Grace Grows (19 page)

“Ty!” I hissed. “Ty!”

His head popped up, squinting at me over the back of the couch. Einstein hair. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Are you going to get up? It’s eleven.”

“Oh . . . okay . . .” He lay down and went back to sleep.

“Ty!”

He stood up and weebled around in his boxer briefs, searching the floor for something. He must have been having a rather
stimulating
dream. I scrambled up the stairs and back to the Barcalounger and picked up my book.

Minutes later he staggered into the doorway wearing his jeans and henley from yesterday. Barefoot.

“Please go find a mirror,” I said. “You have to get a look at your hair.”

He smashed it down with both hands. “I’m going to take a shower.”

He was back in thirty minutes, clean-shaven, hair damp and much smaller, wearing a T-shirt that said suits suck. He came and stood beside the Barcalounger. “Comfy?”

“Very.”

“Did you have breakfast?”

I nodded.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, are you?”

“Yeah.”

I pointed to the deer head. “Is that the deer you shot?”

He studied it. “It is.”

“Did you . . . feel bad about it?”

“No, I felt great. There were a lot of trees between me and him. I was with my dad and a bunch of other grown men and it was a big deal, me making that shot. But I guess I’m getting a twinge about it now, with you looking at me like that.”

“Sorry. It’s just, well, I guess I just can’t imagine it.”

He nodded and shrugged and wandered out of the room. He came back minutes later with a travel mug of coffee in one hand and our jackets in the other. “Let’s go.”

We listened to
Car Talk
on NPR for the twenty minutes it took to get to town. It felt good to be quiet; I was still processing the night before. How on earth had I ended up with him here in the Pennsylvania hinterlands, slightly asthmatic from inhaling marijuana, bloated from the ensuing salt and sugar orgy, with my expensive engagement ring hidden in a sock in my suitcase?

The Wilkies’ flower shop, Best Buds, was in a strip mall on a main drag, nestled between a realtor and a karate studio. Bells on the door rang when we stepped inside.

In the front of the store there were gifts for sale: porcelain boxes and crystal wind chimes and other pretty little tchotchkes. Silk plants that looked close to real lined the front window, and a refrigerator housed fresh arrangements of orange, brown, and gold flowers that would look festive on a Thanksgiving table.

We walked behind the counter and into a back room that had plywood and vinyl worktables covered with floristry supplies and tools. A football game was playing on a small TV.

“Good morning!” Jean said. She was sweeping up bits of stems and greenery on the floor. She set the broom in a corner and put an arm around my shoulders. “Did you sleep all right?”

“Yes, thank you. I’m sorry about the mess we left in the kitchen.”

“If you made a mess, I never saw it.”

Ty must have cleaned up.

“Hey, Grace, c’mere.”

“He’s in there.” Jean pointed at a big metal door on one wall, slightly ajar.

I peeked inside. It was a walk-in refrigerator, with flowers of all colors in metal buckets covering the floor and shelves.

“Come in,” Ty said.

It was so cold. I stood beside him and wrapped my arms around my shoulders and closed my eyes, breathing in the clean, bracing scent of carnations.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Yeah?” her voice was muffled.

“What color are the tablecloths?”

“Pink!”

“What do you think of these?” He tapped a bucket of flowers with the blunt toe of his boot. They were fuchsia-colored, with lots of frilly petals going all up the long stem.

“They’re beautiful. I can’t think of what they’re called.”

“Gladiola.”

“Oh, right!” The plural of which would be gladioli, of course, but I kept that to myself.

He handed me a bucket to carry—yellow gladioli—and he brought out the fuchsia and a bucket of pale lavender-pink ones, as well. We set the buckets next to one of the worktables, and from somewhere he produced a tall, clear-glass vase and filled it halfway with water at a big, deep sink.

“We need about ten of each color,” he said. I helped pick out the best-looking stems and watched him trim them with scissors and settle them one by one in the vase. He finished by tucking in long, spiky pieces of grass.

Jean came over for a look. “Well, this is gorgeous. Let’s put it on the front table for people to see when they come in. Gram is gonna love it.”

The bells on the door jingled. “Excuse me,” Jean said, and went up front.

Ty adjusted a gladiola.

“You are full of surprises, aren’t you?” I said.

“Just one after another. What are you wearing tonight?”

“A dress.”

“What color?”

“Blue.”

We carried the gladiola buckets back into the refrigerator and while we were in there he pointed to a bucket of small, pale yellow roses and asked, “Do you like those?”

“They’re beautiful.”

He pulled from the bucket a rose bud and an open rose and, from another bucket, a small cluster of breathtakingly blue hydrangea.

I followed him back to the worktable. “Are you making something for me?”

He set down the flowers and wrapped a length of elastic around my wrist and cut it. “Yep.”

I laughed. “I feel like I’m going to the prom!”

“Did you?”

“Go to the prom? Yes. Did you?”

“I only went to a dance once, when I was fifteen.”

“Who was your date?”

He pushed green wire through the base of the rose bud. “My cousin Elaine.”

“Your cousin?”

“My mom arranged it. Only Bogue knew that my cousin drove over from her college in New Jersey. All my other friends were shocked that I could get a beautiful older girl to go out with me.”

“Why didn’t you ask a girl from school?”

“I did. She said no.”

“She must have been an idiot.”

Ty looked at me and smiled. “Why, thank you, Grace.” He was wrapping green tape around the wires he’d inserted in the roses.

“What was it, did she have a boyfriend?”

“No. She wasn’t into me. I stuttered. Especially around girls. It took me a whole red-faced minute to get out the words ‘would you go to the prom with me.’ ”

I stared at him. “I’ve never heard you stutter.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t happen much anymore. Only if I’m tired or upset, and hardly even then.” He was doing something now with the elastic band and the hydrangeas.

“How did you stop?”

“I started singing, instead of talking.”

“You mean, when you were speaking to people?”

“Yeah, sometimes. They were gonna laugh at me anyway. And then I just did it in my mind, imagined singing what I was saying.” He shrugged. “For some reason, it worked. Hold out your hand.”

He had nestled the tiny yellow roses in among the hydrangea and some curling ivy leaves and tied it all with opalescent blue ribbon. It was delicate, contained, perfect. An exquisite, living bracelet. He slid it on my wrist.

“Ty. . . .” I looked up at him. Astonished.

Gram is crackers

It was dark out. I could hear Ty downstairs playing the piano. I looked at the clock. I had overnapped and now had ten minutes to get ready. I threw on the blue dress and some lip gloss and twisted my hair up.

Ty was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. He was wearing a boxy, ill-fitting blue suit.

“You look nice,” he said.

“You, too.” I am a terrible liar.

He looked sheepish. “Last time I wore this was for my granddad’s funeral six years ago.”

I felt the slick fabric of his sleeve. “More blackmail material.”

“Yeah, good thing I trust you.”

“Where are your parents?”

“They left a few minutes ago.”

When we got to the car he opened my door for me. He went around and got in and handed me my lovely corsage, cold from the fridge. I slipped it on my wrist and admired it as we were pulling out of the drive. “It is so weird that you can do this,” I said.

“I had to help out in the shop weekdays after school. I didn’t get paid, but it was the best ‘real’ job I ever had.”

“What did you do after you graduated?”

“Moved out of my parents’ house. Went to work at the lumberyard.” “That doesn’t sound too exciting.”

“Yeah. I went through a few other jobs, too.”

“Like what?”

“Hospital orderly. I got fired from that one.”

“How come?”

“I was bringing a patient down to surgery and forgot to lift the rails on the gurney. Too busy writing a song in my head. He kinda fell off while we were wheeling him down the hall.”

“He
kinda
fell off?”

“I caught him, mostly. Then I worked at a funeral home. It’s harder to hurt those people.”

“What did you do there?”

“Whatever they needed me to.”

“Do I want to know what that means?”

“I don’t think so.”

Things got quiet, except for his fingers drumming a beat on the steering wheel. He was writing a song. “Do you need some paper and a pen?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He pulled the car over to the side of the road and I handed him the little spiral notebook I keep in Big Green.

He scribbled for a while and tore the page out. “I’m gonna play this for you later, see what you think.”

Ten minutes later we were parking at the Holiday Inn.

“Anything I should know about your grandmother?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“Like whose mom is she?”

“My mom’s mom.”

“And her name is?”

“Rebecca Rachel Sinclair.”

“And she’s eighty?”

“Yeah, next week.”

“And the idea here is to impress her with my giant brain.”

“Exactly. I want you to know that I really appreciate you doing this, Grace.”

“Oh, sure, no problem.”

“I really think it’ll give Gram some peace of mind. She’s been worried about me.”

“Of course, I’m happy to help.”

“So, what are you gonna do to make her think you’re with me?”

“With you. Um . . . well, I thought I’d start by standing beside you when you introduce me.”

“And then what?”

“I’ll hold your arm?”

He looked dubious.

“You know, in a proprietary way. Like I consider you mine. An ordinary friend wouldn’t hold your arm like that, would she?”

“I guess not.” He didn’t sound too enthused.

“Well, what do you want me to do, hump your leg?”

He was delighted. “Grace, you never talk dirty!”

“I’m sorry, that was crude.”

“Okay,” he said. “Holding my arm is fine. And maybe look at me like you love me a time or two.”

“Can you give me further direction about that?”

He sighed. “Just do the best you can.”

As we got out of the car, a woman walked toward us across the parking lot. I watched her unsmiling approach and resisted the urge to shrink back in awe. She was gorgeous. Tall, straight-backed, wearing a cream-colored wrap dress and heels. Her stunning red hair fell in smooth waves down her back. No discernible makeup, with eyes that were light-amber colored. Except for the dragonfly tattoo on her right ankle, she looked like she could be the elegant, cutthroat CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

“Hey,” Ty said.

“Hey, ugly.”

“This is Grace.”

She eyed me narrowly. As discreetly as possible, I shifted an inch or two closer to Ty.

He laughed and reached out and tugged roughly on her hair. “Cut it out, Beck.”

She smiled.
The smile!
On a girl. She was suddenly lovely, far less intimidating. “I’m Rebecca. The good twin.”

I tried not to wince when she shook my hand. Maybe she didn’t know her own strength.

She threw an arm around Ty’s shoulders. “So how about if I hear from you once in a while?”

“How about if I hear from you?”

“I’m not the one with the big fucking record deal. That I have to learn about from Mom.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“I guess you’ve been busy.” She slapped him roughly on the back and winked at me.

“How’s school going?”

“Straight As.” She looked at me. “What do you do, Grace?”

“I’m an editor.”

“Of books?”