Peter Heller - Celine

Where was the beauty, where did it begin? Celine, who understood the necessity and power of mystery, wouldn’t know where to start.

It could have begun in the tilt of her head, the angle, the light tension it put on the neck so that she seemed at once poised and relaxed, the way a violin can look—or a bird. Celine thought of the great blue heron in Baboo’s cattails, just below the porch. How the bird would stand, it seemed, for hours, neck stretched over the shallows in effortless balance between stillness and strike. Because the strike would inevitably come. Celine used to think that if eternity was anywhere it was somehow contained in the attitude of this bird. Everything the heron had done, and would do, and was now so perfectly not doing, was contained in her bearing. And so Amana. As she tipped her head she was both bowing to time—there is no mercy there, that is clear—but she was also gathering herself, her focus, for something that went beyond acceptance: She had acted and she would act, and there would be love in the action, and imagination. In whatever she did. That was also clear.

So that in a world whose onslaught was barely bearable there would be something new and lovely. The angle of her head suggested a promise.

Then there was the plane of her cheek and where it softened and yielded to meet her eye, her temple. Her cheek was high but not severe. Pronounced but not insensitive to the soft skin below it. It suggested self-discipline and submission to duty—if she were asked to be a warrior, she would be a warrior—but also compassion and tolerance. Am I reading too much? Celine thought. No. This is what I do. I am not always right but usually I am.

Her mouth, the half that Celine could see, was relaxed, closed. Celine might have stayed right there. Made camp, so to speak, and dwelled on this aspect of the woman’s glory. From the slightest downturn at the corner, her upper lip rose through a long double bow and into a fullness at the crest that was sensuous but held the faintest humor, too. There were many serious pleasures the mouth had tasted, but its favorite may have been laughter. The lower lip seemed like the serious younger sister—she was resolved to follow along and join the fun but was willing to stay back a little, and to be bitten. One wanted to kiss that mouth. To reach down and kiss even the edge. But it was Amana’s eye that kept drawing the viewer: The intelligence there and the stillness. The relaxed concentration. The sense that whatever was seen and decided would be acted on swiftly. The photos were black-and-white, but Celine imagined that her eyes were a smoky green.

Celine had not even considered the fine nose, the smooth shoulders, or ever realized that a jawline could evoke such purity. Amana’s temple slayed her. The vulnerability there, the stray hairs just before the perfect and odd nautilus of the ear. Remember that Celine had been a painter. She had been drawing and painting figures since soon after she could walk. When had she ever felt that a face could so effortlessly hold all her attention?

She was reluctant to leave the image but she nodded to Pete and the next came up, and the next. Portraits of Amana looking straight into the camera—the same distilled serenity but full face, the beauty now full bore, both barrels, the wide-set eyes looking straight at the viewer, who catches her breath—or Amana contemplating something humorous or faintly sad, or something inward and distant, the pictures almost hard to look at, not because they demanded some recalibration by the viewer, or obeisance, or envy, or anything at all, but just because simple beauty can be hard to bear. There were nudes, Amana stretched on her back and shot from behind her head, seeing almost what she might have seen. Or on her side, one knee almost to her chest, or the woman bending to test the water in a tub like a Degas. But these were not by Degas, the framing was not meant to flatter. These were transparent statements of awe. A few times Celine had to remember to breathe.

She found herself forgiving Paul Lamont a little. Good God. Whatever the man had done after the death of his wife, she could more than understand. A weaker man would have simply offed himself. And these were moments with Amana captured in relative stillness. What would it have been like to make love to such a woman? To receive her kisses? To taste her skin? To make her laugh? To listen to her tell stories to the child you had given her? To take the child from her arms? To share a meal? To hold hands and walk the neighborhood late on an August night, the light clapping of your sandals the closest sound? To watch her shed her clothes and dive into a lake and swim, steadily outward—she was a trained and strong swimmer, that was evident from many shots of her at a pool, a pond—leaving behind a spreading wake and tiny wavelets that touched the pilings and the shore long after? Celine could not conceive it. For Lamont, who clearly was so sensitive to beauty, it may have been like experiencing some kind of afterlife while he was still alive. Certainly it would not have been easy.

He would have wondered often if he were dreaming. And if the dream would one day vanish.

She closed the laptop herself. It was enough.

In the World According to Celine and Pete the very best part of every town was the library. And then the historical society, if there was one. Unless, of course, there was a discount gun shop (Celine), or a woodworking store (Pete) that sold fine hand planes and chisels. Jackson’s library was just a mile down the road. They’d passed it on the way in and Celine had remarked the hand-drawn sandwich board that said BOOK SALE TODAY! MAGAZINES!

Now, as they walked to the truck, Celine popped in a stick of Juicy Fruit and said, “Pete, I’d like to see more of young Paul Lamont’s photographs. I had an idea—just a sec.” On a bench outside an art gallery crouched an athletic girl in running tights and training top. Celine had a hunch she was pretty but couldn’t be sure because her face was in her hands and her very red shoulders were shaking. Celine stood over her and touched her heaving back. The girl’s head jerked up. Her eyes were swimming in tears and they were confused and angry now and they tried to focus.

“Breakup?” Celine said. She had lived long enough to know that the tenor of the girl’s sobs could only be one thing.

The girl wavered. The more she registered the handsome older woman, the less angry she became. She nodded.

“May I?” Celine said.

The girl hesitated, nodded, and Celine sat.

“You have the kind of loveliness that comes from inside,” Celine said. The girl almost smiled. “Which means he is a complete fool, don’t you think?”

The smile broke through, quivering. What the hell, was she dreaming?

Celine reached for the girl’s wet hand, held it. “You know, I have lost three great loves. Loves that could knock the earth off its axis. Truly. Each time I thought my life was over.” The girl was very still, she was listening. “I have finally found the one I am meant to die with. It’s a love so deep I cannot attempt to fathom it, and I don’t want to. I wish I could have told that to my younger heartbroken self. That everything would work out, more than work out, it would be glorious. So I am telling it to you. One day you will be grateful for this new chapter.”

The girl was listening. Her hand rested in Celine’s now like a bird that had nowhere else it would rather be. “Here,” Celine said. She rummaged in her purse with her free hand and found a small tube of SPF 50. “Will you please wear some of this so you make it to a ripe old age. You look like a very lovely lobster.” She gave the hand a squeeze and returned to Pete. She did not see, but Pete did, that the girl looked like she’d been hit on the head by a lily—or struck by an angel. A Day in the Life, Pete thought. He had long ago admitted that when one moved through the world with Celine, well—it was simply more fun. A giddy concept for a seventh-generation Mainer.