Grace Grows (9 page)

The song finished and people clapped. Ty said into the microphone, “Hey, Grace.”

I turned around and gave him a little wave.

“Aw, I embarrassed her,” he said. Mass laughter. He began another song.

Peg was sitting with Bogue and a tall, emo-ish, black-haired girl who turned out to be Rash. She was pretty, in a wan, purple-lipped way.

“Rumor is there’s a
New York Times
reporter here, doing a story on Ty,” Peg said.

“Really?”

“Yeah, for a series on singer-songwriters in the city.”

I ordered a glass of wine and asked Rash about herself. She was from Virginia, a psychology student at NYU, and a performance artist. She was working on a new piece, to be staged in front of the New York Stock Exchange. She was going to dress in a man’s suit and run a half-marathon on a treadmill while reading aloud from the
Wall Street Journal
.

“How are you going to power the treadmill?” I asked.

“Generator. And my friend has a van to haul it in.”

“There are a lot of police down there.”

She shrugged. “If I just get five minutes of video, it’s cool.”

I asked about her experience of living with Bogue and Ty.

She leaned closer and spoke confidentially. “Bogue’s a total slob. And he doesn’t have a job yet. But he’s rich, so I guess maybe he doesn’t have to get one if he doesn’t want to.”

“He’s rich?”

“Yeah, his dad owns grocery stores.”

Who knew? “What about Ty?”

“He’s a little better. He hangs up his wet towels. And makes his bed. Which is more than I can say for Bogue. And neither of them jerk off where I can hear them, unlike other guys I’ve roomed with.”

“Maybe you should stick to female roommates.”

“Nah, sometimes I need something heavy moved.”

I excused myself to go to the bathroom. Two girls were huddled over the sink, laughing, fixing their hair and makeup. I recognized them as being on Ty’s street team. The taller, prettier one had on thong undies that were displayed way over the top of her pants in back.

I went into the stall. They were dead silent the whole time I was peeing.

I came out and they made room at the sink.

“Grace, right?” Thong Girl asked.

“Right,” I said.

“So are you and Ty hooking up, or what?”

I thought about not answering such appalling rudeness but it seemed better to squelch a stupid rumor. “No,” I said. “He’s just a friend.”

“Yeah, it didn’t seem like you were his type. No offense.” She flipped her ice-blond hair over her shoulder.

I resisted the urge to grasp the edge of her tiny underpants and give her the mother of all wedgies.

Squeezing back through the crush of people at the bar, I ran into Ty’s manager, Dave. We hadn’t formally met, but he seemed to know me. He was a big, good-looking guy, mid-forties, dark hair and beard. Very white teeth. He smiled at me, so I thought up something pleasant to say.

“Ty sounds great!”

Dave leaned in close. “He’s fucking brilliant. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Till what?” I asked politely.

“Till he makes us both a shitload of money. Enjoy him while you can, soon he’s going to be very, very busy.”

Why? Why did people make this annoying assumption?

“Oh. Well. Hopefully he won’t change that much.”

Dave smiled like he knew a clever secret. “Change is inevitable.”

“Yes. Okay, I have to go now. ’Bye.” I hated being rude, but I needed to get out of there.

I pushed through the drunken multitudes—had the door in sight—when Ty stepped into my path. He grabbed my shoulders, laughing, his eyes glowing from alcohol and the high of performing. His hair had grown out a lot and curled ruddily around his face, brushing his collar.

“Hey!” he said. “Sorry about making everyone look at you earlier.”

“Yeah, that was kind of uncomfortable.”

“Thanks for coming. I thought you didn’t like me anymore.”

“I’ve just been so busy. In fact, I’m sorry, but I have to go now.”

“No, I’m gonna play that new song for you!”

“I’m so sorry, I’ll have to hear it another time.”

He tilted his head and gave me a long, unsmiling look that might have meant he knew what was up. Which was probably for the best.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “Good-bye.”

He kissed me on the cheek, close to my ear. “ ’Bye, Gracie,” he whispered.

SPRING

learning the Heimlich/hearing the song

When March comes I desperately grab on to it. It’s only marginally warmer—the wind and sleet are biting and I know we could have a freak snowstorm in April—but still, I pack away my heavier clothes and start planning picnics.

Self-delusion. I’m good at it.

At work things had settled to avoidance and false camaraderie between me and Bill.
Healthy Teen
was at the printer. Now I was busy proofreading a fourth-grade Indiana history textbook.

I went to Peg’s Vernal Equinox celebration. We had dinner, then lit candles and planted herb seeds in little clay pots. Peg talked about how this was a time of new beginnings, of new growth and fertility. She had us write our prayers for positive change in white crayon on hard-boiled eggs, then one at a time dip them in a bowl of dye made from grated beets.

My turn came. I nudged my egg around in the soupy redness and watched it turn pink.

Peg peeked over my shoulder. “Your egg is so bare. Couldn’t you think of anything you’d like to see change?”

“I needed more time to think about it.”

She sighed and scooped up my egg with a slotted spoon. “Hey, look!”

A tiny, improbable adornment was attached to my otherwise plain pink egg. A fragment of shredded beet in the shape of a perfect little heart.

“Hey, how did you do that?” I asked.

“I didn’t.”

“I mean, how did you make little tiny beet hearts?”

“I didn’t! I just grated them to smithereens.”

“Weird.”

We contemplated the egg.

“It’s a message, Grace,” Peg said. “Pay attention.”

Steven spent the first three weeks of March in London, working on the European patent application for a new drug for blepharitis. I enjoyed the time alone. I liked sleeping in the middle of the bed, spread out, a foot in each corner. I liked walking around naked without worrying about bottom wobble. I liked bringing home page proofs and spreading them out on the table and working while slurping down a half-gallon of takeout tom kha gai. Maybe I dribbled some on my shirt. Maybe I belched. Or worse. Maybe I got up and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and observed that my hair, blindly piled up and banded in a knot on top of my head, made me look like the mayor of Whoville. Maybe all the mascara on one eye had completely disappeared and, on the other, had slid down almost to the corner of my mouth. Maybe, it turned out,
I
was the building’s Boo Radley, not Sylvia. So what? Who was there to see it but me?

It bothered me how okay I was with Steven being away for so long.
But it’s perfect!
my inner deluder reassured me. Because he would always be traveling for work, and it would never make me miserable.

Ty had stopped calling weeks ago. I knew that Peg was still going to see him play on Monday nights. Edward went, too, sometimes. But neither of them talked about it much after I made it clear I wasn’t interested. Sometimes Peg would glare at me during a conversational lull, as if she had something exciting she was just busting to tell me, and I would divert her with a quick dive into a new subject. But I could only hold her off for so long.

“What is your problem with Ty?” she blurted out during one late-night phone call. “What did he do?”

“Nothing!”

“Why won’t you go see him play anymore?”

“You know what it is?” I said. “He’s very flirtatious.”

“So what?”

“Well, he’s just relentless about it. It’s tiresome.”

“He’s a horny young guy, he flirts with everyone. Can’t you just ignore it? I think you may be missing out on a major sociological phenomenon.”

“And that is?”

“Well, I know this sounds cheesy. But a ‘star’ being born.”

“Golly.”

“Seriously, Grace. There are more people there every week. It’s like watching a religion grow. It’s fascinating.”

“It’s not. It’s painful.”

Silence.

“I know that sounds weird,” I said.

“Well, I guess you’re worried about him, or something.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“He’s going to be fine, Grace. Just fine.” Peg sounded a little deflated.

“You know me, always overthinking.”

He was still walking the dogs. I knew the routine, could hear it from my comfy perch in the corner of my couch. He’d come up the stairs whistling every morning at seven thirty. Bismarck and Blitzen would hear him, too, and start woofing till he got the door open. The door closed, muffling his friendly greeting. The door opened. Doggy nails clicked on tile, followed by the shuffling commotion of two big dogs and one (probably) hungover man going down three flights of stairs. Sometimes I’d go to the window in time to catch sight of them ambling toward the park.

At eight, all the seven-thirty arrival sounds played in reverse. At 8:05, he’d have unleashed and watered the hounds and left the building. At 8:15 the coast would be well clear, and I’d leave for work.

Until one Tuesday morning in late March. Major deviation. He came up the stairs late, at 8:07, and slower than usual. No whistling. No jingling keys. There was, however, a knock on my door.

I sat frozen in my couch corner, willing him to go away.

It wasn’t that I expected never to see him again, I just wanted more time in between the last time and the next time. More weeks. Months, even.

He knocked again. I crept to the door and peeked out the peephole. The top of his head was right there. He must have been leaning against the door.

“Grace?”

I stayed very quiet.

“Shit,” he said, and moaned. Yep, hungover.

Finally, he shuffled away, down the stairs, without ever walking the dogs.

I couldn’t give him more than a few minutes to clear out of the vicinity, or I was going to be late for work. I grabbed Big Green and headed out at 8:15, hoping he’d gone in a different direction.

But there he was, right in front of my building. Flat on his back, the bottoms of his black Converse high-tops peeking out among the feet of the five or six people huddled around him.

“Oh God!” I pushed through to him, knelt, and grabbed his shoulders. “Ty!”

He groaned.

“He just sat down on the ground and keeled over,” said the guy with blond dreds who was squatting beside me.

“Tyler! Wake up!”

He obliged me by coming to, blinking at me, grimacing, and rolling onto his side in a fetal position. “
Shit
, Grace!”

“What happened?”

“It fucking hurts!”

“What hurts?”

“I’m fucking dying!”

“You’d better get him to a hospital,” said an old lady carrying a Chihuahua and a Fairway bag.

“Right.” I groped around in Big Green for my cell.

“Don’t wait for an ambulance,” the dreds guy said, getting up. “Get a cab to take you to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt.”

“Right! Good idea,” I said. The guy was already at the curb, his arm in the air. A taxi pulled over.

“Ty.” I pulled on his arms. “Get up. We’re going to the hospital.”

He was moaning, dead weight. I couldn’t move him.

“Ty, please. You have to get up. Hold on to me.”

The dreds guy, the cabdriver, and Salvatore, our street-corner Louis Vuitton handbag-and-used-books vendor, helped me get him in the backseat of the cab.

Ty leaned heavily against me, eyes closed, face tight with suffering.

“Hold on.” I held his hand firmly and tried to sound confident. “We’ll be there in a minute. You’re going to be okay.”

I think I made the wrong career choice. It seems like emergency room workers have way more fun. Every time anyone came through the swinging doors that led into the emergency inner sanctum, I could hear people laughing and whooping it up. Some guy was taking orders for a Starbucks run and wow! Are those people caffeinated. Meanwhile, my friend was lying curled up on his side across three of the vinyl waiting room chairs, pale, sweating, wincing with every breath. It was half an hour before a nurse invited us into the triage room.

He told her that the pain in his abdomen had started at around one a.m. and had grown steadily worse. It felt like being stabbed with needles. And he needed to throw up, but couldn’t.

He had a fever. “Probably a virus,” the nurse said. “Go back to the waiting room and finish getting him registered. We’ll call you.”