Grace Grows (25 page)

Best to be nonspecific. “For a nonprofit. Doing community HIV education.”

“All right! Way to go, Grace! You’re finally putting yourself to good use.”

I beamed back at him. I couldn’t help it. It was ridiculous, how satisfying his approval felt.

The waiter came and took away the plates. Asked if we wanted to try the baklava. Gave Ty the check. Good, we were wrapping things up.

“I have something for you.” Ty reached into a pocket and brought out a small box, tied with a bow.

I took it slowly. “What’s this for?”

“Christmas. And I missed your birthday, didn’t I, in September?”

“I—I don’t have anything for you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I untied the bow and lifted the lid.

Earrings: delicate, silver, with dangling, pale rose-colored tear-drop crystals. Exquisite.

“They’re white gold,” Ty said. “And pink diamonds.”

He was watching me closely. It took a moment to think of what to say, and it came out too bluntly. “You shouldn’t have done this.”

He shifted impatiently in his chair and crossed his arms. “Why shouldn’t I?”

I put the lid back on carefully. “They’re too much.”

“Actually, they’re not. I have a lot of money now.” His tone became ironic. “I’m incorporated.”

“Well, that’s awesome,” I tried to joke. “Now you won’t have to mooch your marijuana off your mom and dad.”

He laughed, a little, but mostly he looked angry. And hurt.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was—that was a joke.” I set the box on the table in front of him.

“No.” He pushed it back across to me. “Goddammit, Grace. Keep them.”

“It’s better if I don’t.”

“Why is it better?” He put his hands together on top of the table and cracked his knuckles unbelievably loudly. “Just so I know,” he said calmly but pointedly, “how long are you gonna keep running from me?”

Okay. My heart was pounding.
Ask . . .

“Ty. Why are you doing this?”

“The earrings? I wanted to give you something.”

“Why?”

He looked at me, a long, silent time.

“What will happen, if I stop running from you?” I asked.

Still no words. Then he looked away.

I almost felt guilty for putting him on the spot. I knew that he didn’t mean to be hurtful; he was all about fun. I stood up and put on my jacket and tried to sound calm and normal. End this pleasantly. “Thank you for lunch. I hope you have a great time in L.A.”

I walked out, fast, but he caught up with me at the light. I jay-walked, faster, across Sixth Avenue. He was still with me.

We came to the big fountains outside Spender-Davis. I stopped and turned and he was right there, too close. I lost my balance but he caught me. I pushed away from him. “Please! Why won’t you just leave me alone? I don’t know what you
want
from me!”

I hated myself. Hated the furious, hurt look in his eyes.

“I w-w—” He stopped. Closed his eyes.

He inhaled and tried again. “I w-wa—”

I stood there appalled, frozen, thinking,
Don’t try to help him, you’ll make it worse
.

He stopped trying to answer and just looked at me and it was incredible, how much he looked like his fierce-eyed Valkyrie sister. He walked away, jaw and fists clenched.

I don’t remember walking through the revolving doors into the building or following Edward onto the elevator.

“Oh, Edward.” I covered my face and sobbed, sinking bonelessly against the wall. I couldn’t say any more. There was nothing else to say.

For the next couple of days I spent most of my time in the living room armchair by the window, watching the winter sky. It was gray. Everything was.

Ed offered to stay with me but I sent him away, promising to answer when he called. Which turned out to be every two hours.

At one a.m. the first night I answered and said, “Ed. Go to sleep.”

“Why don’t I sleep over there?”

“No, thank you.”

“Are you still in the chair?”

I didn’t answer.

“I think I should call your mom, or Peg.”

“No.”

“Did you eat anything?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“What?”

It took me a minute. “Cap’n Crunch.”

“You’re lying. I know when you lie, Grace, you’re terrible at it.”

“Ed, I love you.”

“Just tell me you’re not going to die.”

“It kind of feels like I might. Please. I just need to be still for a while.”

“Fine. I’m bringing breakfast at seven.”

At 6:45 he rang downstairs, rousing me from my fetal curl in the armchair. I shuffled over and buzzed him in. Opened the door.

Ed came up the stairs looking tired and worried, carrying a bag of chocolate croissants and a package of plus-size Depends. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t bear to see that flame-stitch upholstery messed up.”

I smiled.

Ed brightened considerably.

bird’s-eye view

I loved my new job.

I was sent out to learn community sex ed with a woman named Lakshmi Sharma. She was a few years older than me, originally from Delhi, but had been living in the States for almost twenty years. A little heavyset, pretty, with big brown eyes, thick, short black hair, and perhaps the driest, most unsmiling sense of humor I’d ever encountered. The kind where at first you think the person hates you, until she unexpectedly pats you on the back.

Although I was going to be working with seniors, Lakshmi made sure I learned how to teach everything.

“This,” she said, holding up a box of emergency contraceptive pills, “is a big one. It keeps you from conceiving if you take it right after you’ve had sex. Saved my sister’s ass a time or two when she was uncareful. I had a student who was date-raped, and she used it.”

One day before we left the office she handed me a piece of gum and told me to chew it. Then she fed me a spoonful of peanut butter. As I chewed them together, the peanut butter disintegrated the gum into a nauseating blob of slime in my mouth. I gagged and hawked it into the trash can under my desk.

“That’s what happens when you use vegetable oil as lubricant with a condom. It breaks down the latex. Do that demonstration with a group of kids, and believe me, they don’t forget.”

Another day she had a group of giggling, blindfolded eighth graders race each other putting condoms on bananas. She timed them with the stopwatch on her iPhone. At the end of class she served them banana muffins.

And then it was my first time teaching seniors. We went to a community center in the Bronx where the people spoke only Spanish. Lakshmi was fluent. I was sincerely trying.

During a break, a woman approached me. She spoke quickly, quietly, but I understood that she had contracted genital herpes a year ago and was too embarrassed to go to the doctor. In my clunky Spanish, I urged her to go to the doctor right away and tried to give her some basic information about how to avoid painful outbreaks. Then she muttered something about Crisco.

I leaned closer. “Mande?”

She told me again. I recoiled.

“Oh, no, no! Eso no es bien! Crisco! No, no.” Boy, now she had me worried and she was really stretching the limits of my Español. “Pienso que . . . usted quiere mantener las lesiones limpias y secas así que se puedan curar y dejar de existir. . . . Si ponga Crisco en las lesiones usted las tendrían para siempre tiempo.”

The woman looked frightened. Lakshmi, standing nearby, spoke to her in rapid Spanish. The woman smiled with relief at Lakshmi, looked askance at me, and went back to her seat.

“What?” I asked Lakshmi.

“You were doing good when you told her to go to the doctor, don’t eat crap, get a lot of rest, and don’t get sunburned. It went downhill when you said if she puts Crisco on the lesions she’ll have them forever.”

“Forever! I meant
longer
.”

“Yeah. I think she’ll be all right.”

At the end of the session, after handing out goody bags of condoms and lube and packing up our materials, I said, “Look, I probably shouldn’t teach Spanish-speaking people.”

“Maybe not by yourself, yet,” Lakshmi said. “Repeat after me,
rr-r
oja.” “Roja.”

“
Rrr
io.”

“Rio.”

She scowled. She wanted me to roll my Rs, but I am physically incapable. My tongue just lies there like it’s sunbathing on the beach in Cozumel.

Lakshmi patted my back. “Work on it.”

The next couple of weeks we went to retirement communities in the outer boroughs. I hadn’t actually spent that much time around seniors. I never knew any of my grandparents. My life experiences were so limited! Old people and small children were complete mysteries to me. It turned out that the old people I taught were generally extremely nice to be with. They told great stories. They asked good questions. They laughed, a lot.

After I completed the training and started doing workshops on my own and became more confident, my appetite came back full force. By March I had regained the seven pounds lost,
plus
an additional seven. All in my ass. I didn’t care. I wasn’t on the market.

The first day of spring was gorgeous, a bright promise that winter really was ending. Peg had brought in the mail and left mine, as usual, on the kitchen table. On top was a postcard from the Hollywood Wax Museum. I flipped it over. Tiny, packed handwriting.

Hey. They let me out for a meal and fresh air and I came here. Someone said they had a good statue of David Haselhoff. True! But Sammy Davis jr totally sucked! Its warm here and people are nice. I think you would like it. They gave me a place to live in that has a fireplace and a
cleaning lady
.
She brought me homade tomalies! Bogue came out to visit for four days and she almost quit coz he is such a slob!!! Gotta go sing for my supper now. Take care. TGW

I sat at the table and absentmindedly picked up a pencil and started making corrections. I mean, why so many exclamation marks? And Has
s
elhoff. Davis
,
Jr
. It
’
s. Hom
em
ade.
.

Coz—
where to even begin?

Peg came in and stood at my elbow for a moment before I realized she was there. I peeked up at her. She looked rather incredulous.

I set down the pencil. “This looks bad, doesn’t it?”

“Um, yeah. Slightly nuts.”

“Ha! Reflex, I guess. I just—honestly, I’m kind of bemused. I’ve never seen so many bizarre misspellings—”

“Step away from the postcard, Grace.”

“Okay, yeah. . . . Okay.”

I turned down five dates. One from a guy I sometimes saw at the Strand bookstore on Saturdays. The other four were from Felix, the Puerto Rican kid who bagged my groceries. I’d heard through the neighborhood grapevine that he was a sociopathic computer genius. He’d gotten into big FBI trouble for hacking into major retail websites but was only sentenced to community service and psychiatric rehabilitation because he was a minor.

Our exchanges at the register went something like this.

Felix: Hello, my love. (He is bagging my purchases. He kisses, and then bags, my box of tampons.)

Me: Hello, Felix. Don’t do that.

Felix: When are you going to let me show you a good time?

Me: I’m not.

Felix: Come on, baby, why?

Me: Because you’re fifteen and I’m twenty-nine? As a starting point.

Felix: You know that only makes me like you more.

Me: It’s never going to happen.

Then he would abandon his workstation to follow me out of the store and down the block, sweet-talking me and threatening to hack into my e-mail.