The Gallery of Unfinished Girls

by Lauren Karcz

  What I want to do, maybe today, maybe now, is see if Vic will come over this weekend. Which is one of those things I’ve said a hundred times, but it’s felt different lately. I feel like I need to be extra careful in the way I ask, or she’ll find the secret lurking in the spaces between my words.

  “It’s showtime, folks!” She pushes away from the mirror. I hope I never get tired of Victoria Caballini’s way of leaving a bathroom.

  We head to the Dead Guy with our lunches. There is no more peaceful place in school than right here, at the memorial bench and plaque for one Timothy Gelpy, who died in a car accident during his junior year ten years ago. Vic takes the bench, so I sit on the ground, using the cool marble plaque stand as a backrest. When people die suddenly, it seems like everyone around them wants to create something beautiful and good in their honor, and that’s exactly what Sarasota Central High School did for Tim (Vic and I can call him that—we’ve been sitting here long enough), but not for anyone else who died in the years before or after him.

  I’ll have to ask Vic sometime what she thinks about this one saintly guy being memorialized over all others, but I don’t want to spend our measly twenty-two-minute lunch period on that kind of thing.

  Vic sets her container of carrot sticks aside. “Have you heard anything from your mom yet?”

  I take my phone out of my pocket and click it to life. The main screen flashes its usual photo of Victoria and me at Tall Jon’s party back in January. No notifications.

  “Nothing today. I guess everything’s the same. She would have told me if Abuela had woken up.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Vic’s illogical optimism always makes me smile. In her world, there’s a chance that Abuela snapped back to consciousness this morning, and now she and Mom are sitting around having coffee and watching novelas.

  Vic checks her own phone out of habit. She’s got a photo from the same party as her wallpaper, though it’s from the beginning of the night, when we were looking less windblown. “How weird is it not having her around for so long?”

  “It’s weird. It’s quiet. She used to always have the TV on, you know? And she would always sort of narrate her life as she went through it.”

  “I remember one of the first times I came over, she was in the kitchen putting away dishes, and she just kept saying, ‘Dishes, dishes, dishes,’ the whole time. It was like she created a little theme song for every part of her day.” Vic laughs, maybe out of relief that she could fold this funny story into the most serious conversation we’ve had at the Dead Guy in a long time.

  I try to smile. “Dishes, dishes, dishes,” I sing.

  Abuela’s first stroke was two Sundays ago.

  That Monday, Mom made the arrangements to go to San Juan, and she left on Tuesday morning.

  And then the next Monday, Abuela had the second stroke, and fell into a coma.

  Vic crunches through a few more carrot sticks and I coat my fish nuggets with ketchup before digging in. We could sit inside with the other girls from my fifth-period English class, or with Vic’s friends from chorus, but it’s nicer like this: Vic, me, and the Dead Guy. We’ve been able to eat outside for most of the school year. We did last year, too, but over at the picnic tables in the stark, sunny center of the courtyard, where everyone could see us and everything moved way too fast. Connor Hagins and his pals on one end of the long table, Bill Stafford and Tall Jon and two other white guys on the other, and Vic and me in the middle. We always sat next to each other and exchanged looks or bumped arms whenever one of the guys did something worth noting, but there was hardly a chance to talk, and we had to find time later to do a lunchtime postmortem.

  That part was so critical: we had to replay everything, to dig deep into our then-boyfriends’ words and shrugs and try to use them to predict their (and our) futures. I think we forgot sometimes that we were in charge just as much as they were. And we didn’t realize until later that the guys weren’t doing the same level of English-class analysis that Vic and I were.

  That’s why I have to be so wary about every word I say to her.

  “You should come over this weekend.” I stare at her knees while I say this. And when she says nothing for a minute, I drop my gaze to her ankles. “Spend the night on Friday, maybe?”

  “Sure,” Vic says. “Or we could go to the beach or walk around downtown.”

  “That’s a possibility. Especially since Angela might be playing the piano all weekend.”

  Vic straightens up on the Dead Guy’s bench. “Wait, you have a piano?”

  It’s already coming true: Angela has pulled a chair from the dining room to use as a piano bench, and I’m marooned on the back porch with the pieces of Food Poisoning #2: a sketch pad with the fifteen penciled thumbnails for the painting, and the canvas itself, its blank patches staring me in the face. I’ve spent the whole fall and winter not getting this picture right, and now, with a month before submissions close for the county show, and two months to be sure I don’t flame out as the Sarasota Central High School senior with the most wasted potential, it’s like I expect the thumbnails to rearrange themselves into the raw material I need, or the shape of the painting to jump onto the canvas itself.

  But everything is still. The thumbnails, the canvas, the other half of the porch, the hairy moss on the backyard trees, and me. Maybe potential is all I have: energy, all held-up and trembling, waiting to be set free.

  Inside, Angela taps at the piano, stopping and starting, trying to fit notes together. But if I’m going to wait for her to come up with even five notes in a row that work, I might be out here a long time.

  The door to the neighboring porch opens. “Hi there, Mercedes!”

  “Hey, Rex.” I pick up a brush for show. Yep, I’m totally an artist at work. “If I could paint you a picture of anything in the world, what would it be?”

  Rex comes to the screen that separates his porch from ours. “Hmm. It probably wouldn’t be something that’s in the world. I think I’d ask for an imaginary planet, or your perception of dignity . . . something like that.”

  “Dignity, huh? I’ll take that into consideration.” I streak purple watercolor across the canvas. It’s the most I’ve painted all day. “Can you hear Angela from your side?”

  “Not too much,” Rex says. “A note here, a note there.”

  “That’s pretty much all she’s playing right now.”

  Ding-ding-ding-ding-dong! Okay, that’s five decent notes. I’m free from the porch and Food Poisoning #2 if I want to be.

  “Listen, Mercedes.” Rex scratches his beard. “I don’t know if your mom told you, but I’ve given you all a break on the rent for the next two months. What with, you know, the situation.”

  “Thanks. The situation hasn’t gotten any better or worse, by the way.”

  “No need to update me,” Rex says. “I know it might be rough going for a while. And it’s good that you and Angela have each other to depend on.”

  “Yup.”

  “So, your dad knows that you and Angela are here by yourselves, right?”

  “Mom talked to him. He knows we’re fine.” I make a broad stroke of purple across one of the patches that’s already purple, but the shades aren’t the same and it’s going to look odd. “Anyway, she’s probably coming back soon, so it’s not like Dad needs to drive down here from Ohio.”

  Angela has reverted to notes that are scratching at one another’s faces.

  Rex’s gaze kind of goes in the direction of the notes, but then shifts back to me. “I also wanted to let you know that I’m going to advertise for a renter for my spare bedroom. I’ll introduce whoever it is I rent to. No need to be strangers around here.”

  “Sure. Hey, if you could find someone who’s a piano teacher, I think that would make everyone’s lives easier.”

  Rex grins. “I’ll see what I can do.” He nods toward my canvas. “What are you working on?”

  “The second painting in a series.” It’s still technically true, even if
I never finish it.

  I stand at the sliding-glass door, from where I can see the left half of Angela and the piano. Maybe she’s got the right idea, devoting herself to this thing that shoved itself into our lives. Maybe if I stand on the driveway, a lacrosse stick or some knitting needles will fall out of the sky. I’ll give Food Poisoning #2 one last shot, and if nothing works, then I’ll do something else.

  Here’s how a painting comes together. First, you get an idea. Maybe it’s something you see in your head or in real life, or it’s an abstract concept you want to turn into color and shape. Whatever it is, you sketch some thumbnails of it. You get to a thumbnail you like, and then you move to the vast white gulf of canvas. You create a pencil outline of your work on the canvas before bringing in color. Color is tricky and joyful and frightening all at the same time: you start with the broadest strokes, and then you come back again and again with layers and details and texture.

  Here’s how Food Poisoning #1 happened: During a ridiculous lunchtime conversation, my then-boyfriend Bill pondered out loud whether the word salmonella came about because someone got sick from eating salmon. And I pondered—not out loud—if a whole series of artistic works could be made about food poisoning. Something that’s supposed to be nourishing makes you feel worse, I scribbled on a napkin. I went home and got started—no thumbnails, no outlines, just paint splashed at canvas, newspaper crumpled and torn and embedded in the paint. I added layers and birds. I was color and shape and energy. I finished a layer and had to let it dry, and I swear my fingers and eyes and legs twitched until I could come back and add more paint.

  And it won first fucking place.

  So many things were different about my life during the Food Poisoning #1 days. All the members of my family were in their expected places: Mom and Angela here in Sarasota, Abuela in her little apartment in San Juan, Dad and his girlfriend still unsure if they were going to leave Naples, Florida, for Columbus, Ohio.

  I was sixteen. It was a cool, rainy fall. I was still having sex with Bill Stafford.

  I didn’t think about Victoria the way I do now.

  None of these things can be reversed right now. I can’t do a single thing to bring my life back to the way it was then.

  I scrape at Food Poisoning #2, freeing a few crumbs of yellow paint from having to exist in the picture. Maybe there’s one unchanged strand of my life I can grab onto. One simple, comforting thing.

  Maybe the one relationship from back then that hasn’t changed a bit. The one person who’s always been good for a night of cigarettes and nonpiano music. I pick up my phone and give Tall Jon a call.

  “Moreno!” he yells over background noise that’s louder than Angela’s piano. “I can’t believe you called. I just had a revelation about you earlier today.”

  “I need to escape for a while,” I tell him. “Where are you?”

  I’ve just mixed a few shades of purple, as if I could recapture that one thing about the first piece. But what am I going to do—repaint Food Poisoning #1 on a different canvas?

  “It’s league night. We’re three frames away from the end.”

  Tall Jon is responsible for my understanding bowling-speak. So I’m off to the bowling alley, to hear about a revelation.

  three

  TALL JON IS ready for me: a lane set up with TJ and Mercy on the screen, pizza and fries and Cokes on the table. He has even hunted down the six-pound purple ball for me to use.

  “Nah, you can play my frames for me,” I tell him.

  The other guys on his league team are stowing their bowling gear in bags tall enough for a set of golf clubs. Tall Jon is the youngest guy on the team by at least twenty years. It’s his dad’s old team—Tall Jon took his dad’s place last year when the older-but-shorter Jon’s AA sponsor advised him to quit bowling. This was, conveniently, around the same time that Tall Jon graduated from SCHS, and so he turned into a college freshman who spends half of his free time in a bowling alley.

  “I’m not bowling as ‘Mercy,’” Tall Jon says, “because I have none.”

  “Oh, fine,” I say, “but let me have some pizza and a revelation first.”

  “The revelation rests on the idea that you still have, ah, feelings for that best friend of yours.”

  “Sure, yes.” My face burns a little. “Idea confirmed.”

  “Okay, then.” Tall Jon waves good-bye to the league guys, and we’re alone at this end of the alley. The lights flicker—every time I wind up here, it’s right around when the black lights and lasers make their appearance.

  Tall Jon grins at the darkening bowling alley, as if he timed this transformation with his revelation. “Well, I was thinking about the way Bill told you he liked you. And we both know he’s kind of an oaf, but he was pretty brilliant about getting his feelings out there. And I thought—damn, if Mercedes, or even the awesome but reluctant bowler named Mercy, did something like that for her friend Victoria, I bet little pink hearts would be floating up from their love nest in no time.”

  “Okay. I’m going to bowl now.” I grab the six-pound ball and line up my feet and roll it down the lane and do a follow-through flourish like Tall Jon taught me the last time we were here, and of course the ball rolls into the gutter before it gets even halfway to the pins. I whirl around to Tall Jon. “Wait, did you bring me here as some sort of elaborate metaphor where my gutter balls represent my love life?”

  “What? Oh my God, I didn’t even think of that.” He laughs and his hat falls off. “Sorry, Moreno.”

  My ball is coughed up from the machine, and I roll again. This time, it grazes the pin on the far left enough to tip it over.

  “The thing about Vic,” I say, sitting back down by the food, “is that she is so far away from me sometimes. And this—this whole situation—is one of those times. Think about what she knows. She knows I made out with that girl Callie at your party. She knows I went out with Keema that one time. Of course all this was after I broke up with Bill, when I told her, hey, I liked Bill, but I like girls, too. And we’ve left it there, just sort of sitting there between us.”

  “Like this pizza,” Tall Jon offers.

  “Exactly. So there would need to be, you know, the interim steps of dough rolling and baking and slicing before I could do anything about it. But I’m not, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “And you thought I was the one making elaborate metaphors,” Tall Jon says.

  He gets up and bowls a strike. I swear he stood in the same place I did and rolled the ball with exactly the same motion, but his pins fell down as though they weighed nothing.

  “Why do you do this?” He flops back into the seat and replaces his hat, or as he calls it, his “jaunty cap.”

  “Do what?”

  “Lock yourself up.” He clicks his tongue and sticks his thumb through his fist. “Click, click.”

  “I do it to see you make stupid gestures like that.”

  “Ah, Moreno, if I wasn’t so nice, I’d call her up and tell her myself.”

  “You can’t right now. She’s at dance.”

  “Still?”

  “Yup. Tuesday’s one of her late nights. And anyway, she’d probably think you were joking. That’s how far apart we are on this.”

  As recently as a year ago, I thought I was broken. I envisioned the part of me that liked girls as being separate, an imaginary friend who would sometimes sit next to me and poke me in the thigh. Hey, M., look at Victoria. She’s hot, isn’t she? I thought I could ignore her, that imaginary friend, and for a while, I tried. But it was such a brilliant relief when I realized that this was part of me, internal and real, as vital as anything else.

  Tall Jon points a fry at me. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “I could lose my best friend.” I shrug. “Isn’t that obvious? And I know you’re gonna ask, is that worse than not having her know how I really feel about her? Yes, yes, that is much worse. Okay, end of discussion, let me go roll some more gutter balls.”

  But I do
n’t. I get five pins down the first roll, and the other five on the second roll. The white stripes in my T-shirt glow under the ancient black lights, and Tall Jon stands and applauds me. For a few flickering seconds, I am the greatest version of myself, standing tall and radiating light. Mercy the Bowling Queen.

  Really, I appreciate that Tall Jon doesn’t think I’m ridiculous. Because I sort of do. Like whenever Callie comes to mind, all I can do is shudder and hope that she doesn’t think too often about me. I let her kiss me, that night at Tall Jon’s house right after I broke up with Bill, and then I was kissing her and wondering how long I would know her. Would she ever see the mole on my right shoulder, or know about my extensive collection of pencil sharpeners, or ask me why the hell I like Marcel Duchamp?

  “What’s your favorite movie?” I asked her, between kisses, as we were trying to get comfortable on the old recliner in Tall Jon’s bedroom.

  “What?” Callie said. She was white, a redhead, and about Tall Jon’s age. She had perfect eyeliner, the top and bottom lines meeting in a sharp swoop.

  “I just want to know,” I said.

  “Um.” She fell against me, touching her nose to my neck. “I guess it’s But I’m a Cheerleader.”

  She didn’t ask me what mine was, or ask if she was the first girl I’d ever kissed (maybe because I made it so obvious), but the next time I saw her, again at a Tall Jon shindig, she told me she’d like to hang out somewhere other than our vertically blessed pal’s apartment.

  And I told her that, well, there was this friend.

  Callie looked like she was trying to roll her eyes but couldn’t quite get the mechanics right. She said, “Let me guess, your best friend?”

  “Actually, yeah.”

  “Oh, drat.”

  The major realization I had at this moment was not that Callie was imagining me ridiculous for having a crush on my best friend, but rather that she was the type of girl who had loads of signature swear-substitute expressions. “Oh, crabcakes” or the like. I would just say “Oh, shit,” but I get the appeal of those alternate sayings. I totally do.