Grace (37 page)

Authors: T. Greenwood

BOOK: Grace

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“Larissa used to make those green beans I like, with the crunchy onions,” Pop said, the effort of speaking laborious, his words like rocks in his mouth. The entire left side of his face drooped now, his left arm hanging like dead weight at his side. “You ever make those?” he asked Trevor's mom.

“Not this year, Jude,” she said.

“That woman was a fine cook. Didn't even have to use a recipe for anything.”

Trevor's dad looked at his mom as if to say
sorry
with his eyes.

Pop lifted a forkful of sweet potatoes to his mouth, struggling to get it in. It was like watching a baby try to feed himself. His dad grimaced.

“Listen, Pop. I checked in with Plum's, and the room is actually still open for December first,” he said. “That's just next week. Maybe we could at least go check it out this weekend? You don't have to commit to anything, but it might be nice to at least go see.”

Pop set his fork down, defeated but defiant. “Don't you get started with that bullshit again.”

Gracy's eyes widened.

“Jude,” his mom reprimanded.

“Well, if you stay at the house, maybe we should hire someone to help out,” his dad said. “You know, just with the yard. Someone to help keep the place up.”

His mother stiffened, scowling. “And how exactly do we plan to pay for that?”

Kurt set his fork down and shook his head. “It wouldn't have to cost a fortune.”

“I don't ... need help.”

Trevor ate until he felt like his stomach might burst, until he felt sick. But as long as his mouth was full, he wouldn't have to speak.

“Got trouble at school again, huh?” Pop asked.

Trevor felt a jolt rush through him. He nodded, tasting the bitter combination of green beans and squash on his tongue.

“Your dad says some boys givin' you a hard time,” he said.

His father must have told Pop about the fight.

“They're meanies,
super
meanies,” Gracy said, pouring gravy over a small mountain of mashed potatoes.

“Careful, baby,” his mother said, helping her with the heavy boat.

Trevor wanted them to talk about something else, anything else. Even if it meant going back to their stupid argument about money.

“Your dad says you got 'em, though. Got 'em real good.”

“I didn't say that, Pop,” Trevor's dad said, his chapped face reddening even more. “We're not encouraging the fighting. There are other ways to handle this. The school's stepping in.”

“You startin' to sound like your brother,” Pop said.

“What's that supposed to mean?” his dad asked.

“I raise a
couple
of pansies? Couple of goddamned pussies?” He held up one hand, limp at the wrist, and Trevor felt his entire body flood with heat, and the edges of his vision went black, his ears filling. He couldn't hear anything but Pop's laughter. He watched as half of Pop's mouth opened, the spray of orange sweet potatoes that splattered on the clean white tablecloth. Trevor tried to make this picture flat, just a snapshot. Just a frozen image, something he could tear up and toss away.

“Jude,” his mom said, standing, slamming her hands on the table. “I'm done. Get out of my fucking house.”

Pop stopped laughing and closed his mouth, wiping at the wet dribble of potato with his shirt sleeve. “You,” he said, slurring and pointing at her, “you don't talk to me like that.”

“I'll talk to you any damn way I please. You're an ignorant asshole, and I want you out of my house. Kurt, I need you to take Jude home.”

His dad nodded, standing. “I'm sorry,” he said to his mom. “Come on, Pop.”

“You've always been an ungrateful bitch,” he said. “Getting knocked up and ruinin' any chances Kurt had to make something of himself. Working two jobs while you sit on your boney ass all day.”

“Jude, we have children at this table. I need you to go now.”

“Pop,
let's go,
” his dad said, gripping the table angrily.

Gracy was starting to cry. Normally, Trevor would have reached for her hand and said, “Come on, Gracy. Let's go play Chutes and Ladders.” But he was afraid to touch her now, and so instead he stood up and went to his bedroom alone. Inside, with the door shut, he tried not to let Pop's words splinter and sting him. He tried to ignore the sounds of the chairs scraping, the muffled argument still raging in the kitchen. He pretended that the sound of the door slamming and the truck's engine roaring to life and his mother's crying were just TV sounds, special effects. That they weren't real, that they didn't belong to anyone he knew.

Not much later, he heard his dad's truck pull in and the sound of the door opening, his boots banging against the jamb, the hushed whispers between him and his mother. Just insects in the grass. Just wind whistling through the tops of trees.

That night Trevor watched his body moving through the world without feeling anything but a dull ache. He watched his own hands as they pulled on his socks, as they tied the belt around his robe, as they ran across the cowlick on the top of his head. He studied his fingers as they held the toothbrush and made it move up and down and in circles, remembering the motions, the bristles not registering against the numbness of his gums and tongue. He looked at himself in the mirror, and while he recognized his own face, he felt as though he were looking at a stranger.

The house was warm and still smelled like Thanksgiving. Like every other Thanksgiving. Outside it was cold. Trevor touched the glass of the window. It was still snowing. The crystalline white kept coming down, relentless, covering everything in a layer of pristine white. He imagined it blanketing the house, the yard, the cars and people it touched. If it never stopped, maybe they'd all be buried in snow. Maybe they wouldn't be able to open their doors, and he'd never have to leave the house again.

Four more days. Four more days before he had to go back to school. His suspension ended on Monday. On Monday, he was expected to return to that building, to the classrooms, to Ethan and Mike. To pretend as though nothing had happened. As though he were just a bad kid who'd been punished and forgiven. As if he weren't changed. Weren't found out. Weren't proven to be the freak he was always afraid he was.

As he pissed, he couldn't look at himself. He felt ashamed even holding himself to aim. He felt acid rising in his throat as he thought about what he'd done to Gracy. He was sickened by himself, his whole body quaking with shame. He knelt at the toilet, the lid still lifted, and vomited until there was nothing left inside him. Retching, his body feeling like it was trying to turn itself inside out. Until he was absolutely hollow, and then he felt his fingers wipe his cheeks with a bit of toilet paper. And watched, around and around, up and down, as they brushed his teeth again.

He tried to picture himself returning to school, dreamed the walk down the halls, the smells of the cafeteria, the sound of the bell, the
hush hush
of the other kids as they whispered behind his back. The feel of Ethan's hands pushing him into lockers, into desks, into anything that would hurt him. He tried to pretend that any of this was possible. That life could go on as it always had. Monday.
Monday.
For everyone else, it would be just another day. Just another beginning to just another week. But to him, it felt like the end of the world.

He walked out of the bathroom, aware of the sound of his feet on the floor but unable to feel anything. Nothing. It was like his entire body had fallen asleep, not the prickly sensation of raw nerves, just the dead heaviness of sleep. He went back to his room, and Gracy was just coming out.

“Do you want some punkin pie?” she asked. She was clutching her hippo. Trevor couldn't even look at her, he was so ashamed.

E
verywhere across the country, families were sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner. Crystal tried to imagine them. A hundred million different families. Each of them convening over the same meal. Every father's face peering over a turkey, every mother fussing over smudges on the silver, spots on the wineglasses. Kids arguing, babies crying. All of America sitting at an enormous table. When she was a little girl, thoughts like this were both comforting and terrifying. The notion of a shared experience like this, in whatever form it might take, made her feel small. She was just one of a billion children, digging into her mashed potatoes, hiding a creamed onion in her napkin. Just one, indistinguishable from all of the others.

When she and Ty were still best friends, she used to eat dinner with her own family and then, after she had helped her mother finish washing all of the dishes, she'd walk to his house and join the McPhees for what Ty's dad called “Secondinner.” Their house on Thanksgiving was like a looking-glass reflection of hers. While she and Angie were expected to sit quietly in their straight-back chairs, hands and napkins in their laps, Ty's house was loud and chaotic and wonderful. It was never just the McPhees. There were always cousins and aunts and uncles and friends. Music cranked up loud on their old-fashioned stereo. Their regular dining room table was too small for all the guests, so they cobbled together a string of tables, a mishmash of chairs. Her favorite was always the piano stool that spun up and down; no matter how old she was, how tall she was, she could always adjust it to the right height.

Crystal's mother never let anyone in the kitchen to help her. She seemed to want to make it seem like the entire meal had appeared magically on the dining room table, as though she hadn't spent the entire night before and day of preparing it. At Ty's house, Lucia invited everyone into the kitchen, handed everyone a peeler or knife or rolling pin. By the time she was nine, Crystal had helped make apple pies, acorn squash, and buttermilk biscuits. Dinner itself was a loud affair, served on the McPhees' collection of china dishes, each one hand-picked from flea markets and yard sales and secondhand shops. She loved the one with the yellow roses, and Lucia always made sure that one was in her spot. The food was different every year. Sometimes instead of turkey they had ham or beef stew or, one year, each plate had a trout with its head still on. The tradition was in the company, not in the various courses.

When Crystal was pregnant, she had imagined that first Thanksgiving with the baby. She imagined them passing her back and forth, taking turns holding her as they ate, the entire family clamoring to hold her, to pinch her cheeks and tickle her belly. She would feed her sweet potatoes from a tiny little spoon. She could hardly wait to sit by the fireplace after the meal, sprawled out on the worn Oriental rug with her as Ty's father and his friends played old Van Morrison songs on their guitars and mandolins, the sound of the stand-up bass like a heart beating through the floorboards.

But here she was, just a year later, and Ty was gone. The entire McPhee family was gone. The house that had once been filled with people and music and good smells was empty. There was no baby. She was just a name etched in skin, a name carved in a windowpane.

Crystal sat at the dinner table, hands in her empty lap, as her mother moved purposefully and silently from the kitchen to the dining room, covering the table with the same food she and a million other mothers had spent the day preparing. Light from the brand-new candles caught in the wineglasses, each rubbed with a soft cloth until they were so clear they were almost invisible.

Her father sat at the head of the table where he had sat every single Thanksgiving of her entire life. The turkey carcass lay before him like an offering.

“Just think, next year you'll be coming home from college for Thanksgiving. Maybe have a new boyfriend with you?” her mother said cheerfully.

Crystal felt her entire body tense.

“I can't believe my little girl is so grown up,” she said. “Eighteen years old already.”

“I'm moving out,” Crystal said.

Her mother's perfectly plucked eyebrows raised, and her eyes went dark beneath them.

“Of course you are,” she said, laughing. “Your dorm assignment came last week.”