On Beauty (8 page)

‘Kiki . . .' she began, her face as demure as can be managed at fifty-four, ‘the term isn't figurative, you know. Not any more. When I said husband just then.'

‘What are you talking about?' said Kiki at the same moment that she realized the answer.

‘Husband. Warren is my husband. I said it earlier but you didn't pick up. We got married. Isn't it
fabulous
?' Claire's tensile features pulled themselves tight with glee.

‘I
thought
something was going on with you – you seemed nervy. Married!'

‘Completely and absolutely,' confirmed Warren.

‘But you didn't invite anybody or anything? When
was
this?'

‘Two months ago! We just did it. You know what? I didn't want anybody rolling their eyes about a couple of old birds like us getting hitched, so we didn't invite anybody and there was no goddamn eye-rolling. Except Warren. He rolled his eyes because I dressed up as Salomé. Now is that something to roll your eyes about?'

Just before an oncoming lamp-post their little chain of three dissolved itself, and Claire and Warren merged into each other again.

‘
Claire
, I wouldn't have rolled my eyes, honey – you should have said something.'

‘It was utterly last minute, Keeks, really it was,' said Warren. ‘You think I would have married this woman if I'd had time to think about it? She called me up and said it's the birthday of St John the Baptist, let's do it, and we did it.'

‘Again, please,' said Kiki, although this aspect of the couple, their locally celebrated ‘eccentricity', was not really attractive to her.

‘So I have this Salomé dress – red, sequinned, I knew when I saw it that it was my Salomé dress, I bought it in Montreal. I wanted to get married in my Salomé dress and take a man's head with me. And, goddamn it, I did. And it's such a
sweet
head,' said Claire, pulling it gently towards her.

‘So full of facts,' said Kiki. She wondered how many times this exact routine would be repeated to well-wishers in the coming weeks. She and Howard were just the same, especially when they had news. Each couple is its own vaudeville act.

‘
Yes
,' said Claire, ‘so full of genuine
facts
. And I never had that before, someone who knew
anything real at all
. Apart from “art is truth” – you can't
move
for people in this town who know that. Or
think
they know it.'

‘Mom.'

Jerome, in all his gloomy Jeromeity, had joined them. The ill-pitched greetings that compassionate age sings to mysterious youth rang out; hair was almost tousled and then wisely not, the eternal unanswerable question was met with a new and horrible answer (‘I'm dropping out.' ‘He
means
he's taking a little time out.'). For a moment it seemed that the world had drained itself of all possible subjects that might be gently discussed on a hot day in a pretty town. Then the glorious news of matrimony was recalled and joyfully repeated only to be met with the dispiriting request for specifics (‘Oh, well, it's actually my
fourth
, Warren's second'). Through all this Jerome continued to unwrap, very slowly, a silver foil package in his hand. At last the top of a volcanic burrito was revealed; it then promptly erupted in his hand and down his wrist. Their little circle took a collective step back. Jerome caught a shrimp from the side of it with his tongue.

‘Anyway . . . enough about the wedding already. In fa-aa-act,'
said Warren, taking his phone from the pocket of his khaki shorts, ‘yep – it's one fifteen – we've actually got to head off.'

‘Keeks – it's been
so nice
– but let's do it indoors at a table soon, OK?'

She was clearly eager to get away; Kiki wished herself more compelling, more artistic or funny or smart, more able to retain the attention of a woman like Claire.

‘Claire,' she said, but then could think of nothing interesting. ‘Is there anything Howard needs to know? He hasn't been checking his mail – he's trying to work on the Rembrandt; I don't think he's even spoken to Jack French yet.'

Claire looked baffled by this tediously practical turn to the conversation.

‘Oh – right, right . . . well, we have a cross-faculty meeting on Tuesday – we've got six new lecturers across the Humanities Faculty, including that celebrity asshole, you know the guy, I think, Monty Kipps –'

‘Monty Kipps?' repeated Kiki, each word encased in the double ripple of a dead laugh. She felt shock shudder through Jerome, radiating out.

Claire continued: ‘I know, really – he's apparently going to have an office in the Black Studies Department – poor Erskine! It's the only space they could find for him. I
know
 . . . I don't understand how many more crypto-fascist appointments this place is going to make, it's actually pretty extraordinary at this point . . . it's just . . . well, what can you say? The whole country's going to hell.'

‘Oh, god
damn
,' said Jerome beseechingly, turning around in a small circle, inviting sympathy from the people of Wellington.

‘Jerome, can we talk about this later –'

‘What the
fuck
 . . .' said Jerome more quietly, shaking his head in wonderment.

‘Monty Kipps and Howard . . .' said Kiki evasively, and made an iffy motion with her hand.

Claire, at last aware of a subtext of which she was not the sub, began to effect her exit. ‘Oh, Keeks, I really wouldn't worry about it. I heard Howard did have a beef with him a while back, but
Howard's
always
having some fight or another.' She smiled awkwardly at this understatement. ‘So . . . OK – well, come on – kisses – we gotta go.
So
lovely to see you guys.'

Kiki kissed Warren and was hugged too tightly by Claire; she waved and called goodbye and did all the necessaries on behalf of Jerome, who stood oblivious next to her on the blue doorstep of a Moroccan restaurant. To stave off the inevitable discussion, Kiki watched the couple walk away for as long as she could.

‘
Fuck
,' said Jerome once again, loudly. He sat down where he was.

The sky had misted over slightly, allowing the sun to cast itself in a misleading godly role. It shone beneficence in thin rods of Renaissance light, thrusting through a landscaped cloud that seemed designed for this purpose. Kiki tried to figure the blessing in it all, a way to spin bad news as good. Sighing, she removed her headwrap. Her heavy plait collapsed down her back, but it was good to have the sweat ooze from the scalp down her face. She sat down next to her son. She said his name, but he stood up and began to walk away. A family searching each other's backpacks for some lost item blocked his progress; Kiki caught up.

‘Don't do that, don't make me run after you.'

‘Er . . . free citizen, moving through the world?' said Jerome, pointing to himself.

‘You know, I was just about to sympathize, but actually I think I want to tell you to grow the hell
up
.'

‘Fine.'

‘No, it is
not
fine. Baby, I know you were hurt badly –'

‘I'm not hurt. I'm embarrassed. Let's skip it.' He pinched his brow with his fingers, a gesture so like one of his father's that it was ridiculous. ‘I forgot your burrito, sorry.'

‘Forget the burrito – can we talk?'

Jerome nodded, but they walked the left side of Wellington Square in silence. Kiki paused, and made Jerome pause, by a stall selling pin-cushions. These were shaped like fat Oriental gentlemen, complete with two diagonal dashes for their eyes and tiny yellow coolie hats with black fringes. Their pulvinate bellies were red satin,
and it was here that the needles pierced. Kiki picked one up, rolling it in her hand.

‘These are cute aren't they? Or are they awful?'

‘Do you think he'll bring his whole family?'

‘Honey, I really don't know. Probably not. But if they do come, we're all going to have to be real grown up about it.'

‘You're tripping if you think I'm hanging around.'

‘Good,' said Kiki with facetious cheeriness. ‘You can go back to Brown, problem solved.'

‘No, I mean . . . like maybe I'll go to Europe or whatever.'

The absurdity of this plan – economically, personally, educationally – was debated loudly here in the middle of the road, while the Thai woman who ran the stall grew nervous about the weight of Kiki's elbow as it pressed down beside a pyramid display of her useful little men.

‘So I'm just meant to sit around like an
asshole
– pretend nothing happened, is that it?'

‘No, it means we'll deal it with politely
as a family who
–'

‘Because of course that's the Kiki way of dealing with trouble,' said Jerome over his mother. ‘Just ignore the problem, forgive and forget, and poof, it's gone away.'

They stared at each other for a moment, Jerome brazen and Kiki surprised at his brazenness. He was, temperamentally, traditionally, the mildest of her children, the one she had always felt closest to.

‘I don't know how you stand it,' said Jerome bitterly. ‘He only ever thinks of himself. He doesn't care who he hurts.'

‘We're not talking about . . . about that, we're talking about you.'

‘I'm just saying,' said Jerome uneasily, apparently scared of his own topic. ‘Don't tell me I'm not dealing with my stuff when you're not dealing with yours.'

It surprised Kiki, how angry Jerome was about Howard, apparently on her behalf. It made her envious too – she wished she could muster up such clarity of hate. But she could not feel fury for Howard any more. If she was going to leave him, she should have done so in the winter. But she had stayed and now summer was
here. The only account she could give of this decision was that she was not quite done loving him, which was the same as saying she was not yet done with Love – Love itself being coeval with knowing Howard. What was one night in Michigan set against Love!

‘Jerome,' she said regretfully, and looked to the ground. But now he was determined to have his parting shot – children in a righteous mood always are. Kiki recalled being invincible and truth-loving and twenty years old; remembered feeling exactly this: that if her family could only speak the truth, together they would emerge, weeping but clear-eyed, into the light.

Jerome said, ‘It's like, a family doesn't work any more when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone. You know?'

Kiki's kids always seemed to say ‘you know' at the end of their sentences these days, but they never waited to find out if she
did
know. By the time Kiki looked up, Jerome was already a hundred feet away, tunnelling into the accepting crowd.

Jerome sat in the front seat next to the taxi-driver because the trip was Jerome's treat and Jerome's idea; Levi, Zora and Kiki were in the second row of this people-carrier, and Howard lay flat on his back with a row to himself. The Belsey family car was at the mechanics', having its twelve-year-old engine replaced. The Belseys themselves were on their way to hear Mozart's Requiem performed on Boston Common. It was a classic family outing, proposed at the moment when all the members of the family had never felt less familial. The black mood in the house had been building these past two weeks, ever since Howard learned the news of Monty's appointment. He saw it as an unforgivable betrayal on the part of the Humanities Faculty. A close personal rival invited on to campus! Who had supported it? He made angry calls to colleagues, trying to uncover the Brutus – with no success. Zora, with her
creepily expert knowledge of college politics, poured poison in his ear. Neither paused to recall that Monty's appointment might affect Jerome too. Kiki held her temper, waiting for the two to think of someone other than themselves. When this didn't happen, she exploded. They were only just recovering from the family row that ensued. The sulking and door slamming would have continued indefinitely had not Jerome – ever the peacemaker – thought up this trip as an opportunity for everybody to be nice to each other.

Nobody much wanted to go to a concert, but it was impossible to deter Jerome when he was resolved upon a good deed. So here they were, a protesting silence filling the car: against Mozart, against outings generally, against having to take a taxi, against the hour's drive from Wellington into Boston, against the very concept of quality time. Only Kiki supported it. She believed she understood Jerome's motivation. The word on the college grapevine was that Monty was bringing his family, which meant the girl was coming. Jerome must behave as if nothing had happened. They must
all
do that. They must be united and strong. She struggled forward now and reached over Jerome's shoulder to turn the radio up. It was not loud enough, somehow, to drown out the collective sulk. She stayed in this position for a minute and squeezed her son's hand. They had escaped outer Boston's network of cement and traffic at last. It was a Friday night. Single-sex clusters of Bostonians made their boisterous way through the streets, hoping to collide with their opposite numbers. As the Belsey taxi passed by a nightclub, Jerome squinted after the many girls in few clothes lining up before it, like the tail of something marvellous that did not exist. Jerome turned away. It hurts to look at what you can't have.

‘Dad – get up, we're almost there,' said Zora.

‘Howie, you got any money? I can't find my wallet, I don't know where it is.'

They stopped at the top corner of the park.

‘Thank God, man. I thought I was gonna be
sick
,' said Levi, yanking open the sliding door.

‘Plenty of time for that yet,' said Howard cheerily.

‘You might
enjoy
it?' suggested Jerome.

‘Of
course
we're gonna enjoy it, baby. That's why we came,' murmured Kiki. Finding her wallet, she paid the driver through the window. ‘We'll enjoy it fine. I don't know what's wrong with your father. I don't know why he suddenly acts like he
hates
Mozart. I never heard
that
one before.'

‘Nothing's wrong,' said Howard, linking arms with his daughter as they began to walk the pretty avenue. ‘If I had my way, we'd do this every night. I don't think enough people listen to Mozart. As we speak his legacy is dying. And if
we
don't listen to him, what will happen to him?'

‘Save it, Howie.'

But Howard continued. ‘Poor bastard needs all the support he can get, as far as I'm concerned. One of the great unappreciated composers of the last millennium . . .'

‘Jerome,
ignore
him, honey. Levi'll like it – we'll
all
like it. We're not animals. We can sit for half an hour like respectable folk.'

‘More like an hour, Mom,' said Jerome.

‘
Who
likes it? Me?' asked Levi urgently. The mention of his own name was never an occasion for irony or humour for Levi, and, like his own avid lawyer, he took a personal interest in every mention or misuse of it. ‘I don't even know who he is! Mozart. He's got a wig, right? Classical,' he said with finality, having satisfied himself that he had diagnosed the correct disease.

‘That's right,' agreed Howard. ‘Wore a wig. Classical. They made a film about him.'

‘I've
seen
that. That film eats my
ass
 . . .'

‘Quite.'

Kiki began to giggle. Now Howard let go of Zora and held his wife instead, gripping her from behind. His arms could not go entirely around her, but still they walked in this manner down the small hill towards the gates of the park. This was one of the little ways in which he said sorry. They were meant to add up each day.

‘Man, look at this line,' said Jerome glumly, for he had wanted the evening to be perfect. ‘We should have left earlier.'

Kiki rearranged her purple silk wrap around her shoulders. ‘Oh, it's not that long, baby. And at least it's not cold.'

‘I could jump that fence like
that
,' said Levi, pulling at the vertical iron rods as they walked beside them. ‘You wait in line, you're a fool, seriously. A brother don't need a gate – he jumps the fence. That's street.'

‘Again, please?' said Howard.

‘Street, street,' bellowed Zora. ‘It's like, “being street”, knowing the street – in Levi's sad little world if you're a Negro you have some kind of mysterious holy communion with sidewalks and corners.'

‘Aw, man, shut
up
. You don't know what the street
looks
like. You ain't never been there.'

‘What's this?' said Zora, pointing to the ground. ‘Marshmallow?'

‘
Please
. This ain't America. You think this is America? This is
toy-town
. I was
born
in this country – trust me. You go into Roxbury, you go into the Bronx, you
see
America. That's
street
.'

‘Levi, you don't live in Roxbury,' explained Zora slowly. ‘You live in Wellington. You go to
Arundel
. You've got your name ironed into your underwear.'

‘I wonder if I'm street . . .' mused Howard. ‘I'm still healthy, got hair, testicles, eyes, etcetera. Got
great
testicles. It's true I'm above subnormal intelligence – but then again I
am
full of verve and spunk.'

‘
No
.'

‘Dad,' said Zora, ‘please don't say spunk. Ever.'

‘Can't I be street?'

‘
No
. Why you always got to make everything be a joke?'

‘I just want to be street.'

‘
Mom
. Tell him to stop, man.'

‘I can be a brother. Check it out,' said Howard, and proceeded to make a series of excruciating hand gestures and poses. Kiki squealed and covered her eyes.

‘Mom – I'm going home, I swear to God if he does that for one more second, I swear to God . . .'

Levi was trying desperately to get his hoodie to cover the side of
his vision in which Howard was persisting. It was surely only seconds before Howard recited the only piece of rap he could ever remember, a single line he'd mysteriously retained from the mass of lyrics he heard Levi mutter day after day. ‘
I got the slickest, quickest dick
–' began Howard. Screams of consternation rose up from the rest of his family. ‘
A penis with the IQ of a genius!
'

‘Dat's it – I'm
gone
.'

Levi coolly jogged ahead of them all and tucked himself into the swarm going through the gates into the park. They all laughed, even Jerome, and it did Kiki good to see him laugh. Howard had always been funny. Even when they first met, she had thought of him, covetously, as the kind of father who would be able to make his children laugh. Now she tweaked his elbow affectionately.

‘Something I said?' asked Howard, satisfied, and released his arms from their folded pose.

‘Well done, baby. Has he got his cell on him?' asked Kiki.

‘He's got mine,' said Jerome. ‘He stole it from my room this morning.'

As they filed in behind the slow-moving crowd, the park gave off its scent for the Belseys, sap-filled and sweet, heavy with the last of the dying summer. On a humid September night like this the Common was no longer that neat, historic space renowned for its speeches and hangings. It shrugged off its human gardeners and tended once more towards the wild, the natural. The Boston primness Howard associated with these kinds of events could not quite survive the mass of hot bodies and the crepitations of the crickets, the soft, damp bark of the trees and the atonal tuning of instruments – and all this was to the good. Yellow lanterns, the colour of rape seed, hung in the branches of the trees.

‘Gee, that's nice,' said Jerome. ‘It's like the orchestra's hovering above the water, isn't it? I mean, the reflection from the lights makes it look like that.'

‘Gee,' said Howard, looking towards the flood-lit mound beyond the water. ‘Gee gosh. Golly gee. Bo diddley.'

The orchestra sat on a small stage on the other side of the pond. It was clear to Howard – the only non-myopic member of his family
– that every male musician was wearing a tie with a ‘musical notes' design upon it. The women had this same motif printed on a cummerbund-like sash they wore around their waists. From an enormous banner behind the orchestra, a profile of Mozart's miserable, pouchy hamster face loomed out at him.

‘Where's the choir?' asked Kiki, looking about her.

‘They're underwater. They come up in like a . . .' said Howard, miming a man emerging with a flourish from the sea. ‘It's Mozart in pond. Like Mozart on ice. Fewer fatalities.'

Kiki laughed lightly, but then her face changed and she held him tightly by his wrist. ‘Hey . . . ah, Howard, baby?' she said warily, looking across the park. ‘You want good news or bad news?'

‘Hmm?' said Howard, turning round and finding both kinds of news were approaching from across the green and waving at him: Erskine Jegede and Jack French, the Dean of the Humanities Faculty. Jack French on his long playboy legs in their New England slacks. How old was this man? The question had always troubled Howard. Jack French could be fifty-two. He could just as easily be seventy-nine. You couldn't ask him and if you didn't ask him you'd never know. It was a movie-idol face Jack had, cut-glass architecture, angled like a Wyndham Lewis portrait. His sentimental eyebrows made the shape of two separated sides of a steeple, always gently perplexed. He had skin like the kind of dark, aged leather you find on those fellows they dig out, after 900 years, from a peat bog. A thin yet complete covering of grey silk hair hid his skull from Howard's imputations of extreme old age and was cut no diff erently than it would have been when the man was twenty-two, balanced on the lip of a white boat looking out at Nantucket through one sun-shading hand, wondering if that was Dolly stood square on the pier with two highballs in her hand. Compare and contrast with Erskine: his shining, hairless pate, and those storybook freckles that induced in Howard an unreasonable feeling of joy. Erskine was dressed this evening in a three-piece suit of the yellowest of yellows, the curves of his bumptious body naturally resisting all three pieces. On his small feet he wore a pair of pointed Cuban-heeled shoes. The effect was of a bull doing his initial
two-step dance towards you. Still ten yards away, Howard had a chance to switch his position with his wife – quickly and unobserved – so that Erskine would naturally veer towards Howard and French would go the other way. He took this opportunity. Unfortunately French was not given to duologic conversation – he addressed the group, always. No – he addressed the gaps
between
the group.

‘Belseys
en masse
,' said Jack French very slowly, and each Belsey tried to ascertain which Belsey he might be looking at directly. ‘Missing . . .
one
, I believe. Belseys minus one.'

‘That's Levi, our youngest – we lost him. He lost us. To be honest, he's
trying
to lose us,' said Kiki coarsely and laughed, and Jerome laughed and Zora laughed and so did Howard and Erskine and after all of them, very slowly, with infinite slowness, Jack French began to laugh.

‘My children,' began Jack.

‘Yes?' said Howard.

‘Spend most of their time,' said Jack.

‘Yes, yes,' said Howard, encouragingly.

‘
Contriving
,' said Jack.

‘Ha, ha,' said Howard. ‘
Yes
.'

‘To lose me at public events,' said Jack finally.

‘Right,' said Howard, exhausted already. ‘Right. Always the way.'

‘We are anathema to our own children,' said Erskine merrily, with his scale-jumping accent, from high to low and back again. ‘We are liked only by
other
people's children.
Your
children for example like me so much more than they like
you
.'

‘It's true, man. I'd move in with you if I could,' said Jerome in return, for which he got the standard Erskine response to good tidings, even minor ones like the arrival of a new gin and tonic on the table – both of Erskine's hands placed on his cheeks and a kiss on the forehead.

‘You will come home with me, then. It is settled.'

‘Please, take the rest too. Don't dangle carrots,' said Howard, stepping forward and giving Erskine a jovial slap on the back. He then turned to Jack French and put out his hand, which French, who had turned to gaze upon the musicians, did not notice.