Grace (9 page)

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Authors: T. Greenwood

BOOK: Grace
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He didn’t want to go inside. Being in there, surrounded on all sides by boxes and trash and clothes and broken things, made him feel like he’d crawled out of his skin and put it on again, but inside out. It made his heart beat fast. It made him dizzy.
“I’ll wait out here,” he said.
“You can get started with those trash bags, then. Put ’em in the back of the truck. You better wear these gloves,” his dad said, pulling his own gloves off and handing them to him. Then his dad went to the front door and banged on it, blowing into his bare hands. It was still as cold as winter, even though it was already the end of April.
When his dad disappeared into the house, Trevor took pictures of the heaps of garbage, the bags half-buried in old snow. He focused on a cardinal, crimson and still, perched on the open drawer of a broken-down dresser. He snapped shot after shot of something rotten on the ground that was crawling with maggots until he thought he might gag. When he heard the door opening, he quickly set his camera down and started lifting up the bags of trash.
They worked for hours, taking everything that wasn’t contained and shoving it into giant green yard bags. Pop sat on the porch, overseeing, occasionally making them stop so that he could inspect the contents of the bags. More than a few times, he’d pulled something out and held on to it. A broken stapler, a cap gun, a nasty John Deere cap that he perched on top of his head. Something about seeing him like that, his drooping face and that cap sitting high up on his head, made Trevor feel sad. He hated that he hated being here. He tried to remember what it used to be like when his grandma was alive, but those memories were fuzzy, like what you see when you open your eyes underwater.
At lunchtime, his father ran into town to drop off the first load at the dump and to pick up some sandwiches and sodas, asking Trevor to stay behind with Pop. “Make sure he doesn’t start emptying those bags out,” he’d whispered to Trevor when Pop went inside to use the bathroom.
Pop was working on one of his model fighter jets at the messy kitchen table, carefully painting the wings with his good hand. The other one sat curled and useless as a cat on the table. Pop was always working on a new model. He had a whole collection of fighter planes from the Vietnam War that he’d assembled and painted. They hung from the ceiling in the living room on invisible strings, thick with dust, hovering over the piles and piles of junk like buzzards over a landfill.
Pop was lost in concentration, his cigarette burned down to nothing but ash in the plaid beanbag ashtray next to him. Trevor sat quietly across from him. A beam of sunlight found its way through the kitchen window. In it, he could see the smoke from Pop’s cigarettes floating like ghosts.
Now,
he thought, and aimed his camera.
Pop looked up as the shutter released. “Your dad says you been fighting again.”
Trevor nodded.
“You keep it up, they’re gonna kick you out of school, you know.”
That wouldn’t be such a bad thing as far as Trevor was concerned.
“Now, school ain’t everything,” Pop said, his mouth sounding like it was full of marbles. “But it’s somethin’. Even I got my diploma.”
“I hate school,” Trevor said.
“Maybe if you spent less time scrappin’ and more time studyin’, you’d like it more. Can’t let shit stick in your craw.”
Trevor thought about that, about holding grudges.
“You know, your dad graduated number ten in his high school class. He shoulda been the one to go to college. To get the hotshot job in the city.”
“Why didn’t he go, then?” Trevor asked.
Pop’s eyes were milky with cataracts, and his hands shook as he reached into the pocket of his faded khakis and pulled out his wallet. Sometimes, when he was little, he used to give Trevor quarters. Linty and warm. They always smelled like the menthol eucalyptus cough drops he sucked on. But today, instead of pulling out a wilted dollar bill, his yellowed nails pinched at the edges of a picture of two little boys in matching outfits. Plaid shirts with pearly snaps on their pockets.
The photo was scratched and worn. It looked like one of the pictures his mother took him and Gracy to get taken at the JCPenney every year. Against a fake forest backdrop, both boys had startlingly white hair and pale eyes, but the older boy was solemn, scowling, while the younger one was smiling brightly, missing his top two teeth in the front.
“Your daddy’s always been so serious. But a good boy. Responsible.”
“Is that Uncle Billy?” Trevor asked, peering into the scuffed boyhood face of his uncle.
“Some people give and some people take,” Pop said. “
Loyalty
.
Fidelity
. That’s something you don’t learn at college. That’s something you either are or you aren’t.”
Trevor didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter because Pop returned quietly to his work. When he was finished, he held the fighter jet up for Trevor to see. “This here’s a Cessna A-37 Dragonfly, son, a Super Tweet.”
“It’s cool, Pop.”
Later, his father and Pop ate their lunches on the porch and Trevor took more photos. Of his grandfather in his pressed khakis and clean white tank top. Bright blue suspenders. He focused on Pop’s long, sad face and deep widow’s peak, his shock of white hair so much like Trevor’s own and his father’s. He clicked when his dad wiped at the mustard on the sagging side of Pop’s mouth, when they laughed at something Pop said, and when his dad put his arm across the back of Pop’s shoulder and patted him twice. Like he was Pop’s father instead of his son.
By the time they got in the truck to take the last load of trash to the dump, Trevor had used up a whole roll of film. As much as Trevor hated school, he was looking forward to learning how to develop his pictures. He could hardly wait to get into the darkroom, to see what he’d caught.
C
rystal was still bleeding on Monday when she went back to school. She was starting to wonder if she’d ever stop, if she’d ever heal. She made sure she had extra pads in her backpack, wore dark jeans and a big sweatshirt over them.
Her mother dropped her off, like she always did, pulling up in the drop-off lane and kissing her on the cheek. “Have a good day,” she said, her voice as bright as fluorescent lights. “Work hard,” she added, in place of her usual “Be good.”
Crystal nodded and got out of the car. “I picked up a shift at work after school. I’ll call at nine when I’m done.”
Before her mother could protest, she slammed the door shut harder than she intended to. She couldn’t bring herself to turn around and look back at her mother, who she knew was leaning over the passenger’s seat and waving at her.
She tried to pretend like this was any other day, like every other day. She’d been going to this school for four years now, walking this same path from car to door without so much as a second thought. Now it felt like she was making the journey totally naked, with bells on her ankles and a bullhorn announcing her arrival. But worse than how exposed she felt was that she knew she’d have to see Ty. Ty who hadn’t even called back after she left the message saying she was in labor, or later when she was headed to the hospital. Ty who didn’t even bother to come say good-bye to the baby girl that was half his. Ty who hadn’t answered a single one of the text messages she’d sent him since she got home from the hospital.
Their lockers were right next to each other, just like their desks all through elementary school had been: the unfortunate consequence of alphabetical proximity—his
McPhee
to her
McDonald
. They’d be stuck next to each other until graduation next month, and even then they’d have to share the stage for a moment as the diplomas were dispersed.
“What do you want from me?” he had asked, after everything had turned to shit.
She used to know exactly what she wanted from him. At first, optimistic, she’d wanted him to step up and be a man. To be a father to the baby, and, maybe one day, be a husband to her. After that, when those ideas began to seem silly, she just wanted him to be her friend again. They’d known each other almost their whole lives; how hard was it to just support her through this? She wouldn’t make unreasonable demands. But then at the end, she’d just wanted him to
be
there. Just to hold her hand, to be with her after the baby was gone. And he hadn’t done any of it. Instead, he’d been a fucking coward. A fucking terrible friend. Now she didn’t know what she wanted from him. Now that he might round the corner any minute, she thought maybe what she really wanted was for him to
stay
disappeared.
But as the warning bell rang for first period and she opened her locker, her face reflecting grimly in the magnetic mirror stuck on the door, there he was. Before she saw his face behind hers, she could smell the detergent his mom used. It was just soap, for Christ’s sake, but it seriously drove her crazy. It used to anyway. Now it just made her feel like crying.
“Hey,” he said, and she felt everything starting to seep. God, her entire body was just one big leaky mess lately. Milk, blood, tears. She couldn’t keep anything in.
When she turned to him, she half expected him not to be there. That he was just a figment of her imagination. But he was real. Standing there, looming over her with his six-foot-two frame, and she felt just as small as ever. Just as overwhelmed.
She ducked under his arm as the bell rang again, and turned to face him.
“Crys,” he said, cocking his head in that way he did. Like he was innocent. Like he was still just a little boy. His dark hair flopped across one green eye; the other one peered down at her sheepishly. He stood there, looking exactly the same as always. How could he be so unchanged after all this, when she didn’t feel even remotely like the same person anymore?
“Where
were
you?” she asked, feeling the words catch in her throat.
“Cryssy,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She wanted him to touch her. To notice that she was melting. But he just stood there, not touching her.
“I need you to leave me alone now,” she said, using every ounce of energy she had not to burst into tears. “Just pretend like I don’t exist.”
When Crystal was a little girl, she used to fill her baby pool with bubble bath and give her baby dolls baths in the backyard. For hours, she would float them on their backs, lather their hair with dish detergent, make sure not to get soap in their eyes. Afterward, she would swaddle them in her beach towels, comb their wet hair. She powdered their plastic bottoms and wrapped them up in washcloth diapers held together with tape. When her mother brought Angie home from the hospital, Crystal was only five, but her mother let her do all the things that real mommies did. She would let Crystal sit on the couch with Angie propped up in her arms. She taught her how to squirt a little bit of milk out of the bottle to make sure it wasn’t too hot. She taught her how to get the bubbles out of both the bottle and the baby. She let her help change her diapers, and when Angie was taking a bath in the yellow plastic tub, she was allowed to wash her feet and her tiny little hands. She was the one who sang Angie lullabies. She was the only one who could make her laugh. When people asked Crystal what she wanted to be when she grew up, she always said, “A mommy,” at which her parents would laugh and say, “After college. After business school.”
Of course, as she got older, she knew it really was silly. Nobody wanted to be
just
a mom. There was college and graduate school. There were careers. Future moms didn’t stay up until midnight studying calculus or making PowerPoint presentations for European Civ. None of her friends ever talked about wanting kids. They talked about drinking and sex and clothes. They talked about getting the hell out of Two Rivers and getting on with their lives. And slowly, she forgot that old dream. It was just another one of those silly things she’d said as a kid. Like the time she said she wanted to be a gorilla when she grew up after her parents took her to the Granby Zoo. Wanting to be a mom when you grew up was as ridiculous as wanting to be an ape. But still, when she found out that she was pregnant, the first thing she felt was not the horror and fear she would feel later, but a twinge of
excitement,
something she hadn’t expected at all. Not at all during the weeks when she waited for her period to come. Not once during that awful trip to the Rite Aid all the way up in St. Johnsbury to buy the test where no one would know her. Not at all as she squatted over the toilet and felt warm pee accidentally running over her hand. But for a single moment, as she looked at the pink plus sign, she felt strangely
happy
. It was illogical, she knew this, and this sliver of happiness was quickly replaced by the awful realization that her life as she knew it was over. But this had less to do with the baby and everything to do with Ty.
She and Ty had been friends since kindergarten, but only hooking up for a couple of months when she got pregnant. His family lived one block behind her family; her mother used to send her to his house to play when she and her father first started their real estate business. She’d loved him since they used to catch toads behind his house, and after twelve years he’d
finally
loved her back. But now she was pretty sure he would go right back to not loving her again. And he probably wouldn’t even be friends with her anymore. She knew that’s what that plus sign really meant. It didn’t mean having a baby as much as it meant giving up Ty. And she was right. Now she watched Ty move away from her, down the hallway, backpack slung over his shoulder. She couldn’t believe how easy it was for him to walk away, to pretend like everything they’d been through didn’t matter anymore. She made her way to first period, past the whispers, to her desk. She had to let go. Get back to
normal,
like the doctor had promised. She looked at the scratched surface of the desk, smelled the medicinal scent of the floor cleaner, listened to the humming fluorescent lights overhead. Here was her old life back. Only it wasn’t her old life at all. It was worse. It was awful.

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