Grace Above All

by Jane St. Anthony

  Grace Above All

  ALSO BY JANE ST. ANTHONY

  PUBLISHED BY THE

  UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS

  Isabelle Day Refuses to Die of a Broken Heart

  The Summer Sherman Loved Me

  Grace Above All

  Jane St. Anthony

  The Fesler–Lampert Minnesota Heritage Book Series

  Funded by the John K. and Elsie Lampert Fesler Fund and Elizabeth and the late David Fesler, the Fesler–Lampert Minnesota Heritage Book series publishes significant books that contribute to an understanding and appreciation of Minnesota and the Upper Midwest.

  Originally published in 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  First University of Minnesota Press edition, 2015

  Copyright 2007 by Jane St. Anthony

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290

  Minneapolis, MN 55401–2520

  http://www.upress.umn.edu

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  St. Anthony, Jane.

  Grace above all / Jane St. Anthony.

  ISBN 978-1-4529-4579-8

  1. Mothers—Fiction. 2. Family life—Fiction. 3. Vacations—Fiction. 4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. I. Title.

  PZ7.S1413Gr 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2015006584

  The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

  For my mother and father, Jane and Paul,

  for my brothers, Paul and Neal,

  and for my sister, Ann

  Grace Above All

  1

  The morning sun streaked through the cobwebbed porch windows into the big room. On the rollaway, Grace squinted, then turned her face from the brightness. Across the expanse, her brother Chuck lay curled on the daybed, his back to Grace. Grace winced. Today began almost two weeks of summer vacation that would be wasted at this cabin with Bernadette and the kids, although Dad would enliven the weekend.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Grace pictured her friend Margaret in the city. Margaret’s day would begin as soon as she finished her mother’s job list. Here there would be no escape. Job list? Her life was a job list.

  Rubbing one eye with her fingers, six-year-old Beth emerged from the hallway into the main room, a jumble of sofas and recliners, a dining table, and the disguisable beds occupied by Grace and Chuck. The refrigerator, sink, stove, and doorway to the bedrooms shared one wall. When the family had arrived after dark the night before, Bernadette sent Beth as well as Polly and Pinky through that doorway to one of the two real bedrooms. Bernadette commandeered the other.

  Grace shut her eyes again. She wasn’t fast enough.

  “Will you take me swimming, Gracie?” Beth asked. The family baby was a timid, smaller version of Grace, complete with a strawberry blond ponytail that drooped after a night in bed.

  “Bernadette will take you when she gets up.”

  “What did you say, Gracie?”

  “Mom will take you when she gets up.”

  “Oh,” said Beth, already dressed in a pink-skirted swimsuit. She dragged her “Oh” out softly, easing into a long sigh. Grace worried that Beth might turn out to be a freak, the kind of kid who printed her letters backward and stared at people as if she couldn’t understand them.

  “I’m still sleeping.”

  “But you’re talking to me, Gracie.”

  “I was sleeping. I’m going back to sleep now.”

  Grace opened one eye and watched her sister disappear onto the porch. She heard Beth settle into a wicker chair.

  A door closed within the hallway. Bernadette surfaced at the same spot Beth had occupied moments earlier. Her floral orange-and-red shift was as wrinkled as it would be if it had been wadded up under her pillow. She frowned into the sunlight.

  “Two bodies accounted for in the bedroom. Did we lose Bethie already?” Bernadette paused to flip open her silver cigarette lighter and start her day with smoke.

  “She’s out there,” Grace said, lifting her face from the pillow, hand gesturing at the porch. Pretending to be asleep was pointless.

  Beth appeared in the doorway. “Mommy, may I go swimming?”

  “What’s all the noise?” groaned Chuck from his bed as he pulled a sheet over his head.

  “Jeez, Bethie, I’d like a cup of java before I go on patrol,” Bernadette said, banging cupboard doors as she searched for coffee. “Finally.” She plucked a can from the shelf.

  “Mommy, may I go swimming?”

  “Let me wake up first,” Bernadette said, her hand crashing around in a drawer. “You would think she owned a can opener.”

  “Who owned a can opener?” said Chuck.

  “Aunt Marie, you idiot,” Grace answered. At fifteen, Chuck was two years older than Grace and, Grace thought, about a century dumber. “This was her cabin.”

  “Oh, yeah, Grandma’s dead sister.”

  “Gad, did they bury it with her?” said Bernadette, finally extracting her prize from the drawer, which she shut with her hip. She positioned the can opener’s little cutting wheel and turned the handle.

  “Mommy, maybe?” Beth’s gentle voice floated from the doorway.

  “What’s for breakfast?” Chuck demanded loudly.

  “That’s an original question,” Bernadette said. “Am I supposed to turn into a waffle iron because you’re on vacation?” She pulled a Good Housekeeping magazine out of a stack piled on a shelf built into the wall. The fire hissed under the coffeepot.

  Even though the sun was heating the cabin, Grace slipped deeper under the bedspread for privacy. She wondered whether Bernadette had bought hot dog buns. She didn’t remember seeing them when she had unpacked the grocery bags last night. Hot dogs wrapped in Wonder Bread were hateful.

  “Are there any bikes up here?” Grace asked. The last town they had driven through couldn’t be too far away, could it?

  “Never were a hundred years ago when I was here last,” Bernadette said.

  The coffee began to perk on the stove, the water beating against the little glass dome.

  “Keep things under control, Gracie,” Bernadette called back as she disappeared into the hallway. “I’ll be back for my brew.” The bedroom door clicked shut.

  “Please, may I go swimming now?” Beth asked quietly.

  Grace sat up on the rollaway. She would never get back to sleep.

  “Go on, Bethie, but only up to your knees. Got it? Just up to your knees. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  The screen door squeaked open and bounced shut a few times. Beth’s bare feet padded away from the cabin.

  The old linoleum floor was cool under Grace’s soles as she walked to the cupboard where she had put the cereal. At least Bernadette had remembered to buy that before they had left home. Grace looked through the cupboards, memorizing the location of anything that might be useful. Picking up an eggbeater from the utensil drawer, Grace absentmindedly turned the handle. A spider dropped from between the blades and scooted away.

  Polly walked into the big room, bumping into an end table as she blinked in the brightness.

  “Having trouble walking, Polly?” Chuck muttered.

  “At least I’m not paralyzed, fathead,” Polly shot back as she rubbed her shin. She stopped to peer through the porch into the sun. Polly was the most nearsighted twelve-year-old—or kid, for that matter—that Grace knew.

  “What’s that pink thing out there?” Polly said, s
quinting hard.

  “Maybe your brain went for a swim,” said Chuck.

  Polly put her face up to the window and strained to see through the porch.

  “Grace, is that a person?”

  Why me? Grace thought. You don’t have a mother? She walked away from the cupboards and stood next to Polly. “Where?” she asked.

  “There, floating, I think.”

  Grace looked at Polly. She wasn’t wearing her glasses. She really couldn’t see what she saw. Grace’s chest seized with panic.

  “Can’t you see it, Grace? Pink.”

  Think, think, think, Grace repeated to herself. No lifeguard here. Who else could swim besides her? Bernadette, no. Chuck, yes, but not as well as she could. Polly, slow dog paddle. Pinky, no. Maybe Chuck could float on something. She moved quickly to Chuck’s head, which had emerged from the sheet. Grace put her mouth next to his ear.

  “Keep your fat trap shut,” she said in a hissing whisper. “Beth is floating on something in the middle of the lake. We’re going to get her. Now.”

  “Get Mom,” Chuck said in a strained voice.

  “She can’t swim. She’ll slow us down.”

  Chuck stood up in his T-shirt and boxers.

  “We’re going down to the beach to check out the situation, Pol,” Grace called as she ran through the porch and let the screen door slam. Chuck followed, pushing the door open behind her and following down the steps to the beach. The door bounced in protest again.

  At the bottom of the steps, the cool sand shocked Grace.

  A weather-beaten rowboat floated next to the dock, joined to it by rope. Should she hunt for paddles under the junk heaped in the boat? How hard would it be to untie it? Grace decided. No time. She had to act.

  “What should we do?” Chuck asked.

  “Grab that inner tube. I’ll swim.”

  “Where’s the tube?”

  Grace gestured toward the adjoining beachfront as she moved to the water.

  “Too hard to swim with a tube,” Chuck protested.

  “We need it. Do it.”

  For a second, Grace marveled that her older brother obeyed her in times of crisis. Dad said that she was born to be a military commander. As a toddler, she had barked orders: “Make food!” “Push higher!” “Move, Chuckie!”

  From the cabin, the unmistakable high voice of Pinky, their younger brother, shot down to the beach.

  “Bethie’s in the lake!” he screamed. “Mom, Bethie’s in the lake!”

  2

  Grace plunged. She forced her arms to chop through the water as if she might escape its cold grip. Chuck yelped behind her as he splashed into the lake. How far out was Beth? Grace tried to gauge the distance in regulation-size swimming pools. Three pools? Four? More?

  A few fishing boats perched in the distance, the fishermen minuscule on the sun-dappled lake. As Grace swam toward her, Beth became more distinct, gently bobbing on an air mattress—the kind that some moms floated around on in shallow water and then yelled at their kids from when they got splashed. Afraid of losing time, Grace lifted her face completely out of the water to right her course only every few breaths. She hadn’t given the lake a thought earlier. Now the water lapped a little—hitting her face with insulting little slaps—but at least a hurricane wasn’t flipping wave walls at her. She would trade Chuck for a pair of goggles. Where was he, anyway? What was she, the world’s lifeguard?

  Beth began to turn her head slowly as Grace closed in on her. The air mattress submerged where Beth’s hand pushed on it as she tried to look back and balance at the same time.

  “Turn around,” Grace called. “Don’t move, Bethie.” Could Chuck be catching up on the inner tube? The splashing came closer. Grace hated to waste energy by yelling at Beth again. Lake swimming was so much more work than pool swimming. The Girl Scouts should have been dumped in the middle of a lake instead of taking lessons in that smooth chlorinated bath at the junior high.

  From far away on the beach, a muddle of voices reached her across the water. If Grace had waited for someone else to figure out what to do, Beth would have floated to Canada by now. That was, if the air mattress didn’t deflate. Whose was it, anyway, all puffed up, luring little kids onto it?

  For every splash Grace made, a splash echoed. Grace pushed forward, focused on Beth’s ponytail rather than on the depth of the lake. When Grace pulled alongside her sister, Beth’s slurpy crying burbled over the water. Grace gently held the lip of the air mattress, taking care to move slowly for fear of jostling the rider. She didn’t want Beth on her neck.

  “Hey, Bethie,” she said. “Pretty out here, isn’t it?” Grace held on to an edge of Beth’s boat and kicked her feet to stay afloat. The lake was friendlier now.

  Beth looked past Grace at the swimmer who had splashed up. “Who is it, Gracie?” she said, voice still stiff with fright.

  Grace turned to see a wet head bobbing next to her, and a life jacket trailing by its belt. For a second it seemed that Chuck had turned into someone handsome.

  “The other guy was falling back, so I took over,” the boy said. “I can tow the little girl on the flotation thing. You take this. You really raced out here.”

  “Okay,” Grace said as she struggled into the life jacket. “Here we go, Bethie. You’re getting a ride.”

  “Let’s go,” said the handsome person who wasn’t Chuck. He held on to the mattress.

  “Gracie, you pull me,” Beth said, tears streaming down her face.

  “I’m right here, Bethie. We’re all going to the same place.”

  Grace paced her strokes to match the boy’s, slowed by the cargo. Buoyed by the life jacket, she noticed what she hadn’t seen on the trip out. The sun, still climbing, heated her head. Birds called to one another. Cabins, widely spaced, peeked from behind birch and pine trees. The trip was a glide over the surface, not a struggle to stay on top.

  In the distance, tiny figures peopled the beach, some cavorting, some unwavering as tree trunks. Grace picked Chuck out of the lineup as she neared the shore. He was such a fathead that he could probably float forever. She would have to tell him that.

  Bernadette, bright as a field of poppies, stood out, too. Chuck jumped up and down next to her. Polly held Pinky’s hands as the eight-year-old pulled her around in circles. Two men stood a little apart from Bernadette. One wore a straw hat.

  “That’s the way, Frankie,” called the straw hat, who looked old as Grace got close enough to stand up.

  “Go on, Grandpa,” said the boy. Now Grace knew his name.

  Grace stepped onto dry land and turned to help Frankie with the air mattress as if they were beaching a canoe. She looked Chuck in the eye. He stopped jumping.

  “Afraid of sharks?” Grace asked him.

  “We traded places. That guy had a life jacket.”

  “Bethie, Bethie, what in the blank were you trying to do?” Bernadette said in her hoarse morning voice. She scooped Beth up and held her in her arms, turning Beth into an elongated baby. Bernadette sounded like Bernadette, but the little scar on her chin was more apparent than usual in her pale face.

  “The pillow floated,” Beth said softly, tears squeezing out of her eyes and onto the sand. “I jumped on it to catch it. I didn’t go in over my knees, Gracie.”

  “That’s brilliant,” said Chuck.

  “Unlike you,” Grace replied, without pause. She wished that she had a towel. The T-shirt she had slept in clung to her chest. She folded her arms over it.

  “A most admirable rescue,” said the straw-hat man to Grace. “My name is Ernest Hale, and I’m happy to make your acquaintance.” “Grace Doyle,” said Grace as Frankie’s grandpa extended his dry hand and she shook it with her clammy one, leaving her left arm in place on her chest.

  “Bernadette,” Ernest Hale continued, including everyone with a sweep of his eyes. “It’s been too many years. You remember my son, Tom. And the other swimmer is my grandson, Frankie, who just turned fourteen.”

  “M
r. Hale, I would know you anywhere,” Bernadette said. “And you, too, Tom.” She shifted Beth’s weight in her arms. “Bethie, your big sister saved you. You are one lucky baby girl.”

  “That boy saved me, too,” Beth said, her lip quivering.

  “Don’t cry now,” said Chuck. “You’ve been saved.”

  Bernadette pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her shift pocket as she balanced Beth on her left hip. She tapped a cigarette into the hand that held Beth’s bottom. “She’s relieved, Chuck.” She turned to the elder Mr. Hale. “First off, I’m still Bernie to you, Mr. Hale.”

  “Well, then, Bernie, I’m Ernest to you now.”

  “Okay, Ernest, we’re both grownups. Whew. What a morning. Bethie, no more crazy stuff.”

  “And these are your other children?” asked Ernest Hale.

  “Oops, my manners,” Bernadette said. “This is my firstborn, Chuck. That’s Grace, but she already told you. That’s Polly, then Pinky, and you must have figured out that Beth is the wave rider.”

  “A pleasure to meet you all,” said Frankie’s grandpa. His son, Frankie’s dad, nodded and smiled at everyone.

  “And thanks to you for hauling the girls in,” Bernadette said to Frankie.

  “Really, she”—he looked at Grace—“was doing it by herself. I was backup. She’s a good swimmer.”

  Grace stared at Frankie. Water dripped down his smooth chest. She wondered where he had thrown his shirt. Did the Hales have a cabin on this shore?

  As if reading her mind, Grandpa Ernest pointed to a cabin mostly hidden by the trees. “Our cabin is next door to your family’s,” he said, looking at Grace. “We go back a long way. You must come over and visit us while you’re here.”

  Grace was grateful for Grandpa Ernest. Staring at Frankie Hale made her weak. The strength came back to her legs. She could exit.

  “Great,” she said. “Thanks.”

  She gave a little wave and started up the wooden stairs to the cabin, although she couldn’t imagine what she would do when she got there.