BEAUTY

Joan Stephens

It had been eight long months since she had seen him. As the months passed, one into another, she had sometimes wondered if he was real, but then she would catch a glimpse of fading microscopically thin scars and the untouched scar in front of her left ear. It had happened; he was real. She was trying to change her life, to become a better person, to be worthy of his friendship if they should ever meet again.

Then one night he came. She couldn’t contain her joy and she embraced him. He seemed a little unnerved by her happiness at seeing him, and after a short, stilted explanation of why he had come, he dismayed her by saying that he had to leave, that he should never have come.

Somehow, she persuaded him to stay. They sat close together, their knees touching as they talked for hours, telling each other how much their life had changed. Then she read the last chapter of ‘Great Expectations’ to him. They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, then tilting her head to the side, she soberly contemplated him. In all seriousness, she asked, "Why are you, Vincent?"

Shrugging his shoulders, he spread out his hands, "I don’t know."

But she knew. At least, she knew one of the answers, and with a gentle smile, Catherine murmured, almost to herself, "Beauty is its own excuse for being."*

* ‘The Rhodora’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson