No 2: THE AWKWARD DAUGHTER
IMAGE BY LUCIA AUERBACH
REBECCA KOPELMAN
Tracey was the awkward daughter of a powerful man, a bit too well-bred for her own good. Her huge, patrician nose made little sense set atop her delicate cheekbones, beneath her tiny gray eyes. Her bright red pussy looked like a gaping, open wound. Frankenstein’s debutante, Paul called her, sometimes to her face. He knew she’d take it, maybe even laugh softly, in the way that ugly girls who knew they should’ve been beautiful did.
When she’d debuted as a teenager, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, her expensive dress had been ill-fitting. Her thick arms spilled over the tops of her long white gloves, and she kept reaching under the silken fabric, wrinkling and straightening the material. Her mother, from whom she had inherited the fawnlike facial structure and elegant skull, gripped her shoulder tightly and shot her a cold, gray look. Her father, from whom she’d gotten all her mannish features, smiled at the two. His girls, he would say.
Tracey was the only daughter, and her father’s least favorite. The two facts were likely correlated. Her three straight-spined older brothers–one of whom was a decade older, a product of his father’s previous marriage–had graduated from Princeton, Stanford and Yale respectively. She, as an act of wealthy rebellion, had chosen to go to NYU. Paul had too, but his choice felt more meaningful. He studied screenwriting, after all, and wore a dangly earring, and maybe was bisexual. Tracey studied communications. She dressed poorly and expensively, in sweaters meant for surfers and skinny jeans with rips in the knees. Her lacy bras were always peeking out the tops of her v-neck t-shirts, and if one looked closely, one might catch a glimpse of her light, puffy nipple. Nobody tended to look closely, though. She had few friends, and Paul was probably her closest. He was her best friend, and she was most definitely not his.
Benefits with friends, he joked to his friends and to her. Still, he loved her, conditionally: the conditions were rough sex, and that she not freak out when he slept with other people. He didn’t like looking or feeling as if he belonged to her. He didn’t like her sweating hand on his chest or in his hair; her pride at being seen with somebody as handsome as he was.
She had learned all the gestures required to mimic a beautiful, elegant woman. The straight spine, the soft dancer’s hands. Probably from her mother, who actually was beautiful and elegant. It was all a bit stiff, though, when Tracey combed her hair to one side, or looked up at Paul through curled eyelashes, but he felt a bit too tenderly towards her to make fun of that particular shortcoming. It was too personal–things like her nose, or her thighs, or her grating voice felt more anonymous, more temporary. Tracey could’ve easily fixed those things (gotten her nose done, exercised more effectively, taken voice lessons) but how could he get on her about moving too prettily? He could’ve, he supposed, easily.
His love was legitimate, even if he could turn it off at a moment’s notice. He could unlove her, for example, if he watched her shift her body to see her own reflection in a store mirror, but then start again watching her brush her wet hair–she did have nice hair. He loved her so dearly when she kneeled before him, when she looked up at him, redfaced, after he hit her. I love you, she would breathe. That was enough for him to unlove her once again.
Because they were from the same town in Westchester, Tracey and Paul took the Metro North together for school breaks. If he saw somebody attractive on their train, he would tell Tracey that he was going to the restroom and find a new seat, so she wouldn’t place that possessive arm on his shoulder or knee. Mostly, though, the two took mostly-vacant early morning trains, so that they could be home in time for brunch with the grandparents. Tracey looked nearly attractive when she curled herself into a window seat (somehow straight-backed even in a near fetal-position) and read The Valley of the Dolls, moving her lips silently as she read. Sometimes, Paul would feel the impulse to touch her cheek, her soft white arm. But she loved it far too much, and took the touch as an invitation for conversation or prolonged nuzzling. So he refrained from soft touches, when possible. He pretended to look past Tracey, out into the dense morning light by the window, into the cool green trees.
They hadn’t been talking for a month or so, at Tracey’s request this time, as she found their relationship (a term to which Paul objected) toxic. She felt constrained, and wasn’t even sure that she enjoyed being hit with his belt or called a little slut during sex. I love you, but I don’t think I can be treated this way, she had said. Bullshit, Paul said, you love it. It was no great loss, really. He had other girls, girls who were prettier and less clingy, towards whom he could allow himself more overt tenderness. He could touch their stomachs, lightly, and kiss their shining foreheads. He could hold their slim waists in public. He could stand to be held by them.
He was reading in bed, having just cum inside with one of these acceptable girls, when he saw the news about Tracey, somewhere in the middle of the New York Times’ second page. The girl’s name was Gloria–the girl he was sleeping with–and she had bangs and small, heart-shaped lips. Anyway, Tracey had been found, naked and dismembered on the forest floor. She had been abducted. Nobody even noticed she was gone until her mother called to see whether she would be coming to Aspen with the family that Winter Break. After getting no answer for three days, she called anybody who might’ve known her whereabouts, and Paul supposed that was why he had received a call or two from her last week.
Tracey So-and-So, the headline had read, Heiress to the Such-and-Such Fortune Found Dead. She had been found in those familiar woods, Paul saw, the woods that they whizzed by on their early-morning train rides. When he had taken the train last, alone, on his way back to school after break, he’d probably passed her heaped carcass.
Tracey had been raped, Paul supposed, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she was even pretty enough for that. It was a hideous thought, but a legitimate question. He stared off, picturing that unpretty face smashed in, those wet bones squelching under a hiker’s feet. Gloria touched him softly. Sweet Gloria. What happened, she asked, and he folded up his paper and placed it on the floor next to his mattress. Nothing, he told her, a girl from my town got herself killed. Before Gloria, sweet, beautiful, tiny Gloria could answer, he was kissing those heart-shaped lips.
