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Authors: T. Greenwood

BOOK: Grace
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It wasn't two weeks into the school year that Kurt and Elsbeth got the first call from Mrs. Cross. Apparently during the seventh-grade recess some kids had been giving Trevor a hard time, pushing him around, and he'd, finally, pushed back. There had been two other “incidents” since then, the same kids picking on him, and both times instead of just taking it like usual, he'd fought back, once shoving one kid into a snowbank. Part of Kurt was proud of Trevor. These stupid asshole kids were finally getting what they deserved. But the school didn't see it that way. The same counselor who had insisted that Trevor was fine now said she “didn't know what to do with him.” She thought he should see an outside professional, someone who could help him manage his anger. But even if Kurt hadn't thought that therapy was a load of shit, his insurance wouldn't have covered it anyway. He knew Trevor shouldn't be fighting, that he'd have to punish him, again, for this, but he also knew that there weren't a lot of other options.
Kurt grabbed his keys from the shop and went to his truck. The windshield was filthy. He lifted the wiper-fluid lever, and the motor buzzed. Empty. He turned the wipers on anyway, and they pushed the sludgy grime across the glass. He waited until the windshield was clear enough to see, until the road came into focus in front of him, and then sighed, backing out of the driveway and heading to the school.
T
revor sat perched on one of the wheel wells in the back of his dad's truck as they drove away from the school. He watched as the school became a dollhouse and then just a red-brick pinprick in the distance. Trevor loved riding in the back of the truck. With the wind coming at him from all sides, he held his arms out and could feel every inch of his skin. Sometimes, in the summer, his dad would take him and Gracy swimming up at Lake Gormlaith, and they'd get in the back still soaking wet, their towels flapping around like capes. By the time they got home they'd be dry, their eyes red and stinging from the wind. He loved the taste of the air, held his mouth wide open and stuck his tongue out, tasting the seasons on his tongue. Spring tasted like fresh-cut grass. Summer tasted like hay and heat. Fall like overripe fruit. It was too cold to ride in the back in the winter, but he imagined winter air might taste like peppermint. In the back of the truck, he felt free. His skin stopped prickling. His muscles relaxed. He let the breeze wash over him. It made him feel clean. In the truck, he could almost forget about school.
School. He almost wished Mr. Douglas hadn't gotten to him so quickly. If there had been an actual fight, he would have gotten suspended. And if he got suspended, at least then he wouldn't have to go back to school tomorrow.
Mr. Douglas, who restrained and then detained him, considered himself the school cop as well as the janitor. (After somebody started calling in bomb threats a few months ago, Mrs. Cross gave him a neon orange bib that said
SECURITY
across the front, which he wore when he patrolled the parking lot at the school.) He was fat and sweaty. When he'd pressed Trevor's head down onto the sticky cafeteria table and yanked his arm behind his back (which Trevor thought was pretty ridiculous considering he hadn't even gotten a chance to hit anybody), he'd hissed into Trevor's face, “You're in a lot of trouble, mister,” and his breath smelled like hot dogs and cigarettes.
Trevor turned toward the cab and looked at the back of his dad's head. When his mom rode in the truck, his dad would stretch one arm across the backseat behind her and rub her neck. But today he had both hands on the wheel, his knuckles tight and white. Trevor wasn't sure what would happen to him when he got home. His mom would probably try to get him to talk about it, but he knew that even though she asked the questions (
What did they say to you? What did they do, baby?
), she didn't really want to hear the answers. What she wanted was for him to be like Gracy. Sweet and loveable and easy. But he wasn't any of those things, never had been.
All the other times, his dad had taken him out to the shed, made him yank down his pants, and hit him twice on his bare backside with his belt. It hadn't hurt much, but it made his eyes sting with shame. As further punishment, his dad had made him go to the yard and stack tires all day on the weekends. He couldn't get the smell of rubber off his hands, even with soap. His dad didn't try to talk to him; he was probably smart enough to know there wasn't any way for Trevor to explain. No way to describe how he felt right before he snapped. When the things they said to him pricked his skin like needles.
Freakshow, Frankenstein, Faggot
. How could he tell him about that rusted-out taste in his mouth that meant all hell was about to break loose?
When they pulled into the driveway, he stood up and hopped out of the back of the truck. He could see Gracy peering out the front window at him. She pressed her nose against the glass like a pig and blew her cheeks out. He smiled at her, and she waved, leaving greasy prints on the glass.
“Come on,” his father said, exasperated, leading the way to the backyard, loosening his belt as he walked.
It was only five o'clock, but the sky was already darkening. The whole world looked bruised. They'd made this same trek a dozen times or more since last year. There was practically a path worn into the ground. When they got to the shed, Trevor closed his eyes and braced himself, leaning his hands against the cold siding.
“Damn it, Trevor.” His father's voice was deep and soft, a lullaby voice. Trevor squeezed his eyes shut tighter and tried to pretend that he was only waiting for sleep. But then he heard the slide of leather through denim, the belt catching on the loops, and his whole body tensed, readied itself.
“What am I supposed to do with you?” his father said softly. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” But he wasn't talking to him, to Trevor, not really, but rather seemed to be asking the question to the dusk. To that damaged sky.
And then it was over, as if it had only been a couple of distant cracks of thunder. As if it had only been a faraway storm.
 
O
utside the hospital window, the sky was like a fairy-tale sky. A violet sky, a
violent
sky, with a terrible moon. If this sky were flattened into the pages of a book, the moon might have a face, a sneering face. And the story would be about what happens to bad little girls when they don't listen to their mothers.
Crystal's mother sat at the side of the bed, busying herself with the remote control as if the most savage thing in the world hadn't just happened to her daughter.
“You can go home, Mom,” she said. “I'm okay.”
Distracted, she turned to Crystal and said, “Don't be silly.” But she couldn't hide the look of relief on her face, the gratefulness for Crystal's permission to leave. For all of the arguing over the last several months, now neither one of them seemed to have any words left for the other, and they had spent the last two hours sitting in silence. “Seriously. I'm fine. They said I can check out in the morning. Just come back at nine.”
The truth was, she didn't want her mother to stay. She wanted to be alone with this strange sorrow, the one curled like a cat in the corner of her mind. If her mother left, then it might leap to her lap, let her stroke its soft fur. But not as long as her mother insisted on lingering. As long as her mother was here, she had to pretend. To make believe that it was as simple as this.
“Well, only if you promise me you'll be okay,” her mother said, cocking her head slightly and reaching for Crystal's hand. She ran her thumb gently, absently, over the IV needle stuck into the vein in the back of her hand. This tenderness felt like a blow. Her mother hadn't given her so much as a good-night kiss in months; she couldn't remember the last time she hugged her. But now that it was all over, now that her mother had gotten what she'd wanted, the warmth she'd withheld was suddenly released. Her lips pressed against Crystal's forehead; she squeezed Crystal's hand. “We love you,” she said, speaking not only for herself but for Crystal's father, who had known enough to leave three hours ago, as well. “We're proud of you. This was the right decision.”
Crystal could feel her throat thickening, the sorrow filling her body in all the new, empty places. She nodded because if she spoke she would cry. And she would not cry.
“Okay, then,” her mother said, straightening. “You call if you need me to come back. Even if it's the middle of the night. I can come back.”
Crystal kept nodding, willing her mother out the door. Watching, relieved, as she disappeared, as the heavy wooden door closed, leaving her, finally, alone. Her whole body felt like a limb that had fallen asleep and was just now prickling back to life. The pain was there but not there. Like some shimmering thing underwater. And the memory of what happened tonight was also soft at the edges.
She'd been out walking Willa after dinner. She hadn't been able to eat more than a few bites before she felt bile rising like mercury up the thermometer of her esophagus. Like fire in her throat. She thought that maybe if she walked, gravity would prevail, and there would be some relief.
She'd only gotten to her sister Angie's school before she needed to sit down. Her heart was skipping beats again, stuttering and stumbling and then stalling. It took her breath away each time, like a dozen small deaths. She'd looped Willa's leash to the swing set and sat down on one of the swings. The canvas cradle was not designed for a girl in her condition, but she needed to rest. She didn't feel right.
Willa hadn't found a place to relieve herself yet. She'd sniffed nearly every bush, every tree, along the way. But now she was squatting at the foot of the slide.
“Willa, no!” Crystal said.
Willa looked up at her as her body convulsed with the effort of relieving herself.
“
Jesus,
Will,” Crystal said, grabbing onto the cold chains of the swing to help her stand up. She shoved her hands in her pockets, hoping she'd remembered to put a plastic baggie inside or else some poor kid would get a terrible surprise at the end of his ride.
Willa sniffed at the pile, and Crystal located a bag in her pocket. She enclosed her hand in plastic and bent over awkwardly to scoop up the stinking mess. Suddenly, she felt a shock go through her entire body, and then a deep ache across her abdomen. She stood up, hand full of shit, and swooned from the stink and the pain.
“Come on, Willa,” she said, and Willa obeyed.
The two blocks home felt like two miles. She had to stop every other house it seemed, her entire body quaking with each contraction. When she walked past Ty's house, she wondered if he was inside. What would he do if she just stopped here? If she just had the baby right here on his doorstep? Would Lucia invite her in, make her some chamomile tea? She almost laughed at the thought of it.
By the time Crystal got back to her house, she realized that this was it. It was finally, really, happening. She needed to go to the hospital; the baby was coming tonight.
And now, just eight hours later, it was over. All of it. The baby had come. And gone.
She thought about her mother driving home. Her back straight, her hands at ten and two. She imagined Willa waiting at the door for her. Her father inside now, maybe catching up on some listings, trying to forget what had happened in the hospital. She thought of her sister, Angie, doing homework or drawing. Or maybe already asleep, as if this had all been a dream. As if Crystal weren't lying in the hospital feeling like her body had been split open like a ripe peach. That dark pit in the center of her, that pocked dark place now exposed.
She reached for her phone on the nightstand. Nothing. Ty hadn't answered any of her texts. Hadn't had the decency to even answer the goddamned phone. She stung. She leaked. She could feel her body emptying. Everything that remained trying to escape.
Through the wall behind her she could hear a woman moaning, like an animal. On the other side of the curtain that divided her own room in two, a baby cried, its cries like tinkling bells. Only Crystal keened silently. Her body weeping, seeping, but her eyes were absolutely dry.
Later as she closed her eyes, she allowed her mind to wander to that place she'd promised she wouldn't ever go again. To that impossible place. To imagine what would have happened if she had simply refused. If instead of handing the baby over to Mrs. Stone with her pale hair and pale yellow sweater set, she'd just held on.
A
s Elsbeth stood, rolling Mrs. Van Buren's whispery hair into hot rollers, she dreamed her life backwards. She couldn't help it. It was magnetic, this need to circle back again and again. To unwind the life that had been woven from that moment on, to imagine how things would be different if she hadn't met Kurt. Mrs. Van Buren's soft voice was hypnotic, and as she talked, Elsbeth drifted.
When she'd met Kurt, she was sixteen years old. Elsbeth at sixteen was doe-eyed but scrappy. She was on the girls' basketball team at school, all legs and speed. She met Kurt when she and a couple of girls from the team had gone out for pizza at Luigi's after the game. They'd won, she'd scored twenty points, and she was feeling invincible. Kurt was sitting at the booth behind them, and she'd noticed him right away when she walked back to the table, carrying the giant pizza on the hot silver tray. He had slow eyes, the kind her mother would have called “bedroom eyes.” Light blue with heavy lids, thick blond lashes. Totally sexy. He looked at her, and she felt everything inside her go soft and melty.

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