Grace (41 page)

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Authors: T. Greenwood

BOOK: Grace
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But this morning, instead of letting Angie sleep, she had woken her up, gently nudging her shoulder. She was sitting on the edge of Angie's bed, already dressed.
“Hey, Ang,” she had said. She wasn't wearing her Walgreens smock, which meant she wasn't going to work. Why was she up, then? Angie could never understand that. On days when she didn't have school, she slept until it was time for lunch.
Angie had sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Yeah?”
“I want to give you something,” she said.
“What?” Angie asked. Couldn't this have waited until she was up? Or at least awake?
But Crystal looked like she was going to cry. “Here,” she said, pressing whatever it was into Angie's hand. Then she stood up, all business. “Mom wants you to come down for breakfast. She's leaving for work in five minutes.”
Angie opened her fist. In her hand was the charm bracelet that Crystal had gotten for her birthday a few years ago. The one that Angie had borrowed without asking, and, within hours, lost. It was missing for almost a whole week before their dad finally found it behind the toaster. It had probably slipped off her wrist when she was making a piece of toast. She knew Crystal had to have been furious, but she hadn't said.
“I added a charm,” Crystal said as she stood in the doorway. “One that's just for you.”
Angie looked at the silver chain in her hand: at the shamrock charm, the heart, the soccer ball. There was a
16
with a space where her birthstone used to go and, of course, a striding runner. But near the clasp was the new charm: a palette, a tiny silver palette and brush, with gemstones like miniature dollops of paint: red, yellow, and blue.
“Why?” Angie asked.
Crystal, still looking like she might cry, just shrugged.
Angie had put the chain on her wrist, felt the heft of it, the cold metal against her skin. Now, at the art table, as she studied the brown bananas and the bruised apples, trying to remember what the fruit looked like before it started to decay, the bracelet felt strange. Too heavy. Too cold. Something was wrong. For as generous as Crystal was, she didn't just give up her stuff for no reason.
Next to her, Heidi Lemeau's bananas looked like summer squash. Her apples were like cartoon apples: too round, too red. The two boys at the end of her table weren't even drawing; they were horsing around with a stolen banana, making obscene gestures behind Heidi's back. As weird as he was, she really missed that kid Trevor. At least he took art class seriously. But she'd heard he got suspended, and somebody said they'd put him in the special-ed classroom. She felt bad for him. She knew some of the other eighth-grade boys were really mean to him. He was always getting in fights, but she was pretty sure that he wouldn't be fighting if they weren't always teasing him. The special-ed kids didn't come to the art room, as far as she knew. That was just sad.
Mr. Franklin was sitting at the desk at the front of the room, looking bored. If Mrs. D. was still there, she would be walking around, looking at what they were doing, clapping her hands together or putting her hand on her hip and leaning in close for a better “look-see.” Angie was pretty sure that any excitement Mr. Franklin had had about his new job was gone now; most days he just gave them an assignment and then sat back, leafing through a magazine while they worked. They had pop quizzes once a week about whatever artist he told them to read about in the lame textbook he'd passed out the first day. He wouldn't let them into any of the messy stuff: clay, oils, Cray-Pas.
She watched him glance at his watch. There was still forty minutes left of class.
She raised her hand, felt the charm bracelet slip down her arm. The cold silver sent a chill down her back.
“Yes, Angie?” he asked, when he finally noticed her.
“Can I use the restroom?”
He nodded and reached for the enormous wooden pass labeled
Girls
in red Sharpie. She stood up and went to the desk and took it from him. He smiled miserably.
She walked down the empty hallway to the girls' bathroom and looked out the window next to the handicapped stall, touched her nose to the cold glass. Snow was falling outside, and for a minute the dizzying display gave her vertigo. But she stayed, watching the snow falling up, blowing sideways. Upside down.
But then there was a shudder, a tremble, and a crack. Like thunder. And in the split second before everything went black, she thought,
How strange.
She'd never heard of thunder during a blizzard.
At that crooked little house downtown, Trevor made his way up the creaky stairs and knocked on the door. He heard Mrs. D. shuffling around inside, but when she opened the door, he barely recognized her. She wasn't wearing her wig, and her skin and hair were the same silvery color. It made his ears hot, as though he'd caught her without her clothes on.
“Trevor,” she said, reaching for him. “Oh dear, come in. You look half-frozen.”
He followed her inside. It was dark but warm. He could smell whatever she had had for breakfast. Coffee. Toast. The snow that had dusted his shoulders and hair started to melt. Soon, his clothes would be wet.
“Can I get you something to drink? Maybe some hot tea?” Her voice sounded weak, smaller than before. “Can I take your coat?” She coughed, and her entire chest rumbled like thunder.
He shook his head and, without taking his coat off, without waiting for an invitation, he sat down on the worn couch.
“Did you have a good Thanksgiving?” she asked.
He nodded and his heart panged momentarily with the thoughts of the argument with Pop. He squeezed his eyes shut and saw only the splatter of sweet potatoes, the fury on his mother's face. He thought of Disney World. Of airplanes and beaches. The cold crash of the ocean. All of those dreams seemed to belong to someone else now. A figment of someone else's imagination.
“My brother was here for the holiday,” she said, sitting next to him. “The one I told you about. He brought me these,” she said, motioning to a box of a thousand watercolors, which looked like a tray of candy, on the coffee table. There was an open sketchbook, a still life of a melon and a single dimpled orange. Loose papers scratched with pencil drawings lay scattered across the table.
“How is school?” she said, her face crumpled with concern.
Trevor looked out the window at the street below. The sky was white, achingly bright. It made his head throb, his eyes unable to bear all that light. He thought about all the things she'd told him. About how the quality of light is the only thing a photographer should ever really care about. That beauty lies simply in illumination. That a good photographer can use the light to change the way we see things. He wondered if there was any light that could shine on him and change who
he
was.
“I did something,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
He turned to her and studied the lines on her face. Her skin was like paper in an old book. “I hurt somebody,” he said.
She reached for his hand. When she touched him, he felt his entire world starting to crumble. Like paper that's been burned. Like something turning quietly to dust. Outside the snow was falling hard now, ashen flakes covering the entire world. “Did you have another fight?” she asked.
He shook his head. His entire body ached, and he knew the end started here. He only needed to say the words. To admit the truth.
“They're right about me,” he said. “They're all right.”
C
rystal had downloaded maps from the Internet, the route that would take them away from here. She had memorized the directions, repeated them like a mantra each night to fall asleep. Even now as she clicked her right-hand turn signal and peered through her windshield, a kaleidoscope of crystals, at the entrance ramp to the interstate, the path was like a prayer: 91, 11, 279, then west, west, west. Farther and farther, until the world itself ended.
She'd called Lucia from work the day after Thanksgiving, surprised and grateful that she hadn't changed her cell phone number yet. Grateful that she could still be found. Sobbing, Crystal had tried to get the words out to explain, and Lucia had soothed her, waited for her to catch her breath.
“It'll be okay, sweetie,” Lucia said. “Everything will be okey-doke.” She assured her again and again that they would figure something out.
Sitting in the back office at the Walgreens, Crystal had hugged her knees to her chest and imagined herself in Ty's old kitchen, Lucia making cocoa from scratch at the antique wood-burning stove top. She knew that Lucia was in California, in a different house, a different life, but the smooth calm of her voice brought her back to that warm kitchen. A dog at her feet and the smell of cloves and bay leaves.
When she first found out she was pregnant, Crystal told Lucia first. Before Ty. Before her own mother even. She'd gone to the house when she knew Ty would be at soccer practice and sat at the counter like she had so many times after school. Now that Angie was older, she had things to do after school; the house was too quiet without her. But Lucia was always home. Always in the kitchen ready to talk.
Crystal had broken down as she told her about the test, about the baby. About her fears of losing Ty. But instead of looking horrified, like her own mother would just days later, Lucia softened and moved toward Crystal instead of away. She enclosed her. Held her. Enveloped her. Inside her bangled arms, Crystal felt safe. She knew that, at least for now, everything would be okay.
Crystal had looked up from her knees at the boxes and boxes of meaningless crap stored in the stockroom, and Lucia offered what Crystal had prayed she would.
“You can come here. You can come be with us. Ty is living in the dorms. We have an extra room. As soon as you establish residency, you can go to school. One of the community colleges.”
“I shouldn't have given her up,” Crystal cried, her entire body racked with pain from the hole Grace left when she was born. “I did the wrong thing.”
“It's okay. Crystal. You have a family that loves you.”
She didn't know which family she was talking about, but it didn't matter anymore. She had somewhere to go.
And she started to think that maybe it was possible for a mother other than your own to love you just as much, if not more. Her whole life, Crystal's mother had given her nothing but ultimatums.
Conditional
love. Love with strings. Lucia, on the other hand, was patient and understanding. Made no demands. Crystal had wished a hundred times that Lucia could adopt her. Funny how the world works.
She didn't tell her about the other Grace. She wasn't even sure then about what she should do. What she did know was this: Here was her chance to save a little girl. To make her world right. To be a mother to Grace when her own mother had clearly failed her. She only had to look at those photos to know that something had to be done. She thought about Grace's mother, wandering the aisles pocketing trinkets. Stealing all those incidental things that no one would miss. Wasn't this the same thing?
But now, as she turned that giant beast of a car onto the interstate, accelerating through the whiteout with someone else's child in her backseat, now that she could smell that child smell of Cheerios and Play-Doh, hear the sound of tiny lungs inhaling and exhaling, she worried that maybe she was losing her mind.
The little girl was looking out the window, her face concerned.
“It's a big storm,” Crystal said. “But this is a very safe car,” she said, feigning cheerfulness. Her entire body rocked with nausea. She'd kidnapped a child. She'd stolen someone's little girl. And it had been so easy. How could it be so simple? She'd called this morning and pretended to be her mother. Told the woman that Grace's sitter was coming to get her. That there had been a family emergency.
And the sitter's name?
the secretary had asked.
Crys,
she had started. What a fool.
Chris Johnson
.
“What is that?” Grace asked.
“What?” Crystal said. She looked in the rearview mirror again. Grace was leaning across the seat toward the opposite window.
“That smoke?” she said, pointing.
Crystal turned back around and looked out her own window. From the interstate, she could see down into the valley where Two Rivers lay nestled. Plumes of black smoke curled up from the whiteness.
“It looks like a fire maybe,” Crystal said.
“There was a fire at my grandpa's house,” the little girl said. “You shouldn't smoke cigarettes.”
Crystal's phone vibrated on the seat next to her. She reached for it before it could shimmy across the seat and onto the floor. Her mother's name flashed across the display. She thought for a moment about answering, but then sent the call to voice mail.
E
lsbeth and Kurt stood in a crowd of parents held back by the police tape that circled the entire periphery of the school, a bright yellow ribbon enclosing a horrific package. How many “gifts” like this would he receive? First Pop's house. Now this. It struck Kurt as ridiculous how readily and unthinkingly the parents obeyed the flimsy boundary. How easy it would be to duck under, crawl over, or even just break through the tape. The only thing stopping him was what was on the other side of the tape. What was inside this particular package: from where they were standing, they could see an entire wall blown out, a classroom's contents spilled onto the snow.

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