The Rules of Love & Grammar (5 page)

“I guess you've seen her handiwork outside,” he says, winking at Mom. “She whipped those gardens into shape. I don't think Martha Stewart could have done a better job.” He looks at my mother with pride. “She's tamed those geraniums and trimmed the echinaceas, and I think the hydrangeas are bluer than your eyes, Gracie.”

He smiles at her, and my heart melts a little.

“The party is coming along fine,” Mom says. “We're up to ninety-five people.” She reaches for the dish of chutney. “But I'm guessing we'll end up with over a hundred.” Her face brightens. “Oh, and I heard from Roberta Carson today. They won't be able to come, but she told me Julie's getting married. Little Julie. Do you believe it?” She spoons more curry onto her plate.

Julie Carson, getting married? I used to babysit Julie, before the Carsons moved to Milwaukee or Minneapolis or some other place that starts with an
M.
“No, I don't believe it. I remember her as a scruffy tomboy.”

“I do, too,” Mom says with a laugh. “But time marches on. And you'll be next, honey.” She looks at me with the tiniest bit of pity, and then she adds, “I never really thought Scott was a good match for you.”

“I'm beginning to feel as though nobody did except me.”

“He just seemed so…” She glances at me as if I'm supposed to supply the word.

“Self-absorbed?” Dad says as he swirls the wine in his glass.

“Afraid so,” Mom says. “Sweetie, I can't believe you don't have a line of eligible men at your door.” She reaches out and pats my hand. “You're so smart and so pretty. In a city of eight million—”

“Mom.” I pull back my hand. If I hear about the eight million people one more time, I'm going to throw myself off the roof. “It's hard to meet nice guys, even in Manhattan. In fact, it's probably harder there than most places.”

“Maybe it's something you're doing that you don't even realize,” she says. “Like…I don't know, giving off negative signals.”

“Why would I be giving off negative signals?” I look at my father for some help, but he just shrugs, as though this isn't his territory. “You make it sound as though I'm wearing a red circle on my back with a diagonal line over the figure of a man.”

“I'm just saying you might not know it, honey. Otherwise, I can't understand why nothing has worked out for you. After all, you have had some nice boyfriends.”

“I've had losers.”

“No, you haven't.”

“Yes, I have.”

“What about that fellow you were seeing before Scott? I think he was in banking. David somebody-or-other. With the two first names.”

“David Martin? The guy with the old, green MG?”

“Yes. He had that cute little sports car.”

“Mom, David Martin was a total cad, and that cute little sports car broke down more often than it ran.”

“Oh, MGs are notorious for that,” Dad chimes in, as if he could possibly be an expert on anything mechanical.

“On our third date,” I say, “we stopped at a light around Eighty-Sixth and Second, and the car conked out. Just wouldn't go. David told me to get out and push while he jump-started it. So I did. Crazy, I know. Why couldn't he have done the pushing? He knew I could drive a stick. Then, a couple of weeks later, it happened again, and we had a repeat performance. When it happened the third time and he suggested I get out and push, I got out and left. That was it for David.”

Mom's shoulders slump. “I didn't know about any of that.”

“I try to spare you the harrowing details.”

She sighs, and I push around my food while my other ex-boyfriends march through my mind in a little parade. Bill Stoddard, who was far more interested in my father than in me, and Ted Ecklund, who had to plan his whole schedule around when the football games were on TV, and Gordon Hackley, who wanted to open a chain of restaurants for dogs and was trying to get on
Shark Tank
the last time I saw him.

“Look, if Julie Carson can land a husband, you certainly can,” Mom says. “Roberta emailed me her picture. She still looks like a tomboy, if you ask me.”

I really don't want to hear anything more about Julie Carson. I grab a roll from the basket. “I found the coolers you were looking for.”

“The coolers?” she says. “Oh, right. Well, that's good. I'm never sure what's in that garage.”

“What coolers?” Dad asks.

“The ones in the garage,” I say. “You know, in the
storage area?
Once in a while you guys really ought to take a look at what's out there. You might find something interesting.”

Dad tilts back his wineglass. “Like what?”

“Like Renny's bike.” There's a moment of silence running between my parents. “The Schwinn,” I add.

“The Schwinn?” Mom mumbles as she holds a forkful of rice in midair.

“Don't you remember? Red road bike? She got it when I got my Raleigh?”

“You girls had quite a few bikes over the years,” Dad says.

“Yes, but this was her last one. It was called a Paramount.”

Mom shakes her head. “I don't know. Maybe I'd remember it if I saw it.” She looks away.

“I didn't know we still had Renny's old bike,” I say. “I thought you gave it to the thrift shop ages ago when you took mine there.”

“Well, I guess I didn't,” she says, with that little edge in her voice that sometimes comes out when she talks about Renny. She glances at my father. “Doyle, would you please pass the butter?”

“The bike's a mess,” I tell them. “Really dirty and rusty. The salt air's gotten to it. I couldn't believe it was out there all this time. I took it to the Bike Peddler to see what they can do.”

“Are they going to fix it?” Dad asks.

“I think so. I'm waiting for them to get back to me.”

“What are you planning to do with the bike?” he says. “If they can fix it, I mean. Are you going to take it back to New York? Is it safe to ride a bike there?”

“I'm trying to figure that out. I don't have a lot of room in my apartment, but I'm not going to put it back in the garage. It shouldn't have been out there in the first place.” I look at Mom.

She frowns at me. “So what are you saying? That the bike was my responsibility?”

“I'm just saying, once in a while you should take a look at what's in the garage. If you did, you would have seen that it was getting ruined.”

She drops her fork, and it hits the plate with a
clank
. “I didn't let it get ruined on purpose, if that's what you're implying, Grace. Why would I do that?”

“I'm not saying you did. I'm just saying it was out there and nobody bothered to notice, and now it's ruined.” I reach for the butter and knock over my wineglass, one of a set Mom found tucked away in some shop, antique crystal from Prague. The glass shatters, and red wine spreads across the table, toward Renny's empty seat. Mom throws a napkin over the wine, and I run to the kitchen and grab a roll of paper towels.

“Sorry about the glass,” I say as I finish mopping up the spill.

“It's all right,” Mom says, a resigned expression on her face.

My father's sitting in his seat, but he's not looking at me. And he's not looking at my mother. He's studying the mural over the fireplace, those yellow hills, that green river. Maybe he wishes he could walk into it as well.

It's only ten o'clock when I go upstairs to my bedroom. I turn on the bedside table lamp, and the light hums through the shade, a quiet amber glow. I fold down the white coverlet, climb into bed, and lie between the crisp sheets, my head half-buried in the soft pillow.

The wallpaper, with its pink rosebuds, wraps me in a gentle embrace, and I remember the day Mom took me to Accents, a home decor shop that used to be in town, and I picked out that paper. I was in ninth grade, trying to decide between rosebuds and daisies. I chose the rosebuds because they reminded me of the roses that grow on the trellis behind the house.

I gaze at the bookcase across the room, the bottom shelf lined with poetry anthologies. The book with the gray cover summons me, and I cross the floor and pull it off the shelf. Back in bed I find the poem, but as I read the lines I realize I don't need the book because I already know every word. Dad is right, of course. I did once write a paper on this poem. I always thought it was only about nature and its dominion over mankind. How we believe we can possess something—that house, that acre of land—but how nature reclaims everything in the end. I guess my father thinks the poem is about striving and struggling and needing that to stay alive and to stay connected with the universe. What I think now is that the poem is really about the overall transience of life. You're here one moment, and the next you're gone. Lifetimes are short, in the general scheme of things, and some, like Renny's, are shorter than others.

I
pull into Cluny's driveway and beep the horn. She comes running out a minute later, dressed in a gauzy top and flowing skirt, carrying a pair of flip-flops, making me wish I'd worn something better than my tattered jeans.

“Just like old times,” she says as she climbs into the passenger seat of the Beetle. “Saturday-morning breakfast at the Sugar Bowl.”

I pull out of her driveway. “Old habits die hard.”

She reaches into her handbag, a big drawstring affair made of floral fabric. “Check this out,” she says, removing something she's torn from the newspaper. “Your horoscope for today.”

“Oh, here we go again.”

“No, come on, listen to this:

“All that's supposed to happen today? Seems like a lot.”

“Grace, this is real. I read it and immediately thought,
This means Grace is going to get a
job.
Besides, there's going to be a new moon tonight, which means it's a good time to embark on something. So that would be a job. Don't you see?”

“No, I don't.”

Sometimes I can't believe how a brilliant artist and otherwise smart woman can be so gullible about certain things, like these horoscopes. Once, when we were young, Cluny insisted that if she could just get on a TV talk show and tell everyone to join hands and love one another, it would happen. It wasn't from an overinflated opinion of herself; she just believed that if someone, anyone, could remind people of their inner goodness, then goodness would follow.

I'm way too skeptical. “That horoscope could be about anything,” I tell her. “They're written by people sitting around drinking coffee with their feet up on their desks. Or worse, by computers. They're not divine providence.”

“That's not true, Grace. They're written by astrologists, who study these things—the planets, how they're aligned, the angles, all of that. It's complicated, but they know how to interpret the data and figure out what's going to happen.”

“Keep dreaming,” I mumble as I make a right onto Baxter Field Road. There's a big addition going up on the house where the Holbrooks used to live. And the widow's walk is gone. “Look at that.” I point to the house. “Remember the parties Ben Holbrook used to throw there? How we'd go up to the widow's walk and fling water balloons off the roof?”

“Ah, those were good times,” Cluny says, her voice sounding a little dreamy.

“The addition ruins the house, though.”

“You know,” she says, “you can be kind of critical, Grace.”

I press on the gas. “You're just upset because I don't believe in horoscopes.”

When we reach Main Street, traffic is crawling, and I notice little tents and tables of merchandise set up in front of the stores. The street is crowded with shoppers, mostly women dressed in shorts and T-shirts, exercise clothes, tank tops, and sundresses. The few men I see look bored or dazed, some of them holding the hands of small children, most of whom also look bored or dazed.

“Wow, I forgot it's the weekend of the sidewalk sale,” I say.

“It's even more packed than last year,” Cluny says. “I hope we can get a seat at the Sugar Bowl.”

“Me too. I'm dying for their apple pancakes.”

As we wait for the traffic light to change, I gaze at the shoppers and remember how Mom used to drag Renny and me to the sidewalk sale when we were kids. “My mother always loved this,” I say. “She used to turn it into a kind of mystical experience, as though she was hunting for some special thing she didn't even know she needed until she found it.”

I can see her on the sidewalk, picking up candlesticks, place mats, sandals, a skirt here, a lamp shade there, giving each item a thorough examination, as though it might be telling her something about itself that wasn't readily apparent.

“She's always had a way of spotting cool things,” Cluny says.

“Yeah. If I hadn't learned her skills in weeding out the junk to discover the gems, I never would have found my purple jelly shoes.”

“Oh my God, I
loved
jelly shoes,” Cluny says. “I had that pair in hot pink.”

“I remember. Oh, and I got my cassette player–boom box at the sidewalk sale one year.”

“Another great find.”

“And that denim shirt I thought looked exactly like the one Jason Priestley wore in
Beverly Hills, 90210
.”

“Yes, you wore it all summer,” Cluny says. “And I had that blue dress that looked like one of Tori Spelling's.”

“I wish I still had that shirt. Wait, what am I saying? It's probably in the attic.”

“Knowing your parents, I'm sure it is.”

The light finally turns green, and we pass the Sugar Bowl's blue and white awning and the sign with a cup of coffee on one side and a bowl of sugar on the other. I pull into the parking lot in the back, trying my best to avoid the potholes left from last winter's storms. There's one empty space, and I take it.

The second we walk inside, I'm hit by another wave of memories—sodas and French fries with Cluny after school, and grilled-cheese sandwiches with Renny after her Saturday sports practices.

I look around. “You were right. It's really crowded.”

We walk along the U-shaped counter, where every stool is taken, and past the sign boasting
World's Best Apple Pie
. There's been heated competition for years among the eating establishments in Dorset over which one has the best apple pie. The sign in the lobby of the Dorset Inn says
Best Apple Pie in the Universe,
but that assumes there is life on other planets and that those life-forms, whatever they are, have apples and ovens and the desire to make pies.

Having Miller's Orchards in town is what started the competition decades ago and what keeps it alive today. For years I've heard about the street fight that erupted back in the fifties between the owners of Chester's and the Sea Grape, two restaurants that faded into oblivion long before I was born. Apparently the two men got into it over their apple pies. Some say it's just a country legend, but, judging from how seriously people around here take their pies, I wouldn't be so sure.

I glance at the framed photos on the walls as we follow the hostess to a booth—an orange sea star; a striped chambered nautilus; a spiky, purple sea urchin; and the silvery inside of an oyster shell. “New decorations,” I whisper to Cluny.

“I'm so glad they finally got rid of those paintings of doughnuts and muffins,” she says.

I kind of liked them, but I don't say anything.

Fortunately, everything else is the same—the high-backed booths running along the walls, and the tables in the middle, the glass salt and pepper shakers and frosted sugar dispensers, the blue and white checked curtains tied back with tassels.

Cluny and I slide into our booth and order coffee from a waitress with a haphazard bun, broad shoulders, and
Luann
on her name tag. I study the menu, relieved to find that it offers many of the old standards, like apple-cornmeal fritters, apple pancakes, and baked apple French toast, along with steak and eggs and a lobster omelet. Luann returns with a carafe, pours our coffee, and takes out her pad and pen.

I order the apple pancakes and take a sip of coffee, which tastes metallic, as if someone dropped a few pennies into the pot while it was brewing. That hasn't changed, either. Cluny orders the artichoke-and-mushroom quiche. I'm about to ask Luann for more milk when another waitress walks over. Her name tag reads
Dee
.

“You're right,” Dee says to Luann, her voice quiet but excited. “I wouldn't have recognized Brittany Wells in a million years. She looks so different in person.”

“I thought she'd be a lot taller,” Luann says. “She's a tiny little thing.”

“Brittany Wells is here?” Cluny asks. “The actress?”

“Sure is,” Luann says, looking pleased that she's the one to provide this information. “Over there, with some other people from the movie. I heard one of the guys is the director.”

“The director?” I straighten up.

Cluny looks at me and mouths,
Peter!
“Where are they sitting?” she asks.

Luann points to someplace behind my side of the booth, a place I can't see from where I'm sitting because the back of the booth is too high. “At the middle table,” she adds. “There's a skinny girl with long, dark hair. That's Brittany Wells. She's just drinking lemon water. Probably why she's so skinny. And some guy with hoop earrings. He looks like he needs a shave. I think he's an actor, too.” Luann puts her pad in her apron pocket. “He ate two orders of apple pancakes.” She raises two fingers. “And look how skinny
he
is.” She pats her stomach. “Maybe I need to move to California,” she jokes as she walks away.

Cluny slides toward the end of her bench to take a look, and I grab her wrist. “No, don't!”

“Why not?”

“He might see you.”

“That's the point, Grace. We should say hello.”

I wish I hadn't worn my old jeans. And why didn't I put on more makeup this morning? “I'm not ready. I can't see him looking like this. Besides, he's with other people. We need to come up with a plan first.”

“I thought you didn't care.”

I pull my hairbrush, my compact, and my Rose Glow lipstick from my handbag. “Cluny, he's a former boyfriend. I don't want him to think I've gone to seed.” I apply the Rose Glow to my lips. “Or that I walk around in ratty clothes like this all the time.”

“But you do.”

I sigh. “Let's just figure out the plan.” Figuring out the plan was always my job when Cluny and I were in our detective phase. “All right, we need to do some reconnaissance,” I begin. “Make your way to the edge of the bench, just until you can see his table. But don't let him see you.”

“How am I going to do that?”

“I don't know. What do you have in your handbag? Anything you can use to make a disguise? A scarf or a hat, maybe?”

Cluny puts her handbag on the table. “Sure, I'll just pull a sombrero right out of here.” She makes a face. “Why can't you do this, Grace?”

“Because I'm in the wrong position and you're in the right position. I'd have to go to the edge of the bench and turn around, and then he'd recognize me right away.”

“All right,” Cluny says as she digs through her bag. A moment later she holds up a pair of large, black sunglasses.

“Perfect.”

She puts them on and arranges her hair so it covers the sides of her face.

“You haven't lost your touch. Now take a look.”

She inches her way to the edge of the bench and peers around. Suddenly, she straightens up. “It's him!”

“Are you sure?”

She leans forward and adjusts her sunglasses. “Yep. He's talking to another guy. He doesn't have any hair.”

“Peter's
bald?
”

“Not Peter,” she says. “The other guy. And he looks really good. Peter, I mean. Oh, wow, yeah.” She goes silent for a moment, her fingers gripping the edge of the table. Then her hands fly to her chest. “Oh my God, somebody else just joined them. I think it's…” All the color has left her face. “It's
Sean Leeds.
”

“What? You're kidding!” I start to stand, to get a glimpse of the actor
People
magazine recently named Sexiest Man Alive. Then I catch myself and quickly sit down. “Are you sure?”

Cluny looks again. “Yes, it's definitely him. He just sat down two seats from Peter.” She bangs her fist on the table. “Oh God, he's so handsome. I'm going to faint.”

I'm dying to look. Peter's back in town,
and
he's with Sean Leeds. “All right, tell me exactly what they're doing.” My hand trembles as I dump a packet of sweetener into my coffee.

“Okay, let's see,” Cluny says. “Besides Sean and Peter, there are two other guys—one is the bald guy, and the other is the one who needs a shave. And there's Brittany Wells. Wow, she really is tiny.”

“Okay. So what are they doing?”

“They're just talking. Oh, wait. Peter's on his cell phone now. And Brittany's drinking her lemon water. One guy is eating something. Looks like seeds. No, that can't be right. I don't know what it is.”

“Who cares what
he's
eating? What's
Peter
eating?” I ask. He can't be eating seeds. He always had the apple pancakes.

Cluny leans out a little farther. “I can't tell.”

“What about the other people?”

“I just told you what they're eating.” She lowers her sunglasses and glares at me.

“I mean, can you tell who they are?”

“No. Which is why we should just go over there and say hello.” She starts to rise again.

I grab her by the forearm and yank her down. “Not yet. We're still in the reconnaissance phase of our mission.”

“Well, what else do you want to know?”

“Are the other guys actors?”

Cluny focuses again on the table. “I don't know. I recognize Sean Leeds and Brittany Wells, but I don't know who those other two are.”

“They always say when you see actors in person, they never look the way they do in the movies,” I remind her. “Just like the waitress told us.”

A coy smile emerges on her lips. “I don't know about that. Sean Leeds sure looks like Sean Leeds to me.”

“Then who are they?”