Forged in Grace (29 page)

“
No, honey, it’s not gone, it’s forged in you. You can’t heal me for the same reason you can’t heal yourself,” Ma whispers. “It’s like asking water to make itself wet.” She looks at me with uncommon tenderness. “You’re part of me and I’m part of you. I know you felt that.”

Or is it as Drew said: that Ma does not believe, and so I am, essentially, powerless? A fraud, as that woman Ellie shouted on the day of my heatstroke?

I am shivering with an emotional echo of what Ma experienced after I burned, of the realization that she felt the presence of my serpent, even if it could do nothing for her.

“
You lost a baby,” I say.

Ma inclines her head back into the pillow, as if holding it up at all is too much effort.
“Two, actually: one before you, one after. First one, a little girl we called Melody, lived ten days; heart abnormality, poor sweetheart. We took her home. I didn’t tell Harlan about the miscarriage; it would have broken his heart.”

Two died. One burned. My body heaves with painful understanding and I recall the image I saw when I last touched Ma, a baby in a bassinet…not me after all.
“I can’t heal you,” I say, for confirmation to myself.

“
I don’t think so,” she says. “But you can live your life now however you see fit.”

“
No I can’t.” Gus’s strange and familiar face rises into my mind. I don’t want to believe he’s gone, or worse, that my hands had something to do with his death, but I know it must be true. “Something has happened, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

She eases herself gingerly up to sitting.
“Tell me.”

I am too exhausted to resist. And in some way, I feel joined with Ma at the edge of death, though mine isn
’t literal; when I picture my future, I see a horizon cloaked in ash. So I tell her everything about Marly’s revelation, saving the details of Gus’s death, though they burn a hole inside my throat.

Ma
’s tone is heavy, but not angry. “I knew she was responsible for the fire, Gracie, one way or another.”

“
What? How did you know?”

Ma coughs, points to a box on the end table, which I hand to her. She pulls out a pale pink tissue, spits into it.
“I knew instantly that the fire was no accident. Why do you think I worked so hard to keep you girls apart? After that incident with the young men, coming to pick up my baby girl at the police station, well I knew it would be something, Grace. She’d get you to jump out of a moving vehicle, or play with fire…I forgave Marly a long time ago for what she did to you,” Ma says, “once I realized what a damaged little girl she was.”

Why didn’t we didn’t talk about any of this sooner?
“So why did you give me, and her, such a hard time when she came back to town?”

Ma grabs my hands gently and pulls me down into her chest with surprising strength. It feels good to be folded into her bosom.
“I didn’t want to take away your good memories. Marly was your best friend, no matter what I thought of her. I wanted you to remember her that way. Of course, I didn’t think you’d ever see her again, so when she came looking for you, well…I had a feeling she’d give in to the need to unburden herself. I was afraid of what it would do to you.”

She pulls me tighter to her, but not so that she hurts me.
“Forgiveness has to come on its own—it can’t be forced.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The air in my mother’s room smells of bad coffee and onions. I rise and pull open one of her curtains, which looks out onto a tiny, tangled backyard made even tinier by wildflowers and grass growing together as if in collusion to choke out the apple tree. “I should weed all that,” I say. “Plant you a little vegetable garden.”

Ma shuts off Judge Judy.
“No way on God’s green earth.”

I turn back around. Ma squints in the afternoon sunlight like a cat awakened abruptly.

“It’s no big deal. It would be meditative. I do stuff like this at the Wildlife Center all the time.”

“
Did. You
did
stuff like that. You’re not staying here. “You have a life…in Las Vegas. Not where I pictured you ending up, but it’s like your Aunt Mo would say—wherever you go, there you are. You’re there, and you’re doing something that’s important to you. Keep doing it. Don’t come back here.”

“
Ma, you need help.”

Ma scoffs, and sits up higher in her bed.
“I’m a fighter, Grace. Aren’t you proof of that? Aren’t I? And you know what?” She pats her belly. “I finally found a way all this flesh is a good thing—there’s too much of me for cancer to take all at once.”

Her words are soft and sharp, both, but I don
’t find myself arguing with her. Something else has just occurred to me. “Ma, I’m going to ask you something, and please, I just want you to tell me yes, or no. No lecture.”

She falls into a coughing fit, and I wonder if she
’s faking it. At last she says, “Okay, Grace.”

“
Do you have Dad’s most recent address?” Maybe he can come and help out. Maybe there’s a spark of concern, or a sinewy cord of guilt I can yank on.

The air feels charged between us.
“Has he gotten in touch with you?” she asks at last.

“
No, of course not. When does he ever bother? Just, look, either you do or you don’t, and it’s fine if you don’t—”

“
I do.”

I
’m not sure I heard her right. “You do?”

“
And his phone number.” And then she rattles off a phone and address by memory.

“
Have you and Dad been in touch?” Shock pushes me up straighter.

“
Nothing like that, Grace. I suspect you can ask him the rest.”

I walk through the neighborhood before I do what I need to do next.

The bus drops me off not far from Adam’s office, set inside an old, blue Victorian with white scrollwork, something I loved immediately about working for him. No sterile white hallways or patient rooms. Adam’s office is like an extension of his own home.

Standing on the sidewalk, behind a thick magnolia tree, I can see the front office through the wide-open bay window. And there he is; the sight of him is like an electric charge to my solar plexus. He
’s leaned forward over the front desk. But it isn’t Miranda, the head receptionist, sitting there, it’s Helen: the nurse who cringed away from me at every turn, the one who always stands too close to him, entering his personal space as if she’s earned it. And Adam is laughing with her, an open-mouthed, face-full-of-pleasure kind of laugh.

My breath has claws as it climbs up my throat.
An animal thing.

I turn, quickly, before he has a chance to see me and walk as fast as I am able back toward the bus stop. What
’s the point in trying to cultivate a relationship with a man in Drake’s Bay, if I am going to leave?
And who already has a more attractive woman in his life.
I swallow cement.

My next stop is the
Wildlife Center. Tucked away in a grove of pines on the outskirts of town, it’s the last place the bus stops before the long valley stretch out to the coast. A haven.

The peeling red gate still squeaks when I enter. There
’s the gnarled old central building, a “portable” that once served as a school for children with mental disabilities. The “CAUTION, BROKEN STAIR” sign is still affixed, dangling by one nail at an angle.

There are two, big bird enclosures covered by netting, each containing a slightly stagnant pool of water and buckets of dead fish. The smell is like a fish kill at low tide. Inside the main building are all the small mammals: raccoons, rabbits, rodents. Then there are the last two big outside pens: one called
“The Grotto,” which houses Brownie, the bear; the other is for wounded mountain lions, or the occasional deer.

A squeal that is distinctly human comes from the main building. Natalie, my supervisor, a tiny woman with a massive head of curly black hair, comes running my way.
“Grace!” She stops shy of hugging me, but her smile is as wide as an embrace. “We’ve missed you. I hear you’re living in Las Vegas now?” She sounds impressed.

“
Yeah, strange, huh?”

“
Not strange if it makes you happy.”

“
I hope my leaving hasn’t left you all in the lurch here. I feel terrible. But I wanted to come say ‘hi.’ Especially to Brownie. I actually dreamt about him while I was gone. I miss the big old guy.”

To my surprise, Natalie tears up.
“Oh Grace,” her face takes on soft lines. “Brownie died. About a month ago. I thought you knew. It got written up in the
Drake’s Bay Gazette
. Figured your mom would tell you, or Adam.”

I have a sudden feeling of being upside down.
“Oh no,” I manage to say before tears come. Natalie is shaking her head, mumbling “I’m so sorry” over and over, and then she’s guiding me away, out of the center, my feet not registering the contact of the earth beneath them. She floats me on an eddy of my own grief to a bench.

“
It’s just a stupid bear,” I cry, picturing the slightly oily, spiky pelt of the great beast, who once took a fish right out of my hand and then licked my arm, a rasp surprisingly strong and sharp—a tongue for gouging honey out of bees nests and deboning a salmon.

“
It’s not stupid,” Natalie says. “You’ve got amazing empathy, Grace. It’s what made you so natural with the animals, and why I loved having you around—and that is not guilt, okay? If it makes you feel better, I still cry, too, every time I walk past his grotto.”

Natalie and I have never touched before. She treated me with the same cautious respect as the wounded animals we tended. When I lean into her, she is, at first, tentative. And at the end of it all, in the hollow of the last sob I can squeeze out of me, my serpent becomes aware of two heartbeats, one big, one tiny, beating in such close harmony they could be mistaken for one.

“You’re pregnant,” I say without thinking.

Natalie pulls back sharply.
“How’d you…?”

I look up at her, eyes wide, shaking my head. There is no way to explain.

Natalie smiles, takes my hand. “I always knew there was something special about you, Grace.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The town car pulls onto a private road that runs about a mile and leads up to a large ranch-style home with salmon-colored stucco exterior. I paid the driver at the outset, and so he leaves as soon as I close the door behind me, dropped here, a traveler in a familiar land.

A white fountain gurgles in a little landscaped courtyard surrounded by tall juniper shrubs shaped into tapered tips and laid down with red bark. These are what Marly might call
“seriously nice digs.” In contrast, the untamed yard of our house in Drake’s Bay comes to mind.

“
Oh shit,” I say, as a lovely auburn-haired woman in an empire style yellow sundress emerges from the front door, porting a toddler on one hip. She can’t be more than thirty-five. As the woman squints into the sun, I see a man come out and put a hand on her shoulder. I stare at the vaguely familiar outline of my father. I can barely believe it. It’s him.

And the child. Even at this distance I see the work of his genes. You could have held up a picture of me at age three and said with certainty that the tiny girl on the woman
’s hip and my young self were sisters.

He walks toward me, neither rushing, nor dawdling. When he reaches me my hand is trembling. His hair is grayer up close and lines are now carved deep and furrowed, mapping out the years on his face.

“Grace? I…Is everything okay? Are you okay?”

I effort up some politeness.
“I’m sorry to show up like this. I didn’t mean to barge in.”

He clears his throat roughly.
“No, are you kidding? It’s not barging! Celine and I—you’re welcome anytime, you know that. I’m just mighty surprised, is all.”

I stare at his nose, because it
’s easier than looking into his eyes. “Celine?” I point to the doorstep where the woman holds her hand, visor-like, over her eyes and sways the toddler. She’s thin in a way that would corrode Ma with jealousy, with upswept blondish hair, dark at the roots. She’s pretty in a bland sort of way—like a canvas awaiting paint.

“
And little Melody,” he says with a straight face.
Melody—the name of the child he and Ma lost?
I want to throttle him right there at the callousness.

“
Come on inside and I’ll get you something to drink,” he says. “Celine, can you believe it? It’s Grace!” Harlan calls. A stranger would see this as kindness, but I know it’s guilt-driven politeness. I know what he’s capable of: walking away from his own blood.

We walk a flagstone path lined with lavender and rosemary and a bush that sprouts tiny white flowers, like little peace flags. I have the urge to step on them.
“Hello!” Celine greets me in a customer service, falsely friendly tone when we reach the door.

We enter a living room that could easily star in
House Beautiful
. The entire room, save one wall, is windows, and the ceilings are high and open-beamed. The tile floors are so pristine I am afraid to walk on them. In a far corner is an immaculate gray marble-front fireplace. But the eye-catching detail of the room is an enormous painting of a trio of nude women, one old, one middle-aged, one barely a teen, over the couch. The colors are bold jewel-tones, attention getting, yet the forms soft, subtle, suggesting melding or union somewhere between maternal and sexual.

“
Celine’s an artist,” My father says in an awkward attempt at breaking the silence.

She puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Your father and I met when his photo show debuted. I know he’d hoped you would come to see it.”

Come to see it? How on earth has Harlan kept his lack of contact with me a secret from his own wife?

“Well,” my father clears his throat, as if afraid to go down that road. “Are you thirsty? Hungry?”

I am thirsty, but feel an ache of pride on Ma
’s behalf. At home we drink out of Snoopy drinking glasses she found for twenty-five cents each at a garage sale. Celine’s glasses are probably hand-blown in Italy. I feel as though to eat or drink anything provided by her would be a betrayal of Ma. Does Harlan not see the hypocrisy of having left my mother to a life where she had to work twice as hard to support us to pay for my medical bills?

Celine clears her throat. I
’m rooted in place, silently shaking my head. “I’d love something to drink,” I say, to save myself from saying worse.

Celine hands the little girl—I have trouble thinking of her as my sister—to Harlan wordlessly, and then disappears around a towering fern into what I presume is the kitchen. I envision an enormous island in the center of a gleaming expanse crowned by copper cooking pots and a spotless stainless steel fridge. Harlan deposits the child in a gated play nook.

“Please, sit down,” he offers, tense and fidgety, the picture of unease. I am wondering what I can or should tell him. I finally ease into a red leather recliner.

Celine returns with a serving tray of iced teas in elegant, pink glasses and delicate cake-like pastries frosted white. She sets them down on the mahogany coffee table.

“Grace,” she says softly, as if tasting my name.

“
Yes?” I ask when nothing else follows. Her green eyes travel frankly over my face, boldly assessing what she sees. I decide I will meet her gaze rather than flinch away from it.

“
Grace was one of my choices for a girl’s name before I met your father. Then of course, I learned it was already taken, so we went with Melody.”

“
Was it easy for you to move on?” I ask Harlan in a tight voice. “Have a new family without any tragedy in it?”

He clears his throat and looks to Celine, mouth open.

“No, Grace, it’s not like that…” Celine says.

“
Grace, why don’t you tell me why you’re here,” Harlan cuts in. His face looks pinched, as though my presence causes him pain. “It seems unlikely of you to come for no reason when I never hear from you.”

My ears begin to ring and then I
’m talking without any care for how I sound or their feelings. “You left us after the fire, and all I got from you was a stupid Christmas card every year.” I’m shaking. “I come here and find out about your new family by accident!”

Harlan
’s eyes are wide. “Honey…what? I sent you lots of letters. Your Ma never—?” My father shakes his head. “Now, for the record, I’m not saying I’m a saint, but your Ma wanted me gone. After the accident we said things to each other I’ll forever regret. We blamed each other. And I drank too much—I’m not pretending here. But when you didn’t want to talk to me, I felt hamstrung. I called for two years until I finally gave up.”

“
You never called—” But even as I say it I can picture Ma holding her hand over the phone receiver while ushering me out of earshot. Ma was my gatekeeper—keeping out the world, and I let her, because I was afraid.

My father looks directly at me, then drags his thick fingers down his cheeks.
“I had no idea you didn’t know…oh God. I should have tried harder. I should have come to see you. But that house, it was painful for me to see your Ma falling into that way of life.”

“
Well maybe if you’d stuck around you could have helped her out of it!” The part of me that has spent twelve years believing he abandoned us isn’t ready to let go of that story entirely.

Harlan puts his face in his hands momentarily.
“Grace, marriage is complicated. You can’t just make someone change.”

“
It is what it is,” Celine says softly. “You’re together now. Grace, tell us what you need.”

Just spit it out
. “Ma is sick. Cancer, and she won’t get the medical help she needs.” Death suddenly feels like bad weather, my own personal storm. Gus’s face looms large, fills me with pain. I take a deep breath. “I honestly came here to ask…well, it seems stupid now that I know what I know.”

“
You wanted him to help care for her, didn’t you?” Celine asks. “Of course you did.”

It bothers me that she
’s so understanding; but I finish telling them everything, and when I stop talking my father puts his hands on his knees and sighs. “In whatever way we can, we’ll help your mom, I want you to know that. She’s proud, though, so I have to say it’s unlikely she will accept much. I guess we’ll figure something out.”

I get up, stretch my aching leg, look around their spacious lovely house, so free of junk and clutter.
Can I blame my father for feeling pushed out?
I approach a series of framed photographs on the far wall: rows of photos comprised solely of me, me and him, and even a family portrait I’ve never seen. In it, the three of us are seated on a bench against the backdrop of a lush green picnic area, complete with duck pond and one lone duck in its waters. I am perhaps nine in the photo, with a small red balloon tied to my wrist and a joyous, gap-toothed smile. Ma looks thin in a vertically striped green and white summer dress, and Dad, hair to his shoulders, wears a blue Hawaiian button up. I can’t remember Ma ever looking that happy or thin. And then it hits me:
this is the memory I had on the day of Gus’s death.

I gaze closely at my young face.
“I was a pretty child.” The kind that many mothers would have thrust into acting or commercials that sold things wistful and pure.

“
You were,” says my father, and I hear him leave the room.

The photographs are in chronological order, and stop with me at fifteen—before the face I once found plain, but now see as gorgeous, was erased. In the photo I sit staring at the camera as though I want to punch whoever is holding it. Considering how unpleasant my expression is, I find it odd that he displays this image.

“Grace, please don’t hold it against him that there are no recent photos of you,” Celine frowns. “I took the most recent one down.” She turns to face me, her gaze unflinching. “I couldn’t stand how sad he became looking at you after your accident. I was angry for him. We didn’t know your mother was interfering with his letters and cards. The checks were cashed so we knew they were reaching you. We thought you’d made the choice to cut him off.”

“
I didn’t even know there were any photos of me
after
,” I say. “I can’t remember letting anyone take a photo of me then.”

“
You were in your hospital bed the day of your release. With a young doctor.”

Adam
, I think, his powdery scent suddenly rich in my nose, his absence an added ache.

I stand there, staring at the happy portrait of a family I barely remember, and Harlan shuffles back in, carrying Melody. She
’s such a calm child. He hands their daughter off to Celine and sidles up to me. I’m still reflexively bent on seeing him as the bad guy; it takes several deep breaths to realize that he was also a victim of lies.

“
I need to tell you something, Grace. Something I’ve never had the courage to tell.”

Oh great,
I think.
More confessions.

He looks at me full on. It
’s been a long time since he’s had to look at my scarred face. I dare him to look away, to break eye contact first, to prove that he can’t handle it, but he doesn’t.

“
The night of the fire, Marly was just back from the psych ward. Your ma didn’t want you going over there. She was tweaked with fury about it and threatened she’d leave me if I let you go. She had a pretty strong mother’s intuition…”

I want to tell him to stop, that there
’s really no point to unburdening himself now, when the damage has been done.

“
I should have listened. But you were just so damn sad, not having seen her for so long—after that stupid incident with the cops. I wanted to be the good guy, the sympathetic dad. I never wanted you to look back and say…well…” He makes a choking sound, before saying, “I let you go even though your ma forbade it.”

Celine is watching us, her face ringed with sadness. How nice, I think with cynicism, for him to have her to worry about his every feeling.

“Neither of us ever forgave me for that, Grace.”

Pieces of it come back to me. How I
’d stared at Oona Donovan’s letter letting me know I could see Marly at her house. How I’d torn all the clothes off the hangers in my closet in a fury after Ma said no. And then, Harlan’s soft, tentative knock on the door. “You came up to my room, whispered to me that I should go while Ma was watching her show.” I can almost remember the swell of elation at his words.