by Lea Geller
Grace made a funny noise, then let go of the crib and clapped her hands, as I’d seen her do many times. This time, though, she did something more. She clapped her hands, stared at me, and then she took her first steps. She took six steps, perfectly, as though she’d waited fourteen months to walk just so she could skip the awkward drunken-dwarf stage. She walked and then collapsed onto the floor. I moved to her quickly and folded myself over her. I thought about crying, but crying ruins silk and organza, so I squeezed my eyes shut and ran my hands over the carpet.
Jack was meeting us on the corner of Ninety-Sixth and Broadway. Beeks lived a block away, but I knew Jack would want to walk in together. I also knew he had no desire to come all the way up to the Bronx to get us, so I told him to meet us at the entrance to the subway.
You take Grace on the subway?
Yes, Jack. I take Grace on the subway because you cannot take taxis in Manhattan on a teacher’s salary. My own thoughts aside, I texted back:
Lots of children ride the subway.
I walked up the subway stairs on Ninety-Sixth Street. Jack was always early and I was ten minutes late, so I assumed he’d be waiting for me. When I got to the top of the stairs, I looked around but didn’t see him. Grace was in my arms, the stroller too much for me to handle on the subway. I scanned the four street corners for him. When I didn’t see him anywhere, I turned and looked into the window of a coffee shop. Jack was at the counter, looking down, reading the paper. I walked to the window and knocked. He looked up and his whole face smiled at me. I just wanted to stand there and bask in it for a few uncomplicated minutes, but he stood up and walked out to us.
“Hello, darling,” he said, kissing me and holding me to him so his chin rested on my temple.
“She walked, Jack.” I beamed, pulling away so I could see his face.
“She walked,” Jack said, looking right at Grace, running his hand down her leg, letting his fingers linger on her feet. I was grateful that he said nothing about her shoes.
We walked a block to Beeks’s apartment. Jack held Grace and I linked my arm through his. We looked like a family. A Sunday best family. A Sunday best family that goes to no church but finds it necessary to procure a silk-and-organza dress for a one-year-old who will, in a few short hours, be covered entirely in yogurt. I had always wanted to be a Sunday best family.
-4-
Beeks was not home when we arrived. Neither was Kyle. Turns out, if you keep throwing things down the trash chute, at some point you’ll get stuck and break your arm. The two of them were in the emergency room. Brian nervously promised they’d be home within half an hour. None of us wanted to be there without her. Brian took our coats, and I went into the kitchen to see if there was anything I could do for Beeks. The men sat in the living room, while Stevie and the other boys played a video game behind them.
Jack and Brian had met a few times, but those times had been awkward, bordering on unpleasant, so Beeks and I had an unspoken agreement to keep their encounters to a minimum. Jack never understood why someone who went to Harvard, and then to Harvard Business School, would want to work in a green energy company, when he could, as Jack put it, “name his price.” I knew from Beeks that Brian loved his job, even if he wasn’t making hedge-fund dollars. We sat uncomfortably on the dark-gray tufted couches in Beeks’s living room, and I put Grace down to walk for us. Like a wind-up doll, she performed on cue, saving us from having to do any talking at all.
Beeks walked through the door, escorting a beaming Kyle, who sported a bright-blue cast. We all jumped up to meet her as though we’d been waiting days for her arrival. She laughed. When she pulled me close to her she whispered in my ear, “Don’t be so nervous, Aggie. No drama. I promise.” She pulled back a little. “But I do want to talk to you before you leave,” she whispered. She hugged Jack and made an enormous fuss over Grace. Poor Kyle was completely ignored until his brothers realized he was home and pounced on him.
“Get off!” screamed Beeks. “Get off him! He’s in a cast, you guys! Do you want him in another one?” The boys just looked at her, completely surprised by her outrage. One by one they peeled themselves off their brother, who could not have looked happier with their attention.
Beeks was right. Lunch was uneventful. There was no drama. She made her famous ham with Pepsi. She’d texted me a picture of herself the day before, pouring a bottle of Pepsi over a pink ham studded with cloves. As promised, it was delicious, and thankfully Beeks followed my advice and didn’t mention anything to Jack about soda being a part of the recipe. She steered the conversation to interesting yet safe topics. We didn’t discuss Brian’s job, and we obviously couldn’t talk about Jack’s work. So for the first time ever we talked about her work . . . and mine. I told funny stories about my boys. I even told a few about Stacey Figg. When the meal was over, I was grateful—both that it had ended, but also that it had ended without a bang.
Beeks asked me to follow her into the bedroom to get our coats. Once we were in there, she closed the door behind us.
“Aggie,” she began. “I’m not going to ask you any questions. I know you love him. I see that. But if whatever you do for him gets you into trouble, I want you to know that Grace will always have a place here with us.”
Suddenly, my ears buzzed loudly, and for a moment I could not see. The room spun around and I heard the words again. She will always have a place here with us. They were Beeks’s words, but I’d heard them before. My first foster mother had said them when the social worker came to visit me, a few weeks after my parents had died. “Agnes will always have a place with us,” she said, standing in the living room talking to the social worker. It didn’t turn out to be true. By the middle of eighth grade, I was with another family. And then another.
“I have to go, Beeks,” I said. I grabbed our coats, staggered out of her room, and motioned to Jack to pick up Grace. I bolted out of the apartment and didn’t bother to wait for the elevator. With Jack behind me, I ran down the stairs two at a time to the small, dark, mirrored lobby. I never thought I’d be so happy to breathe Manhattan air, but once outside I took in huge gulps of it.
“Are you OK?” Jack asked as I heaved on the sidewalk, the spinning in full force.
I crouched down and gripped my knees and tried to slow my breathing. My eyes watery, I looked up at Jack and nodded, but I could not yet talk.
“Aggie,” he asked, Grace in his arms, “what’s wrong? What happened?”
I took a huge gulp of air and brought myself up to standing. I exhaled slowly, opened my eyes, and looked at him. “What you’re asking me to do, Jack. It’s a lot. It’s a lot to ask.”
“What did she say to you?” he asked through his teeth.
“Who?”
“Don’t play dumb, Aggie. What did Beeks say to you when you went into her room? Why did you run out?”
“Nothing.” We stood in front of Beeks’s building, and although people were moving around us, I kept my eyes on Jack. The wind was picking up and tousling his hair. Breathe.
“Nothing? You expect me to believe that?” he asked. Grace started to whimper in his arms. I reached for her, but Jack took a step back.
“Jack,” I pleaded. “Jack, you’re asking me to break the law.” I sidestepped a small dog that had started to sniff my leg. The dog’s owner yanked at the dog’s leash and kept walking.
“Does Beeks know?” he asked, pulling his caramel-colored blazer tightly around him as a gust of wind came barreling down the sidewalk. Grace put her head on his shoulder and played with the lapels of his blazer.
“No,” I said, shivering. “She just knows that I’m conflicted about something.”
“Conflicted?” He laughed. “That’s rich. What are you conflicted about? Do you really expect me to believe that you never wondered where all the money was coming from?”
“What?” Deep breaths.
“You heard me. You never asked where it was all coming from—the cars, the house, the jewelry, the vacations, all t
he restaurants. You never asked.”
“Why would I?”
“You sat in the armchair in the office and watched me pore over the numbers night after night and you never asked a single question.”
“What was I supposed to ask?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, almost amused, but not. “‘Can we afford all this, Jack? Where’s all the money coming from?’”
“What would you have told me if I’d asked? Would you have said, ‘Sure, Aggie, it’s all coming from people who think they’re investing with me but really aren’t’? Besides, we both know you wouldn’t have wanted me to challenge you like that.” The wind was blowing harder and my hair was flying around.
He took a step toward me, and with his free hand he grabbed my arm. He spoke in a low but clipped voice. “For a poor girl, you took to it very well. You took to all of it, and now that I’m asking you to help pay for it, you balk. Ask yourself, Aggie, are you willing to give it all up? Do you want this to be your life?” He looked disdainfully at the New York around us—the dirty gray buildings, the weather that started out clear and sunny but was now cold and blustery, the pigeons, the dogs, the people walking right into the middle of our personal space. I thought about my New York, which also had a brown couch, a leaking ceiling, and hulking window air-conditioning units. “Is that what you want for yourself, for Grace? Because if you don’t help me, Aggie, this is your life.” Jack was right. I hadn’t known what was going on, not because I’d asked and he wouldn’t tell me, but because I’d never wanted to know. I’d made a calculation and plunged my head deep into the sand. I was happy to live that way, and I’d still be living that way had none of this ever happened.
“I thought you were my life,” I said. “You and Grace.”
He let my arm fall. “Just help me now and I promise this will never happen again.”
“You’ll never rip people off again? Or you’ll never get caught again, Jack?”
We stood staring at each other as people maneuvered around us.
“I need you,” he begged. “Please help me, Aggie.”
“That’s what I thought. I have to go,” I said, reaching out and taking Grace from his arms. I let my hands linger on him.
I heard Jack calling out for me as I ran down to the subway with Grace in my arms. Grace. She will always have a place with us.
That night I walked outside to take out the trash. It was cold and I wasn’t wearing enough. I rushed down the stone steps of my stoop and tripped on the bottom stair. I came crashing down, my lower back slamming into the stone. The trash flew into the air and exploded when it hit the ground. I lay on the ground, my back throbbing, the smell of trash in my nose. It was a cloudless night, and I lay there looking up, trying to find a single star in the city sky. I found a small cluster and squinted through my tears.
This is what I have become. This is who I am now. I am cold and covered in trash, and other than a one-year-old who likes to play with her food, I am the only living descendant of Maureen and Bob Riley of Modesto, California. I am the only person who remembers them, and I know that there is nothing about my situation that they would like. My parents taught me to be honorable and self-sufficient and to look after my family, and for the first time since they’d died, I really hoped they couldn’t see me.
-5-
Later that night, hours after I’d cleaned up the mess, I returned to the stoop. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t be inside. The walls of the house seemed to be inching toward me. I bundled up and opened the front door, hoping to sit on the front steps and clear my head. I didn’t expect to see Stacey Figg doing the same thing.
“Hey,” she said, turning to face me. She looked awful. Circles ringed her eyes, and her hair, which I’d never seen down, was enormous—angry and unsubdued.
I didn’t say anything, I just sat down on my steps.
“I’m a bad person,” she said, looking away.
“Let’s not get carried away,” I said, hearing my voice but Jack’s expression. “Besides, you aren’t the only one.” I ran my hands through my hair and leaned back against the step, letting out a deep breath. “I think I just made a huge mistake.”
“What did you do? Sell out your students? Rat out your neighbor? Oh no, that was me . . .” She looked down at her feet, which were in a pair of silver clogs. Stacey Figg loved silver.
“I sold them out, too,” I said. “To Gavin and Ruth. I could have helped them, but instead I decided to help myself.”
“Huh?” she asked.
I didn’t want to go into details. So I just shrugged and hoped that she’d get the message and not push me.
“Would you go back and undo it?” she asked, sensing my reticence.
“I think I would.” It helped to say the words out loud.
“Then it’s not too late to help the boys. Is it?” She leaned toward me and lowered her voice.
I thought about it and wrapped my arms around my knees, resting my chin on them. “No, it’s not.”
“Then how about this,” she said, sitting up straight and flexing her feet. “Tell them I’ll talk.”
“What?”
“You can use my name. You can tell them I’ll talk.”
“Stacey, I think I’m gonna need actual proof, or at least more than your word against theirs.”
“Then tell them I have emails. From both of them.”
“What if they drag you down with them and you get fired?” I asked.
“Then I’ll find another job. It’s not hard. Nobody wants to teach middle school.”
“I do,” I said.
“Yeah.” She smiled. “You do.”
We sat outside in silence for a while, neither of us saying much. At some point, a tray of Stacey’s carrot muffins surfaced. I think I ate six. Before she headed back inside, Stacey looked at me and said, “I’m sorry, Agnes. I really am.”
“I’m sorry, too. For never really trying to be a good friend. And I get it,” I said, swallowing a bite of muffin, because I did get it. Stacey had done something pretty crappy and was trying to undo it.
Now it was my turn.
Early the next morning, I barged into Ruth’s office with Grace in my arms. I expected to find Ruth alone, but she was sitting at her desk talking to Gavin. They both looked surprised to see me.
“I’ll take the deal,” I said to Ruth, hugging Grace to me for fortitude. “I’ll trade what I know for getting Gavin fired, and when he’s gone, I’ll help hire his replacement.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gavin’s jaw drop to the floor. “And the summer program,” I added. “You agree to shut it down.”
“What about Jack?” Ruth asked.
The words were caught in my throat, but finally I spat them out. “Jack’s on his own,” I said, ignoring Gavin, who was silently gasping and flailing. Using one of Jack’s favorite expressions, I said, “I’m letting the chips fall where they may.”
“And what if Jack’s chips end up in prison?” Ruth asked.
“Then they end up in prison. They’re his chips, not mine.”
Gavin put his jaw back together and jumped out of his seat. “What’s going on, Ruth?” he asked.
With Grace in my arms, I pivoted and took a step closer to him. Now it was his turn to back up toward the wall. “Ruth didn’t tell you?” I said, looking at Ruth out of the corner of my eye. “You were right, Gavin. Ruth does agree with whoever she happens to be talking to.”
His face fell again, his jaw landing right between his feet. “She agreed to fire you and suspend the summer program if I stay quiet about what I know.”
“Is this true?” He looked at Ruth but didn’t wait for an answer. “What if I talk?” he gasped, his voice cracking.
“Stacey Figg will talk, too, and if that’s not enough, she’s got emails . . . from both of you.” I looked over at Ruth, then back at Gavin again. “Besides, what would you tell people, Gavin? Would you tell them you forged hundreds of behavior reports just so parents would sign their k
ids up for a summer program, which is your meal ticket, all while demoralizing the students you’re supposed to be educating?”
He looked at me, then at Ruth, and then back at me again. “Demoralizing?” he asked, looking truly confused. “Why are you fighting for these boys?”
“Someone has to.” Grace was making noise, so I pulled a baggie of puffs as well as my keys out of my coat pocket. I put her down at my feet and let her have at them.
“Nobody has to fight for these boys. These boys will all be just fine,” Gavin said.
“How do you know they’ll be fine, Gavin? Because they’re rich?”
He laughed. “It’s not just that they’re rich, Agnes. It’s that they’re rich and mediocre. Do you know what that means?”
I wasn’t sure I knew at all what he meant, and Gavin read it on my face. He crossed his arms and kept talking. Grace toddled over to a bookshelf and started pulling off books one by one. I let her.
“It means that these boys will inherit enormous family businesses, or they will marry into enormous family businesses. It means they can go to low-level colleges, barely graduate, and still live lives most of us could never dream about. It means they will have cars and homes bought for them, and then bigger cars and bigger homes.” He talked quickly, spit flying out the corners of his mouth. “Don’t pity these boys, Agnes. When you’re rich and mediocre, nobody expects you to cure cancer. Hell, no one even expects you to go to medical school. These boys will be handed everything, all of it. They get the keys to the kingdom, and they get them without ever having to work.”
For a moment, I felt sorry for him. Maybe it was hard to watch these kids barely make it through middle school but know that it didn’t matter, that none of it mattered. Then a light passed over his face, as if he had just had a realization.
“Oh, but that’s why, isn’t it?” he said, nodding his head.