Grace

At my aunt's East Village apartment, my little brother sat by the window to document each car passing by.

"Black car, blue car, yellow car, yellow car, yellow car,"

"Sounds about right," my aunt chuckled. She took a sip of tea from one of the mugs she made in her pottery class. This one was red with white daisies painted all over. I took a sip from the one she painted in blue and white stripes.

"White car, yellow car, yellow car, red car,"

We were visiting my aunt so that I could pick up the birthday present she had for me. Seeing her after Christmas and my birthday never fail to be my favorite parts of the year, she always knows exactly what to get me. Grace Kerr: my father's sister, although I look more like her than either of my parents. Sometimes I joke that the stork sent me to the wrong Kerr sibling. I do resemble my father, but Grace is basically the female version of him and in a way so am I, so that along with some of the quirks we share make it seem like she might've birthed me instead. Even my cousin Caroline has made the same observations. We were walking down Lexington Avenue one day when I went on a tirade about how the city made a huge mistake when they stopped constructing buildings in the art deco style.

"My mom feels the same way," Caroline said when she was finally able to get a word in.

Another day the two of them had come over to our place. Grace took a look around my room as she always did, seeing if I had any new posters up.

"She keeps trying to get me to put some posters up on my wall," Caroline said after Grace left.

"Really? My mom keeps trying to get me to take them all down."

"Yep. She thinks you're cool."

This was touching, considering I didn't think there was anyone else in the world cooler than my aunt than the people she'd hung out with. Grace Kerr was a woman who lived through New York in the 70s, and I was a girl who sure as hell wished I did. I've heard stories about shows at CBGB's, how she's spent nights at the Chelsea Hotel, and I wouldn't be surprised if she shared a drink or two with Lou Reed and the Ramones. Almost every band I brought up was followed by an "I saw them live," or "I met them once." A big fan of Talking Heads, she had the chance to experience them in their prime. Also a big fan of Talking Heads, I have the chance to hope for a reunion tour. These days, she spends her time in art galleries, coffee shops, and sitting in parks reading a lot of the same books I do.

"Have you read Just Kids yet?" She asked me one day.

"Yep, just finished it the other day."

"Good," she nodded. "I saw her live."

For my 8th birthday she gave me a copy of Little Women. For my 18th birthday, she gave me a mug with Toni Morrison's portrait on it. For my 19th birthday, I opened my gift to find she got me Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I'd gotten into Didion a couple months ago after reading The White Album, a read which really confirmed the fact that I was meant to be living beside Grace in the 70s. After thanking her for my gift, I smiled and waited for an interjection of some grand anecdote.

"You know, I met Joan once."

There it was.

"In the 70s?"

"No, no, she was already back in California by then. This wasn't until later, around the time you were born actually."

I nodded to show I was impressed.

"I almost invited her to your christening."

I almost choked on my own cup of tea. Though shocked and curious (though not surprised), I decided to leave it alone. The magic of Grace Kerr's life would not be destroyed by detail.

Red car... black car... yellow car...

"So, tell me about school. Are you passing?"

I barely opened my mouth to speak before she interrupted.

"No, no. That's boring. Tell me about that boy you like. Have you told him yet? Have you asked him out?"

"Oh, I'm not sure we're really there yet," I said uncomfortably.

"Nonsense. You won't ever be there if you never push yourself towards it."

I smiled and thumbed the pages of my new book. She was right, totally and completely right. Of course she was. This was unfortunately the one area in which we were not similar at all. Dreadfully so, her outgoing, extroverted personality didn't carry over to me in the freakish way all her other traits did. I'd always been shy; I know it, Grace knows it, everyone else knows it, but lately I can't help but feel that my chronic shyness will eventually get the best of me. It will get the best of me and when it does I'll be too shy to even save myself, and I'll be left with sorrow and regret and whatever other feelings you get after a lifetime of missed opportunities. I blame my shyness for ruining things with Wyatt, and I blame my shyness for inevitably ruining things with Charlie. All the stories from Grace's life made it seem like she made no room for shyness.

"What's wrong?" She asked after a few seconds of silence.

"I just... I can't."

"Can't what?"

"I can't say it."

"Say what?"

"How I feel."

"And why is that?"

Because! Because I will fail! And I will horribly embarrass myself and find how he truly feels and what if its distaste? I'll have to come to terms with the fact that something must be wrong with me, or maybe the God just forgot to make someone for me. And what if he does like me? So what if he does? My shyness will catch up and he'll see that and change his mind or I'll be too scared to say anything and he will pass, and I'll be left alone again. It's not like I lack confidence, Grace is cool and I am like Grace so therefore I am cool by association. I think I just lack faith. Or maybe I have too much faith, faith in that everything will go wrong.

"I just can't," Is what I verbalized instead. Graced leaned over the table and held my hands.

Red car... black car...

"Ok, I'm sorry I brought it up," She rubbed my hands with her thumbs and looked over at my book. "I saw an interview with Joan once*. If I can remember it correctly, she said, if your final test of character was whether or not you could go on, and if there was absolutely nowhere else you could go, then you were never going to be put to that test of character in the first place."

"Well, I'm not Joan Didion," I mumbled.

"No, but I'm sure she was 19 once. I could be wrong, I only met her once," She laughed a bit at her own joke. "But I do know that I was 19 once, as was your father, and your mother, and soon will be your sister and your brother. We're all human."

"Yea, but you're one of the more exceptional ones,"

Grace sighed and let go of my hands. She leaned back in her chair, I could tell she was sorting through her memory to find some other anecdote which might relate to my situation.

"I've never told you this, well, I haven't told many people this."

A secret? My mood lifted a bit. I was about to unlock a new part of Grace's life.

"My life really wasn't all glamorous the way you think it was. I mean, I was living out of hotels picking up odd jobs here and there before I met Emmett."

Emmett is my uncle. Though never legally married, Grace and him met by chance one day in 1979 and have been together ever since. Everyone jokes that Emmett had a lot of work to do in order to get Grace to settle down and leave her punkish lifestyle behind. I believe she tricked everyone into thinking he did, and made all those around her just a bit livelier.

"Anyways, my life was full of leaps of faith. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere if I didn't jump a few times," She paused again as she thought some more. "Have I ever told you what my biggest regret in life is?"

I shook my head.

Yellow car...

"Andy Warhol asked me to be in one of his films. I said no, I was too scared."

Even her failures were somehow successes.

"He was so distraught but, oh that's not help at all," She said quickly, as if she could read my mind (which I'd have no doubt about if she told me she could). "How about I just throw him under the bus- It took your father a year to finally gain the courage to ask your mother out."

"And, now they're married, and they have me!" I added, trying to show I understood the point.

"Well, not right away. Your mom said no at first,"

"What?"

"They never told you this? Forget I said anything then, but it's true. Your mother was too scared." She shook her head before taking another sip of tea. "You can't have two shy people in a relationship. It's like trying to push together the same sides of two magnets."

"Well, what happened?" I looked back at my brother to make sure he wasn't listening.

Blue car... yellow car...

"What happened was, your father didn't give up. And despite all of the pain and absolute embarrassment he would've face if your mom truly meant no, he still tried again."

"And then they got married."

"Well, no, and then they had you."

"Huh?"

"Oh, nothing," She smiled. "Just one of my jokes."

I left my aunt's apartment that day with a new perspective on life (and on my parents). That night I sat in the living room of our own apartment while my brother continued to document the cars going down our street. I thought about Grace again, despite how absolutely insane her life was (though I wish I'd gone through some of that chaos myself), she ended up where she is, a place in life I feel is very fitting for her. I was still scared, I don't know if that feeling ever goes away, but I felt everything was going to turn out the way it should, the way it has to. I still had a lot of "what if's", but I liked Charlie way too much, and the "what if" regarding the two of us would be too much to bear if I never said anything. I thought about how he might fit into the grand scheme of my life, if he'd play a huge part in it or be just a passing blip I'd think about now and then (or forget). I wondered how I was going to tell him. I wondered what I was going to tell him. I wondered if I was even going to tell him. I looked over at my brother.

Yellow car... yellow car... yellow car...

I'll tell him in a week.

*"Joan Didion (1971)" on YouTube