Chapter Twenty-three 16 page

Over supper he'd almost got to believe it was, because the smiles she gave Frank and Diane and the kids were nothing like it. And maybe he'd imagined it, but when she talked, no matter how generally, it always seemed somehow directed at him. He'd never seen her with her eyes made up before and he watched how they shone green and trapped the candle flame when she laughed.

When everything had exploded and Grace stormed out, it was only Diane being there that had stopped him from taking Annie in his arms and letting her cry as he could see she wanted to. He didn't fool himself that the urge was merely to console her. It was to hold her and know closely the feel and the shape and the smell of her.

But nor did Tom think this made it shameful, though he knew others might. This woman's pain and her child and the pain of that child were all part of her too, were they not? And what man was God enough to judge the fine divisions of feeling appropriate to each or all or any of these?

All things were one, and like a rider in harmony the best a man could do was recognize the feel and go with it and be as true to it as his soul let him.

She switched all the downstairs lights off and as she went up the stairs she saw Grace's door was closed and beneath it that her room was dark. Annie went to her own room and switched on the light. She paused in the doorway, knowing that crossing the threshold somehow had significance. How could she let this pass? Allow another layer to settle unquestioned with the night between them, as if there were some inexorable geology at work? It didn't have to be so.

Grace's door creaked when Annie opened it, pivoting light into the room from the landing. She thought she saw the bedclothes shift but couldn't be sure, for the bed was beyond the angle of light and Annie's eyes took time to adjust.

'Grace?'

Grace was facing the wall and there was a studied stillness to the shape of her shoulders beneath the sheet.

'Grace?'

'What?' She didn't move.

'Can we talk?'

'I want to go to sleep.'

'So do I, but I think it would be good if we talked.'

'What about?'

Annie walked over to the bed and sat down. The prosthetic leg was propped against the wall by the bedside table. Grace sighed and turned over on her back, staring at the ceiling. Annie took a deep breath. Get it right, she kept telling herself. Don't sound hurt, go easy, be nice.

'So you're riding again.'

'I tried.'

'How was it?'

Grace shrugged. 'Okay.' She was still looking at the ceiling, trying to look bored.

'That's terrific.'

'Is it?'

'Well isn't it?'

'I don't know, you tell me.'

Annie fought the beating of her heart and told herself, keep calm, keep going, just take it. But instead she heard herself say, 'Couldn't you have told me?'

Grace looked at her and the hate and hurt in her eyes almost took Annie's breath away.

'Why should I tell you?'

'Grace—'

'No why? Huh? Because you care? Or just because you have to know everything and control everything and not let anybody do anything unless you say so! Is that it?'

'Oh Grace.' Annie suddenly felt she needed light and she reached across to turn on the lamp on the bedside table but Grace lashed out.

'Don't! I don't want it on!'

The blow hit Annie's hand and sent the lamp crashing to the floor. The ceramic base broke into three clean pieces.

'You pretend you care but all you really care about is you and what people think of you. And your job and your big-shot friends.'

She propped herself up on her elbows as if to bolster a rage already made worse by the tears distorting her face.

'Anyway, you said you didn't want me to ride again so why the hell should I tell you? Why should I tell you anything? I hate you!'

Annie tried to take hold of her but Grace pushed her away.

'Get out! Just leave me alone! Get out!'

Annie stood up and felt herself sway so that for a moment she thought she might fall. Almost blindly, she made her way across the pool of light that she knew would take her to the door. She had no clear idea of what she would do when she got there. She merely knew that she was obeying some final separating command. As she reached the door she heard Grace say something and she turned and looked back toward the bed. She could see Grace was facing the wall again and that her shoulders were shaking.

'What?' Annie said.

She waited and whether it was her own grief or Grace's that shrouded the words a second time she didn't know, but there was something about the way they were spoken that made her go back. She walked to the bed and stood close enough to touch but didn't, for fear her hand might be struck away.

'Grace? I didn't hear what you said.'

'I said… I've started.'

It came amid sobs and for a moment Annie didn't understand.

'You've started?'

'My period.'

'What, tonight?'

Grace nodded.

'I felt it happen downstairs and when I came up there was blood in my panties. I washed them in the bathroom but it wouldn't come out.'

'Oh Gracie.'

Annie reached down and put a hand on Grace's shoulder and Grace turned. There was no anger in her face now, only pain and sorrow and Annie sat on the bed and took her daughter in her arms. Grace clung to her and Annie felt the child's sobs convulse them as if they were but one body.

'Who's going to want me?'

'What, honey?'

'Whoever's going to want me? Nobody will.'

'Oh Grade, that's not true…'

'Why should they?'

'Because you're you. You're incredible. You're beautiful and you're strong. And you're the bravest person I ever met in my whole life.'

They held each other and wept. And when they could speak again, Grace told her she hadn't meant the terrible things she'd said and Annie said she knew, but there was truth there too, and how as a mother she had got so many, many things wrong. They sat with their heads on each other's shoulder and let flow from their hearts words they'd barely dared utter to themselves.

'All those years you and Dad were trying for another baby? Every night I used to pray this time let it be okay. And it wasn't for your sake or because I wanted a brother or a sister or anything like that. But just so I wouldn't have to go on being so… oh I don't know.'

'Tell me.'

'So special. Because I was the only one, I felt you both expected me to be so good at everything, so perfect and I wasn't, I was just me. And now I've gone and spoiled it all anyway.'

Annie held her more tightly and stroked her hair and told her this wasn't so. And she thought, but didn't say, what a perilous commodity love was and that the proper calibration of its giving and taking was too precise by far for mere humans.

How long they sat there Annie couldn't tell. But it was long after their crying had ceased and the wetness of their tears had grown cold on her dress. Grace fell asleep in her arms and didn't wake even when Annie laid her down then laid herself beside her.

She listened to her daughter's breathing, even and trusting, and for a while watched the breeze stirring the pale drapes at the window. Then Annie slept too, a deep and dreamless sleep, while outside the earth rolled vast and silent under the sky.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 697