If I'd Known You Were Coming

Everything Looks Beautiful

3 8 Everything Looks Beautiful On Tuesdays the gardeners come and Lila puts on the cowhide skirt. She likes the feel of the tanned leather, the smooth slip of it across her legs as she dances. She dances to mariachi music. There is the sound of the mower on the front lawn and Lila goes to the bedroom, dresses, opens the windows and then draws the curtains. The curtains are sheer and white and she is sure—once the gardeners come around to the backyard—that they can see the sway of her hips, the twist of her silhouette behind the fabric. She turns the stereo up loud enough for them to hear over the mower and the trimmer. E v e r y t h i n g L o o k s B e a u t i f u l 39 The backyard usually takes three songs and by that time Lila is damp with perspiration and short of breath. She goes to the kitchen, fills three glasses with ice, and balances the pitcher of lemonade outside. She lets the gardeners help themselves , seeing it makes them feel more at home. Roberto is the tall one, with a mustache. And the little skinny one’s name is either Santo or Sanso—she has never heard him properly. The three of them move to the end of the brick walkway and look out across the yard, watching the sprinkler wave a wide smile back and forth over the grass, drinking together, thirstily. “It’s almost time to cut back the persimmon tree,” Roberto says. “Not just yet,” Lila tells him. She likes to watch the sprinklers most on sunny days when she can catch the flash and dispersion of little rainbows beneath the water’s stream. Tuesdays have become Lila’s favorite days—the smell of fresh-cut grass, the stiff odor of the sweat of these men, and lemonade. “We’re due next door,” Roberto says. She writes them a check, adding, “Everything looks beautiful.” “Gracias,” Santo or Sanso says, raising his empty glass. Lila doesn’t dance for Paul. It isn’t the same. Paul has no legs, or hasn’t for over three months now, and he doesn’t seem to miss them. It is as though he has always been in a wheelchair, as though someone just came to the door one day, a messenger boy in khakis who pointed to Paul’s knees, saying, “I’m here to pick those up,” and Paul only shrugged and handed the limbs over. He still plays basketball with his friends on Saturdays—everyone ignoring when he rolls over their toes. He still goes to work, with a new higher desk. He even got a raise. He insists they should start a family, as planned, within the year. Lila pictures a baby pulling itself along the floor with only the strength of its arms. 4 0 E v e r y t h i n g L o o k s B e a u t i f u l Lila asked the doctor where the legs went even before she’d thought to find out how Paul was doing, if the surgery had gone as planned. Some plan. Paul had offered the legs to science. ‘‘Such a good man,’’ the doctor said, to which Lila had almost responded, Really thinks on his feet. The driver who came sailing through the farmer’s market, pinning Paul—knocking him down with the front of the car and holding him still with the back tires—was eighty-five years old and had driven the same maroon Buick LeSabre clear through his own garage door one week earlier. After he’d come to a stop— seemingly wedged still by Paul—Lila helped the old man out of his car. Three other shoppers pushed and rolled Paul free. The ambulance took too long, the blood clotting at the thigh, the feet and ankles dying without pain. Lila wondered if she would feel less, less of lessness, if Paul had been a soldier at war or a racecar driver flung from the track, if he’d been an active participant in his own tragedy. One other person had been hurt, not so badly, but an elderly woman had a heart attack after the fact and died on the spot. “Maybe I had a stroke,” the eighty-five-year-old man said to Lila. “Or maybe not,” Lila said. Paul has started going...