculty member it would be a smart move for you. We do value research here, of course, so we’re all very pleased about—what is it,
Abduction in the British Novel
?—but at a school like this we’re even more interested in things like innovative teaching methods, so you could see this as an opportunity to demonstrate that you’re not so wrapped up in your research that you have no time for your students, which of course is a perception you really want to avoid.”