Grace (46 page)

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Authors: T. Greenwood

BOOK: Grace
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“Daddy,” he said, the words like icy slivers in his mouth.
They kept moving forward until they were at the top of the hill. From up there you could see the entire valley below them. Only a few lights twinkled now. It made him think of the little Christmas village that his mother set out on the mantel every Christmas. Just a tiny little make-believe place. If he had his camera, this picture would be of a snow globe, a father and son trapped inside.
“Daddy, please don't,” he said again, feeling as though his body was turning inside out. When he spoke, his words burned his throat.
His father was aiming the gun at him now, and he realized that this might be the end. Any moment now, he would be gone. Just a memory. Maybe he deserved this, though. Maybe, without him, the world would be a better place. He knew he was a mistake. He'd known that every day of his life. He had been nothing to them but trouble and pain.
“What did you do to Gracy?” his father asked through his teeth.
Trevor squeezed his eyes shut tight and conjured the pictures, the good ones he'd made. Gracy, sweet Gracy. He squeezed his eyes so hard, trying to rid his mind of the image of himself in her bed, his penis thick and hard against her back. The thrill of his skin against her nightgown and that awful, awful release.
“Did you touch her?” he asked.
Trevor was crying hard now; it was hard to stay upright. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to hurt her. I love her.”
He watched his father's body convulse. It looked like he'd been struck by lightning. Shaken.
“Where is she?” he hissed. “Where did you take her?”
Trevor shook his head. “I didn't ...”
“Where is she?” he screamed now, his voice echoing in that hollow air.
“Stop!” The voice came from behind his father, but it was disembodied. Just an owl's hoot, the mournful cry of a dove. “Kurt, no!”
His father lowered his gun and turned as his mother came up over the hill. She was holding Gracy in her arms, running and stumbling as she made her way to them. “Don't hurt him. God, don't hurt him. What is wrong with you? He's our son.”
“Mama,” Trevor said as she ran to him. And then her free arm was around him. And her tears were warm as they pressed against his cheek, and her lips were warm as they kissed his away.
E
lsbeth left Kurt standing alone in the field. She clung to both children as they struggled through the falling snow back to the house. He watched as their three bodies slowly merged into one dark form that disappeared into the distance. Kurt blinked the snow out of his eyes. His vision was blurred; he struggled to focus through the icy crystals.
The gun was cold at his side now. Without gloves, his hands had grown numb. His entire body stilled, breathless, as the snow continued to fall. He closed his eyes, concentrated on the bone-numbing cold, on the blistering splinters of ice that kept falling.
He thought about the gun. Also perfectly still.
He dropped to his knees and looked up into the sky, letting the shards of ice fall into his eyes. He wondered how long it would take until the snow buried him alive. He opened his mouth and let it fill his throat. Would it asphyxiate him? Would he choke? He pictured himself frozen in supplication to this unforgiving sky. Would this be his demise? Would this be the way it all came to an end?
He peeled off his coat, tore his hat off, clutched the gun. He imagined the cold barrel in his mouth. The metallic clank of it against his teeth. He squeezed his eyes shut, the tears freezing before they fell.
And then he remembered this:
Winter
. He was twelve years old. He and Billy had taken their metal flying saucers up the steep hill near their house. They had bread bags tied around their feet inside their boots to keep their socks extra dry. It was snowing. Cold. For hours they dragged their sleds up the hill and then raced down. Crashing into rocks and roots, their muscles spent, their backsides bruised. The sky was the color of faded dungarees. Starless, moonless. Still.
Kurt sent Billy down the hill one last time with a push, listening to his voice trilling in the quiet night. And he sat down, exhausted, in the soft snow, lay back and let it press all around him, filling his ears, touching his neck. He closed his eyes and listened to its crunch, its hush.
“That was wicked fun!” Billy said, his voice breaking through the silence, his boots crunching the icy snow. “Get up,” Billy said. “Kurt, get up! Let's go again!”
Spring
. Waking up in the soft pink glow of morning in Elsbeth's childhood bed, her skin hot and soft against his. Outside, the calling out of birds, the close click-clack sound of the train. Underneath them, the rumble and hum. He'd pressed his hand against her stomach, cupping it with his large palm, amazed. She stirred, arching her back in a stretch. He buried his face in her hair, let the darkness swallow him. Sun on his exposed shoulder, the chill of spring and the cold lilac smell of possibility. Clean white sheets. “Get up,” Elsbeth whispered, turning to face him, her breath across his cheek. “You need to get up before my mom wakes up.”
Summer
. Trevor took his hand and led him through a labyrinth of raspberry brambles that pricked and scratched their bare legs. Kurt watched the back of his head as he led him through the summer foliage, the green so brilliant it almost hurt his eyes. Like looking into the sun. Like looking into cold white snow.
“Where are we going?” Kurt asked, but Trevor didn't answer.
Suddenly they came to the place where the brush gave way to an open field, littered with wildflowers. It was sunset, and the sky looked as though it were melting.
Trevor turned to Kurt, smiling sadly. “Sometimes, I lie down here and I don't want to ever get up,” he said.
“Yeah?”
Trevor nodded and lay down in the grass.
Kurt lay next to him, dandelions gone to seed sighing next to him, exhaling in quiet puffs. And they stayed this way, studying the sky as dusk surrendered to evening.
“Time to go,” he said Trevor. “It's beautiful. But we have to get up.”
And Trevor had nodded and reached for his hand.
Fall
. “Get up, Daddy,” Gracy said, leaping onto the couch where Kurt had fallen asleep with the TV still on. His entire body so tired from work, so exhausted he felt like an old man. Like someone at the end of his life.
He'd willed his eyes open. Her hair was messy, and her cheeks bright pink and smudged with dirt. She'd been outside playing all morning, trying to make summer last.
“I made something for you, but you have to get up!”
And so despite his body's defiance, its desire, every inch of him wanting nothing but sleep, release, he'd taken her hand and she'd pulled him through the house and out the door to the front yard. The driveway was buried under a blanket of leaves. The trees were barren without them. On the brown grass she'd lined up six silver pie tins, each filled with mud. It was cold out, and their breath was like smoke in the air.
“I made these for you. Let's pretend it's your birthday. And my birthday.”
He had looked at her then in her old coat and frayed scarf and felt something he didn't have words for. Something so powerful it felt almost dangerous. And so, fighting back tears, he'd nodded and said, “Thank you. It's exactly what I wanted.”
Now Kurt opened his eyes, listened to the silence. The snow had stopped falling finally, and around him the entire world glistened. He was alone, and he knew the house was empty now, but still he got up. He got up and pulled his coat and hat back on. He got up and grabbed his shotgun. He got up and started the long trek back home.
G
RACE
K
urt pulls his truck up next to the curb at the airport and turns on his hazards. The sun has come out, but the snow remains. The combination is almost blinding, the whiteness making that place behind his eyes throb in time with the blinking lights.
“You got everything?” he asks Billy.
“Think so,” Billy says.
Billy stayed for two weeks. He relinquished his motel room to Elsbeth and the kids, and he stayed with Kurt at the house, doing what he could to help. Thankfully, he was able to clear Trevor of all charges; there was simply no connection between him and the disaster except for a series of unfortunate coincidences. Trevor showed the police to the place in the river where he'd dumped the stolen equipment, explained that that was why he'd been carrying a duffel bag out of the school that day. He explained that he'd only been trying to set up a darkroom in the old caboose. Billy also somehow convinced Mrs. Cross not to pursue any charges of burglary or vandalism against him for stealing the equipment. And luckily, it didn't take long before the fire marshal came back with the report, which confirmed there was no way the bombs could have been set off remotely. Someone was in the building that morning. Someone else set the bombs off and ran. The surveillance cameras had caught video of a young man in coveralls fleeing the building moments before the blast. Dark hair, dark eyes, short in stature. The opposite of Trevor. The police received an anonymous tip with a name, an address, and after searching the man's apartment, an arrest was made. He was a former employee of the school district who had grievances after being let go. He'd been calling in bomb threats from a pay phone for over a year. He'd written a manifesto and posted it on the Internet. He was someone troubled. Someone truly capable of harm. He was no one they knew.
Billy suggested they press charges against the school for all the damage they'd done with their accusations. For defamation. For leaking Trevor's name to the press. Kurt had nodded as Billy explained the logistics of this abstract justice. But he knew that nothing Mrs. Cross or the school had done could compare to the wounds he himself had inflicted on his only son.
Billy had slept in the kids' empty room those two weeks; he and Kurt ate breakfast together each morning and then reconvened for dinner each night.
“They'll never forgive me,” he said to Billy as he pushed his food around his plate. “And even if they do, I'm not sure I can forgive myself.”
What he didn't say was that he worried he'd done exactly what Pop had done all those years ago. Worse. That he wasn't sure he even deserved forgiveness. But Billy knew; Billy had always known what Kurt was thinking. “The difference between you and Pop is that you're
sorry,
” he said. “And that has to count for something.”
Elsbeth didn't speak to him for those two weeks after she found him in the pasture with Trevor. She couldn't even stand to look at him. She refused his calls. She wouldn't let him see the kids. She said that when Billy left, she'd check out of the motel and go stay with Twig.
“Give her time,” Billy said. “That's about all you have left to offer.”
Kurt knew she was on the verge of flight, and Billy was right. There was nothing that Kurt could do except wait. To set her free and hope that she would come back. To prepare for what would happen if she didn't.
As for Trevor, he wasn't sure where to begin in making those kinds of amends. How do you fix a hole that big, the one that lived between them now? A chasm with no bottom. A terrible abyss. There were no words that could undo what he had done. What he needed to do was to earn his trust, to earn his forgiveness. But how to do that was a mystery to Kurt.
During those terrible lonely weeks, he spoke with the school, got the names and numbers of the agencies Mrs. Cross had recommended that fall. He arranged his work schedule so that he would be able to drive Trevor to Burlington every week to see a therapist. He spoke to the therapist himself, and she assured him that Trevor was not damaged beyond repair, that unlike glass, children cannot shatter. They are resilient, and over time these terrible fissures could be mended. He accepted the blame he knew everyone would place on him, and he vowed to fix the broken places, to do everything he could to repair the damage he had done. It was all he could do.
And Billy helped. On the days when Kurt began to wish he
had
simply turned the gun on himself that night, that he'd simply ended everything in that field of snow, Billy was there. He also became the bridge between him and Trevor, visiting Trevor first at the motel and then later at Twig's. Billy told Kurt that he and Trevor were able to talk, that maybe Trevor just needed an ear. An ear that wasn't attached to anybody he knew, but also to someone who knew exactly what he was going through.
“He's going to be okay,” Billy promised.
And Kurt just has to trust that this is true.
“I got everything in order with Pop too,” Billy says, reaching into the cab of the truck to shake Kurt's hand. “Make sure you check in at the court on Monday. There shouldn't be any issue with the conservatorship now. Not after the fire. Then you can put Pop's house on the market. Get on with your life.”
“Thanks, Billy,” he says.
“I don't understand why you feel compelled to help him still, but I respect it.” Billy has Pop's habit of nodding his head emphatically whenever he is trying to convince himself of something.
“Don't be a stranger,” Kurt says, leaning in to hug his brother.
He waits until Billy has disappeared through the terminal doors before he turns off the hazards and pulls away from the curb. As he drives away, he realizes how much he will miss having Billy there at the table each morning and each night. How much he's missed having him in his life all these years. It makes him angry at Pop. All this time, he's blamed Billy for stealing the life he'd once wanted, but the truth is it was
Pop
who was the thief. The one who stole his brother from him, stole his future.
Kurt pulls onto the interstate, flipping the sun shade down to shield his eyes from that blinding light. Tucked behind the visor is the school picture of Gracy, the one they'd given to the police that awful night when she disappeared. He studies her face, her two missing teeth, the slow sparkle in her big dark eyes.
Thank God for Grace: the constant reminder of everything they almost lost. The miracle of a second chance. Grace is what had held them together; and he has to believe that Grace is what will save them now.
A
s winter slowly turned to spring, Elsbeth, like the bitter cold, began to feel her icy grip loosening, her rage softening. As the snow that had clung to the ground began to melt, leaving the earth soft and yielding beneath it, she felt her resolve melting. The frozen wall she'd built around her and the kids started to crack like ice on the surface of a frozen lake.
“Please come home,” he said into the telephone when she finally answered his call. His voice sounded like something broken. Like shattered glass. It cut her; she could feel his words like icy splinters. And then, finally, she went to him.
“Turn out the light,” she said. She couldn't look at him. Not yet. And so in the dark, they talked. He asked her questions, and she answered. She spoke, and he listened.
She explained the shoe box. She told him that she'd been stealing things for most of her life, that she was so full of wants she didn't know what to do with all that need. That taking things made her feel whole, that the trinkets helped close up the empty spaces. She told him about the man, the one who had come from Florida. She confessed her longing for him too, as if he were just something else that might be pilfered. She told him that he had been nothing but a dream, though, that he had never touched her, and she knew Kurt had to believe her because he had no other choice. They talked about her lost childhood. About everything he'd lost when Billy left. They talked about how they had failed Trevor, and how they had failed each other.
And all the while, Kurt waited. She was pretty sure he would wait forever, and so in late March, when the snow was just a memory, though the chill lingered in the air, she and the kids came home.
Now Elsbeth walks through the Walgreens, noticing that they are already putting out the sunscreen, the seasonal aisle already filling up with picnic items. The promises of summer. She puts a can of sunscreen in the cart. Their trip is only a couple of weeks away now, and it cripples her with guilt. She had suggested to Kurt that they turn in their tickets, but they were non-refundable. Kurt said it didn't matter. They should go anyway, try to enjoy themselves.
Gracy is too big for the cart now, nearly seven, so she walks by Elsbeth's side.
They wander down the toy aisle, and Gracy finds a Tinker Bell coloring book. “Can I have this, Mumma?” she asks.
“Not today. You have a thousand coloring books at home.”
Grace juts her lower lip out in a shameless attempt to convince her. Elsbeth ruffles her hair. “We're here for your brother,” she says. “If you stop begging, I might take you for ice cream later.”
“Okay,” Gracy grumbles.
They walk to the photo department, and Elsbeth braces herself.
Crystal is there; she is always there now. They have never spoken about what happened that night, but there is an understanding between them.
“Would you like the Fuji again?” she asks. Elsbeth is in at least once a week for film.
“Yes, please,” she says.
She finds the film behind the counter and hands it to her.
“How is your sister?” Elsbeth asks.
Crystal nods. “Okay. She's making progress.”
“That's great,” she says.
Word travels fast. The story about Angie McDonald will become the stuff of local legend, she suspects. She was the girl who was in the bathroom when the bomb detonated. She had left art class to use the restroom, and the next thing she knew she woke up in the hospital with third-degree burns over 75 percent of her body.
“She's lucky to have you,” Elsbeth says, and she means it.
An article about the bombing in the local paper talked about how Crystal delayed her acceptance to college to stay home and care for her sister. That she'd organized a run-a-thon to raise money for the other children injured by the fire. There had been a picture of her and Angie, before the burns destroyed her face, on the front page.
She still isn't sure what was going through Crystal's mind that day she took Gracy. She only knows that Gracy came home safe. That while she was with her, she wasn't harmed. She tried to explain to Kurt and Billy how it was that she could forgive her. They wanted her to go to the police. To press charges. But from the start Elsbeth refused. She knew they were more similar than different, she and this girl.
And then a week ago as she was sweeping up a pile of Mrs. Van Buren's gray curls from the linoleum floor at the salon, the door jingled and Crystal walked in with her sister.
Crystal looked startled to see Elsbeth, but she only nodded and asked softly, “Can you help us?”
Elsbeth spent over an hour trimming and styling Crystal's sister's hair. She was gentle as she combed through the fine tangles. Careful of her damaged skin. And with each snip of the scissors, she felt a tremendous sense of having done something right. Something good. For the first time since she started working at the salon, she felt like she had the ability to change the way someone saw themselves, to change the way they felt inside their own skin. It was overwhelming, this amazing sense of purpose.
“Come see?” she said at last to Crystal, who had been perched on a chair near her station. And they'd looked together at Angie in the mirror. She was smiling, and Crystal's eyes were filled with tears.
“Your hair is coming in so nice and thick, Ang,” she said softly. “You look so pretty.”
When Crystal opened her wallet to pay, Elsbeth shook her head.
“It's okay,” she said. “It's on me.”
Elsbeth knew then for sure that to take Crystal away from her sister was a cruelty she couldn't even begin to consider.
“Anything else today?” Crystal asks, and Elsbeth shakes her head. “Howard can ring you up,” she says.
“Thank you,” Elsbeth says. She goes to the register with the film and the sunscreen. She reaches into her pocketbook and pulls out her wallet. “How much do I owe you?” she asks.
C
rystal dreams of Grace sometimes, her Grace. She would be a year old now,
is
a year old now, but in her dreams she is still that tiny bundle she'd held only for a moment. Crystal cries in her sleep; she knows this because she wakes up and her pillow is wet.
Every morning, she helps her mother change the dressings on Angie's burns. It's a delicate job and requires a delicate touch. She is as gentle as she can be as she unwraps her, applies the ointment, and then swaddles her again. She brushes her hair, careful not to pull at her sensitive scalp. She makes her breakfast, her favorite things, and never gives her a hard time about how gross they are.

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