A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

So he wanted beauty too. But he was not like her, not selfish; he wanted it from outside of himself. The thought of those long-forgotten mornings on the tennis courts came back to her, with her hair wind-blown and just a woolly white sweater on her. So he really found her beautiful after all. In that case, why, she must be, in some hidden way overlooked by everyone else until now. Perhaps in that tennis court sort of way, and without all these brilliants and this paint. It was up to her then. She would have to forget about being beautiful and just be beautiful. For beauty, she had heard, was in the eye of the beholder.

Jicky raised her head and looked at him and at everyone else as though she saw them for the first time. She forgave him everything she had ever done — her doubts and her jealousy and her humiliations. She could have forgiven him anything, for they were both alike in this: they were both beauty-mad.

Georgia was sitting up, the exquisite light from a cluster of electric grapes at the head of the bed tinseling her shoulders, when Jicky stopped in the doorway. This was a new Jicky. She held her head high; she was vibrant with courage and a new sort of vindication that still left her puzzled but was more welcome than she could ever know. The bandeau sparkled but under it you noticed the more lasting sparkle of her eyes. The fringe at her shawl dropped to the floor about her in a sort of gentle silver rain. She stepped into the room, carrying her youth like a chip on the shoulder. She took an amber-backed object from the table and put it in the drawer and shut it from sight.

“For us there’ll be no more mirrors. Mirrors lie.”

“Mirrors lie,” agreed Georgia. “They’ve lied to me all my life.”

Jicky turned around to look at her and the shawl dropped to her feet in a foamy pool.

“Mother, I’m beautiful, and I’m going to marry Scotty. Beautiful—”

She stood gloriously erect for a moment, then crumpled over across Georgia’s knees. Suddenly she burst out crying.

“He thinks I am, so I am. Oh, Mother, help me believe it; help me believe it! There’s beauty in me now, real beauty, where there was only wretchedness.”

They lay with their arms around each other, their cheeks pressed together like two children, staring over at a far corner of the room as though they could see themselves there as they believed themselves to be.

“I don’t blame him. Who could help loving you? Oh, if you could only see yourself as I see you.”

“And you, my dearest, you,” purred Jicky, “you’re beautiful. The most beautiful mother in the world.”

Said Scotty, a woman will believe what she wants to believe.

Gay Music

When he was eighteen, Gerald Jones found out things about himself. A gypsy woman told him, a gypsy woman with gold coins in her ears and cigarette-stained teeth and a cerise petticoat and an apple-green scarf about her head. He came across two of them trudging along by the roadside one day, and had pocket money with him, and noticed that they were noticing him.

“You a very good looking boy,” one of them remarked.

“Oh, sure,” he scoffed, but it didn’t make him angry nevertheless.

The one that had spoken to him squatted down until she was no higher than his knee. Her gaudy petticoat settled itself around her in a splashy circle like red ink soaking through the macadamized road. She produced a pack of cards and began to tell them out before her on the ground in a double row.

She said: “I read your fute.”

“Read my foot?” he asked in astonishment. These foreigners could get so embarrassing.

“Fooch,” she said.

“Oh, future, you mean.”

She squinted up at him. “You got money?” she wanted to know.

He became cautious at once. “Uh-huh.”

She had all the cards face downward on the ground and began to turn them over here and there as though at random. A number of twos and threes made their appearance.

“You gonna not be very rich,” she said.

“Aw,” he sighed, “and I wanted a yacht with a little brass gun on the deck of it.”

Two queens came up, one of hearts and one of diamonds. “Two lady,” said the gypsy woman, “gonna loave you.”

“Both at one time?” he gasped. “What’ll I do?”

She shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

In college he was called Jonesy. Everybody knew Jonesy. One of those sporty snap brim hats always pushed back on his head, always going somewhere, always just back from somewhere else, always a wee wisp of something on the breath, always chewing cloves. Everybody liked Jonesy. The night of the prom a girl named Jemima Marsh, Jimmie for short, was his room guest. They had danced themselves almost to death. Toward three in the morning they went down to the gymnasium for a breathless leave-taking. It was pitch dark, and not exactly deserted either. They found a bench with the aid of a match.

“Jonesy,” said Jemima with a mouth full of kisses, “I think you’re awfully mean.”

“Wuff, wuff,” said Jonesy.

“Only don’t muss my hair,” said Jemima. “It took me all afternoon to get it brilliantined.”