Текст книги "The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty"

Автор книги: Amanda Filipacchi

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

My mother was gazing at me.

Gently, I added, “Someone whose interest in me won’t fade as soon as my looks do.”

My mother looked down. “So this is about your father and me.”

Unfortunately, my disguise put the idea in my mother’s head that I should go and see a therapist—a request she began frequently badgering me about and which I didn’t give in to until today: almost two years later, two years of wearing the disguise every day, making small improvements to it along the way.

THINKING ABOUT GABRIEL always makes me want to read some of his letters again—something I do often. So, after calling my mother I go and fetch two of them and sit on the couch. With great care, I unfold his suicide note. His handwriting is beautiful and interesting, like he was.

Clenching my lips, I read it once more. I know it practically by heart.

Beloved Barb,

I’m so sorry I have to say goodbye to you and to life.

You didn’t know. I never made a declaration of love, nor even a declaration of desire. I was very careful not to send you signals revealing my feelings because I knew they were not reciprocated. And worse, I knew it would change our relationship and make you uncomfortable. You would never be the same with me again, never be yourself.

You often mused to me about your future, wondering what your life would be like, whether you’d have children and how many, where you would live, who you would end up with. But you never saw me that way.

You made a drawing of me, once, with that talent of yours which matches your beauty—that beauty that has grown so painful for me to behold. In the drawing, I felt you had captured my soul. You made me more attractive, more appealing than I am. If that’s how you saw me, why couldn’t you love me?

Meeting you meant I was doomed. It has sapped me of my ability to derive pleasure from anything but you. Everything is ruined for me because nothing can match you, nothing can compare. I’ve never been as happy as when I’m with you. And I’ve never been as miserable. Sometimes those two feelings are separated by only a moment.

My work, my success, people’s praise—all those things that mattered to me—mean nothing to me now. My professional ambition has deserted me because I know it will not get me your love.

Beloved Barb, I adored you from the moment I met you. You have touched my soul in ways you will never know.

Goodbye, sweet heart.

More later,

Gabriel

Reading this letter always leaves me devastated, even after all this time.

Those two words, “More later,” which under any other circumstance would seem very banal, baffled my friends and me for a while. That is, until I began receiving more letters from Gabriel—letters he’d prepared before his death and had arranged to be sent to me on specific dates when he knew he would be dead.

The second letter resting on my lap is one of those—Gabriel’s latest, and by far strangest, one. I received it two days ago and have discussed it with my friends at length. We have no idea what he’s talking about. It reads:

Dear Barb, Georgia, Lily, Penelope, and Jack,

One of you confessed to me that you did something very bad. I don’t want to reveal what it is until it’s absolutely necessary. And it will be necessary soon.

Love,

Gabriel

Chapter Three

After folding the two letters and putting them away, I turn off the living room lights.

I’m tired. I go to the other room, which is not only my bedroom but my office. There’s a desk in the middle of this large room and a couch in a corner. The bed is simply a mattress on the floor because it satisfies my bohemian taste. I’ve lined the room with floor-to-ceiling storage space. I have built-in drawers that hold supplies for masks, sketches, fabrics for costumes, sewing equipment, etc. I also have a big closet where I keep dozens of costumes I’ve made or am in the process of making. My own clothes take up only a tiny portion of the closet because I have little interest in my appearance other than to make sure it’s bad.

I’m in the midst of getting ready for bed, taking off my fat, when Georgia calls in tears. She can’t sleep; she’s devastated about her lost novel in her lost laptop. I tell her to take a sleeping aid, and we’ll try calling the police again tomorrow. She says she already took one and it’s not working. I tell her to come over and sleep on my couch if she wants.

A half hour later, Georgia is sitting curled up on my couch, sipping a cup of hot chocolate.

I first met Georgia five years ago when I was the costume designer for the movie based on her novel The Liquid Angel. It was my first job in costume design, and it basically made my career, earning me a Satellite Award and an Oscar nomination. (I chose Gabriel as my escort to the Academy Awards, and we had a memorable time even though I didn’t win.) Job offers poured in after that and I dropped out of Tisch’s MFA program to devote myself full time to freelance costume designing. I haven’t since been nominated for another major award, though my designs continue to get positive reviews that praise their originality, freshness, and psychological insight.

Georgia and I became good friends right away and we often turn to each other during difficult times, such as now.

“I don’t see how I can write again, now that I’ve lost my best work,” she cries, putting down her cup of hot chocolate.

“You’re a great writer. You’ll write it again and even better.”

“I’ve lost work before. I don’t write it better. I write it worse.”

AFTER SHE LEAVES, I work all morning on a series of masks and costumes I’ve been hired to design for a TV movie.

I would happily keep working till dinnertime without taking a break, if only I hadn’t promised our friend Penelope I’d have lunch with her and her parents. I always try to do whatever I can to help Penelope. She’s a dear friend who’s had a tough life. Or rather, she had a tough three days, six years ago. She was kidnapped and kept in a coffin for sixty-nine hours. She doesn’t often ask for favors, so when she begged me because she didn’t want to see her parents alone and she claimed they had always wanted to meet me, etc., I couldn’t refuse.

Penelope doesn’t want to see them alone because of the ongoing tense exchange she has with her wealthy father over the issue of her not yet making a living at the age of twenty-eight. He pressures Penelope to get a job, or to make money some other way, any other way. Instead, Penelope decided to take a pottery class. She discovered she had no talent for making attractive pots. Impressed with her classmates’ pots, which were merely ugly, not hideous like her own, she decided to open a store and sell their ugly pots. Her father disapproves of her business venture. He thinks the pots are ugly and her idea stupid. Worse, the pots aren’t selling and the store is losing money. And he’s the one who pays the rent on her store and on her apartment. He hasn’t given her a trust fund, just a monthly allowance for food, bills, clothes. If he wants to, he can stop supporting her at any time, and she would have nothing, not even a place to live.

It seems obvious to me that Penelope is tortured by her lack of achievement. She would give anything, I think, to possess a special gift, an ability; even the smallest, most modest skill.

She did make efforts to please her father over the years, she did try a few jobs, but hated them and left each one within a couple of months. The pottery class, however, she enjoyed greatly and she continues to take at least two ceramics classes every semester: Wheel Throwing and Handbuilding.

Penelope told me that each time she sees her father, which is every two weeks, he bitterly asks her how sales are going. She never lies, always says, “Terrible.” She’s becoming increasingly stressed by his questions.

PENELOPE AND HER parents are already seated when I arrive at Cipriani Downtown. They shake my hand warmly. They don’t know I’m wearing a disguise. Penelope assured me she never told them. In their eyes, I must make a striking contrast to their daughter, who’s sitting there all prim and ladylike in her cream cashmere sweater set and her immaculately applied makeup.

The waiter takes our order. After telling him I want to start with the steamed broccoli and then have the grilled sole, no sauce, Penelope’s very skinny mother leans over to me and says, “I admire your discipline. My willpower leaves much to be desired.” She rubs her stomach, as though it were convex instead of concave.

“It’s not discipline,” I say. “I just don’t like fatty foods.” It’s ironic that I, of all people, possess the rare trait of not enjoying the things that destroy one’s beauty. “Fat and sugar make me want to throw up,” I explain.

“Really? Then how do you maintain your . . .” She seems unsure how to finish.

“Girth?” I offer.

She nods sheepishly.

“It’s actually not that easy to get rid of, you know. For emotional reasons, I guess.”

“I sure know what you mean,” she says, squeezing her bony upper arms critically, as though they were covered in a layer of thick flesh caused by years of compulsive eating due to emotional torment. “I don’t know how Penelope does it, with what she went through six years ago . . .”

I nod politely.

Not for a moment did Penelope’s father hesitate to pay the exorbitant ransom when his daughter was abducted. He got it ready as soon as the kidnappers told him the amount, but before he had a chance to deliver the money, the police found the criminals and freed Penelope. The kidnappers had kept her in a coffin so that she’d sound all the more distraught when her father asked to speak to her. They held up the phone to the coffin and instructed her to talk to him through its walls and describe her situation. She was crying and had to shout to be heard.

“Barb!” her father booms at me. It’s the first time he’s spoken since I sat down. “You make a living designing costumes, right?”

“Yes,” I say, hoping he hasn’t figured out I’m wearing one.

“You make a good living at it, from what I gather from the magazines.” Penelope must have shown her parents the few articles that have been written about me during the past couple of years.

“It’s okay,” I say softly, sorry that my presence didn’t protect Penelope from her dad’s obsession.

“I wish my daughter would follow your example. She has so many advantages and opportunities.”

No one responds.

Penelope’s father turns to her. “How’s your store going?”

“Quite well, thank you,” she says. I look at her, startled.

Her father does an auditory double take. “What do you mean, ‘quite well’?”

“Selling vigorously,” she articulates. “Compared to before.”

“Are you putting me on?”

“No.”

“Are you selling new merchandise?”

“No.”

“I can’t believe those pots are selling.”

“I’ll show you the sales records next time I see you.”

“No need. I can look at them today when we go to your store.”

“But we’re not going to my store.”

“Yes we are. I want to see the records. After lunch, we’re going back to your store with you.”

“Today’s not a good day. I’m not in the mood.”

“Nonsense. Your reticence is very suspicious, I hope you realize.”

When lunch is over I try to take my leave, but Penelope grabs my arm so tightly it hurts, even through the padding, and in a low voice says to me, “Please come with us.”

“I really need to get back to my work.”

“I beg you with every shred of my being. For moral support,” she says.

In the store, Penelope’s father examines her recent sales records. Appearing impressed and amused, he says, “It looks like you’ve indeed been selling these pots. Didn’t I say customers can be endlessly surprising?”

He gets up and gazes at the merchandise. “It’s beyond my comprehension why anyone would buy any of this pottery. It’s abominable.”

Penelope says, “That makes it art, more than craft.”

Her father reaches for a big, misshapen brown mug. To my surprise, the handle comes off in his hand while the rest of the mug stays on the shelf. Startled, he turns to his daughter, holding the handle.

“You broke the mug!” Penelope says. “That was my best piece.”

He picks up the rest of the mug and attempts to put mug and handle back together. “I’m sorry. The handle just lifted right off.”

“It was a fragile, delicate piece. Very refined and elegant.”

He looks down at the two pieces of mug in his hand. “You grew up in a house filled with refinement and delicacy. This mug is a big clunky chunk of mud, the farthest thing from elegant.”

“Absolutely, according to your narrow-minded and unsophisticated definition of elegance.”

Looking irritated, he puts the pieces back on the shelf and reaches for another item—a bowl. It breaks in two as soon as he’s touched it.

He looks at Penelope. “This bowl was broken,” he says.

He picks up a plate, but only half of it goes with him. “What’s going on? All these items are broken,” he says.

“I can see that. It’s a shame you broke them,” she says.

“Stop it.”

Penelope blushes fiercely.

“Stop the bullshit. I want an explanation,” he says.

In a voice that sounds so strangled I myself can barely breathe, Penelope says, “Customers have to pay for what they break.”

A chuckle escapes me. She has gall. She may not be a creative genius like Lily or Georgia, but nature was a genius in making her.

After a moment’s reflection, her father’s eyes open wide. “That’s how you’ve been selling your merchandise? You make people believe they broke a piece of crap, and you make them pay for it?”

“I was kidnapped,” Penelope says.

“Ah, here we go again.”

“I was kept in a coffin for three days.”

“SO?” he screams. “Why do you always bring that up to defend your inadequacies?”

“Please don’t be so harsh,” Penelope’s mother finally says.

His tone softens. “Don’t you feel ashamed to do business this way?”

“It’s a selling technique,” Penelope says.

Feeling sorry for her, I jump in. “Positioning the broken pieces in such a way as to make them appear unbroken requires great skill. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the long run, the art of the deception becomes the true art of the piece.” I reach for an ugly mug that looks in perfect condition. The moment I raise it from the shelf, a piece of the rim falls inside the mug. “Wow,” I gasp. “It looked so undamaged. Your technique is remarkable, Penelope. Achieving this effect of false wholeness, this illusion of integrity, must take a lot of work. It’s a tough balancing act.”

“Yes,” she says.

Her father is not satisfied. “But don’t customers object to paying for something they didn’t break? How did you manage to get so many people to pay for the pieces?”

“I cry,” Penelope says.

“You cry to sell your broken merchandise?” her father screams.

“Yes, it helps! And I’m thinking of branching out and selling glassware, too.”

“I’m embarrassed by you.”

“I was kidnapped!” she exclaims again. “And don’t pretend you don’t see how that could possibly affect the rest of my life. I was kept in a coffin for three days and three nights. No food. No water. No physical movement. Hardly any air to breathe. No toilet. I should be dead right now.” She gives her father a searing look.

Her father turns to me. “You seem well balanced. Do you have a good therapist you could recommend?”

I stammer, “I have one . . . since yesterday . . . uh, I don’t know how good she is.”

Penelope says, “I didn’t go to a therapist when I came out of the coffin—I don’t see why I should go to one now.”

Her father takes her by the shoulders and stares deep into her eyes. “You’re the one who keeps using the coffin excuse to defend every poor choice you make and to justify your lack of . . . achievements—which I don’t say is invalid, but it tells me you might want to deal with your coffin issue. Face it, you never really got out of that coffin. Let a therapist free you.”

Seeing no reaction from her and unwilling to wait more than two seconds for one, he adds, “And anyway, if you don’t start contributing to your living in a legitimate way very soon, I’m going to stop supporting you. Then you’ll have no choice but to make money, honey.”

THE TENSION OF the last couple of hours has exhausted me. I decide to go straight home instead of buying some more materials for my masks, as I’d intended.

By the time I arrive at my building, I have a blasting headache.

The doorman opens the door, saying, “Here you go, cunt.”

I cringe because I’m afraid he’ll be overheard by the other two doormen at the front desk. There are other staff members as well in this large lobby: porters, handymen, the super, one of the employees from the management office. What worries me is that he’ll get fired, end up homeless, kill himself, and it will be my fault because something about me—my kindness, my compassion, who knows—made him feel safe enough to drop his inhibitions and allow his mental problem to surface in my presence.

“Having a bad day, huh, Adam?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. Hope it gets better,” I say cheerfully, trying to make my tone raise his spirits. And I go up to my apartment.

Chapter Four

That evening, Lily, Georgia, Jack, Penelope, and I go to a bar to blow off steam. We’re all upset. Lily’s shown us a postcard Strad sent her:

Hey Lily, Sorry I can’t make it to your concert. Hope it goes/went well. Last month I read that great article in Time Out about your new music’s powers. Congratulations on your success! Strad

When we meet up, Penelope gives me a gift to thank me for helping her deal with her parents at her store of ugly ceramic items. The gift is an ugly ceramic item: a hideous box with a beautiful metal clasp encrusted with a small green stone. But at least the gift is not broken.

“Sorry I didn’t wrap it,” she says. “I made it. Except for the clasp. Someone in the metal department at school created it for me in exchange for two pots.”

“Thank you!” I say, kissing her on the cheek. “I’m so touched. It’s wonderful. It has such character.”

We all make a show of admiring the box, though secretly we’re just admiring the clasp.

Penelope tells the others about the fight with her dad in her shop of broken pots and his threat to stop supporting her if she didn’t start contributing to her living in a way that wasn’t against the law. They’re astounded to hear about her selling technique.

I’m sad for Penelope, after the fight with her father, and I’m sad for Georgia over her lost novel. Mostly, though, I’m angry on Lily’s behalf. So I scan the bar, as has become my habit, for a possible scapegoat, for a shallow man to represent all shallow men.

At the same time, I’m also searching for an exception, for a man capable of falling in love with a woman for reasons other than her looks. That’s the only kind of man I could ever fall in love with.

While my friends huddle on a banquette and order drinks and snacks, I spot a man reading a stack of handsome books at the bar. He’s a bohemian type. Chin-length hair.

I approach him. The books are small, old editions with lovely bindings. The man himself is attractive, too—not that that matters. As I near, I glance at the spines of his volumes: Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, Tom Thumb, The Princess in Disguise, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Snow White.

Maybe this isn’t an occasion for my usual bar ritual. The presence of the books gives me hope that perhaps this guy isn’t as shallow as all the other strangers I’ve approached.

I stand behind him and look over his shoulder. The page he’s looking at has a beautiful illustration of Sleeping Beauty, with a few lines of text.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen a man reading fairy tales in a bar,” I tell him.

He looks me over and tersely replies, “I’m doing it for work.”

“Now I’m dying to know: what kind of work?” I sit down on the barstool next to him.

He closes his eyes wearily and says, “I’m a kindergarten teacher. I really have to focus right now.”

He has to focus, and yet I can’t help noticing him turning his head to look at several attractive women who have entered the room.

“Bringing fairy tales to a bar must be a great way to meet women, though I don’t think classic fairy tales are the best things to read to children,” I say.

“Excuse me?” he says, in a tone that conveys annoyance, not only at what I’m saying, but at the fact that I’m still talking.

I’m fully aware that I’m very annoying during my bar ritual. That’s the point.

“Haven’t you noticed how the heroines are always beautiful?” I say. “There are no ugly heroines, no ugly girls that are worthy to be loved. There are poor heroines, dirty heroines, like Cinderella, but never ugly heroines. That sends out a terrible message to kids.”

“I can see how that could make certain ugly women angry,” he says, not looking up from The Sleeping Beauty.

I glance at my friends and hold my nose to indicate that this is a real stinker. Georgia mimes stabbing gestures toward the man, which startles me. That seems a bit excessive, even for her.

As for Penelope, she has been trying to gently break her empty water glass in such a way that it can be reassembled and held together with nothing but the glue of gravity. She told us it’s practice, for when she will make good on her promise to her dad to branch out into glassware.

I say to the kindergarten teacher, “Actually, you’d be surprised at how little it has to do with being ugly. I have plenty of female friends who look just like those beautiful heroines. They have hair that looks like this,” I say, taking off my wig. “They have the same kind of body, typically considered to be beautiful in our culture. Very similar to this,” I say, taking off my fake-fat jacket. “Some of them look remarkably like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and that whole classic bunch, and yet they still feel angry about the kind of message the fairy tales communicate to children.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Georgia’s whole body gesticulating. She invariably gets wired when I begin taking off my wig in front of a guy.

As for Lily, I always worry it might pain her to watch a man’s transformation from jerk to gentleman as I go through my own transformation from unattractive to attractive. The difference between how men treat an ugly woman, like herself, and one who is beautiful is not something she needs her face rubbed in, but my compulsion to go through the ritual overpowers my need to spare her the sad spectacle. If she is hurt, she never shows it.

The kindergarten teacher looks at me as I take out my fake teeth. To my amazement, he appears angry. I’m pleasantly surprised. It’s refreshing to meet a man who doesn’t become sweet and gooey when I unveil my looks. I’m about to compliment him on his consistency, when he says, “I feel robbed and violated.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“You deceived me. You stole . . .” he trails off.

“What did I steal?”

“My opportunity to make a good first impression.”

“I didn’t prevent you.”

“Yes you did, by misleading me into thinking you were—” He cuts himself off, but I know what he was about to say. I misled him into thinking I was ugly and fat, and thus not worth his time and attention.

“Ah, I think I get it,” I answer. “When you say I stole from you the opportunity to make a good first impression, you mean that in the same way as how you stole from every ugly woman you’ve ever laid eyes on the opportunity to impress you with something other than her looks.”

“You’re crazy, you know that?” He sweeps his fairy tales into his big bag and leaves the bar.

I go to the restroom, change back into my disguise, and rejoin my friends.

I scoot into their booth. The glass Penelope broke is now sitting in front of her, reassembled and looking intact except for the break lines running across it like scars. She is holding the postcard Strad sent to Lily, gazing at it grimly.

“May I?” I ask, taking it from her. As I look at it again, the slight relief my ritual gave me wears off. This postcard is soul-crushing. No one would understand why it’s soul-crushing unless they knew Lily’s story. And we know it well.

Lily met Strad—a name he’d given himself in honor of his favorite violin-maker, Stradivarius—three years ago at the musical instruments store where they both worked when she was in her second year of graduate studies at the Manhattan School of Music. She developed a crush immediately. Strad Ellison did not reciprocate her interest—was perhaps not even aware of it. He had a very active dating life. He said he had high standards and that he was very idealistic and romantic and was looking for a great love. The reality is that Strad is a superficial guy, only interested in dating beautiful women.

And yet Lily had not aimed too high. Strad was not “out of her league,” as the expression goes—certainly not mentally, and not even physically, that much. He wasn’t particularly good-looking, but in Lily’s eyes he had enormous charm. I met him a few times at the store where they worked and noticed he did manage to be dashing, occasionally, but never for more than five minutes at a time.

One day, Lily invited Strad to watch a studio recital in which she was going to play two of her compositions on the piano. She was hoping to impress him.

But when they went for coffee after the recital, he merely told her politely she’d been good. On the other hand, he raved about Derek Pearce, one of the other composers who’d performed. He particularly praised one of Derek’s pieces, saying, “That’s the kind of music that is more than just beautiful. It beautifies the world around it. You want it never to end.”

Lily said, “At home I have recordings of some of his other compositions, in case you want to come over and hear them.”

“Why not?” Strad said, and they left the coffee shop and went to her apartment.

Strad lay on her floor. It was better for his back than sitting on the couch, he said. She put on a recording of Derek’s music.

“Why don’t you turn out the lights and light some candles? I love listening to music in the dark,” he said.

Understandably, Lily was hopeful.

Strad asked if he could smoke. Even though Lily hates smoke, she said okay and gave him a plate as an ashtray.

She lay next to him, resting on her elbow, and feasted her eyes on his profile which was glowing dimly in the candlelight.

The lines of his face mesmerized her. They had character, were so lived in. His features were weathered yet humorous, connected by tremendous laugh lines, and encircled by silly curly hair. He had an ugly kind of beauty or beautiful kind of ugliness which was why, in her secret heart, she hoped that her own ugliness could appeal to him the same way his appealed to her. Unfortunately, his particular brand of ugliness appealed to a lot of women, she noticed.

His physical appearance was not what she had first fallen in love with. She’d first fallen in love with everything else about him. His considerate nature. His love of his dog. His way of laughing at things she said when she had no idea why.

That night, as Strad was lying on the floor of her apartment, listening to Derek’s music, he began commenting, “He’s good. Not as good as he was tonight—he’s gotten better. Music like his, music that has the power to make things around it beautiful—that’s great music. Music that improves people’s perception of reality. That’s music’s highest power, most noble ability. Making the world more appealing.”

Strad took a drag on his cigarette and after blowing the smoke toward the ceiling he said something that changed Lily’s life. He said, “I would fall in love with—and marry—any woman who could create music like that. If Derek was a chick, I’d ask her out.” He flicked his ashes onto the plate.

And then he talked of all the various women he had recently dated, was presently dating, and was thinking of dating.

Lily made a decision right then in the dark: to attempt the impossible. She knew she couldn’t win Strad with her looks. Her strength lay in her talent. She would win him through her music. She would impress him so deeply that he would have no choice but to fall in love with her. She would try to create music that beautified the world.

Lily quit her job the next day, wanting to set to work immediately on her project. But beautifying the world with her music was not an easy task. It took her eight months of the most intense dedication. It required an extraordinary amount of perseverance.

After many failed attempts, she decided that perhaps she was aiming too high. So she tried beautifying merely her neighborhood instead of the world.

But she still couldn’t manage it.

She scaled down, focusing on her street.

But still, she didn’t pull it off.

So she went to the supermarket and picked out a single item at random: a banana. She brought it home, put it on her piano, and stared at it for a while, rotating it, trying to see the unique beauty in the banana. She then imagined having a craving for it. And slowly, slowly, a melody came to her.

She was excited. She found other objects in her apartment, spread them out on her piano, and studied them while trying to compose flattering pieces for them.

She called us, told us she’d succeeded and wanted to test her music on us. We gathered at my apartment.

“The piece of music I’m going to test is the one I composed for junk mail,” she told us. “But before I begin, I want to make sure you all dislike junk mail.”

We confirmed we not only disliked it, but hated it.

She went to my week-old pile of mail near the front door, pulled out all the junk mail, and plopped it on the ottoman cube in front of us.

“You haven’t changed your minds yet, right? You still hate junk mail?”

“Right!” we all exclaimed.

“As I play the piece, pay close attention to your feelings and let me know if you detect any change in your perception of the junk mail. Let me know if you start finding it more beautiful and desirable.”

She sat at the piano and played her junk mail melody while we gazed at the pile of junk mail.

When Lily was done playing her piece, Penelope said, “I’m sorry, Lily, but this was not a valid test.”

“Why not?” Lily asked, rising from her piano bench.

“Did you take a look at this junk mail before you set it down? It’s not normal junk mail!” Penelope said, kneeling at the foot of the ottoman cube and looking through the envelopes and leaflets. “In fact, technically, I don’t think this is junk mail at all. I mean, look at it; it must have cost a fortune to print. The quality, the colors, the sheen, are all exceptional.”