Disclaimer: I own neither West Side Story nor the movie referenced here. Graziella's particular backstory is LCV Productions'.
Note: For its length, and for an idea that basically hit me in the face, this took a surprisingly long time to come together. Stress and headaches and no time for writing/the internet anymore. Boo-hoo and all that, lol. Anyway, I really hope you enjoy this (am pretty sure Graziella hates me by now for tormenting her so much), and if you haven't seen the mentioned film, I highly recommend it. Hopefully the fic will still make sense without it—please let me know if it doesn't!
For: Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. And anyone who's ever had his or her heart broken, by their film, or otherwise.
reel
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In that lone sea, far off from any ships!
Do I not know now of a day in Spring?
No minute of that wild day ever slips
From out my memory.
—William Morris, "The Defence of Guenevere"
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No matter how many times she sees the ending, she still cries.
She's sitting in the theater, slouched in the back row, knees drawn up and hugged like she's still eighteen, waiting for the lights to go down, and as she stares at the blank screen, Graziella picks up a piece of popcorn and crumbles it between her fingers. She's a mess, she knows, or will be once the movie starts, and there's this nagging sense inside her that she shouldn't be here. That she knows better. Graziella can count on one hand the number of movies she's actually seen and thought about more than once but this one—
This one is horrible, she thinks as the theater dims, and even though she's watched it six times already she'll go every week it plays.
Graziella isn't dumb; that's something she's always wanted to clear up, but sometimes she isn't too smart. She forgets, sometimes, that she's married with a husband and three kids and wakes up wondering what'll become of her when she already knows her future, laid out in stone before her. Other times she gets the shakes, thinking that she isn't good or pretty or thin enough and no one loves her, no one loves her, when she knows better—after all, she does have a mirror and if she asks, enough people will tell her it's not true so that she's more or less convinced. For sure, Graziella does some stupid things sometimes. She might even admit it.
But most of all, the dumbest thing about her is that she never knows how to stop caring, never knows how to get out of the way of something that she knows will hurt her. She never has. And these two, on that screen now, she thinks as she touches the tip of her tongue to her finger, picking up oil and butter, are glass in her hands, waiting to be shattered. They'll drive deep into her skin, as always, but then, she's used to that.
The girl with the blonde hair and the boy with the sweet smile have only just met up there, and already it's too late for them. Two people in love. Graziella wonders if they really knew how far it would go. At home when the kids are parked in front of the TV she daydreams. She thinks; sometimes too much. It's the stupid things she remembers nowadays. The silly things. Your hair's orange, he'd said to her sleepily one night when he'd come in drunk. But you're a real peach, Graz, y'know that?
She thinks to herself she should have just looked at him, photographed him with her eyes, held him and never let go, instead of doing what she did then and pretty much every other time he said something dumb but really kind of wonderful: socked him on the arm and kissed him like mad because they had all the time in the world to be serious and Riff, he was never what you'd call big on growing up.
The boy who never did. She can't picture him in the world she lives in now. It just doesn't work—what kind of job could he have had? What kind of life? But it doesn't mean she doesn't try. She imagines the house. The car. Their son. She imagines being happy.
There's a road, she thinks. And you go down this road because there's no other way. If there was, you've left it behind a long time ago. And at the end of the road is—what?
It's the movie. It's awful, terrible, but there's something about it, something beautiful in the tragedy of it all that draws her in, won't let her go. It might just be a movie but to her it's real anyway. They stay with her. Ghosts. Graziella isn't the smartest girl in the world but she knows a little something about that.
God, she's a fool, Graziella thinks, hugging her knees so tight it hurts.
At home she likes to think of herself as Bonnie and him as Clyde, laughing with the air flying in through the open window of a car that isn't theirs. Riff never robbed banks and he never graduated to full-scale grand theft auto—he always said he'd learn to drive just so he could hot-wire a squad car, and just like everything else he didn't get the chance—but all the same, she can picture it. Long days and nights just driving around, being in love and living without tomorrows. And at the finish, shot up and full of holes and but still together. Always together.
Because she knows how it ends. That it does end. Hell, everyone does, it's in the way their names are intertwined, laced together in legend because they had nothing but each other and maybe this is what makes it so beautiful, and so terrible. It makes her cry every time, but she can't stop watching, can't turn her eyes away from the heartbreaking sadness of that final look in his eyes, that sweet shy this is it but we had our time and I love you I love you that she always imagines Riff would have given her, if it had been them. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Isn't it romantic.
Graziella isn't dumb. She might not be a whiz kid, sure, but she's no idiot and she sure as hell can take care of herself a lot better than most of the guys she knows. And if she's stupid, she wouldn't have ended up with a husband and Gus and Gina and her son, Jesus, her son who she loves more than anything in the world in a comfortable apartment, with nothing to do but stay with them. She'd be holed up in some seedy joint, scraping for pennies to pay the rent. If she isn't smart, she thinks, who is?
But once in awhile, Graziella huddles deep into the crook of her seat, pressing her hand to her mouth, watching the end of all things through the tears leaking from her eyes, and wonders.
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.end.