On Grace

by Susie Orman Schnall

  Something changed in my brain at lunch yesterday. I feel a renewed strength, like maybe I can do this alone. Like how a toddler must feel the first time she takes a step and realizes her mother is not holding her up anymore. That feeling of pride and independence that she can do it on her own. Sure, the toddler usually falls. But if she keeps getting up and trying it, keeps standing on her own two feet, eventually she succeeds. And it’s only a matter of time before she realizes she can run away.

  My mom is still asleep, so I go for a jog. It’s still cool, but the air feels perfect. As I run through the UCLA campus, I practice just being, not thinking. I pay attention to the feeling of my body as my heart beats faster and my legs work to keep the pace of the music on my “running” playlist. I look at the trees and marvel at the basic yet extraordinarily irrational concept of a thick piece of wood growing out of the ground and sprouting green. I observe the cloudless blue sky, scattered with acrobatic birds, and think about the force (I alternate between calling it God and The Universe) that has already decided what my future holds.

  After my run, I stop at a cafe in Westwood Village and pick up breakfast for my mom and me: Greek yogurt parfaits, fruit salad, and two large cappuccinos. When I get back to the condo, my mom is on the terrace reading the paper.

  “Did you get my note?” I ask, handing her a cappuccino.

  “I did, thank you. And thank you for this fabulous breakfast,” she says, clapping her hands, as I lay out the contents of the bag on the outside table. We eat quietly, lost in our own thoughts, staring at the trees, the sky, The Universe.

  After breakfast, I get ready for my day with my sister and rejoin my mom outside.

  “Anyone home?” Eva sings as she unlocks the door with her own key.

  “We’re out here!” my mom replies.

  “Hi, Gracie! I’m so glad you’re here,” Eva says as she gives me a hug.

  “Me, too.”

  “Ready?” Eva asks. She’s all Kim Kardashian in a stylish grey tank top, a black scarf wrapped around her neck, white skinny jeans, lots of bracelets, and very high wedges. I am in an unstylish white Old Navy tank top, regular blue jeans, and flip flops. I am very me. And, I realize, I’m completely comfortable. I guess that’s what nearing forty is doing for me. I no longer think my sister is right and I’m wrong. I think my sister is my sister, and I’m perfectly, happily, comfortably me.

  Her red Audi convertible is parked outside, and I take a deep, anxious breath as I strap myself in. My sister is a horrible driver. She thinks she’s Danica Patrick, completely in control. But she makes the mistake of always assuming what the other drivers are going to do. She leaves no room for chance. No room for the other driver to suddenly decide to change lanes while she speeds up behind and swerves around.

  “Hey, Ev, mind if you go easy on the gas pedal and lane changing today?” I ask sweetly, trying not to nag and be all goody-goody.

  “No problem,” she says as the car lurches forward.

  A white-knuckled fifteen minutes later and we’re walking into Fred Segal in Santa Monica. I have loved Fred Segal since I found out what it was in middle school. Most people who’ve never been think it’s one store, but actually it’s a collection of amazing and unique boutiques. It’s so nice to have the whole day ahead of us. We laugh and try things on, peeking into each other’s dressing room the way sisters can, swapping clothes we know will look better on the other. I make my way through the handbags, jewelry, jeans, sunglasses, and casual clothes, happily collecting items that make me smile.

  I’m not much of a shopper at home, so I give in to the experience and take advantage of the stylish and plentiful selection. Two hours later, we return to the parking lot overwhelmed by bags. I end up with a delicate gold necklace with horseshoe, starfish, and peace sign charms; a pair of J Brand skinny jeans (because I’m planning on getting skinny); a chunky cropped white sweater; and a pair of very high wedges (when in L.A.).

  Eva had lobbied for The Ivy on Robertson for lunch, but whenever I’m in L.A., I have to go to Chin Chin, the California-ish Chinese cafe that’s been around since 1983. I crave their Szechuan dumplings, pork bao, and Chinese chicken salad when I’m in New York, so goodbye Jennifer Aniston sightings at the Ivy, I’m going to Chin Chin. We head to Brentwood and pull into the parking lot of the strip mall where Chin Chin has been forever. I was such a fan growing up that I even worked in the Studio City location one summer just to get an employee discount.

  After we place our order (Eva gets the chicken salad, too, but without the chicken), we settle in and talk about her job. She’s worked in publicity since college, interning at the venerable Rogers & Cowan each summer she was home from UC Santa Barbara. And she is fully entrenched. Most people in the entertainment industry realize that their jobs, while vital to the economy and incredibly valuable to our culture, are not brain surgery. Eva does not. She believes that the world will stop if her client does not make it onto the cover of Cosmo the same month her new movie with Matt Damon comes out. That her client might actually die if there is no alkaline water available in the green room. It makes her a bit of a nut, but it also makes her a damn good publicist. Her corner office at Farrar and Frank and long list of A-list clients say so.

  “Did you ever hear back from that website lady about the job?” Eva asks, sticking her fork in my steaming pork bao. She says she’s a vegetarian, but that never stops her from eating meat.

  “Yeah, I didn’t get the job.”

  “Oh, Gracie, I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. I had really convinced myself I was gonna get that job. But she hired someone who hasn’t been out of the workforce for the last eight years.”

  “I understand why you want to work and all, but I don’t know why you’re putting so much pressure on yourself to get a job right away. I mean, I could never stay home, but you’re so good at it.”

  “Seriously, Eva?” I say. “Why do you have to be so snarky?” And this is why Eva and I will never be the type of sisters who are best friends. She says everything that comes to her mind, as soon as it gets there, without filtering it. And then I go ahead and misinterpret it all.

  “What do you mean? I just told you what a good mom I think you are,” she says, taking a sip of her three-Splenda iced tea.

  “Well, you say it like you could never do something so boring and meaningless as staying home with your kids all day. You’ve said that for years, how you could never stay home. It’s such an insult. Like I’m simpler than you or you’re so important.”

  “Hold on, Grace. If that’s been upsetting you for years, why haven’t you ever said anything? And, besides, that’s entirely not what I mean. God! You always twist my words around.”

  I stare at her, wondering, once again, how we sprang from the same womb, and then I take a long sip of my Diet Coke. “I’ve never said anything because I never wanted to get into it with you. But I’ve decided to speak my mind more, and I’m practicing on you. How did I do?” I ask, smiling. That’s the main difference between sisters and friends. Sisters can interrupt a fight to tell a joke. Friends just fight.

  “You did fine,” she says sarcastically, eyeing the plate of spareribs at the table next to ours.

  “Thanks.”

  “But I don’t mean it as an insult that I could never stay home,” Eva says. “I just mean that I’m less patient with my kids, that I’m worse at being a mother than you are. I’ve always wished I could be as good with my kids as you are. I just get all frustrated and annoyed, and yell at them. I go to work so I don’t have to spend as much time with them. There, I said it. Now it really proves I’m a bad mom,” she says and crosses her arms across her chest.

  “Well, I get frustrated and annoyed, too. And I would love to escape every day and work at an awesome job in a cool office, with real work friends and microwave popcorn at four o’clock, and come home every afternoon to get that same greeting that Darren does. But I just can’t imagine leaving my kids with a nanny all day. At least you
have Mom to be with the kids sometimes.”

  “First of all, Grace, Mom is rarely with my kids. She’s very busy with her own life. Second of all, you could leave your kids with a nanny if you found the right one. And stop being so damn judgmental.”

  “I’m not being judgmental, I’m just being honest. Why is it that if my opinion is different from yours it means I’m judgmental? I hate that word.” I thank the busboy as he takes our appetizer plates away.

  “Damn, girl, you are just full of high and mighty ideas of how the world should operate, aren’t you?”

  “Have you and mom been talking about me behind my back and calling me high and mighty? Because she threw that out at our lunch yesterday. I am not high and mighty. I’m just a little high-strung. But there’s a lot going on in my life. And I’m trying to figure it all out.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. And maybe we do call you high and mighty, but we say it with the deepest respect,” she says and laughs. “Mom and I just wish you’d chill a little, stop taking things so seriously, stop thinking every decision you make is so important.”

  “I am chill,” I protest.

  Eva lets out a guttural laugh. The sparerib people stare.

  “Seriously,” I say. “You guys don’t know me anymore. You see me a few times a year, you talk to me on the phone, but you don’t see me in my life, every day, with my kids and my husband and my friends. I’m a lot more chill than you think. And high and mighty, I am not, thank you very much!”

  The waiter brings our salads, and I close my eyes and inhale the delicious smell before I pick a few of the crunchy noodles up in my fingers and eat them contentedly.

  “Anyway, back to the main point,” I say, digging into my salad. “I would like to find a job, because I know that is what is going to fulfill me entirely. I love my boys, but that’s not enough for me. And I’m so done with just being defined by being a stay-at-home mom. I would like to be proud of what I do.”

  “Okay, Grace. But I’ll just say one more thing. You should be incredibly proud of being a stay-at-home mom. Just remember there are women like me who wish we could be stay-at-home moms. Some who can’t for financial reasons. And some, like me, who can’t because we just suck at it. So don’t give it such a bad rap. Maybe you should just come at it a little differently and see it as a service you’re providing society, bringing up two amazing citizens of the world.”

  “Hmmm,” I say, as I digest all that she says. My heart stops as I look up and see Jake Doyle approach our table.

  “What?” Eva asks as she sees the flushed panic on my face and then turns to see what I’m looking at.

  “Hey, Grace!” Jake says, a huge smile on his ridiculously gorgeous face.

  “Hey, Jake,” I mumble as I try to chew the food in my mouth daintily while also smiling and trying to act very cool and relaxed. It’s not working. My sister reaches over and pulls a piece of lettuce off of my cheek.

  “I was in Brentwood doing some errands, and I called the number you gave me at your mom’s place to see if you wanted to grab lunch or something. She told me you were here with your sister, so I just thought I’d stop in real quick and say hi,” he says. He’s wearing a grey hoodie and jeans with a knit hipster hat. His look, so different from Darren’s, is arresting. I’m a mess.

  “Oh, I didn’t even know my mom knew we were here,” I say. I have regained my composure and am clandestinely making fists with my hands under my napkin while at the same time yelling at myself inside my brain to just chill out. Why am I acting like a love-struck little girl?

  “I texted her,” my sister says, shrugging.

  “Oh, sorry, Jake, this is my oldest sister, Eva. Eva, Jake.” I still say oldest even though she’s really my older. I often forget to reduce the set of my siblings to two and use the grammatically proper older. I still think of us as three. Jake doesn’t know Eva because she was a senior in high school when we were freshmen.

  “So, it’s so good to see you!” Jake says as he awkwardly leans in for a kiss on the cheek. He grabs the chair from the empty table next to ours, turns it around, and sits down, legs spread wide. I am staring at him. Then I remember that my sister is here, and I turn to look at her. She gives me a look that means both, What the fuck?, and who is this hot guy? So I explain.

  “Jake is an old friend from high school. He’s best friends with Scotty. He’s in the group that’s going out tonight.”

  “Okay, got it,” Eva says.

  And that’s why you’re staring at him like you would like to sweep the soy sauce and sugar packets off the table next to you and let him have it right here in the middle of Chin Chin?

  I am not!

  You are, too!

  “I don’t want to interrupt your lunch,” he says, putting his hands out like he’s grasping an imaginary basketball. “Wow, you look great, Grace. I’ll see you tonight.” He pops up, pushes the chair back in, and gives me another kiss on the cheek.

  Before I can think of something witty, yet non-incriminating to say that would at once be fittingly kind to Jake and convey that I am happy to see him, not give Eva any reason to believe that there is anything going on between Jake and me, and allow me to maintain my slowly retreating sense that I am not crossing a line, he takes off. As he saunters away, I see the muscular back I remember holding onto so many years ago.

  “What the hell was that?” Eva asks me accusingly.

  “That was Jake Doyle,” I say, taking a bite of my salad so my mouth chews instead of smiles. Unfortunately, the blush slowly rising from my neck is giving me away.

  “And why is it that Jake Doyle is making you blush like that, little sister?”

  “Okay, fine.” I decide to come clean with a story—more like a lie—just to get my sister off the trail. “I had a huge crush on him in high school. He found out I was coming tonight (lie), got my email address from Kiki (lie), and sent me an email. I emailed back and told him I was staying at Mom’s and gave him the number in case he needed to contact me because he’s arranging all the plans (lie). So I blush when I see him. Big deal. It’s old news, Eva.”

  “Well, I can fully understand why you blush. He’s smokin’ hot.”

  “I know, right?” I ask, relieved to know she bought the lie.

  As we finish our lunch, I ply Eva for sensational stories about her clients. She is good for loads of juicy tidbits. She’s always dying to share these stories with someone, but she doesn’t trust anyone in Hollywood not to run to a tabloid with the information. But she knows I won’t, so she saves all the good stuff for me.

  She tells me the long and scandalous story about one of her clients, a certain blonde starlet who shall remain nameless, who was discovered in the office of a particular A-list director making her case for a choice part that had already been offered to ScarJo. Said director’s phone system was inadvertently turned to the mode where everything said in his office was broadcast on speaker through his assistant’s phone, which happened to be located close to the office’s cappuccino machine where other staffers had gathered. At some point, the blonde starlet’s pleadings, in her unmistakable high voice, stopped and lots of moaning and slurping started. When she emerged from the director’s office twenty minutes later, she noticed everyone staring and then suddenly turning away. She called Eva on the hunch that someone knew something and begged Eva to make sure the press didn’t get wind of the story. So Eva immediately went on damage control: She called a press conference, had the starlet announce a hefty donation to a battered women’s shelter, and effectively squashed all rumors of a casting plea gone wild.

  After lunch, we decide to go back to her house and watch the girls swim. I fall asleep on her thickly cushioned, teak lounge chair as my mind swirls with images of Jake and Darren. I wake up sweaty and unsettled, and ask Eva to drive me back to the condo so I can get ready for dinner.

  When I get back to my mom’s, I sit on her terrace and scroll through my emails. There’s one from Cameron checking in from Maine. She expl
ains that it was a perfect idea for her to go there—she’s being well taken care of. She has been on my mind constantly, and I’m so glad to know she’s getting some peace and quiet.

  I stop at an email from Darren with no subject and click it open. It’s long. The longest email I’ve ever gotten from Darren. The longest thing Darren’s probably written since his college application essays. I sit back, take a deep breath, and read.

  Grace,

  I hope you are having fun with your family and your high school friends. I think taking this time apart was probably a good decision. The boys are fine. They have been talking about you. I think they really miss you. James cried last night when he was going to bed because he said he missed you. I let him sleep with me. I missed you, too. But I couldn’t fall asleep. Besides the fact that James was snoring, I just had so much going on in my head. I came to the conclusion that the hardest part of all this is my deception. So, I’ve decided to be completely honest with you hoping that you will take this as an effort to show you that I am so sorry for what I did and that I can’t stand the idea of not being with you.

  You asked me a while ago why I did it and I said I didn’t know. I do know. I did it because it felt good. I know that sounds so stupid and horrible, but if I’m going to tell the truth, it’s the truth. It felt good to have an attractive woman flirt with me and to have her want me. Add the alcohol and I wasn’t strong enough to resist. I know that makes what I did horrible, but it doesn’t make me a horrible person and that’s what I need you to realize. I have tried to figure out how I feel about the whole thing and I came up with embarrassed, ashamed, sad, disappointed, and idiotic. I think a lot of guys do what I did and feel proud of it like they passed some man test. Grace, I don’t feel like that at all. I know it’s really hard for you to believe that I could have done what I did and have it not mean anything. It didn’t mean anything, but I know that doesn’t make you feel any better. I know you can’t imagine how I didn’t think about you when I did it. It’s not that I don’t love you and don’t honor our marriage so I didn’t think about you. It’s more that I just wasn’t thinking. I was an idiot and a stereotypical asshole man. I never thought I’d be like that. I guess I was wrong. I hope you know that woman and that night meant nothing to me. Unfortunately, I know they mean everything to you.