The Spaces Between Us

by Ethan Johnson

  The Windsors were watching television. Mrs. Windsor looked over to see the gift exchange, gave a polite smile, and trilled, “That’s nice, dear.”

  Gracie couldn’t resist. “Maybe I’ll sleep with it tonight.”

  Lacey shot her a look and decided to get in one of her own. “Poor baby. Does Gracie need to warm up in her cold bed? Aww.”

  Gracie reveled in their secret play, then changed the subject. “I got you something too, Lace.”

  Lacey twirled on one foot and did a little strut over to a box, wrapped in red gift wrap with gold bell designs repeated all over. “Pour moi?” She pressed her fingertips to her chest.

  “Sí, Señor.”

  Lacey picked up the box and shook it a little, then set it down on the coffee table. She made a theatrical gesture. “And now, I vill predict ze gift.” She touched her index fingers to her temples and gazed at the still-wrapped box. “Almost haff it, ah…. Yes, ze vision is clear now.”

  “You wish,” said Gracie.

  “You doubt my psychic abilities? Vell, now, Madame Vindsor vill make you a believer. I predict… an autographed picture of you making double gun-fingers at me.” She paused and held up one finger. “In a black frame.”

  Gracie feigned disbelief and pressed her palms to her cheeks. “Incredible! How could you have known?”

  Lacey took a bow. Gracie sat down on the sofa, and Lacey plopped down beside her, without getting too close. Gracie nodded in the direction of the gift. “Well, are you going to open it?”

  Lacey picked up the gift and held it on her lap. She looked directly at the stick-on bow that Gracie had slapped on after passably wrapping the box. “I was thinking I’d unwrap you later.”

  Gracie gave her a sly smile and felt her ears redden.

  CHAPTER 7: WHAT JUST HAPPENED

  Marc stared in disbelief at his sister. Agnes had just had some sort of episode, and now she’s just going to act like nothing happened, and in the wake of having her notebook swiped away from him, make him feel like he did something wrong? If he hadn’t been directly involved, he probably would have marveled at the change in his sister. Agnes, doing anything noteworthy, even if it involved scaring a family member half to death? Right, that happened. Like, never, he fumed.

  Agnes quietly slipped the notebook back into her knit bag, along with the other items that Marc dumped out onto the floor and she slung the strap over her left shoulder, keeping the bag close. She tried to brush past him and go upstairs to her room when he grabbed her arm suddenly and prevented the retreat.

  “Excuse me, what the hell was all of that, Agnes?”

  “You’re hurting me.” She tried to pull away.

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough. What just happened? And what’s this about being ‘strong for my sister’? What’s going on?”

  Agnes stopped pulling and turned ashen. She stood facing away from her brother and paused for a moment. “Let me go and I’ll tell you," she said. Her voice was tiny.

  Marc tugged at her arm. “Now.”

  Agnes looked at the floor. “Let me change into dry clothes. Then I’ll explain everything, I promise.”

  He glanced down at her tea-stained pants and relented, if only on humanitarian grounds. He kept up his best attempt at a tough exterior and permitted her to go upstairs and change her clothes. “I’m holding you to your promise.” He followed slowly as she padded up the stairs to her room.

  The sound of Jacqueline tapping her organizer with the cap end of her pen and uttering brief acknowledgments into her phone filled the hallway when Agnes opened the door to her room, which was still being used as a conference room for another of Jacqueline’s stakeholder buy-in meetings. Marc had nearly forgotten she was there at all, which was normally Agnes’s station in the Morris family hierarchy.

  “Mmm-hmm. Right. We can definitely prioritize that into the appropriate bucket.” Jacqueline glanced up at Agnes, gave an annoyed glare for an instant, and tossed her head and switched the phone over to her left ear. Agnes closed the bedroom door, peering through the decreasing opening at Marc before the door clicked shut with an uncomfortable air of finality.

  She walked softly over to her closet and slid one of the doors open. She riffled through piles of neatly folded clothing and picked out a pair of clean pants. She began to remove her tea-stained pair, then looked over at Jacqueline, who kept her back stiff as she nodded along to the phone conversation. Agnes stepped into the closet and slid the door closed quietly.

  Marc paced back and forth outside of the bedroom door. He wondered how long it took to put on a clean pair of pants. He wanted answers, and every minute standing in the upstairs hallway was time not spent finding out what his sister’s problem was.

  He glanced at his cell phone and realized fifteen minutes had passed. Enough was enough. He turned the doorknob and entered the bedroom with more than a hint of exasperation. “Agnes, let’s go. You’ve wasted enough time.”

  Jacqueline had just wrapped up her conference call and was gathering up her things. She looked up and made a puzzled face. “Marc? What are you all upset about?”

  Agnes wasn't in plain sight. Marc looked around the room and considered dropping to the floor to look under the bed. The look on Jacqueline’s face forced him to reconsider.

  “I’m not sure yet. Agnes is hiding from me and she owes me an explanation.”

  “An explanation for what? And I think she’s in the closet.”

  Agnes was a lesbian? That didn’t seem like something that would trigger some sort of episode, but Marc didn’t have much else to work with. He started to speak. “She’s…?”

  Jacqueline gestured toward the closet door. “In there. I think she went in there for some reason. Agnes is weird, you know that.”

  Marc stomped over to the closet. “Agnes, come on, quit being a baby and tell me what’s wrong with you.” He slid the closet door roughly aside and looked at… clothes.

  Agnes’s unremarkable wardrobe was all there: shirts and sweaters neatly arranged on hangers, pants folded in cubbies, all of which framed a bare patch on the floor.

  Marc wasn’t having it. He ran his hands through Agnes’s clothing, expecting to find his obstinate sister and well prepared to yank her out of there forcibly. He felt nothing but fabric. He felt around the cubbies and pulled them from the wall in search of a secret passageway. He found nothing but the bare wall. He was about to give up the search, when he dropped to his knees and felt around the bare patch on the floor. He didn’t think his family home was outfitted with secret passageways and trap doors, but after Agnes’s episode all things became possible, but not the prospect of finding her in the closet. Since he was down there anyway, Marc flopped onto his stomach to check under the bed and found only a stray sock. He sneezed.

  Jacqueline stood over Marc as he wiped his nose with his sleeve.

  “Marc, what exactly are you doing?”

  “Agnes had some sort of nervous breakdown.”

  “Agnes? What’s she got to have a nervous breakdown about? They discontinued beige cardigans?”

  “No, I’m serious. We were talking in the front room, and then she got all weird and passed out. She spilled tea all over herself and on the carpeting. Then when she came to she wouldn’t tell me what happened. When I made her tell me, she asked if she could change out of her wet clothes first, and now here we are.”

  Jacqueline took a step back. “Whoa, that’s a lot to process. You and Agnes… talked? As in, an actual conversation? What about?”

  “School, mostly.”

  Jacqueline cocked her head to one side. “Marc? What do you mean, school? Were you trying to get her to enroll and stressed her out?”

  Now he was on the back foot, if only metaphorically. He knelt on the floor, preparing to use the bed to stand up again. “What? No. Agnes said she was going to night school at Van Buren, going for an Associate’s.” He stood up, and Jacqueline rested her free hand on his shoulder. Marc met her intent gaze.
<
br />   “Marc, Agnes doesn’t go to Van Buren.”

  Marc shook his head. What about the school ID? The night classes? The 38 credit hours or whatever it was? The math class? He articulated all of this with a simple, “Huh?”

  “Mother wishes she would apply herself and get a degree. She thinks it would be good for Agnes to get out of the house more often and away from her silly notebook.”

  Wait, what? What about Agnes’s day job as a research assistant? He again said, “Huh?”

  “Marc, don’t you talk to Mother about anything besides work? Agnes doesn’t do anything. Mother has been talking about forcing her to get a job and earn her keep, if she’s not going to continue her education. But Father isn’t backing her up on that.”

  Marc was dazed.

  “Oh, and for your information, Marc, the kids are excelling in school and Richardson closed the SBA deal he’s been working so hard on all year.”

  “Oh, wow… uh, that’s great.”

  “You should take more of an interest in the rest of us, Marc. There’s more to your family than Lauren, you know.”

  “You mean Gracie?”

  She scoffed. “She was never ‘Gracie’ to me.”

  He cracked a wry smile. “You’re right. Especially the part about there being more to our family. Like, let’s start with, where the hell is Agnes?”

  Jacqueline turned on one heel and left the bedroom. “Who cares?”

  He took one more scan around the room and found no trace of his errant sister. Then, as he left the room, he felt for the first time in a very long time, he cared.

  CHAPTER 8: GRACEY

  Gracie enjoyed the thrill of sharing Lacey’s bed knowing that her uptight parents were directly below them, none the wiser that their only daughter had just done things with her girlfriend that they were in no way prepared to accept or tolerate. Television noise wafted up through the floor, and both girls knew the elder Windsors weren’t going to be up in their business anytime soon. Gracie thought she heard snoring.

  “That was very unladylike,” She teased.

  “Shut up. You loved it.”

  Gracie glanced down at the floor, in the direction of the register vent. “They’d freak if they knew what we just did.”

  Lacey blushed and shushed her.

  Gracie couldn’t help herself. “Oh my god, what if they came through that door right now? ‘It’s not what it looks like!’” She feigned panic. “It’s worse!”

  “Shut up, Grace. I mean it… that isn’t funny.”

  “It’s kind of funny.”

  “No, it isn’t.” An icy chill ran between the two girls as Lacey’s mood became devoid of all playfulness.

  Gracie reached over to stroke her shoulder. Lacey pushed her hand away and rolled over on her opposite side, turning her back to Gracie.

  “Hey, I was just playing, Lace. Don’t be like that.”

  Lacey didn’t reply. Gracie rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Moments ago, they were in the throes of passion. Now everything had turned to crap. Lacey’s parents weren’t the only uptight Windsors in the house, she thought darkly.

  So, that was that: They were fighting again, and as usual it would be a secret skirmish. They’d play at being annoyed at something else, or complain about other people, but it would be elaborately coded speech they spoke fluently to each other. Gracie would remark at the “goddamn prudes” that allegedly walked past them at the skating rink concession stand, and Lacey would close a few of the buttons on Gracie’s top shirt and say, “Nobody needs to see this hanging out.” About a week later, they’d stuff the fight away and get back to normal. Until next time. Gracie saw the future unfold in waves, with the ceiling serving as a crystal ball, revealing each phase of the tiff in a cloudy mist.

  The kicker was, Gracie loved Lacey. She knew that more than anything, Lacey was scared to death of being kicked out of the house for liking girls, or whatever mild euphemism her parents would have used. But Gracie wanted the issue forced, and the air cleared. A homeless Lacey meant a fresh start for the two of them. Gracie’s parents wouldn’t necessarily disown her for being gay, but they wouldn’t be beacons of tolerance either. Father would give her mournful looks and not talk about it, while Mother would rattle off a list of boys that surely might “change her mind.” It was best to move out, she figured. A cardboard box under a bridge with the love of her life beat that by a mile.

  But did Lacey feel the same way? Her insistence on clinging to her charade of a home life told Gracie everything she needed to know about how things were, and how things were always going to be. A tear ran down straight back into her hair and onto the pillow. Well, we had a good run, she thought bitterly.

  She rolled sideways into a sitting position, then got up and started to dress herself. Lacey continued giving her the cold shoulder treatment. Once Gracie was fully clothed, she ran her fingers through her hair to mitigate the bed-head look. She took one last look at Lacey’s back before reaching for the doorknob.

  “See you around, Aimee.”

  Lacey sucked in her breath but did not turn around. Gracie tossed something on the bed, then left the room, closing the door behind her. Lacey laid there silently and heard the front door close; Not with a slam, just an uncomfortable soft thud.

  Lacey rolled over to look at the space formerly occupied by Gracie and found a ball of fabric on the bare mattress. She knew what it was, but reached for it anyway, as if for assurance that what happened indeed had just happened. Her heart sank as a Roller Vixxxns t-shirt unraveled in her hand. Not just one… two of them. One smelled of Gracie. Lacey clutched the wad to her chest and sobbed.

  Gracie pulled her coat tighter as she trudged home, down a layer from the morning.

  CHAPTER 9: HOMECOMING

  Marc made his way back downstairs and found Jacqueline in the kitchen sipping orange juice from a tall, thin glass. “Was Agnes down here?”

  Jacqueline cocked an eyebrow, then shook her head after swallowing nearly a mouthful of juice. “Mmm-mmm.”

  “So, she just disappeared? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Jacqueline smirked. “Marc, it’s Agnes. She’s probably right there in the front room, blending in with the wallpaper.”

  He doubled back toward the front room, remembering the tea spill. How would he explain it to Mother, upon her return from shopping? Then again, why did it fall to him to do all the explaining about why… there wasn’t any tea on the carpeting?

  He shook his head in disbelief. He crouched down at the spot where Agnes had fallen, and ran his fingers over the carpet, finding it bone dry. Her tea mug was on its side, last time he saw it, no doubt leaving stains as well, and… there was no mug either.

  Jacqueline emerged from the kitchen, minus the orange juice. “Problem?”

  “The tea… it’s gone. It was right here, and the mug was over there, and Agnes was laying… here.” He framed out the elements of the crime scene with hand gestures, then looked up at Jacqueline. “You didn’t… clean up after her, did you?”

  Jacqueline laughed. “Do I seem like the cleaning type to you?”

  Probably not, he surmised. She probably had an army of butlers and maids, all wearing clichéd garb. “Well, did you see the mess when you came down here?”

  She shook her head. “To be honest, Marc, I was focused on other initiatives… and getting something to drink after all of those meetings.”

  Marc ran his fingers through his hair. What the heck was going on? Agnes couldn’t have snuck out of the bedroom without him catching her, and she sure as heck couldn’t have cleaned up the tea stains without leaving a trace. Even if she had used some space-age carpet cleaner, the floor would have been damp, if not downright soaked after the treatment. Instead, it was like the strange incident… never happened. Agnes was weird, but she wasn’t this weird.

  He stroked the carpeting once more when the front door banged open and a dark-haired blur went past. By the time it registered with Marc that
Gracie had come home, she was gone, leaving him to call after her, feebly.

  She took the stairs two at a time, and slammed her bedroom door, sending some family portraits askew in the stairwell. Marc rose to his feet, and began to follow her, when another door banged open and Monroe streaked into the front room by way of the kitchen.

  “Mommm…. Monroe got more at Sloane’s than I did. It isn’t fair!” Millie walked in exaggerated steps toward her mother, dragging shopping bags on either side of her, like they were filled with gravel. Monroe was on the spare sofa reveling in his loot.

  “What did you get? Remember, quality over quantity!” Jacqueline patted the back of Millie’s sulking head, who in turn dropped her shopping haul on the floor next to the chair Agnes has been using before her episode. She plopped down onto the chair herself and reached into the nearest shopping bag.

  “Well, I got a new laptop. My other one was getting slow.”

  Jacqueline nodded approvingly. Marc was torn between following Gracie upstairs or solving the mystery of the missing tea, but when he caught a glimpse of a shiny new laptop priced more than he made in in two months in the hands of a ten-year-old, his eyes bulged, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Didn’t that just come out, like, a week ago?”

  “Correction: This is the new ARCTURUS Luna. I pulled some strings in San Jose to have a couple of them ready for pick-up for two special customers.” Jacqueline beamed.

  Mark was dumbfounded at the revelation. “Two…?” He looked over to see Monroe smugly tapping away on his very own: Monroe’s was black, Millie’s was white. Marc rubbed his head in disbelief. He knew the Winsteads were, well, loaded, but wow, he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with consumption this conspicuous, even without the benefit of seeing the rest of their holiday loot.

  Jacqueline said to Millie, “Show Mommy what else you got, sweetie.”

  Millie set the laptop aside and rustled around in another bag.