1985: Careless Whisper (Love in the 80s #6)

by Misty Provencher

  “I do believe everybody in the neighborhood, and three neighborhoods over, knew who the Strykers were before they were even out of diapers. Eugenia Riley, goodness, I hope she’s died before me…Eugenia, that old gossip, she nicknamed those boys The Highland Street Strykers, just to tiff their mother and spur that Mrs. Stryker to get hold of her hooligans. Never did work that I know of.”

  Gada covers her mouth with a tissue, emitting a crackly, laugh-cough. “Those boys were into everything and just imagine what I was thinking when, suddenly, they were at our house every day of the week that I would allow it. At first, I tried to shoo them away, but after a time, I saw that not only wasn’t it going to work, but that those boys needed some help. So, I decided to ask the Good Lord for help, because who else is there to ask that can really doing anything? But, do you know what He told me? He told me to make friends of those boys and, that way, they might just do less harm than good. So I did.

  “However, as you all moved into your teenage years, I realized the Good Lord may not have been the one sending the messages that day after all. Those boys were into more trouble than I could shake a stick at, but I began to notice that they only seemed to get into mischief when they weren’t at our house.

  “When you were off for piano lessons, Gracie, James would be hauled into the police station for throwing tomatoes at the Larson’s garage and Paul would get scooped up in the net for standing there and holding them while his brother did the dirty work. If you were playing volleyball at school, and I didn’t take those boys along to watch, then they’d be shoplifting from the dime store, or shaving Mrs. Kowalski’s cat, or some other foolishness.”

  Gada leans forward, looking hard at the lens. “If you’re watching this, boys, you know I liked you, but goodness, you scared an old lady more than you should have with your shenanigans.”

  Paul and James exchange a grimace.

  “But then, Gracie, you and James became an item.” Gada’s lips become heavy, her brow solemn. She scratches her chin. “That, I knew, was serious trouble. And trouble it was. James couldn’t follow you off to Columbia, and jealous as he was, he didn’t want you to go yourself, and chance losing you to someone with more money and prospects. I couldn’t blame him, but I wanted you to have the opportunities your mother never did.”

  Gada leans back in the chair with a forlorn sigh, looking out the bright front window that casts a dreary shadow now. James body radiates heat beside me, but I keep my eyes on the screen, embarrassed for how bluntly Gada is talking about who we were. And how right she was.

  “I know you remember the day I got the call from the police, telling me that my Charlene had died—the drugs finally got her. That was the day I decided that you absolutely would not follow in her footsteps. You would never be trapped like she was. So, when James wanted you to pass on your opportunity to attend Columbia, and none of your other friends wanted you to go either, I knew I had to step in.”

  She pauses to dig something out from under her middle finger nail with the tip of her thumbnail. Despite her gray curls and sagging wrinkles, Gada looks like a little girl.

  “I did some things I’m not proud of,” she continues. “There is a box of tapes in the kitchen, bottom cupboard across from the stove, and one or two of them are evidence of what I’m about to tell you. The other tapes…well, I’ve been looking, but I can’t find them. As you clean out the house, I’m sure they’ll show up somewheres.” She shrugs with a sigh that breaks my heart. Lisa reaches down and takes my hand, squeezing it in hers.

  “You know,” she gives her head a tiny shake, as if she’s shaking off the bad, so she can give us this next memory of the good. “You kids were so tight knit, I loved watching your friendship grow over the years. I loved it, until it threatened to ruin all of your chances, not even just yours, Gracie, but all of your chances at the futures I wanted for you. James needed to make something of himself, something he could be proud of, before he proposed and the two of you ended up living in those awful apartments across Main. Paul was following James right into a life of crime and those two needed to get straightened out. Evelyn had to figure out exactly who she was to herself and everyone else before anything else. And Lisa, well, Lisa needed to learn what she was worth,” Gada looks straight into the camera lens, leaning closer as she says, “and Lisa, if you’re listening, honey, you really need to avoid men altogether until you know. They’re just going to muck up the picture for you.”

  “Amen,” Lisa whispers and I squeeze her hand.

  “So,” Gada continues, “I did what no person really has the right to do. I fiddled with all of you. I used all those mix tapes you all made and I recorded some of your conversations myself, and I put the words together in such a way that they said what I needed them to say. It sounds heinous now,” she winces, “that I meant to split you kids apart. But I did it with the right intentions, I want you to know that. I meant to send each of you in your own, individual directions that I thought might benefit you more than staying together like a pack of hoodlums.

  “If you don’t know already, I put a tape in Evelyn’s mailbox that revealed her homosexuality.” Gada sniffles then, mirrored by Eve’s sniffle at the end of the couch. Paul shifts, laying a hand on her back and James rests his own hand on her knee.

  “Again, I’m sorry, Evelyn, but since Gracie had already left for Columbia, I thought this was the least damage. You needed to be who you were and you needed to let the world know it too. I figured there wouldn’t be much harm done, other than some hurt feelings, but that would be the end of it and maybe fuel Evelyn’s fire to be courageous in letting people know who she is. If I’m being truthful, Evelyn, I did know you would blame Gracie, but do you see how that helped Grace too? I hoped this would stop you from binding with the other kids in trying to entice Grace back.

  “But Evelyn, you were the least of the problem. It was when Grace told me, right after graduation, that she wasn’t going to pursue the acceptance to Columbia that I knew Lisa and James had the greatest hold on Grace’s future. Then, Lisa came needing help and told me that she was pregnant with Paul’s baby. She insisted that she had to abort it without her mother knowing and that’s when the idea came to me clearly, of how I could separate the three of you without anything more than some hurt feelings.

  “I decided to help Lisa. We secluded ourselves for those two weeks, telling everyone we were taking Lisa with us on a vacation to Florida, so Lisa could heal and deal with the trauma. I thought it was the right thing at the time.

  “After it was all said and done, it ripped out my soul, Gracie, but I told you that Lisa had confided in me and that the baby belonged to James. It was a horrific lie to tell, but I couldn’t have you stay and follow your mother’s path. I loved all of you, no matter how awful this all sounds.” Her voice drains to barely a whisper. “I hope you know that.”

  Gada wipes her nose with the Kleenex and her old, gray eyes wander out the window again. The sun shines on her wrinkled face.

  “James came looking for you, Grace, but you were already packed to leave the next morning. I kept him away for the night, telling him you were ill—”

  “I remember that,” James mumbles beside me.

  “And the next day, when I got home from the airport, I sat James down and told him about the night Paul brought you home drunk. I told him that you and his younger brother had conceived the baby we’d just had aborted.

  “As you can imagine, James was destroyed.” Gada sobs then, a few that rack her frail body and end in sputtering coughs buried in a tissue. “He was going to hunt Paul down and kill him, but I told him Paul never knew about the baby either. I believed James needed a wake up call and that afternoon, we talked about turning his life around. But, later that night, I heard he tried to run Paul over in the car and ended up in jail on assault charges.”

  “Unfortunately, even that worked out. Paul’s mother couldn’t take it all anymore and moved Paul out of the Highview house and in with his father—”<
br />
  “We think it was my father,” Paul adds as Keanu gurgles and reaches his fingers up into Paul’s mouth.

  “And the last one of you I spoke to was Lisa. I told her that you’d had a change of heart, Grace. That you decided to go to Columbia because you saw what Lisa was doing with her life and that staying here, you knew she would only drag you down with her. I laid it on thick, but I was hoping it would snap Lisa to attention too. Lisa,” Gada smirks at the camera, “you always did have your cap set on doing whatever it was you wanted to do and to hell with reason.”

  “I hated you,” Lisa whispers beside me. “Gada was right about me, but I can’t believe she lied to all of us like this.”

  “It ruined me inside that I hurt each of you, but over the years, you all came back to me and I saw that maybe what I’d done wasn’t so awful after all. Evelyn told her parents about her sexuality and what do you know? Those stubborn old religious buffs accepted her after all. I don’t think it was as warm a reception as if it’d been a wedding announcement to a man, but they accepted her.

  “Paul graduated high school—something none of us expected.” Gada gives her old-lady chuckle. “He said there were plans for college, but last we spoke, he’d gotten a job doing metal stamping and said he’d decided to become a tradesman. I think that’s perfectly respectable work and that he’d do well at it.

  “James bumped around for a while, which disappointed me, but he visited last year and had finally turned himself around. He was saving money to open his own mechanic shop in town.” Gada winks at the camera. “If you’re watching, James, I want you to know, that last brake job you did for me was aces in my book.” She flashes a thumbs up at the camera and James chuckles. Pressed together on the couch, I feel the soft, joyful rumble cross from his body to mine.

  “And Lisa,” Gada sighs. “Well, Lisa, you decided to have all those kids right away anyway and now we all know why. You’re a fabulous mother and I’m proud of you.”

  Lisa sniffles. “She came to the hospital and held each of my babies the day they were born.”

  “Then, there’s you, Grace. Everyone else was getting on with their lives and doing alright—except you.” Gada looks down at her hands in her lap. “Don’t misunderstand me here, you’ve done so many wonderful things—you graduated and you’ve been knocking them dead in the corporate world. You’ve got a beautiful apartment and you make plenty of money, but I noticed, Gracie, your light went out after you left home.

  “You lost your sparkle, Gracie. Suddenly, it was like you were living your life with a soldier’s mission—getting through one thing so you could go on and get through the next, sort of like your life was only about marching for the end. Your joy was gone, Grace, and you…you have always been my little girl who loved everything there was to love in life, even when it seemed bleakest. You were life to me.”

  Gada cries then, soft and controlled, and I cry too, but it’s loud and sniffly, with tears rolling down and dripping off my chin. James’s arm encircles my shoulders and Lisa leans in, her head on my shoulder as she cries too. Eve and Paul are trying to be men and hold it together at either end of the couch, but it is Gada who calms herself down way before any of us do.

  “So here’s the thing, Grace. James was your world, your joy. I realized it almost too late,” she shoots up her index finger, a smile quivering behind it, “but not too late. If you are watching this tape with The Band, and I hope to goodness that you are all here, I want you to know that this old lady has finally learned what is most important in life. It’s the people you love.”

  She smiles as her voice breaks on that last part, and the whole couch turns into a sobbing pile of bodies. We’re all crying and clinging to each other, except Keanu, who claps and gurgles and pulls at Paul’s hair.

  On the TV, Gada wipes her eyes and her nose and starts again.

  “It’s not too late, if you’re all still alive, and I want to give you back what I took from you. I like thinking that you’re all sitting right here, across from me on the couch.” She waves a hand toward the camera, which must’ve been propped up on the coffee table before us. “Please give each other a chance. I’ve never seen a group of friends as close knit as all of you, and while that was what frightened me most—that your influences would affect my Gracie in the wrong way—I never let myself see that the real effect the four of you had, on both of us, was a miraculous gift. When you were with us, in our house, creating messes and arguing and getting in and out of trouble, we were the happiest we ever were. Gracie and I, we needed you.

  “The influence you had made Grace happy. Now I know, after all these years, that James, you would have gone to the ends of the Earth to protect Gracie and to make her happy. And I think she might’ve been happier if she was living in a cardboard box with you, rather than a big townhouse, alone, in New York City.

  “Lisa, I know now what a loyal friend you are and that you would stand by Gracie’s side all her life, through thick and thin and no matter whether she was wrong or right. You’ve shown me the meaning of family I should’ve had, way back when.

  “Evelyn, I believe that you would keep Grace grounded and true to herself. You know who you are now and I think that Grace still has some searching to do, so maybe you’ll be a good sounding board. Better than that head-shrinker she’s been seeing.

  “And Paul, I think you should be in Grace’s life as a brother, but most of all, I hope you get back into James’s life as his brother. You two always relied on each other, and I know that’s hard for a Stryker to hear, but maybe it’d be easier to hear if I said it like this instead: you two were like metal reinforcements for one another. And brothers need their brothers, for goodness sakes. For the sake of an old lady, make amends, you two.”

  “So, that’s it,” Gada says with a puff, throwing her hands in the air. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to understand how precious The Band was to each of you, and to me. I did a horrible thing to all of you by tearing you apart and now that I’m old and see the effects of what I did, I wanted to take this one last opportunity to make it right by all of you. It’s humiliating to admit that I was the one who put those careless whispers in all your ears. It was awful of me to meddle and I have been too much of a coward to right it, until now. I hope you will all be much braver about getting back into each other’s life. It’s a lot to ask of you, but you’ve always been a scrappy bunch, and I think you can handle it.”

  Gada raises her hands again, the end of a fresh tissue dancing with the gesture.

  “I’ve got to go now, but promise me you’ll think it over. I love you all, and my final wish is that you all figure out how to love one another again. Give it your best shot for old Gada, okay?”

  Her eyes well up as she stands and shuffles toward the camera. We can only see the blurry buttons of her blouse as she says, “Love you all,” and clicks off the camera. The screen goes black and I feel four pairs of arms pull me into a huddle of an embrace that I haven’t felt in seven, long years.

  It is totally excellent.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Lisa says. “I want to kill her, but it’s Gada. I loved that old lady.”

  “And she loved Grace more,” Paul says.

  “Suck it up,” James says. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know how much Gada thought of you. Your own mother didn’t show up for your graduation, but Gada was up in those bleachers, clapping her heart out for you.”

  “I know, I know,” Paul says. “I just mean, it was her granddaughter and with all the stuff that happened with your mom, Grace, I kind of get why Gada did what she did. It’s weird, but—”

  “It is weird,” Eve echoes. “But splitting us up did do something for me that I wouldn’t have done by myself. I was never going to come out to my family, but this pushed me to do it. I would’ve never known they accept me.”

  “Didn’t help me any to be tagged the town slut,” Lisa says.

  “We all knew you were a slut way before Gada said anything to us
,” I tell her with a smile. Lisa punches my shoulder.

  “She did help,” Paul says. “Without James around getting into trouble, I stopped hanging out at night and studied. I graduated with over a D average.”

  James claps him on the back. “First Stryker to do it.”

  “Gada stood in as Grandma for Alabama on grandparent days. She always showed up with plates of those butter cookies. God, she made the best cookies, didn’t she?” Lisa says and we all murmur our agreement. She leans back to look at James. “Did it help you, James?”

  James sighs. “In some ways,” he says. And that’s all he says. That’s all Stryker right there—pleading the fifth.

  “You okay, Grace?” Paul asks.

  “No,” I say. The tears well up again and, this time, I just let them spill. “I’m angry with her, but I miss her worse than ever. I’m ashamed I didn’t come home every holiday to be with her, but I also feel like she just told me I threw my whole life away. She’s right—her lies were why I left, but now I have this whole other life in New York. I don’t fit here, but I have never fit there either. I don’t know what my life is supposed to look like now.”

  Their arms surround me again and I’m pulled into a tight knot, twisted in with Lisa’s hair and James’s scent, Eve’s lumberjack flannel and Paul’s baby-slimed fingers. Nobody says it will be okay, or offers advice on what to do next. None of them says anything—they just wrap themselves around me and hold tight. Baby Keanu whacks my head and giggles.

  I lay my head on James’s shoulder, knock Lisa’s knee with mine, smile at Eve, and squeeze Paul’s free arm…and I realize that, here, among these people, I was always someone better and this might still be the safest place on earth to figure out who I am again.