Beth Bauman - Beautiful Girls

Growing up, Libby’s dad had been a good father from a distance. His attention never landed directly on her, but good energy radiated off him in all directions and she felt it as a kind of love.

When Libby was small, her mother’s cousin’s kid Wilhelmina from New York City spent several summers with them. Wilhelmina was a sour girl, tough as a spike, whose favorite game was Choir Girl, a sadistic version of church in which Wilhelmina would play the plastic organ, and Libby, draped in a sheet and Amish bonnet, would solemnly descend the staircase and make her way behind her father’s recliner, which was the pew. When Libby got the speed of her descent right, which wasn’t often, they would take communion with the watery scotch left in the bottom of her father’s glass. Or if Wilhelmina was feeling chipper, the host might be a gumball, although chewing wasn’t allowed. Most times they didn’t get to communion because Libby didn’t descend the staircase slowly enough, and Wilhelmina would pinch Libby hard, hissing, “You’re not doing it right.”

Once during these church services, Libby’s dad reclined in his chair with a copy of the Tribune held out in front of him as his bonneted and glum daughter worked her way to and from the pew. Perhaps because Wilhelmina was no relation of his, he caught Libby’s eye, pointed to the organ-playing girl, and twirled his finger next to his ear. At this, Libby dove onto his lap while he continued, humming a happy tune, to read the paper. Wilhelmina, sensing a conspiracy, lifted her bony fingers off the keys and glared at them.

Libby’s parents divorced when she was twelve, and she divided her time between them, traveling from one end of town to the other with her ratty blue suitcase. Her mother sighed a lot during Libby’s teenage years while her dad threw himself into goodwill and charity. Each year he planted an enormous garden and went door-to-door distributing his eggplants and zucchinis, and it was in this way that he met his girlfriends.

All the equipment in the hospital room gives off a smothering heat that leaves Libby and her dad sticky and soft-brained. A portable fan, precariously balanced atop a garbage can, makes a low, jumbly noise while Libby feeds him ice chips. She’s not doling them out fast enough and he snatches the cup, shoveling in three or four chips with his good hand before she grabs it back. “It’s gonna go right into your lung and you’ll turn blue,” she tells him.

“Kiss my ass,” he mouths.

“Dad, you can kiss mine.”

“Go,” he writes. “I’ll sleep.”

Libby is suddenly so tired, so very tired. She stiffly lowers herself into a chair. Does he really think she can just leave? Each time this happens, she is frightened to think that he might believe she really will leave, that her leaving would be all right with him. She wonders what kind of a life he imagines she has in the city while he is here. “Won’t you be lonely without me?” she asks.

“Boring?” he writes. “Hanging out with the old man?”

It’s true, dying is boring and tedious among all the other terrible things ascribed to it.

“Boyfriends?” he writes.

“Not at the moment,” she says.

“None in this joint,” he writes. She frowns. He shrugs with a small smile.

“Pain in the ass,” he scribbles on his pad, pointing to himself. She nods. He points to the same words, and then points to Libby. She half-smiles. He writes the word “Talking,” circles it, and then draws a diagonal line through it. In solidarity, she zippers her lip.

On TV, Fred Astaire dances across the screen. “Fred again,” he mouths. Every time they turn on the TV Fred seems to be swinging around a pole or dipping Ginger. Such poise, such dexterity, such sheer joy. Fred exhausts them. Her dad reaches for her hand and closes his eyes. As he falls asleep, he slides down the pillows and rests lump-like in the middle of the bed. The ventilator keeps a steady, dull rhythm. Something livelier, like a salsa, would better encourage health and healing, she thinks. As he sleeps, his fingers fly up to the ventilator and he wakes. It’s been weeks, but he still hasn’t gotten used to the tube protruding from his neck. Often he makes like Frankenstein’s monster, jutting his arms out in front of him, widening his eyes and letting his mouth go slack. “Your kind of poison,” he once scribbled on a pad.

“Not anymore,” she’d snapped.

Before her no-job job, and before law school, Libby worked on the production crew of low-budget horror/sci-fi movies that went straight to video. The actors were snarly and unprofessional, the pay was crap and the hours spilled into each other, leaving her with no time for a life. They often shot several movies at once, and in holding at any given time there might have been a group of corpses playing poker, assorted fanged creatures complaining about the air-conditioning, and gross-out, flesh-eating lumps chowing down on meatball heroes. Libby raced from set to set, where several times a day she’d get chewed out for not doing something she hadn’t known she was supposed to do in the first place. There were some compensations: Libby, who was never good with clothes, had Jane, her best friend in wardrobe, help her dress when she was dating the cute though underachieving cyclops, Peter. Jane would flip through racks and come up with something chic yet understated, maybe slutty footwear; there was always plenty of this stuff on hand for the hapless heroine whose job was to traipse unwittingly through the cool, serene world before meeting early doom.

One day when none of the bloody corpses was cooperating—one even had the nerve to snap gum while lying on a stone slab under a fake moon—and the director endlessly futzed with the lighting, Libby parked herself behind a tombstone and filled out law school applications.

“But you like the ghoulies,” her dad had said.

“I don’t.”

“Well, all right.”

“I’m going to be a lawyer. It’s great news, dad.”

“I’ll say. You can write my will. You get everything. Make sure none of my girlfriends get anything.” Ironically, he is generous to a fault. He bought Geri a barbecue, Sue an aquarium, and Mary a front-end loader, even when she had moved to ex-girlfriend status. He didn’t expect much in return and rarely phoned the girlfriends. He claimed to hate the phone, referring to it as the “squawk box,” and yet he called Libby every Saturday without fail.

Early the next morning, Libby puts on a coat over her bra and underwear and heads to the laundromat, but Hugh can’t find her laundry bag. “It’s huge ,” Libby says, cornering him by the fabric softener. “Where could it have gone?” She tries to remember what was in there—shirts, jeans, fuzzy slippers.

“Man,” Hugh says, dejectedly. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Find it!” she says, giving him her address. “Apartment 2G. Two.” She holds up two fingers. “G as in goddamn it.”

At home, she pulls out her horror clothes, a speckled mess of paint- and fake-blood-splattered T-shirts and holey jeans. So comfy, she’d forgotten.

A handsome young kid who reminds Libby of Neil Lubin, who was supposed to ask her to the prom but never did, pushes a wire cart down the east wing as she sits at Imelda’s desk. “Filing?” he asks. Libby gives him her letter to Gautreaux’s tailor, requesting another pair of the size 42 herringbone trousers with a little more room in the seat, please. The handsome kid puts it in his empty cart and winks at her before speeding the single sheet down the hall to the filing room.

The women’s bathroom in the east wing is always empty, with Imelda gone and Miss Perry not seeming to have the need, but today someone pees in unison with Libby. They exit the stalls at the same time, and Libby stands face-to-face with Miss Perry, who eyes Libby’s outfit with concern. As Libby washes her hands, staring into her raw and crusty eyes in the mirror, she suddenly confides to Miss Perry about her dad.