We All Love the Beautiful Girls

by Joanne Proulx

Genres: Family Life; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Who do the lucky become when their luck sours?

One frigid winter night, the happily prosperous Mia and Michael Slate discover that a close friend and business partner has cheated them out of their life savings. On the same night, their son, Finn, passes out in the snow at a party - a mistake with shattering consequences.

Everyone finds their own ways of coping with the ensuing losses. For Finn, it's Jess, a former babysitter who sneaks into his bed at night, even as she refuses to leave her boyfriend. Mia and Michael find themselves forgoing tenderness for rougher sex and seeking solace outside their marriage: Mia in a flirtation with a former colleague, whose empty condo becomes a blank canvas for a new life, and Michael at an abandoned baseball diamond, with a rusty pitching machine and a street kid eager to catch balls in Finn's old glove. As they creep closer to the edge - of betrayal, infidelity, and revenge - the story moves into more savage terrain.

With honesty, compassion, and a tough emotional precision, award-winning author Joanne Proulx explores the itch of the flesh, sexual aggression, the reach of love and anger, and the question of who ultimately suffers when the privileged stumble.

Release date: August 28, 2018

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

I love her. Everything. The way she smells. Tastes. Feels. Jesus. The way she feels.

The first time. It was an early-morning thing. I was coming out of the bathroom. Jess was in the hall. We were both still half-asleep. I don’t know why she was sleeping over—she wasn’t babysitting, we were way past that, I can’t remember, it wasn’t that unusual, she’s always been at our place a lot. She put her hands on my shoulders and backed me into the bathroom, kicked closed the door. The whole thing lasted about fifteen seconds.

You took advantage of my morning wood, I say, later, months later, when I’ve regained my ability to speak.

Lucky boy, she says.

Lucky boy.

We’re lying in my bed this time, a map of the world pinned to the wall above us, a million other places we could exist. I’m rubbing the lace on her bra, trying to take things slow, so she knows that I can. The lace is scratchy against my thumb.

Doesn’t this bug you? I ask.

Not really. You get used to it.

I kiss her, there, beneath the lace, so now it’s scratching my cheek.

She puts her hand on my belt buckle, gives a little tug, and I can’t help it, I moan just thinking about what’s next.

Your parents would be mad if they knew, Jess says. They expect more from me.

More than this?

She laughs. Her lips are gorgeous. Her teeth white and perfect. Perfect. She undoes the top button of my fly. And Eric, she says. He’d be very mad.

My jaw tightens, back teeth clenched. Yeah, I say. Whatever.

She undoes another button. And whatever you do, you can’t tell Eli. Because he’d tell Eric. For sure.

I know, I say. I’m not stupid. I know Eli.

Jess lifts her head off the pillow, opens my mouth with hers, slips her tongue inside, long black hair sweeping my face, the smell of summer in winter.

I like it with you, she says. She works the last button loose and slides her hand inside my jeans. With you I don’t have to be a porn star. With you, I can just be myself.

Her hand. Jesus, I love her hand.

Mia and Frankie are well into an impromptu photo shoot when Frankie asks her if Michael, her husband of nineteen years, is the first guy she really loved. Mia tells the girl no. Without lowering her camera, she tells her how the first boy had been trembling when he whispered he loved her on the stone bridge that crossed Black Bear Creek.

“Actually?” Frankie says. “Trembling?”

“Like a leaf in a storm. We were young. Fifteen.” He’d walked her home for weeks before working up the nerve to hold her hand.

Mia rotates the ring on her lens, snaps the girl sharply into focus. A beauty. A lioness. Broad shoulders, amber eyes, beautiful lips, crazy, springy hair—the deepest shade of red. Behind her a wall of old north-facing windows, winter creeping in around the puttied edges.

What Mia doesn’t tell Frankie about the night on the bridge is how that first I love you collapsed her life before into a trinket. How one beat back her heart had been a quiet thing, hung in her chest like an un-struck gong. Instead, she dips her camera so she and the girl are eye to eye. “Hot chocolate?” she says. “A cup of coffee?”

“Nah.” Frankie flips her phone over on the settee. “I’m good.” The blue rectangle shines bright on the purple velvet, the fabric dark as a bruise in the low northern light that floods the front of the studio and lets Mia shoot without a flash.

Frankie puffs a stray curl away from her face. Over the last couple of years she’s grown out her hair and found some magic product to tame it. Today, her curls lie long and loose, only a hint of wild, and there’s a new gleam at her nostril—the nose ring she hasn’t told her parents about. It’s the reason she came to the studio, to show Mia first and build up the courage to go home. Mia’s already reassured her that the new piercing looks good—and it does—and sure, her parents might be upset, but they’ll get used to it. Although honestly, Mia’s not certain they will.

“So.” Frankie glances up from her phone. “What happened with the trembler?”

Mia tells her how she loved the boy back, so unguardedly, so completely, so willingly, and the tragedy of him being a fundamentalist Christian who didn’t believe in premarital sex. How intense it all was, the two of them falling deeper and deeper into a frustrating fumble of love.

“God,” Frankie says, “that sounds horrible.”

“It was.” Mia is surprised by the camera’s tremor. She presses the body more firmly against her brow; old-fashioned, she knows, but she rarely uses the screen. “After three years,” she says, “all I wanted to do was, well, you know, fuck.”

“Mia!”

It is their best moment together, and Mia has caught it, the girl leaning so joyously toward her, laughing, her body draped over her knees, the ring in her nose a gold glint in the soft gray of the studio windows.

And then, after she’s sitting straight again, she asks so shyly, “Well, did you?”

“No,” Mia says. “We broke up. He was pure when he left me. Both of us pure and broken-hearted and terribly, terribly horny.”

“That’s a sad story.” Frankie’s shoulders lift as she laughs.

“The saddest part,” Mia says, “was afterward we could not find a way to be friends.”

Frankie stares off out the window at the sternness of a Canadian winter. In her hand, her phone tumbles, darkened screen flipping to dusty-pink case.

“How about you?” Mia asks. “You met anyone special?”

The girl casts a long stare into the camera. Light framing light, she lets Mia in, the shutter clicks, a flicker of black, and Frankie snaps back bright at the center. She brushes her nose, and her auburn mane quivers. “No,” she says. “Not really.”

Michael unfolds the scrap of paper he’s drawn from the bowl. “Frankie,” he reads, and she flashes him a peace sign. Sitting on the floor of her family’s slope-side chalet, leaning up against one of the old leather couches, her cheeks are red from being outside all day. Like everyone else she’s in her après-ski wear: wooly socks, long johns and a baggy sweatshirt, Mont Orford embossed across the front. Michael sees no sign of the nose ring Mia mentioned, which probably means Frankie lost that fight.

“I hope you’ve learned to draw,” she says.

“No, I hope you’ve learned to draw,” Michael teases back. They’ve always been easy together. On the chairlift that morning, bobbing in the air thirty feet above a slope of glittery white, their skis brushing the tips of snowy evergreens, she’d asked him to just, blah, be quiet for a bit. A few seconds later, with her face tipped to the sun, she said it felt like she was communing with God.

Finn picks his mom’s name from the bowl, leaving Frankie’s parents, Helen and Peter, as the third team, which isn’t ideal. Peter can’t draw to save his life, and board games make Helen cranky, especially when she’s paired up with her husband. Regardless, everyone’s pretty mellow as they settle in around the table and set up the board, well fed on spaghetti and meatballs—Helen’s recipe, always wonderful—and muscle-tired after a good day on the hill: bright blue sky and decent snow and a fairly mild fourteen degrees, which is about as good as it gets in the Eastern Townships in January.

The teams select their markers. Michael and Frankie get stuck with a stray chess piece, a knight. The game’s old, the little hourglass also missing, so Finn pulls out his iPhone to use as a timer.

Peter places a red marker on the board. “Think we’re going to get the management contract for the Soho?”

“Yeah,” Michael says. “I think we’re good.”

“Premium condo building. We’ll make big money.”

Mia rolls her eyes. “Can you please not talk business tonight?”

“Fine with me,” Michael says, and picks up the die. “Who starts?”

“We have to get off P.” Frankie has the rule card in her hand. “Person slash place slash animal.”

Helen holds up a bottle. “More wine?” Mia raises her glass.

“Can I have some?”

“You’re seventeen, Francine,” Helen says. “The drinking age is nineteen.”

Finn glances up from his phone. “Eighteen in Quebec. And we’re in Quebec.”

Helen sets down the bottle, doing her best to look stern, which isn’t easy for her. “Then next year you can both have a glass.”

“You and me”—Finn high-fives Frankie across the table—“rockin’ the clubs in Orford.”

Peter jimmies the first card from the box. “Are we starting here or what?”

“HOW DID YOU get tinsel out of that?” Michael plucks the paper from Mia’s hand. “He drew three squiggly lines.”

“Are you two cheating?” Peter leans over, trying to see what Finn’s drawn.

“Definitely cheating,” Frankie says.

“We don’t need to cheat. We’re just good.”

“Yes we are,” Mia says, in her most pleasantly obnoxious game-player voice.

“I swear you two can read each other’s minds.” Michael looks at the paper again, those three anything squiggles, feeling unsure, disconcerted.

“NO ACTIONS!”

“Come on, it’s right there.” Michael cocks a thumb over his shoulder, at the chairlift behind him, framed by the picture window. “Does it say no pointing? Where does it say no pointing?”

“It’s Pictionary.” Finn picks up the lid and shows it to his dad. “The Game of Quick Draw. First Edition.”

“I’m fine with pointing,” Frankie says. “I mean, it’s hanging right behind his head. It seems almost wrong not to use it.”

“I like your thinking, partner.” Michael gives her a wink. “Someone should get you a glass of wine. Maybe a nose ring while they’re at it.”

“Would you stop,” Helen says. “Michael, you are a s-h-i-t disturber.”

He reaches across the table and squeezes her hand. “You know the kids can spell now, right, Helen?”

“Just move your stupid piece, you cheater,” she says, finally letting herself laugh.

“HOW IS THAT a giraffe?” Helen stares at Peter’s drawing in disbelief. “It looks like a horse. Oh my gosh, we’re never getting off the first square.”

Peter elongates a line, stretching his stick horse’s neck. “There. Now it’s a giraffe.”

Helen tuts. “My kindergarten students draw better than that.”

“Yeah? Well, they’re not on your team tonight, are they?”

“Everyone knows giraffes have long necks, don’t they? I mean, isn’t that what defines them? Their long necks?”

“FRANKIE, YOUR HAIR. I can’t see what you’re drawing. Skirt. Dancer. Skirt?”

She stabs at the paper with her pencil and gives Michael an exasperated look.

“What? Dress? Oh, oh”—he snaps his fingers, his eyebrows lift—“tutu.”

“Yes!” Frankie whinnies as she moves her marker onto the same square as Finn and Mia’s and rubs it saucily against their playing piece.

“Are you hitting on our little blue thing?” Finn asks.

Frankie whinnies again and rears up her little plastic horse.

“WE’RE THINKING ABOUT going to Whistler for Family Day weekend.” Helen drops the game pieces into the tray. “You guys interested?”

Michael and Mia exchange a glance. They definitely do not have the funds for a trip like that.

“Whistler!” Finn says. “We should so do it.”

“We’ve never gone together,” Frankie says. “It’ll be sweet.”

“Isn’t it kind of expensive,” Mia says, “to fly across the country for only a couple of days?”

Peter looks up from folding the board. “We’re just tossing the idea around. We haven’t decided anything.”

Helen’s jaw drops. “I thought I was supposed to book the tickets.”

Peter slots the board into the box. “Finn, can you hand me the lid? We were just going to talk about it, Helen.”

She shakes her head. “I thought we already had.”

“So, what?” Frankie says. “We’re not going, then?”

“LOOK.”

Finn’s first to notice the snow falling outside, so dense the night sky has lightened to gray and the evergreens bordering the runs have disappeared in the flurry along with the looping string of chairlifts. Michael slips his arm around Mia’s waist and tucks her into his side. She smells good, a fine blend of wood smoke, red wine and fresh air. For many reasons, he’s happy that they have their own room at the chalet tonight, that Finn and Frankie have moved out of the bunk beds and onto the living room couches where they can watch old movies on late-night TV.

Helen frowns out at the storm. “We’ll need more food if we get snowed in.”

“We’re not getting snowed in,” Peter says. “We have work on Monday.”

Frankie bumps her shoulder into Finn’s. “Powder in the east.”

“Who needs Whistler?” he says. “We can be happy right here.”

Friday night, there’s a knock at the door. Michael and Mia, stretched out on the floor in front of the fire trading sections of last Sunday’s Times, a half bottle of shiraz standing on the carpet between them, both groan.

“You expecting anyone?”

Mia shakes her head.

“Probably someone collecting for something,” Michael says. “They always come on Fridays, when they know we’re at our weakest.”

“Charity people—heartless bastards.”

“You went out for Heart and Stroke.”

“Don’t remind me. Most of the neighbors were so unhappy to see me, cap in hand. God, and Randolph. The millionaire on the corner—”

“With the Aston Martin.”

“—dropping change into my hand. Nickels, dimes, the occasional quarter.” Mia shivers. “I’ve been wishing a heart attack upon him ever since. Or a stroke. Either would be fine.” She leans a little closer and lowers her voice, as if there’s a chance whoever’s on the front porch might overhear her. “He doesn’t deserve the tree on his lawn.” An enormous maple, at least two hundred years old, Mia’s always been crazy about it. Even Michael, not a huge tree connoisseur, is impressed by its size, the fact it grew so large in the city.

They lie still, listening for the dull thud of boots on snow-packed porch stairs to release them back to their papers. Instead, there’s another knock, this time louder, more insistent.

“Shit,” Michael says. “You get it.”

“No, you.”

“No, you.”

“I’ll blow you if you get it.”

“Deal.” Michael slaps Mia’s ass as he rolls up off of the carpet. He knows that after another couple glasses of wine, they’ll probably both fall asleep in front of the fire. Still, he likes the sexual banter, likes the fact that after nearly two decades of marriage Mia still says the words and, from time to time, graces him with the deed.

He goes to step away, but Mia slips her hand under the hem of his jeans and gives his ankle a squeeze. “Lucky,” she says.

Which is exactly what he’d been thinking. By the end of the work week, all he wants is to be home. When they’re invited out for dinner, separated by people, he misses having her to himself. At a party, it’s always Mia who catches his eye. Her vitality, her youthful heart. He’ll wait for her to feel him watching. Then from ten, twenty, thirty feet, their eyes will lock, hold, as love rises sly into the room.

Front door open, Michael can’t quite process the man shuffling from foot to foot on his porch, in a tuque and puffy down jacket, each breath an icy fog. Michael’s used to seeing Stanley tugging at his tie in their boardroom, trying to explain to him and Peter why even though sales are up, their property management companies aren’t making the money they once did. Stanley showing up at his house on a Friday night, even with his briefcase clutched to his chest, is way out of the norm.

Michael puts a hand on Stanley’s back and guides him into the front hall. “Come in before you freeze to death.”

“Sorry to drop in like this.” Stanley places his boots on the mat beside the door, then unzips his jacket, revealing an impressive paunch, fallout from long hours behind a desk and too many client lunches. “I saw your Jeep in the driveway.”

“You want something to drink?”

“This is a professional visit,” Stanley says, “but if you’re having one.”

Mia’s still on the floor by the fire, but now she’s sitting up, cross-legged with a pillow on her lap. “Mia, you remember Stanley. Stanley, Mia, my wife.” Michael knows he doesn’t have to clarify the relationship, to add the title, but he likes to lay claim. Mia’s always worn her hair long, but this week she had it cut into a short bob, the bangs high on her forehead. On an older woman the haircut would be severe, on a child it would look like a mistake, the scissorwork of an unskilled parent, but on Mia the effect is gamine, showing off her straight, dark eyebrows, her moony eyes. She looks like a ripe tomboy from the Isle of Man, a French schoolteacher who prefers cafés to classrooms.

“Our boys were on the same team a few years back, weren’t they?” Mia says, repeating a neighborhood mantra, forget Kevin Bacon, everyone one ice sheet removed.

Stanley nods. “Finn’s not playing this year?”

“Nope,” Michael interjects. He bends and picks the wine bottle from the floor. “Concentrating on his marks.” Which is only partly true. Finn will be applying to universities next fall, so sure, his marks are important, but playing hockey a couple of times a week hadn’t hurt his grades; Finn’s always done well at school. But when he turned fourteen, fifteen, the sport turned rough. Even in their no-hitting house league the boys had started raising their elbows and slamming each other into the boards, trying out their bigger bodies, throwing around their new strength. Finn had been one of the biggest kids on his team—close to six feet tall and naturally muscular—but still he started hesitating going into the corners, looking over his shoulder, shying away from really fighting for the puck. Michael wasn’t sure if anyone else noticed, but he sure did.

At one mid-season game against a team of farm kids from Quebec, a brawl had broken out, every guy on the ice grabbing hold of an opponent, jerking them around by their sweaters, trash-talking each other in both official languages. Finn had been the only kid to skate away. Michael had felt relieved, although standing in the brouhaha of hollering parents, he’s not proud to admit he’d also felt a stab of embarrassment. There was a code in hockey, unwritten rules governing sportsmanship and honor, and his boy wasn’t playing along. As he watched Finn hanging on the boards by the bench, the word pussy had floated into his head, although Michael had pushed it away fast.

When it came time to sign up this year, Finn had said he was going to stick to shinny, that he preferred pickup games on outdoor rinks with only his gloves and his skates and his stick.

“Daniel still playing?”

“Only thing that gets him off the computer.” For the first time since he walked in, Stanley risks a smile. “Made the A team again this year.”

“Good for him,” Mia says as Michael heads for the bar at the back of the room.

They bought the house before Finn was born and had extended the legs on an old pump organ they’d inherited from Mia’s grandmother, added a matching rosewood extension, complete with a built-in fridge and a discreet stereo system. They’d painted the walls a rich ruby red, and Mia had hung velvet curtains and an antique mirror behind the bar and a Fortuny lamp—hand-painted Venetian silk; Michael hadn’t even asked how much it cost—overhead, so what had been an awkward, unused end of a long living room now had the lusty warmth of a Parisian salon.

“You still taking those pictures?” Stanley asks.

“I am.”

“That one you took of Daniel a couple years back. My wife just loves it. You just, just got him somehow, you know?”

“Well thanks, Stanley,” Mia says. “He’s a lovely boy.”

Michael pulls the curtains against the cold and clunks a fresh glass onto the bar. The kid is a puck hog. Fast, but he never passes. Always tries to go end-to-end, which worked okay when the boys were younger but rarely once they all figured out how to skate. Michael pulls the cork and motions to Stanley. “Shiraz okay?”

Stanley nods but stays put at the front of the room. “I have some papers to go over.” He reaches up and scratches his neck. “We’ll need better light.”

“It’s brighter in the kitchen,” Mia says, flashing Michael a wondering look. “You could use the table in there.”

Michael has no desire to sit in the kitchen. He’s comfortable behind the bar. “Should I call Peter for this?” he asks, rather gruffly. “He’s the finance guy.”

“No.” Stanley shakes his head. “You shouldn’t. You definitely shouldn’t call Peter.”

THE PARTY’S A RAGER. And like all things Eli, his basement is killer. Rich kid. Rich parents, currently in Costa Rica. Everyone drunk on their left-behind booze.

If anyone tries to talk to me, I pretend I can’t hear over the music, which is loud—Eli’s at the coffin, two decks, two laptops, professional six-track mixer. Tonight, I’m not into it. At all. What I’m into is drinking—tequila shots, beer, more tequila. You know, whatever. What I’m feeling is the bass from the upstairs party. Like hammer blows from above.

Frankie and this other girl, Brooke, from my physics class, straddle arcade motorcycles in the corner. Eli’s dad got them cheap from some place that was going under, gave them to Eli and Eric last Christmas. I got a hockey stick and some socks. The girls swing into the curves—the bikes tip, their asses tip—but I’m not really paying attention. Until game over, Frankie slides off the bike.

I got owned, she laughs, stumbling against my leg, drunk or pretending to be. She sits on my knee, holds up her phone and leans in for a selfie. I tell her she’s heavy and bounce her off. She gives me a bitchy look as she walks away.

Like I care. Tonight, I only care about the upstairs party, the music. Which is irritating. And distracting. Very Fucking Irritating and Distracting.

I haul myself off the couch, head over to tell Eli I’m leaving. But he’s totally oblivious, in his five-hundred-dollars-a-pop headphones. He finally sees me and frees up one ear. You okay? he shouts over the music. Travi$ Scott. “Goosebumps.” Tonight I hate the fucking song. You in a shit mood, or what?

I’m fine. A bit wasted.

Crash here. In my room. Just don’t puke in my bed. His pupils are small, the whites red. He’s been upstairs with Eric. Eric and Jess.

I’m not gonna puke. I’m fine. I’m going home.

Come on, man. Stay here. I’ll call your mom. Make some shit up. He tries to throw an arm around my shoulder, but I shrug it off.

Frankie elbows her way in, flashing smiles and cleavage as she leans into Eli, making some bogus musical request, shimmery and happy, pretending I don’t exist. Eli smiles loosely back—he’s always been into her, she’s given him nothing so far—his face lit blue by MacBook, his stupid fucking smile.

When he’s stoned, he looks just like him.

I’m going, I say.

I’m halfway up the stairs. Eli calls over the music. Finn!

I trip.

Hey, Finn!

I trip again.

WHEN MICHAEL CALLS HER, his voice sounds strangled, as if Stanley’s got him by the throat in the kitchen. They’ve been in there a while—obviously their time together hasn’t been pleasant. Reluctantly Mia downward-dogs her way off the living room floor, finds the remote and with a click shuts off the fire. She and Michael have always agreed she wouldn’t get involved in the business. And despite her financial acumen—ten years as a corporate banker—Peter never argued. Nothing more emasculating than a wife hovering over her husband’s shoulder, he’d laughed. Especially one as number smart as Mia. But there’d been no bonuses at the company this year or last, and recently Michael has been making noises about her taking a look at the books.

Let him and Peter work it out. She’s had enough of men and their money. She knows that in every business numbers get fudged, games get played, and honesty and integrity aren’t typically at the top of anyone’s list.

She pushes hard through the swinging door. Michael and Stanley are sitting side by side, watching as she makes her way across the kitchen. If it weren’t her husband and his accountant at the table she’d laugh; the two men are the embodiment of white-collar scared shitless. Normally with his easy smile and beautiful skin Michael looks like a man just back from sailing. But tonight his face is the color of chickpeas. His lips are white. And Stanley’s hot and red as a second-degree burn. Two full glasses of wine stand forgotten in the spread of papers between them.

The radio, permanently tuned to the CBC, is playing an old Q rerun, the host interviewing Joni Mitchell. Mia turns it off. She also shuts off the hood fan left on after a dinner of homemade lasagna, so all is quiet, the air undisturbed but for the lingering smell of burnt cheese. Mia takes the two steps down to the garden room. The dining room. A new addition to an old home. A bank of windows overlooks the yard; Michael likes to stretch out on the long bench seat beneath them after dinner. The outside lights are off, so the windows reflect back the room, making it feel encapsulated, as if beyond the glass the world has stepped soundlessly back. The deck, the trellis, the snowy yard, the crabapple’s twisted branches. The cedar fence flattened. The house behind them, converted to a triplex years ago now, much to the chagrin of the neighbors—Jess and her mom live on the second floor. All of the houses, all of Old Aberdeen crept away, the handsome bridges fallen. They’ll wake tomorrow alone in a new wilderness, a white flatness running to every horizon, the river a rush in the distance.

The image is not entirely unpleasant. When Mia was a new mother, she had a recurring dream of watching the house burn. Smoke gushing out the windows, flames shooting from the roof, the heat pressing into her where she stood in the middle of the avenue. And instead of feeling panicked, she’d feel relieved, joyous even. She’d wake flushed and excited, as if she’d been liberated into a glorious second chance, although even in her dreams she was careful; she always held Finn in her arms and stood Michael squarely beside her before burning her life to the ground. At least that’s the way she remembers it now.

Mia circles the table and takes the chair next to her husband, so she’s facing away from the windows.

“Explain it to her,” Michael says, his voice pinched.

Stanley squares papers neatly in front of her, ready to back up all his bad news with official documentation. A corporate search, his fingerprints clammy along the edges. “During the last restructuring,” he tells her, “the splitting of one company into three, Peter wrote Michael out.”

“What?”

“He wrote him out.”

Company records slide across the table, an amendment to the shareholder agreement with Michael’s signature at the bottom. Mia does her best not to flinch. Stanley explains how Peter had things drawn up so he was the sole own. . .