Unbecoming (27 page)

“No, you just don’t have a job. You’re the lady of the house, just like now.”

She swatted him and he laughed into her hair.

“No,” she said. “We should sell it and move to Canada or someplace, never to be seen again.” She imagined never seeing Alls again, never seeing the Grahams again, and felt momentarily peaceful, as though someone had turned on a white-noise machine.

“Canada? You want to rob the Wynne House so we can move to Canada?”

“Anywhere,” she said. “Belize. Peru. Rome. Anywhere with you.”

 • • • 

Alls got a second job as a cashier at the drugstore, so he bought the groceries. Grace had applied for the drugstore too, but they had not called her, and of course she couldn’t take a job there now. Riley had called the wedding photographer he worked for in the summers, but it wasn’t wedding season yet. So far, he had refused to take less than he owed on the car, but no such offer was forthcoming. Somehow, it had not yet occurred to Greg that he would have to find a job. He ate the pizza Alls brought home as if it had long been his due. If they’d lived in Memphis or Nashville, getting jobs would have been less of a problem, but Garland was too small to employ them, and now Riley and Grace were without a car.

Grace’s heist fantasy became her and Riley’s private joke, increasingly elaborate. At night, eating saltines, they “debated” the pros and cons of single-item theft versus all-out looting. Grace drew “maps” of the site, including floor plans of the interior. They walked by the house sometimes, wondering about the locks on the doors and the windows, noting the curtains and shades, which ones were drawn and when. But these conversations all fell disappointingly within the bounds of their standard what-ifs, no different, really, from folding a four-pointed fortune-teller. Grace wished the robbery were not a joke to him. Each time he made a crack about shoplifting from the Wynne House, he was laughing on the edge of the idea, and Grace waited for him to step over. The real idea would have to be his, she knew.

Even if their Wynne joke stayed a joke, she was grateful for the shared diversion, which gave them something that had been missing: a game, a secret that, unlike their secret marriage, let her imagine them somewhere other than where they were. They read together about the unsolved 1990 robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in Boston, where two men dressed as police entered the museum late at night, tied up the guards in the basement, and stole five hundred million dollars in Rembrandt, Degas, and Vermeer. They read about the thieves who rented a storefront across the street from the National Fine Arts Museum, in Paraguay, dug a tunnel ten feet underground into the museum, and stole five paintings. Never caught.

Riley had been utterly charmed by the San Juan Surfer, later rechristened the Surfer Bandit, who robbed ten banks in Southern California before he was caught, always wearing “casual surfer attire” and escaping on a maroon 1983 Honda motorcycle. Riley had shaken his head in wonder at the published security camera photos; the man bore an uncanny resemblance to Greg. Grace preferred Blane Nordahl, a cat burglar who’d stolen
only
hallmarked antique silver from wealthy Americans along the East Coast for decades. He chose his marks from
Architectural Digest
and
Town & Country
, where people eagerly displayed their most portable capital in situ. To get in, Nordahl would painstakingly cut through a single pane of window glass, so as not to provoke the security system by raising the window. He was at large again. Grace thought of her Dianakopf spoons and felt the glow of camaraderie. She knew which silver to take.

In 2008, four men in drag stormed into a Paris Harry Winston with guns and grenades. They bashed in display cases and swept the diamonds within into suitcases while the employees and shoppers trembled in a corner. All told, they got away with $108 million, never recovered. Grace loved the audacity of it—broad daylight, broken glass, one of the most famous jewelers in the world. She caught her knee bobbing as she read.

The Wynne House had no security guards, no security system beyond locks on the doors. All they would have to do was show up.

 • • • 

Grace, Riley, and Greg were sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal one night when Riley read the local police blotter out loud from the
Record
. The complaints of Garland’s citizens were always ripe for mockery.

“‘A resident of the three hundred block of Lowery Avenue called police Friday afternoon at four to complain of two youths, estimated twelve to fourteen, cutting through her yard and disrupting her garden. The youths’ parents have been notified.’”

“When I’m an old lady, I will collect dead birds to throw at the youths,” Grace said.

“‘A Garland citizen,’” Riley continued, “‘found a lewd drawing on a napkin near the Lions Club picnic.’”

Greg snorted.

“Here’s one: ‘The Josephus Wynne Historic Estate reported the theft of an antique desk accessory from its premises.’”

Grace stared at him. What was he playing at?

“They don’t even know when,” Riley said, avoiding Grace’s eyes. “Because who would notice a missing desk accessory?”

“I’m surprised people don’t steal shit from them constantly,” Greg said. “All that old shit no one cares about.”

“I bet it’s all crap,” Riley said. “What do they call it?” He looked at Grace. “When they make new stuff that looks like antiques?”

“Shabby chic,” Greg said with authority.

“Reproduction,” Grace said, seething at Riley’s indiscretion.

“No, they probably don’t allow that,” Riley said. “Against the rules or something.”

“Some people go in for the dumbest shit,” Greg said. His family’s house was full of crystal decanters and silver napkin rings, but maybe he had never noticed them amid the rubble. The Kimbroughs were more into biannual kitchen renovations than they were into heirlooms.

Riley shrugged. “I’d rather have George Washington’s spittoon than a home theater.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Greg said. “You’d be like, how many Xboxes can I get for this? You’re just saying that because of
her
.” He got up and dropped his bowl in the sink. “They should just liquidate the Wynne House and build a water park.”

“We’re doing it. Raiding the Wynne House,” Riley said, clasping his hands behind his head. “Me and
her
.”

“Hot damn, I want in.” Greg laughed and leaned against the counter. “Then what? Yard sale?”

“Then we drive the loot to Atlanta or whatever and sell it off. All our grandpas died.”

“Come on,” Grace said, getting up. “We need to get to Walgreens before they close.” Grace needed to pick up her birth control, but Riley didn’t need to walk with her, and he knew that.

“Why do you hate me?” Greg asked her. He’d said it as if he was kidding, but he wasn’t. He smirked at her, daring her to answer. She rolled her eyes.

“No, you really do,” he said. “Like, it’s painful for you that I’m laughing at one of your jokes.”

“Christ, man,” Riley said. “Will you chill?”

Grace was getting tired of Riley’s
Christ
, which seemed to stand in for his brain so he wouldn’t have to think of anything to say.

“You don’t have any money anymore,” she said to Greg. “What are you going to do?”

Greg shrugged. “They’ll give in. They’re not going to let me starve.”

“Doesn’t it bother you, though, that it’s up to them?”

Riley was clearly nervous. In the six years they had known each other, Grace and Greg had never had any real discussion, and she certainly had never flaunted her contempt for him.

“It bothers you more than it does me,” he said, surprising her.

“We need to hurry,” Riley said. “They close at nine.”

They closed at ten, but Grace followed him out.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded on the sidewalk.

“What the hell was
that
? You tell him everything we talk about?”

“It’s a
joke
,” he said. “I didn’t realize that was such sensitive information.”

“I feel like we have no privacy here,” she said. She could not tell him what she had meant to say without looking like a fool. “I feel like we have less privacy now than we ever used to.”

He looked at her then as if she were crazy. “What is this about?”

“Riley, how are we going to pay the rent, huh? And buy food? By selling your stupid car?”

“Look, I know you’re worried, but something will change. Worse comes to worst, we move back home for a while. We’re not
adults
.”

“I can’t
go
back home,” she spat. “Don’t you get that?”

“Calm down. My mom
made
you a room, for chrissakes.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence. It was only a matter of time until Riley found out
something
, she knew. If the Grahams told him about the money, she knew that Riley would want to believe that his father had made a mistake, that he had not given her the envelope. Or that he had, but she had not opened the envelope, that she had simply lost it. She didn’t know which was better to say.

She wished she could take something else from the Wynne House, just so she could sell it and pay the Grahams back. They could all pretend she had simply misplaced the envelope. Everything could be the way it was before, or at least the Grahams would think it was.

The horrible shame of knowing Dr. and Mrs. Graham thought—
knew
—she had stolen the money seemed like it couldn’t possibly get any worse until she imagined the further conversations: Riley telling them they were wrong, that
of course
he believed her. Mrs. Graham knowing that Grace had lied to her son, and so effectively. Grace wouldn’t be a girl with a little problem of borrowing and not giving back, their girl who just needed some sessions with a counselor. They would never really trust her, or even look at her like
her
again,
their
Gracie.

But that had already happened, she knew. Mrs. Graham had been clear. Grace was not their daughter, not all the time.

Grace and Riley had not been to his parents’ since Mrs. Graham had confronted Grace. She had dreaded Riley’s questions about why she didn’t want to go, but he barely noticed. Grace had been the one pushing for those weekly dinner visits, and she and Mrs. Graham had always arranged them. Two weeks had passed since Mrs. Graham had taken her up to the bedroom, and she had not called Grace about dinner. About anything.

This was what happened when your heart wanted two things it could not have together: You lost them both. Everyone knew that.

But she still had Riley, the only person who still thought she was a good girl, and she could not let him change his mind. She knew this even as she fought to ignore the inexplicable, grotesque rage she felt hissing deep within—at Dr. and Mrs. Graham, for treating her as their daughter and then humiliating her like a stray who’d forgotten her place; at Donald and at Bethany; at Lana and Kendall; at Craig Furst, wanting to know if she
enjoyed
Miami; at her parents and at the twins for revealing them to her; at Greg, who coasted through the days in an Xbox fugue state, blank-eyed and gassy. At Alls, who had picked her like a lock. At Riley, for being so loved and so smug, even now, and in love with her. At herself, more than anyone, for not smacking her own hand back when it wanted, so often, what was not hers. She looked at her husband and saw a ticking clock. She had to take him away, and she had to take him before she ran out of time.

 • • • 

The next morning, Grace and Riley were lying in bed when Grace heard a door slam in the driveway. She turned over and covered her head with her pillow, trying to stay asleep.

“RILEY!” Greg bellowed from downstairs. “YOUR CAR’S GETTING TOWED!”

She heard the front door swing open and shut, Greg shouting at someone. She elbowed Riley, her eyes squeezed shut.

“Wake up,” she said, her throat dry. “Greg is yelling.”

What had Greg said? The car?

She pulled a T-shirt over her head as she stumbled to the window. “Riley,” she said sharply. “There’s a tow truck in the driveway.”

He rubbed his eyes. “It’s our driveway,” he said. “I can park in my own driveway.”

“I think you better wake up,” she hissed, raking through the pile of clothes for a pair of jeans.

All at once he sprang up and sprinted downstairs. Grace followed him. Alls was already outside, demanding to see the man’s papers, and Riley ran out into the March frost in only his shorts, shouting at the man to stop.

“What are you doing?”

“Repossessing your car,” the man said. “You want to give me the keys?”

“What?
Why?
”

“Are you sure you have the right car?” Alls asked the man. “You check the VIN?”

Greg turned away and shambled up the porch steps. He stood next to Grace in his sweatpants. “I’ve never seen a repo man in real life,” he said.

 • • • 

Later, draped across the couch, Greg said it was fucked up that they could just come take your car like that, and he wanted to call his lawyer dad but Riley stopped him. He hadn’t made his last payment, he said, and the one before had been late. But he hadn’t realized they could just take the car back. Alls told Riley he was relatively lucky, that when his father’s car had been repoed, the repo man had followed him to work, at Hawkes’ Sports, and taken it from the parking lot without his dad knowing, and then he was stranded out there, and Alls didn’t have a car yet and couldn’t go get him, so he’d had to spend the night in the camping department. Riley’s was a pretty okay repo guy, as far as these things went. He’d even let Riley get his stuff out of the car.

“We should rob the Wynne House,” Riley said. “I’m serious.”

“I’m ninety-nine-point-nine that there’s
no
security,” Greg said, as if he’d given it real thought. “Not even a camera.”

“Your dad’s going to cave, right?” Riley asked Greg. “He always does.”

“Fuck him. I don’t want to go to fucking law school. Alls is poor as shit and bagging tampons. You don’t even have your ghetto Volvo anymore. And she flunked out of school.”