Beauty & the Beasts (24 page)

The really creepy thing about it was that she hadn’t once stopped to wonder
why
she was doing this. Maybe she’d just closed her eyes—to her motives, to how Eric would respond, to whether she wanted even for one evening to be this other woman.

Now she opened her eyes. And she knew.

She’d been afraid. Afraid she’d lose him or never have him to start with. Deep inside, she’d reverted to believing that only her looks made her lovable. She had to enhance what she had, use it for all she it worth, or he wouldn’t want her. After all, it was her “perfect” breasts he admired, her eyes, her waist, her legs.

Still she sat staring at him, the horse moving restively under her. Was that what falling in love did to a woman? Eroded her confidence to the point where she’d do anything to have and keep a man?

Her trance was broken by Garth. “Can we go?” he asked, his horse prancing and tossing its head.

Eric’s eyes held a challenge now. Madeline raised her chin. “You bet.”

Garth let out a whoop, leaned forward and loosened his reins. The half-Arab bay he rode exploded forward, dust puffing behind her in the hot summer air. Not wanting to be left behind, Honey did a small dance. Palms suddenly sweating, Madeline took hold of the saddle horn again, said, “Okay, Honey,” and eased back on the reins.

From a standstill, the quarter horse leaped into a lope. Unprepared, Madeline snapped back in the saddle, but her death grip on the horn held, and a moment later her body was moving in an easy rocking motion with the big gelding’s. Eyes watering, she turned her head to see that Eric was right beside her.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she called back, and then laughed. “It’s fun! Garth’s right. Hey, race you!”

She gave Honey a timid boot with her heels. The horse responded with a burst of speed that made Madeline’s vision blur. Ahead, Garth was still yelling. Hair streaming down her back, exhilaration like champagne in her blood, Madeline let out one modest whoop.

Even over the thunder of hooves behind her, she heard Eric’s laugh of sheer pleasure.

Now
this
was life!

This, and making love with Eric.

The scary part was the wondering whether he’d have wanted her nearly as much if she’d just been herself.

G
ARTH HATED
the way his dad looked at Madeline. It was too much like the way Chuck looked at his
mother, and his mother at Chuck. They’d lock eyes and get this stupid expression on their faces, and nobody else would exist.

He
liked being with Madeline, too. Like today was mostly cool. She didn’t ignore him or anything. But his dad spent most of his time watching her when she didn’t know. It was like she was all he could think about.

Right now they were riding along together, talking in low voices, as if he was nobody up here, maybe a dog that all they had to do was call every once in a while.

He yanked too hard on the reins, and Kineta ducked her head and danced in protest.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, stroking her sweaty dusty neck, but he reined her in until Dad and Madeline came even with her.

Madeline flashed him an absent smile, but Dad didn’t even seem to notice he was there.

“Grandma called yesterday,” Garth said loudly.

His father turned this distracted look on him that became a frown. “You didn’t say anything. Did she want to talk to me?”

“Not especially.” Actually she
had
asked if Dad was there, but she hadn’t left a message or anything like that.

“This is your mother?” Madeline asked Dad.

“Yeah, he calls his other grandmother Nanna. My parents live in Denver.”

“She said they might fly out in August so they could see me,” Garth interjected.

“Oh? Good.” But Dad didn’t sound very interested. He was looking at Madeline again.

“Grandma is really pretty,” Garth said before Madeline’s attention wandered, too. “I mean, she is in pictures. When she was young, you know.” Dumb! he told himself. Like Madeline was going to care about what his grandmother looked like.

But she actually did cock her head and say, “Really? Is she blond like you and your dad?”

“Yeah, she has blue eyes-like me. She’s—” he tried to think of the right word “—like a princess or something.”

“Regal?”

“Yeah.” That was it. “Her back’s always really straight, and she’s never silly and she never laughs so you can see food in her mouth, and she’s… graceful, you know? And when she tells you to do something, you do it, even though she never yells.”

This weird expression crossed Madeline’s face. “She sounds like my mother. I hope she’s more of a hugger than mine. I was thinking the other day that we hardly ever touch.”

Garth didn’t exactly mind that Grandma wasn’t a hugger, Nanna wasn’t, either. His friend Dave had this grandmother who always squished him to her huge bosom and kissed his cheeks and cooed at him, and she didn’t care if his friends were standing there or not. It made Dave major, mass embarrassed. Secretly Garth thought it might be nice to be hugged like that.

But now his dad said in a funny voice, “No, she
isn’t very physically demonstrative, either. Maybe it’s their generation. She and my father never kissed or held hands in front of us kids, much less in public.”

“Mom doesn’t like it when Chuck kisses her in front of anyone,” Garth said, the words just popping out and surprising him. “She’s kind of regal, too.”

Nobody said anything. Dad stared straight ahead, his face getting this dazed look that reminded Garth of the time he’d finally gotten mad enough to punch Tim Bancroft, and then Tim had just stared at him with that same stunned expression before he’d toppled over like a tree going down. Only, nobody had hit Dad.

Madeline was watching his father, too. “Are you okay?” she asked in a voice so soft and sweet it tightened something in Garth. For a second he wished that she was his mother and talked to him like that. But she wasn’t, and no stepmother was going to think he was anything but a nuisance.

Dad gave his head a shake. “What? Of course I’m okay. Just…had a thought. Sorry.” He gave this fake grin. “Want to gallop again?”

Garth didn’t know how Madeline could look even prettier with her hair falling down and windblown and her nose starting to get sunburned and her T-shirt and jeans dusty, but she did. She lit up, and he wondered if that was what actors and models did when the camera came on.

“Race you!” she said really fast, and gave Honey a kick. Honey had been trained for cow-penning, so she could turn on the back burners. Madeline barely
grabbed hold in time, and the last sight he had of her face, her mouth was open in a big O.

Dad’s smile looked more natural. “Shall we let her win?”

“Heck, no!” Garth loosened the reins and whacked Kineta’s rump with the flat of his hand. As the mare rocketed forward, leaving Dad in the dust, Garth thought,
now
this
was cool. He’d kick Dad’s butt.

If only it was just him and Dad riding, like it used to be. With Madeline around, his father would forget all about him by the time they caught up to her.

O
UT OF THE MOUTHS
of babes. God, what a moment for a revelation!

Two days later Eric still reeled from the insight Garth had hit him over the head with.

He was getting in a short run before work, taking a circle that was about three miles. Even this early in the morning the day was hot; it was going to be a scorcher for the Pacific Northwest, which might mean the thermometer would reach ninety. Sweat dripped from his face and soaked his T-shirt. He hardly noticed. He was too busy reliving that moment Garth had pointed out the obvious.

Noreen had a hell of a lot in common with his mother. They were both blond, slender, elegant, untouchable. The untouchable part had been the challenge; he remembered how Noreen had intrigued him with that cool classy air, how determined he’d been to shatter it and see her flushed and panting with passion.

Well, passion had been easy. He never had penetrated the shell in any other meaningful way. She didn’t get angry or laugh until she fell out of her seat; her eyes didn’t fill with tears or outrage or excitement. She loved Garth. He had no doubt she was an affectionate mother—up to a point.

She was probably rather like his own. Which was undoubtedly why he’d married her.

Not that Eric thought he had an Oedipus complex. But he had an uncomfortable feeling that he had wanted something from his mother—still did—that he hadn’t gotten, that she wasn’t capable of giving. And that Noreen had been the stand-in. Noreen, and possibly all the other women he’d dated.

His father was a brilliant man, a professor of mathematics. Physically he was large, blockish, even a little clumsy. Inept socially, as well, he must have been a source of constant irritation to his wife, who loved to entertain, dress well, be seen at the right events. She’d worked, too, in public relations and fund-raising for a private prep school in Denver, and very successfully—her aristocratic style had undoubtedly made potential donors feel inadequate and therefore eager to rise to her standards by writing huge checks.

Even as a kid, he’d wondered why his parents had chosen each other. They didn’t
fit.
Their ambitions were different. His mother had a way of belittling his father, just tiny jabs, but constant. She still did it, and they were still married. Eric sometimes wondered if his father even noticed.

She hadn’t been all that warm and accepting with
Eric and his sister, either. Madeline’s remark on Sunday had sent a jab of shocked recognition through him. Hell, he didn’t remember ever being held or hugged or patted. His mother didn’t offer back rubs after a tough football game, didn’t straighten his shirt collar or brush back his hair. She didn’t touch.

He was a fool not to have understood years ago that he was subconsciously trying to recreate his relationship with her, to have the warmth and complete acceptance of a woman who measured up to his mother’s standards. In other words, an equally beautiful woman.

So Madeline had been right that her looks were what had drawn him, although not for the reasons she probably suspected.

The big question was, what if Madeline was no longer beautiful? What if they got married and she put on sixty pounds? What if she was in a car accident and her face was damaged? What if she had a mastectomy?

How would he feel about her?

He knew one thing: he had to decide before their relationship went any further.

“A
UDITION
:
The Man Who Came to Dinner,
female and male roles, July 30, 7:30 p.m., Everett Historic Theater.

The newspaper open on the counter before her, Madeline read the brief notice again and again. She hardly ever even glanced at the Billboard section. This time, as she’d idly thumbed past it, the casting
call had jumped out from the newsprint as though it glowed.

Madeline had stopped by the newspaper office to drop off a photograph for the Pet of the Week feature sponsored by local veterinarians—including Eric. Behind head-high partitions, she heard voices and the hum of computers and printers. Since she had to wait for Carmen, the young Chicana woman who always put the feature together, she’d opened the newspaper.

She was still looking at that darn audition notice.

She
had
loved to act. The day she left behind her modeling career, she’d pulled a mental curtain closed, resolving never to peek behind it again. A good deal of her past was behind that curtain, gathering dust, like old props left behind when a theater shut down for good.

Lying awake last night, she’d decided it was as if she’d opted for selective amnesia, only it hadn’t been as selective as she’d thought. She’d come to detest a couple of the props; but because she’d chosen not to remember any of them, her emotions had become diffused, until all she knew was that the curtain hid something she’d hated, something that had made her feel dreadful about herself.

Her mother had shaken the dust from the velvet and dragged her over, insisting she peek through a crack. Most of what she saw was still shrouded, indistinct, but some small bits of her youth were clearly visible, and they weren’t the bogeys she’d imagined them.

Her mother had probably figured she was a natural for the beauty pageant after seeing her ham it up in
school plays. Oh, how she’d adored being the center of attention, even if the audience was just her classmates! At some point she’d done community theater. Thinking back, she realized her mother must still have been working two jobs; how she’d managed to get Madeline to rehearsals and performances, she couldn’t imagine. But the experience had been unalloyed joy. Her singing voice was none too great, but she’d played Annie, anyway, fake freckles on her nose. Later she was Heidi, and one of the daughters in
The Sound of Music
and…oh, half a dozen other roles.

Eventually she’d been too busy modeling to waste time on unpaid theater. She’d done commercials, but they weren’t fun the way stage acting had been, and she’d been too successful at what she did to audition for movies or television. She ought to have done it, anyway; she’d always blamed her mother for making that sweeping decision for her. But now she wondered whether she’d ever even told her mother how she felt or what she wanted. Or had she assumed that Mom would magically know?

Truthfully Madeline was far from certain she’d had the talent to make it as an actress, anyway. She’d never know.

Still, it might be fun to be on stage again. The thought crept insidiously into her mind as she read the audition notice yet again. Why not try?

Wearing a tight short black skirt, hair a wild mass of permed curls, Carmen popped around the partition. “Hi, Madeline. I thought that man would never quit talking. Do you have this week’s picture?”

She shook off her self-absorption. “Yep. Right here.”

“Terrific. Come on back.”

They wound their way through the maze of cubicles where the newspaper sales force had their offices. Carmen pulled up an extra chair for Madeline and settled in her own. Within minutes she’d run the photograph of Meow, a big homely orange cat, through her scanner and begun sharpening it up on her computer screen. Once Carmen was satisfied with the clarity and the horizontal form the ad would take, Madeline dictated a short description of this issue’s Pet of the Week—Meow wasn’t handsome, but he was as sweet and gentle as they came—which Carmen typed in. Some brief editing, the insertion of the sponsor’s name and the Ten Lives logo, and she printed off a copy of the weekly feature.