The Whore's Child

didn’t get it—but only one of them held it against you.
    â€œNo paved roads, anyway,” he continued, after Beth allowed her eyes to close again sleepily. “Except for the summer, there are only seventy-five full-time residents on the island. Five children attend the local school.”
    Beth didn’t open her eyes when she spoke. “I wonder if they have a special program for gifted kids.”
    Martin chuckled. “Or a remedial one, come to that.”
    She didn’t smile, causing Martin to wonder if he’d misread her remark. He’d assumed she meant it to be funny, since it was, but one never knew. “She looks perfect for you, Martin,” Joyce had remarked yesterday, though Beth had remained in the car while Martin climbed the front porch steps and rang the bell. “How clever of you two to find each other.”
    â€œThey suggested that visitors bring a flashlight, since power outages are pretty common,” he said, looking up from the brochure. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a flashlight on you?”
    At this, Beth pulled the material of her tube top away from her chest to check. From where Martin sat, her entire right breast was exposed for a full beat before she allowed the elastic to snap back into place. The young man seated behind them had chosen that precise moment to stand up, which meant that he must have gotten an even better view.
    â€œHey,” he whispered, once the boy had wandered over to the railing. “This ain’t L.A.”
    â€œIt’s not?” she said, feigning astonishment. “Really?”
    â€œOkay, fine,” he said. “But people have different attitudes about things in New England.” California born and bred, Martin had been to the Northeast only a couple of times, both on shoots, once to southern Connecticut, which didn’t feel much like New England, and once to Boston, which felt like most other big cities. But Puritanism had flowered in this same rocky soil, hadn’t it? And after driving up the coast of Maine from Portland, Martin thought he understood why people who lived in such a harsh, unforgiving landscape might come to sterner conclusions about sex and life in general than they did in, say, Malibu.
    â€œWell, old man, I’ve spent a lot of money on these boobs.”
    Which was true. And not just her boobs either, Martin was certain. Beth was a firm believer in fixing whatever ailed you and also, come to think of it, a believer in firmness. At thirty-five her body was taut and lean, her long legs tanned and ropelike, her stomach flat from thousands of murderous crunches. Her breasts, truth be told, were a little too firm, at least for Martin, better to look at than to caress. Whatever she’d had done to them caused her nipples to be in a constant state of erection. If the boy over at the rail had gotten a good look, he’d already had the best of them.
    â€œIn California,” Martin’s friend Peter Axelrod was fond of saying wistfully, “ugliness is gradually being bred out of the species.” And beauty along with it, Martin sometimes thought. Living in L.A. and working in “the industry,” Martin saw many beautiful women, and even the most beautiful were anxious about some supposed flaw, from Audrey Hepburn’s eyebrows to Meryl Streep’s nose. On the set he’d witnessed many a tearful, whispered conversation in which an actress would explain how that next shot would reveal or emphasize some terrible imperfection she was determined to conceal. Axelrod, whose face had been badly burned in childhood, handled them as well as anybody. “Look at me,” he’d say quietly. “Look at this face and then tell me
you’re
ugly.” They loved him for that, sometimes, Martin suspected, even sleeping with him out of gratitude. Back in his director’s chair, he’d give the actress a few minutes to compose herself, explaining to the waiting crew, in his most confidential tones, “Everybody wants to be perfect. I certainly hope this isn’t a perfect movie we’re making.” Whereupon he would be assured they weren’t.
    Strangely, when Axelrod himself wed, late in life, the woman he married might have been Beth’s sister, a flawless beauty some twenty years his junior with a face and body whose perfect symmetry seemed computer-generated. Which probably meant that men, ultimately,
were
to blame.