Unbecoming (26 page)

“Christ.” He pulled her toward him and she wept on his chest. “You should have told me.”

“I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

“It would have explained a lot. I thought you were unhappy with me.”

“No,” she blubbered. “I could never be unhappy with you.”

He sighed and stroked her head, and there they lay in repair, the forgiver and the forgiven.

19

N
o one wanted Riley’s car. He’d felt so flush when he bought it, he admitted; he couldn’t imagine not having
more
money. He thought he’d sell a painting every month, that the commissions would come rolling in. But he’d satisfied Garland’s needs better than he’d meant to.

They tacitly agreed to revise their memories of the inkwell argument for a tonal adjustment. Riley was determined to laugh—at the inkwell, at himself. He pointed to the objects in Grace’s photos from the Wynne House, playing a version of
The Price Is Right.
“How much for that one? Three grand? Four? Too bad you couldn’t fit that in your pocket.”

She knew now how she’d screwed up.
He
had always been the rascal. She was supposed to play the goody-goody, Pollyanna looking over her shoulder for parents, teachers, and cops. Taking something from the Wynne House should have been his idea. If Riley had been on the tour with her that day, Grace could have cocked an eyebrow and he would have put the lion in
his
pocket, and later, he would have gloated as she pretended to scold him. That was how they worked; she knew their roles, and yet she hadn’t really seen their limits until now. She vowed to do better. Every couple hit a rough patch from time to time. She would pull them through.

 • • • 

On a Tuesday night in late February, Grace was eating vanilla ice cream in the Grahams’ living room after dinner with Riley, his brother Colin, and Dr. and Mrs. Graham. They were all talking about basketball, or they had been, and Grace had gotten lost imagining her teeth in Alls’s shoulder, the nakedness of his stare, and (God, how unfair to remember this so well) the way he’d nuzzled down her belly, down between her thighs to tease them apart.

“Gracie and I are bored,” Mrs. Graham said, startling Grace out of her daydream. “We’ll see y’all later.” She crooked a finger at Grace for her to follow.

Mrs. Graham led Grace upstairs into the master bedroom and shut the door behind her.

“They do go on, don’t they?” she said, going to her closet. “Gracie, tell me, how are you
doing
?”

“Fine.” Grace swallowed. “Relieved. To be home.” Since she’d come home, she’d avoided being alone with Mrs. Graham, fearing that Riley’s mother would somehow
know
, that she would look at Grace and see exactly what she was hiding.

“I know you two must have missed each other something awful,” Mrs. Graham said. “You’ve never had to be apart before.”

So this would be that conversation. “Yeah,” Grace said. “I thought I could imagine it, but I just couldn’t do it. I mean, I didn’t want to.”

“You know, Dan and I didn’t go to college together,” she said. “He was at Garland, but my parents sent me to Sweet Briar, you know. He’d drive up for any long weekend, but it was so hard. Well, you know.”

“I know it’s supposed to be hard and I’m supposed to do it anyway,” Grace said. “But I don’t think I can. Maybe because of where I went—maybe it would have been different if I’d gone to Vanderbilt or Sewanee. I just couldn’t find my . . .” She gave up.
I had sex with Alls
, she imagined saying.
I had sex with Alls, and I married your son.

Grace had thought Mrs. Graham had gone to her closet to get a sweater, or to show Grace something she had bought, but Grace now saw that Mrs. Graham was only straightening a row of shirts on their hangers, looking into their collars instead of at Grace.

“And it was too expensive,” Grace said quietly.

Mrs. Graham turned around holding a pale green blouse. Her first name was Joanna, but Grace had never called her that, and even though she secretly thought of Mrs. Graham as her real mother, she couldn’t imagine calling her anything but Mrs. Graham.

Mrs. Graham fingered the blouse’s collar. “Don’t I know it,” she said absently. She smiled. “Honey, remember at Thanksgiving, when Dan gave you some money to give to Riley?”

Grace’s hands were under her thighs. She dug her nails into her jeans. “What money?”

“He gave you an envelope, with money inside,” she said carefully. “For Riley’s supplies.”

It had been three hundred dollars in cash, crisp fifties. Grace had meant to give it to Riley, but she hadn’t. She’d used it for his Christmas present and some other things; she could hardly remember now.

“I don’t remember,” Grace said, growing hot at her temples. “He did?”

“Yes, about three hundred dollars.” She didn’t seem to know what to say then, and neither did Grace. “I told him not to do cash, in case it got lost or something. But he didn’t want Riley to have to go to the bank, since he was working all hours for his show.” She went back to her closet and hung up the blouse.

“I didn’t open it,” Grace said, groping for time. “It’s probably still in my coat pocket.” She’d given over her last paycheck to Riley. She had no way to come up with that money until she found another job, but if she could just hold off—

“Oh, your winter coat? Downstairs?” Mrs. Graham’s shoulders collapsed in relief.

“Yes,” Grace said with false hope that quickly became real. Maybe the envelope would be there; maybe she
hadn’t
spent the money. She held on to this prayer as she stepped downstairs, Mrs. Graham right behind her, to check her pockets. But of course there was no envelope. There were drugstore receipts and a ChapStick, a few crumpled straw wrappers.

“Oh dear,” Mrs. Graham said. “What could have happened to it? Do you think you put the envelope somewhere? I’m sorry, honey, but three hundred dollars is a lot of money, and Dan was in such a piss that Riley never thanked him, and I wondered if—well, let’s just try to find that envelope.”

But three hundred dollars wasn’t that much money, not to the Grahams. Grace’s sudden flare of anger only made her more scared and more ashamed.

“I don’t remember taking it out,” she said. “It could have fallen out at the airport? Or I guess someone could have taken it? Oh no, I had this dry-cleaned.”

“Well,” Mrs. Graham said, biting her lip. “That’s certainly possible.”

“This is awful,” Grace said. “Let me pay you back. I’m so sorry I lost it.”

She expected Mrs. Graham to say that it was okay, that everyone lost things now and then, and let’s go downstairs and get some ice cream. That would be the Mrs. Graham–like thing.

But Riley’s mother smiled grimly and took Grace’s clammy hand in hers. “Honey, I’m saying this out of love. You know that.”

The heat shot up Grace’s neck and wrapped around her skull in a second. Mrs. Graham’s face floated before her like a too-bright light.

“It’s not the first time something like this has happened, right?”

Grace shut her eyes.

“When you took one of the little silver spoons, I—I was even a little touched. And a scarf once, and some earrings, remember?”

Mrs. Graham was talking as if Grace had stolen the spoon, the scarf, the earrings. You couldn’t steal your mother’s earrings, not if you were her daughter. Grace had just wanted to have them as a piece of—

You couldn’t
steal
from your own household—that was the point. Riley took his brothers’ old things and his dad’s pocket change all the time. That wasn’t stealing. That wasn’t wrong. It was family.

“But this is different,” Mrs. Graham went on. “This is another kind of thing.” She swallowed. “And we love you, and we just want to take care of you and make sure you have what you need. You need to talk about this with someone, okay?”

Grace wanted to die and she wanted her hand out of Mrs. Graham’s, so she pulled it back.

“Gracie, it’s okay. We’re going to get you some help. Maybe we should talk to your mom?”

Grace lurched forward in a silent sob.

Mrs. Graham put her arm around her. “I’m just glad it was us, instead of—you’re here with us and it’s going to be okay.” She rubbed Grace’s back. “Oh, sweetie, I didn’t mean for you to—I’m used to yelling at boys! Come here, honey. We didn’t tell Riley, okay? Is that what you’re worried about?”

 • • • 

How
had they not told Riley? Curled like a bean on their bed back in their room on Orange Street, Grace pled menstrual cramps as she clutched at her stomach. That was what this misery felt like, her insides being carved out of her.

Whether she had meant to steal from the Grahams was an impossible question. Of course she hadn’t meant to
steal
from them—or rather, she hadn’t meant for
stealing
to be the right word for keeping the money. It had been something else, the answer to a split-second series of emotional calculations, not quite conscious and immediately suppressed. She had wanted to be the beloved daughter but had tunneled in as a wife. Community property applied to wives, even secret wives. What was Riley’s was hers; the money was a gift to her. But she knew that she had kept the money to feel like a daughter, not like a wife.

Riley was on one of his rare picking-up sprees, shaking the dust bunnies out of their clothes and stuffing them back into drawers. Grace’s pile grew up from her suitcase, which she still had not put away, and now it seemed too symbolic, as if her time were up and now she would have to go.

She didn’t know how she could find out what they had told him without dragging everything up to the surface.

She tried hard to imagine the scene: Mrs. Graham would have asked Riley about the money, to remind him to thank his father. Riley wouldn’t know what she was talking about.
But he gave it to Gracie
, she might have started. Riley would have asked if she was sure, and Mrs. Graham would have had to think then.
Maybe not
, she would have had to say.
I’ll ask him. It’s probably buried in his desk or something.

“Sorry, what?” she asked Riley. He was holding up a pair of black tights.

“Shouldn’t you
wash
these?”

Mrs. Graham must have thought quickly, to say those things, to protect her. Grace had always known that Riley’s mother loved her; she had never doubted it. That was why she and Riley couldn’t tell anyone they’d married, because Mrs. Graham would be crushed to have been left out of the wedding. Her daughter’s wedding. But no, Grace was not her daughter. Mrs. Graham had made that clear.
Why
had she and Riley gotten married? Why hadn’t they gotten engaged? That, they could have told everyone. Marriage had seemed bigger, more romantic and risky, she guessed.

No, she realized. They’d married because marriage had seemed final, as though it would protect her, protect them.

Dr. Graham knew about the money too, of course. Oh, it was worse than if Riley knew, so much worse.

“Are you
sure
you’re okay?” he asked her, his hand on her calf. “They’re not usually this bad, are they?”

She shook her head. “No, not like this. I feel horrible.” She began to cry, her throat burning, and Riley went downstairs for her bag, where there was ibuprofen. He came back upstairs clutching her purse from the side, and he looked so young—his face pale and pink and childish, his green eyes big and worried. He’d poured her a glass of Coke.

When you’d known someone this long, she had often thought before, you could rarely see what they looked like at any present moment. Riley’s face was a composite of every face it had been since she had met him. Only every now and then did his face become singular. Now it shocked her, how young he looked. Like a little boy. She felt desperate to fall back in time with him, to go back, back, back, and sickened that she couldn’t.

20

A
week later, Grace was eating a mealy apple, dumbly clicking through auction records, and staring at her phone, both desperate for and dreading a call from Mrs. Graham asking them to come to dinner, when Riley burst in the kitchen, flushed with panic.

“My dad says I have to pay
taxes
on my painting money.”

“Oh,” Grace said, looking up from a listing on Mdina pottery. “I hadn’t thought about that. All the jobs I’ve had, they were just taken out.”

“Obviously, I hadn’t thought about it either,” he said, blowing up at his hair. “This is fucked up.”

It wasn’t that she
had
thought about his taxes, but more his look of indignation, as though someone else were at fault. She wanted to smack him.

“Well,” she said, looking back at her reading, “maybe you should rob the Wynne House.”

She was surprised when he laughed. He sank down the wall and sat on the floor, his hands over his face, his laughter muffled.

“Just put on some nice ski masks,” he said. “Just get some flashlights and clean the place out.”

“Strip it,” Grace said, biting a side out of her apple. The cold hurt her teeth. “Lock old Dorothea in the powder room, throw it all in the back of a pickup, and drive to New York City.”

“What do we tell the people who buy the stuff?”

“That your grandfather died. Great-aunt. Great-something.”

“Grandpa Dwight promised me his guns,” he said. “At the home, right before he died, when my mom was out of the room. He also said, ‘The ass is the lass.’ Didn’t elaborate.”

“He died when you were, what, thirteen? Did you get the guns?”

“Nope, he gave them to Nate and Colin. He mixed us up a lot.” He stared at the ceiling. “Maybe we should just move into the Wynne House. Then we wouldn’t have to pay rent.”

Grace got up from the table and joined him on the dirty floor. “We could sleep in the tiny bed together,” she said. “All snuggled up.”

“I will be the statesman and you can be the . . . the—”

“They didn’t have stateswomen,” Grace said. “I get something crappy. The charwoman.”