Jane Austen Goes to Hollywood (2 page)

“Hallie, it’s OK.” Grace was too tired for this. Only her sister could switch from wishing she’d killed their dad herself to blaming Grace for not loving him enough, all in a single breath.

“No, I mean it!” Hallie cried, wide-eyed. “I know you cared, of course you do. I just don’t understand how you can be like this. So,
calm.
”

Grace didn’t reply. Hallie said “calm” like it was a dirty word, but Grace didn’t see what choice she had. Anger wasn’t getting Hallie anything, besides headaches and dehydration, and denial may suit her mom just fine, but Grace preferred to function in the real world. The world hadn’t stopped when their father left them, and it wouldn’t cease spinning now that he was dead. There were distant relatives to console, a chem paper to write for school by Monday, the search for a summer job.

They’d managed well enough with a part-time father these last two years. Grace suspected they’d manage just fine without him around at all.

Portia’s penthouse was apparently besieged by renovations, so the reception was held back at their house. By the time Grace and Hallie arrived, the block was jammed with shiny cars parked inches apart on the perilous incline. The neighbors had all long since succumbed to big-money developers who put up luxury apartment complexes with wraparound decks; charging young professional types half a million dollars or more for a one-bedroom condo with a view all the way to the bay. But Grace’s parents had always held fast. The ramshackle, three-story Victorian sat squarely at the top of the hill, surrounded by an overgrown garden plot that was equal parts wild roses and weeds, and spelled death to any mower that tried to tame it.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.” Another well-wisher clasped Grace by the hand. “Is Valerie around?”

“In her studio, I think.” Her mom had disappeared up to the attic as soon as they got home, and Hallie too, leaving Grace alone on the front line to handle the torrent of platitudes. “Thank you for coming.”

“So brave.” The middle-aged woman cupped Grace’s cheek. Grace tried not to recoil from the touch. “Such a tragedy.”

“Thank you,” Grace repeated. “There’s food set up in the living room, and drinks, if you want.”

The woman finally moved off, and another mourner took her place. “What a terrible waste.”

Grace nodded numbly. Out of church, it was easy to see the divide, between her father’s old life, and his new one. Her stepmother’s crowd was straight backed, adorned with hats and designer black mourning attire. They carried tiny dogs, and wore family jewelry, and probably did things like play golf, and yacht. And they were white. A sea of pale faces; Jewish at best, Grace noticed wryly; they were barely even tan. Their group — their mother’s group — was a more motley crew: college professors, artists, activists. The people who had known and loved her father before. Before the long hours and corner office. Before the personal trainer and new suits. Before he’d made enough money to catch the eye of his East Coast event planner, and decided that he wanted an “after,” after all.

“Grace, dear.” She felt a tug on her sleeve, and turned to find Portia frowning at her. “Are those shrimp puffs on the buffet gluten-free?”

Grace blinked. “I don’t know,” she answered slowly. “You’d have to ask the caterer.”

“I can’t find her anywhere,” Portia tutted. “And you know Dash has a wheat intolerance. I e-mailed you a list of his diet requirements.” She looked at Grace expectantly, her skin stretched tight and luminous over the sharp angles of her cheekbones.

“There are vegetables too,” Grace offered. “I think I saw crudités?”

“Yes, but Dash wants the shrimp puffs.” Portia looked impatient. Grace sighed.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’ll go find out for you.”

“Please don’t be long.” Portia’s tone belied the politeness of her words. “He gets so cranky when he’s hungry.” She saw somebody behind Grace and lit up. “Delilah! Darling!”

Grace watched her waft across the room. She was beautiful, there was no doubt about it, but to Grace it had always seemed a cool, precise kind of beauty: her hair smoothed back, her outfits always crisp and formfitting. Grace had met her around her father’s office a couple of times before — well, before
it
happened — and remembered feeling intimidated by her glossy kind of perfection. Like Portia had read a memo on how to be a woman that Grace couldn’t even decipher.

She’d never suspected for one moment what was to come.

The room was suddenly unbearably hot; her wool tights prickling against her skin. Grace retreated to the kitchen, but there was no sign of the caterer.

“You must be one of the daughters.” An older woman squinted at her through wire-rimmed spectacles. “Helena, isn’t it?”

“That’s my sister, I’m Grace,” she corrected, but the woman was already beckoning over a group of proper-looking guests in starched shirts and high-necked blouses.

“This is one of them. You know, the girls from his first marriage.” She said it with a hushed voice, like it was a scandal.

One of the men assessed her curiously. “You can’t really see it, not like with Dashwood.”

“Oh, I know!” the woman exclaimed. “That boy is the spitting image of his daddy. You have your mother’s looks,” she added, patting Grace absently on the arm.

They were wrong. Both girls looked like their father, he had always said so. Grace had his eyes and his laugh, and Hallie shared his smile. But Grace didn’t bother correcting the group; to them, there was no way two black girls could look like their white father. They may not have been half as dark as their mother — second-generation Nigerian, by way of Philadelphia — but Grace had learned years ago that there were some people who would never look long enough to register the difference. Black was black, regardless of shade or hue.

“Such a tragedy. You at least had time with him,” another woman told Grace. “And poor, poor Portia . . .”

“Poor Portia,” they all echoed.

Grace tried to catch her breath. Her head was throbbing now, and the crowd seemed to close in on her, a mass of dark tailored clothing and insincerity. “Excuse me,” she murmured, backing away, but the moment she stepped back into the living room, she was accosted by Portia’s impatient call. “Grace? Grace, the puffs!”

Grace quickly turned to head the other direction, but bumped straight into another guest.

“Grace, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” The woman crushed Grace against her generous chest. She was an artist friend of her mother’s, Grace remembered, a wild-haired woman with a penchant for spoken-word poetry and healing crystals. “You must be devastated. Wrecked!”

Grace struggled to breathe.

“Let it out, I always say. You have to let it all out!”

“I . . . I can’t. . . .” Grace pulled away, gasping for air. “I’m sorry, I have to . . .” She turned and dashed toward the back kitchen door, the woman’s words calling after her.

“Work through the pain, sugar!”

Outside, it had begun to rain, a misty drizzle that clung to Grace’s face as she hurried across the overgrown lawn and into the thicket of elm trees at the back of the yard. The trees were wide and shady here, a natural hideaway out of view from the house.

Grace made straight for the largest tree and scrambled up the ladder nailed to the side of the gnarled bark. The tree house had been her father’s pride and joy, the greatest achievement of a man who could barely replace a blown fuse. It was simple, sure — a sturdy floor lodged over the V of two wide branches, planks hammered into uneven walls, a dripping roof — but it was hers. Grace had spent hours up here as a child, cataloging leaves and bugs into her notebooks, while Hallie danced around with the fairies below, and staged dramatic readings of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Later, her father had brought up a telescope, and shown Grace her first glimpse of the infinite possibility of the night sky: that the random scattering of stars was actually a precise moving equation, a million forces pinning the whole universe together.

Grace pulled an old blanket from the chest in the corner and settled cross-legged on the damp floor, looking out through the trees to the city below. From here, the world was shrouded in thick white mist, only the vague outline of the bridge visible in the distance. Grace shifted, and heard the rustle of paper in her pocket. Her poem.

She pulled it out, crumpled and creased, but didn’t unfold it. She didn’t need to.

“ ‘When I am dead, my dearest,’ ” Grace began, her voice soft. “ ‘Sing no sad songs for me.’ ”

She’d learned it in fourth grade, for an intramural speaking contest. Her father had helped her, drilling the lines every night with the promise of a dollar to spend at the bookstore for every time she made it through without an error. In the end, she’d lost the competition to a whey-faced girl reciting a limerick about her dog, but it didn’t matter; Grace’s father had presented her with a beautiful leather-bound guide to the night sky, illustrated with every constellation. Roxy Heatherington could keep her silly certificate; Grace had won the prize that really mattered.

“ ‘Plant thou no roses at my head, nor shady cypress tree.’ ” Her voice was stronger now, the lines spilling from her lips with barely a conscious thought. “ ‘Be the green grass above me, with showers and dewdrops wet, and if thou wilt, remember, and if thou wilt, forget. . . .’ ”

Grace paused, the words catching in her throat. She hadn’t grasped it as a child. This was a poem about death. About what happened after we were gone — or didn’t happen. Was her father dreaming through his twilight? Did he remember, or was there nothing left of him with which to even think? Hallie was the one who believed in spirits, in souls; Grace had always believed in science instead.

“Rossetti, right?” A voice came from below. Grace made a startled noise, and grabbed the door frame to stop herself from tumbling right out of the tree.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Grace caught her breath and peered down. A teenage boy was staring up at her. Hallie’s age, maybe a little older, wearing a black jacket with something under his arm. He had square-rimmed glasses, his brown hair already tufting in the rain. “I always liked that one,” he added. “The poem, I mean. And ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep.’ Mary Elizabeth Frye, I think.”

Grace recovered. “Can I help you?” she asked, trying to sound polite.

“I was actually looking for a place to hide.” The boy glanced back toward the house, then gave Grace a rueful smile. “It’s pretty crowded in there, and my sister is being . . . let’s just say, demanding.”

He wanted to join her in the tree house, Grace realized with dismay. “I don’t know if it’ll take the weight.”

“I have food.” The boy offered up a box from under his arm with a hopeful expression.
The
box.

Pie.

Grace relented. “OK, but be careful, the ladder is kind of . . .” She trailed off as the boy expertly scrambled up the tree. “Weak,” she finished as he collapsed on the floor beside her.

“Practice,” he explained. “I climb rigging all the time out on the water.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “You’re one of
them.
” He looked quizzical. “The people who yacht.”

The boy laughed, then offered his hand. “I’m Theo.”

Grace shook it carefully. “Grace.”

“I know,” he replied, easing open the pastry box. “We met before, at the christening.”

Grace paused, assessing him again. But she had nothing. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember. That day was kind of . . . a blur.”

It was the only other time she’d stepped foot in that fancy church, exactly nine months after her father had left them. (The math was unavoidable.) Hallie had refused to go, of course, so it was left to Grace to stand politely in the front pew while baby Dash wailed so loudly even the pastor looked nervous to bless him. All Grace remembered was the reception afterward at some upscale hotel, and the fancy layer cake with chocolate frosting she’d eaten until she felt ill.

Faced with the pie there on the floor between them, Grace brightened. Maybe she wasn’t a terrible person, after all; maybe that was just her mind’s way of dealing with tragedy. In times of unbearable sadness, she thought about baked goods.

Theo must have seen her expression. “You like blueberry?” He pulled a fork and some napkins from his breast pocket and passed them over. “Go ahead.”

Grace cut a couple of misshapen slices. “So how did you know my dad?” She passed a crumbling wedge to Theo. “You’re one of Portia’s crowd, aren’t you?”

“You could say that.” Theo took a bite, smearing blueberry filling across the side of his face. He laughed awkwardly, wiping his mouth. “She’s my sister.”

“Oh.” Grace blinked. She’d known Portia had a younger brother, two of them, in fact, but had always pictured them just like her: perfectly coiffed hair and an elegant smile. Theo’s tie was askew, his hair stuck out in wet tufts, and there was still a blueberry smudge on his chin. Still, there was something comforting about his haphazard appearance; she’d had just about all the fake perfection she could take.

“How is Portia doing?” Grace ventured at last, more because she felt she ought to than because she actually cared.