At the beach that day, Lynn looked even more beautiful than usual. She wore very little makeup. She had a tan and wore a white macramé bikini. She looked happy, relaxed. Jelly took three photos of her. Just held up her cheap camera and clicked. One showed Lynn looking away, thoughtful. One was blurred. The third showed her smiling into the camera. Lynn looked sexy but not mean. A happy, open, sweet-looking girl. Jelly knew as she took the photos what she would do with them. She dropped the film at the Kodak stand to be developed. She made sure she kept the negatives in a safe place.
The photos bought her some time with Mark, but they also escalated things. She knew there was no coming back from the lie. She tried to enjoy the moment, the delicious male desire directed at her. She often imagined herself looking like Lynn and being worshipped by Mark.
Jelly never thought, even in her fantasies, of Mark loving Jelly the way Jelly looked. She was always Jelly but not Jelly, even as she lay in her bed with the lights out after Mark had whispered his love for her and she had replaced the phone on the cradle. She closed her eyes and leaned back into her pillow. Her hand found the top elastic of her panties. The curly hair and then the tiny wet bump. She took her time, and she thought of Mark meeting her at last. With all the possibilities of the world at her beckon, she did not imagine Mark loving Jelly, squishy middle-aged Jelly. She was herself but in Lynn’s body. She imagined Mark undressing her and touching her perfect pink-tipped breasts as they spilled out of her bra, her smooth thighs under her skirt, her supple-but-taut midsection, her round high ass. In all of Jelly’s fantasies she looked exactly like Lynn, not even a better version of Jelly. She watched her fantasy as if it were a movie; she could see the man — Mark — undress the perfect girl, and Jelly could feel him lose his breath. He cannot believe how exquisite she is. And after Jelly came, she didn’t think too much about it. Was it unusual to exclude your own body from your fantasy? Why not imagine he loves you as you are, if anything is possible? Because (and she knew this absolutely without ever saying it to herself) her desire winds around her perfection in the eyes of the man. The fantasy — and her arousal — was about her perfect body. That’s what excited her. And how a man like Mark — a man who already loved her in theory — would worship her in that body. It was impossible to fulfill, and she was never dumb enough to believe that Mark could love her as she actually was.
After Mark, she used the photos with two other men. Things always proceeded in one direction, and she ended things when they escalated to an unavoidable meeting.
But what about Jack? She didn’t want to send him those photos. Some part of her thought that maybe Jack would love her no matter what. She thought about sending a neck-up flattering photo of herself, just to see what happened. The second time he asked her for a photo, she addressed the envelope and started to cry as she put the photos of Lynn inside and sealed it. She realized she was ending any future between them. But she had to. Before he wanted her photo, before he wanted her to visit him, he asked her the question they all had asked at some point. But it was an artful, gentle version with Jack: “You sound so young when you laugh. How old are you?”
She laughed again. Jelly knew how to avoid answering questions. But you couldn’t laugh off questions forever. She didn’t want to lie to Jack, which was something she’d just realized. But all of his circling around eventually came to the point. What do you look like? It wasn’t that she didn’t expect it or that she didn’t understand it, it was just so hopeless to always wind up against it. And how could she answer it? After she hung up the phone, she sat on the couch for a long time, staring into the faint dusk light.
What do I look like? If you look or if I look? It is different, right? There is no precision in my looking. It is all heat and blurred edges. Abstractions shaped by emotion — that is looking. But he wants an answer.
What do I look like? I look like a jelly doughnut.
Jelly got up and looked in the mirror. What to do if what you look like is not who you are? If it doesn’t match?
I am not this, this woman. And I am not Lynn-in-the-photograph. Jack must know, Jack knows who I am. I am a window. I am a wish. I am a whisper. I am a jelly doughnut.
I am beautiful when my hair brushes my shoulders, when the sun makes me close my eyes, when my voice vibrates in my throat. When I am on the telephone, I am beautiful.
How would it go? Jelly knew, just as she knew so many things without ever experiencing them. The knowing seemed to come from her senses, her fingertips and her skin. She knew that if she met Jack, he would be disappointed even if she were beautiful in the common sense of “beautiful.” Common is an interesting word. It could be comforting when you mean what we all have in common. But it also means ordinary; it means something we have all seen many times and can find easily. So a common sense of beauty is agreed upon by all but also dull in a way. Still his disappointment would come out of something human and inescapable: the failure of the actual to meet the contours of the imaginary. As he listened to the words he heard come across the line and into his ear, he imagined the mouth saying them. Even more so, as he spoke into the receiver, he imagined a face listening, and an expression on that face. Maybe it was made of an actress on the TV from the night before plus a barely remembered photo of his mother when she was very young and a girl with long hair and bare tan legs that he glimpsed at the beach. But there was no talking without imagining. And once imagining preceded the actual, there was no escaping disappointment, was there?
What about Jelly? Would Jelly feel disappointment with Jack, when he showed up sweaty, old, smelling of breath mints and cigarettes? It never occurred to her to think this way. She would be so focused on him that her own feelings wouldn’t matter. She would feel disappointed if he felt disappointed. She would hear it in his voice, and she would feel herself lose everything, all the perfect, exquisite moments that she had made with him.
“I want to see you,” Jack had said. “I need to see you.”
“I know. I know. Okay,” Jelly said. “I will send you some pictures.”
Of course she was right to send Lynn’s photos; she needed to make things last just a little longer. But she cried, because for a minute it might have gone a different way.
JELLY
The alarm went off, and Jelly stared into the murky early morning light. It was the day she was supposed to get on the plane to California, a 9:00 a.m. flight. She hadn’t packed, but she thought about it. She really did. Last night he laughed on the phone, excited, and she would never have let him go this far if she was sure she wasn’t going to go. Last night, after a glass of wine, she laughed too and imagined being with him at last. But as they said good night and hung up, she knew.
She hit the button on the alarm, pulled the comforter up over her head, and heaved a long breath into the dark, warm air.
CARRIE HAS A WEDDING
Meadow came an hour late to Carrie and Will’s rehearsal dinner. As toasts were being made, she slipped quietly into the empty seat next to Carrie with a smile. Later, Will made a face when Carrie explained traffic, parking, picking up the dress. (Meadow wore a silk suit to the rehearsal dinner but had agreed to wear a dress to the wedding. Meadow never wore dresses, but she would do it for Carrie.)
“At least she showed up,” he said.
“Of course she showed up,” Carrie said, slightly annoyed. She knew he was only being protective of her, but she couldn’t help feeling protective of Meadow.