The Whole Beautiful World Read online

  “It’s beautiful,” Aleesa said one evening while I was sitting at our table, procrastinating on a paper by making a red tam. She was feeling sick and had resisted all of the invitations to hang out she had that evening. “The way your hands move when you do that. It’s like they’re fluttering, or dancing.”

  I blushed. I hated that her words made me feel warm.

  “I could teach you,” I said.

  “Oh no—I wouldn’t be any good.” I knew she would be, but she couldn’t be bothered to be around me for the length of time it would take to learn. “I don’t have the patience for finicky things.”

  “You’ve got patience. You’re pretty good at getting your school work done.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve got to keep my scholarships or I can’t afford to be here. I’m the first in my family to go to university, so. It means a lot to them I guess, or something. To do things differently.”

  “Than who?”

  “Well, than they did. You know how it is—your parents want you to have things better than they did, but they don’t know how to get you there.”

  I didn’t know how it was, so I just nodded lightly.

  “But I just wanted a good excuse to move out. You know—small towns, nowhere to grow. So backwards.”

  This time I did know; coming from small towns was about the only thing we had in common. But I liked Talbot. I liked being with people I had known my whole life. I didn’t know what to do in this new space, how to find these things to do to connect you to other people.

  “You picked bass up pretty quick. But then, it helps having a hot teacher.”

  She smirked. “Bass is easy, straightforward.”

  “Guys think girl bass players are hot.”

  “That’s not why I learned it.”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  I didn’t look up from my crocheting, the twisting hook mesmerizing us both as it grabbed loops and linked them together, its delicate stem so light in my hands.

  She said, “It really is beautiful. It’s beautiful that you can use your talent to help people.”

  “It’s not really helping them. Doesn’t change the fact that they’re sick.”

  She got up and walked over to her corner and started plucking at her bass. The rhythm was too irregular, and I kept dropping the yarn. I started to feel motion sickness from staring so long at the flashing red wool.

  ALEESA WAS LATE for practice and sound check before the Ne’er-Do-Wells’ first gig. It was an eight o’clock show on a Tuesday night at a bar with a grimy disco ball hanging above the green platform that acted as a stage. They were only allowed to do covers. I drove Tyler and Aleesa’s bass. She had a paper to finish beforehand and was taking the bus.

  “So she’s still borrowing this thing from James, eh?” Tyler said as he tuned her bass. He sat on the peeling green platform.

  “Sun-In Guy? Yeah,” I said. He chuckled. Did he find Aleesa funny also?

  “Does she usually take a while to finish her homework?”

  “She usually stays up all night before it’s due.”

  “I guess she’s pretty smart.”

  “Well, book smart.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I paused. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard you play.”

  “She’s picked it up pretty quickly, this bass thing. Is she practising on her own, or with James, or . . . ?”

  “He’s over a fair bit.”

  He nodded slowly, twisting a tuning peg. My reflection rippled in the shiny plastic of the bass. His hand moved across it, plucking above my lopsided cheek.

  “It’s too bad you can’t do your own songs here,” I said. “They always let you in Talbot.”

  “In Talbot people know you. But there’s no point if no one knows them,” he said. It didn’t entirely make sense to me, but I didn’t think he was trying to communicate anyway.

  Aleesa’s heels clicked into the room, long boots clinging to her solid calves. She said hi, dragging it out remorsefully with her head to the side. Her big eyes were pinched in apology.

  Tyler jogged over and hugged her. The stage smelled like vomit and cheap soap from a dispenser. I tried to look out of the window and watch the people walking along the street while blond wisps of Aleesa’s hair kept flicking in the reflection.

  AFTERWARDS, THE FIVE of us gathered around the table where I had sat alone during their set. There were about ten other people in the bar. The guys stared at Aleesa intently while she told us a story about her high school ski trip.

  “My Armenian friend’s mom bought her some cookies for the trip and left them in a paper bag on the counter, only she grabbed the wrong bag, so when we got to the hotel, she left the bag on the counter and I opened it, and it was full of all these chicken feet—little claws sticking out everywhere. So at one in the morning we jumped the fence to the pool area and swam through the indoor-outdoor pool after it was closed and dumped the feet in the hot tub. In the morning, we went down, and the whole place smelled like chicken soup. There was foam all over the top of the water and the kids were all reaching in to grab the chicken claws and throwing them at each other. So awesome.”

  The guys laughed for too long. Too hard.

  “Where’d you get the money to go on the trip?” I asked. The sides of Aleesa’s plump lips went slack.

  “My English teacher helped me out a bit. I had a big crush on him, actually. He was the one who encouraged me to come here—”

  “Were you sleeping with him?” I asked.

  Tyler’s eyes narrowed. “Hey,” he said softly. I waited for him to say my name, to touch me chidingly, but he didn’t. “Hey,” he said again.

  “There’s nothing wrong with it if you did,” I said quickly. “I mean, your choice. It’s cool. I was just wondering.”

  She looked at me with a soft smile, and sort of shook her head. It seemed like disgust, but it might have been pity. I didn’t deserve an answer. My cheeks were burning. I wanted to take off my sweater, but left it on and pretended my neck wasn’t turning red.

  “So what other crazy things did you do in high school?” Tyler asked.

  “Well, our biology teacher told us once that if you didn’t sleep four nights in a row you would go crazy, and we wanted to see if he was right,” she started. She must have slept with that teacher.

  I WASN’T SURE if Aleesa started skipping band practices because she was forgetting about them or just couldn’t give a damn. It wasn’t bothering Tyler enough for him to say anything. Sun-In was over more often as well, standing behind her, arms wrapped around her and the shiny guitar.

  A couple months later she missed a gig entirely. “You guys are so together, you couldn’t even tell you were missing a bass,” I said as I drove Tyler back to campus. He didn’t say anything. When we got back he asked if he could come up to our room, “just to check if she’s there.” As we walked through the yellow stairwell, I tried to think of a time he had been confrontational, with me or with anyone. Nothing came to mind. I felt my hands get clammy imagining him telling her off, his face getting red, saying I was a more reliable member of the group than she was.

  She was asleep and had left a note on the fridge under a plastic manatee magnet.

  So sorry I couldn’t make it to the Ne’er-Do-Wells’ gig. Turns out I’m pregnant. If you see him tell Tyler I’ll explain everything tomorrow. Love, Aleesa.

  She had emphasized her name by underlining it with a curlicue.

  But I knew she would explain nothing to Tyler or to me. Tyler stood beside me and read the note, then leaned his head against the buzzing fridge. I wasn’t sure if I should hug him, if I should wait for him to hug me.

  He pulled his head away finally and said, “Figures. Figured it had to be this important for her to miss.”

  “I can walk you to your dorm,” I said.

  “All good—I’m good,” he said as the door closed behind him.

  SHE LOST TEN pounds in her firs
t trimester, which made the boys pay even more attention to her. Everyone was so impressed that she was still able to get to half of her classes despite the morning sickness. Girls came over and talked with her and then held her hair and stroked her back while she threw up in our bathroom. It constantly smelled like vomit. Tyler was sure the baby was his, and never asked her for confirmation. Sun-In Bass Player didn’t seem to mind that Tyler was claiming it, and no one else seemed to care whose it was, including Aleesa. It seemed everyone else thought she was creating the thing all by herself.

  For the next three months she kept saying she was keeping it. She wasn’t getting drunk at parties, but she still captivated everyone as she talked about the benefits of breastfeeding, about how the fetus was the size of a grape or a plum or a grapefruit.

  But the bigger she got the less she talked about whether to do sleep-training, and the fewer books on motherhood she took out from the library and piled on our table. By early spring she stopped talking about keeping up with school by dropping a course each semester, stopped making plans with the girls who wanted to live with her next year about how they would try to find a place with enough rooms for her to have a nursery, how they would watch the baby while she was at class, how they would find ducky wall decals for the bathroom.

  DURING EXAM WEEK at the end of second semester she woke me up at three in the morning when her labour pains became too much to handle.

  “I thought you weren’t due for another month and a half,” I said.

  “So did I. Should I call 911?”

  “No, don’t bother—I’ll drive you.” I dragged my legs over the side of the bed. I pulled on a black sweater with the iron-on band logo Tyler had designed for the Ne’er-Do-Wells—a moose with antlers made of fingers—and left my pajama pants on. I noticed in the car that Aleesa was wearing the same sweater I was, though her moose seemed more alive over her plump breasts. She had straightened her hair and put on makeup. She must have been up for hours before bothering to wake me.

  “I’m the first in at least three generations to not have a baby at sixteen,” she told me between deep breaths. “At least I waited till nineteen.” She tried to laugh at herself but it sounded like a cough. “I’m the first to give the baby up.” She reached over and squeezed the steering wheel tightly, just below my hand. “So we’re getting better,” she said in a forced whisper. I nodded though I knew her eyes were clamped shut.

  “I didn’t sleep with my teacher, by the way,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t. That’s why I’m telling you.”

  “Are you counting the time between contractions? You should probably be doing that. Sorry I can’t help you, but I’m driving.”

  WHEN WE PULLED into the parking lot of the hospital I asked her if she wanted me to call her mother. “No, thank you,” she said. I drove up the crescent along the entrance, parked the car, and watched her wobble through the automatic glass doors as they gracefully parted for her. I idled there for a minute, thought about my exam that coming evening and then drove over to visitor parking. When I got out of the car I was surprised that even in the city I could hear the cicadas sing.

  I asked at the information desk which room Aleesa Prins, who was having a baby, was in.

  “Are you family?” the woman asked. I looked at her scalp, the dark grey shoots of roots popping up below orange-blond hair. I thought she would recognize me from the time months ago when I asked where the chemo ward was. “That’s a lovely thing you’re doing,” she had said in a cooing voice to my bag of crocheted hats. “It’s so important, young people like you thinking about other people like this. You’re touching hearts.” But now she didn’t remember.

  “She doesn’t have any family here,” I said.

  “Did she ask you to join her?”

  “I’m her roommate.” The woman told me to take a seat and then made some calls in a hushed voice. I lay down across two vinyl seats, legs pulled tightly into my stomach, head propped on a few copies of Chatelaine. When I woke up a magazine cover was stuck to my face. I walked by the desk, asked for the room number again and took the stairs.

  It felt odd to be at the hospital when everything was still. I stopped by the chemo ward on my way to Aleesa’s room. The doors were closed and the lights were off. I noticed something red in the garbage pail as I left the hall. I was convinced without looking it was my hat. I didn’t bother to stop to confirm, knew if I did, the tension in my stomach would climb up my throat and I’d be a mess by the time I reached Aleesa’s room.

  ALEESA DIDN’T LOOK at me when I walked in. Two round soft nurses were busy smiling around her, telling her what a great job she was doing, wasn’t she strong, a powerful woman warrior.

  “So you found me.”

  “It feels weird to be here so early,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure you know this place pretty well. You’re a saint.”

  I couldn’t read her tone. Even now, with her mascara smudging under her eyes and her bulging body covered in a gauzy gown, vulnerable as could be, I had no idea whether she meant it or not.

  “You don’t have to be here.”

  “I know.”

  She let out a high groan, then lifted her hand towards me as if she had a question. I took it and she squeezed my knuckles against each other. When she was done squeezing I carefully reached between her fingers with my other hand and pulled off my mood ring.

  “Can I see that?” she asked. She held her other hand open above her breasts and I pressed it into her palm. It was black. When she was done squeezing through the next contraction, she lifted the mood ring. It had turned a bright greenish-blue, a colour I’d never seen before.

  When the baby came out she didn’t want to see him, but asked me to go look while the nurses cleaned him up. I stared from behind their chubby arms at his blotched and screaming face.

  “Is he cute?” she asked. “Of course,” I lied. The nurses beamed. She went to sleep.

  I sat beside her bed and flipped through some magazines until a woman came by to do some paperwork. I gave Aleesa’s shoulder a little shake and the woman told her she’d been a real trooper, just a real rock star, and it was wonderful that she could bring so much joy to someone else through all this. Aleesa sighed and said she wanted to make sure it was the type of thing where she wouldn’t have to talk to the baby’s parents, but if he wanted to find her when he was old enough, that was fine.

  It was three in the afternoon when I got home, and I decided that sleeping was more important than cramming before my exam that evening. I woke up an hour later to a steady knocking at the door.

  Tyler stood there, red-eyed. “Why didn’t you—” He stopped for a minute and stared at the finger-antlers on my shirt. I tried not to breathe. “Why the hell didn’t you call?”

  “Call?”

  “When it happened!” His voice had stopped breaking.

  “I . . . I didn’t think about it. She didn’t want anyone.”

  “Right.” He stared for a bit at the plastic ridge along the threshold before walking away.

  He didn’t ask about Aleesa anymore after that. She stayed at her parents’ place for the next month and was given permission to write her exams in July. Tyler helped me pack up the day after exams and I drove us back to Talbot.

  THROUGHOUT THE REST of university she and I shared no more than passing waves in the hall. She got her degree, and even though we didn’t invite her to the wedding, she’s been sending Tyler and me Christmas cards since she got married to some lawyer. I used to keep them on the fridge for a week, but now I just put them in a drawer right away, with the others from years past. She’s a music teacher, the first teacher in her family. She and the lawyer had two blond daughters, and they’re both in pink in the pictures she’s sent me. In the most recent card, it was just her and the girls. “Chad and I split up,” she wrote, “but it’s amicable.” “Figures,” said Tyler when I told him. She sings jazz standards on Thursday nights at a loca
l restaurant, and asked in her most recent card if we wanted to come out sometime, but I haven’t gotten around to replying.

  PRETTY PRAYER

  DEAR GOD, SHE PRAYED, make me beautiful and deliver me from vanity, which seemed like a good prayer because God could see she had her priorities right. She had just learned in biology class that skin cells die and reproduce themselves every month, so essentially she had a new skin every thirty days. She prayed this prayer before bed each night, visualizing her skin cells rearranging themselves while she dreamed (though she seldom remembered her dreams), renewing her face overnight. The old self gone, the new there to greet her when she woke.

  She prayed this prayer every morning when she looked in the mirror and her old self was still there, tolerable but imperfect. And to prove her pious devotion to staving off vanity, after she spent half of an hour doing her hair, she resisted the urge to apply makeup before biking to school, to put a little shimmer across her lids to make her thin eyes pop, to take attention away from her crooked nose. She would prove to God she was different than the other girls—and he would heal her acne, make her A cup overflow.

  If I should die before I wake, I pray my corpse will look beautiful in the open casket. She sat there in bed for a while, twisting a strand of her smooth clean hair (her one irrefutable source of beauty) between her fingers, imagining the people passing through the warm amber lighting like apparitions in the funeral home. How beautiful she looks, they would say—her classmates who had ignored her all these years, her teachers who hardly acknowledged her presence in class, the boys who she was good enough for but who always paid more attention to the flirty, high-maintenance girls. Her friends who were nice enough, but never appreciated how charming she could be. The young minister who shook her hand every Sunday and complimented her on her piano solo, and then reached to grab the next hand in line. At her funeral, he would be unable to keep from glancing every minute or so at her still, smooth face on the satin pillow. He would preach about the fleetingness of youth, perhaps, how man’s days are like the flowers in the field, and how, as angelic as she looks here before us now, Family of God, we cannot even begin to imagine the beauty that surrounds her, that exudes from her in paradise. He would draw out exudes in the way a pastor does, so that everyone would close their welling eyes and see it for themselves. She’s probably up there accompanying the angel choir, her hair swaying to the music, in a new and perfect body.