“ ’Kay,” he said.
I was not allowed to help wash dishes. Jean gave us mugs of hot coffee and handed Ty a blanket and told us to get our coats and go outside and watch the moon rise.
We sat on a wicker love seat on the side porch. Ty tucked the blanket mostly around me.
“Don’t you want some?” I held up an edge.
“Nah, I run pretty hot.” He hadn’t even bothered to zip his brown bomber jacket.
The moon was big and full, cresting the skeletal tops of the trees.
“If the moon weren’t so bright you could see a lot of stars out here.”
“Oh, I would have liked to see that,” I said.
“Do you want to smoke a J? I can probably get one from my dad.”
“Erm, no. Thank you. You go ahead.”
“Getting stoned alone is boring.”
“Sorry.”
“Have you ever?”
“I tried it once and nothing happened.”
“Yeah, same here, the first time. You gotta try it again.”
I couldn’t quite say yes.
He must have felt encouraged by my silence. “Be right back,” he said. “Stay there.”
“Right here,” I said dryly.
He came back in two minutes with a Zippo, an ashtray, and a fatty. “My mom wanted me to tell you that they’re not potheads. They only smoke once in a while.”
“Okay.”
“Same with me,” he said. “It fucks up my voice.”
“That’s your business.”
“Just don’t judge me on it, okay?”
“Am I in any position to judge?”
“Good point,” he said, lighting up.
He sucked the smoke in deep and held it, squinting, passing the joint to me. I took a tentative little draw. He waved a hand at me, encouraging me to inhale more deeply. Gak, it burned my throat and lungs! I choked and emitted plumes of smoke.
He patted my back and handed me my cup of coffee. After I drank some he offered me the joint again. I waved it away.
“Come on, one more. Not so much this time.”
I inhaled lightly and handed it back. “That’s all I want.”
He took another drag and put the joint out in the ashtray. Then he leaned back and tugged on the edge of the blanket. “I’ll take some of this now.”
We settled in to moonwatch.
The moon was watching us back. She had a tender, cream-and-gray Lillian Gish face.
“My skin is vibrating,” I said, after a while.
“See? Second time’s a charm.”
“The moon is so sad,” I said.
“I know. She’s lonely.”
“She is a she, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is. Of course!”
“She needs a song. A moon song.”
“A moon song!” Ty agreed.
“I’m going to make one up,” I said.
“Okay.”
“Dear little moon girl. Way up in your moon world. Where are your ears? Why don’t you have any?”
The wicker sofa shook.
“Stop,” I said. “This is serious.”
“Although this man is laughing, moon lady, ears are very important. Can you even hear me?” I croaked plaintively through my singed vocal cords. “Do I need to sign?”
“Sign!” Ty echoed in a tiny little soprano Kate Bush-y voice.
“You live in the big dark sky and don’t ever get to play basketball.”
“Basketball!”
“If it will make you happy I’ll read you a book.”
“But not A Prayer for Owen Meany because it will make you cry,”
interjected my boy-choir backup singer.
“I feel a little light-headed,” I said.
“Let’s go for a walk.” Ty held out his hand and led me down the porch steps toward the trees.
“Can you feel my hand vibrating?” I asked.
“No. I think you’re just feeling that way inside.”
“I don’t want to get lost.”
“I know exactly where we’re going.”
“How far is it?”
“Just a ways. Stay a little behind me so you don’t catch a branch in the face.”
“At least it’s not all that dark.”
“Nah, it’s bright as day.”
“Are there . . . bears out here?”
“Do they shit in the woods?”
I pulled him to an abrupt halt. He laughed and tugged me back into motion. “Any bears we got out here would run from us. We’re good. Just keep hold of my hand.”
Like I was in a million years letting go.
“Your fingertips are so rough!” I said.
“You get calluses from guitar strings.”
“Ouch.”
He stopped. “What happened?”
“No, I mean, ouch, the calluses!”
He turned and marched on. “You scared me,” he grumbled.
“Sorry.”
We kept going and going. “Are we there yet?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re there. See that tree?”
It must have been huge once but now some of it lay on the ground and some stood ruined, a long-dead, blackened spear pointing at the sky.
“What happened?”
“Lightning strike. I saw it get hit from my bedroom window. I ran out here and watched it burn till the rain got so heavy it put the fire out.”
“You ran out here in an electrical storm?”
“Well, I was thirteen. And I told you, Rebecca got most of the brains.”
“You could have been killed! What did your parents say?”
“Didn’t hear me go out. I sure never told them, I might have gotten a whipping.”
“They beat you?”
“Only when I deserved it. Anyway, it was pretty spectacular, watching it burn.”
I would have to think about the burning tree later. I was having a problem with the whipping concept. They had seemed so kind, but they were monsters! How would I look them in the eyes now, knowing they had done that to him? I cradled his hand gently in both of mine and drew a ragged breath into my sore lungs. I hardly felt high at all anymore.
“What’s up?”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I wish they hadn’t done that to you.”
“What, the whipping? Shit, Grace. Didn’t your parents ever wallop you a time or two?”
“Never!”
He sighed. “They did it because they loved me. To knock some sense into me. Because I scared them and pissed them off. Believe me, I was all over the place.”
That, I believed.
“I guess it sounds strange to you, but that is just part of raising kids in my family.”
“What did they hit you with?”
He shrugged. “Belt. Yardstick. Extension cord. Fly swatter. Badmitten racket.”
“Minton,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Minton. Badminton, not mitten.”
“Well, a mitten wouldn’t have hurt as much. Anyway, they hit me with whatever was nearby. But only if they could catch me.”
“You ran?”
“Hell yeah! Till sometimes my mom was laughing too hard to try to get me anymore.”
These people were nuts.
He put an arm around me and shook me gently. “Come on, sing to the moon some more.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“If you don’t sing, I’m gonna.”
“Go ahead.”
He looked up at Lillian Gish, weeping over us, and started snapping his fingers.
“Fly me to the moon,” he sang, in a loud, dead-on imitation of Frank Sinatra, “and let me . . . play?” he looked at me. “Is it play among the stars?”
“How would I know?”
“Da da da da da da da on Jupiter and Mars.”
“Hey, those are the same words in that Willie Nelson song.”
“Do you mind? I’m trying to sing.”
“Sing ‘Moon River.’ ”
“Moooon RIV-er,” he obliged me instantly in the braying Sinatra voice.
“No.” I grabbed the unzipped edges of his jacket. “Really sing it.”
He held my cold wrists, smiling. “I don’t know the words.”
“Do you know the melody?”
“I think so.” He started humming. He knew it.
We couldn’t think of all the words but it didn’t matter.
He sang the three sweetest words in that song slowly, soulfully, in his real voice. My huckleberry friend. I absorbed them and they sharpened all other sensations—the cold, crisp air, the silvery trees. I gazed up over his shoulder at the sweet-faced moon. What had I ever done in my life to deserve this wondrous little moment?
Ty squeezed my wrists lightly. “Grace. What are the rest of the words?”
I reluctantly left the moon and looked at him. My mind was perfectly empty. I wanted it to stay that way. “I have no idea.”
“Okay. Let’s go, Zombie Girl. Are you hungry?”
“Ravenous!”
“Another good word for Gram! Come on.”
He led me to chocolate.
Barcalounging, bloat, and bouquets
Cheez Whiz. Yes, my mouth tasted like I had squirted it full of Cheez Whiz. It was possible that I had.
I mentally catalogued the feeding frenzy that followed our illicit drug use. I remembered eating (in roughly this order): half a giant Kit Kat, a ham and Swiss on rye, two kosher dills, an indeterminate number of Combos Nacho-Cheese-Filled Pretzels, and fourteen watermelon Jelly Bellies—each one carefully hand-sorted from all the other flavors by my drug supplier, who made sure that I did not accidentally eat a jalapeño.
I had excused myself to go to bed at around one a.m. and fallen asleep in my clothes, on top of the covers, propped up against the headboard. Trusting that gravity was my friend and would not let me die a vomitous Jimi Hendrix death.
I woke up queasy, flat on my back in the gray November morning light. All the pillows were on the floor. I sat up squinting and emitted a monstrous belch that made me feel like a new woman. I tiptoed to the door and peeked out into the hall. All still and quiet; maybe Jean and Nathan had gone to work. I grabbed my toothbrush and fresh clothes and crossed the hall to the upstairs bathroom.
I showered and pulled on jeans and a sweater and crept quietly down to the kitchen. Half a pot of still-warm coffee sat on the stove.
I ate a bowl of Rice Krispies, then munched on a banana while I snooped around the living room. It featured a gorgeous bay window and a fireplace with a carved mantel, but also a purple velour couch and a camel-colored Barcalounger. An old upright piano stood against one wall, and above it, a dead deer mounted on the wall. Well, just its head.
I went back into the kitchen and checked the time on the microwave. Nine o’clock. I listened at the basement door for sounds of life.
I went upstairs for my book and brought it down and stretched out on the Barcalounger. Read two pages and dozed off.
At about eleven, I crept down a few of the basement stairs to take a peek. Nothing to see but a bunch of bumps and lumps under the navy sleeping bag on the plaid couch. Oh, wait, there was a bit of foot visible.
“Ty!” I hissed. “Ty!”
His head popped up, squinting at me over the back of the couch. Einstein hair. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! Are you going to get up? It’s eleven.”
“Oh . . . okay . . .” He lay down and went back to sleep.
“Ty!”
He stood up and weebled around in his boxer briefs, searching the floor for something. He must have been having a rather stimulating dream. I scrambled up the stairs and back to the Barcalounger and picked up my book.
Minutes later he staggered into the doorway wearing his jeans and henley from yesterday. Barefoot.
“Please go find a mirror,” I said. “You have to get a look at your hair.”
He smashed it down with both hands. “I’m going to take a shower.”
He was back in thirty minutes, clean-shaven, hair damp and much smaller, wearing a T-shirt that said suits suck. He came and stood beside the Barcalounger. “Comfy?”
“Very.”
“Did you have breakfast?”
I nodded.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, are you?”
“Yeah.”
I pointed to the deer head. “Is that the deer you shot?”
He studied it. “It is.”
“Did you . . . feel bad about it?”
“No, I felt great. There were a lot of trees between me and him. I was with my dad and a bunch of other grown men and it was a big deal, me making that shot. But I guess I’m getting a twinge about it now, with you looking at me like that.”
“Sorry. It’s just, well, I guess I just can’t imagine it.”
He nodded and shrugged and wandered out of the room. He came back minutes later with a travel mug of coffee in one hand and our jackets in the other. “Let’s go.”
We listened to Car Talk on NPR for the twenty minutes it took to get to town. It felt good to be quiet; I was still processing the night before. How on earth had I ended up with him here in the Pennsylvania hinterlands, slightly asthmatic from inhaling marijuana, bloated from the ensuing salt and sugar orgy, with my expensive engagement ring hidden in a sock in my suitcase?
The Wilkies’ flower shop, Best Buds, was in a strip mall on a main drag, nestled between a realtor and a karate studio. Bells on the door rang when we stepped inside.
In the front of the store there were gifts for sale: porcelain boxes and crystal wind chimes and other pretty little tchotchkes. Silk plants that looked close to real lined the front window, and a refrigerator housed fresh arrangements of orange, brown, and gold flowers that would look festive on a Thanksgiving table.
We walked behind the counter and into a back room that had plywood and vinyl worktables covered with floristry supplies and tools. A football game was playing on a small TV.
“Good morning!” Jean said. She was sweeping up bits of stems and greenery on the floor. She set the broom in a corner and put an arm around my shoulders. “Did you sleep all right?”
“Yes, thank you. I’m sorry about the mess we left in the kitchen.”
“If you made a mess, I never saw it.”
Ty must have cleaned up.
“Hey, Grace, c’mere.”
“He’s in there.” Jean pointed at a big metal door on one wall, slightly ajar.
I peeked inside. It was a walk-in refrigerator, with flowers of all colors in metal buckets covering the floor and shelves.
“Come in,” Ty said.
It was so cold. I stood beside him and wrapped my arms around my shoulders and closed my eyes, breathing in the clean, bracing scent of carnations.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Yeah?” her voice was muffled.
“What color are the tablecloths?”
“Pink!”
“What do you think of these?” He tapped a bucket of flowers with the blunt toe of his boot. They were fuchsia-colored, with lots of frilly petals going all up the long stem.
“They’re beautiful. I can’t think of what they’re called.”
“Gladiola.”
“Oh, right!” The plural of which would be gladioli, of course, but I kept that to myself.
He handed me a bucket to carry—yellow gladioli—and he brought out the fuchsia and a bucket of pale lavender-pink ones, as well. We set the buckets next to one of the worktables, and from somewhere he produced a tall, clear-glass vase and filled it halfway with water at a big, deep sink.
“We need about ten of each color,” he said. I helped pick out the best-looking stems and watched him trim them with scissors and settle them one by one in the vase. He finished by tucking in long, spiky pieces of grass.
Jean came over for a look. “Well, this is gorgeous. Let’s put it on the front table for people to see when they come in. Gram is gonna love it.”
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The bells on the door jingled. “Excuse me,” Jean said, and went up front.
Ty adjusted a gladiola.
“You are full of surprises, aren’t you?” I said.
“Just one after another. What are you wearing tonight?”
“A dress.”
“What color?”
“Blue.”
We carried the gladiola buckets back into the refrigerator and while we were in there he pointed to a bucket of small, pale yellow roses and asked, “Do you like those?”
“They’re beautiful.”
He pulled from the bucket a rose bud and an open rose and, from another bucket, a small cluster of breathtakingly blue hydrangea.
I followed him back to the worktable. “Are you making something for me?”
He set down the flowers and wrapped a length of elastic around my wrist and cut it. “Yep.”
I laughed. “I feel like I’m going to the prom!”
“Did you?”
“Go to the prom? Yes. Did you?”
“I only went to a dance once, when I was fifteen.”
“Who was your date?”
He pushed green wire through the base of the rose bud. “My cousin Elaine.”
“Your cousin?”
“My mom arranged it. Only Bogue knew that my cousin drove over from her college in New Jersey. All my other friends were shocked that I could get a beautiful older girl to go out with me.”
“Why didn’t you ask a girl from school?”
“I did. She said no.”
“She must have been an idiot.”
Ty looked at me and smiled. “Why, thank you, Grace.” He was wrapping green tape around the wires he’d inserted in the roses.
“What was it, did she have a boyfriend?”
“No. She wasn’t into me. I stuttered. Especially around girls. It took me a whole red-faced minute to get out the words ‘would you go to the prom with me.’ ”
I stared at him. “I’ve never heard you stutter.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t happen much anymore. Only if I’m tired or upset, and hardly even then.” He was doing something now with the elastic band and the hydrangeas.
“How did you stop?”
“I started singing, instead of talking.”
“You mean, when you were speaking to people?”
“Yeah, sometimes. They were gonna laugh at me anyway. And then I just did it in my mind, imagined singing what I was saying.” He shrugged. “For some reason, it worked. Hold out your hand.”
Grace Grows Page 13
