Authors: Christina Bell
When
Gianni moved in a year ago, and her last suitcase didn’t cross the threshold before Gianni started encouraging Theo to replace Emma's furniture. She said that holding onto old mementos was preventing Theo from moving forward in his new relationship. Now that Theo and Gianni were getting married in two months, Gianni was making one last push to establish herself as the most important woman in Theo's life.
When Grace fou
nd them in the kitchen, Theo and Gianni were sitting on barstools around the kitchen island. He was still wearing his gray suit from work, but he had unbuttoned his top shirt button and his tie was pulled loose. At forty-five, he was still an attractive, youthful man, though the generous dusting of gray in his hair betrayed his age. The contrast between his easy style and Gianni’s big yellow hair and gold accessories was startling. Her glittery long nails alone were enough of an assault on the senses to send anyone with even a modicum of taste into a deep aesthetic crisis. Grace just tried not to look at her for too long.
There was a bottle of
prosecco and three glasses set out on the island. When Theo saw Grace, he reached for the bottle and began to twist the cork out. “Hey, sweetheart,” he greeted her. “Sit down. I have amazing news.”
“Okay,” Grace said softly as she sat on an empty barstool. “Start with why we’re
getting rid of Mom’s furniture.”
There was a pop as the cork was freed from the bottle. Theo filled the glasses as he spoke.”I guess I didn’t think of it that way,” he admitted. “Anyway, something remarkable has happened.” He handed first Grace and then Gianni glasses before he held his high and announced, “Today, I was offered a partnership at the Oberon Law Firm in Manhattan. By the end of the summer, we will have moved into a luxurious apartment on the Upper East Side, and my lovely daughter Grace will be attending classes at the prestigious St. Helen’s School.”
Grace felt like she’d been physically knocked backward. “I’m changing schools?”
“I spoke to the headmaster an hour ago.” Theo was positively beaming.
“But St. Helen’s isn’t an art school.” Grace blurted. “I don’t want to change schools.”
Theo frowned and looked at Gianni, who tried to help him. “
Maybe you could think for one second about your father. You could at least say congratulations.”
Grace stared at Gianni before she turned her attention back to her father. “I only have one more year. Can’t you commute until I finish school? It’s not that far. My whole life is in this neighborhood. My boyfriend is here. Come on, Theo. You don’t really expect me to move my senior year, do you?”
“I’m sorry, Grace,” Theo said. “There’s an apartment open in Oberon’s building now. If we don’t take it, there might not be another opening for years. I need to be close to work. The hours will be brutal and a commute will mean that I never see you or Gianni.”
Grace felt tears rush to her eyes. “This is already decided, isn’t it? It’s done.”
“It’s not exactly a tragedy,” Gianni snipped.
Theo interrupted Gianni before she could continue. “We thought you’d be happy. This is a huge opportunity.”
Grace took a deep breath in and exhaled slowly. This was more than she could handle all at once. To spend part of her day focused on what was genuinely important at the time and then find out that it had suddenly been completely erased and replaced by something even worse, was overwhelming.
“Congratulations,” she said
quietly before she nearly ran out of the kitchen and up to her room.
Once she was in her
bedroom, she threw herself down on the bed and then flipped over to stare at the ceiling. The fact that he seemed to believe this was good news just showed how brainwashed by Gianni he really was. What did he think she was going to say?
Grace wanted good things for Theo, but she also wanted to stay in her home. This was the only place she’d ever lived. Every memory, no matter how joyous or sad, revolved around this room, her house, her neighborhood. Why couldn’t Theo commute for just one year? By then, she would be away at college and it wouldn’t hurt so much.
She had planned around having this last year at home. Didn’t Theo realize that it was a very big deal to change schools your senior year?
She stood up and stayed in one spot for a minute, completely still except for her habit of using her left hand to twist the ring that she wore on her right hand. The ring had been her mother’s. It wasn’t valuable. In fact, it was more whimsical than beautiful, with what looked like a stick person etched into the flat surface on the top. Grace had slipped it out of Emma’s things shortly after the funeral and kept it until her finger grew into it.
Everything in this room would have to be recreated exactly the way it was at that moment; her mother’s vanity, the family pictures stuck in the mirror frame above it, framed posters from Matisse’s jazz series over the dresser. If she photographed every inch of the room, she could put it all back together in the new apartment. Her mind was so occupied with plans that she didn’t hear Theo rap his knuckles on the open door.
“Grace, can we talk about this?” he asked.
Without responding, she walked past him, unable to look at him. She knew if she stayed, she would cry. Theo would talk with her and comfort her as he always had, but Grace couldn’t allow herself to be that vulnerable with Gianni in the house. Gianni had a way of inserting herself into any private moment between Grace and her father. It was intolerable. Without a backward glance, Grace ran downstairs and out the door.
It was a gorgeous summer day in Park Slope. As she rushed past the series of brownstones and co-op buildings toward Prospect Park, she felt tears running down her face. She had lived here all of her life. Since infancy, the images of this neighborhood dominated her impressions. In two blocks, she came to the brownstone
her boyfriend, Ryder, lived in with his parents. He was sitting on the stoop, elbows on his knees, as if he was waiting for her. He was a welcome sight, and she hurried to him, words spilling out of her mouth before she stopped moving.
“Theo took a job in the city and Gianni is getting rid of everything. We’re moving to Manhattan. I have to change schools.” She threw her arms around Ryder’s neck. Grace hadn’t cried since her mother’s death. Instead, she was trembling with a wretched combination of anger and pain. Ryder hugged her tightly until she calmed down.
He felt warm and comforting, like an old blanket. She pulled back and looked at his face, her nose almost touching his. His reddish brown hair and hazel eyes were so familiar to her. They’d been friends since they were kids, and she sometimes wondered if they had become a couple out of habit. Through all of these years of adjustment, first to the death of her mother, then the intrusion of Gianni into her world, Ryder had been a continuous force of positive energy. He was absolutely devoted to her. She had never seen him even glance at another girl, and he had no inhibitions whatsoever about making himself vulnerable to Grace.
“When is all of this happening?” His voice was calm, despite the gravity of the news.
Without speaking, Grace pulled out her phone and typed a note to Theo.
WHEN R WE MOVING?
Less than a minute passed before the phone signaled a response.
4 WEEKS. COME HOME SO WE CAN TALK.
She put the phone back in her bag, ignoring Theo’s instruction to return to the house. “One month,” she told Ryder.
He put his arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. Her long auburn hair spilled over his shoulder and she moved some strands out of her face. “Listen,” he said. “Did you get the whole story, or did you just run out?”
Grace grinned sheepishly through her tears, and Ryder laughed. “That’s what I thought,” he chided. “Let’s go back and talk to Theo.” Ryder stood and pulled her to her feet next to him. Together, they walked back up the street, hand in hand.
August 12
6:00 PM
Grace slid her sunglasses over her pale blue ey
es to guard them from the slowly setting August sun. She scanned the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an open spot where she could sit. The gray stairs that spilled forth, high and bright, from the massive museum were dotted with small groups of people enjoying that late afternoon breeze. Snippets of conversation drifted up to Grace as she passed through the crowd, looking for a spot far away from the gaggles of designer-clad teenage girls. Some of these girls would probably be her classmates in two weeks when she began attending St. Helen’s. She would be forced to tolerate their company when that time came, but for now, she wasn’t ready to listen to their vapid chatter. They were hideous. She made the accident of sitting close to them once, and had the misfortune of discovering the level of cruelty in their conversations. Anyone who was not present was completely picked over, like vultures pulling at carrion.
Grace was used to Brooklyn girls, not rich girls. There were cliques and queen bees in Brooklyn, just like anywhere else, but it was all more obvious. You always knew where you stood with a Brooklyn girl. These Upper East Side girls struck Grace as sneaky. She had a strong suspicion that they could make her life hell no matter what she did. She could ignore them or acknowledge them; neither approach guaranteed her safe passage through her senior year with such vicious creatures.
Eventually, she found a spot between an elderly Indian couple and a German-speaking couple in matching Hard Rock Café shirts. She gave the Indian couple a friendly smile and lowered herself onto a step before she reached into the brown leather Marc Jacobs Theo gave her. From its depths, she pulled a messy Gray’s Papaya bag that held an incredibly sloppy hot dog covered in relish and mustard. On her way home from her daily trip to see Ryder in Brooklyn, she intentionally took the train to the wrong side of Central Park, stopped at 72nd Street for this meal, and then carried it across the park to the Met. Recently, she made a game of exploring a variety of alternate paths to her new home on the Upper East Side as part of her quest to find something she could love about Manhattan. So far, she had only found the Met and Gray’s Papaya. She could take or leave the rest.
Reluctant to cross the street to Theo’s newly acquired posh digs, she was spending a good deal of time either in Brooklyn with Ryder, in the Met, or here on its steps with a carryout meal. Even though she could see her bedroom window from where she sat, she felt more at home on this side of the street, amongst the tourists resting their tired feet. She would always be a tourist here, even though she literally had the key that unlocked one of Manhattan’s elite apartment buildings.
Before taking a bite, she glanced at her watch. Gianni was throwing a cozy family dinner for Theo’s new boss, Miles Oberon, in an hour. In their new highbrow life, a cozy family dinner meant tiny portions of unpronounceable, but beautiful food. It all tasted good, and it surely cost a small fortune, but Grace always left the table hungry. Hopefully, a preemptive hot dog would get her through the next few hours without starving to death. Ever since they moved, everything seemed to be about appearances and money. She was expected to eat dainty food served on giant plates and wear expensive clothes. And worst of all, she was expected to spend less time in Brooklyn.
At seventeen, she hadn’t had much reason to wander this far out of Brooklyn. She occasionally needed to visit a gallery in order to complete a school project, but even with a great deal of the gallery scene shifting from Soho to Tribecca in recent years, those visits still didn’t put Grace anywhere near Central Park. It was like navigating a different world, just ten miles from where she’d been her whole life.
When Theo informed her that they were moving to the city, she imagined gothic buildings with gargoyles. What she found was the opposite. From her current vantage point, she could only see ugly gray apartments. There was one interesting orange brick structure with balconies and bay windows, but it was dwarfed by its close proximity to a modern monstrosity with floor after floor of gleaming windows. In the other direction, there was gray upon gray, as far as the eye could see. The most interesting spot in her sight was on the top of her own building. Against the backdrop of the bright cloudless sky, fifteen stories in the air, a structure loomed. She thought it resembled a church or a mausoleum; it was hard to decide which from this distance. It was surrounded by trees, almost as if someone had scooped it right out of the English countryside and rested it on top of the building. She hadn’t been up there yet, but figured it was only a matter of time. That was where Theo’s new boss lived.
From her bag, Grace heard her
phone chirping the special tone she had given Ryder. She liked knowing that it was him before she went digging through her bag. She picked up the phone and read Ryder’s quick message.
HOME OK?
She quickly typed. AT MET. HOME IN 10 MINS.
TEXT ME WHEN YOU GET HOME?
PROBABLY NOT. Grace knew it was a grumpy response, but her patience was wearing thin. They had been together all day. She couldn’t see the point in texting again to confirm that she managed to cross the street to her apartment safely.
His response was almost instantaneous.