Youve changed, p.4
You've Changed, page 4
You gotta get it removed, he said.
Well, obviously, Beckett, I can’t walk around looking like a basset hound.
(He could get a basset hound.)
Her face hadn’t changed, just a barely discernible heaviness in the lip. He was more concerned about her health.
He squeezed her tightly then took the pin from her hands.
That small gesture was enough to align Princess and Beckett again. She gave up trying to make him feel useful and just wanted him to feel good. She actually said, I know what’ll make you feel better. But Beckett knew that it would make her feel better. Unfortunately, there was a failure to launch, the thought of that half blister in her mouth, filled with tiny seeds like a cherry tomato, made him squeamish. And then he recalled the udon noodle reference. He let her cuddle him as little spoon for a while, then lifted her arm off him and went outside for a puffpuff.
When Beckett returned, he froze while removing his shoes, hearing her voice upstairs. Who was she talking to in this new voice? Keza. They were talking about her laser hair removal and she said it again, laying a bird at the foot of her master: If I’m not completely smooth, he goes limp like an udon noodle. All desire drained from him onto the front mat, near where the suitcases had been a few weeks ago.
* * *
Princess got an emergency appointment. Beckett picked her up from the gym to take her to the clinic. When she leaned in to kiss him, he was startled, she didn’t normally, and that made her more determined. She held down her lip and wiped it on his cheek as he squished himself toward the window, almost losing control of the vehicle while reversing from the parking spot.
At the clinic—a different one from the laser clinic—Beckett waited in his truck while the aesthetician injected Princess’s lip with a hyaluronidase solution that dissolved the hyaluronic acid.
You’re done, Beckett said when Princess entered Becky. He meant done broadly: this experience ought to mark the end of your procedures.
Princess informed him that she had to go back in a week to have the filler replaced.
Wait, after all this, you’re going to put more stuff in your lip?
Well, it’s even more uneven now, she said. She fingered the gold @Princess necklace that labelled her chest. Beckett had bought it for her on their honeymoon in Colombia, as a half joke; he found it tacky.
There were many things he could have said in response, but he picked the gentlest: You think you might have a problem?
Not anymore, she said. I handled it.
She meant that she was the type of woman to address problems and not the kind of woman who might have an erectile dysfunction problem and ignore it, not the kind of woman who could not conclude an evening with his wife after she had watched Black basketball players dunk balls with such force the net arched and towelboys had to mop up the floor afterward.
True, since getting fired, sometimes he said he was tired and sometimes he actually was tired and sometimes the thought of running across the court, even on a breakaway, made him tired. I’m full, he said after a late dinner. Too full. I’m hungry, he said on nights when too much time had elapsed since dinner. Not that Princess was begging for it.
As was her way, she offered information instead of apology. She said that Keza’s CBT therapist said that she, Keza, should actively interrupt her negative patterns of thinking. Replace bad thoughts with affirming thoughts and hold them in mind for seven seconds. It only took one second for a bad thought to register, but seven for a good one to take hold.
Why’s Keza seeing a therapist? Beckett asked.
Depression, Princess said.
She didn’t seem depressed. As he was saying it, he knew it was the wrong thing to say, but Princess didn’t police him at that moment.
She had postpartum after the first two kids, and she’s worried it’ll happen again. But she doesn’t want to go on medication. And she and the baby are already at risk for everything under the sun because she’s over forty.
He remembered Wood and his miscarriage eyes.
Hours later, Beckett was sitting in bed looking at SPCA dogs on his phone, swiping from a basset hound to a cocker spaniel to a schnauzer, and Princess was lying down beside him. She returned to Beckett’s depression comment.
People don’t have to be sad to be depressed.
Clinically, he clarified.
She paused and he felt her looking at him, although he kept his eyes on the screen. She asked, Do you have a problem with seeing a therapist?
If that’s what someone needs, fine, he said. Go crazy.
She didn’t laugh. I mean, you personally.
Me personally? he repeated.
Would you?
I’m not depressed.
I didn’t say you were depressed. We don’t know if you’re depressed. Princess turned toward him. She was invested in the conversation. She said, Therapists do more than treat depression. You said you almost saw one when your mother died.
Beckett didn’t respond. This all seemed like an exercise in figuring out what went wrong before anything went wrong. Or like she had arranged a recent profile of him that she wanted verified by a professional. She was good at being right.
And maybe now, with the job situation and all, doesn’t it make sense? she asked.
When he didn’t respond, she shoved his thigh.
What? I don’t need to see a therapist.
Beckett busied himself furiously with the phone, expanding his search for dogs to other cities. He could even adopt a dog from overseas. A sandy Egyptian dog or an icy-eyed husky, rescued from dog Gulag. Princess turned away. When he was sure she had let go of the subject, he searched in an Incognito tab for therapist CBT, then sex therapist CBT, then an image search, SafeSearch disabled, hoping to see a woman in black lingerie and heels.
* * *
Three weeks after Beckett was discontinued at work, a Tuesday, Princess again proceeded to give the number one answer on the board and Beckett’s body responded with a giant red X. The seduction began, Let’s see those biceps, babe. Those abs. She tugged his shirt up. It ended with a ratings flop and Princess drawing herself a bath.
Beckett couldn’t go on this way. He was a framer by trade, but much more versatile than that. He had a long stint of drywall work last year. When he used to come home covered in drywall dust, Princess would order him to strip on the front mat and point him upstairs to the shower like a dominatrix. He loved the game as much as she did, the pile of clothes, the laundry, the steam, the sex.
He could have that life again. Beckett decided he would call the Mouth in the morning and ask for work. Late in Princess’s bath, forty-five minutes in, he sat on the lid of the toilet and told her what he was thinking. The hair on her legs was falling out from the laser treatment, right on schedule, and she was skimming the surface of the water trying to find them.
He thought the news would bring her some relief. They were not wealthy. Princess made the kind of money to be spent monthly not saved. He couldn’t just sit at home. And although he didn’t want to be demoted to holding the stop sign while trucks backed out, he’d do it. They had a mortgage.
It was Princess again who said what he needed: Don’t go back, Beckett. Run your own company. Look at what you did with this house.
He had tried to launch a business before and failed, or put it on pause. He still had the business licence for Beyond Repair Renovations (same initials as Beckett Robinson Renovations). But he had ended up in debt from undercharging, losing money on jobs, and finally being threatened with a lawsuit for breach of contract. How was he to compete with the megabuilders out there? Had he overestimated his abilities? He had to helicopter in help on a few projects. Not one of those guys had called him.
He found it hard to ask clients for money. He circled around the point. He asked if they’d be home. When he showed up in soft shoes, they should assume that he was there to collect money, not to work. Soft shoes were a sign, he thought.
He told Princess that he didn’t want to beg people to hire him. To convince people of his skills. In fact, he didn’t want to talk to people if he could help it.
She said she’d do that part.
It was one of those moments where Beckett felt his love for Princess stir, like the time he first saw her rental apartment, the honey floors, the soaring ceiling, the waxy plants, the bike mounted over the couch, the evening light—he could live with a woman who lived in such a space. He got up from the toilet seat and sat on the floor next to the bathtub. She had made her offer, but he wanted to succeed on his own. He wanted Princess in the stands, not on the team.
You’re too pretty, Beckett said. Clients want to see a man with a gut and hairy forearms.
You don’t have a gut, she said.
Another surge of love. He reached for her and she took his wrist and placed a leg hair on the tip of his finger. He made a wish on her leg hair for
* * *
That weekend, when he picked her up from work, she said she wanted to get something at Metrotown mall out in Burnaby. Beckett, who did not have the ability to predict Princess the way she did him, thought he’d carry around shopping bags and say things like, That looks cute on you. She almost always wore leggings instead of jeans, as if she could break into workout the way people broke into dance in Bollywood.
But Princess had tricked him. She pretended to shop for herself but held things to his chest and slapped his butt into the dressing room while slurping from a big cup of coconut bubble tea. Sometimes she snuck into the dressing room with him.
I know what you’re doing, Beckett said. They were in a spacious accessible dressing room with a door instead of a curtain. He stared at her. For all her enhancements, she did not yet look like a Bratz doll.
Took you long enough, she said.
I’m going to resurrect Beyond Repair? We’re really doing this?
You’re getting the clothes. You might as well, she said.
Princess had an Instagram following of about four thousand people, a staggering number to Beckett, who thought of her as a microcelebrity, but in reality she didn’t have ambitions to be a fitness, beauty, fashion or lifestyle influencer. Followers liked content of her demonstrating how to increase the difficulty of basic movements. She might assume a plank position while gripping dumbbells, then add a row, then add a rotation or pick up one foot, before returning to plank position. A subset of the comments were appraisals of her form and appraisals of her body, but rarely her style.
Beckett’s wardrobe still tipped toward mostly free T-shirts, his work overalls, jeans, track and cargo pants. Princess was initially puzzled by his wardrobe. In high school, he dated one girl for two years in a boring, hangout kind of relationship. No effort or outfits required. In his twenties and most of his thirties, he went through a series of one-season-or-shorter relationships where he wore the same black shirt on dates to Olive Garden–tier chain restaurants, to hide the sweat, and found himself mostly being an audience for his dates, having nothing much to say. Between high school and Princess, he had had one serious relationship with a woman named Cindy in which he was indicted for being unavailable, unaffectionate, and unnecessary. What do you mean? he countered. I’m right here. I’m quiet. I’m steady. And Princess seemed to agree with him. He made himself necessary by cooking and driving and sheltering and listening and touching and admiring. He absorbed every dull task in her life so she could finally come to rest on a piece of earth where she was not an outsider. He had made her princess of a tiny kingdom, an enclave within another country, like Lesotho or the Vatican.
Princess claimed that he called her Cindy a few times, but he was sure he hadn’t. Why would I make that up? Princess had asked. Cindy had also claimed that she didn’t feel special. She felt interchangeable with any mammal who stuck around Beckett’s life.
The first trustworthy contractor outfit Princess chose was a plaid shirt and dark jeans.
Next, he said. He felt like a Property Brother.
But he should probably defer to her on the matter of how to present himself. Princess had known his waist, shoe, and shirt sizes from looking at him. She knew his height and weight within three pounds and when she wasn’t exact, she felt his body to see where he was hiding or had lost the weight. When she was beside him, out in public, her presence raised him a point or two. He liked that other men looked at her before looking at him. And she said she felt like she was with a basic Jared Leto. She bought him a leather jacket and white undershirts so he could level up his look. (Beckett never understood the purpose of an undershirt and could tell whether he’d get along with someone by whether they wore an undershirt in the summer.) You could be so cool, she said. She used to give him pictures to give to a hairstylist, and although he felt uncomfortable, he couldn’t deny that she made him look better. But, without any good reason apart from dogged independence, he slowly stopped being her mannequin and now he hadn’t had a haircut in over a year. He pulled it back into a bun, never a ponytail for fear of getting it caught in some equipment and sucking his neck into the blade.
She made him try on a second outfit: a green shirt and snug tan pants.
What about all black? he asked. It seemed like the whole city was wearing black clothes and white sneakers.
Too severe. You need all the warmth you can get.
While looking at Beckett in the mirror, Princess smoothed the clothes on his body.
Must be boring being a man all the time, no? she said.
Less maintenance, Beckett said. Cheaper on fuel.
I used to think a dick was like an annoying braid you guys had to carry around.
Beckett felt emboldened. You know, everybody in the waiting room can hear your conversations when you’re getting your laser treatments.
She dusted his shoulders. So?
He made eye contact with her in the mirror and dipped his chin. He said, Udon. Noodle.
She laughed. Oh, Beckett. Nobody cares about your dick.
Beckett needed to assert himself. She was dressing him now, laying out gym clothes on the bed for him, asking him to open jars, taking long baths. Beckett said, I will not be driving you there anymore.
Because of a limp dick joke? (Or did she mean to say lame.) Stop being a drama queen.
I suppose I should be happy that you didn’t say spaghetti.
I could have said angel hair.
Beckett clasped his hands over his heart in gratitude. She was joking, of course. He was not insensitive to a joke. But he felt himself about to reject the shirt on a matter of principle. It was now tainted with this conversation. She had cast him in an erectile dysfunction advertisement. He was sitting in the foreground of a stock photo, on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, green shirt, tan pants, while she was out of focus in the background, leaning against the headboard, arms folded. Then because he clicked on that ad, the next day, he’d be in the background of a related ad where she would be lying on her side, facing the camera, her expression between anger and boredom.
Look, Beckett, I was just trying to get good service. It was like session 4 and I was as hairy as Big Foot. Trust me, your situation is not making the rounds in the laser hair removal community.
She was right but Beckett was still troubled. And why should he own two green shirts?
It’s not just that, he said. Hesitated. I don’t support any of this, the zapping and the plumping and the freezing. It’s madness. I can’t.
She raised her eyebrows. Only she couldn’t.
The laser hair removal was only a recent addition to a number of procedures. First, she got shot between the eyes with ten units of Botox and another twenty across her forehead. Then she had microdermabrasion to even out hyperpigmentation near her sideburns. Then microblading to fill out her eyebrows. Then she had her teeth whitened (the Invisaligns were well before Beckett). Then she had her cheeks and lips injected with filler, just a little bee sting. And of course, the rhino and the ta-tas around the time they were getting married. The procedures she spent their honeymoon getting done.
And I’m not entertainment for you and your African friend to laugh about, okay?
Oy, she said.
He dropped his voice. Would you like it if I told everyone your breasts were fake?
Keza knows already, she said. Then sensing that this really mattered to Beckett, she softened: Okay, calm down. I’m sorry.
She touched the temples of his hair. Do you want me to give you a dye job? The Mouth had said, The only job you guys are fit for are blowjobs
Beckett lifted her hands from his head.
Let me shape your eyebrows, Princess said.
No.
Just the strays.
No.
She ran her hand down the buttons of the green shirt. Your pecs look good in this one. She took his hair out of the bun. Princess had once described Beckett’s hair as oily black pasta. And his only defence was correcting her on a technicality: it’s brown. Since they got together, he had in fact undergone a Principlasty of his own. In addition to the leather jacket, he owned leather boots, belt, wallet. He had collared polo shirts and shorts that did not have elastic around the waist. He still preferred himself on the sloppy side. Shirt untucked. Denim layers. She had not been able to change his expression, though undoubtedly she brought happiness and jalapenos into his life. His expression was more aloof than he felt internally. Sometimes he saw himself in the mirror and was surprised by how critical and unapproachable he appeared. He felt he wasn’t usually judgemental, more live-and-let-live. Dogs approached him, and their owners, sometimes, apologetic, but children never.
