Grace Above All

by Jane St. Anthony

  “I’m going out for a while,” said Grace.

  “Where, Gracie? There’s no place to go around here.”

  “I’m going on a walk for a couple of hours.”

  “Man alive. Your father will be here by lunchtime. How am I going to have everything ready if you’re off traipsing in the woods?”

  Bernadette’s larger window faced east. The sun was climbing toward its noontime destination, spreading heat as it rose.

  “I’m going crazy being here alone every day,” Grace said.

  “So take a little walk and be back before lunch.”

  “I’m walking to town.”

  “Town? Don’t be crazy, Gracie. You won’t be back until tonight. You’re not going. Case closed.” Bernadette straightened the magazine in her lap.

  Grace fumed. Was she Bernadette’s servant? Nobody paid her to keep everything together.

  “I’m leaving. I’ll be back when I’m back.”

  “You’re my right-hand man,” Bernadette said. “Can’t go.”

  For the most part, Grace did what was expected of her. Give Beth a bath. Iron Dad’s shirts. Open chicken noodle soup for supper when Dad worked late. That was her part of the pact. For the most part, Bernadette stayed out of her hair. Why was Bernadette policing her now?

  What would Frankie do if she was late? Knock on the door? Or would he leave if she didn’t show up outside?

  “Gotta go,” Grace said. “Train another kid while I’m gone.”

  “Gracie, you’re asking for it.”

  If Bernadette lurched out of bed, she would spill her coffee and tip the ashtray. She wouldn’t get up. Getting up was not convenient.

  “See you later,” Grace said in a bright voice, as if nothing unpleasant were happening.

  “Jeez,” Bernadette said behind her.

  Polly sat at the table, the only sibling in the room. She paged through a bird book. “What’s up today, Grace?” she said.

  “I’m going on a hike.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Let me finish. I’m going on a hike. Dad will be here soon.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “Late. I’m walking into town.”

  “By yourself?”

  For a second, Grace considered telling her. Poor Polly. If there was one thing worse than being Bernadette’s oldest daughter, it was being the second daughter. Grace pictured herself as the head housekeeper with the all-important ring of keys at her waist. Polly was the scullery maid. The scullery maid was off dreaming about Frankie, too.

  “By myself.”

  “Please, can I come?”

  “Another time.”

  Frankie stood in the trees between the two cabins with his back to Grace, hands in the pockets of his shorts.

  Grace walked slowly and watched the sun sneak through the branches to bathe Frankie’s head in stripes of sunlight. He heard her and turned, smiling. She was grateful that she had brushed her teeth and whisked the toast crumbs from the front of her blouse.

  Frankie pulled one hand out of his pocket. He held it in front of Grace, his fingers loosely curved into a vase. A tiny yellow flower peeked out, looking fresh for having been in a pocket.

  “For me?”

  Frankie lifted his eyebrows as if to say, Who else?

  “Pretty,” said Grace, plucking it out of Frankie’s hand-vase. Where could she keep it without carrying it, purse-like, for five miles and back? Grace put it behind her ear.

  As she lowered her hand, Frankie took it in his. But somehow he had the wrong hand. Grace and Frankie faced each other as if they had just shaken hands and not let go.

  “Nice to meet you,” Grace said, moving her hand up and down with Frankie’s attached.

  “Oops.” Frankie let go of Grace’s right hand and took her left. “Let’s go to town.”

  Frankie seemed happy to be in possession of Grace’s hand. But five miles could be a very long walk if no one spoke.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asked, after they turned onto the gravel road from the driveway.

  “I have a little brother, Tommy. He’s eight. He’s with my mom at her parents’. Sometimes we split up like that. Last year I went to Chicago with my mom for a weekend. We’ll all be at the lake together in August.”

  “Aren’t there any in-between kids?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I’m trying to imagine my family with only Beth and me in it.”

  “My family seems okay to me. My little brother is a nice guy.”

  They walked. The sun felt friendly, as if it was painting them evenly with a coat of comfort. Sumac rushed the season with a red leaf drawing attention here and there. A caterpillar neared the end of its desert road, having almost completed its trek to the other side. In the distance, a speck of car grew larger, dust creating a puffy tail behind it.

  “Hardly anyone drives this road during the week,” Frankie said. “But this is Saturday, isn’t it?”

  “Days don’t matter as much when there’s no school.”

  “What are you good in?” Frankie asked. “At school.”

  “I like science. There’s a lot to think about.”

  “Reading?”

  “I read all the time. Reading is like water. I need it. Do you?”

  Before he could answer, Frankie moved with Grace to the side of the road as the oncoming car approached. The driver made a wide arc to avoid them, braked, and then went into reverse. A lost tourist? A car seemed out of place here, where the loudest noises were cicadas and invisible scurrying creatures and snapping twigs.

  A man leaned across the front seat and spoke through the passenger window. “Who’s that you’re attached to, Grace?”

  14

  Grace peered into the car. “Dad, whose wreck is this?”

  “Uncle Joe’s. I had to figure something out, since your mother stole the wagon.”

  “I didn’t know he had a car that looked this bad.”

  “Who are you eloping with, Grace?”

  Grace leaned on the car’s window frame with both elbows. “This is Frankie. He lives next door to the cabin.” Dad seemed out of place here. Or maybe it was Frankie.

  “How do you do?” Dad said, extending his arm to shake hands with Frankie through the passenger window, as Grace moved out of the way.

  “Hello, sir,” said Frankie.

  Dad’s hand slipped back into the car, which stopped rumbling when he turned off the ignition. He opened his door and walked around the front of the car to the other side.

  “How are things going, Grace?” he asked.

  “The usual.”

  Frankie was almost as tall as Dad, Grace observed. But Dad was solid, with broad shoulders and a chest designed to repel an attack.

  “You two look alike,” Frankie said, his eyes moving from Grace to her father.

  “It’s the hair,” Dad said, running a hand through a reddish thatch that was a few shades deeper than Grace’s. “And the determined jaw. But you do like her face, even though it resembles mine?”

  “Oh, sure, I like it,” said Frankie, looking trapped.

  “What should I know about the cabin, Grace?” Dad said.

  “Bernadette dragged us to see Hilda a few days ago. Polly saw crazy Gunda and acts as if that zapped her brain. Otherwise, things are pretty normal. We could use some more food. We ate at Frankie’s grandpa’s cabin last night.”

  “I shopped on the way up. No one should starve for a while. I’d better get going. Nice to meet you, Frankie. By the way, where are you two off to?”

  “Town,” said Grace.

  “So,” Dad said, looking at his watch for a few seconds, “with a break for ice cream, you’ll be back by two o’clock, maybe two-thirty.” He winked at Grace as he lowered himself into the driver’s seat. “I never forget a face,” he said to Frankie.

  “Bye, Dad.”

  “Bye, Mr. Doyle.”

  The car started up and diminished in size as it mov
ed away.

  “Is your dad strict?” Frankie asked. “I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.”

  “Serious, not mean.” Grace didn’t mention that Dad had never said anything about boys and remembering their faces before, probably because she had never been with one.

  Five miles was an easy walk. The talking was easy, too. Frankie listened, talked, listened, talked, almost the way Grace’s friend Margaret did. This was the opposite of Chuck, whose main topic was himself.

  “During the school year, I walked at least two miles a day—to school, home for lunch, back to school, and home again,” Grace said. “Next year I’ll walk twice as far to high school, but I won’t go home for lunch.”

  The gravel road looked baked, as if pleading for rain to cool it off. Grace didn’t mind the heat, although the breeze was welcome.

  “Five miles shouldn’t be hard for us,” said Frankie. “Our legs are kind of like our personal vehicles. One time, for math, we had to think of a problem. Mine was about mileage. If I walked my dog for one mile, how much farther would that be for her based on the length of her legs compared to mine?”

  Grace thought for a minute. “You’d both cover the same number of miles. Her leg length doesn’t make any difference.”

  “Right. Hardly anyone got that. The only difference would depend on who walked on the inside and who walked on the outside of the curve.”

  “So I’m better at math than most of your classmates.”

  “Right again.”

  Frankie understands conversation, Grace thought with gratitude.

  “Grandpa told me that your mom shops at the same grocery store as my mom,” said Frankie.

  “In Bagley?”

  “No, at home.”

  Grace thought that her heart had stopped beating. “Are you sure?”

  “That’s what Grandpa said.”

  “That means that we don’t live that far apart.”

  “Four miles, we figured.” Frankie squeezed Grace’s hand.

  “This walk feels as if we’re moving on a map,” she said because the current topic was too blissfully overwhelming. “I’ve never walked into a town before in my life.”

  “It’s pretty cool. We’re crossing a border. Stepping into new territory. Stuff like that. Let’s find someplace to get a drink.”

  A DINER sign loomed ahead on the edge of town. But Grace and Frankie decided to stop at a gas station with a pop machine in front. Frankie had change. He put a dime in for Grace, who pushed the Orange Crush button. The bottle hit the bottom with a thunk.

  “We never have pop at our house,” Frankie said as he chose 7UP.

  “We don’t either,” said Grace. “My dad won’t let us. He calls it sweetened paint thinner, you know, toxic. But my mom drinks it all the time.” She pictured ants swarming on the empty bottles next to Bernadette’s lawn chair in the backyard.

  They sat on the curb, drinking pop. Two kids rode by on their bikes and stared at them. A girl across the street sat reading on a porch swing. Grace looked down the street into town. Even the air felt lazy. What would it be like to live here? Would you feel more confined or freer? Could you find a best friend anywhere? A boyfriend?

  “Do you want to buy something to eat?” Frankie said. “We can go to that little park.”

  “I’m not really hungry,” Grace said, because she wasn’t. Her stomach was filled with flutters.

  “Let’s just walk around a little bit and head back. I don’t want to get on the wrong side of your dad.”

  They stood up. Once again, Frankie took her hand. “I like you, Grace,” he said. “I mean, I really like you.”

  A pickup truck pulled into the gas station, and its two doors slammed as a man and a woman got out. Then quiet descended again. Frankie deserved a response. What kind of response? “I watch for you every minute.” “I pretend you’re with me when you’re not.” “Ditto.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  They started to walk. Two figures moved into Grace’s view, far down Main Street where the cluster of stores stood. The smaller person was about half the size of the larger one, who loped ahead and returned. They shrank as they moved farther and farther away, until they must have turned a corner. The sight of Gunda, next to her mother, wasn’t as distressing as Grace’s first look at her. Was it the distance? Or didn’t Gunda have the same shock value once you had seen her up close?

  Grace recalled Gunda’s hand on Hilda’s head, groping for safety. She wondered how long it had been since she had touched Bernadette’s head. But that was a ridiculous thought. She was thirteen years old. You didn’t pat your mother’s head when you were thirteen.

  She turned and smiled at Frankie. He smiled back. Grace considered telling him about Hilda and Gunda. Instead she said, “Tell me about your dog.”

  15

  Grace heard Chuck yelling even before she and Frankie turned off the main road and onto the long driveway that led to the two cabins. The yelling stopped abruptly. Dad’s here, Grace reassured herself. Everything will run more smoothly.

  “Your dad seems a lot different from your mom,” Frankie said.

  Grace had always hoped that Bernadette appeared more normal than she really was to other people.

  “I know,” she said. “It really messed with my head when I was a kid.”

  “That they were different from each other?”

  “No, that Bernadette was different from other moms.”

  “You could see that?”

  “If the little kids were asleep or something, she let us do whatever we wanted so that she could do what she wanted—mostly nothing. Chuck and Polly and I were on our own. My best friend Margaret’s mother was really strict. So I knew the difference. Anyway, I had to watch the kids. A lot.”

  “Why didn’t Chuck have to?”

  “I think I stepped into it because it made me feel grownup when I was younger. Chuck wasn’t as good at it. He burned the food, that kind of thing.”

  Frankie didn’t respond.

  “Bernadette did the grocery shopping most of the time. And sometimes, when you would think she’d be mad, she wasn’t. Once Chuck put a couple of mice in our neighbors’ car and waited.”

  “What happened?”

  “The son had just gotten his driver’s license. He got in the car and pulled away from the curb before he saw the mice. Then he hit the gas instead of the brake. He wrecked the wheel.”

  “And your mom really didn’t get mad?”

  “Not so much. My dad was the one who took Chuck to the neighbors’ to settle up.”

  Beth came out of the cabin. “Daddy saw you,” she said, a smile on her pale face with the pointy chin. “He’s here now. He told us that he saw you.”

  “That’s right, Bethie. Are you happy that Dad is here?” When they all got older, it would be Beth, innocent and gentle, who would take care of Dad after Bernadette burned herself to death smoking in bed.

  “Come in and see Daddy,” Beth said.

  “Do you want to go out again?” Frankie asked Grace. “Soon?”

  “Sure. There’s a lot of road up here.”

  That wasn’t what she wanted to say. Her pores soaked up the sunshine. The warm wind made her ponytail dance just a little. All because of him. How could you tell someone that after one walk?

  “That’s for sure,” Frankie said, looking around as if surveying endless highways. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  He didn’t move. He hadn’t held her hand since they had turned into the driveway. But he still seemed to have some part of her.

  “Great,” said Grace.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  Inside the cabin, the only noise was the tinkling of ice in Bernadette’s cocktail. Dad looked up from the newspaper that lay open on the table.

  “Where is everybody?” Grace asked.

  “Pinky and Beth just went down to the beach with Polly and Chuck,” Dad said. “I’m going down there in a few minutes.”

&
nbsp; “How was your love walk, Gracie?” Bernadette said.

  Grace ignored the question, which felt like dirty dishwater on her. The kids’ voices drifted up from the beach.

  “Why did you marry her?” she wanted to ask Dad. “How could you have been so foolish?” But would she want to hear the answer? Besides, if Dad hadn’t married Bernadette, she, Grace wouldn’t exist. That was a truly horrible thought.

  “I’m going down to the beach, too,” Grace said.

  “I’ll go with you,” said Dad. He folded the newspaper and walked around the table to squeeze Bernadette’s shoulder.

  Grace turned and walked through the porch. Dad caught up with her before she reached the steps to the beach.

  “How are you doing?” he said.

  “I’m going to say it. I’ve never said it before. I don’t understand how you can stand Bernadette.” She started crying. If Dad tried to hug her, she would bolt. This wasn’t a hugging time.

  Dad didn’t say anything for a minute or so. “I’m not sure that I understand it myself. I fell for her. She had a lackadaisical way that was very appealing.” He paused. “She is, for better or for worse, my wife.”

  Grace resisted the urge to look at him.

  “You get the brunt of it, Gracie. I know that. I don’t know what else to do. I wouldn’t mind being the at-home parent, but someone has to go to work.”

  Grace remained silent.

  “I’m sorry, Grace.”

  Grace sat in the woods by herself instead of going down to the beach with Dad. It would feel good to hate him. But she couldn’t.

  16

  That night, Dad made hamburgers that were big enough to meet the edges of the buns he had brought. Polly peeled potatoes next to him.

  “I hope those are going to be fried,” Chuck said as he came in from a brief fishing trip with Frankie.

  “C’mon, Chuck,” replied Dad, lifting a knife out of the drawer. “You can chop. Otherwise we won’t have this meal ready until tomorrow morning.”

  “What about Grace?” Chuck asked, casting a frown at her as he walked slowly to the counter. “Why doesn’t she have to do anything?”