State of Grace

by Sandra Moran

  I pointed to the back of her car. “Are your bags back there?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I’ll get them.” She turned to walk to the car. I followed and as she lifted the hatch she glanced around the front yard and then up at the second floor windows of the cabin. “This is really nice, Birdie.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I held out a hand for one of the bags. “I like it. My mom and Tara think it’s a little too remote, but it’s really perfect.”

  She handed me a battered brown leather suitcase, and slung a red and black tote bag over her shoulder. She pulled a blue duffle bag out and set it on the ground, closed the back of the station wagon, and followed me inside.

  “So, this is it,” I said as we stepped into the living room. “It’s small, I know, but it’s cozy. Your room is upstairs. It’s the one on the left.” I pointed to the doorway visible on the balcony that overlooked the living room. “The bathroom is in-between the bedrooms. I put some towels on your bed.”

  “It’s perfect, Birdie,” she said as she slung the tote bag off her shoulder and handed it to me. The contents inside the bag clinked, glass upon glass. I peered inside at the bottles of wine. “Compliments of Pete. How about you open one while I take these upstairs? The room on the left, right?”

  I protested as she picked up her bags and headed for the stairs.

  “I’ve got it,” she said. “If you want to help me, pour me a drink, and keep them coming. I’ll be down in a second.”

  Natalie did drink a lot that weekend. I, however, did not. I knew from experience that when I began to drink, I often didn’t stop, and it was during those times when my guard was down that Grace was at her most vocal. I already could feel her interest in Natalie and was very careful to keep her under control. Natalie, for her part, didn’t seem to notice that I wasn’t matching her drink for drink—that, or she didn’t seem to care.

  She had come to spend time with me, but most of our time together that weekend was actually spent apart or doing solitary activities in each other’s presence. Natalie went on long runs and when we were in the cabin together, we often sat on opposite ends of the couch and read. When we talked, the conversation was light and pointedly absent of references to Grace’s murder, my work, or Natalie’s life with Pete. It was as if we had silently agreed not to discuss the things that troubled each of us the most. But that last night, after we had finished dinner and put away the dishes, we sat next to the fire and finished the last bottle of wine.

  “I’m going to leave Pete,” Natalie blurted out.

  I had been struggling with the fire tongs to turn a large log over on the grate when she spoke. I turned, caught off guard, and the log rolled back to its original position.

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m going to leave Pete,” she repeated and swirled the wine in her glass. I watched for several seconds, mesmerized. “I can’t do it anymore, Birdie. I wake up every day and I look at him and I think, ‘you stole my life.’” She snorted and shook her head almost violently. “I know he didn’t. I know that. But for some reason, when I look at him, all I can see is my wasted life.”

  I turned back to the log, gave it a final shove, and pulled closed the mesh spark screen. I wanted to say something—anything—that would make her feel better. But nothing came to mind—nothing except Grace’s obvious interest.

  “Could you really do it?” I picked up my own glass and settled back onto my end of the couch. “Leave him?”

  Natalie pursed her lips and shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “All I know is that I can’t stay with him.” She took a large swallow of wine and then turned to face me. When she spoke again, her voice was earnest. “Part of the reason for coming here was to get some time away from Pete and the kids to think about this. To see how it feels to be on my own—like you are.”

  I shook my head slowly back and forth. “Natalie, it’s not as easy as you think. My life is lonely.”

  “Birdie, please listen,” she said and reached clumsily forward to clasp my free hand. “I’ve been thinking a lot about this and this is what I want to do—what I need to do. Birdie, this is my last chance.” Her grip on my hand tightened. “If I don’t leave now, I never will. Do you understand?”

  I blinked several times and looked at our joined hands. Her thin fingers were clamped so tightly around my hand that the knuckles were white. She was breathing heavily. “I know it’s wrong, but I don’t want to be a wife and mother.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going to leave Pete and the kids.”

  “Wait. The kids? What do you mean, leave the kids, too? Nat, you’re their mother.”

  Natalie wrenched her hand away. “You don’t have to say it like that. You don’t have kids. You don’t understand.”

  “But you’re their mother.”

  “I know,” she said miserably. “Don’t you think I know what it means, my saying this? Don’t you think I know what people will think—how they’ll see me?” She turned and leaned forward, feet on the floor, elbows resting on her knees. “What kind of monster doesn’t want her children?”

  “Natalie,” I said softly. “You’re unhappy. You’re just—”

  “I know what I am,” she said ruefully and drained the wine in her glass. “I know.” She turned her head to look miserably at me. “I just can’t do it anymore. I’ve thought about this a lot and I’m going to go back, talk to Pete, and try to explain to the kids. Men do it all the time.”

  “And then what?”

  Natalie shrugged. “I’ll pack what I need to get by, come back here, and figure out what to do next.”

  I felt my stomach contract. “Here? With me?”

  “Just a few months, until I get my head straight. That’s okay, right?”

  “I . . . Natalie,” I stammered.

  “She can’t live here,” Grace said urgently in my head. “She’ll ruin everything. You won’t be able to work. She’ll make messes you’ll have to clean up. Think about the hair you saw yesterday in the shower drain. Do you want to wake up to that every day?”

  “I need your help, Birdie,” Natalie said. “I can’t stay there. I don’t have any place else to go.”

  I felt my resolve begin to waver. Grace felt it, too. I felt her shift in my head, pacing back and forth. She was anxious. “If she is around here all the time, she’ll figure out you’re crazy,” Grace said. Her voice was anxious. “I can take care of you when it’s just us, but if you let her come here, I can’t protect you. She will ruin everything.”

  “Nat—”

  “Birdie, I can’t do this anymore.” She reached out for my hand and began to squeeze again. She shook her head. “I won’t.”

  I felt a pressure build in my chest and squeezed her hand tightly. “What are you saying?” I asked hollowly. When she didn’t answer, I tried again. “Natalie, what do you mean?”

  She blinked several times but still didn’t reply. Her eyes were dull in her gaunt face and I had a flash of her laid out in a coffin, ready to go into the ground. I fought down the terror of having another person in my home for such a long time and opened my mouth to say that she could stay—that we would figure it out. But something in me just couldn’t say the words.

  Instead, I sighed and said, “Let’s talk about this in the morning.” Natalie stared at me for several more seconds before nodding. The gesture was one of resignation.

  “Sure,” she said and smiled sadly. “Sure.”

  We didn’t talk about it the next morning. I didn’t bring it up and neither did she. We simply drank our coffee, silently ate our toast, and then Natalie went upstairs and brought down her bags. As I helped her carry them out to the car, I struggled to figure out what to say.

  “Nat,” I said as she slid the bags into the back of the station wagon and closed the hatch.

  “Don’t.” She turned to smile at me. Her eyes were shiny. “It’s okay. I just wasn’t ready to go home. But I’m okay now.”

  “What you said—” I began but she
cut me off.

  “Just the wine talking.” She pulled me into a hug. We stood that way for a long time. After several seconds, I broke the embrace.

  “I love you,” she said as she stepped back and looked into my eyes. “I know things have been hard for you, too. After Grace . . . I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be more help to you.” She continued to look at me and for a second, she looked like the old Natalie—the fearless, strong Natalie of our youth.

  “Well, I had better get on the road,” she said and walked to the driver-side door. “Thanks for everything.”

  “Let’s do it again in a couple of months,” I said suddenly. “Maybe you could come and stay longer.”

  She opened the door and then stepped back and pulled me into a final good-bye hug. “That would be great.” She squeezed my shoulders once and then climbed into the car.

  “I’m sorry about—” I said after she started the engine and rolled down the window. She held up her hand.

  “It’s okay. Really.” She paused and reached her hand out the window. I stepped forward and grasped it. “I love you, Birdie.”

  I squeezed her fingers tightly. “I love you, too.”

  She bobbed her head a couple of times in acknowledgement, squeezed my fingers again and then withdrew her hand.

  “See you later alligator.” It was our old good-bye.

  “After while crocodile,” I responded.

  She grinned, rolled up the window, and put the car into gear. I stood on the porch with Toby and waved until she had turned out of the driveway and onto the dirt road that led to the highway.

  It was the last time I saw her. It was about a month after Roger and Adelle’s visit that my mother called to tell me that Natalie was dead. They were doing an autopsy, my mother said, but it appeared that she had taken an overdose of prescription narcotics.

  I was silent for several seconds.

  “Birdie?” my mother asked. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, not considering that she couldn’t see my response through the phone line. All I could think about was our talk on the last night of her visit and the stilted phone conversations since. We had never talked again about that night, and each time we spoke on the telephone, Natalie had seemed less and less engaged. She had seemed to retreat into herself, and because I felt unable to help her, I had taken to not picking up when she called.

  “Birdie,” my mother said again.

  “Yeah, Mom, I’m here,” I mumbled. “Sorry. How’s her mom holding up?”

  “She’s taking it hard,” my mother said. “She asked about you when I called her. She wanted you to know that the funeral will be on Friday.”

  My stomach clenched in its familiar knot. Images of Grace’s funeral flashed through my mind. I hadn’t been to the cemetery since my grandfather’s burial. My grandmother had been cremated, so her service had been held at the funeral home. The thought of going out there now left me breathless.

  “I’ll have to check my schedule,” I mumbled. “I want to, but I’ve got a lot of work . . . deadlines. There’s a new show . . .”

  “Birdie,” my mother said. “I know you have . . . issues. And most of the time, we try to be sympathetic to them. But this isn’t up for discussion. Natalie was your best friend. She loved you like a sister. You owe it to her to come back.”

  I was silent. I hated myself for what I had become. I needed to go to the funeral—for Natalie’s parents, but also to say good-bye. Even though we never recaptured the closeness we had before Grace’s death, we had held onto each other, bound together in a common orbit. Natalie had never shown me anything but unconditional friendship and had only asked for one thing in return—the one thing that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give her. The thought of her being gone was unfathomable. I felt a void—a loneliness that was as palpable as if she had physically been in my presence and then had been yanked away.

  “I know,” I said finally. “What time’s the funeral?”

  Chapter 24

  Ultimately, I didn’t go to Natalie’s funeral. I tried—even going so far as to pack my bag and load it into my Jeep. But then, instead of forcing myself to get into the driver’s seat and start the engine, I went back inside and sat down on the couch. “Any time now,” I kept telling myself. But after three days of locking the house, getting in the Jeep, and sitting in the driveway, I finally acknowledged that I wasn’t going anywhere and brought my bag back inside. My mother was disappointed and angry. I sent a letter to Natalie’s parents explaining that I couldn’t get away, but that when I came to visit my mother, I would come see them. Her mom eventually sent a vague, polite response that made me feel worse than I already did.

  That’s not to say that I didn’t commemorate Natalie’s death. I did. I mourned privately. And I drank—a lot. I also talked to Grace. She was the one person who I thought could understand—the only one who wouldn’t judge me. In the end, though, there was little she could do to make me feel better, though her idea of holding a private service for Natalie was a good one. I was midway through my second bottle of wine when Grace suggested it—“so you can say goodbye.”

  I considered the idea.

  “But how would we do it? We don’t have a body.”

  “You don’t need to have the person there to have a memorial service,” Grace said. “Just light some candles and put on some special music. Say a few words.”

  “We could drink a toast,” I said starting to get into the idea. “To her memory.”

  “I don’t know if you really need more to drink,” Grace said. “You’ve had quite a bit already.”

  “A fact that is really none of your business.”

  I could feel her shrug.

  “So, go get some candles,” Grace said. “And I’ll pick out the music.”

  I got unsteadily to my feet and lurched into the kitchen.

  “Candles,” I muttered and began jerking drawers open. After about the fifth try, I found what I was looking for. “Got ’em,” I yelled as I put several on a plate and then grabbed the matches and the bottle of wine.

  “What do you think about the soundtrack to Eddie and the Cruisers?” Grace asked as I came back into the living room. It had been one of Natalie’s favorite movies and she had worn out the cassette tape playing it so often. She had brought it with her when she visited, and we’d listened to it one night while cooking dinner.

  “Perfect,” I said. “Cheers to you, Grace!” I picked up my glass and raised it in a sloppy toast. I could tell that I was moving clumsily, so I compensated by trying to be very deliberate. I was, I knew, drunk. Again.

  “‘Tender Years’,” Grace said. “It was her favorite, right?”

  “Let me light these candles first,” I muttered as I tried to arrange them on the battered wooden coffee table. My fingers felt thick as I struggled to extract a match from the box. “Why do they make them so stinkin’ small?”

  “Light the candles, Birdie.” I could tell Grace was getting exasperated with me.

  “I am,” I said, and struck the match against the side of the box. The tip of the match flared to life. “I love the smell of sulfur.”

  “Birdie, light the candles before you burn yourself,” Grace said.

  I held the match to the wick of the largest candle. My fingers trembled as I waited for it to catch. The colors of the light were mesmerizing—red, yellow, orange, and, in the center, dark blue and black. I felt the heat of the flame as it inched nearer my fingers, but still I didn’t move. I didn’t blow it out or drop it. I just watched in fascination as the flame began to lick at my fingertips. I was amazed that it didn’t hurt.

  “Birdie!” It was Grace. “Blow it out. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “I was just watching it,” I said as I dropped the blackened matchstick onto the candleholder. “It’s like it has a life of its own.”

  I felt Grace sigh. “You need to put some ice on your fingers. Go into the kitchen and get some.”

  “No,” I said almost petula
ntly. “I’ll use this.” I stuck my fingers into my wine glass and wiggled them in the red liquid.

  “That’s disgusting,” she said.

  “Oh yeah, music,” I said and suddenly leapt up. “‘Tender Years.’” I scanned the stacks of tapes and CDs. “John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band,” I said as I popped the cassette into the player and pressed Rewind. I winced as my fingertips came in contact with the button.

  “Told you,” Grace said.

  “Shut up,” I said as the player clicked off. Using my other hand, I pushed Play. When the music began to play, I dropped my hands and walked back to the coffee table.

  “What if you used a fireplace match to light the rest?” Grace suggested. I nodded. After the candles were lit, I knelt in front of the table and poured the remainder of the wine into my glass. I was about to start my eulogy when Grace stopped me.

  “You need a picture,” Grace said. “Remember the ones she sent you from her last visit? Get one of those.”

  She was right, of course, and so I scrambled up and went to my desk. The pictures were in a small manila envelope in the top desk drawer. I flipped through them and extracted my favorite. It was Natalie, in profile, looking out across the mountains. I had grabbed her camera when she wasn’t looking and snapped some pictures so she could have some of herself. She had a wistful expression and for a moment, I was reminded how disappointed in life she must have been.

  I leaned the photo against one of the taller candles and settled back into my spot.

  “Natalie,” I said. It was both a question and a statement—an entreaty. I paused, wondering what to say next. I looked down at her picture. I had no idea how to start. I took a sip of wine, cleared my throat, and began again. “Natalie, I’m sorry your life didn’t turn out the way you planned. I’m sorry I couldn’t be . . . wasn’t capable of being a better friend to you. And I’m sorry I didn’t go to your funeral. I tried. I really did. But that place, that . . . town and everything that happened there . . . all of it . . .”