Grace

by T. Greenwood

  Sometimes Kurt could hardly believe this was the house he had grown up in. It was like the cancer that had slowly rotted out his mother’s belly. At first, you couldn’t tell from the outside what was happening on the inside, but in the last year or so, the rot and decay and stink had started to spill out onto the front porch, the yard, the driveway, and beyond. And now that the snow had melted, he realized just how much crap there was outside. As he walked up the cracked walkway to the porch, he knew he was going to have to say something to Pop about the mess before the neighbors did.

  Kurt had tried numerous times to help his dad clean up, but Pop had only gotten upset. Taken it personally. He was a collector, he said. Why couldn’t Kurt just respect that and leave his shit alone? Kurt, of all people, should understand the value in other people’s junk. Hadn’t the salvage yard put food on his table his whole life? Hadn’t it put this very roof over his head? The problem was Jude Kennedy was a collector, but he didn’t collect antiques or snow globes or even those little spoons from all over the world. He collected everything. The bloody Styrofoam trays that cradled his ground beef, the plastic rings that embraced his beer, the junk mail that filled his mailbox. Advertisements for oil changes and grocery store fliers were as valuable to him as his dead wife’s china and his own Purple Heart. The house had always been full, but when Kurt’s mother was alive at least it was clean. Now it was filthy. There was one path that you could walk through, which led from the front door to the La-Z-Boy where his father spent most of his days and all of his nights and then on into the crowded kitchen and, finally, into the bathroom. Every time Kurt visited it seemed to get just a little bit worse; the pathway just a little bit narrower. He wanted to help him, to just empty the place out, give him a fresh start, but at this point he wasn’t even sure where to begin.

  Most Fridays, he’d sit with his father in a spot cleared off on the old couch and watch a basketball game or baseball game or just old episodes of Law & Order. Pop would draw hard and long on one Kool after another. The air was minty and thick; there was a layer of ash on everything. Kurt would catch him up with what was happening down at work as well as stuff happening in town. He brought drawings that Gracy had made, with GRANDPA scrawled across them in waxy crayon. He was usually there at least a couple of hours. But tonight, he’d promised Elsbeth he’d be home by suppertime, so he’d have to make it quick.

  “Hey, Dad!” Kurt said by way of warning as he slowly cracked the unlocked door. He knew his father sometimes left the door to the bathroom open, and he didn’t want to embarrass him by walking in while he was struggling to use the contraption they’d gotten at the medical supply store after the stroke.

  “C’min.” His father’s voice crackled, scratchy and deep like the crush of fallen leaves, and Kurt pushed the door open as far as he could. Something was blocking its full arc. The light was dim inside, but it looked like a ratty footstool.

  Jude wasn’t in the bathroom but in the recliner, already wearing his pajamas. He didn’t usually lounge around in his nightclothes; despite the state of his home, he still showered every day, used a straight razor to shave, and wore clean, pressed Dickies and collared shirts. This attention to hygiene and grooming was a relief to Kurt.

  “You okay, Dad?” Kurt asked, making his way through the messy living room to the kitchen with the bag of groceries.

  “What’s that?” he asked. Growing up, Kurt used to be able to tell when his father had been drinking from the soft slur that signaled three or four or more cocktails. But ever since the stroke, Pop always sounded drunk. The only way Kurt could monitor his drinking now was by measuring how much was left in the bottle when he got there on Friday nights.

  Kurt returned to the living room after shoving the perishables in the fridge and tried not to look at the mess on the counter and in the sink. Last week’s bottle had about a finger left in it. “I said, Are you okay?”

  “Why don’t you ask that bitch from across the road?” he said.

  “Theresa?” Kurt asked, sitting down on the couch next to a stack of newspapers and his father’s breakfast plate slick with congealed eggs and bacon grease. Theresa Bouchard had been in Kurt’s class in high school. They’d even gone out once or twice, but after graduation, he’d never called her again. Now she was a single mom, raising five boys, or maybe it was six. The rumor was every single one of them had a different father, though they all looked the same to Kurt. Dirty little buggers with hair in their eyes and runny noses.

  Pop’s eyes were glassy, and there was a sweating tumbler between his legs.

  “What’d she say?” Kurt asked.

  “Said she’s gonna call the county, get the house condemned.”

  “What?” Kurt asked. He felt sucker punched. “For what?” Though he knew exactly for what.

  Pop shrugged. “Complainin’ about rats and raccoons. One of her snot-nosed kids come over and says he got bit.” He reached for a new cigarette and lit it with the tip of the one still burning between his lips. “When I was a kid, that was called trespassin’. Those little shits are always comin’ around, stealin’ stuff. They’re lucky I don’t shoot ’em.”

  Kurt lifted his chin and rubbed his hand across his head. “Well, let’s get it cleaned up, then. If it’s just the trash out front, I can make a couple trips to the dump this weekend. Let me put some of those boxes on the porch into the garage. What else?”

  “Be a good kid and get me a fresh drink?” his father said then, holding out his cup to him like a beggar, shaking it so the remaining ice cubes tinkled inside. His eyes looked as watery and viscous as the whiskey.

  Kurt went to the kitchen and made a weak cocktail, loading it up with ice. He turned on the faucet to water it down, but the pipes only clanged and hissed. Jesus. “Pop, did your water get shut off?” Kurt was seething. His father always seemed to wait until the last possible moment to let him know there was a problem.

  Pop stared at the television.

  Kurt rubbed his temples. “Jesus, Dad. Why didn’t you tell me? We can pay your water bill. How much do you owe?” Kurt had no idea how he was even going to pay his own water bill this month.

  “Bah,” Jude said.

  “Dad, this is serious. If Theresa calls the county and they find out you don’t have running water, you’ll lose your house. What will you do then?” Kurt asked, though he knew exactly what he would do then. He’d have to move in with him and Elsbeth. Christ. He knew he was going to have to call Billy and ask him to send a check.

  “Listen, Dad,” he said. “I’m gonna bring Trevor over this weekend and we’ll work on the yard. And I’ll figure out what to do about the water. But you’ve got to let me help. You can’t get all sentimental about stuff. It’s time to hoe out. I’ll call Bill.”

  “Don’t you even think about calling that little prick,” his father grumbled, slamming the cocktail down on the end table.

  “He’s your son,” Kurt said.

  “He’s no son of mine.”

  On his way home, Kurt called Billy on his cell, knowing he wouldn’t pick up. It was Friday night. Billy might be out after work. Kurt tried to imagine him sitting down in some dark bar, loosening his tie, ordering a drink. He tried to picture the contents of his briefcase as he rested it against the bar stool, but Kurt had no idea what he carried inside, what a lawyer’s trappings were. Billy was five hundred miles away, but it felt farther than that. It felt like a whole lifetime between here and there. Between them.

  “I need to borrow some money,” he said into the silence. “Not a lot. Call me back.”

  By the time he pulled into the driveway at home, the nerves in his legs were raw and thrumming.

  Trevor sat down on the couch next to Gracy. She was watching SpongeBob, hugging a stuffed bunny he hadn’t seen before. She put her little feet up on his lap without taking her eyes off the TV. There were holes in the toes of her tights, and her big toes were both sticking out. He didn’t know how she could stand it. He tickled her toes, and she wr
iggled and giggled.

  “Stop it!” she squealed.

  “Color with me?” she asked. There was a TV tray in front of her, paper and crayons all over it.

  Trevor’s mother was busy making dinner in the kitchen: The smells hit him like a punch in the gut. Ever since the fight the other day, he’d been skipping lunch, avoiding the cafeteria completely, eating vending-machine peanut butter crackers in the art room during lunch period. Now his head felt swimmy with hunger, his stomach knotted tight.

  “Dinner!” she called.

  The table looked fancy, with candles and the good place mats she usually only put out for Thanksgiving and Christmas. She dished fish sticks and green beans onto his and Gracy’s plates and big juicy pork chops onto hers and his dad’s. The smell of it all made his mouth fill up with saliva. It was all he could do to keep from shoveling it in with his fists.

  His dad sat down and scowled. “What’s all this for?” he asked.

  His mother shrugged, smiling and pouring some wine into two tumblers. “You’ve been working so hard lately, we both have, I just thought it would be nice for us to have a nice family dinner.”

  She smelled like flowers, and her hair was still wet. When Trevor got home from school, she’d asked him to watch Gracy while she took a bath. She was in there a long time, and when she came out she smelled sweet, the steam coming off her like hot roses.

  “How was your day?” she asked, and her voice sounded funny. Too high, like a cartoon version of herself.

  His dad just nodded, and his mother looked at him hard, like she wanted something. Like he was supposed to be able to read her mind. She did that to Trevor too. But his dad didn’t say anything, he just started to saw at his pork chop.

  His mother took a deep breath, like she was filling herself with air, and he wondered, for a moment, if she might just float away. He imagined her lifting off the ground, like a ghost, slipping out like shower steam through a crack in the front door.

  Gracy was trying to explain some sort of project with lima beans they were doing in her kindergarten class. Trevor remembered doing that in kindergarten too, the beans wrapped in wet paper towels, their sprouts curling like tapeworms inside their plastic bags. It was supposed to teach them something about life cycles.

  “And mine was the first one to sprout. The first one!” Gracy said, grinning as she speared a fish stick with her fork. “Mrs. Nelson says I have the best handwriting in the whole class. Do you know how to spell difficulty? It’s hard. D-I-F-F-I-C-U-L-T-Y. That’s funny! It’s difficult to spell difficult.”

  Trevor’s father hadn’t spoken a dozen words to him since the fight at school. And Trevor was afraid to look him in the eye, so he concentrated on cleaning his plate. When he was finished, he quietly asked for more.

  “Help yourself, honey,” his mom said.

  He scooped another pile of green beans, like slimy pick-up sticks, onto his plate, and took the last fish stick from the greasy cookie sheet.

  “I need you to come to Pop’s house with me this weekend,” his dad said, without looking up from his own plate.

  Trevor felt sick to his stomach, but it wouldn’t do him any good to argue. He hated going to Pop’s house. He’d have stacked a thousand tires at the yard if it meant not having to go to Pop’s. If they were looking to punish him, this was how to do it.

  “What for?” his mother asked. Her voice was back to normal now, and her face looked like a fist. “I thought we could go to the outlets in North Conway this weekend. Gracy’s grown out of all her summer clothes. Plus, I wanted to pick up some annuals at the nursery on the way back.”

  His dad looked up at her, but kept chewing. It was a good long time before he finally swallowed, like he was chewing on the words he might say. “Maybe we should hold off until the good weather sticks. Last year we got a frost in the middle of May. Ruined all those flowers you planted.”

  Sometimes, when they did this, Trevor could hear the warble and hiss of all the words that weren’t being said. Of all the ones stuck inside. They were like angry whispers, squashed down. Suffocated. It made his throat feel tight. Made him feel like he couldn’t breathe.

  “What does Jude need that can’t wait until next weekend?” she said, and set her fork and knife down. Trevor knew this meant she wouldn’t eat any more until she got her way. And as much as he would love to ask for the half a pork chop, as likely as it was to wind up in the trash, he knew he shouldn’t even think about it.

  “Theresa Bouchard’s been making some noise. He needs me to take some junk to the dump.”

  “Somebody oughtta take that whole shit box to the dump,” she said softly, the word like a snake slithering out of its hiding place in the grass, and then there it was. Out in the wide open.

  “Mumma, you cussed,” Gracy said, her mouth open wide, half-chewed green beans inside.

  “El,” his dad said sternly.

  His mother shook her head like she was just waking up from a dream. She reached for Gracy’s hand. “I’m sorry, honey. Mommy shouldn’t use bad words.” She smiled and looked down at her own plate, nodding. “Okay. It’s fine. We’ll go another weekend.”

  And just like that, there was silence again. Only Trevor knew that the unspoken words were being choked, asphyxiated, that all those unsaid things were slowly dying.

  Crystal lay in the bathtub in the bathroom she shared with her little sister, Angie, and watched as milk began to leak from her nipples, floating across the water like liquid clouds. Her breasts were hot, buzzing, and so large they hardly seemed to belong to her anymore. Her stomach looked different now too, like a partially deflated balloon.

  At the hospital, after they took the baby away, the doctor had offered to give her medicine to help dry her milk up, but she’d declined. She told him she couldn’t swallow pills and then almost laughed because that’s how this happened in the first place. But now as she rose out of the water into the misty air, her boobs felt like bowling balls, heavy and aching, pulling on every muscle in her shoulders and back. She hesitated and then tentatively pinched one of her nipples, watching as three distinct, almost violent streams of milk squirted out, like a mini showerhead. She gasped and pulled her hand away, but it kept on spraying. The doctor had warned her not to do this, not to “stimulate” her nipples; if she just left them alone, the milk would dry up on its own and everything would go back to normal.

  Normal. God, she couldn’t remember what normal was anymore. Was normal back when the biggest worries she had were writing her college essay, what to wear to school in the morning, who would take her to the prom? Was normal back when she had only daydreamed about Ty, her best friend Ty—all that awful wishing, wanting, waiting? Or maybe normal was later, when Ty finally loved her back and they walked down the halls at school, his arm slung over her shoulder—the taste of Big Red gum in his mouth when he kissed her. When her whole world felt anything but normal. What she did know was this: There was no going back to that normal. Not now.

  Her work shirt was still on the bathroom floor where she’d left it. The wet circles on the chest were dry now, crusty and dark. She’d need to toss it in the laundry before her next shift. She didn’t want her mother to see it either; she didn’t want to see the red shame on her mother’s flushed face.

  She’d gotten the job at Walgreens to save money for college. Her parents said they would cover her tuition, but she’d need to pay for her room and board. She kept the job after she got pregnant, because for a while she thought she might keep the baby. She’d gotten the job so she could support herself. Support both of them. But later, after everything fell apart, she kept the job because it was the only thing she had anymore that she could count on. She couldn’t count on Ty; that was for sure. She couldn’t count on her best girlfriend, Lena. And she couldn’t count on her parents, even though they insisted she always could. That was only true now that she’d given the baby up; if she’d kept her, she wasn’t sure she’d even have been able to count on a roof over her he
ad.

  The people at work didn’t judge her the way the kids at school did, the way her parents did. They didn’t care that she was pregnant. They didn’t care that normally she’d be training for the state track meet, or that she’d been third in her class until all this happened. They didn’t even know that she was supposed to go off to UVM in the fall, nor would they care that she was starting to think she might not even go to college anymore. They didn’t care about her old dreams or who she was before all this; as long as she showed up on time and her register balanced out at the end of her shift, she was golden.

  Crystal liked the way Walgreens smelled: like lemons floating in bleach. She liked how organized it was and that you could pretty much get everything in the world you’d need to live on here, except maybe fresh fruits and vegetables. She liked the electronic doors, the air-conditioning, and the white linoleum floors. She liked that you could go from brunette to blond with stuff from one aisle and then find everything you’d need to kill yourself in another. There was power here. There was possibility.

  She had known today was probably going to be a little weird. Last week she’d been pregnant, and now she wasn’t anymore. Just like that. They all knew she wasn’t going to keep the baby. That wouldn’t be a surprise, but still. She knew it was bound to be awkward. She hadn’t even been back to school yet. That would take her a while longer, she figured.

  Thank God, Howard wasn’t there. Howard was the day manager on the weekends when she usually worked. Howard had a crush on her, and once, in Feminine Hygiene, he muttered something about helping her raise the baby. She’d acted like she didn’t hear him and rushed back to the counter, pretending she had a customer. Today when she’d walked through the doors, it was Deena who was up on a stepladder replacing one of the fluorescent bulbs. “Hi,” Deena had said, like everything was normal. Deena was no-nonsense. She wouldn’t have cared if Crystal had had a litter of puppies right before her shift; there was work that needed to be done. “Someone just dropped a twelve-pack of MGD in Beverages,” she said. “Mop’s already out there.” And then, stepping down off the ladder, she scowled. “You okay to mop?” And Crystal nodded.