5
Grace woke as if falling, arms flying out to catch her illusory descent.
“Did I fall asleep?”
“Yes.”
“What about the trip? The magic?”
“That was it.”
Then she noticed that she was rested. Really rested. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in three months. Cocaine tends to keep a person awake. Often she would lie in bed until the night turned to grey dawn and the time would come to get up. Even on the nights that she did fall asleep, that sleep was disturbed, haunted, full of fitful movements. Now the constant soreness in her muscles had disappeared. The endless buzzing feeling in her nerves had quieted. Hollow guilt that incessantly plagued her had bowed out for this act.
“How long was I out?”
“You could say: For the distance between the past and the present.”
The thing on the back of the shelf again, this time Grace didn’t bother to reach for it. She didn’t need to grasp it. She only wanted to enjoy the sensations of well-being. It had been so long.
“I feel like I could face anything–no matter how bad it is.”
She looked out to see a volleyball game in progress, one of her own. She relaxed her guard a little but not entirely. Though the court was a refuge for her: tensions and worries forgotten in the wash of adrenaline, sweat and lactic acid, she knew from experience that any situation could turn ugly without notice. He had warned her.
But really, how bad can it be?
“This one might not be so bad.” Her companion didn’t answer her hopeful prediction, watching as the other Grace crushed a ball down the line. “That was good hit. Don’t you think I look pretty good out there? Those briefs show everything but I don’t look horrible.”
“Grace, you are beautiful to me, especially when you’re healthy. You are strong like bull.”
Grace laughed that he had borrowed the Russian accent her mom affected when she said the same thing, making it sound more like ‘st-dawng like booll’. In the wake of her laughter she grew immediately uncomfortable with the compliment she had so brazenly solicited. She waffled, “I guess I could lose five pounds. Still, I look okay right?” Grace cringed at the desperate need in her voice. She might just have well have said, ‘Please like me. Think I am pretty. Reassure me!’
Pathetic.
“I do like you. You are pretty.”
Nice.
Grace had begun to notice that she was unable to differentiate between real and imagined, even within the confines of this fantastical scenario. She didn’t know whether her companion had actually spoken or whether she had wished the words into her own hearing. She was too embarrassed to ask him directly, ashamed at her need, afraid the words hadn’t really come. For now, it didn’t matter. Real or imagined, she basked in the warmth of his favor.
The game she was playing ended. The crowd started clapping. Grace watched herself walk over to the players bench and grab some sweats. Pulling up her pants, the team went into a stretching warm-down ritual that was really just an excuse for the coach to blather endlessly. If talking made for good coaching this lady would have been coach of the century. Grace didn’t enjoy listening to her yammer in real life, she wondered if their time was best spent listening to her now.
“Um are you sure this is where you want to be? We could probably skip this part.” As those words departed her mouth, Grace caught a glimpse of the person standing near the bench talking to their trainer. The trainer was laughing and batting this person’s arm, twirling some trainer’s tape around her finger in her usual come-hither stance. All the volleyball players called her See-through Sally behind her back and sometimes to her face. Although the University issued heavy duty white polos to all its training program staff, somehow Sally’s always managed to be see-through. There was an actual betting pool, guessing how she had achieved this transparency: she washed the shirt with a washboard, she sanded the shirt to a paper thin fiber, she bought a different polo and reaffixed the trainer’s insignia to it. In order to win the pot, somebody was going to have to ask for her secret.
At this point, Grace felt a sudden and inexplicable rush of jealousy at Sally’s unabashed petting of the stranger’s arm. He was wearing the red sweats particular to the school’s soccer team. But Grace didn’t know anyone on the soccer team.
“Hey, is that–?” she cut her query short, reluctant to draw attention to her interest. She felt a chuckle drop on her and was startled by a sudden shifting of perspective and speed of motion of all the people around them. “Oh wait, are we leaving? Where are we going?” she felt swift disappointment.
“I thought you didn’t want to listen to your coach.,” his pleasant laughter rippling speculatively.
“I don’t, it’s just that–I don’t know.” She didn’t want to articulate this thing, so ancillary, maybe even frivolous, on such a crucial journey. Embarrassed, she shut her mouth.
They watched as sweaty Grace moved up the bleachers to where her parents sat with her sisters Honey and Molly and her brother Ben, her number one fan. At some unseen command, the speed of movement tripled and then quadrupled as if everything were fast forwarding.
Talk about your Universal Remote.
High fives and hugs moved in a blur, her family filed out of the gym at a run, got into the car and gained momentum that jumped over the ride home and stopped in the kitchen of Grace’s home.
“Neat.”
Back at normal speed, Grace stood, leaning against the smooth soapstone of the kitchen counter, breathing in the baked vanilla of an angel food cake, fluffy and pure, a prim virgin queen on a cake-plate throne. Across the counter her mom and dad were seated at the kitchen table with Molly and Honey. Beyond the kitchen table over in the den section of the great room, Ben lay on the couch, mouth open, air raking across adenoids. The sound of his rasping breaths caused one of her momentary bouts of panic. Ben’s frailty was able to leave her weak with fear.
This fear had started one gorgeous day when the bay had frozen over. Such a huge body of water didn’t often succumb completely to the cold so it was kind of a big deal. Ben had never been out on the frozen bay so the whole family had gathered to take their precious cargo for his inaugural visit. Everybody was there: Annie with her husband Charlie, even Wendy had come home for Christmas. All the siblings had scrum rummaged in the closet under the staircase, each person looking for the right sized skates. Ben waited patiently like little Lord Fauntelroy on the bottom step. The sisters tumbled out of the closet en masse, bestowing the double-bladed learning skates on their little brother like a benediction. Each one of them had used those red laced skates as her first. His juicy lips had twisted into a smile of delight lighting up his face with the glow of excitement for his first day of ‘eye-kay-dee’.
Glorious sunshine glinted off the ice, guiding colorfully sailed iceboats across the endless expanse in a crunching shoosh. Between the cold and the beauty, it was literally breathtaking. Unforgettable. Each person fought for the right to hold Ben’s mittened hand and guide him through his first day out. He didn’t do much actual ‘eye-kay-dee’, mostly he just walked around and then finally everyone took turns holding him. Ben didn’t want to leave but his nose had turned Rudolph red and signs of green had begun to tell in the line of mucus from his nose. Time to go home. That night he had been rushed to the hospital with sudden onset of pneumonia. Safe at home, Grace had tried to pray for Ben’s rapid recovery but fell asleep instead.
That night she dreamed that Ben had died at the hospital. The crushing desperation of loss had been stunningly unexpected, leaving her paralyzed. She couldn’t remember all the details of the dream, just the overwhelming hopelessness of never seeing Benjamin again. In her dream she had cried with the rawness of agony she had only felt once before, in another dream.
During the summer approaching seventh grade, young Grace had read almost all the books in the bookshelf in her living room. She was nearly finished the most daunting collection of butterscotch leather books, each classic title listed in gold leaf on a rectangular field of a different jewel color. After exhausting every other resource she had reluctantly settled on the emerald bordered Faust. Always one to judge a book by its cover, Grace had already decided she didn’t like this one but read on with dogged determination. The story disturbed her deeply and as happens in Grace Land, her mind translated the disturbance to dream. While sleeping, dream Grace made an unremembered Faustian trade that consigned her to hell. Though most details were misty, she woke with a sharp remembrance of herself kneeling in the auditorium of her Middle School, waiting for final, eternal judgement to be passed on her.
That night, she cried the same black wretchedness that had followed her dream of Benjamin’s death. Both times the tears in her dream had finally crossed over into her real life and she had awoken with tears soaking the pillow, sobs clutching the air around her. She remembered the raw panic of irrevocable loss in her first moment’s awakening,
Am I going to hell?
Is Ben really dead?
She had raced down the stairs to find her precious brother nestled between her parents in their giant bed. Relief nearly dropped her to the floor at the door of their bedroom. Still she couldn’t forget that sinking feeling and was often unsuspectingly besieged by the panic of that memory. Her eyes rested protectively on her favorite little piece of angel food cake as he lay peacefully sleeping where she had deposited him on the cushions, looking over the head of her father whose glasses were busily twirling in her periphery. Grace watched herself flare her nostrils and roll her eyes as her Dad began his nightly ritual of reading the bible to his family. Distracted from Ben, she turned microscopic attention to the greasy smudge marks on his bifocals while she and her other self made a pact to tune out his words. She would rather be listening to her coach.
She deliberately diverted her attention again, picking up a knife, plunging it into the golden exterior of the pristine cake. Carefully cutting a generous portion, she grabbed a fork and stabbed the tines full of lovely white sponge. Hungry, as usual, from her game, she was poised to eat when words penetrated the barrier she normally erected in these situations.
“Are you sure you want that?” Her father’s voice grated her ears in every dimension. Grace could tell that she and herself were equally annoyed when she saw the snarl that distorted her face. “Don’t make such an ugly face. I’m just trying to help. I saw you in those briefs and they don’t hide much.”
“I’d like to see you in a pair of briefs Mr. Angel Food Cake.”
Grace mumbled, barely above her breath. Her father didn’t catch the response but she and her companion did. Lilting drops of joy fell from his mouth, landing on Grace’s ears with gentle healing. Grace was almost willing to get another barb from her dad if the reward was that laughter.
“Interesting response.” He nudged her, distracting her from the tears that threatened to join a pool being formed by the other Grace in the sisterhood of hurt feelings.
“If I thought he knew me better I would think he was deliberately pushing my buttons. The truth is worse: my buttons developed over time in specific response to him. Without even trying, everything he says makes me overreact wildly. He doesn’t even know he’s driving me insane. If he did, he wouldn’t care. Nobody else can get beneath my skin like that and make it itch like a thousand insects invading. His helpful little remarks instantly make me feel horrible, small and fat at the same time. I wish I could say the perfect thing to let him know how it hurts me and then hurt him back in equal measure. Instead I just trip over my own words, tongue-tied and miserable.” She leaned in for comfort against his side, ribs and muscle a soothing fortress.
Grace knew from not too distant memory that she had immediately lost her appetite but watched as she spitefully and deliberately shoveled that forkful into her mouth and a second gigantic portion to chase it down. Sad to see herself force feeding a huge chunk down to her churning stomach, she noticed her mom making furious grimaces at her father.
“Huh. I never saw that.”
“I guess you were busy proving something.” he pointed out.
“I was hungry before he said that. I had just finished playing a college level volleyball game. That burns calories you know. Do you know how much fat there is in Angel Food Cake? None. What the heck? Can’t I get a break?”
“So, instead of repeating these facts in a rational way, you decided to force feed your fugitive appetite to teach him a lesson? Again, this is a very interesting response. I don’t see how it helps you. I don’t see how it makes him understand you better.”
“I told you, I get tongue tied and if I try to say anything I end up shrieking and crying and then I get in trouble for being disrespectful. That’s the worst part, when, all of a sudden, I’m in trouble for doing absolutely nothing besides eating a piece of cake. Did you notice that he interrupted himself reading the bible just to share that nugget of helpfulness? Is telling me I’m fat supposed to be more important than his precious bible?” She challenged, once again shifting the object of his scrutiny.
“Grace, be fair. You weren’t even listening to him.”
“Oh yeah, I know. I can tell you what he was saying though: ‘Blah blah blah something about sacred man-loins, something else about head coverings, a happy tale of children being stoned at the gates of the city for disobedience, a recitation of the need for a millstone to be tied around the neck of somebody—probably me, and why? because I bear a striking resemblance to a lady named Jezebel, witch of the Old Testament. We finally get somewhere when he reads out in his giant booming voice, so full of conviction: ‘if you love me you will obey me.’ Only he isn’t talking about obeying God. He’s always talking about obeying him. Small g god of our family.”
As if to bear witness to Grace’s stream of invective, her father’s voice carried across the kitchen, swelling in her ears with what she called, 'oulde thyme religion.' She even spelled it that way in her mind.
“I am God’s representative to you on this earth. That's why He gave you parents. You weren’t beamed down from a spaceship. He gave you to us so you can follow us.”
Grace turned to her companion. “How can anyone justify that? What kind of God would let that be His representative? Not a good cosmic marketing plan if you ask me.” Grace looked into his dark eyes with her challenge and saw profound sadness.
“Why did you?”
“Why did I what?” she quizzed him despite knowing exactly what he meant.
“Why did you let him be the only representation of God you relied on?”
“I guess I wasn’t interested in what was being sold. If I was in the market for anger and hypocrisy I might have kicked the tires. But, surprise surprise, I was all stocked up.” Grace despised the petulant weakness of her own response. She was deflecting, once again focusing on cartwheels in a supermarket. Still, she felt marginally justified as she turned back to the familiar kitchen table in time to see her father pick up the bible to read a choice morsel of what seemed to Grace to be furious condemnation. She saw his face twist and watched as spittle flew from his mouth.
“That,” her newest and loveliest friend placed himself between Grace and the contorted visage, “does not justify you never getting to know God for yourself.”
He looked at her, commanding her attention.
“Grace, let’s imagine you’ve met someone you find attractive. You are intrigued. Wouldn’t you look for opportunities to see this person? Wouldn’t you want to know more about him? Hear his voice, examine him more closely, learn his features, find out about his character to confirm your initial reaction?” She nodded, her head bobbing on the ethereal waves of recent discovery. She had been blindsided by that desire ever since the stranger in the Ceramics Studio. More importantly and to her complete surprise, she wanted that very thing with this stranger by her side. The more she knew about him, the more she wanted to know.
“Would your dad have to drag you, sullen and reluctant, to see that person?” She didn’t bother agreeing in the negative, they both knew an absurd notion when they heard one.
“Would you need your father to act out a perfect pantomime of this person, to be sure you were interested, to know he was really attractive, to know if you liked him?”
She made a little retching noise,
“Okay, I get it, you don’t have to gross me out to drive home your point.”
“Grace, I don’t think you do get it. Imagine you began to fall deeply, madly, wildly in love with this person. You’ve discovered his beauty is exactly what you’ve always waited for, that his love is profound and true.” Again, her head nodded in acknowledgement of something she had begun to learn this night. “He has sent you letters detailing his past, present and future plans for the two of you. He has sent ardent letters and poetry declaring his love, your exquisite beauty in his eyes, how he could move mountains for you and walk on water just to be by your side.” Her eyes filled with tears remembering the assurances, the kind words, the gifts he had already shared with her.
“Would you wait for your father to read those letters to you?” She reared her head back against that absurdity. “No, you would anxiously await the moments until you could rip open this person’s letters and devour his words. Even if someone else did get hold of those letters, reading only the parts that made you feel confused, in a voice that irritated you, wouldn’t you want to see for yourself what the letters actually said? Read them with his voice in your mind? Make sure his words sounded like the person you had come to know and understand?”
Grace nodded, reluctantly fascinated by the questions following each other out of those compelling lips,
“Finally, once you knew him, wouldn’t you want to spend time with him, listening to him, letting him listen to you, just being together in the quietness of bliss? This could be the love of your life. Wouldn’t it be worth the effort to really get to know him?”
Grace, interrupted the trance induced by his words. A desire for control always wanted to cut in on the new dance her companion was teaching her. After all, this conversation had started as an indictment of her father and the one who put him in charge.
“I get it.” her voice sounded curt and rough to her own ears.
“So why didn’t you bother to get to know me for yourself?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. In this lovely fantasy picture you’ve created I’m supposed to have been magically attracted and intrigued. What about real life? In that reality I felt no interest or attraction.” She paused letting that sink in, “Never once did I even come close to falling deeply, madly, or wildly in love. I get your point, but it presupposes me discovering you as the love of my life. That’s never been the case and I don’t think one night’s journey is going to make up for it.”
In the words of the singer, Grace can be viciously unkind. At some point she had chosen to be annoyed that he had challenged her excuses and turned them upside down. She was so busy trying to be right that she didn’t even notice they had transitioned from the third person to the first person. His word picture had brought out his truth into the simple, clear light, for the billionth time, outshining the darkness of her complaints against her father but she was petulantly angry that he deftly stripped her of all pretense. The part of her that still wanted to control this situation designed her half-truths to hurt and punish him for finding the giant error in her logic and blasting it to kingdom come. She knew they had hit their mark when his hand trembled. She turned defiantly to him and saw tears standing in dark pools of pain. Grace was suspended in horror and maybe, yes, disgust.
How pathetically needy.
The words sprang to her mind and while causing guilt they gathered momentum.
Is he so desperate for me to love him?
“Grace I am wildly, deeply, madly in love with you. I have walked across a sea of stars to reach you, changed my form so you could comprehend me, accepted death on your behalf and stormed through hell and back again just so we could be together. You are beautiful to me. You are the love of my life. I could spend an eternity with you.”
