Grace (20 page)

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Authors: T. Greenwood

BOOK: Grace
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The woman at the shop in Montpelier hadn’t asked about the stretch marks, the red rivers that ran across her belly. She simply had Crystal lie down in her panties on the table that reminded her of the OB/GYN’s office and asked her where exactly she wanted the tattoo. An hour later, she had walked out of the shop with a bandage at her hip and found Angie sitting on a bench out in front of the art store, sketching in a new sketchpad. She’d thought about how powerful a few simple brush strokes could be, about indelibility, about permanence.
Now the feathery script was healed: the secret name embroidered on her skin. She sat on the edge of her bed in her underwear, traced the calligraphy with her fingers, and looked out the window at an angry sky. Angie came in and sat down next to her, leaning her head against her shoulder.
“Hey,” Angie said. “You okay?” She touched Crystal’s arm, and it felt like a shock. When they were little they used to tear through the carpeted living room in the winter making sparks. Crystal used to think this was something only she and Angie could do. That it was like a super power.
She wondered if the Stones would adopt other children, if her baby would ever have a sister. She imagined her running through the labyrinth of that house, slippery socks on hardwood floors. She dreamed of pigtails and dress-up and the little girl watching Mrs. Stone do her makeup in the mirror. She thought about her legs swinging under the table at dinner, about birthday cakes and backyard parties. School dances and soccer games and dance recitals.
Graduations
. The skin at her hip pulsed with pain. This terrible call and response. Every thought of the baby made her body wince.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Is Dad still downstairs waiting?”
Angie nodded. “He’s so excited.”
She’d wanted to skip the graduation ceremonies; she had pleaded with her mother to understand, but she was still making her go. “It’ll kill your father if you miss it,” she said. Her father’s wishes clearly trumped any sliver of compassion her mother might have. And so she put on the rented cap and gown, bobby-pinning the cap to her head.
“Come on, come on,” he said, grinning stupidly, his camera in one hand and his camcorder in the other. He ushered her out to the front yard and made her stand in front of the giant maple tree where he’d taken a picture of her and Angie on the first day of school every year since kindergarten. In the photos she always held a sign with her grade on it. After about the sixth grade, she’d grimaced in every shot.
7, 8, 9, 10
... “Here you go, now don’t look so glum,” he said, and handed her a sign that said C
LASS OF
2010! “Say Limburger!” he said, fiddling with the camera lens, her mother fussing with her hair.
She was ready to get in line and get it over with, ready to walk down the paved walkways, littered with cherry blossoms, to the football field where there was a makeshift stage assembled. Ready to get her diploma and get on with her life, whatever that meant. But the sky was ominous, dark and thundery, and it was already ninety degrees at only ten o’clock in the morning. It was clear the outdoor ceremony wasn’t going to happen, and something about this break in tradition seemed fitting somehow. Nothing was going the way it was expected.
The principal announced over the loudspeaker in the cafeteria where they had all been herded that the ceremonies would be moved to the ice arena across the road from the school. Mrs. Noyes, the PTA president, with her cotton candy hair and cotton candy breath and her cotton candy dress, lined them up alphabetically and then they waited as the ice arena across the street filled with proud parents and grandparents and siblings. Finally, Mrs. Noyes made them follow her in a winding line, leading them like a caterpillar rope of preschoolers, making them look both ways before crossing the road as if they weren’t all at an event celebrating their entrance into adulthood.
Inside the ice arena, it was even more suffocating and oppressive than it had been in the cafeteria. Crystal could see Angie and her parents sitting near the stage in the very front row. They’d taken out a huge ad (
Let the McDonalds Sell Your House!
) in the graduation program in exchange for front-row seats. “You scratch my back,” her father had said, “and I’ll scratch yours.”
“Hey, Cryssy,” Ty said softly. The hairs on the back of her neck and on her arms stood up.
He was standing behind her in line. She’d ignored him the best she could while everyone was hustling to get into the right spots and then as they inched their way from the cafeteria to the ice arena. But now he was talking to her. She couldn’t pretend like she didn’t hear him; they were smushed together too tight, she could practically feel his breath on her neck.
She turned around to look at him. His mortarboard sat crookedly on his head, his trademark flop of brown hair peeking out and covering one eye. He smiled that familiar coy smile, and for a minute, she just wanted to forgive him. To reach for his hand and squeeze it and say, “It’s okay.”
But instead she just nodded and said, “Hey.”
“So I never found out where you were going to school,” he said. “I heard you were going to UVM?”
“Yeah,” she said. “What about you? You got into Middlebury, right?” Middlebury. Their big plan to go to school close to each other. Like a forgotten vegetable in the fridge, rotten now. She almost reeled from the stink of everything gone so slowly and perfectly bad.
“Actually, I’ll be at UC Berkeley,” he said.
“Berkeley?”
She felt her throat thicken. In all the years she’d known him, he’d not once mentioned California. It was the same as if he’d said he was going to Alaska for college. To the moon. “You’ve wanted to go to Middlebury for, like, forever,” she said. How in the world did she not hear about this?
He shrugged and straightened his cap. “My mom got a full-time faculty gig,
finally,
in San Diego. That means I get tuition free at any UC school.”
“Oh,” she said, feeling sweat rolling down her sides under her gown. Her head aching, her heart aching. “So your whole family’s moving to
California?
”
“Well, yeah. I totally thought you knew. Your mom and dad are selling our house,” he said. “They didn’t tell you?”
They hadn’t said a word. She glanced across the sea of people and located her mom and dad in the crowd. Crystal was hot now, steaming, and pissed off. They really thought that if they just pretended like none of this had happened, then they could undo it. That if they willed Ty out of her life, he would disappear. And they were right. Ty and his entire family
were
just disappearing. For good. Like nothing ever happened.
She thought about his family. About the afternoons she had spent with his mother in their kitchen, about the cracked blue Congoleum and her chipped Fiestaware bowls. She thought about Dizzy with her spy kit and the baby, Squirrel, stuffing things in her mouth. She thought about the basement puppet shows and all the bottles stuffed with notes she and Ty had set sail on the river. She thought about lying on the trampoline in his backyard, holding hands, looking up at the stars. She thought about his bed. The sheets worn so soft they felt like skin.
It was so hot in the arena, she could barely breathe. “When do you ...”
“Lena and I broke up,” he said, his words tumbling over hers. “In case you didn’t know.”
She didn’t know about California, but she did know about this. She’d heard about the breakup only minutes after it happened, Marcy Madden delivering the news like some wretched present.
“Yeah, I heard.” She nodded, trying not to cry.
“It was kind of stupid,” he said.
“Yeah,” she agreed, not knowing whether he was talking about dating Lena, or
everything
he’d done (and not done) in the last six months.
They sat next to each other in the uncomfortable metal folding chairs. She was sweating so badly, the polyester gown was making a sort of furnace. Everyone was using their programs as fans. You’d think in an ice arena they could make it a little bit cooler. The Zamboni looked like a metallic dinosaur parked at the edge of it all. The commencement speaker was some old guy, an alumnus from like a hundred years ago, who wrote a book about thermodynamics or something. Totally dull. And then, finally, they were being called up on the stage one by one.
“Crystal McDonald,” the principal said, and she took a deep breath. There were a few cheers. She could see her mother and father grinning and nodding in the front row. Her mother was dressed in the red blazer she always wore for open houses; she had one immediately following the ceremony and wouldn’t be joining them for the nice dinner out her father had promised.
When she got back to her seat, clutching the rolled-up diploma, she was suddenly absolutely overwhelmed with emotion. She hadn’t planned on this, hadn’t planned on feeling much of anything besides relief. She wouldn’t have to go to school anymore. She wouldn’t have to dash into the girls’ room every time she saw Ty coming down the hall. She wouldn’t have to spend her entire day avoiding confrontations. It was over now.
California
. He was leaving, and chances were, she would never see him again.
“You know, you could come out and visit me sometime,” Ty said, and Crystal felt her stomach clench. “Like during spring break or something?”
She turned to look at him in disbelief. So now that Lena was out of the picture, he was suddenly interested in salvaging whatever it was they had ever had? Her eyes filled with tears at his audacity, at his stupidity. She wanted to say something that would let him know how much he’d hurt her. Something that would hurt him. But words failed her. They tangled together like knotted shoestrings in her mind, so she said nothing.
They both stared straight ahead for the rest of the ceremony, as everyone with last names from N–Z got their diplomas. It was raining hard outside now; it pounded against the metal roof of the arena. When the principal said, “Congratulations to the Class of 2010!” and everyone threw their mortarboards into the air, she and Ty looked at each other before yanking their caps off. Just briefly, but long enough to make that empty place ache with pain.
Normally, after the ceremony, people would gather outside for pictures, but the rain was coming down so hard now, everyone just found their families and ran for their cars. She lost Ty as soon as they exited the arena. It took her almost ten minutes before she found her parents. By the time her dad pulled the car around for her, she was drenched, her mascara running down her cheeks. But at least nobody knew she was crying. It could have just been the rain.
L
AST
S
UMMER
 
O
n June thirtieth, Kurt peered toward Pop’s house, at the ravaged edges of the yard. It looked barren, stripped. Like a victim of some violent act. Pillaged. It had been raining nearly every day, and the driveway was just a rushing river of mud and gravel and debris. For two weeks he and Maury had spent every spare minute working on cleaning up the yard and making the repairs outlined in the notice from the county. Maury had called in a favor from a contractor friend and gotten an industrial-sized Dumpster for the week. It was brimming with refuse now, completely full. It sat in Pop’s desolate yard like a monster with its mouth hanging open.
Beal had watched the shop for a few extra hours each day, keeping things going, happy for the additional work. He talked about wanting more hours now that the twins were here. His wife hadn’t been able to get the hang of breast-feeding, and formula was costing them a fortune. It made Kurt feel awful, because as soon as this business with Pop was taken care of, he was actually going to have to cut back Beal’s hours. Kurt was dreading that conversation, but he had no choice; taking over Beal’s hours himself could make the difference between making the new mortgage or not. Even with the added income from the night shifts at the 76, they were still coming up short now that the kids were out of school. They’d had to dish out four hundred dollars so the kids could be at swim camp every morning while Elsbeth worked. Four hundred dollars he was going to have to come up with by the time that first balloon payment came on August first. He tried to put it out of his mind, but it was nearly impossible.
Kurt had come back to Pop’s today to be there when the inspectors returned with their clipboards and their checklists. He was pretty sure he and Maury had taken care of all of the infractions, but you never knew. While the outside had mostly been cleared, the dead cars and old trailers towed to the yard, the trash and debris thrown away, the inside of the house was still packed solid. Pop hadn’t let them throw away anything but obvious garbage. He’d refused to get rid of pots and pans and radios and ratty paperback books. He’d gone into a rage about a collection of coffeemakers and toasters Kurt found underneath the kitchen sink when they were repairing a leak.
“This is gonna kill him,” Maury had said, shaking his head.
Kurt had thrown up his hands. “No, living in a rat-infested
house
is going to kill him. Whatever that stuff growing up through the bathroom floors is, is going to kill him. The fucking exposed wires and the rotten drywall are going to kill him.”
Now Pop sat on the front porch on a metal folding chair, a drink in his lap. It was ten
A.M.
He stood up and started to walk into the house, listing, righting himself by grabbing onto the doorway. Kurt didn’t know whether it was his leg or the drink at fault.
“Pop, I think we should at least get the kitchen table cleared off before they come. So they’ve got some place to sit if they need to.”
“No more!” Pop hollered, swaying like he was on a ship.
“We don’t have a choice, Pop. They will take your house away. They’ll take all this
stuff
away.”
“I am a goddamn decorated veteran. I served my country.” Pop looked skinnier than usual: his belt pulled tighter, the waistband gapped. He was unshaven, the few hairs left on his head sticking up. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. His face was furious, red. “Last I knew, this was a free country.” He went into the house, the screen door slamming behind him.
The inspectors pulled up then, one white county car and then another. Kurt was loading up the truck with some stuff he thought he could sell at the salvage yard: some old starters and car stereos, a half dozen steering wheels. He’d assured Pop he wouldn’t throw any of it away and that he’d write him a check for anything that sold.
Irene Killjoy pulled up behind the inspectors and got out of her car, straightening her skirt. “Well, let’s see what sort of progress we’ve made, now shall we?”
Two hours later, the inspectors wordlessly got into their cars and took off.
“Well?” Kurt asked Irene. Pop, who had come and observed the inspection angrily but, thankfully, silently had now gone back into the house, slamming the door shut and locking it behind him.
“It looks like the major infractions have been taken care of,” she said. “Legally, the house is now up to code. However, Mr. Kennedy, from my experience, this is just a temporary fix.” She shook her head sadly, and Kurt felt his shoulders tense. “With all due respect, your father has an
illness
. Trust me, I’ve seen this before. The stuff will come back. He’ll just fill up all that empty space. He doesn’t need a housekeeper; he needs a mental-health professional. I can suggest a wonderful social worker who can work with him on his hoarding issues ...”
“Hold on,” Kurt said, trying to breathe deeply so he would not lose his temper. “The house passed the inspection, correct?”
“Well, yes. For now. But I’m fairly certain there is a deeper problem here,” she said.
“Everything is up to code now. I think it is time for you to get off my father’s property.” Kurt raised his chin, gesturing toward her car.
She sighed, looking at him in the same way that Trevor’s principal did. As if he were someone to pity. Some sad sorry fucker. He knew it was like putting a Band-Aid on a ruptured artery, but Jesus, what else could he do?
“Let me see you to your car,” he said, grinding his back molars together and putting his palm against her back, pushing gently.
“Of course,” she said and awkwardly navigated a string of mud puddles to her car.
“We’d like to follow up with your father at the end of the summer. Unless I receive any complaints sooner.”
“There won’t be any need for a follow-up,” Kurt said.
Irene Killjoy got in her car and started her engine. But when she tried to back out, her car spun out in the mud.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” Kurt said and went to the car.
She rolled down the window and smiled. “Would you mind giving me a little nudge?” Kurt got behind the car and pushed as she revved the engine, but as her tires finally gained enough traction to move forward, the mud was already flying, splattering his jeans. Pop wouldn’t answer the door. He was probably passed out by now. He’d gone through half the bottle of Seagram’s while the inspectors negotiated the piles of stuff in his house. Kurt scratched a note on an old receipt in his pocket and stuck it with the county’s inspection pass notice to his window.
I’ll come by Friday night—K.
T
revor liked to swim. In the water, his body never betrayed him like it did when he was doing something as simple as walking down the halls at school. In the water, he felt coordinated and weightless, fluid.
Free
. He liked the mix of cold water and hot sun, the way the water filled up his ears, numbing his senses. He preferred to swim in natural bodies of water—ponds and rivers and lakes—but the swimming pool was the next best thing. So when his father told him that he and Gracy would be in swim camp all summer, he’d been happy.
It was finally summer. He didn’t have to think about Mrs. Cross or Ethan and Mike or homework or
anything
until September. He couldn’t help but think of Mrs. D. though, and every time he did, it made him feel like he couldn’t breathe. He asked Angie if she’d heard anything, but she hadn’t; all he knew was that she hadn’t come back to school.
He kept taking pictures, but knowing he had no one to show them to made him feel untied somehow, unraveled. He collected all the rolls of undeveloped film in his underwear drawer; the spent rolls of film were like little capsules, little treasure chests for which he had no key. His last commission check from the yard wasn’t enough to pay to process all of them, and he chose to spend what was left on more film.
He’d finished the inventory sheets at the yard last week. He’d also helped his dad upload the remaining pictures to eBay. The increase in business wasn’t what his dad probably hoped for, but they had sold a few things so far: a starter, a catalytic converter, a steering wheel for a ’69 Chevelle. Trevor knew things weren’t going well at the shop. He could read the worry in his father’s face. He’d cut Beal’s shifts back to just a couple of days a week now, and Beal had suddenly gone from friendly and funny to sullen and irritable. Trevor figured his dad would need his help even more now with Beal only there half-time, but instead he said that Trevor could have his summer off as long as he stayed out of trouble. That wouldn’t be hard with both Ethan and Mike on the all-star team for baseball; their summers would be occupied with games and travel. If he was lucky, he might make it a whole summer without having to deal with them.
The first week of swim camp was great. He and Gracy rode into town with his mom on her way to work, and she dropped them off at the pool, giving them each a dollar to get a soda or an ice cream after they were done. Gracy went to the shallow end where all the other little kids were, and Trevor went to the deep end. There were only four kids in his class, and two of them were eighth-grade girls, Savannah and Kylie, he sort of knew from school. They didn’t talk to him, but they weren’t mean either. The other boy was Rudy Hauser, a sixth grader who had just moved to town. Their teacher was a college girl named Lisa who had shaggy red hair and freckles everywhere. She wore a whistle around her neck and had a tattoo of a four-leaf clover on her ankle.
Every morning, they swam laps to warm up, and then she had them work on a particular stroke for the next hour. Trevor liked the backstroke the best, because then he didn’t need to think about breathing. The hour always went fast, and then they got to take their break at eleven. Afterward they worked on their turns or diving until it was time to go. Sometimes they had races, and Trevor always won. When the session was over at noon, he picked Gracy up from the kiddie end of the pool and they went to the snack shack for Popsicles or French fries. Their mom picked them up at twelve thirty, and then they went back to the house, where he usually just changed out of his wet clothes and took off for the woods. Trevor spent every afternoon that first week walking in the woods taking pictures, hanging out in the caboose. He’d cleaned it up, brought some stuff from home (some photo books and comic books and an old beanbag chair). He took a pair of scissors and cut out his favorite photos from the Lewis Carroll book Mrs. D. gave him and hung the pictures on the wall:
Alice as Beggar Girl, Agnes Grace Weld as Little Red Riding Hood, Beatrice in fancy dress
. The few pictures he had of his own looked amateurish in comparison, but he hung them up anyway. The caboose was his own Fortress of Solitude. He would have been happy if summer never ended.
But the second week of swim camp, everything changed.
Trevor knew as soon as they showed the kid at the gate their laminated camp passes that something was different. He could feel it. He walked Gracy over to her class and pulled her Sleeping Beauty towel out of his backpack. The towel was threadbare and Sleeping Beauty’s eyes had worn off, making her look sort of creepy. He pulled his own towel out and went to the locker room and hung his backpack on a hook in an empty locker, stuffing his T-shirt and sneakers inside. Somebody else was in the locker room; he could see their feet underneath the bathroom stall door. He hurried into the shower to rinse off and then walked back outside to the pool.
“Check it out,” a voice behind him said. “Is Bigfoot learning to swim?”
Trevor didn’t turn around. He didn’t have to. It was Mike Wheelock. Right behind him, breathing down his neck. He ignored Mike and walked out of the locker room to the end of the pool where, waiting for him at the deep end, was Ethan Sweeney and another kid from the baseball team. Ethan was in the water, flicking water at Savannah and Kylie, who were sitting on the edge of the pool. They were giggling, “Stop!” Just his luck, it looked like their baseball team was cut from playoffs early, and now here they were here. Of course.
Trevor’s whole body was covered in goose bumps from the cold shower. He rubbed his arms up and down and sat down next to Rudy, who watched as Mike swaggered to the pool’s edge.
“What are
you
looking at?” Mike said to Rudy.
Rudy was smaller than Trevor, with a perpetually runny nose and acne. He knew it was awful, but he couldn’t help entertaining the hope that Rudy might just become a new target for Ethan and Mike, take the burden off him, even just for a while.
Mike cannonballed into the pool, getting everyone at the edge wet, the two girls squealing but not really upset. When he came up for air he high-fived Ethan in the water. Trevor’s eyes stung with chlorine. The air suddenly smelled dank and musty. Rotten. He was grateful when Lisa finally showed up and had them all get into the water to do laps. Today was the breaststroke, and he glided through the water.
“Thought you might be here for
synchronized
swimming lessons,” Ethan said as he climbed up the ladder after he was finished with his laps.
“Water ballet?”
“Just leave me alone,” Trevor said and moved to the far side of the pool.
“Just leave me alone,”
Ethan mocked.
“Okay, that’s enough, boys,” Lisa said, gently knocking Ethan in the back of the head.

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