Pretty

by Jillian Lauren

  The air through the open window rushing wet on my face smells like rain from earlier in the evening, though I don’t remember it raining. The pavement hisses as I drive and drive on the freeway with the late-night radio blaring.

  The grocery store parking lot is nice late at night: dark gray and quiet, embossed with an Aztec hieroglyph of yellow lines. The only soul in sight is a nodding bum in a Santa cap. When I get closer, I see the bum is a handsome guy with a matted blond beard who was probably an actor five or ten or fifteen years ago when he came to L.A., like I came here, like everyone comes here. We must have the best-looking homeless population in the world. I’m glad he nods off as I pass by him, because he doesn’t ask me for change.

  Jesus is a Krispy Kreme Kit Kat caramel candy sugar coma. Jesus is a salt and vinegar potato chip ranch dressing heart attack.

  I want anything to make me forget. I try to walk purposefully, but not too desperately, through the aisles. I maneuver around a couple of dazed-looking club kids. A pixie girl wearing a silver minidress and glittering silver makeup stares wide-eyed at the cereal. She’s so delicate, so dainty, so pretty. She reminds me of how I left Milla’s little Kitty behind. The girl’s gay boyfriend stands behind her wearing rainbow platforms, turquoise hip-huggers, and a Starsky and Hutch orange leather jacket. They each have a gallon of Gatorade tucked in one arm and the boy carries a box of Lucky Charms. One sad old lady wearing weird eye makeup pushes a cart with some fish sticks in it. The floors glow green from the fluorescents.

  I go back to the dairy case to look for the rice pudding, planning to open one and eat it right here in the store. I do this sometimes. But when I get there, I realize I don’t have a spoon. How this works is you have to get the spoon first from up at the front.

  The whipped cream cans are lined up like little soldiers. I grab a cold cylinder and aim to shoot the whipped cream straight into my mouth.

  I don’t know what happens, where the lapse is between thought and action, but I don’t tilt the can the right way. The choice isn’t a choice; it’s pure momentum. I hold the can upright, push out all my breath, insert the plastic nozzle in my mouth, and suck the first spray of sweet sour limp liquid and then the slightly chemical-tasting nothing cold air. Suck and suck and let the poison fill me up and then hold it in my lungs until they ache. Perhaps the lamest relapse in all of addict history—sucking whipped cream cans at a Ralph’s.

  I am already reaching for another one as the sparkles close in. I can’t feel my mouth and then I can’t feel my body. I sink to the cold floor in front of the dairy case and, when I begin to come around, I see a red-aproned fat white man hurrying toward me. I gauge that I have time, grab for one more can, and suck the nitrous out of it as fast as I can.

  Far away in my body, someone’s hands drag me by under my arms. By the time we reach the door, I’ve regained consciousness. I scramble to my feet as he attempts to haul me out. He keeps stopping to huff and puff dramatically.

  As I stand up, I hear him say, “Sorry, Manny. I’m going as fast as I can. She’s a big un.”

  “Wait, please. I’m sorry,” I say, straightening my dress, which is hiked up around my waist. I try to sound reasonable. “I have to pay for my merchandise. I just need to grab a couple more things first. Please.”

  I’m gone. Somewhere in that nondecision decision, I gave up. All this trying so hard to change and love and live. I wasn’t trying hard enough and now I’m done trying at all. Fuck it. My eye is already on the liquor aisle.

  Three red aprons line up, making a wall in front of me that blocks the door. An angry Asian guy points into the night, into the early parking lot morning.

  “Please leave these premises immediately, ma’am.”

  “Please. Let me back in. I won’t do it again. It was just a teeny mistake.” I make the baby girl face with the pouty lips and the blink blink eyes. They are unamused. What are they so serious about? What the hell do they care if I suck some chemicals in their aisles?

  It dawns on me that I can’t buy liquor after two in the morning anyway. I wish I’d stolen a bottle of vodka. I wish I had shoved some food in my jacket first before I got myself thrown out of the store.

  “Okay, okay,” I say, totally logical. “Listen. I’ll blow all three of you for a bottle of Absolut and a package of Snowballs right now. I’m serious.”

  This seems like a reasonable idea.

  “I have your bottle of vodka right here,” the Santa bum pipes in, grabbing his crotch. He still squats against one of the columns in the grocery store entrance.

  The clerks stand there, shoulder to shoulder, serious and pimply and pale green. Two of them look at each other, as if considering the offer, but the angry Asian guy stares them into submission. He’s the rule guy. He’s the boss here. Apparently it’s more important to him to be the boss than to get a blow job.

  What the fuck is wrong with these people? What the fuck is wrong with me? Am I so ugly? Have I lost all my powers of persuasion? I can’t even get a fifteen-dollar bottle of liquor out of a couple of night-shift grocery clerks? Even with offers of oral sex? I’ve fallen so far so fast. It hasn’t felt fast. It’s felt like forever.

  “Oh, come on,” I say. They stare at me wordless.

  “Homos!” I shout at them as I turn and walk ungracefully toward the Honda. I’m less walking and more falling toward the car. There’s no liquor to be had. I think of who I can call with drugs or booze, but I don’t have anyone’s number.

  The cool thing about being pregnant is how I stopped feeling alone. Like there’s this other glowing presence with me all the time. But I just killed it. Not the baby. The baby’s still there I think. I killed the feeling and I’m back alone again. I have to get rid of this baby, this probably crazy monster fetus. I’ve got to do it tomorrow. And with that thought the night crumbles in front of me. I’m going to get high. Whatever I have to do I’m going to get high and I’m going to stay that way as long as I can.

  Jesus is nowhere. Jesus is nowhere and nowhere and nowhere.

  Frantic inspiration strikes me. I dig through the mountains of crap in the trunk of my car and pull out the plastic gas can, red and yellow like a child’s fire truck toy. I have the gas can and the tube stashed in case I get down to my last dollar, run out of gas, and need to pillage from a good samaritan. This embarrassing scenario has happened before, is why they’re in here. Is how I know how to siphon gas in the first place.

  I fall to my knees on the pavement next to the car, unscrewing the gas cap with a pop hiss. I thread the clear tube like an IV into the metal pipe. I set the can in front of me and put the other end of the tube between my lips, sucking out the air until a mouthful of burning acid piss poison floods my mouth. Then I fill the can with a small amount of gas and pull the tube out. The relief starts even before you get high. It starts the minute you can see the finish line. Eyes on the prize.

  Kneeling on the blacktop in front of the gas can, I unzip the back of my dress and shimmy the top half of it off my shoulders. I unsnap the leopard print push-up bra, hold it against the nozzle of the gas can, and saturate the padding. I open the door and crawl into the driver’s seat without even standing up. I wrap the gasoline-soaked C-cup around my nose and mouth and I breathe and breathe and breathe until my head caves in and there is nothing but floaty blackness and my arms drop like weights to my sides and everything is so heavy until it is so light and there is only the twinkling dark and nothing no feeling just nothing.

  The solidity creeps back in beginning with my extremities and a current of nausea surges through me. I open the car door and vomit onto the asphalt. As I hang there, trembling, waiting for the next wretch, about a foot to the right of the curry whipped cream splatter I see a broken beer bottle, tossed out a window by some asshole who wanted to tell God he didn’t give a shit about anything. Most of the bottle is shattered, but the bottom stayed intact, with one tooth of a shard sticking up. I lean just a little farther from my perch, carefully grasp the piece of g
reen glass, and place it, still wet, onto the dashboard in front of me. A delicate hem of light highlights the perfect edge of the shard.

  I can’t imagine living after this moment. I close my eyes and lean back and imagine that the suicide ghost surfer who owned the car before me is a warm boy with a shoulder I can lean my head on. I pretend he’s with me and he is. He’s white pale and the blood has pooled at his feet. I know it sounds ghastly but it isn’t. It’s like having a friend. He sat in this same seat, cut his wrists, and bled to death as he stared out at the ocean, the dark shapes of the other surfers drifting over the waves. He had once felt flickers of the joy that the morning ocean held for the others. He had once believed that their purpose could be his. But always he wound up back to blinking the water from his eyes and thinking, born again and again and this is all there is? It’s not enough.

  Would it be undignified to join him right now, like this, in a Ralph’s parking lot with vomit crust on my dress and the car smelling of gasoline? I only need to not feel so sick first. I only need to find the strength to sink the glass into my skin. It’s the thought, the always thought, the one I don’t talk about too much because people get all worked up about it. The one where I drive wild up in the canyons until I find the perfect cliff to launch off. The one where I push the plunger down and the next moment doesn’t exist.

  Maybe I’ll find them waiting for me, Aaron and my dad and the surfer. Not that they’ll be sitting on a cloud with wings growing out of their backs, but I think that I’ll find them. I’ll find my Aaron again in a realm of boundless forgiveness. We’ll be together and be more than the sum of our choices.

  Here it is, the perfect piece of glass. Waiting for me like God planted it there. Like God is saying go ahead and let yourself off the hook already, you’re so far beyond saving.

  I mean to do it after I rest my eyes for a minute, but instead I surrender to sleep. When I wake, the windshield has shattered into a spiderweb of cracks and I think how it almost looks pretty. When did I crash? When did the sun rise? The daylight is so bright, this relentless white flame, that I try to put my hands over my eyes but my arms are so weak I can’t move them. I wonder if I did it and I can’t remember.

  I can barely turn my head to see the surfer sitting next to me. He looks just like I imagined, with a tangle of sun-bleached hair and eyes like they sucked up the sea itself. He smiles at me. He’s fine now. There’s no more blood on the floor and his arms are sealed up with perfect skin like he never took a razor to them. What about my hands, I wonder? Are they healed? I think that if I look down and see my hands are healed then I’m probably dead. I don’t look.

  The surfer has a look on his face like he’s perfectly balanced on his board and riding the highest and wildest wave. He’s tan and shining and he’s winning, he’s flying. And I know—this is who he is. This is who he was really. I wish he could have seen himself this way. It’s a gift of mine. I can see people how they are in their dreams. Like how Javi can give people the haircut they have in their dreams. And if you can do that, I guess it becomes like your job or obligation or something. Or even your purpose. It can become your purpose to see the people no one else sees and to see them truly pretty. I have my beauty school graduation today and for today my wrists will stay.

  I say to the surfer, “Please go on ahead without me. I’ll catch up. I’ll catch up with you.”

  I wake for real and open my eyes. I’m sitting in the driver’s seat shaking with sobs, my face wet with tears. I must have been crying in my sleep. The windshield is whole and so am I.

  And what I say to nothing, to the milky light of the approaching dawn is, “Please go on ahead. I’ll catch up. I’ll catch up with you.”

  And I mean it. I’m ready for Aaron to go on ahead of me. I can’t hold this guilt anymore. And I don’t seem to be dying.

  The car smells like a gas station. My mouth is cracked and dry. Drool coats the side of my face and the top of my dress hangs off me, barely covering my boobs. There’s a toxic taste in my mouth so strong it creeps up the back of my throat and into my nose. The taste makes me gag, but I breathe through it and through the throbbing of my poor head. I put the car in drive and head it toward Serenity. Because this morning is as good as any to be born again. And you might call me an expert.

  Twenty-two

  When I walk in the door, I immediately know that I’m fucked. The living room is washed in pale light and Susan Schmidt, looking hastily dressed and wearing no makeup for the first time I have ever seen, sits there with three of my sleepy housemates. They talk in low, concerned voices. My stomach lurches as I enter in last night’s crumpled dress with my shoes in my hand. But this is how it goes. You do shit and sometimes you get away with it and sometimes you don’t. Some people get away with everything. I don’t get away with much.

  All four of them look up at me, real grave. Althea looks down and Missy looks at Althea and Violet looks at me with helplessness in her eyes and I know that at least she has been defending me.

  “Hello, Beth,” says Susan, all grim and self-important. “Would you please take a seat?”

  I throw myself down into the ratty recliner and cross my legs. I fling my arms wide over the armrests. If this is it then this is it. I’m not dead and the full possibility of that fact alone moves through me like a speedball, nauseating and thrilling. I’ll miss this place. This has been my home. But I’m not about to grovel to someone who knows me so little that she insists on calling me Beth.

  “You know I like you, Beth, but you have committed some very serious infractions here. Do you have an explanation for why you stayed out all night, violating your curfew and making your friends sick with worry? I’ve already called the police and reported you as a missing person.”

  “Not far off the mark, I guess. But I hope to find myself soon.”

  Susan Schmidt rears up in her seat like an angry cobra. She has been dragged, at dawn, out of her cozy bed in her swanky home bought with her family money and now I, a soon-to-be homeless, half-crazy, knocked-up, gas-huffing skank, am being cryptic with her. It offends her sense of hierarchy.

  “In light of the position you’re in, it may be wise to drop the defensive cleverness and try to have an authentic conversation.”

  This conversation, authentic or not, is totally pointless. I know well that there is no saving myself at Serenity and I am not about to hash this all out on the coffee table with Susan Schmidt. Plus, she’s right. I pushed the boundaries a little too far and broke them. It appears as if it’s time to leave.

  I look at Violet. Fat, silent tears snake down her cheeks.

  She wipes her red nose with her leopard print sleeve. It was Missy, I bet, who called Susan. She’s frozen and looking down at the carpet with those haunted bug eyes of hers. For a full-blown paranoid schizo, she sure is a company man. I bet she thought she was doing the right thing, though. I can’t really blame her.

  “Well, kids,” I say. “It’s been fun.”

  “Why are you so defiant?” Susan asks.

  “Bebes, please. Please,” says Violet. “We have to talk about this. You can’t leave. Where are you going to go?”

  I stand, pivot, and head upstairs to pack my stuff. There isn’t much of it and it’s fit in the Honda before.

  “Wait, Beth,” Susan calls after me, scurrying to the foot of the stairs. “I think you owe it to yourself and to your housemates to process this situation with honesty and closure. We have to make a plan for you. We’re concerned about your well-being. We don’t want you just to run out onto the street.”

  Susan’s entreaties echo through the hallways but don’t follow me upstairs. When I get to my room, everything looks neater than I left it, which is a sure sign they’ve gone through my shit.

  I look around the room at Violet’s goth goodies, at the dust along the top of the moldings, at the place where the window doesn’t close exactly right, at the precious guitar leaning against the side of the dresser. I’ve lain in my bed here many hou
rs just looking around, unable to get up and actually do anything. I know every crack in this ceiling.

  My bravado drains into the floor and my stomach cramps. I wasn’t expecting to leave so soon and with nowhere else to go.

  I take my shirts out of the closet and fold them neatly into my duffel bag, thinking about a lunch I had with Jake. Two months ago, Jake and I were languishing in the same apathy: trying to not drink and to figure out a way that living in this world might suck a little less. Maybe wild success, maybe a good fuck, maybe saintly spiritual devotion, maybe a package of onion rings, maybe a trip to the Grand Canyon in a trailer or to Peru in a goat caravan or something. Sitting over black and white shakes at the 101 Cafe, we mused about it. The next junked car he had his eye on fixing up. His next doomed straight job. My soon-to-be career at a fancy Beverly Hills salon.

  Afterward we went to Griffith Park and hiked up one of the trails to an overlook called Dante’s Peak. We both thought that was really funny. When we turned back, there was this particularly steep stretch that he ran down with his feet barely touching the ground and his arms out to the sides and I swear he was almost flying. That’s what this leaving is. It seems like a steep downhill, but maybe I’m just about ready to take off. That’s the thought that keeps me packing.

  Violet wakes Buck, and Buck helps me carry my bags down the stairs. The three of us walk out into a bright, cool spring morning. My graduation day. As I walk out the door of the sober living, a curtain closes behind me. I am moving, but I don’t know in which direction. Susan hovers in the doorway as I hug my friends good-bye. The sincerely concerned look on her face surprises me. Have I been right about anything?