24
PAUL MCCARTNEY ALL OVER AGAIN
Between Emily’s gift and the Jell-O turkey that
Muriel brought over, Grace felt she had consumed more
gelatine-based food in one meal than she had in all the years since
preschool. The real turkey had been a lost cause, though Truman had
questioned whether some part that hadn’t touched the floor might
still be perfectly good. But Sam was a witness to the fact that the
bird had rolled once it hit the floor, and neither he nor Lou could
vouch that Iago hadn’t slobbered on it before being shooed
away.
But even if the balance of the food had
been Jell-O, Grace wasn’t off the hook in terms of dishes. She did
them all, washing the good china by hand to preserve the gold
pattern. She was glad for the time alone, and even gladder to hear
her father laughing with everyone in the next room. When Peggy came
in to ask if she needed help, Grace sent her back to the others.
She felt much more generous toward her neighbor since the rescue of
the day before.
“Dad is so happy to have you all here,”
Grace said. “You should stay with him.”
Peggy held her gaze for a moment.
“Promise we’ll have a chance to talk again before you go
back.”
That word, back, stabbed at her heart. “We’ll have a chance,” she
assured her.
As she was finishing up, the back door
opened and Dominic came in, followed by Lily. “Are people still
here?” Lily asked.
“Some people,” Grace answered. “Muriel,
and my brothers. You should go in and meet Sam.”
“Okay,” Lily said, passing on
through.
Dominic saw the huge piles of dishes
and went closer to inspect. “Did you do all those by
hand?”
“Yes.”
“We were lucky. Granny Kate did all the
dishes before she and Pop Pop decided to leave.” He grabbed a
leftover roll from a basket on the counter and took a
bite.
“I thought your grandparents were
supposed to stay the weekend.”
“They were, but I think they got tired
of us. They left right after we ate, so we came over
here.”
“What about your dad?”
Dominic shrugged. “He’s having one of
his zombie days. He was probably hoping we’d all leave so he could
sit in his office and listen to Mom’s piano music.”
Grace pictured Ray over there, holed up
in his office lair, and a little of her self-pity melted
away.
When Dominic joined the others, the
sounds in the next room spiked up again. Crawford appeared, and a
Monopoly game was suggested.
Grace went upstairs to fetch her
brothers’ old game that she’d seen in the storage closet, but
instead of staying to play, she slipped on a cotton cardigan and
went out onto the back porch. Iago, who had been put outside
because all the food was putting him on snuffle overdrive, waddled
over and nuzzled her. She buried her face in the soft roll at the
nape of his neck and breathed in his comforting doggy smell. Part
of her couldn’t wait till everyone went home and she could be alone
again.
Although, come to think of it, she was
all alone now.
Or so she thought. Someone nearby
cleared his throat.
She jerked her head up. It was
Ray.
“I didn’t expect to see you all alone
today,” he said.
She laughed. “I didn’t expect to be all
alone.”
“Can I join you?”
He sat down next to her. “Am I right in
thinking all my kids are over here?”
She smiled. Not
sitting in a funk and listening to piano music, then. That was an
improvement. “And probably will be for a while yet. They just
started a Monopoly game.”
His brown eyes studied her face.
“You’re sad. Or worried about something. What’s
wrong?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Oh, it could
be a lot of things. The past twenty-four hours haven’t been the
greatest. First my father got lost, and then today he and my
brother wrestled with a twenty-pound stuffed turkey and dropped it
on the floor, and I got next to no sleep last night. Oh, and
yesterday Ben broke up with me over the phone as I was on the bus
on the way to the airport to pick him up.”
Ray looked gratifyingly horrified. “Why
didn’t he tell you before?”
“Just a coward, I guess. See, he had a
very good reason for breaking up with me. He’d gotten a mutual
friend of ours pregnant.”
“Oh God.”
She drew in a ragged
breath.
“How long had you and Ben lived
together?” he asked gently.
“Two days.”
Ray gaped at her, obviously thinking
she’d misspoken.
She couldn’t help smiling at his
reaction. “He had just moved in when Dad had his accident. We had
planned for Thanksgiving to be our big reunion. But instead, he
left me.”
“Hmm.”
She glanced over at him. “What do you
mean, ‘hmm’?”
He hesitated. “Well, some people might
say that you were the one who did the leaving, Grace.”
“But I had to—to take care of
Dad.”
“Had
to?”
“Wanted to.” She sighed. “Chose to. And
you’re right—it was mostly my fault. Not the pregnancy, of course,
but leaving Ben, and then stringing him along and telling him I’d
be back, and then not coming back. I didn’t intend to string him
along, but I guess that’s how it seemed to him. I should have
thought more about how he was feeling, but I was so wrapped up in
what was going on here.”
“It’s natural that you would
be.”
“I know, but you said it yourself. If
I’d really loved Ben, I wouldn’t have left him at
all.”
“I said that?”
“Well . . . you implied it.” She
sighed. “The problem is, I wanted an Olivia-Newton John man, but I
wasn’t willing to be hopelessly devoted myself.”
Ray shook his head. “You’ve lost
me.”
She smiled. “Ask Lily sometime. She’ll
explain it.”
He took a moment to think. “So it
sounds to me that you’re not completely broken up by losing
Ben?”
“No, not entirely. But now I’m
uncertain about what to do. Everyone tells me I should leave, that
I would be giving up too much if I stayed with Dad. The word
martyr comes up a lot. But it doesn’t feel
that way to me. I keep thinking that I wouldn’t be able to forgive
myself if I did leave.”
“You’d be missed.”
His words gave her heart a gentle lift,
even though she knew she was being a dope. He’s
not talking about himself. He meant Lily and Dominic. Or he
was just being polite.
The trouble was, she had almost
developed an addiction to these quiet conversations with Ray. She’d
almost . . .
No. She would
not go there. She was still less than twenty-four hours away from
having been dumped by one guy, and wasn’t going to tell herself
fairy tales about falling in love with anyone else. There was no
basis for it. Yes, they had talked—but usually about Jennifer, and
their extended courtship. Was it possible to fall in love with
someone for the way he had fallen in love with someone
else?
Possible, perhaps, but certainly not
wise.
She cleared her throat, wanting to veer
the conversation away from her problems and back to his. “I heard
the in-laws left early.”
“It wasn’t much of a visit for them.
Now I can’t imagine why they wanted to come in the first place.” He
looked down at his feet. “It was tense. Jordan was the smartest—she
just went to a friend’s house. The rest of us sat around pretending
we were all glad to be there. Pretending to be thankful. The
holiday felt like a sham to me. I can’t help thinking about how it
was before, thinking of . . .”
His words broke off, so she finished
for him. “Four kinds of pie.”
He looked baffled “What?”
“Dominic told me your family had four
kinds of pie last year. Riches.”
His brows scrunched together over his
glasses. “Dominic said that?”
She nodded.
“I hadn’t remembered that. But yeah, I
guess this holiday must have seemed pretty awful to the kids.” He
shook his head. “There are so many hurdles to get over before any
of us can settle into some kind of normal. I can’t even think about
Christmas, or . . .”
“Or what?” Grace asked.
He turned to her. “The twins’ birthday
is coming up.”
Jordan’s birthday. Nina’s
birthday.
“December sixteenth. I’d like to just
forget it,” he said.
“But you can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to
her.”
His jaw remained clenched.
“It wouldn’t,” she said. “Look, I can
see how Jordan might be . . . a handful. I don’t know exactly
what’s happened, but I do remember that sixteen can feel awful even
when everything’s going right. You make mistakes that five minutes
later cause you to cringe and want to be invisible. Knowing there
are people around who will forgive you is essential to
survival.”
She waited for him to say something,
but for a moment it looked as if she might have shut down
conversation between them for good.
When his gaze focused on her, his dark
eyes were bright. “You remember from experience?”
She held back for a moment, but caved
in to impulse. What the heck. She stripped off her cardigan
sweater, then yanked her V-neck T-shirt down off her left shoulder.
Ray’s eyes bugged in surprise.
“Look,” she said, twisting toward
him.
“I don’t see anything,” he
said.
She wiggled her shoulder a little. “You
don’t see a scar?”
“Uh, no.”
Her bra strap was probably in the way.
She flicked it off her shoulder and then told him to look again.
“See? There should be a faded scar.”
It was the remnant of a tattoo she’d
gotten at age eighteen—a tattoo of her first serious boyfriend’s
initials. Trouble was, she and Mike Mulcahey had broken up three
weeks later. She’d attempted to have the letters removed, but now
the spot on her skin just looked like a giant botched vaccination
scar.
Ray leaned so close she could feel his
breath on her skin. She closed her eyes. “So what do you see?” she
asked.
“MM . . .” he said, sounding the
letters out so that it sounded like a murmur.
A door slapped shut behind them, and
they both whipped around to see Jordan towering over them with a
glare. “This is just great! I leave my friend’s house early to be
with my family, and not only do I have to hunt everybody down next
door, I find my father pawing the neighbor!”
Several more faces peered around her as
a pileup occurred at the side door. Crawford, Dominic. Truman and
Peggy. Her dad.
“Did you guys sneak back here to make
out?” Jordan’s voice was charged with outrage.
Ray flipped Grace’s bra strap back into
place and surged to his feet. “Grace was just showing me her
scar.”
Grace couldn’t help smiling to herself
as she stood up.
“Look at her—smirking!” Jordan turned
to make sure everyone else took note. “See?”
“Grace and I were just talking,” Ray
explained.
Jordan sneered. “Really? ’Cause it
looked to me like you were trying to get her bra off.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ray said. “It’s
just Grace.”
Grace did a double take. Just Grace?
“We were just—”
“I can’t believe you’re already
forgetting about Mom!” Jordan railed. “And with her, of all people!”
“I’m not—especially not with Grace,”
Ray said.
“Wait,” Grace said. Where did all this
especially not, of all people, just Grace
language come from? What was the matter with her?
Jordan crossed the porch to get right
up into Grace’s face. “Just because my little brother befriended
your dad doesn’t give you the right to try to take over our whole
family!”
“Jordan,” Ray said in a warning voice.
“Apologize to Grace. And go home.”
The girl rounded on him. “I can’t
believe how you’re acting!” she yelled. “Heather was right. You’re
Paul McCartney all over again!”
Everyone stood in puzzled silence until
Sam laughed.
His laughter just riled Jordan up
further. “I can’t believe I’m the only one who even seems to care
about Mom anymore!” She turned on her heel and ran toward her
house.
Ray raked a hand through his thick hair
and released a ragged sigh. “I’d better go.” He turned, and caught
the glances of Dominic and Lily, who were blinking at him in
confusion and, it had to be said, mistrust. Maybe they didn’t
believe that he had been tearing Grace’s clothes off, but they
didn’t seem to believe his story in its entirety, either. “Why
don’t y’all come home with me?”
“We haven’t finished our game,” Lily
said.
“Yeah,” Dominic echoed.
“Oh.” Ray turned back to Grace, lifting
his arms in an exasperated, helpless gesture. “I’m sorry, Grace. I
just can’t . . .” His words petered out, and all the warmth seemed
to drain from his features. “Have a good trip home.”
Something between them—a tentative
connection—had ruptured.
“Thank you,” she said,
sadly.
After Ray had gone, the rest of their
audience filtered away. Except for Muriel. She hovered at Grace’s
side. “You sure are moving in fast.”
Grace closed her eyes and took a deep
breath. “Nothing happened. It was just like he said—I was showing
him my old tattoo.”
“Wow. There’s a tactic I never
tried.”
“It wasn’t a tactic!” With a growl of
frustration, Grace said, “I’m going for a walk.”
“Good idea. Try to get him out of your
system.”
As Grace turned to shut the gate to the
side yard behind her, she saw that Crawford was gaining on
her.
“I thought I’d go next door and check
on Jordan,” he said, a flush creeping up his neck. “She seemed sort
of upset.”
“That’s nice of you.”
She attempted to sound neutral,
although the idea of Crawford chasing after Jordan gave her a
chill. Like watching a bunny chasing a fox.
He shrugged and peeled off to the left,
to the West house. A few seconds later, she heard someone calling
Crawford’s name. It was Lily, standing on Lou’s porch, facing the
Carter house. She obviously didn’t know where he’d
gone.
Or who he’d gone after.
Grace took in a deep breath and then
breathed it out slowly. This was life. It went on. There were
always more tattoo scars in the making.