The Suffocation of Hilary Blythe

Hilary Blythe is smiling. This is not unusual; that’s all she ever does. She must be quite happy today, swimming in cheer, even. She must be, but it is not the truth. The fact of the matter is that something’s the matter with Ms. Blythe.

She cannot frown. Or perhaps she cannot not smile. Any other expression would cause her great difficulty and strain her face to the point that she could end up with a long twisty nose and her eyes glued shut. She opts for the relatively easy option—she lives with the perpetual grin. There isn’t anything exceedingly unpleasant about her constant smiling. It’s to their benefit; she drenches people with happiness even when she doesn’t feel it herself.

Yes. The unfortunate fact about joy is that it is not a one-step process. But who could have known? Experimental genetics is, unsurprisingly, entirely experimental.

“I can live with premature wrinkling. Assumptions of stupidity or else insanity are okay too. I’ve overcome my smile-induced speech impediment. But people dismiss my “fake” emotions, and that’s when I start to hate my upturned mouth. “You’re not upset” they say, “See? You’re smiling so big! If you were truly unhappy, you couldn’t look so happy. Who are you trying to fool?” I’m not trying to fool anybody, I just manage it. Just comes natural, I guess. I know I feel things like everyone else does, I can feel it. But sometimes it doesn’t even seem genuine to me.”

She closed her eyes, and took herself to a mouthless world.

“Let me see that beautiful smile!” said the overly goofy-friendly photographer.

Hilary removed her nervous hands from her face, revealing the perfect teeth beneath.

“That’s lovely, hold it there.” he told her, as if it were even something she could think about and control. The picture was snapped, needlessly, she thought. Why would she want another picture exactly like the one from last year, and ones before? A crying, screaming, messy photo: that would be nice.

“Sir, do you ever get tired of seeing smiles all the time?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean does it ever bother you? Whenever you see us kids we must seem so surreally perfect. You could easily pretend we’re all wax figures and an evil genius gave us life artificially and sent us after you. It must bother you just a bit, or at least bore you. Something?”

“Well, uh, no! I guess I’m not bothered by things like that. Seeing happy faces makes me happy. I know that you’re all real people, I keep in mind that you don’t always look this way.”

Hilary walked off feeling blue, beaming ecstatically with disappointment. She’d thought perhaps she’d finally met someone in her boat, who’d also had their fill of smiles. Instead she had found a greedy joy pirate who supplemented his complex sadness with the superficial gladness of the photographed face. Understandably, she did not feel better after this encounter.

Hilary loves crayons. She has creative tendencies. She draws triangles mostly, overlapping and interlocking and triangles who don’t want to be friends. There are endless possibilities to be unlocked when you draw in triangles. She often wonders what it would like to be a triangle. Triangles are carefree creatures of numbers and lines. It seems pleasant.

“I like what you’re doing here with these triangles, Hilary.” said Mrs. Eisenberg.

“Thank you, but they’re not just triangles, you know. They’re ice cream cones, and ice cream. And here they’re flowers. They’re clouds too, and sheep and everything. Everything is triangles. ”

This teacher had said nice things so many times that it was hard for Hilary’s untrained mind to figure out whether or not she truly liked it. But she did, evidenced by the fact that she decided to take a picture of it. The picture was snapped, needless again, Hilary thought. But she was glad that Mrs. Eisenberg liked her work so much. She smiled, proud of herself, but her mouth adjustment was ultimately too miniscule. She couldn’t even express her happiness, the one emotion she was supposed to be able to display. This proved to be a distressing concept to grasp. Hilary dropped her yellow crayon on the table and picked up a blue one.
Little raindrop triangles.

As she stood at the mirror, it was still there. The over-conspicuous tooth canoe that was always so problematic. She pondered for some way to hide it, a way to override the never-ending happy face her face was so prone to. Tears were possible, but coupled with her expression they only exaggerated her visible joy. She produced a sob: pained, mournful and probably offensive. She heard it through impersonal ears, the absurd noise-making of a child. There really was no hope, she thought.

Scalding suburban sidewalk. It was a triangle too, if it went far enough to disappear. Today Hilary didn’t care, nor did she care to avoid stepping on cracks or to limit her steps in each block. She did care, contrary to her broad smile, about the formerly fat grey squirrel. Inexplicably it lay at the side of the road, where it would have been spared. Fat no more; flat.

“I’m sorry squirrel. I’m not happy, you see, but I can’t help this thing” She pointed to her lips. The squirrel offered a disbelieving reproach.

“I am sorry, can’t you see? I’m not like the shameless specimen of steel that brutally murdered you.” She was gesturing at a car.

Alas, she glanced at the car in its driveway. The grate on its face was lined and sculpted with teeth. A smile, incontrovertibly.

“I am a car!” she screamed.

She ran so fast the pedestrians’ mouths blurred to nothing, and she was home.

“Enough!” she said “enough. They’ll all see what I really feel. Tomorrow will be a day for frowns, even for me. Especially for me.”

Hilary Blythe gathered her crayons, she gathered her paper. With monstrous creative energy she fashioned the saddest face she could imagine. Glistening eyes, brows of the perfect furrow and a mouth which drooped as if twenty-four yaks had trodden upon its corners;

it was beautiful.

Glue was slathered onto the back. Triumphantly, the mask that would finally unmask Ms. Blythe was pasted over her dreadful smile.

“I’ve won!” she squealed, her squeal obscured by her creation, “soon I can be real and sad and everyone is going to know it.”

But in her joy—the first true joy she’d had in years, brought on by her expression of sadness—she realised something vital. While her happiness grew and grew, she had lost the ability to take in air. She tried desperately to peel her perfect creation from her face, but she had used her stickiest glue; it would not yield. Maybe, she thought, her mouth wasn’t all bad. Maybe it was of more use than she had contemplated. As Hilary Blythe lost consciousness, she wondered.