The Murderer's Daughter (29 page)

Another word filed for future investigation.

Malcolm: “Pundits are nitwits, for the most part.”

Sophie: “Any self-designated expert is by nature fraudulent, Mal, no?” To Grace: “That applies even to this guy and myself. Just because we have fancy professorial titles doesn't mean we know any more than anyone else.”

Malcolm: “Anyone including you, Grace.”

Grace shook her head. “Maybe I know more about being twelve but you know more about almost everything else.”

Laughter from across the dinner table.

Sophie: “Don't be so sure, dear.”

Malcolm, chortling: “Looks like we fooled her.” He leaned over, as if to tousle Grace's hair. Stopped himself. He never touched her. Grace was thirteen and in all the time she'd been living here, physical contact between her and Malcom had been limited to accidental brush-bys.

Sophie occasionally touched her hand, but not much else.

Fine with Grace.

Now Sophie put down her silver salad fork and said, “Honestly, dear, don't sell yourself short, you know more than you think you do. Yes, experience is important. But you can gain that. All the experience in the world won't help an idiot.”

“Amen,” said Malcolm, and he speared another lamb chop.

Sophie had served up a platter of chops along with tossed salad, thick fried potatoes, which Grace found delicious, and brussels sprouts, which smelled and tasted to her like something dying.

Sophie: “Don't eat the sprouts. I've cooked them poorly, they're bitter.”

Malcolm: “I think they're fine.”

Sophie: “Darling, you think canned sardines are gourmet fare.”

“Hmmph.”

Grace ate another yummy piece of potato.

Especially with Sophie,
Grace was careful not to overdo the good-manners stuff because Sophie was good at spotting fakes. Like with antiques in the magazines she subscribed to. Sometimes she'd look at a picture of furniture or a vase or a sculpture and nod approvingly. Other times, she'd say, “Who do they think they're kidding? If this is Tang dynasty I'm Charlie Chaplin.”

In general, Grace was polite but normal about it. Following a rule she'd set for herself a long time ago.

If people like you, maybe they won't hurt you.

Sometimes, mostly at
night, alone in her big, soft, sweet-smelling bed, snuggling under a down comforter, sucking her thumb, Grace thought about Ramona.

The slimy-green pool.

That inevitably connected to Bobby in his bed, air tube hissing.

Terrible Sam. His brother and sister, scared as squirrels fleeing a hawk.

When those thoughts invaded Grace's brain, she worked hard to throw them out—to
evict
them, a word from her vocabulary lesson that she liked because it sounded hard, mean, and final. Finally, she figured out that the best way of clearing her brain was to think of something nice.

A delicious dinner.

Recalling Malcolm saying she was brilliant.

Sophie's smile.

Being
here.

Two months after
her thirteenth birthday—an event celebrated at the fanciest restaurant Grace had ever seen, in a hotel called the Bel-Air—she discovered something other than sucking her thumb that helped her feel peaceful: touching herself between her legs, where hairs were sprouting like grass. Feeling dizzy and nervous, at first, but afterward warm and soft in a way she'd never experienced.

And she could do it by herself!

Combine all those things and bad thoughts didn't have a chance.

Soon, she stopped remembering anything that had happened before she lived on June Street.

Sophie could cook
very well but, as she reminded Grace more than once, she didn't like it.

“Then why do you do it?”

“Someone has to, dear, and Lord knows Malcolm's a disaster in the kitchen.”

“I can learn.”

Swiveling from the big six-burner Wolf range, Sophie looked at Grace, sitting at the kitchen table, reading a book on the birds of North America. “You'd learn to cook?”

“If you want me to.”

“You're offering to relieve me of culinary duties?”

“Uh-huh.”

Sophie's eyes got a little wet. She put down her pot holder and came over to Grace, cupped Grace's chin and bent, and for a moment Grace was worried Sophie was going to kiss her. No one had ever kissed her, not once.

Maybe Sophie could tell Grace was worried, because she just chucked Grace's chin and said, “That is a gracious offer, my dear Ms. Blades. One day I may take you up on it, but please don't ever feel you need to take care of us. We're here to take care of you.”

It was the first time since Grace had moved in that someone had touched her nicely on purpose.

“Okay?” said Sophie.

“Okay.”

“Then it's settled. We will cast off the shackles of domesticity tonight and the eminent but selectively inept Professor Bluestone will take us both out to dinner. Somewhere pricey and chichi. Sound good?”

“Sounds superb.” Another great word.

“Superb it is, dear. I'm thinking French because no one understands haute cuisine like the French.”

“Haute couture, as well,” said Grace.

“You know about haute couture?”

“From your magazines.”

“Do you know what “haute” means?”

“Fancy.”

“Strictly speaking it means ‘high.' The French are all about dividing their world into highs and lows. With them, there aren't just restaurants, there are cafés, bistros, brasseries, and so on.”

“Which one are we going to tonight?”

“Oh, definitely a restaurant. Malcolm must treat us like the haute gals we are.”

That evening, at
a place called Chez Antoine, Grace had a complicated time. Wearing a stiff dress that scratched her, she was a little frightened of the dark, nearly silent room filled with fast-walking black-suited waiters who looked as if they were ready to find fault.

She said yes to everything, enjoyed the meat and the potatoes and some of the green vegetables. But she felt her stomach heave when one of the grumpy waiters brought out little iron skillets of—could it be, yes it was—oh, God,
snails
! As if that wasn't enough, another waiter brought plates of little bony things that looked like baby chicken legs and Grace thought how mean to kill tiny chicks but then Malcolm explained they were the sautéed limbs of
frogs
!

She tried not to watch as Malcolm and Sophie stuck tiny forks into the snail shells, pulled out gross clumpy lumps covered with parsley, chewed and smiled and swallowed. Tried not to listen as the frog legs crunched under the weight of Malcolm's heavy jaws.

Look listen learn, look listen learn.

When Malcolm held out a frog leg to Grace and said, “Don't feel obligated but you might surprise yourself and like it,” Grace sucked in her breath and took the smallest nibble and found the taste not great but okay.

Pretend it really is a baby chicken. No, not that, too gross. How about an adult chicken that just didn't grow because it was sick or something.

A chicken with a problem in the pituitary gland. She'd learned about that in her biology lesson two weeks ago.

“Thank you, Malcolm.”

“Glad you like it.”

I like everything about this dream.

By age fourteen
and a half, Grace had begun to think of herself as belonging in the big beautiful house. Dangerous feeling, but she couldn't help it, she'd been here longer than anywhere else.

Except that place in the beginning but that didn't count.

Sometimes she even let herself imagine she belonged to Sophie and Malcolm. But not owned in that crazy way she'd read about in the poems she studied. This was something more…civilized.

Three months ago, she'd taken a huge chance and allowed her fingertips to brush Sophie's hand when they were shopping at Saks, in Beverly Hills. Lingering long enough for Sophie to maybe understand.

Sophie squeezed Grace's hand gently and took hold of it and the two of them walked that way for a few moments until Grace grew twitchy and Sophie let go.

Later, when they were finishing a light lunch in the Saks tearoom, Sophie was the one to initiate: running her long, delicate fingers along the side of Grace's cheek.

Smiling, as if she was proud.

They'd come to buy bras for Grace.

Sophie remained outside the dressing room, but not before offering advice: “Make sure it fits perfectly, dear. It will mean all the difference between proper support and backaches when you're my age.”

Grace understood; Sophie's bosoms were large for a woman so slim. Grace's own breasts were little more than bumps, though her nipples had doubled in size.

She said, “Makes sense. Thanks for taking me, Sophie.”

“Who else, dear? We girls have to stick together.”

By fifteen, Grace
had small, soft tufts of blond armpit hair and a reddish-blond triangle of pubic hair that she explored with her fingers to get herself in the mood before she masturbated each night. Downy nearly white hairs on her legs were close to invisible but Sophie showed her how to shave them anyway, without nicking herself.

“Use a fresh disposable razor every time and put this on first.” Handing Grace a glass bottle filled with golden lotion, the label lettered in French cursive. “It's got aloe in it, that's a spiky plant that looks pretty unimpressive but is impressively multitalented.”

Grace knew about aloe, about all sorts of botanical specimens. Her lessons were all college-level or above now, and Malcolm informed her that her vocabulary was that of “a doctoral candidate at a damn good university, remarkable, really.” Everything floated easily into her brain except math, but if she worked hard enough she could get that, too.

And that was her world: the three of them, Ransom Gardener every so often, occasionally Mike Leiber.

Mostly, her studies.

Once, in the beginning, Malcolm and Sophie had asked her if she wanted to meet other children. Grace decided to be honest and said, “I'd prefer not,” and when they asked again, months later, and got the same answer, the subject never came up again.

Then…

It was a Sunday. Grace was fifteen and two months.

Malcolm raked leaves in the backyard and Sophie read a stack of magazines under the giant quince tree at the rear of the garden. Grace was off by herself, stretched out on a lounge chair near the rose beds, reading Coleman's text on abnormal psychology and trying to fit people she'd known into various diagnostic categories.

Suddenly Malcolm stopped raking and Sophie stopped reading and the two of them looked at each other and came over to Grace.

A couple of giants converging on her.

“Dear,” said Sophie, “do you have a minute?”

Grace's stomach—her entire gastrointestinal tract, she'd learned anatomy and could visualize the organs—began quivering. She said, “Of course.” Amazed at how calm she sounded.

Or maybe she didn't because Malcolm and Sophie looked uncomfortable and when grown-ups looked that way it was a bad sign.

A
precursor.

“Let's go inside,” said Sophie, and that clinched it. Something terrible
was
going to happen. Grace was surprised, but at the same time she wasn't because you never knew when life would turn disappointing.

Sophie took Grace's hand and found it clammy with sweat but she held on and led Grace into the house, ending in the kitchen. Explaining, “I'm in the mood for lemonade,” but not coming close to convincing.

Malcolm, trailing behind and still looking uncomfortable—that horrible
concerned
look—said, “Lemonade and ginger cookies. To hell with the avoirdupois.”

Sophie set the
lemonade and three kinds of cookies on the kitchen table. Malcolm ate two cookies immediately. Sophie looked at him and raised an eyebrow and held the plate out to Grace.

“No, thank you.” Now Grace's voice was quivering stronger than her intestines.

Sophie said, “Something wrong, dear?”

“No.”

Malcolm said, “You've got a sensitive antenna, Grace.” Addressing her by name; this had to be
really
bad.

They were kicking her out. What had she done? Where were they sending her?

She burst into tears.

Sophie and Malcolm leaned forward, each of them taking a hand.

“Sweetheart, what's wrong?” said Sophie.

Grace was helpless against the torrent of water pouring from her eyes. She felt out of control. Like the psychotics she'd read about in Malcolm's psychology books.

“Grace?” said Sophie, stroking her hand. “There's nothing to be upset about. Really—”

Then the water stopped pouring out and words took their place, as if someone had turned Grace upside down and shaken the speech out of her. “I don't want to leave!”

Sophie's deep-blue eyes were huge behind her glasses. “To leave? Of course not—oh, my God, you thought—Mal, look what we've done, she's terrified.”

And then Professor Malcolm Bluestone, who'd never touched her, walked behind her and placed one huge, padded hand on her cheek, the other lightly on her shoulder, and kissed the top of her head.

Another man might've spoken softly and gently. Malcolm boomed with authority. “You are not leaving, Ms. Grace Blades. You are ensconced here for as long as you choose to be. Which from our perspective is forever.”

Grace cried some more until she'd emptied herself of tears and had to gasp to regain her breath. Feeling relieved but now worse than stupid—idiotic.

She vowed never to lose herself that way again. No matter what.