As for Penelope, she has been trying to gently break her empty water glass in such a way that it can be reassembled and held together with nothing but the glue of gravity. She told us it’s practice, for when she will make good on her promise to her dad to branch out into glassware.
I say to the kindergarten teacher, “Actually, you’d be surprised at how little it has to do with being ugly. I have plenty of female friends who look just like those beautiful heroines. They have hair that looks like this,” I say, taking off my wig. “They have the same kind of body, typically considered to be beautiful in our culture. Very similar to this,” I say, taking off my fake-fat jacket. “Some of them look remarkably like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and that whole classic bunch, and yet they still feel angry about the kind of message the fairy tales communicate to children.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Georgia’s whole body gesticulating. She invariably gets wired when I begin taking off my wig in front of a guy.
As for Lily, I always worry it might pain her to watch a man’s transformation from jerk to gentleman as I go through my own transformation from unattractive to attractive. The difference between how men treat an ugly woman, like herself, and one who is beautiful is not something she needs her face rubbed in, but my compulsion to go through the ritual overpowers my need to spare her the sad spectacle. If she is hurt, she never shows it.
The kindergarten teacher looks at me as I take out my fake teeth. To my amazement, he appears angry. I’m pleasantly surprised. It’s refreshing to meet a man who doesn’t become sweet and gooey when I unveil my looks. I’m about to compliment him on his consistency, when he says, “I feel robbed and violated.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You deceived me. You stole…” he trails off.
“What did I steal?”
“My opportunity to make a good first impression.”
“I didn’t prevent you.”
“Yes you did, by misleading me into thinking you were—” He cuts himself off, but I know what he was about to say. I misled him into thinking I was ugly and fat, and thus not worth his time and attention.
“Ah, I think I get it,” I answer. “When you say I stole from you the opportunity to make a good first impression, you mean that in the same way as how you stole from every ugly woman you’ve ever laid eyes on the opportunity to impress you with something other than her looks.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?” He sweeps his fairy tales into his big bag and leaves the bar.
I go to the restroom, change back into my disguise, and rejoin my friends.
I scoot into their booth. The glass Penelope broke is now sitting in front of her, reassembled and looking intact except for the break lines running across it like scars. She is holding the postcard Strad sent to Lily, gazing at it grimly.
“May I?” I ask, taking it from her. As I look at it again, the slight relief my ritual gave me wears off. This postcard is soul-crushing. No one would understand why it’s soul-crushing unless they knew Lily’s story. And we know it well.
Lily met Strad — a name he’d given himself in honor of his favorite violin-maker, Stradivarius — three years ago at the musical instruments store where they both worked when she was in her second year of graduate studies at the Manhattan School of Music. She developed a crush immediately. Strad Ellison did not reciprocate her interest — was perhaps not even aware of it. He had a very active dating life. He said he had high standards and that he was very idealistic and romantic and was looking for a great love. The reality is that Strad is a superficial guy, only interested in dating beautiful women.
And yet Lily had not aimed too high. Strad was not “out of her league,” as the expression goes — certainly not mentally, and not even physically, that much. He wasn’t particularly good-looking, but in Lily’s eyes he had enormous charm. I met him a few times at the store where they worked and noticed he did manage to be dashing, occasionally, but never for more than five minutes at a time.
One day, Lily invited Strad to watch a studio recital in which she was going to play two of her compositions on the piano. She was hoping to impress him.
But when they went for coffee after the recital, he merely told her politely she’d been good. On the other hand, he raved about Derek Pearce, one of the other composers who’d performed. He particularly praised one of Derek’s pieces, saying, “That’s the kind of music that is more than just beautiful. It beautifies the world around it. You want it never to end.”
Lily said, “At home I have recordings of some of his other compositions, in case you want to come over and hear them.”
“Why not?” Strad said, and they left the coffee shop and went to her apartment.
Strad lay on her floor. It was better for his back than sitting on the couch, he said. She put on a recording of Derek’s music.
“Why don’t you turn out the lights and light some candles? I love listening to music in the dark,” he said.
Understandably, Lily was hopeful.
Strad asked if he could smoke. Even though Lily hates smoke, she said okay and gave him a plate as an ashtray.
She lay next to him, resting on her elbow, and feasted her eyes on his profile which was glowing dimly in the candlelight.
The lines of his face mesmerized her. They had character, were so lived in. His features were weathered yet humorous, connected by tremendous laugh lines, and encircled by silly curly hair. He had an ugly kind of beauty or beautiful kind of ugliness which was why, in her secret heart, she hoped that her own ugliness could appeal to him the same way his appealed to her. Unfortunately, his particular brand of ugliness appealed to a lot of women, she noticed.
His physical appearance was not what she had first fallen in love with. She’d first fallen in love with everything else about him. His considerate nature. His love of his dog. His way of laughing at things she said when she had no idea why.
That night, as Strad was lying on the floor of her apartment, listening to Derek’s music, he began commenting, “He’s good. Not as good as he was tonight — he’s gotten better. Music like his, music that has the power to make things around it beautiful — that’s great music. Music that improves people’s perception of reality. That’s music’s highest power, most noble ability. Making the world more appealing.”
Strad took a drag on his cigarette and after blowing the smoke toward the ceiling he said something that changed Lily’s life. He said, “I would fall in love with — and marry — any woman who could create music like that. If Derek was a chick, I’d ask her out.” He flicked his ashes onto the plate.
And then he talked of all the various women he had recently dated, was presently dating, and was thinking of dating.
Lily made a decision right then in the dark: to attempt the impossible. She knew she couldn’t win Strad with her looks. Her strength lay in her talent. She would win him through her music. She would impress him so deeply that he would have no choice but to fall in love with her. She would try to create music that beautified the world.
Lily quit her job the next day, wanting to set to work immediately on her project. But beautifying the world with her music was not an easy task. It took her eight months of the most intense dedication. It required an extraordinary amount of perseverance.
After many failed attempts, she decided that perhaps she was aiming too high. So she tried beautifying merely her neighborhood instead of the world.
But she still couldn’t manage it.
She scaled down, focusing on her street.
But still, she didn’t pull it off.