Grace Grows (23 page)

“Grace, I’m certain you mean more to him than those girls.”

“Maybe. But come on! Artists and musicians are not people you can seriously hope to have a life with.”

“So this is about your dad.”

“No! It’s about loving this man and knowing that I want so much more from him than he is going to be able to give. Peg, I have to stop this thing, whatever it is, now. I have to take care of myself.”

I could see that she was finally hearing me, but it had been hard work. I slumped in my chair, exhausted.

“Okay. But I think that you should ask Ty what he wants. Just ask him. To be sure you’re doing the right thing.”

“I won’t be seeing him again. He’s disgusted with me about what happened. He didn’t even say good-bye when he brought me home. And he’s going away. Probably forever. Could I lie down on your bed for a while? I haven’t slept much.”

She came into her bedroom with me. I lay down and she covered me with a knitted afghan. She patted my back. “Everything is going to be all right, Grace.”

“Yeah,” I said tiredly. “This is all good, Peg. Because I don’t want a boyfriend. Or a fiancé. Or a friend with benefits. I just want to be with me.”

“Grace, I’m curious. Why do you think you got so scared, when you realized you love Ty? Why would love be scary?”

“I don’t know. . . . Maybe just the impossibility of the whole thing.”

“Hm. Do you want a little Reiki, to help you sleep?”

“Yes. Please.”

She made some mysterious motions in the air and moved her hands in a light, warm hover around the top of my head, my face, over my heart.

I slept.

Big Green declares independence me, too

Peg went to a friend’s house in the country for Thanksgiving, just for the day. Besides having to come back on Friday for work, I think she didn’t want to leave me alone for too long.

The guy who lived in my room was gone, too, to be with his family in Michigan.

Steven and I had planned to spend the day with his parents, out in Kew Gardens. It worked well for me that Julia and Dan thought I had holiday plans and didn’t pressure me to be with them. They would never know I stayed home alone on the couch in my underwear, wrapped in a quilt, alternately sleeping and watching the same stories over and over on CNN.

Edward came with me on Saturday to get the rest of my belongings. Steven wasn’t there but he had boxed everything up for me and stacked it all by the door.

Edward looked at the neat boxes. “That’s more than any of my exes have ever done for me when we broke up. You sure about this?”

“Please be helpful.”

I started to write a note to thank Steven, to wish him well, but what could I say that wouldn’t sound hollow?

I left the key on the kitchen counter.

At work I had recently been assigned to help Edward project-manage a junior high textbook, U.S. history to 1877. I tried to focus and be productive, but those first couple of weeks were hard. I cried several times a day at the most innocuous triggers: no mayo on my sandwich from the deli; snagging my sweater on the rough edge of a binder; dropping my last, just-unwrapped tampon on the bathroom floor. Edward telling me that we were about to get a revised edition of the
Chicago Manual of Style
sent me home for the afternoon. I crawled onto my air mattress and buried myself under pillows. I had the current edition memorized. How dare they do this to me at a time like this, those
Chicago Manual
bastards!

Peg’s guy roommate did find another place and was moving out December 20, but none too cheerfully. I tried to be friendly and smile at him when I saw him, but otherwise, I hid in Peg’s room.

And it was Christmas in two weeks. I had no idea where to begin. There was no answer for it, I would have to try to do all my shopping online and hope for the best.

I was in terrible physical shape. My shaky stomach lasted a while, so I force-fed myself toast and crackers and matzoh ball soup. Buttered white rice. Ginger ale. Then I started to have a small appetite, but only for appalling non-foods. Count Chocula cereal. Gummy bears. I ate so many scorching Atomic Fireballs and stinging salt-and-vinegar chips in one twenty-four-hour period that the top layer of my tongue peeled away. In three weeks I lost seven pounds and was well on my way to developing rickets and scurvy.

And then, the unthinkable icing on the cake: I lost Big Green. I was coming home from a visit to the Cloisters and in a disastrous moment of mental fog I left it sitting on the train. As the doors were closing I realized what I had done. I stood on the Christopher Street station platform watching it ride away. My cell. My wallet. My lists. Everything Else I Might Conceivably Need was in that bag. It was my safety net, my portable contingency plan for so many possible New York City challenges. Now I would have to rebuild even that from scratch.

I had my second-ever full-blown panic attack. A young Indian-American man saw me hyperventilating and crying and led me to a bench. He gave me his unopened water bottle and sent another concerned stranger off to tell a nearby policeman about my runaway purse. He sat with me through the arrival and departure of three more trains, until I felt well enough to get myself home. When I thanked him and said good-bye, he asked if he could take me to lunch or dinner some time. In another life I might have said yes. He was cute.

“I’m not fit company,” I said, and walked away. Pity party in full swing, but also exasperated with myself. I knew I needed to do something.

That night I wrote down the plan for Part I of the rest of my life. I would start by finding another job after the holidays, some kind of work that I could feel good about, that would put my strengths and passions to good use.

I would practice self-care. I would eat kale and go to yoga. Give my hair a hot-oil treatment once in a while. Buy a premium subscription to the
New York Times
online.

I would maybe try to increase the time I spent with Dan. He had been so helpful, with his advice during my night at the Waldorf.

I would get a much smaller bag than Big Green, and try to live life a little more bravely and spontaneously.

I went to bed and lay in the dark, feeling almost positive after weeks of despair. Then I remembered what had been in my wallet. Ty’s college ID, with the ridiculously adorable photo.

“You were going to get rid of it anyway,” I said out loud.

“Yeah right,” I said back to myself.

I said something else to me, but I couldn’t understand it because by then I was blubbering.

A couple of days after I lost Big Green, I had a meeting with Bill, Edward, and people from Production to review some of the proposed visuals for the U.S. history text. I handed Bill the folder of images we had amassed so far.

We had a gorgeous painting of Chief Agüeybaná greeting Juan Ponce de León on the shores of Florida. A 1612 map of Virginia, published by John Smith. The elegant first page of the original treaty of the Louisiana Purchase (people used to have such nice penmanship!). A photograph of Harriet Tubman. Bill flipped past them all, which meant we were in good shape.

At Thomas Jefferson, the famous 1805 painting by Rembrandt Peale, he stopped flipping.

“What is it, Bill?” I asked.

“Well, I’m just thinking. All this stuff is so dry. It’s for eleven-year-olds, right?”

“Yes, sixth grade.”

“So let’s do something fun. Like, instead of this boring dead president picture, let’s have one of a bowl of ice cream.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, didn’t I read somewhere that Jefferson invented ice cream?”

“I don’t think he invented it,” Edward said. “He just brought a recipe for vanilla ice cream to America from France.” He wrote something on his legal pad and nudged me under the table.

I read:
Close your mouth
.

“So let’s give them something to look at that will actually interest them. All kids like ice cream.”

“Bill,” I said, “what about nutrition?”

Bill waved a hand. “This book is for Wisconsin. They’re big on dairy there.”

“I don’t know . . .” I said. “I mean, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. I really think we ought to have an actual image of him.”

“They see him all the time. He’s on the quarter, for God’s sake.”

“The nickel,” Ed said.

“Whatever,” Bill said.

I gathered up my pad and pen and folders.

“Where ya going, Grace?” Bill asked.

“Would you please excuse me? I’m not feeling well.”

“Sure, go ahead, Ed and I will finish up.”

I went back to my cubicle and Googled “New York City nonprofit jobs.” From there I went to
Idealist.org
and found several positions that seemed worth applying for—executive assistant and coordinator openings at organizations for the homeless and people with disabilities. Then I read a posting that made my dormant life force spark and flare—briefly, but brightly. A city health organization was looking to hire people to do community sexuality education. They would even do the training. I sat up straight in my chair. I could do that! I would
like
to do that. It would be wonderful to do work that was helpful. It might even be a chance to clear out some of that
Healthy Teen
guilt I was carrying around.

I reread the listing carefully, then spent the next hour writing a letter to the director. An impassioned letter, about how I would love the opportunity to help ensure that people, especially youth, receive complete, accurate sexual health information.

I opened up my resumé and looked it over. I had done work-study as a receptionist at the campus health clinic at school. I could perhaps add that I had taken a couple of classes in gender and sexuality studies; otherwise, it was all publishing, ever since graduation. All I had ever been, wanted to be, was an editor. Not really the trajectory for becoming a community health educator. And I had to assume that there were hundreds, thousands, of more qualified people hitting Send right now. But I was doing something about my pathetic life, and that felt great. It was a start.

There was no getting around it: time for my monthly lunch with Julia.

I suggested a Christmassy place, the restaurant next to the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center. I was counting on her holiday spirit to help her process the bad news I was about to present.

No, I had not yet told her that the wedding was off. For which I felt a little guilty. Dan knew; he had drawn the basics out of me in e-mails and instant message conversations. If Julia ever found out that he knew something about me that she didn’t, it would be a very bad scene.

She was waiting for me at a table that looked out on the ice. She saw me coming in and came around the table and grasped my shoulders. “My God, you look awful! Have you been sick? Why didn’t you call me?”

“I’m fine. I’ve just had a little stomach trouble.”

“Have you been to a doctor?”

“I’m getting better. Really.” She was squeezing my arms, frowning. “Please, let’s sit.”

Julia was radiant in a red turtleneck sweater-dress, big silver hoop earrings, and stiletto-heeled boots.

“You look great, Mom.”

She flushed with pleasure. “José gave me this dress. An early Christmas present.”

“Wow, you two are really going strong.”

“Well, we both see other people, you know. It’s casual.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

She laughed uncomfortably. “I insisted on it.”

The waiter came. She ordered a salad for herself and said to me, “And you’re having a nice buttery, creamy pasta. An Alfredo,” she said to the waiter. “With penne. And extra butter and cream.” He went away and she continued with me. “Not that you want to eat like this too often, once you’ve gained a few pounds back.”

“Of course not.”

She pulled a folder out of her bag and started showing me wedding cake designs. It took me a while to work up the nerve.

“Mom, these all look
so
good.”

“But what? Too many flowers? We could have them do one with no flowers and just this lacy pattern in the icing.”

“Mom.” I breathed deeply and exhaled.

She started to look worried. “What?”

“Steven and I are not getting married.”

Grim, staring silence.

“What happened?”

“I can’t do it.”

“You’re nervous. That’s completely normal.”

“I don’t love him.”

“You should go home and talk about your fears with him.”

“I moved out.”

“When?”

“About three weeks ago.”

Not good, the look on her face. “Well, thanks for telling me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ve been making calls, pricing menus.
I have talked to your father on the phone.
”

“I know that was difficult for you. Thank you.”

“And what are we going to do with a three-thousand-dollar wedding dress?”