Beth Bauman: Beautiful Girls

“Dear, you must go to him now. Give me your work,” Miss Perry says, kindness and duty shining in her eyes.

“But I don’t have any.”

Miss Perry looks at her incredulously. “Well, then you must go now.” She ushers Libby to the east wing coat closet, and by this time Libby is crying, crying because why hadn’t she gone to the prom? So when Miss Perry accidentally grabs Bilox’s coat—long and black, woven with a touch of cashmere—Libby is mildly aware it isn’t hers, but what difference does it make at a time like this? Little Bilox, tidy and delicate as an egg in a nest, is just her size, and she grabs her token and flees to the subway.

When Bilox comes in the next day wearing her coat, at first Libby thinks he’s just being polite by not mentioning the mix-up. But when he leaves for an early appointment, he slips into her velvet-collared wool coat and waves at the room before departing.

It’s not that surprising when the sepsis comes. Her dad’s body has been invaded at too many points and the armies of antibodies wave a white flag. A ridiculous fever shakes his entire body, a smoldering heat rises from his limbs, and the back of his head, which has been pressed against a pillow for weeks, reveals a strange and snarled hairdo.

Sepsis isn’t a bad way to go, the Dumpy Downer tells her. The toxic shock brings on delirium and then coma, after which her dad would float away to a better place, leaving behind his soggy body. Her dad wears a finger cap to monitor his oxygenation, which isn’t good, and in his furor he pulls it off and the machine begins a steady ding. Libby places the cap on her own finger and the room is quiet again. Why didn’t she fight with that Gestapo nurse yesterday—let him have the damned milkshake! Really, what are they doing here? She doesn’t know if she’s done right by her father, and she’s not sure he’s done right by her. He’s abandoning ship, and she blames him a little.

Libby walks the twenty blocks from Penn Station to her apartment just to feel the cold breath of air on her face. On the way, she stops in a Korean market and buys a beer and drinks it out of a paper bag. It’s late, but when she gets to her door she finds Hugh sitting on the stoop, holding a bag of laundry as if it is a small child. “Maybe you’d like this,” he says.

“You can’t give me someone else’s laundry,” she says, peering into the bag.

“It’s been in the lost and found for a year, man.” He looks at her kindly. “You could probably use some underwear, right?”

“Well, you’re sure this is nobody’s?” Maybe there are some towels inside. She needs a clean towel. Bingo. Inside are four towels, several aprons, knee socks, a large shapeless sweatshirt with many zippered pockets, and a daisy-printed muumuu.

And so this becomes her routine: in the mornings, Libby pulls on her soft and comfy horror clothes and puts Bilox’s coat over the colorful, shabby mess. Then she dashes to the office, sits at Imelda’s desk chewing a nail, waits for Marianne Switzer and her wire cart, runs the forms in to Bilox, then Gautreaux, then Sodder, adds her own initials in four minutes flat, phones Marianne Switzer for a pickup, dashes down the hall at the sound of the breakfast cart, shovels a doughnut into her mouth, tosses Miss Perry a buttered sesame bagel, snatches Bilox’s coat from the east wing coat closet, runs for the elevators, thinks bad thoughts all the way to the lobby, flies through the double doors, takes the shuttle across town, hops on the 2 or 3 to Penn Station, scrambles for a ticket, steps onto the Jersey-bound train and falls into a wicked hot sleep.

Libby’s mother calls late one night from Chicago, where she’s married to a placid radiologist. “Tell me how I can help,” she says.

“Do you want to see Dad?”

“Well, no, not that,” she says. “I’ll come visit you!”

“But I’m never here.”

Today Libby’s cab sits in a traffic jam en route to the hospital. She pays the driver and gets out and walks, her feet crunching over autumn leaves. Directly across from the hospital is a mini-mall with a deli, a clothes shop and a laundromat. Above the stores are apartments with tiny curtained windows. I should move here, she thinks, digging her hands in Bilox’s pockets, which are filled with crumpled bills, sticks of gum, train tickets, ATM receipts.

Her dad’s pulled through the sepsis, and he’s looking good. In fact, as he becomes sicker he’s more alert and the color has returned to his cheeks. Maybe this is some kind of crazy antibiotic flush, a crazy antibiotic buzz.

A boisterous nurse with a smock that pulls across her stomach announces it’s time for cognitive tests. “Mr. Meyers, who’s the president of the United States?” she asks, checking his intravenous bags. As his body grows waterlogged and inert, they need to check and see that he’s still home.

Her dad makes little effort to hide his irritation, but he is more of a charmer than a crab, even in sickness, and finally he smiles wearily. “George Washington,” he mouths.

“All right, wise guy,” she says. “Let’s try movies and entertainment for $500.”

He scribbles on his pad, “Frankly my dear I don’t give a flying,” and then for modesty’s sake he’s drawn a line.

“Oh!” she hollers. “Mr. Meyers is getting fresh.” He offers a half-smile and a silent laugh. He’s always been handsome and easy in a reluctant way. Sometimes while he sleeps, the nurses will confide to Libby, “I like your father.”

Now as they joke, Libby sees he’s already folding in on himself. “Are you in pain?” she whispers. For a moment he’s quiet, then shakes his head. He can’t name it. They don’t have a language for any of this. Libby pats his hand, and his fingers wriggle against the sheet as if movement might carry him somewhere else.

As Libby walks down Eighth Avenue, shivering and drinking a beer out of a paper bag, she bumps into Hugh from the laundromat, who tells her he will personally do her laundry this time. Funny, she asks, but isn’t it his personal job to do all the incoming laundry? He tells her he will protect her garments as if her jeans and underwear are the Ten Commandments delivered by God to Moses. She considers letting him wash her horror clothes, but she doesn’t trust him. Instead she asks him if he wants to sleep with her. He arrives a bit later, shyly slurping on a chocolate drink, and she greets him at the door wearing the daisy-printed muumuu.

Her law school friends start taking her out for dinners when she arrives back at Penn Station late in the evenings. They eye her speckled clothes, the same mess of a wardrobe she wore through law school, and her headbanded friend Marcy suddenly offers to take her shopping at Loehmann’s. “Maybe it’s time we found your softer side,” she whispers. Libby, tired and drunk, says, “Maybe it’s time for one of my friends to do my frigging laundry.” But the laundromat can do it for her, Marcy insists. Libby just smiles. They have better jobs than hers, and they insist on tiramisu and picking up the checks. Hang in there, they say nicely.

Her horror friends bring over Chinese food late at night when she’s already under the covers in a bathing suit and knee socks, and they spread out all over the floor, eating lo mein with their fingers and discussing tracheotomies, incontinence and hemorrhaging. Sleep, they tell her, we’ll lock up when we leave.

Late one evening, Peter the cyclops calls. He’s heard about her dad and wants to know if there’s anything he can do.

Libby, though wound up and hungry, feels touched. “Come over and do my laundry for me one day.”

“No, really?”

“Really.”

He hedges and then suggests she take it to the laundromat, where they’ll wash, dry and even fold it. Imagine that. “One, two, three,” he says.