The Gallery of Unfinished Girls

by Lauren Karcz

  “Oh, here we go. I told you what happened.” She stares out the window. The plastic surgery place is busy, the funeral home isn’t. “I don’t understand why you thought it was something different.”

  “Look, I know that night was weird. There was definitely something in the building, about the building, that changed us. And that’s what’s terrifying about that place, and what’s amazing, too. That’s why I keep going back, I guess. Because I never know what’s going to happen, but usually, it’s something perfect. And beautiful.”

  I pull up in front of the Sarasota Dance Academy, Vic’s poor, imperfect company, these people who are doing the Gershwin show again. She reaches down for her bag, then lets go of the handles and looks at me. Several hairs didn’t make it into her bun this time. “So why didn’t I get to see it?”

  “Vic.” I tug at my neck. I wish I could pick up my cigarettes right now and see how much smoke and ash I’d fidget away before I felt comfortable telling her the whole story. “Okay, tell me this. Think of a moment you’d want to live in for longer than a moment.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Or think of a feeling you had once that you’d like to have again.”

  She’s ready to go to dance, ready to move through that wordless world where she reigns. I wonder if anything has come back to her about that Saturday night at the Estate—a flash of a red-and-white wall, a tug on her hand that reminds her of me, a feeling that washes over her of trembling and comfort.

  “Wait, so you’re saying that your favorite abandoned building can give you those feelings?”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “And wouldn’t it feel weird and fake if you were only experiencing that because the building gave it to you?” Vic puts her dance bag on her lap.

  “It’s still you, though. It has to be.”

  “Okay.” She turns to the side window and waves at a girl heading into the studio. The girl waves back and offers a big, openmouthed smile. I bet it is a lot easier to be best friends with that girl than with me. “Okay. I thought of something that happened during the Gershwin show two years ago. We were about to go out and do Rhapsody in Blue for the first time, and I was waiting a few steps offstage. I wanted to bust out of there before the music started and do a series of turns and leaps across the stage. Just me. The stage was so inviting—like, clean and black and shiny—and I wanted to jump in and experience it for myself before everyone else got there.”

  Every part of me aches when she looks at me again, and it cannot be Lilia and the Estate’s powers prodding at me this time. It is Victoria. It is her near infallibility with the creation of her ballet hairstyle. It’s the way she can let her perfectionism sag and sigh when she’s with me. It’s her playlists and her dresses and the way she says dearie and how she comes to Tall Jon parties with me and is, despite the abundance of cheerful dance girls in every corner of her life, the most loyal best friend I’ve ever had. It’s the way she puts the right angle and weight and feeling into every step she takes, except perhaps for the ones she needs to take most.

  “And I couldn’t do it,” she says. “I couldn’t move forward at all. Not before the dance started.”

  “Vic, I kissed you. That Saturday night, in the studio. I know you don’t remember. But you kissed me back.”

  The world gets louder in this second, I swear—the rain hastens from a steady shower to a pour, and the cars passing on Honore Avenue behind us seem to rev their engines at once, and all of it becomes a churn of sound in my ears.

  The crack, the canyon, between our realities is filling up now. Victoria’s cheeks flush. Mine probably do, too.

  “I kissed you back?” she says. “What—what was it like?”

  “It was perfect.”

  Vic sinks back against the seat, puts her hands on her face as though she’s comforting herself, and I wish I could reach across and make the same gesture. “What else happened there?” she asks.

  “I told you about it the next morning. I painted, there was some music, and we danced.”

  “Okay, okay. Enough about this for now.” And she opens the door. It’s the ultimate commitment to leaving, as the rain immediately dumps on her hair and her dance bag and everything. “I can’t talk about this. I have to go.”

  It’s the worst sort of Victoria exit—slow and graceless. Unbalanced and unshowy. And it’s my fault. I’ve given her the information and left her to slink away with it—rather, to stumble away with it, as she’s doing now, angling around puddles in her bright yellow sandals. The moment is gone. She has slammed the door behind her and I can’t even smell her makeup or her dance clothes or whatever it is that makes her smell like her. Instead, the rain hangs heavy in the air, its weight and scent clinging to me, and to this car whose windows are fogging again, obscuring my view of Victoria walking away.

  She has to go, yes, but so do I.

  twenty-three

  WHEN I’M BACK in the Estate, standing in the center of the dusty lobby, the music from upstairs is going at full blast, with the sound of the piano front and center. I consider going up to the eighth floor to talk to Angela, or possibly to collapse into the piano, to wonder why it came clanging into our lives. I don’t even know what I would say to Angela—I just want to see someone familiar, someone who might not run away into the rain.

  But, ugh, the music is so joyful that I don’t dare go upstairs and douse it with my sadness. Up the stairs I go, stopping at the second-floor landing. I sit on the top step and lay my head against my knees. It’s something I’ve done enough times in my life to know how it feels, but this time I want it to feel different. My knees should be knobbier, my hair should be coarser . . . something to reflect this version of me who has tried to jump the Mercedes-Victoria Memorial Canyon of Awkwardness and missed the other side.

  In our unending game of “How Many People?,” now playing out quietly in my head instead of cheerfully at the Dead Guy, I’m asking her, Hey, Vic, how many people who you’ve kissed before would you want to kiss again?

  And she would not even respond. She would put on her modern dance shoes, these strange half shoes that look like unfinished ballet slippers, and twirl herself back into the rhythm of the Gershwin show practice.

  My jeans have a big wet spot on each knee, crowned with a smudge of black because I actually wore mascara today.

  I get to my feet and trudge to the studio, even though I don’t have any kind of solid plan for what I’m going to work on today.

  Lilia is there.

  And it’s weird, but it’s such a relief to see her. She’s sitting on the floor, staring up at her damn ceiling art, and I go and do the same. Goya cans, Tide bottles, Dial soap dispensers. It’s dizzying to look at—the different colors and shapes and heights of the elements of the work. My eyes keep adjusting and readjusting to it. I wonder if that’s all the piece is meant to do.

  “Hey, Lilia?”

  I feel like I can finally ask her these things.

  “Hmm?” Lilia turns to me. She’s wearing plain dark jeans and a white T-shirt.

  “Am I ever going to be able to figure out what you’re doing with this, I don’t know, this collage? Why do the rest of us have to give our secrets while you get to keep on being so mysterious?”

  Lilia takes in a long breath at my question, my outburst. “But this is one of my secrets,” she says quietly. “That I’m any kind of artist at all. No one ever knew. You never knew.”

  “Oh, come on. I’m here right now, surrounded by your art. I’ve seen your weird Estate series and your portraits and your abstract art. I’ve seen you work some sort of musical magic on Angela. You’re totally a Renaissance woman. Give us both some credit, you know?”

  She looks over at me with watery eyes. “You’ll remember all that?”

  “Hell, I don’t know if I like this ceiling art, but I’m definitely not going to forget it.”

  “Okay,” she says, stumbling to her feet. “Okay, I hope you’re right.�
��

  I follow her lead in getting up, and I go over to the kitchen and pour some orange juice for both of us. “You know what my sister told me once?” I say, handing Lilia the glass. “That the orange juice you buy in the carton isn’t what you’d think it is at all. It’s, like, old juice that was squeezed, stored in huge pasteurization tanks, and then eventually reflavored to taste like oranges again. Angela called it ‘orangified sipping water’ for a year before I told her to stop.”

  Lilia looks even sadder than before.

  “I mean, I didn’t mean to disappoint you if you love orange juice or something, Lilia. You can try to forget about it. That’s what I usually do.”

  She takes a couple of gulps. And then she says, “I’m leaving soon, Mercedes.”

  “I know,” I tell her. “Are you still going to be at Rex’s for a while?”

  “No. I think I’ve exhausted his generosity.”

  “Well, fine.” I finish my orange juice and put the glass by the sink. “Before you go, can you tell me what you think of my work?”

  “Anything you create here is fabulous.” Lilia wanders around the living room, toeing the weird zigzag black lines on the floor. “You know that.”

  “I know. But what’s the point? Are you fulfilled by coming here and always creating your best work, every single time?”

  “I used to be,” she says.

  “And now?”

  “I’m not sure,” she says. “I think I want to be a part of something permanent. Or potentially permanent, at least. I want to have a chance to mess things up and have to deal with them. I hardly even know what that’s like.”

  “You totally do,” I tell her. “You know me.”

  She kind of shakes her head at me. The short hair really does suit her. “Ciao, Mercedes.”

  I study her for a second as she traces the black lines on the carpet with her feet, and then I turn and leave the room. On the eighth floor, I’ll be able to work. I’ll be able to look honestly at my self-portrait and figure out what else I should do.

  As I arrive, I grab all my supplies and go to sit on the floor. I study the whole painting—the pencil lines, the parts that have been filled in with color, and the big black streak. And I start to sense what else I need to do here.

  Confession. Awkward confession. Here goes everything, onto the wall. The watercolors I didn’t mean to steal. The rejection from SCAD I haven’t told anyone about, and the acceptance from the University of South Florida that I’ve also kept secret. A picture of me being relieved at my dad leaving. All the girls and guys I’ve had crushes on. And the picture, again, of Victoria dancing and catching my eye in the audience, as well as I can re-create it.

  And even after all that, the most honest thing is the black streak of paint. It juts in, announces itself, and doesn’t care that it’s wrecking my damn memories.

  I streak another shot of black across the wall. And another and another. All the way across until I reach the one blank, white space that remains.

  I draw all the people I fear losing: Tall Jon and Angela and my mom and of course, Abuela.

  But when I draw Abuela, something different happens. The face I try to draw, the face of the Abuela I know, is not the face that appears on the wall. It’s younger and softer. Longer hair. Abuela who loves nicknames and flowers. Abuela who left Puerto Rico as a teenager to spend a few years in Florida, to live on her own and perfect her English and discover herself.

  And to discover, apparently, her love for art.

  And how to keep this girl, this best version of herself, in an old building on the coast of Sarasota.

  Hot and cold rush to my head and feet at the same time. I step back, dropping my pencil and then falling on the rug that she brought me. Lilia. Abuela. She has been here all along, guiding me to this moment, as though thinking that I wanted the same thing she did. This place to be perfect, to preserve my art and my best days.

  But who’s to say that the girl she preserved here is her best self?

  And who’s to say that the girl I would be here would be my best self?

  I scramble to my feet and run down, down, down, from the eighth floor to the fifth and then to the second, the music with me all the way. The door to Lilia’s studio is open wide, showcasing her ceiling artwork to anyone who walks by.

  “Lilia!” I call through the rooms. “Lilia! I know who you are. I know I can help you. Will you come out and talk to me?”

  And all at once, everything stops. The music. The lights in the living room and my and Angela’s purple room dim. The pleasant hum that emanates through the building goes silent. It’s just me and the gulf now.

  Lilia, my abuela’s perfect self, is gone.

  But I still have the keys she gave me.

  Wiping at my eyes, I climb as far as the stairs go, past the eighth and ninth floors, to where the stairs come to a stop at a landing. It’s the penthouse apartment, a single white door, flanked by little white light fixtures without bulbs in them.

  My hands are cold and shaking, not unlike Angela’s were before she could get them on her piano. I unlock the door and just about fall into the penthouse room. No lights flicker on. I fumble for a light switch and find one next to the front door. Only one of the overhead lights comes to life, but it’s enough to see what’s there.

  My self-portrait from two floors below. It has appeared here, at the top of the Estate.

  I stand at the window and yank it open. The sea breeze rushing in makes it bearable to stay here longer. I can’t go back downstairs right now, and risk running into Edie or the members of Firing Squad. Even Angela, with her physical enthusiasm for this place, is too much for me today. She’s playing the piano, so she’s fine for the time being.

  I call on the only person alive who might be able to help me make sense of all this. Abuela. I stick around, she told me that time, and yes, she does. She has been here, in the form of her supposed perfect self, watching me, helping me. I realize I never saw Lilia in a place that wasn’t our house or the Estate, both places where she seemed to carry her magic. She was with me. The breeze blows me back from the window, and, turning, I see her. Abuela, projected into this room. Abuela, still hanging on in the hospital room in San Juan. I want to whisper to her in Spanish, but the words don’t come. But they’re not there in English, either. Please or por favor is not even close to what I want her to hear from me.

  Abuela’s perfect black hair has grown out, slashed at the top with a thick line of silver-gray. Her face is relaxed and her eyes look so small without eye makeup. And her hands . . . ah, if only I could have the same moment my mom had, thinking she saw a flicker of movement from Abuela’s fingers.

  It’s okay if you need to go.

  This is what I’m trying to tell her.

  It’s okay if you need to move on.

  It’s a huddle of words, but it’s also a feeling, a shove away from the window and toward the door of the room.

  It’s okay if you can’t stay here anymore.

  She’s trying to tell me the same thing.

  Across the gulp of air that separates the Estate from its nearest neighboring apartment building, there’s a single light on—a woman sitting in bed, trying to finish reading a novel before she wears out for the night.

  “Hey!” Did I just yell that out to her? Shit. I really did.

  No sound comes back.

  “Hey! Somebody over there!”

  Nothing.

  It doesn’t matter if the woman across the way ever notices me. What matters is that Lilia doesn’t belong to the Red Mangrove Estate anymore. Lilia is nowhere.

  Angela falls asleep in the car on the drive home. She looks normal and calm again, but how long will this last? She could wake up screaming in the middle of the night, or disappear from school again. I’m going to be worried about her every second of the day until I figure this out. Figure out what I’m going to do.

  twenty-four

  OF COURSE I don’t have any finished work for Mrs. Pag
onis on Friday. Of course. She drops by the Orange Table and smiles understandingly at me, like she knows she’s going to have to give me a low C (in art! The last semester of senior year!) and that I’m not going to have anything for the county show and that I’m definitely not going to SCAD and that I’m going to be one of those people who puts down my paintbrush after graduation and doesn’t pick it up again until I’m, like, Abuela’s age and taking a class down at Ringling on Wednesday mornings. That’s really what she thinks.

  I can explain, I want to tell her. She moves past the table, and I want to explain to someone, to Gretchen or even Rider, about Angela and the piano and everything else. Or I could pull out one of the big rolls of brown stock paper that Mrs. Pagonis keeps on a shelf at the back of the room, stretch it out from one end of the room to another, and paint everything, starting with the arrival of the piano and Lilia’s and my red room.

  Maybe I will.

  I raise my hand. “Mrs. Pagonis?”

  She lets me have the paper. I start with a small section, stretched across my territory of the Orange Table. But now, with the opportunity to draw everything out, to do a different sort of self-portrait, I don’t even know where to begin.

  Maybe with the red room.

  It’s going to be tricky, getting this painting the way I want it to look. I’m envisioning a whole swath of dark red, with two abstract figures, unpainted, approaching each other from opposite sides of the paper. And this time, these elements will be here for good reasons: for instance, Vic and I will be abstract because everything has been strange between us lately. With every brushstroke of red I make, I want her to know more and more about my life. I could seek her out after this class, take the still-wet paper from here to the hallway junction she crosses through on the way to second period, and hold it in front of my face as a way to say, Hey, I miss you, learn about me again.

  Gretchen leans in toward my work. “What’s that?”