HAPPILY EVER BEFORE (2 page)

“I asked out Fireman Jack!”  Grace laughed. “He said yes. Oh yes he did! I laughed like a dolphin and he said, “
yes
.”

Grace walked in the door of her cluttered apartment at
three a.m.
She wasn’t as tired as she usually was when she got home from work. She was completely energized and pumped. She had done one proactive thing today, she asked out a man. Not just a man; the kind that gets his own calendar-- a fireman! She hadn’t been out on a date with a nice guy, hell any guy, since she broke up with Ray. Ray was bad news. And, Ray was gone--along with her money, her car, her jewelry, and her entertainment center. It took Grace a long time to get over Ray. Well, it wasn’t so much the getting over Ray that took so long as it was the restraining order, insurance claims, and the police reports that needed constant re-filing that made it hard to shake Ray from her system. Grace learned a lot from Ray, a lot about what not to do in a relationship. Like the song says. “Breaking up is hard to do,” but it’s much harder when it slowly dawns on you that the minute you started dating that particular individual the person you really broke up with was yourself.

Grace took one look at the utter chaos that was her living space and her spirits were slightly dampened. She sailed past the barbershop chair, the messenger bike, the drop cloth and paintbrushes, and went into the kitchen. She sat at her tiny Formica table and then did what she did every night--made a cup of herbal tension tamer tea and ate a blueberry non-fat, non-sugar scone. It’s hard for anyone to escape his/her past, but for Grace, who had odd remnants of her previous jobs scattered about her apartment, it was impossible. In her kitchen alone there were gourmet coffees, an
über
expensive coffeemaker, a collection of dog leashes that hung next to her
cabinets,
and a deep fryer from her donut days. All of these were reminders of her past as an utter failure. Grace needed a change. She always needed a change. Now the fact that she had found her Popsicle on that random afternoon and it forever altered her life could very well be the reason why she constantly needed change. She desperately wanted to follow her bliss, but she had no idea what it was. She knew it wasn’t being a 911 operator, but it was better than all her other jobs, so until she found her bliss she wasn’t going to quit yet another job while she was on this seemingly unattainable quest.  Her sister, Clair, had accounting and her Mother had art. The Higgins women didn’t speak about their dreams. It’s not that they didn’t think the topic was worthy of conversation, but once you pass a certain age you’re either following your bliss, or not, and no amount of conversation about what you hoped or dreamed to do with your life is going to change that. You were either living it or not--at least that’s what Grace thought. But, unbeknownst to her, as she put her teacup in the sink, dust-busted the crumbs from her scone, and went to bed, a lot of what Grace thought was about to change.

The next morning, Clair stood in front of her sister’s apartment and paced. It was pretty early. Well, it was
seven a.m.
, but that was early for Grace. Clair knew she was too early, but she hadn’t been able to sleep the entire night. It felt like Christmas Eve when she was just too excited for Santa Claus to actually sleep. Clair tossed, turned, and paced the night away. She had tried to call her mom a few times to ask her what she thought, but she lacked the courage and kept hanging up the phone. Thankfully, her mother didn’t have caller ID and most likely figured someone had a wrong number.

That morning, Henry’s pacing and cajoling drove her right out of the house. She hadn’t planned to come here. She had planned to go to Starbucks, but instead, here she was. Clair’s stomach was in knots and she kept checking her handbag to make sure the hermetically sealed red color-coded Ziploc with the wine stained notebook paper was still there. Clair took out her key to Grace’s, opened the door, walked quickly through the lobby and rode the elevator to her sister’s floor. When the doors opened, Clair hesitated and then scooted out. She bit her lower lip as she strolled down the lime green carpet and past the art deco mirrors. Suddenly, there it was--
Apartment
204
.  Clair was about to knock, but she knew her sister slept with earplugs, so she fingered the keys in her hand, sighed, and then unlocked the door and walked inside. Although she’d been in Grace’s apartment at least a million times, every single time she opened the door, all that clutter completely surprised her. Now, in her sister’s defense, Grace was not dirty; she was just disheveled like an old man who lived alone and had no one to tell him to tuck in his shirt or not to wear brown socks with black shoes. Clair stared down the hall past the aprons and massage table and fixated on her sister’s closed bedroom door. With all of the courage she could muster, Clair steadfastly walked down that hallway, opened the door, saw Grace with her blackout curtains drawn shut, earplugs in, cooling gel sleep mask, and white hand softening gloves on and immediately lost every bit of courage she had. She felt extremely guilty, so she gingerly shut the bedroom door, tiptoed back down the hallway, moved the basket of dog toys and accordion files off the couch, and sat down. She looked around the apartment and sighed. She’d just sit here and wait for Grace to wake up. Clair allowed her body to sink into the cushions. Her eyes wandered about the apartment, which she thought was pretty nice if you got rid of all the clutter… BAM! She had a big idea. Not as big as the favor she was about to ask Grace, but an idea none-the-less. One of her errands for today was to take moving boxes to storage. Yes, frightening, but true, Clair actually had a storage unit for moving supplies. It was a color-coded, numerically numbered slice of heaven. The next thing she knew, she was in her car unloading boxes and calling Grace’s landlord to inquire if her sister had a storage unit. For the record, Clair always had in her possession the name and number of every contact person her mother, sister, or husband might ever need in case of an emergency.

Now, as every woman knows, there are boundaries to sisterhood. You can borrow her new sweater if she already wore it more than once; you can’t use her toothbrush-- unless it’s under duress; and you can never date her ex-boyfriend. When it comes to cleaning your sister’s house and organizing her stuff, there is a fine line between being helpful and being intrusive. Clair, who had finally gotten all of the crap that Grace no longer used out of the hallway and into boxes, hoped she was erring on the side of helpful. It was a fascinating undertaking to clean her sister’s house. First and foremost she had wanted to do this for a very long time. Clair believed that clutter begets clutter in all parts of your life. In her opinion, Grace lived in too much clutter. Clair felt that this physical clutter manifested as emotional clutter in Grace’s love life, work life, and every part of her physical and spiritual being, which was why her older sister was such a loveable mess.

The second reason that Clair enjoyed the task at hand surprised her, but the reason was simple--it enabled her to get to know her sister again. Clair had forgotten that Grace was a puzzle freak until she stumbled upon her enormous collection. She uncovered her stash of Archie comics, old mixed tapes, and t-shirts, which would now be considered vintage, and her tenth grade diary. With each item she cleared, straightened, and boxed, Clair saw Grace for what she was--an amazingly kind, smart, and funny woman who thought much less of herself than she really should. And, that always made Clair sad. If her sister could only truly grasp how utterly spectacular she was nothing else would really matter. Two and a half hours later, when the last box was packed, Clair found some teenagers playing basketball in the alley and paid them two hundred dollars to move everything into Grace’s storage unit.    

It was now
eleven a.m.
and Clair, who had stacked and organized her sister’s storage unit, was exhausted and hungry. She ate one of Grace’s non-fat, non-sugar blueberry scones and decided that the time had come. Clair once again mustered up some courage, walked down that hallway, admired her handy work along the way, opened the door and saw Grace with her blackout curtains drawn shut, ear plugs in, cooling gel sleep mask, and white hand softening gloves on and gently called to her, “Grace, Grace, Racy Gracie, come on sweetie, we need to talk.” Clair nudged her leg then gently took out one of Grace’s earplugs.
“Racy Gracie.”

Grace rolled toward her, “go away.”

Waking her up was always a hassle-- even when she hadn’t worked nights. “Come on Gracie, we need to talk.”

Grace tried to roll away, but Clair blocked her. “Clair Bear, leave me alone. I had an accidental poisonings, a suicide attempt, and a drive-thru…”

“Shooting?
Where?”

“Not drive by, drive thru. A kid climbed through the drive-thru window at McDonald’s to rob the place and got trapped. They had to use the french-fry grease to get him out. Go away!”

 “We need to talk. I have something to ask you--it’s pretty important.”

Grace pulled herself away. “Is mom okay, is anybody dead?”

“No one is dead, mom is fine, really.”

Grace pulled the pillow over her head. “Then leave a note; I’ll call you later, okay?”

Clair reasoned a note would make it easier. She wrote a short note, shoved it under Grace’s sleep mask and left. Well, she thought, I guess I have time to reorganize her fridge. Clair walked down the clutter free hallway and into what was now a spacious living room when Grace came barreling through and almost knocked her down.

Grace struggled to take in her surroundings. “What the fuck?”

Clair was unsure what she was reacting to and in order to buy time she continued into the living room and sat in the chocolate brown leather club chair that faced a most spectacular view of the city. As Grace followed her, she looked around in wonder. Her mind was still filled with the early morning
fuzzies
and if she hadn’t known better she would have thought she had stepped into an adult version of “The Little Princess,” and that someone had come in the thick of night and given her the apartment of her dreams. Grace sat on the couch and for the first time in a really long time she was able to stretch out her long limbs. “Okay, obviously this isn’t my apartment, so I’m hoping that note is for the person who lives here. What the fuck is going on?”

Clair decided to dive in headfirst. “Nervous energy and, you know, organizing calms me down. There was nothing left to organize at my place so I came here.”

Grace’s eyes narrowed, “to organize my life or my womb?
Which, by the way, you technically didn’t even ask.
You put a note under my pillow and then nine months later I put a baby under yours? Are you drunk?”

Clair winced, “you told me to write a note.”

 “I thought you wanted to borrow my Donna
Karan
skirt. What were you thinking? I get you organizing my apartment because, well, you’re a freak. But, why do you need me to have your kid? I’m just not getting this. I don’t even know where all my stuff is.”

 
“In your storage unit.”

“I have a storage unit?”

Clair had to smile. “It’s in the basement; the keys are hanging on the kitchen counter.”

 Grace was still shell-shocked. “How did you know I had a storage unit? Forget that. How in the hell did you get everything into it?”

“I called your landlord and I paid some kids two hundred bucks to move it all. Oh and I did a complete inventory it’s on the kitchen table. You know, you could make some decent money selling that stuff on E-Bay.”

 “So, is it all in storage or did you toss some of it away like that time I went on tour with Death Parade and when I got back, all my beer can art magically threw itself out?”

Clair laughed. “You weren’t on tour; you were less than twenty-five miles away. And, if I’ve said this once, I’ve said it a million times--tour means more than one gig! Hell, it means leaving the city you live in.  You had one gig in your own home town.”

Grace sighed, “You didn’t answer the question.”

“Nothing, and I stress this, nothing was thrown away--not even your pathetic collection of Flintstone jelly glasses.”

“Well,
good
. It’s my stuff and I should decide if it gets thrown out or not.”

They sat there. They weren’t really at a stalemate, but honestly, neither of them wanted to be the one to bring up the bigger and more important question that was looming over them, which was bigger and more important than either of them had ever imagined. Truth be told, they had each at some point gone over the whole donate an organ to your sister/mother scenario and had decided on their own that this was something they would be open to doing. In their minds all the bigger and more important questions that ever could be asked, up to and including, be my Maid of Honor, designated driver, and emergency contact had been asked. The womb thing was big. It was overwhelmingly mind boggling huge. There was a lot to consider. To lend your sister your womb pretty much meant that you lent her your body for at least two years. Who knew how long it would take to get pregnant, and then well, you had to carry the child for at least nine to the ten months and then depending on what type of delivery you had and all tons of other complicated shit, you just never knew when you would be able to call your body your own again.

Grace was still confused. “Why do you need me or anyone to have your kid?”

 “The fluid in my womb is septic and attacks the sperm, which is what birth control does. Turns out I could have avoided that nightmare my whole life.”

Grace felt horrible. Clair loved children. When they were growing up she was everyone’s favorite babysitter, parents and kids alike. “Clair bear, I wish there was something I could to do to help.”

Clair whispered, “
have
my baby.”

“Okay, let me rephrase that. I wish there was some way I could help that didn’t include my uterus.”  

They sat in silence. Neither of them had imagined that they couldn’t have kids. There was no rulebook to follow. No Miss Manner’s Guide on how to ask your sister to lend you her womb. There was no proper way to do it, other than just doing it.

Clair got up to find her bag. “I know this isn’t the same as borrowing a sweater, but I want to have a baby and this is the only way I’ll ever be able to do that.” She located her Kate Spade bag and pulled her hermetically sealed Ziploc out of it.

“Sweetie, I hate to break it to you, but you won’t be having it, I will. I’ll have the labor, the weight gain, and the flatulence. Can’t you adopt?”

Clair blurted, “
no
,” so angrily that she startled Grace. “I mean, we can, but I don’t want to. I know it’s completely selfish, but I want my first child to be a part of me and Henry and you and mom and dad.”

Grace sighed.
“Dad?
Low blow, that’s not fair.”

Clair handed her the Ziploc. A confused Grace opened the bag and pulled out the wine stained notepaper.
“OMIGOD.
You kept this? I was nineteen, I had horrible judgment, and I had a spiral perm for Christ’s sake! I also said I would kill
Tori
Spelling; do you want me to do that before or after I have your baby? Clair, this was not serious. We were just having fun. I was drunk, I mean really, really drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Clair leveled her with a teary eyed look, “Which is what most teenage mothers say when they find out they’re pregnant and yet I can’t have a baby. Just think about it.”

Grace had to clean up her life before she even considered having her own kid, but having someone else’s? That was huge. It wasn’t just any old someone else it was her sister, her baby sister. “Do you mind me asking? What does Henry think about this?”

 “Henry thinks I’m wrong to ask you to do this for us.”

Grace got defensive. “Why doesn’t he think I’m good enough?”

“OMYGOD, no, I mean he thinks you’re good enough, he thinks I’m being a selfish bitch in asking.”

 “I knew I liked him,” Grace leaned back into the couch, “drunken pact or no drunken pact, I’m not making any promises, but I’m going to think about this, really think about this.”        

Clair squealed and pulled Grace into a big hug. “Did you tell Mom?”

Clair hugged her sister tighter. “Not yet. Not until you make your decision.”