Finding Grace (12 page)

I turn the card over. It is addressed to Grace. The hand is old-fashioned, with flourishes and loops on the g's and f's.

I sat there looking at the postcard, turning it over in my hands.

When my mask was dry I put the postcard back in the box and put the box back in the study.

I went into the bathroom and washed the mud mask off my face. I washed Grace's hair and face. I used a big sponge, squeezing the water out over her head. I helped her out of the bath and wrapped her in a big fluffy bathrobe. I sat her on top of the toilet and rubbed some night cream into her face and neck, and then rubbed some moisturizing cream into my own face.

“There, now we are beautiful!” I said to Grace.

I pulled on her jammy jams and put her to bed. I sat up next to her and read aloud for a while. Prickles jumped onto the bed and curled up in the crook of Grace's knees.

Grace's face was shiny in the light of the bedside lamp.

When Grace was asleep, I walked around the house turning off lights and locking the doors. I hopped into my own bed. I lay there for a while on my back, resting my head on my forearm.

I thought about the postcard from Grace's mother. It was an ordinary postcard, saying all the normal things that people say on postcards.

I started to drift off. There's nothing like a bit of pampering to give you a good, long, relaxing sleep.

I took
Grace to the movies this morning. There is one of those huge cinema complexes in the shopping center about ten minutes away. Grace's house is so central! If nothing else, this girl has an eye for real estate.

I dressed her up, put makeup on her face and even blow-dried her hair with a big round brush. I didn't dress her in a tracksuit. I found a long burgundy dress in the wardrobe and put her new shoes on her feet. She looked pretty good.

I took her in the car. Luckily the theater isn't too far away, because I only have the one snorkel. Before I left I got a piece of paper and I rolled it into a cone shape and put it in Grace's
mouth. I curled her hand into a fist around it, but she wasn't having a bit of it. I put the snorkel in the glove box.

When I was buying the tickets, Grace was standing at the edge of the entrance area, looking out at the pinball parlor across the corridor. She was standing there on the ugly carpet they always have in the foyer at cinemas.

While I was standing in line, I kept turning around to check on her. She just looked like a normal person lost in thought. People were bustling about around her and she just stood there with her arms by her sides. That's sort of what she is like—someone who is lost in thought all the time.

I'm being served. I poke my money through the little hole in the glass at the counter. As I turn around, shoving the change into my purse, I can see a teenage boy, probably about fifteen, walking toward Grace. He's about as far away from her as I am, coming from the opposite direction. I can see the aggression in the way he is moving. His chest is puffed out and his face is really hostile.

“What are you staring at?” he yells at her from five meters and closing. I walk toward Grace, fast.

“I'm talking to you.” He's pointing at her. I can see the muscles in his shoulders and arms tense. “What are you staring at?”

I reach her and grab her by the shoulders. The boy stands still when he sees that she is not alone.

As I turn her around, the boy is backing away. “You dumb slut!” he yells over his shoulder as he disappears back into the pinball parlor.

“Well, that was unpleasant, wasn't it?” I say to Grace as we walk away. I'm trying to keep calmness in my voice, but I'm shaken.

I'm wondering what brought that on? I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't been there. Would he have hit her?

What was his problem? I think it must be some kind of prehistoric pack mentality surging through in the hormones, the same kind of survival of the fittest thing that I observed so often in the schoolyard.

Weak person! Weak person! Attack! Attack!

I can feel my blood pulsing through my veins. I'm trying to relax.

I hand in our tickets and we take a seat in the middle of the theater.

We watch the latest animated offering. Not exactly highbrow. I have always taken my brother to see those movies to disguise my desire to see them, but he's a bit old for that now. He's too cool. He doesn't mind coming to see the computergenerated animations—purely for academic reasons, of course.

Grace has provided me with a new excuse.

I love those movies. I love cartoons. I love how the lead character just breaks into song and they all do a little dance and everyone knows the steps, knows the chorus. I love the fact that in these movies everyone
can
sing. Wouldn't the world be a wonderful place if everybody could sing?

Just once, I would like to be in a shopping center, or waiting in a queue or some other ordinary situation, and have someone start singing and have everyone join in and start tap-dancing. There is definitely not enough spontaneous tap dancing these days.

… … …

We drove home again, and I changed Grace into a tracksuit and sat her out on the front veranda in one of the big comfy chairs.

I walked into her bedroom and opened the long cream curtains. Then I sat in the study with my back to the desk, looking through the wardrobe and through the bedroom window to where Grace was sitting. I lifted the lid off the spooky box and read.

I looked up. Grace was gone. I could hear an awful screeching noise, like cats fighting, and laughter—nasty laughter.

I threw the paper back into the box and ran out to the veranda. Grace was standing at the end of the veranda with her hands on the railing, swaying from foot to foot.

The laughter was coming from the lime nightie woman
next door, although she wasn't in the lime nightie now. She was standing on her veranda. She was doubled over, holding her belly, laughing. Shouter had Prickles. He was standing in the middle of the lawn facing Grace. He had Prickles and was throwing him in the air above his head and catching him by the stomach. He's sneering, “Hey, Nuffy. I gotcher caaat.”
Heave
.

Prickles flies up into the air and lets out a long screech. His fur is all standing up. Screamer is laughing uncontrollably. Prickles is writhing in the air, turning himself around in the air. Shouter catches Prickles on the way down again.

“Hey, Nuffy, I gotcher caaat.”

I run out on the veranda. I bellow, “Put the cat down!” When I get angry I bellow, not a high squeak like a lot of people but a deep bellow from way down in the bottom of my guts. I take a deep breath and it comes out loud and low like a foghorn.

Prickles is on the way up again, but Shouter doesn't try to catch him this time, he looks at me, still sneering. He pulls his foot back and watches the cat writhing in the air before him, aims and lays a boot into the cat at about waist height.

When the boot hits him, Prickles' legs wrap around Shouter's foot for a moment and then he rebounds off. He moans as he sails through the air and falls in a heap on our front lawn. He rolls over slowly and lets out a long wail.

I'm running down the steps. I'm running across the lawn. I can hear the screen door shut behind them as they go back into the house, but I'm looking at Prickles. He isn't moving.

Grace is standing on the veranda. She is swaying rapidly
from foot to foot. She has her hands up to her temples and she's making a short breathy sound, “Eeeh, eeeh, eeh.”

I run over to where Prickles is lying on the lawn. His tail flicks once. Tears are running down my cheeks. He looks up at me groggily and then his little green eyes close.

Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.

I'm grunting. I'm kneeling down on the ground over the cat.

Oh no, oh no, what do I do, what do I do.

I can't see because I've got hot, angry tears spilling out of my eyes. I'm blinking furiously. My hot tears are dropping onto his black fur. I brush them off.

He's not moving, he's not moving, oh no, No, NO!

I get up and run inside. I grab my car keys from off the kitchen bench and a towel from the bathroom.

Back on the lawn. Kneeling. Prickles is lying very still, his eyes closed.

OH NO, OH NO, OH NO!

I pick him up gently. He is limp in my hands. His head is hanging down over my wrist. I put him on the towel and I wrap him up. I carry him to my car. His head is hanging down out of the towel.

I lay him down on the backseat. He's lying on a funny angle.

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

I run back up the stairs and put my arm around Grace's waist. I lead her down the stairs. Her hands are still up in the air and her elbow hits me right in the bridge of the nose. Pain shoots up behind my eyes, and for a moment I can't see.

“It's OK, turtledove, take it easy,” I say, trying to sound
calm, but my voice is all scratchy, as if someone has poured a bucket of sand down my throat.

I push her into the car.

I run around the car. I bang my knee on the bumper. I jump in the car.

Please be alive, please be alive.

I start the car and roar off down the street. I can't see where I'm going because there are tears in my eyes, and I'm seeing stars. Grace is twisted around, leaning into the backseat.

Hurry, hurry, hurry.

I pull up at the curb outside the vet's, four blocks away. I lift Prickles up and put him in the curve of my forearm. He's so small and limp.

I open the door of the passenger side. I pull Grace out with my free arm, not bothering to close the door behind me; we rush into the surgery.

The woman at the desk smiles as I walk in. There is a man with a birdcage on his knee and an old woman with a sleepy Alsatian lying at her feet.

“Kicked.”

It's all I can say. I'm wiping my sleeve across my eyes. I feel as though I've got a grapefruit wedged in my throat.

“Kicked,” I say to the woman. Tears are pouring out of my eyes. Grace is swaying next to me with her arms folded across her chest.

I'm holding out the towel bundle in my hands, stretched out toward the lady behind the desk.

“Kicked. In here.”

The woman frowns at me but does not speak. She stands up and opens a door behind her desk.