The Edge of Grace

by Christa Allan

  He wrote so hunched over the top of the kitchen table that I wondered if he inherited Harrison's farsightedness. I made a mental note to call for an ophthalmologist appointment tomorrow, but even then I knew messages often failed to stick to the bulletin board in my brain. Maybe I did need to consider updating my pink flip phone to one that could keep track of my life for me.

  A crooked smile and a plea from my gawky-elbowed son bought him thirty minutes past his bedtime. I relented because the hours he spent in school and the hours I spent cooking or reading about cooking or cleaning up after cooking left us thin wedges of time together.

  Watching him tonight, those long ago lyrics about saving time in a bottle didn't define "corny" as I once thought they did. The night Harrison died, I called his doctor, then stumbled through the dark hallway. I kept my pillow clutched to my chest as if it could soften the grief pummeling my heart, which I feared would explode. At the doorway to Ben's room, I stopped, reached out an arm to the doorframe to steady myself, then shuffled to his bed and poured myself next to his sprawled, tangle-sheeted body. I held my breath until I could hear the fluttering of air escape between his little o-shaped mouth.

  Now, the oven timer—Ben's bedtime signal—beeped. "Got it," he said, snapped the cap on his marker and pushed the off button. "Going to brush my teeth."

  "And floss," I added.

  He looked at the oven clock and scratched his head. "It's late. I'll do that tomorrow."

  "Nice try, buddy," Julie said. "You and Nick must practice these lines, huh?"

  He shrugged and yawned off his expression of defeat.

  I pointed my pasta fork in the direction of his bathroom." I'll be there in a few minutes." This was code since I had been under strict orders from him not to say "tuck you in bed" in front of anyone other than family.

  We filled three more orders, then Julie nodded toward Ben's bedroom. "Go do the good night thing. I can handle this alone."

  "I'm sure it won't be long before this comes to an end," I said and untied my apron, slipped the neck strap from around my head, and handed it to her.

  Ben had already slipped into bed by the time I entered his room and clicked on his overhead fan. He pulled his ear buds out and set them and his iPod on his night table.

  When I held his face in my hands and bent to kiss his forehead, he pinched his nose and emitted a nasally, "Yuck."

  "Since when is a good night kiss a 'yuck' for you, Mr. Benjamin David Becker?"

  He peeled my hands off his cheeks and waved his hand in front of his face like a fan. "You smell like garlic."

  I lifted my hands and sniffed. "Yep. Garlic with a hint of little boy."

  He granted me a token grin before he turned on his left side. His arm bent, he propped his head in his hand and tugged at his pillowcase with the other. "Mom, when's Thanksgiving?" His voice sounded the way it did when the question I ask isn't really the one I want the answer to. He didn't look at me. Just traced the edges of the red baseball cap design on his sheet with his finger.

  "Almost two months from now. September isn't over yet, then there's October, then November." I straightened the shade on his lamp. The one he picked out himself last year when we shopped for a "big boy" room. The base was a wood football with leather stitching. He liked it because it reminded him of the football his Uncle David had given him. David. The dawn of realization just rose in my brain. That was the answer to the question Ben hadn't yet asked.

  "Will Uncle David and Lori come over then?" He had moved on to outlining the baseball bats on his sheet.

  When I didn't say anything, he leaned back on his pillow and tugged his sheet under his chin, and stared at me with his father's serious eyes. Once again, Harrison, I'm left to explain the unexplainable. How am I supposed to tell him that Lori won't be Aunt Lori? That the Uncle David who threw footballs was now just throwing people curve balls? "Ben, sweetie, it's so far away. I'm just not sure what we'll be doing. This year may be different. Maybe we could go somewhere, just the two of us, since you won't have school that week. Would you like that?"

  "I don't know." He turned on his side and faced the wall." I'm going to sleep now."

  His sadness filled the space between us. But I couldn't make it disappear. I didn't have the solution that could transform it to joy. All I could do was cross the bridge over it. "I love you. Thanks for all your help tonight." I kissed my son on the top of his head, his green apple shampoo scent still lingered. "Good night, Ben," I whispered, clicked his lamp off, and carried my guilt back into the kitchen.

  Barb, the secretary at Tisdale High School, handed me an envelope of cash and checks to cover the meals I dropped off." I'm not sure who appreciates you more. Me for not having to cook, or my husband for having something to eat that doesn't come out of a box first."

  "After months of this, I think Ben might actually be thrilled to zap a Hot Pocket in the microwave." I tucked the envelope under the other orders on my clipboard and handed Barb the flyer with the menus for October. "November's list will have my holiday meals, and I'll include desserts everyone can order separately if they want."

  Barb slipped on glasses that hung from a beaded chain that looked like someone had strung together petrified jellybeans of all sorts of colors. "Chicken or Black Bean Enchiladas, Seafood Stuffed Eggplant, White Bean Chili . . ." Her voice slid off the page as she read the month's new offerings.

  A triple play of pings reverberated across the office and seconds later teens with backpack humps spilled into the hallway outside the doors of the office. A whiff of memory rose from their animated voices. Seeing David in the cafeteria. He's talking to a guy whose short wavy blond hair and black Ramones T-shirt both look purposely messy. The new guy turned, and his grin made me think someone might be following me. I glanced over my shoulder and, by the time I realized his soft smile was meant for me, I'm close enough to know I like what I see.

  David's arm tugged me toward him, and I prayed I didn't look as clumsy as I felt. "So, this is my sister, Caryn." The cute face nodded. "Hey. I'm Harrison. I just transferred here . . ."

  Now, outside the office, the crush of bodies and verbal chaos waned as did the flash of Harrison from all those years ago. I pushed my sunglasses on before Barb could see my wet eyes.

  "I'll email the staff as usual. See you next week, I'm sure," said Barb. "I guess you'll be really busy soon with your brother's wedding coming up."

  My dark glasses shielded what felt like eye-popping awkwardness. Unfortunately, the rest of my face couldn't hide itself. I hugged the clipboard. "No, I won't be doing the catering," I answered. I wanted that to be enough, but I knew it wasn't. "The wedding's been postponed, so . . ." I shrugged my shoulders and tugged my keys out my jeans' pocket.

  Barb might have asked more questions, but I mumbled a good-bye and exited before she could.

  I tossed my clipboard in the backseat of my car that now smelled like a Mexican restaurant, blasted the air conditioner, and tried to remember what I was supposed to do next. Somewhere, I'd written a list. When I found it, I'd add, "No more questions" and "need answers." Harrison would've had answers. He specialized in them. Even when I told him and only him, about my relationship in college. The one I thought would last forever. The one that changed me forever. The one that left me broken. He answered my pain with, "I choose forgiveness. I choose you. Forever."

  Now what, Harrison? Where am I supposed to go? Where's the Magic Eight Ball I can shake for answers?

  Even my father proved impossible. He and Loretta were between cruises the last time we spoke. The year after Harrison died, they moved to Village Lakes, a retirement community in Florida, which they spent more time away from than in. For a while after, I wondered if Ben and I should move there since my father's social life outpaced mine by miles.

  I called my father one afternoon a few weeks ago before Ben came home from school, so I could talk to him about David. The conversation bordered on absurd and, had we been talking about someone else's brother, m
ight have been funny.

  "Loretta and I think it's a stage he's going through," Dad told me. "Wait, Loretta's getting ready to putt," he whispered.

  If Loretta took as much time to putt as she did make a decision, I might still have been on the phone when Ben arrived home from school. She must have been within an inch or so that day because in less than a minute I heard him reward her with, "A par shot for the girl."

  "Dad, the only stage that men David's age experience is middle-age crazy and being gay isn't one of the crazies. And if it is, it's so far down on the list no one even knows."

  "Well, just in case, we're working on a back-up plan. Loretta's looking into one of those programs. You know, the ones like camps gay men go to get straight."

  Later on, I told Julie about the phone call while we watched the boys cruise the driveway on their skateboards. As outrageous as it sounded when my father mentioned it, the reform program held out a smidgen of promise. When I asked Julie what she thought about the idea, she stared at me as if I'd just announced I planned to walk to Mars.

  She snapped dead branches that poked out of a nearby waxy leaf ligustrum. "Since when does something Loretta advocates make sense to you? Or have you forgotten she wanted you to register for dates on eHarmony three months into your new status as a widow?"

  Of course it didn't make sense. I realized that as soon as my father's words flew out of my mouth and landed in my ears. How comforting it would have been, though, to have a solution to a problem. A matching set. Something that worked.

  I watched her comb the shrubs free of their brown leaves. They looked so much greener, yet so less full. Not the life lesson I wanted. "I know. I know," I answered in defeat.

  "Think about this," Julie wiped her hands on the front of her jeans. "What if David asked you to go to a reform program that would try to convert you from being a straight person to a gay one? What would you tell him?"

  I laughed. "That's ridiculous. No program's going to convince me I'm gay."

  "Exactly. So why would you think David would be convinced he's straight?"

  11

  For Harrison, a new Thanksgiving meant a new adventure in cooking the turkey. Over the years, he tried smoked, grilled, rotisserie, deep-fried, oven-bagged. The last Thanksgiving we spent as a family, David and Lori brought a turducken, a chicken stuffed inside a duck, which was then stuffed inside a turkey. My father said it was so good he thought he'd "died and gone to heaven."

  Instead Harrison went. And every year since, at every holiday, the throbbing pain of loneliness returned to fill that one empty chair at the table.

  Whatever memories Ben had of his father, at holidays and otherwise, were stored too far into his baby brain to access. His experiences of family gatherings centered in my dad and Loretta, David and Lori, and sometimes the Pierces. This year, Dad and Loretta spent Thanksgiving Day dining on mangoes and mahi-mahi in the Hawaiian Islands. Trey, Julie and Nick traveled to Gulf Shores to meet Trey's family for their annual turkey weekend of shopping, eating, and beaching.

  So, since this year would be different, what would be so wrong in starting a tradition for the two of us?

  Julie had been packing for their trip when I announced my plan for Ben and me to perform charitable acts of giving on Thanksgiving Day. I sat on Nick's bed practicing my two-second T-shirt folding technique, but I felt the sting of her glare even before she stopped tossing socks in his suitcase.

  "Have you told Ben about this?" She closed the drawer, leaned against the dresser to face me, and crossed her arms over her tank top, the one Trey told her Victoria should have kept a secret.

  "Not yet," I said while I tried to flick Nick's shirt into compliance.

  "So, I guess that means you're not going to see David."

  "No, but that was David's choice." I looked at her now because I knew she would be surprised I'd actually called him. But her expression registered a question mark, not an exclamation point. "I invited him."

  Her mouth untwisted itself and her eyebrows relaxed.

  So there. See. I'm not the bad sister.

  Still, nothing. Then she glanced at the floor and, when she looked at me, it was as if she'd picked up a smirk there. "Emphasis on him, right?"

  "Of course. I wanted David to spend Thanksgiving with us. I'm not ready to meet . . . whatever his name is. Max, I think. I tried to explain that to David, but he said he wouldn't come without him. So, he made his choice."

  "Well, it's not like you gave him much of one. Would you have left Harrison home if David asked you to?"

  Julie's question shoved my denial to the wall, and it wanted to come out swinging. I tapped my feet on the braided throw rug by Nick's bed. We're talking Thanksgiving, and I'm still wearing sandals. Nothing's what it's supposed to be about this holiday. Julie just doesn't get it. "That's not fair. You can't compare Harrison to David's . . . I don't even know what to call him . . . "

  "No. You're the one who doesn't want to compare them," Julie said softly, like she didn't want her words to bruise me. She sighed, opened the door to Nick's closet, then turned to me.

  "Maybe this good Samaritan thing you and Ben are doing will point you in the right direction. I don't know what it's going to take for you to see David for who he is, not how he is."

  I stacked three chocolate pancakes from the griddle on a plate, sprinkled them with powdered sugar, and set them in front of Ben.

  "Why aren't we eating Thanksgiving dinner at our house like we do every year?" The suspicion in Ben's voice weighed more than he did. He looked at his breakfast as if it were a bribe.

  I guess I had to own that, even though I tried to pass it off as a celebration of the first not-having-to-wake-up-early day of the holidays. Nick, Julie and Trey had driven out before dawn that morning, so neither one of us could count on any of the Pierces as places to stow our emotional baggage. Harrison, this is yet another one of those days I could use a backup.

  "But we are going to eat here," I said and opened the freezer." Look, we'll each have our own little turkey." I held up the two Cornish hens I bought. "Cool, huh?"

  "No. Those are dumb. I want a real turkey." He eyed his plate.

  "How are the pancakes?" Uneaten. That's how they were. And obviously not effective in my campaign to soften the news.

  Ben licked his finger and swiped the powdered sugar. "Fine. Can I have some milk?"

  I poured his milk and sat across from him at the table. I stopped myself from reminding him not to hold his fork like he was about to club someone over the head. No point in making this more difficult. Maybe the morning wasn't the best time to discuss this. He still had a crease across his left cheek from sleeping, I supposed, on the seam of his blanket. How could he have moved from a blanket in my arms to one in his bed so quickly?

  He sawed through his pancakes with the side of his fork, gulped his milk and looked at me. "So?"

  I held my breath and dove into the pool of disappointment." I thought you and I might want to start a tradition this year. Do you know what a 'tradition' is?"

  "Like a Christmas tree?"

  "Yes. Well, since everyone else has somewhere to go this Thanksgiving—"

  "I know where Nick and PaPa are. But where are Uncle David and Lori going?" he said, taking another bite of his pancakes.

  I had no idea where Lori would be. David, however, had sent me a terse email after our equally terse phone conversation: "Max and I will be in New York until Sunday visiting his family. Tell Ben I love him."

  "Nowhere—" He scrunched his mouth, but before the question could pop out of it, I said, "Not with each other."

  He finished his milk, pulled up the neck of his T-shirt, and wiped his mouth. "Why not?"

  "Here's the thing, Ben. Uncle David and Lori won't be getting married."

  "Why? Are they getting a divorce?"

  He stabbed the leftover pieces of pancake with his fork. Each time the tines hit the plate like metal fingernails on a chalkboard. I leaned across the table and still
ed Ben's attack on his food.

  "No. People who aren't married don't need a divorce. They just don't get married."

  "Is that why you're mad at him? 'Cuz he's not marrying Lori? Is Lori mad at him, too?"

  "Ben, I'm not mad at Uncle David . . . well, maybe a little bit. I'm upset that he doesn't love Lori in the getting married kind of way. And I don't think Lori's mad at him now. At first she was. They care about each other, but like a brother and sister do."

  "You're Uncle David's sister. Why can Lori be like his sister, but you can't?"

  Why does Ben make it sound so simple and uncomplicated? "I still love my brother," I said, but I wanted to add that I didn't like or understand him.

  "Then why don't we see him? I miss him." His voice trembled and this time he wiped his eyes, not his mouth with his T-shirt.

  I walked over to him, and pulled him close. "I miss him too. I miss him too," I said, glad that he'd buried his face in my arms and couldn't see the tears in my eyes.

  I tucked Ben in, then I settled in my office to organize myself for what I hoped would be a crazy-busy season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Trey and I had talked briefly about the upcoming balloon note, and we planned to meet next week to crunch the numbers. He reassured me everything would fall into place, but I didn't know where that place would come from.

  I wondered if Harrison had experienced the same breath-sucking pressure I felt trying to stretch money over the month. After his first stroke, I was almost too embarrassed to admit to Trey that I hadn't given much attention to our finances. When Harrison and I decided I'd be a full-time mom after Ben was born, I traded money management for baby management. It worked. He gave me money. I spent it. I gave him the baby. He gave me a break. Not complicated.

  I never intended to be a working single mom. But then, Harrison never intended to die. But here we both were. Or were not. Most nights I devoted attention to reading celebrity chef cookbooks, investigating whether I should buy a forged or a stamped knife, and deciding if I should make more white chocolate raspberry cakes or more roasted almond truffles. I doubted any of these issues mattered in heaven, where I figured Harrison must be. And where he probably scratched his head every Sunday when Ben and I didn't end up in church.