Open Car Doors

by Athena Nilssen

Gracy would be taken home. That’s the kind of girl she is. She’d come out of your bathroom wrapped in a soft blue towel, her face puffy from the shower. She’d need to be woken up in the morning, and she wouldn’t want to leave. She’s such a girl’s girl the way she turns to you.

She’s that shadow in an apartment window, looking out at the city street below, her knees dug into some old couch, filled up with the noise of cars and basketballs on pavement. She’s that girl in line at the grocery store, a thin ponytail, a can of Sprite, a slight frame, and two little shoulders. Her friends would be standing near the rental videos, sucking Ring Pops and waiting for her, yelling “Hurry, Gracy!” Aqua-netted, heart-necklined, overdeveloped girls who’d flatten out her chest and morsel her up even more. She’d always have these friends around her so there’d never be a chance to talk to her. You’d have to go to Mojave High, or Tehachapi High, or be at some party of some girl named Maria Elena.

She was all legs on the couch, her ankles resting against the coffee table. She filled the room up with a soft yellow. It looked like if you asked her her age, she’d say dix-huit. But she could barely say bonjour, and she could be no more than 15.

Danny made drinks and talked with her like she was just another one of their 40-year-old friends. Gracy had her head on Inga’s scalloped-edged shirt, strands of her greasy blond hair on Inga’s freckled collarbone; they were holding hands as they talked about their horoscopes and the cuteness of raccoons.

Danny thought, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. She wasn’t their usual. She wasn’t a Ginger, a Melanie, a Kathy, older girls, girls with heavy breasts—not breasts but tits. Girls who drank beer and snorted coke off washing machines and toilet seats. Girls who came home on a question, with their own cars in the parking lot. Gracy looked like she needed to be cooked macaroni and shown where the bathroom is.

Gracy had been at Food-4-Less when Inga found her. Gracy was leaned up against the stucco, its peach sharpness against her calf hairs. She twirled a stretched-out grocery bag with stolen tubes of Love Me Pink lipstick at the bottom. Women with heavy brown purses came into the cart corral and unstuck their baskets. Gracy didn’t even flinch, but stared at them, imagined their dining-room dinners and night voices. Maybe at home they had little daughters on swim teams. They’d be all full of enchiladas and orange juice. Their mothers would be huge drapes of fabric, surrounding knobs, guarding flames, asking how the day went.

Inga came to get a cart, looked at Gracy with more attention than most. A feeling told Gracy to say something to this lady who looked like the Queen of Wands. Like there were cat litter boxes and days of lost house keys behind her.

“Do you have a quarter for the payphone?” Gracy asked. Inga opened her purse to find some change, wanted to know who she was going to call this late.

“No one special,” Gracy said. Inga offered her a cell phone instead, because she couldn’t find any change. Gracy didn’t know who to call now that the phone was in her hand. It was just her line. Men would cook their smiles and say something like “How much money do you need, baby?” Women would give her quarters, sometimes more, and not look at her. They wanted to go back home to their Lycra-bound daughters.

“Are you waiting for someone here?” Inga asked. “How about I drive you home?” Gracy shrugged. She wished Kat could see her now. She’d take off her headphones, choke on her red gum, say “Goddamn, Gracy Girl!” Kat never wanted the women like Gracy did. She wanted CDs and $20 bills. Gracy wanted to walk next to the cart, point out which kind of fruit she liked best. She wanted to smell safely of chlorine. Inga had freckles across her nose, like some Norse god spit on her face. In the car, she smiled at Gracy. “Wait until you meet Danny. He’ll love you.”

Danny watched baseball and during the commercials watched Gracy and Inga. Danny went over and sat down with them, put his face real close to Gracy’s nose, said, “You know you’re a real sexy girl.” Gracy laughed and her face flushed to bring out some strange Eastern European look. Inga patted her socked foot.

“Isn’t she a sexy girl, Inga?”

“She’s one beautiful girl. My Libra.” Inga smiled at her. It was hard to imagine Gracy sexually. She was too boy’s-jacket, too rainy-day-and-Kool-Aid. Too “Shut up, Retard!” It was hard to imagine her breathing if Danny fucked her, her reaching orgasm, her emotion. She was just that girl up in the window. Or that girl wearing jean shorts and smelling like laundry soap that’s just a little too fresh and foreign.

“Are you having a good time?” Inga asked her.

“Funner than yesterday,” Gracy said, and her yesterday was pinned up above her little head like a yellow paper lantern. A yesterday of Mrs. Lubick’s office technology class and tell willy to wash the windows quietly. A yesterday of Monica with Flaming Hot Cheetos, fingers gelling down her temple curls in the girls’ bathroom. Gracy, waiting on a red bench outside Room 115, squinting as the sun moved back and forth to play with the roof. A night like a necklace of names and bodies on the couch. Just another name, Gracy, just another pair of legs matchsticked to watch some Adam Sandler movie in a fishtank room. Gracy fidgeted.

Danny asked what kinds of food she liked to eat. “Anything chocolate!” she answered. So decidedly feminine. It seemed rehearsed. There was something so carnal to her girlness. She had splintering nail polish on her pinky finger. (One day, Gracy will eat glass.) Inga was playing mother hen to an explosive device of Barbie hair and tears.

Inga got up to get some water, unaware. Gracy was a strange seal pup on the couch, glued to Inga’s chest. Inga stopped to turn up the music, and Gracy stared like a dog with its stomach punctured. Underneath the Maybelline and vanilla body spray of poor little Gracy, there was a blank need like looking down the edge of a skyscraper. It was as though someone pulled up Gracy’s cheek to expose the bloody flatness underneath. (There were glass shards in her mouth, raising dry cuts on her lips, slivering the gums.) She would be bent over thin Houghton-Mifflin textbooks, hearting Inga’s name everywhere. Gracy loves You. Gracy needs new shoes. Gracy has handprints on her wrists. She has bruises and two toothpaste eyes. She doesn’t get enough meat and she needs a place to sleep tonight.

“How do you feel, baby?” Danny asked her. She said, “Great,” and lit a cigarette.

Gracy was going to let them have her for the aqua leather car coat in the bedroom closet, the big blueish sweater, the fluffy bath towels, the talcs and pink flimsys. Gracy would let herself be driven home tomorrow morning for a chance to study the Hari Krishna pictures around the jewelry box, that moment of trying on the shell-and-dolphin bracelet and the Nina Ricci perfume, the second where Inga holds her so it’s almost enough. Gracy has never wanted anything to end.

They’d drive her home. Call her back for a few more weekends, then find someone new. She’d start making loops around her neighborhood block. (The scars on her lips would heal to fine furrows.) She’d sleep at night turned to the wall. Her mom would come and go and leave her “off-limits” room smelling like Charlie perfume from Rite-Aid. Gracy would have some new history teacher at school, someone young and touchy. She’d put her arm around Gracy one day, and the lid on her world would open, and Gracy would think, maybe it doesn’t have to end. She’d start standing in front of the grocery store again to wait for some tall, booted woman to take her to her evening.

Gracy pretended it would be different. Inga would not want to drive her home, not want to curve the dirty streets of Gracy’s neighborhood. She’d turn back and say, “Why don’t we go to the mall instead?” And they’d walk around, and Inga would be so involved in Gracy. She’d seem sad, knowing, aware. Gracy would talk about her friend Evan or what her third period teacher did yesterday when she got mad. Inga would have her pick out a bedspread at JCPenney. She’d want to buy Gracy a new pillow. She’d say, “What are your favorite colors?” Gracy would have to decide, she’d have to define herself. She’d become yellow polka-dot extra-firm pillow, striped sheets. They’d drive home, laughing about the radio, calling Danny to ask, “What do you want to eat for dinner?” Gracy wouldn’t have to sleep with them tonight. She’d sleep in her new bed.

But that was all wrong. Inga’s smile as she massaged Gracy’s legs was a linear fakeness. She smoked her cigarette, and it was all about Danny. Danny gets two girls. Danny’s Inga is such a cool chick she lets him fuck little blond high school girls. Inga is such a cool chick she goes to baseball games, cooks him steak & eggs when he wins money, tries to make nervous 14 year olds comfortable by saying, “Are you O.K. with all this touching?” Gracy couldn’t say no. She didn’t want to let them down. They’d brought her drugs and dinner. The room spun, the bed was a Lazy Susan. It all happened quickly. Danny was between her legs, Inga petting Gracy’s hair.

Kat and Gracy sat in front of Room 119 on a red bench. The sun, going down, played with the roof. A group of boys ran down the basketball court, invisible, but Gracy could hear the ball. It was almost night and the high school was empty. Kat and Gracy sat with their knees touching, turned toward each other. Kat was telling all about her trip to Sunset Blvd., her stay in the Hyatt—she even got into The Body Shop. She had some old fat man taking her all around L.A. He’d bought her dildos and cute skirts. Kat thought Gracy was jealous. Kat was proud to talk of her bigger life. A life that went all the way down to San Diego, where the man lived. Kat had new names and nouns: Johnnie, Rolanda at the Club, this girl Maria at this place called Astro Burgers, white Mustangs on PCH. Johnnie drove up every weekend.

Once, Johnnie invited Gracy and filmed her and Kat in the bathroom of a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow. Gracy was wearing her red shirt. Kat was high on hash and expensive vodka. He wouldn’t put down the camera. He kept saying, “Why don’t you feel her titties?” Gracy was full on thin steak and crème brûlée. She could squint her eyes and see Johnnie in ten more years, even fatter, covered in a tapestry-print comforter, a worm in a dark room of Vicodin. He owned a roofing company. He had fat fingers. Gracy pretended to be asleep, crushed in white sheets, listening to the slaps of their drugged sex. Johnnie didn’t invite Gracy to come along again. Gracy stayed home, was there to tell when Kat came back Sunday night.

The basketball went silent and a gate clanged, perfect for the evening. It made Gracy think of people holding coffee mugs inside living rooms. Kat finished her telling, ending with a description of the most beautiful brown-haired stripper she’d ever seen. Kat couldn’t stop thinking about her.

“It’s not like I’m lesbo, but she was absolutely gorgeous. She had perfectly lined eyes. Brown eyeliner,” Kat said. Gracy didn’t want to think about some big-boned naked girl having Johnnie pay her to dance on top of a 14 year old. But Gracy asked about the eyeshadow, the lipstick. It was what friends did for each other.

“So who’s that lady I always see you with now?” Kat asked.

“Who?”

“She’s blond. I saw you guys at Dollar Tree. I was with Marcus, and we were like ‘Hey,’ and you were like ‘Hey, what’s up,’” Kat said.

“Just a friend,” Gracy said.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with her,” Kat said.

Gracy shrugged. What before she could barely talk about, now hurt her stomach. Inga had been her secret, her textbook drawing, her thought before sleep. Now Kat prodding it all with ugly stripper hands didn’t bother her as much as it should. Kat would never know Inga’s warmth, her back curved in that small kitchen. Her aloe plants and fairy knick-knacks. Kat would always smell like car exhaust. She’d always live life so surfacely.

“She has a nice house. She buys me things,” Gracy lied, she blasphemed. Inga did have a nice house and buy her things, but to describe her that way was all wrong. Kat picked at the bright pink nailpolish on her hands.

“Don’t be a heartbreaker, Gracy.”

Gracy laughed and they moved on to imitations of Mr. Wallace, the math teacher, trying to decide if he was married. Gracy noticed the grain of Kat’s new jeans and promised herself that she’d be more like Kat. She’d go home, go through her old clothes, find sexier shirts. She’d paint her nails bright pink, maybe bright blue so she wouldn’t be too much of a copycat. She’d find someone to take her out to have fun. Fun was all there was, maybe. Maybe she would be a heartbreaker. She was sick of being sad all the time. She wanted to walk in, heeled, with hair smelling of open-air restaurants, with stories to tell. Nothing secret, nothing closed-door. No more palms-up prayers to be Inga’s favorite. Inga and Danny were just sex. They were just something that happened. Gracy wanted to lie in a lawn chair and not even notice when the sprinklers went off, their sounds like the unwrapping of packages.