Ron Koertge
A DAY AT THE BEACH WITH BEAUTY
Melissa always has a convertible, but her classmates pile into old VWs and Volvo station wagons with dents. In the movies, a beautiful girl has a spunky chum who hooks up with the handsome guy's goofy buddy so they can all double-date. But Melissa has never had that sort of confidante. When kids do hitch a ride, they talk around her. Over and around. Rarely to. Maybe it's because she's always busy with other drivers. Men who throw their business cards at her. Or hold up hastily printed signs that proffer and cajole. It's always a relief to get where she's going. To see the coolers, the gaily striped chairs that unfold, the faithful volleyball. Because somebody might toss her a Frisbee, ask her to start a fire, or want to race to the nearest lifeguard's stand. They might, but they don't. Melissa watches the others sprawl on the sand. Boys start a fire, order one another around. Girls put sunblock on one another. A ponytail nestles into the nearest lap. Or across the small of a back. Or on a nicely upholstered buttock. Tiny radios appear, like books that gossip and sing. Laptops with DVDs yield stories of violence and passion, secrecy and love. Someone opens the contraband beer, lights a joint. Melissa sips bottled water. She's accepted without being ostracized, segregated but not expelled. She tries to believe her friends are protecting her. They might say, "Melissa wouldn't like that. It's not her. But she's cool." They might, but they don't. Everybody swims while the coals die down. They dive and horse around, then burst out of the surf, trunks tugged low by gravity, hair mashed flat or shaped by an energetic hand into quills. Their knees are knobby, stomachs a little slack, a bruised thigh here, a bristly armpit there. Melissa swims alone, emerges from the spindrift bejeweled. She appears groomed by the ocean, not disheveled. As she approaches, headphones go on, music's turned up. She passes among them, passes through them. No one offers her a chili dog, some Doritos, or a beer. No one makes a space for her on their messy towels. She reaches her blanket, perfectly square and unsoiled, and settles into the lotus pose, eyes fixed on the couple beside her locked in a pythonlike embrace.
BEAUTY BUYS A WART
Melissa knows about shops like Costume Heaven; they flourish every year around Halloween, and the owners manage to eke out a living the rest of the time selling fake blood, sneezing powder, and whoopee cushions to nine-year-old boys. What doesn't surprise Melissa is how what is grotesque and ugly outnumbers (and outsells!) what is comely. For every Snow White wig and tube of alabaster makeup, there are dozens of pimples and warts, rubber fungi, giant proboscises, bloodshot eyes, and scruffy wigs. Melissa settles for a small kit, wart + wart glue: $1.98. Her girlfriends whisper one to another, "What does she—of all people—need with a Melissa mark?" So she goes to a different aisle and buys a big snout + snout strap: $3.50. Her friends just stare at her, but crack up when one of the guys slips on the Dangling Eyeball Glasses. Melissa buys a Nixon mask, the rubber one, and wears it to school. Her friends are not amused. In fact, they're nonplussed. Even her teachers act concerned. "Take that thing off." She does, because Melissa is obedient.
BEAUTY GOES SHOPPING
She only needs a few things, so she drives to the nearest upscale department store. A man about to park right near the entrance gives up his spot; the doorman adjusts his gold epaulets, elbows two or three customers out of the way, and bows as she passes. Salespeople stop gossiping, folding, and straightening. A frock is pressed up against her and at just that, without her even trying it on, the employees burst into spontaneous applause and half a dozen customers demand exactly that dress in exactly that color and size and press it against them too, please. Melissa buys a pair of gloves, and everyone watching buys a similar pair. Next Melissa purchases Ginger Body Crème & Lotion. Two or three tame boyfriends who joined Melissa's entourage have to sit down and fan themselves after watching her rub lotion on her forearms and wrists. The stuff sells out in a twinkling, and one savvy man calls his broker and buys Ginger Inc. She wishes they wouldn't do that, but she can't stop them. Then Melissa glides through the makeup department and is entreated by the pearly servants of Dior. They long to apply their unguents, antidotes, and balm. They begin to fight over her, so Melissa agrees, lest a riot break out. She perches on a tall stool. Kathleen (her nametag says so) pops in a breath mint and begins. Melissa can't help but notice some friends of hers from Honors English sitting nearby with a startling eye and a drab one, a rosy cheek and a pale one, half a sanguine lip. "Finish them," Melissa says. Kathleen barely glances. "Oh, they can wait." "But I insist." Kathleen leans in. "Don't be that way," she implores. "I'm not really doing anything to you. I wouldn't gild the lily; I'm just pretending. But look at this crowd! They don't know that. And the minute you leave, I'll sell thousands of dollars' worth of product. I'll be merchant of the month!" Melissa looks at her school chums. "This isn't my fault." "Oh," says the Luminous Eye, "it's never your fault, is it?" Pale Cheek tears off a protective bib and stomps away. "You bitch," cries one voluptuous Scarlet Lip, the other achromatic and thin.
BEAUTY GOES TO THE DOCTOR
Sometimes she has to. Before a contest. Or a trip overseas with her chaperone. Nothing's ever wrong, yet there's something disquieting about the appointment. Could it be the drive? She's been chauffeured before, lots of times. And there's always something trifling about the backseat. Like someone might hand her a book of simple puzzles or a doll while those up front drive and discuss important things. At the medical plaza she signs in, takes a seat. Women in bright smocks filter out from the back and peer at her. Other doctors, stethoscopes hanging around their necks like tame adders, muse: To examine Melissa. To take Melissa's pulse. Listen to Melissa's heart. For a while she looks around, notices how those with prosperous skin sit on one side of the room facing the infected and feverish. A toddler careens into her arms. How unambiguous babies are! Melissa thinks how everyone else is in disguise, full of tricks and lies. Is she? Time to flip through a magazine. Any magazine. Even a medical journal. She ponders a section of epidermis: stratum corneum, stratum lucidum, stratum granulosum, stratum Malpighii, stratum germinativum. She wonders at which stratum Melissa stops if it is only skin deep? And what about the cooperation of the organs, efficient glands, orgy of digestion. Nothing calculated, selfish, or underhanded there. Isn't that beautiful? And if so, is everyone beautiful inside? Again she vows to do more with her life. To puzzle things out. Read deeply. Think hard. "The doctor will see you now." A beaming nurse holds open a beige door. Melissa is glad to see him. Intelligent him. Educated him. Wise him. "I might," she blurts, "go to medical school, too." "No one," he says, "looks adorable in that gown but you." "I know I could get in. My grades are excellent." "Deep breath, please. And hold." "I'd like to help people. I'd like to do something useful." "Say 'Ahhh.' " "Are you listening, doctor? Have you heard a word I said?" "Hmm. Your pulse is a little rapid. Any unusual stress in your life lately?"
BEAUTY GOES TO THE MUSEUM
It's a field trip with her art teacher, Ms. Perspective. Their bus is long and sleek with a jagged bolt of lightning on the side, the bus driver slimhipped in his blue uniform with stripes on the cuffs. Melissa's seatmate is tongue tied. He can only nod when Melissa makes small talk. He does manage to stutter that this is a day he'll never forget. But Melissa is only embarrassed by her enormous unearned power. Ashamed of it almost. She's looking forward to the museum. Melissa is surprised to see Ms. Perspective not worshiping a van Gogh but flirting with the driver. She watches her classmates pair off. One couple starts to sketch. The class clown whips out a beret and starts chattering in faux French. She wanders down a well-lit corridor, past a guard or two in sensible shoes and one-size-fits-none blazers. She takes in the first still life: a bouquet of carnations, two pomegranates, one silver letter opener. Melissa leans closer. A ladybug clings to a stem, light reflects off its folded wings. On the letter opener's blade stands a single drop of water like a tiny, transparent igloo. Melissa moves on to clear goblets of red wine, a pheasant, and a hare. "Both dead," intones her teacher. "The necks loose and suddenly elderly, but their feathers and fur still lustrous and incorruptible." Guess what Melissa found in the mirror not five hours ago: a line on her brow. A line that wasn't there last week. The kind of line that becomes a wrinkle or at least foreshadows one, like the crack in the dam that alerts the reader to the final chapter's flood. Someday will she be demoted from Beautiful to Lovely, from Lovely to Good-Looking, from Good-Looking to Still-Pretty-For-Her-Age? Her teacher clearly envies the statues' marble obstinacy, their enduring thighs. She's jealous of that ladybug, forever red and black, forever at home on that vigorous, nearly immortal stem. But in a way, Melissa welcomes the flaws, each one a ticket to the world of the majority.
BEAUTY HAS AMNESIA
She wakes up in a hospital with a bandage on her forehead. "Where am I?" The voice is pleasing and melodious, but whom does it belong to? The plastic bracelet on her arm says Jane Doe. She presses the call button. "Oh good," the nurse says. "You're awake. How do you feel?" "Peculiar. Disembodied. Not myself, whoever that is." "Well, it shouldn't be long now before we find out. Your picture is in the paper; we're getting lots of calls from people claiming to be your parents. People with deep voices, curiously enough." "How did I get here?" "Do you remember being at the football game? The pigskin spiraling toward you? Tumbling from the stands?" "Actually, no." Nurse pats her hand. "Could you eat a little something?" "What would someone like me eat?" "Probably ambrosia, tongues of nightingales, caviar. But what we have is Jell-O." "Do I like Jell-O?" "Why don't we find out?" What a good idea! This is how she'll discover her identity, by likes and dislikes. Jell-O—yes or no? Football—not likely. This gown that opens in the back—no way. This nurse is pleasing, but others might not be. On TV, someone is weeping: no. A pretty girl sitting in a meadow gazing fondly at a sanitary napkin: maybe. A sleek automobile on a closed course with a professional driver: looks like fun. Just then the door opens and a crowd of deliverymen surges in. Most with metallic GET WELL SOON balloons. Flowers of all kinds. A stuffed animal as big as a bear. Is a bear, actually. But softer and much less dangerous. A nurse plucks cards, begins to read. " 'Hurry back, Melissa. We need you. Who will be Melissa Queen, Prom Melissa, Valentine's Melissa, Harvest Melissa, Melissa of Winter Carnival, Melissa of the Glorious Fourth, and so on.' " "That's who you are," says the nurse. "I should have guessed." "So I'm Melissa?" The nurse waves the cards around. "Well, everyone certainly says so."
BEAUTY IS HOME ALONE
WHEN THE POWER FAILS
There's nothing to be afraid of. It's midafternoon. And anyway, a delightful coolness falls across the house. The heartless cat (the way he brings in sparrows and lays them at her feet as if she were a goddess) pads by to get a drink of water, collapses by the blue bowl, goes back to sleep. The dog moves closer, looks up eagerly. Melissa remembers when these pets would accompany her on imaginary adventures, all of them sitting up on her bed, which could fly, banking left or right depending on which way she leaned, and carrying them toward teeming jungles, dens of pirates, and the Haunted Forest. Melissa wonders what became of those journeys. She was awfully cute then. Merely cute. Just another Terrific Tot. Regularly driven to dance class, gymnastics class, singing lessons. And then Junior Miss. After which she left her magic bed behind. Abandoned her animal friends to their own devices. She stared out the car window. Smiled politely at those who gawked and sometimes put on their sunglasses as if she were luminous. Now the TV is dark. Her radio silent as a brick. Melissa wanders to the windows, peeks between venetian blinds. The woman next door has a child about five. Melissa can see them sitting at a sunny table, coloring together. Each has a book of her own. Each chooses from the enormous box of crayons, removing Burnt Sienna or Atomic Tangerine as swiftly as a highwayman drawing his sword. Melissa remembers coloring: Once she made a farmer blue, a spaniel green, two cows red as sores. Then she went outside the lines: Flesh tones lapped onto the hedge, sky trickled into a station wagon, bark leapt from the tree onto a nearby swan. "Oh no," someone said. "Melissa is as Melissa does." Melissa liked being bad. Was thrilled by it. But she did as she was told. Of course. Now in the shadowed, shadowy house she wonders what might have happened if she'd persisted. Was there such a thing as a beautiful anarchist? A lovely troublemaker? In the teeming jungle her favorite animal was the warthog. On Pirate Island she had a peg leg. In the Haunted Forest she consorted with hags, laughing at human vanity and never brushing her teeth. Just then power is restored. On TV a couple embraces, the radio bemoans congestion in Arcadia. Many lights are on. She can see herself in the mirrors again: here, there, everywhere. And always completely inside the lines.
BEAUTY MAKES A MISTAKE
Love letters turn up in Melissa's locker, under the windshield of her Mustang. She goes to the ladies' room, and when she comes back there's one under her plate, another tucked in a napkin. Some are delivered by sled dog, others dropped by parachute, occasionally taped to a baffled hen. The post office delivers the others without even a street address because she's as famous as Santa. Melissa considers it her duty to read each one, but because she can't reply to all, she doesn't reply to any; Melissa does not play favorites. She does, however, really like the ones from children: "You are like the sun. Congratulations!" "If I was snow, I'd land on your head and melt." "When I cry, I think of you and feel better." And the unusual ones are interesting: "I would hold you for nothing in my arms." "Even if you didn't say anything, I would listen." "Those aren't the lights of the city, but the fireflies of my longing." There's even a kind of eloquence in the traditional: "My heart quickens every time I see you." "There's no one like you." "I'm too shy to say hello in person." Then one day she's reading love letters, and it occurs to her that others need them more than she: the boy shooting hoops by himself, the girl at Starbucks with a scar, the science teacher with his nine dogs—just the general loneliness and longing in almost everyone's eyes. Of course it means picking and choosing, sifting and sorting. "Whose woods these are, I think I know, but they're yours if you just say the word, baby." Nix on that one. But many will do. Most, actually. She scissors away the salutation and signature and secretly distributes the rest. Next day she notices the difference: a new dress, a clean shirt, some general buoyancy, the presence of shy smiles. For a while. But when there are no more letters, a new gloom descends. Worse than before. When it comes out that she is the culprit, that the compliments were meant for her, that Melissa sees others as charity cases, she is reviled. Yelled at. Her mail turns hateful, her phone messages obscene.
"I only wanted to help," she cries.
"Oh please. How could you possibly understand!"
BEAUTY VOLUNTEERS
She signed up, so she went, driving her convertible over to Golden Acres. From the outside it's as advertised: Gilded in the sunlight. A mighty oak or two. There's an artist's rendition of a cozy apartment, complete with docile pet. Two painted seniors (not high school seniors but real ones) adorn the mural. He's robust with a five iron and Lacoste polo shirt. She's laughing gaily at a putter, her hair short enough for an active lifestyle, long enough not to suggest strange sexual preferences. Inside, it smells. Just a little. But it does smell. Like Lysol. And Simple Green. And other smells not from a bottle. Nurse Spud hands her a smock. With a stain. Melissa frowns. "I pictured something with stripes. Red and white stripes. Vertical ones to make me look even taller. But never mind." Nurse Spud, too tired to even look up: "Help me lift Mr. Dickens." Melissa gets both hands under those bony shoulders. His breath smells like yesterday. Melissa: "Goodness, he's awfully heavy. I imagined handing out magazines to brighten people's days." Nurse: "If you can't lift, get the bedpan from Room 209." Melissa: "Are there rubber gloves? I'm sure I need rubber gloves. In beige. Or may I just open the venetian blinds and let the sun in onto napping octogenarians in pressed pajamas?" Nurse: "Help me push this gurney." Melissa: "The big one? With that enormous person on it? Where is the retired CEO with just a slight fever who needs a cool cloth at his brow?" Nurse: "At least look in on Mrs. Rose." Who turns out to be thorny indeed: Her bedspread is too heavy, the TV too loud, the light too bright, magazines too depressing. And that hand! Wrinkled, gnarled, cold, human. OK, Melissa had been thinking about fitting in, being more like everyone else. But not so abruptly. Someday maybe. Not now. No wonder Melissa prefers the warm congratulations of the pageant judges. The limber fingers of those so glad to meet her. She returns to Nurse Spud: "How can you do this every day?" Nurse: "I've got a mortgage and car payments." She barely glances at Melissa. "You will too someday, cutie." Melissa bolts, leaving her smock on the floor by the puddle. The one Mr. Dickens made.
BEAUTY PASSES THE TEST
It's in Honors English, and nearly every question is about symbol and allegory. Melissa has this one aced. Not only does she always listen and take notes, she actually reads the books! So she knows Pilgrim's Progress: anxious Christian, the Valley of Humiliation, Doubting Castle. She's just finishing up when the door opens and in come all the answers on her exam, most wearing sandals and—as often as not—pale, with flowing robes. "Rise, Beauty," they chant, "and walk beside us." She's tentative at first, but soon smiles when Generosity hands her a hundred dollars, then joins Health for a chat about organic food. Although there aren't any cars, Safety cautions her to look both ways, then joins Virtue and begins to talk to a Health Ed. class. Beauty is enjoying herself. It's a pleasure to actually see Justice with her famous scales and blindfold being led about by Duty. Hilarity's high-pitched cackle and endless knee-slapping makes Optimism suggest, "Maybe tomorrow she'll put a lid on it." But there is always Peace and Quiet over by the stream, reading and eating grapes. Then something grotesque stumbles in late. Something damp and deformed, something misshapen and clumsy, ghastly and repulsive. Something, in short, ugly. In fact, Ugliness itself. Denial hurries by handing out those special glasses. Beauty reaches for a pair, but Ugliness slaps them away. "So proud of herself," Ugliness croaks. "But where would you be without me?" Beauty doesn't know what to say, but she does listen. "It's the dark that makes the light so inviting. The reason opposites attract is because they're essential to each other. What is Generosity without Selfishness? Without Practicality, Idealism gets nothing done." Beauty looks around. Sure enough, Innocence chats with Guilt on their way to court. Truth laughs at Falsehood's elaborate lies. Meaning sits down for coffee with Nonsense. Beauty looks at Ugliness. "So," she says, "without you, I wouldn't even exist?" Ugliness nods, grins horribly, and extends … something: part claw, part tentacle, part hand. And Beauty, to her undying credit, takes it.
