The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story by Richard Bach Page B

Print things you've never said?"
    She laughed. "Things you've not only never said, but never thought, never believed, wouldn't think of doing. A story published about you, with quotes, word for word, made-up. Fiction. You've never seen the reporter . . . not even a phone call, and there you are in print! You pray
    readers won't believe what they see in some of those papers."
    "I'm new at this, but I have a theory."
    "What's your theory?" she said.
    I told her about celebrities being examples that the rest of us watch while the world puts tests to them. It didn't sound as clear as what she had said.
    She tilted her head up to me and smiled. When the sun went down, I noticed, her eyes changed color, to sea-and-moonlight.
    "That's a nice theory, examples," she said. "But everybody's an example, aren't they? Isn't everybody a picture of what they think, of all the decisions they've made so far?"
    "True. I don't know everybody, though; they don't matter to me unless I've met them in person or read about them or seen them on some screen. There was a thing on television a while ago, a scientist researching what it is that makes a violin sound the way it does. I thought what does the world need with that? Millions of people starving, who needs violin research?
    "Then I thought no. The world needs models, people living interesting lives, learning things, changing the music of our time. What do people do with their lives who are not struck down with poverty, crime, war? We need to know people who have made choices that we can make, too, to turn us into human beings. Otherwise, we can have all the food in the world, and so what? Models! We love 'em! Don't you think?"
    "I suppose," she said. "But I don't like that word, model."
    "Why not?" I said, and knew the answer at once. "Were you a model?"
    "In New York," she said, as though it were a shameful secret.
    "What's wrong with that? A model is a public example of special beauty!"
    "That's what's wrong with it. It's hard to live up to. It frightens Mary Moviestar."
    "Why? What's she afraid of?"
    "Mary got to be an actress because the studio thought she was so pretty, and she's been afraid ever since that the world is going to find out she isn't that pretty and she never was. Being a model was bad enough. When you call her a public example of being beautiful, it makes it worse for her."
    "But Leslie, you are beautiful!" I blushed. "I mean, there's certainly no question that you're . . . that you're . . . extremely appealing. . . ."
    "Thank you, but it doesn't matter what you say. No matter what you tell her, Mary thinks beauty is an image someone else created for her. And she's a prisoner of the image. Even when she goes to the grocery store, she should be all done up, just so. If not, somebody is sure to recognize her and they'll say to their friends, 'You ought to see her in person! She's not half as pretty as she's supposed to be!' and Mary's disappointed them." She smiled again, a little sad. "Every actress in Hollywood, every beautiful woman I know is pretending to be beautiful, she's afraid the world will find out the truth about her sooner or later. Me, too."
    I shook my head. "Crazy. You're all crazy."
    "The world's crazy, when it comes to beauty."
    "I think you're beautiful."
    "I think you're crazy."
    We laughed, but she wasn't kidding.
    "Is it true," I asked her, "that beautiful women lead
    tragic lives?" It was what I had concluded from my Perfect Woman, with her many bodies. Perhaps not quite tragic, but difficult. Unenviable. Painful.
    She considered that. "If they think their beauty is them," she said, "they're asking for an empty life. When everything depends on looks, you get lost gazing in mirrors and you never find yourself."
    "You seem to have found yourself."
    "Whatever I've found, it's not by being beautiful."
    "Tell me."
    She did, and I listened, startled turning astonished. The Leslie she found hadn't been on film, but in the peace movement, in the speakers' bureau