Stop Telling Me I’m Beautiful

It was strange watching my husband start a fire. It looked like his limbs were newly attached just this morning.

“Well, what do you want me to tell you?” he said, crumbling up newspaper from the kindling box.

“Tell me anything. Tell me that your heart is a mess. Or that you hate sunsets. You can tell me anything you want and it would be better than anything you said to me this entire year. Just be honest with me.”

“I’m always honest with you, Ellie.”

I snorted. We were the only ones in the lounge, which is why this conversation was taking place. I looked out the window and took note of the Applachians. All I saw was white on the ground and dark in the air. It weighed on top of me like a down blanket and I didn’t want to get rid of it. I looked back at him and he was watching me, carefully, like I was an old bat who was losing his mind. Maybe I was. I always feared that I would. I spent a lifetime doing dumb things. Like coming here. Like being in a love I couldn’t hold right.

“I thought you would have had this fire roaring by now,” I told him. “Enough to cook a whole damn bag of marshmallows.”

He sighed and balled up some more, threw it like a baseball at the kindling already in there.

“Well, go on,” I said. “You only told everyone else in the whole place already.”

“I didn’t say it was my hidden talent or anything. Yeesh. Let it go, babe.”

I let it drop. I guess I was being unfair. I was trying to go for some humor as it was a very frustrating day we had. But he did tell everyone that he could get this huge fire going in ten seconds - the girl behind the desk, the owner. I think he even told their poodle.

I figured I should restart the conversation. “Jim, I’m sorry - ”

He sighed like an actor about to give a great monologue. “I should have never taken you to this lousy bed and breakfast,” he said. “I want to drink and you won’t let me. I need a drink, that much I can tell you. You’ve been condescending to me ever since we left our driveway. Every time I try to lighten the mood, you drag it back down into this pit of...I’m not exactly sure what. And you can maybe get out of the chair and help me with this.” He gestured to the fire with soot-covered hands. It looked like he had been polishing shoes.

I laughed.

“What?” He said. He tried to sound angry, but it didn’t sound right, an uneven keen that didn’t mesh well with the rest of the sounds in the room. There were other things around that were heavier than his sadness. The snow outside that I wanted to drown in, the mountains that were taller than I could ever be. I yearned to be smaller than things and I was in a place where I could crouch and duck below most of it.

“Go wash your hands.”

Jim sighed and continued to put paper and kindling in the fireplace, stacking it like a sandwich. He truly had no idea what he was doing. But I didn’t want to help him. Truth is, I couldn’t help him because I didn’t know how to start a fire. I grew up my whole life not really knowing how to help with things. I certainly wasn’t prepared to help with what was going on right now. I just wanted to sit and watch his limbs awkwardly move. Like rubber or taffy, soft and underdeveloped. It was a really odd thing to witness, let me tell you.

I guess though that I was being a little too harsh. It’s my time of the month and I drove here, all three hundred and seventeen miles. I watched him build this sorry excuse of a fire for a bit longer and felt an affection, a tug in the stomach. It’s so crazy to me how men really are the weaker sex. I know I shouldn’t be saying that, but Lord help me, it’s fucking true.

I got up and knelt next to him in front of the fireplace, spaced out the logs a little better. I could smell his sweat, a mixture of salt and oil. He glanced over at me and smirked. It briefly wiped away all the awkwardness, as it always does, but I knew that there would be a deeper feeling, lingering way underneath our skin. I’m not sure if it ever goes away, no matter how comfortable you are with someone. Love can be nothing but sidesteps, like you would in your house, with one person leaving and the other person coming in after work. If you had told me that when I was younger, I wouldn’t have listened, but I would have remembered it.

I wiped the soot and dirt away from my fingers, brushed stray bark pieces towards the base of the fire. For a minute there, I thought it would be better if I spread it under our eyes and we could have been warriors, go out in the clearing and fashion spearheads for a raid. I thought of all that snow again and how I would like to traipse in it, make my skin feel a unique sensation. I glanced over at him to imagine him in warpaint. It was weird that I couldn’t see it. I thought I married a warrior, but I guess I wound up with a straw man.

He was smiling, like he had found some bygone secret in my movements.

“What?”

“You’re beautiful, you know that?”

I know men like saying it because women like hearing it. Some women think it’s true and some don’t - their humbleness or anxiety does not allow themselves to be found desirable. I find myself not to be beautiful - I am decidedly average and wish I had bigger boobs. I know also that physicality does not make beauty, so I’m not too hung up on appearance. But I know that I am not beautiful. I have written that in stone in my mind. I don’t fault him for saying it (it’s what husbands and boyfriends do), but I fault myself because I have never told him that it bothered me. It is his go-top cop out phrase to avoid a fight and I don’t blame him for falling back on it. But I decided that now wasn’t the time and that I better stop it. After all, we were in the mountains, we had time, we had nowhere else to be except in circles around each other, baring teeth. Spearheads, I thought. A warrior raid, I thought.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

I sat down cross-legged on the floor next to him. I stared at the logs and patted my pockets for a lighter to make time, even though I’ve never owned one. Stalling for time, I guess. He sat down next to me and tried to hold my hand, but I brushed him away.

“Saying I’m beautiful. Don’t do it, please.”

“But you are.” His eyes wrinkled into a cute confusion and I almost abandoned this narrative.

But I shrugged my shoulders in a teenage-whatever kind of way. “I’m not so sure that I am.”

He sighed and tried to get closer, but I brushed him away again.

“Look, Ellie, I…don’t know what’s wrong. I know it’s been a difficult day…”

“Oh, nevermind nothing,” I said and stood up. I walked to the other end of the room where there was some wine that was left out from dinner and started to look for a glass. I couldn’t find one, so I ripped out the cork with my teeth. So much talent in this one body, it’s astounding.

“Well, you are,” he said, still sitting there, frozen, forgetting to move. Maybe those limbs didn’t know footsteps.

“What?”

“You’re beautiful, Ellie.”

“Stop telling me I’m beautiful. I mean it. I’m gonna throw up if I hear that again.”

“Alright, what’s wrong? I thought you wanted me to be honest with you. I am. I’m being honest. I’m telling you what you want to hear and what it is true.”

“There, right there,” I said, “I don’t want to hear THAT.” I clutched the wine bottle harder. I had every intention of drinking it all.

“Well, then, that’s just plain confusing,” he said, throwing one more stick into the fire. He stood up and grabbed the firestarter from the mantle. “Don’t say that you want to hear me say something and then complain when you hear it.” He clicked it a few times, lit the edge of the kindling, and the fire went right up, a perfect glow and burn right there just for us. I expected him to turn to me and smirk - almost like a “how about that?” - but didn’t, and that made me sad. We were losing moments that we needed to have for our older years.

“I know,” I said.

“I mean, you did tell me to tell you anything. You just said that minutes ago.”

“I know.”

“Well, then…” He stared at the fire, like it was going to provide him with his next line.

The silence rooted down solid in the room, thick for a minute, as I sipped the wine and watched him clean up his mess.

“I’m going to drink,” he said with a nod, like he had just got a model train set going.

“Sure.”

“You’re not going to stop me?”

I held up my wine bottle like I found a missing TV remote control.

“I don’t get you, Ellie.”

“Well, you married me.”

He sighed noisily. “That’s what I mean right there. You drive me nuts and you’re beautiful at the same time. I love it.”

I stood up too fast, hit my shin on the coffee table in front of me.  Wine bandage. “Tell me that again, I dare you.”

“Ellie.”

“I swear to fucking God, say that again.”

“Just sit and relax.”

“I need to stand is what I need to do. Get on these feet of mine right here.” I stood up and fixed myself like I was going to give a lecture. “You only built that fire because of me. Every fire in your life has been me. You’ve been burning since the minute you knew I even existed.”

He held up his hands again. “I’m done. You’re drunk. And I need to be drunk, clearly. I’ve been trying with you, Ellie. I can see that I’m failing. I’m putting the day behind me. I saw that there’s a beer place right down the road. I’m going to go buy all of it and then watch this fire.”

Jim stood there for a minute, right in front of the flames. I expected him to continue his speech, but he sighed and quietly walked out of the room. It was a shame. I had asked for him to talk and tell me anything, but the minute he did, I realized I never wanted to actually hear it. I knew that from the start, maybe. He had been holding back his entire life until he met me, and when he finally was given a chance to be given a spark and light, I just happened to be the right size of rain storm. Opposites from the start. A gut punch.

I sat down on the couch and watched the fire jump around, gently crack and pop. Jim came back in the room a minute later with his hat and coat on, pointing his keys at me like he had a new toy. It looked like he was finally going to put an ending to his speech, but wound up saying nothing. I almost blurted out an apology but instead I said, “Tomorrow will be better.”

He nodded. He blew me a kiss and walked out the door. I imagine he would be out for a while. I sure as hell didn’t see any beer store just down the road. He’ll find one, though. I heard the car engine start and then fade as the tires crunched over dirt and stone road.

After a few minutes, I got up and carried the wine with me over to the window. There they were, the same mountains I spent all life wishing that I could climb, or at least get close enough so I could feel them, let the roughness of the rocks scratch my skin. Perhaps if I was rough and damaged and worn, then maybe I wouldn’t appear so beautiful anymore - not to just to Jim, but to everyone. I could be some kind of woodland creature, waking up to and with them every day and being able to bask in what they might offer. I always had adventures in me, brewing ever so carefully. Maybe this was the moment to give birth, to open myself up and be daring and different. I liked the sound of it, so I went outside, clutching the bottle.

It had begun to flurry, some snow fairy giving her all just for me. I walked for a little while in the backyard of our bed and breakfast, feeling nothing but cold, letting it burn me. I always loved how it could do that, like if you’ve ever held ice with salt. I looked up and felt so insignificant, a crumb on the planet. Jim was, too. The owners were, too. Maybe they were beautiful and maybe they weren’t. But we were all spilled out together on this canvas, like Lego pieces needing to find a spot on the board. I laughed. I finished the rest of the wine and I positioned the bottle to stand in the snow as a marker. Battleground, I thought.

I turned and looked towards the mountains once more. There’s rocks there, and peaks, and all sorts of jagged somethings, but there were also answers, sunlight, unobstructed views where humans felt clarity, felt some kind of sense. I smiled. Maybe coming here was the right thing to do. Maybe baring oneself in an alien environment is what you need to do to shed yourself of your insecurity, your stupid dumb blood and skin. Paint, I said out loud. I need paint.

I knelt down and pushed enough snow out of the way to get some dirt or mud. The ground wasn't frozen yet so I managed to get a big clump. I put it on like makeup under my eyes - delicately and boldly. I let my hair down. I took off my sweater and draped it over the wine bottle. I picked up a rock I found. Spearhead, I said, and I slowly walked to the front of the bed and breakfast where the cars were parked. I was going to wait for Jim, I decided. I didn’t want a little straw man for a husband, nor did I want a drunk one. I wanted a warrior who would drink blood and hold my hand as we went through this life together, unafraid, ready to move obstacles.

I crouched behind a bush on the edge of the parking lot. I held my spearhead. I felt the mud becoming a new skin. This is how I think we’ll be spending the rest of vacation.

I waited in the snow. He was going to come back soon. Any minute now. Soon, he would see that I was more than just a wife. More than just a woman.

Kevin Richard White’s fiction has appeared in Hobart, Rejection Letters, X-R-A-Y and Hypertext among other places. He is a Flash Fiction Associate Editor at Barren Magazine. He lives in Philadelphia. His Twitter is @misterkrw.