Grace

by T. Greenwood

  He nodded.

  “Well, I could use some help sorting through these slides,” she said. “Think you might be able to help?”

  He sat at the long, scarred wooden table near the front of the room where Mrs. D.’s desk was and peered at the slides using the light box she’d gotten out of the storage closet for him. Mrs. D. needed to locate a good selection representing the early history of photography. She’d let him borrow some books, and he’d read them quickly, absorbing everything, touching the old photos with his fingers. He recognized the names, the photos, as he flipped through the slides. Daguerre. Talbot. Rinehart.

  “Where’s your lunch, Trevor?” she asked.

  Trevor shrugged.

  “Can I get you something from the cafeteria?” she asked, peering over his shoulder at a photograph of a Victorian wedding. The bride scowled miserably next to her husband in his top hat.

  Trevor shrugged again. He’d already spent half of his lunch money on a bag of chips in the vending machine. But before he could say No thanks, his stomach growled loudly, betraying him, answering her question.

  “Well then,” she said as though she were speaking to his stomach. “I’ll be right back.” And then she shuffled to her desk, where she grabbed her big patchwork bag.

  A few minutes later, she came back carrying a tray with a cheeseburger and fries and two chocolate milks. She waddled over to where he was working and set the tray down. Then she went to her desk and pulled out her own lunch bag from a drawer.

  “Thanks,” he said, feeling guilty. He’d assumed she was getting herself lunch too. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  She brushed the air with her hand as if she were swatting a mosquito away. “Phooey.”

  Trevor unwrapped the burger and took a huge bite. He was starving, and it tasted so good. He’d been trying to figure out a way to pack a lunch, but his mother was always puttering around the kitchen in the morning, making his father’s and Gracy’s lunches, fixing breakfast. He had made such a case about wanting hot lunch at the beginning of the year that he wasn’t sure how to tell her he’d changed his mind. But at the same time, he knew that if he was able to avoid the cafeteria, he was able to avoid Ethan and Mike for most of the day, except for during recess and math. He needed to figure out a way to pack himself a sandwich or something.

  “You know you can’t hide in here forever,” Mrs. D. said, carefully unwrapping her own sandwich from its wax-paper envelope.

  “I’m not hiding,” he said, feeling defensive, thinking of Gracy playing hide-and-seek, squeezing her eyes shut and counting as high as she could while he hid from her.

  “Can I tell you something?” she said, setting down her sandwich and wiping daintily at the corners of her mouth with her napkin, as if she were one of those Victorian ladies in the photo.

  Trevor nodded.

  “My brother had the same sort of, how shall we say, difficulties you have in school.”

  Trevor thought of Gracy. D-I-F-F-I-C-U-L-T-Y.

  “He was a lot like you, actually,” she said, and her voice sounded misty. Like fog on water. Like somebody trying to explain a dream.

  Trevor looked up from the slide and cocked his head. No one had ever told him he was like anyone else. As far as he was concerned, there wasn’t anybody out there who was like him.

  “And because he was different, because he preferred to paint and draw and make music to roughhousing or playing sports, he had a terrible time fitting in. Children can be so unkind. He came home crying nearly every afternoon.”

  This made Trevor’s ears feel hot. He didn’t want her to think he was some sort of crybaby.

  “But then one day,” she continued, “he grew up and he moved away, and he made friends who appreciated him and all those qualities that nobody before had ever valued. He found someone who not only accepted him but loved him.”

  His ears still burning, Trevor felt squirmy inside. Embarrassed. Something about Mrs. D. saying the word loved, he guessed. This whole conversation was making him uncomfortable.

  “What I’m trying to say, is that this world you live in ...” she said, gesturing around the darkened room, “might feel unkind, but the world is bigger than this. It won’t be like this forever. If you can just survive this, someday I promise you will be appreciated. And happy. And loved.”

  Trevor nodded and peered down at his giant hands; they were trembling.

  “It’s like this,” she said, gesturing to the slide he picked up. She held it up in her hand. “What do you see?”

  “I can’t see anything,” he said.

  “What about now?” she asked as she laid the slide on the light box, illuminating the photograph.

  “A castle?”

  “A cathedral. It’s Notre Dame in Paris. And it is magnificent. But without the light there is nothing. It simply needs the right light behind it.”

  After math, which passed quickly and, thankfully, without incident, Trevor felt his spirits lifted. His whole body buzzed and hummed; his footsteps clicked across the linoleum like slides slipping into a projector. He found himself smiling despite himself. There was only one period left, science, and then he could go home. He wanted to go to the woods with his camera, take some pictures of the river, the new green tops of the trees. He thought about the church that looked like a castle. A cathedral in the light. He pulled his camera from his backpack and peered down the long hallway through his viewfinder.

  “Hey, it’s the Abdominal Snowman,” Ethan Sweeney said, stepping in front of Trevor, his face filling the frame. He’d gotten his hair cut, and it stuck up from his scalp in sharp red spikes. His freckles looked like spaghetti sauce splatters on a white stove top.

  “It’s Abominable,” Trevor said, quickly shoving his camera back in his bag. What an idiot.

  “That’s what I said, asshole.” Ethan’s already squinty eyes closed into slits like a snake. Then Ethan put his face close enough to his that Trevor could smell what he’d had for lunch. “Stupid faggot asshole.”

  And Trevor could feel it happening. Taste the metal filling his mouth, practically hear the clink clink clink of the bones in his hands as they also curled into fists. But just as he pulled his arm back, Mr. Douglas was standing between them, shoving both of their chests with his meaty hands, acting as a wall between them, looking back and forth from him to Ethan like the referee in a boxing match. “Do we have a problem here, fellas?”

  He wasn’t sure why Ethan and Mike were always pushing his buttons. If he tried, he could level them both. Old habits die like a sonuvabitch, Pop would say; they’d both been giving him a hard time since second grade. They probably figured he was still too afraid to really fight back. He used to just cry when they started in on him. Run away.

  After the final bell rang, Mrs. Cross called Trevor over in the hallway. “How are we doing, Trevor?” she asked. He hated how she spoke in the plural, as if saying “we” made them on the same team. “I hear we had another run-in with Mr. Sweeney this afternoon?”

  Her perfume was making him light-headed. He stared at the floor, at her toes poking out of her high-heeled shoes. At a wad of green gum stuck to the floor.

  “Do you think it might be a good idea to have a little sit-down to talk about whatever it is that’s going on between you two? Maybe if we can get some communication going between you boys, we can get to the root of this.” Mrs. Cross looked awfully proud of herself, as though she’d just figured out a way to bring peace to the Middle East, though Trevor thought that might be more likely than getting Ethan Sweeney to stop bothering him.

  Mrs. Cross put her hand across his shoulder as if to steer him down the hall, but at her touch his shoulder jumped, jerking her hand away. He caught his breath as her eyes widened; she looked at him in disbelief.

  “I didn’t even do anything!” Trevor said, feeling bile rising in his throat, and then he was running; he could hear his sneakers squeaking across the linoleum, feel his hair blowing away from his face, see the tiles mo
ving beneath his feet. He knew if he were to look back now, Mrs. Cross would be standing there, shaking her head. He ran all the way down the hall to the exit, his backpack slamming against his spine.

  “Tomorrow afternoon, Trevor. Three o’clock. Sharp. In my office.” Her voice chased after him.

  Kurt sat down at the kitchen table after supper and reached for the stack of bills on the counter. He’d just sent off the tax bill to the IRS; there would be no refund this year, and the numbers in the checkbook were far lower than he was comfortable with. He knew that one unexpected expense, one emergency visit to the pediatrician, one trip to the shop for Elsbeth’s piece-of-shit car, could mean another major ding in their already beaten-up credit. He divided the bills by delinquency: thirty days past due, sixty days, ninety plus, the ones threatening collections. He paid the utilities first (those things they could not live without: electricity, water, gas). He opened something from their mortgage company next, tearing into this envelope with a vague sense of foreboding. He knew their ARM was coming up soon, and that he really needed to talk to the bank about some refinancing options. But since the market had plummeted, and the house was worth far less than they owed, he figured refinancing again was probably out of the question. He quickly realized it wasn’t a bill at all but a notice. The ARM was apparently set to adjust at the end of the summer, and the mortgage premium was going to change accordingly. His eyes raced across the fine print, his vision swimmy, and his chest heaved as he looked at the figure for the first balloon payment. It was double their current payment. Two times the figure that already caused him monthly anxiety attacks. This couldn’t be right. There was no way. No one at the bank had explained this when they refinanced the first time.

  The whole kitchen smelled like supper still: it was rank with the smell of tuna casserole and green beans. He felt his stomach lurching, his whole world lurching as he tried to get a grip on what to do next. It was seven o’clock at night. The banks were closed. He thought about going to talk to Elsbeth, but he also knew that was the last thing he should do, could do. She would blame him. Not with her words, of course, she’d never ever come out and say that he was responsible, irresponsible, but that’s what she’d feel. That’s what her body would say when it turned away from him. That’s what she would think every time she looked at his face.

  He ran his hand through his hair, surprised by how thin it was becoming. He wondered if this awful habit alone was responsible for making his hair thin. If he had simply worried it away with his fingers over the last couple of years.

  He had to think. He just needed to clear his head and think this through. It was another thousand dollars a month. A lot, yes. But if he picked up another job, he could probably swing it. He was home most nights by six o’clock; a couple of night shifts would be difficult but doable. Maybe he could work the weekends. And it wouldn’t have to be forever either. Just until he could get the house refinanced again. Move the loan over to a different bank. Start fresh.

  “Daddy?” Gracy said. She had wandered into the kitchen without him hearing her. She was wearing a threadbare Ariel nightie she’d had since she was three and the rainbow toe socks she got from Santa last Christmas. Her hair was wet from her bath, and her cheeks pink.

  “Yeah, baby?” he asked.

  She came to him and climbed up into his lap. It shocked him how far her legs dangled now. When did this happen? When did she stretch out like this? She’d be too big for this soon. Grown. She looped her finger through a loose piece of lace at the hem of her nightgown and wrapped it tight.

  “Daddy, I love you more than pie.”

  “And I love you more than birthday cake.”

  He breathed the sweet smell of Gracy’s shampoo and wrapped his arms around her tightly. He could feel the rapid flutter of her heart beneath his fingers like a ticking clock.

  “It’s my birthday in how many days?” she asked.

  Kurt glanced up at the calendar hanging on the wall. “Just over a month, sweetie.”

  It would be okay. He just needed to be logical, methodical. Call the bank. Fill out the paperwork. If need be, he could get a second job. He was able-bodied. Strong. Willing to work. Elsbeth didn’t even need to know.

  Elsbeth came into the kitchen and smiled at them. She kissed Gracy’s forehead and then leaned down to kiss Kurt.

  “I was thinking,” she said as she went to the fridge, peering into it. She pulled out the bottle of wine and poured a little bit into a tumbler. “Maybe we could take Gracy to S-T-O-R-Y-L-A-N-D for her birthday?”

  Gracy puzzled over the letters, probably trying to assemble them in her mind.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sure. That would be nice.”

  But after they went to bed the panic slowly set in. While Elsbeth slept, oblivious, his legs thrummed. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he gave in to them. He walked and walked and walked. He walked the hallway, he walked circles around the living room, and then he walked to the kitchen and called the number on the back of his credit card, making sure there was enough room left to buy their tickets.

  Crystal could count the things she loved about Ty on two hands and one finger. Eleven itemizable things. She thought of these qualities when she was checking at Walgreens. As if they were things you could ring up and bag.

  She loved his hands. His fingers, long with square fingertips and thick knuckles. He chewed on his right index finger’s second knuckle when he was thinking, and it was callused and thick. When he held her hand for the first time (seven years old, running through the fenceless backyards in their neighborhood), she knew she would go wherever that hand led her. She also loved his feet. In the summer, they were tan and bare, his arches strong and his tendons long. When they lay in the hammock under the big oak tree in his backyard, head to foot, she would study the soft bottoms, count his toes.

  She loved the chipped tooth that only showed when he smiled, and she loved that she was there when it happened. (They’d been riding their bikes together when his tire got caught in the railroad tracks. He’d spilled over the edge of the bike, headfirst onto the unforgiving ties. She’d come back the next day and, miraculously, found the other half of his bottom incisor, sitting in the gravel as though it had been waiting for her. She carried the tooth, this little boney sliver of him in a locket she wouldn’t let him open.)

  She loved that he was funny, but that he never needed to be the center of attention. Lena was funny too, but she was always making sure you knew how funny she was. Ty had a quiet sense of humor, and they had a million private jokes that she collected like shells or pretty stones.

  She loved his family. His mother, Lucia, and her paisley scarves and silver rings, the way she looked like she was searching for the future Crystal in her face. “Let me look into my Crystal Ball,” she would say when Crystal was only ten or eleven, holding Crystal’s jaw in her hands and peering lovingly into her eyes. “I see happiness,” she’d say. “I see love and laughter and so much happiness, and what’s this? Lemonade? And brownies?” And then she would pour her a tall glass of freshly squeezed lemonade and cut her the best brownie from the center of the pan. She loved his father, who wrote children’s books and played the bongos and used to put on puppet shows with puppets he’d made for them in their dusky basement. He was tall and skinny and reminded her of the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. He’d play checkers or Monopoly or gin rummy with you without ever getting bored. And she loved his little sisters, Dizzy and Squirrel, who they pushed around in doll-sized strollers.

  She loved his house: the funky Victorian with its slanty floors and drafty windows. With its kaleidoscope of wild climbing roses and rusty claw-foot tubs. It was so different from her family’s prim Colonial with its perfect hedges and wall-to-wall carpeting. She loved the way Ty’s house always smelled like cloves and cinnamon. Like pumpkin pie. She loved it at Halloween when Ty’s father hung trash-bag ghosts from the trees and made creepy silhouettes out of black construction paper in all the windows. She loved it at C
hristmas, when his dad strung the entire house in twinkling lights, a frenetic sparkling peace sign in the center of the cupola. She loved it in the spring when tulips popped up in random places all over the yard.

  She loved Ty’s eyes, which were both blue and hazel at the same time, like God couldn’t make up his mind. Like little greenish brown stones, ringed in blue. She loved the way he kissed her, first her top lip then her bottom, the feeling of his teeth on her flesh. She loved the way he smelled like the French lavender water his mother put in the laundry, even though he said he couldn’t smell it at all. She loved his voice, which was deep and fluid, the way it washed over her like rain.

  And she loved that he read books. Most boys didn’t, or if they did, didn’t admit it. Sometimes, they would hang out together in his room, the one in the attic with its porthole window and exposed beams, just reading for hours, and she imagined that this was what it would be like when they were grown-ups. This happy quiet, each of them alone and immersed in their own world, but still somehow together.

  And for a couple of months last summer, it seemed like Ty’s mother had been right. There was nothing but happiness and love and lemonade. After twelve years, Ty finally realized what had been sitting under his nose waiting patiently for him to come around.

  She hadn’t expected it, the first time he kissed her. They’d been swimming at the river all day and were hanging out on his front porch while Dizzy made a painting on a giant roll of butcher paper held down on the grass with two heavy stones, and Squirrel was bouncing up and down in her ExerSaucer. Crystal’s skin was tight from the sun, and her hair smelled like the river. It was dusk, and one of his dad’s jazz CDs was playing inside the house, the soft breeze of it escaping out into the night. She knew she should head back to her own house, to her mother’s frozen lasagna and her dad’s bad knock-knock jokes, but she didn’t want to leave.

  Ty came over and sat down next to her on the ratty wicker love seat with its faded red floral cushions.

  “I love it here,” she said suddenly, surprising herself.“I love all of this.” And she was suddenly and absolutely overwhelmed by every single thing that she loved.