Finding Pretty
Russell Fox
It was a glorious
afternoon. The grass on the field was
short and crisp, and the fragrance from the recent cutting still lingered in
the early June breeze. I was coaching
little league baseball, adjusting the fourth graders’ bat grips and stances at
the plate before they were called to the infield to meet their arriving
parents. Ben waited. He was the most gifted athlete on the team;
he had hand-eye coordination more acute than most high school players and a
fearless desire to improve. I assumed he
wanted help hitting the ball farther, and I was preparing to tell him that the
only possible way for him to do that would be to wait to get bigger. Instead, he stood in front of me and asked,
“Russ, do you have a girlfriend?” All
the fourth grade boys would ask that question, and when I tell them yes, they
would aw or smirk, and then perhaps laugh.
Ben nodded -- no giggling or awing, and simply asked another question:
“Is she pretty to you?”
I don’t know what answer
I gave Ben, because I didn’t know how to answer him. Is she
pretty to you? What does that
mean? He may have wanted to know what
she looked like, and if she was attractive, or if she was nice and kind and
gentle; or maybe if I liked her, if I loved her, and how much. The truth is I still don’t know what it is
Ben wanted, but his question has been the most profound thing ever asked or
said to me.
The first time I saw
Jenny I was a sophomore in high school.
She was the little blond sitting in the front row so close to the board
that she could see her reflection in Mr. Myers’ glasses. I sat in back talking with all the other boys
who didn’t do their homework. The back
row turned test day into a community effort of shuffling papers and writing so
un-identifiably in an effort to make our test impossible to read. Jenny wasn’t like me; she mastered all her
work, aced every test, always perched in the front
It wasn’t until two
years later that I interacted with her.
She was shoved in the back seat of a beat up Explorer with me and three
of my friends who dragged Jenny along with us after their volleyball game. It was December, and we raced through Niwot blaring music with our windows rolled down, freezing
our cheeks and yelling whatever lyrics we could make out through the crackle of
the speakers. The night was cold pouring
into the back seat, and the wind whipped around and tangled the girls’ hair. It may have been the cold, or because she was
being pushed, but she spent the ride leaning up against me.
I could have answered Ben’s question
then. Jenny was 5’10,
and skinny. Her hair was blond with even
lighter streaks from a summer on the
Between fall cross-country season and
spring track, the early winter afternoons of my senior year consisted of
leaning against a car in the parking lot, with friends talking about girls and
college. The snow melted off the lot and
always kept our shoes damp as we stood flowing across the lot in thin sheets of
cold, evaporating water. Eventually,
when we’d get too cold to stand outside, we would drive to the Conoco gas
station on the corner of the only two roads in our town. The clerk, a Chinese American woman who
didn’t speak English well, always offered us advice on what number scratch
ticket was the lucky card that day. We
would blow twenty bucks on number five, or number two, scratching and losing,
happy our feet were drying. Sweeping the
scratched dust from all of our cards into a pile, we sat content. We didn’t play to win money. We played because under the shimmering
surface was something unknown; we played to guess at what we couldn’t know, and
if right, rewarded to buy more tickets, and then guess some more. We would sit at that dusty table all
afternoon, and when our money ran out we sat sipping our sodas, watching the
afternoon grow old.
On the days when we didn’t make a
trip down to the gas station, and the sun dragged across the sky low and late
in the afternoon, I asked Jenny to come and spend those short hours with me.
It was my cats that
attracted her. Nine kittens, covered in
silk fluff so thick that they looked round.
The gray ones were her favorite; there were two, stuck somewhere between
speckled and striped. She would tuck
four or five kittens in her coat, and carry them around talking to them, she
said protecting them from the cold of the dusty barn. Jenny and I would sit out in the barn, just
talking; most of the time I talked at her, she nodded and listened, and pet the
kittens. What I said didn’t matter; she
was sitting there, listening. I would
ask her questions, trying to scratch away the shimmer that concealed her;
sometimes she’d answer me, sometimes not and just look up and smile with her
eyes that burned sharp and bright. Dust,
hay, grain, and old wood filled the air that smelled warm, despite the cold of
the
She kissed me one day
after coming from the barn. By her car, simply
kissed me and said, “Have a good day Mr. Fox!” in her flirtatious manner. Turning abruptly, and leaving a swirl in the
gravel driveway, she got in her car and drove off.
In the spring we took
salsa classes, and I taught her swing. The speed and swing and jazz camouflages
intimacy. Spinning through a crowd of
others, dragging swirls across the floor with our feet, she taught me to lead
with clarity, and she trusted my every step.
The trumpet and saxophone’s soulful notes mixed with the swirling air
from the fans and the sweat beads on the forehead of the dancers. The air hops with life that cannot be
duplicated with a song or a dance, but only with the exact passion of song,
dance, and trust. I loved those nights
with Jenny. It was a time to immerse
ourselves in a room full of people, a time to be close and intimate.
As my infatuation with
Jenny formed to love, so did my impression of Ben’s question. Jenny was much more than beautiful. The heat of a July night would force us to
spend evenings and nights down at the lake by her house. The lake was small, but deep and cool. We would swim out to the floating dock in the
middle, her long arms slicing the black water letting long smooth ripples flow
behind her. I would paddle and pant,
scratch and claw my way after her, dragging my vertical body through layers of
cold water that she seemingly glided over.
We would lie on the dock surrounded by the black water and gray trees on
the bank; I would pant and she would laugh, and lay her head on my damp
shoulder, and listen to my pounding breath.
Some nights we would sit on the bank, drink beers, and talk about
everything. Though at times different
from my own, her articulate ideas and beliefs would force me to at least
consider them. Those summer nights, when
our words would mix with the buzz of mosquitoes and criquets,
she taught me how to be kind, how to laugh.
Waking up one morning in the middle
of our summer camping trip, Jenny would squirm in her down bag, bring herself
up on her knees in her burnt red cocoon, and peer at me. She’d burst out, “It’s too cold! Malo…” then she’d flip around the tiny tent, rolling over
me and the bags tucked in the corner.
She’d stop to ask if I were too cold as well, and I’d laugh when she’d
continue her rolling routine, shaking the tent feverously, calling out, “You’re
a crazy, too cold, you’re a crazy.”
Jenny’s passion for life flowed in her voice. There were times when she’d sit next to me
and talk in French with the elegance of a native. When she was done with her idea, she’d sit
and look at me waiting for a response, knowing full well that not a single word
registered with me. Other times she
would insert an English word, and highlight it, so within a twenty second
French spat, she would give you two words that didn’t mean anything without
their French context. Her games made me
squirm in anticipation, just as she did avoiding the cold.
Whenever I’d turn the spotlight to
her, she would dismiss her flawless GPA, and refuse to acknowledge that she was
one of the top volleyball players in the nation. She’d look at me and say, “Don’t be silly,
Russell, you are making it all up,” while a stack of scholarship offers sat
behind her. Yet with all her games and
all her play, her elegance and intelligence would command attention that hid in
the beauty of her voice. I don’t
understand her reluctance to take credit for her achievements, but through her
reluctance I began to notice my attempts to draw attention to mine.
I have tried to answer
Ben’s question hundreds of times. Is she pretty to you? The question is
powerful, because it can’t be answered with a sentence or idea. Beauty is held in uncertainty, emotion
muffled in clarity. The un-timed rhythm
of the barn animals, the mix of sweat and jazz in the dance hall, the speckled
gray of the cat and the ripples in the summer lake all lack order. But they capture the beauty of our unstable
world. This beauty is found in the cracks
of life, the time not documented.
Summer beauty is not the child
running down the dock and jumping into the lake. Pretty
is the thud… thud… thud… of his feet stomping the wooden planks, the gasp of
air as he tucks his knees, the moment before he crashes into the shimmering
water, exploding the uniform ripples into a passionate dance. Jenny is that space between the cracks of my
life.
I wish I could answer
Ben again. I would tell him that his
question was beautiful, and then I would tell him that I love her, that I love
her so very much. He wouldn’t understand,
not at eight; but later, when he fell in love, confused and content, he
might.