Grace Grows

by Shelle Sumners

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  I hated when Edward got all older brother on me.

  “Don’t give me that look,” he said. “I’m just making sure.”

  “I know.” I hugged him.

  Steven picked me up at work in a Zipcar. A convertible!

  He hadn’t seen my new look yet. I got in beside him and buckled up. He touched my hair. “Where did it all go?”

  “Locks of Love. Let someone else deal with all that. It won’t even hold a curl.”

  “If you’d told me you were going to do this, I think I’d have asked you not to. But it looks real pretty.”

  “Oh . . . really? I just wanted a change. I thought it would feel good for summer.”

  “Yeah, it looks great.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Grace, it’s not a big deal.”

  “Sometimes you have to just go ahead and make yourself do things you’re chicken about, you know?”

  He eased us into the flow of traffic on Sixth Avenue with a wry little smile on his face. “Tell me about it.”

  The place where we were staying was rustic and colonial, situated in the middle of a retired apple orchard. Exposed beams in the very old kitchen with hanging copper pots and bundles of herbs. A handmade quilt, on our bed.

  Breakfast on Saturday was pear pancakes with smoked bacon. After that we played golf. Me, for the first time. It was not good. Then we had an afternoon spa visit. It was good. I had a facial and a full-body massage, and went back to the inn jelly-kneed and very pliable.

  Steven took me to a fancy French restaurant for dinner, where we were seated in a lovely little private alcove. After my lobster salad but before my filet de boeuf, he took a small box out of his pocket. I set down my wineglass.

  “You know what this is.” Steven’s face was turning red. And his hands were shaking, trying to open the little case.

  “Do you want me to do it?” I offered, although my own hands had just gone numb.

  “Got it!” He showed me what was inside. It was stunning. Platinum, with not one, but three antique-cut diamonds.

  “Oh my goodness,” I said faintly. My heart was trying to stomp its way out of my chest.

  Steven got up from his chair and knelt beside me, just like in the movies. “Grace, I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

  “Okay.” Even though I had known this was coming, I still didn’t know what to do with it. My body was discombobulated, too. I felt like the top of my head was about to lift away from the rest of me and float up to the ceiling. Not having a paper bag handy, I cupped my hands, held them over my nose, and aggressively inhaled my own carbon dioxide.

  “What are you doing?”

  “A little light-headed. Just give me a minute.”

  The floaty feeling subsided. Steven handed me my glass of ice water and I gulped too much, too fast. Ouch.

  “Better now?”

  “Much,” I lied.

  He picked up my tingling hand and slid the ring onto my finger. It stopped on the second knuckle and refused to go farther. He pushed harder, but it was a stubborn ring.

  “I think my finger’s too fat,” I giggled, though I am not generally a giggler.

  “Nonsense. We’ll just have to have the ring resized. I’ll make an appointment for us at Fred Leighton as soon as we get back.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Otherwise, it’s so perfect.”

  He leaned forward and kissed me. Steven was always so steady and kind. I sighed and set my arms over his shoulders and smiled ruefully.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I said, definitively. “Very, very sure.”

  blue Fiji swimming head

  I didn’t see Ty for all of June. I think he went to Philly to play a few times and I was just so busy with work and spending time with my fiancé. But Ty called to remind me that July 13 was his birthday. Rather than commit to his East Village birthday party, which would be heinously drunken and loud, I talked him into letting me take him to dinner at a sidewalk café on Second Avenue. I made an 8:30 reservation but told him to be there at 7:45. I watched him amble down the street toward me at 8:14. I took him by the elbow and walked him away from the restaurant.

  “Hey, isn’t this the place?”

  “Yeah, I told the waiter we’re coming right back.”

  I situated him on the corner of Second and Thirty-fourth, slid a pair of Ray-Bans on him, and turned him westward. “Look.”

  “Oh, man! Awesome!” he said, squinting.

  The sun was setting on the horizon, bold and round and orange, in perfect alignment with the street. A lot of people were around us looking/not looking at it.

  “Manhattanhenge. It happens a couple times a year. Happy birthday!” “Yeah. Happy birthday to me,” he mused absently. I could see that there was a song starting to brew while his retinas were frying.

  “Stop looking at the sun now,” I said.

  “Okay.” He smiled happily at the big blue dot he was probably seeing instead of my face. We walked back to the café.

  We reclaimed our table and ordered. Then we looked at each other. It had been a while, five weeks at least.

  “Your hair’s longer than mine now,” I said.

  “Yeah, you look like Scout.”

  “Edward said Ramona the Pest.”

  He shyly slid a CD across the table to me. It had a charming black-and-white picture of him on the cover, in profile, laughing. He had the nicest nose.

  “My new demo. It has all your songs on it.”

  “My songs,” I laughed. “Please.”

  He smiled.

  I gave him his presents. A book: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slapstick, and a CD: Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside.

  He examined the book suspiciously. “It better be fucking hilarious.”

  “It is! Look, even the title is funny.”

  “Did they make it into a movie?”

  “Um . . . I think maybe they did?”

  “ ’Cause maybe we can watch it when I finish.”

  I smiled. “I’ll Google it.”

  He picked up the CD. “Hey, this was on your list!”

  “Yeah, I can’t wait for you to hear it.”

  Our food came and for a while we just ate and watched people go by. That was something I liked about doing things with Ty. He could talk, quite a lot. But companionable silence was easy, too.

  I figured I should let him know I was getting married. All my other friends knew. I was inexplicably nervous about telling him, but now seemed like a good, mellow time.

  “Hey, by the way,” I said. “I’m getting married.”

  He had been watching a red-haired woman swish down the street, but his eyes came back to me and his chewing slowed. He looked at my hand, resting on the table. At the big shiny piece of metal and mineral I was wearing. He drank some beer and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He looked at me, hard.

  “Well, congratulations,” he said rather loudly.

  “Um . . . thanks.”

  “Um . . . you’re welcome.”

  “Ty . . . aren’t you happy for me?”

  “No.” He was actually glaring at me now. So much for mellow.

  “Shit, Grace!” he said violently.

  “What is your problem?” I spoke sharply, but really I felt like crying. “Why can’t you just be nice?”

  He laughed in a mean way and stood up and tossed his napkin on his plate. “Shut the fuck up.”

  He walked away.

  “Happy birthday!” I yelled after him.

  Julia’s kitchen table was covered with Internet printouts and brochures. She handed me one of those telephone-directory-size bride’s magazines and asked me to look at the pages she’d flagged.

  The wedding gowns she liked were crisp, spare, ankle-length sheaths. They looked like big calla lilies. I flipped through a few mo
re pages. “Ooh.” I pointed at an A-line halter gown with a high, lacy ruffle around the neck.

  “Oh, no,” Julia said. “Too frilly. You don’t want to cut yourself off at the neck like that.”

  I flipped through some more pages and stopped at a breathtaking silk organza Empire gown with bare shoulders.

  Julia took a long look. “The thing is, you’re short, so you don’t want to wear anything too voluminous, skirt-wise. It will absolutely swallow you. You don’t want to disappear on your wedding day, do you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “That’s why I bookmarked those dresses that have a close profile, not too much fabric, and show some chest.”

  My inner storybook princess felt sad. She liked the gowns with big, flowing skirts.

  “But it’s your wedding, of course, and you have to pick something you like.” It was amazing how Julia’s words could be generous and still sound slightly grudging. “Have you two decided on a date?”

  “We were originally talking about December, but I think I’d rather wait until spring.”

  “Good, spring is better. It should give us plenty of time to get the details just right.” She held up a brochure. “What do you think of an outdoor wedding at this winery upstate?”

  “We had talked about getting married at that church where we volunteer.”

  “All right,” Julia said slowly. “A church wedding, with an elegant reception somewhere else. The Four Seasons, possibly, or look at this.” A magazine photo of a gorgeous room: tables, candles, flowering trees, mellow light. “These people rented this loft space and brought in everything. Those are dogwood branches!”

  “Ooh.” I took a closer look. I do like dogwood.

  “Of course, you have to pick your color scheme. And make a guest list. And decide on attendants. And what the men will wear. And the menu. And invitations. And have you thought about your honeymoon?”

  “Steven showed me a webpage for a resort on Fiji. The water there is really blue. And they have snorkeling and horseback riding and a library.”

  “A library? People on their honeymoon don’t need a library.”

  “I thought it was nice. And Steven said we could even get married there, if we want.”

  My mom crossed her arms. “Do you want me going with you to Fiji? Because I will be at your wedding. And what about Steven’s parents?”

  “He said they would be okay with not being there.”

  “Well, I’m sure they were at his first wedding.” She looked at me and quickly backpedaled. “I’m not saying they don’t care.”

  “Mom, can we save some of this for later?”

  “Well, of course, we’re not going to do it all today.”

  “Thank you.” I really did feel grateful. My head was swimming.

  A couple of weeks later Ty called me about his music-industry showcase at Joe’s Pub. He said lots of important people would be there, and it would be recorded. Could I please try to come? He sounded nervous.

  Then, same day, he called again. His lease was running out and he’d found a new roommate to move in with, a drummer who had done some work for him. But he’d just found out he couldn’t move in until August 3. Could he crash on our couch for a couple of nights?

  I had to check with Steven, I said. I looked at the refrigerator calendar. Turned out, he would be in Munich that week.

  Hmmm.

  What might that be like—just me and Ty, roomies? We could order Chinese and watch Lifetime. Maybe play a few rounds of Sorry. I’d go to bed and wake up being spooned. Or wake to the sound of giggling women in my living room. Or a Tupperware party, hosted by Hugh Hefner.

  I called him back. “Can you try one of your other musician friends?”

  “Dude, their places are disgusting.”

  “What about Dave, your manager?”

  “He lives way the fuck out on Long Island.”

  I asked him to try Peg and thought for sure that would be the solution. She was so soft where he was concerned.

  Turned out Peg had cousins from Kentucky visiting that week.

  “Well, what about Bogue and Allison?”

  “And listen to them hump all night?”

  “Wear earplugs!”

  “Grace, come on. I swear I won’t make a big mess. I’ll be invisible.”

  Yeah, right.

  I called Peg. She agreed to sleep over those two nights. It would be nice to have a break from her cousins, an elderly married couple who were visiting for two whole weeks. The first night, a Monday, she’d be with us at the showcase. The second night she’d come over after work.

  “You’ll have to sleep with me,” I said, “hope you don’t mind.”

  “As long as you shave your legs.”

  People were queuing up when Peg and I arrived at Joe’s Pub, but we were special. On the guest list. We joined Bogue and Allison at a table near the stage. This was a bigger deal than I had realized. I looked around at the other special people there.

  “Is that Billy Joel?” I asked Peg.

  “Yes, and that’s Alicia Keys.”

  “David Bowie and Iman are over there,” Allison said.

  I took a peek, confirmed the sighting, and shrank back behind Peg, though surely Mr. Bowie wouldn’t recognize Dan Barnum’s daughter, all grown up.

  “Where’s Ty?” I asked Bogue.

  He shrugged. “Last I saw, in the men’s room throwing up. I told him if he sucked tonight he could always go back to working at the funeral home and he told me to get the hell out of there.”

  My own stomach was beginning to hurt. What if he messed up? What if he embarrassed himself in front of all of these famous people? Would the band be able to cover for him if he made a mistake?

  They let the plebeians in, including the street team girls, all so aggressively sexy with their heels and cleavage and heavy makeup. They commandeered several tables back by the bar. The whole club quickly filled up.

  “I feel so nervous for Ty,” Peg whispered.

  “Me, too.”

  There was an opening act, a girl singer, but I barely remember her. Then Ty’s band came onstage, along with a stand-up comic everyone seemed to know. He introduced Tyler. “The buzz about this guy is pretty huge,” the comic said. “I’ve never heard him, I don’t like music. I’m going to try to get out of here before he starts playing. Tyler Wilkie!” Big whoops and applause.

  Ty came onstage looking a little sheepish and adorable in his wagon-wheel shirt and ripped jeans and scuffed boots. They put a spotlight on him and everyone hushed.

  He started playing, then stopped.

  My heart was in my throat.

  He quietly thanked everyone for being there. Then he started over again, with a song that I hadn’t heard before. You couldn’t tell he was nervous at all.

  I relaxed as he ran through his repertoire with even more creativity and spark than usual. He sank into it. He went into his zone. I wondered how it felt to him to look out and see those familiar faces, people he’d grown up listening to, now listening to him.

  I felt like I could cry, imagining how he might be feeling. Peg looked watery, too. It made me feel even closer to her, that we both cared for him so much.

  He moved to the piano and played the slow, sensual intro to something I knew, though I couldn’t quite identify it.

  “My friend Grace turned me on to this song,” he said.

  Then he started singing.

  It was “Feel It,” my absolute favorite song from that Kate Bush album, The Kick Inside. An extraordinarily sexy, lush, tender song about going home with someone after a party and, well, having a shag. I’d never, ever imagined a man singing it, in this quiet, deliciously bluesy way.

  I was beginning to feel awfully warm. I looked around the room. The women were leaning toward him. Even the men were paying close attention.

  At the last note, pin-drop silence. Then spontaneous combustion. He’d burned up every woman in the place, and a few men, too. We were all ready to go
home immediately and start feeling it.

  Before starting the next song, he took a moment to drink most of a beer and hold the bottle to his face. “Excuse me, I’m feeling a little flushed.”

  The street team girls screamed.

  He played for another half hour, but it was icing. I was pretty sure that, for whatever industry executives were there, the deal must be done by now.

  When he finished and they brought up the lights, he stepped off the stage and was swarmed by people getting up from their tables to congratulate him. We were going to have to wait awhile.

  I headed for the ladies’ room, feeling so happy about Ty’s performance. On the way, a woman tripped me. I recovered and turned around and she smiled and winked. “Sorry, Grace.”

  I had seen her at other gigs, but I didn’t know her name.

  I got back to the table and told Peg, Bogue, and Allison I was leaving.

  “Why?” Peg asked.

  “There’s a psycho fan here who has it in for me. She tripped me on the way to the restroom.”

  “Oh. Well, maybe it was an accident.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Well, you can’t go. You haven’t spoken to Ty yet.”

  I looked across the room. You couldn’t even see him, the crowd around him was so thick.

  “We’ll talk to him later.”

  “This is his big night!” Peg said. “We should at least make sure he knows we’re here.”

  Bogue and Allison had the good sense to leave, after a while. Peg and I stayed and watched the street team amazons slowly infiltrate the knot of people around Ty. There was no way I was going to try to compete with them for his attention; they were all a foot taller than me and probably packing heat. So we waited on the periphery for almost an hour before the place thinned out and I was able to make eye contact with him.

  He came directly to me and slung a heavy arm across my shoulders. He reeked of booze. I grimaced at Peg and fanned the fumes he was emitting away from my face.

  “Hey, I’m going home with you, right?” He was just barely holding on to all of his consonants.

  “That’s the rumor.”

  “Can we go now?”

  Thank God.

  We got a cab. He sat between Peg and me.

  “So I think maybe I got a major-label record deal tonight.”