Hadley & Grace

by Redfearn, Suzanne

  It has always bugged her. “Your side, my side,” she is always telling him, drawing an imaginary line down their bed before settling on “her side.” He pretends to obey, an amused smirk on his face. Then, the moment she drifts off to sleep, he moves in—a toe, an elbow, a hip, some sort of connection somewhere. The problem is she has grown used to it, and now, whenever he goes away, she misses it, and tonight, since she lay down beside Miles two hours ago, she has tossed and turned in search of it.

  Finally, giving up, she walks onto the balcony, where she finds Hadley smoking and gazing toward the silhouetted mountains in the distance. The night is cool, and Grace shivers but doesn’t return inside for her sweatshirt.

  “This the insomniacs’ meeting place?” Grace asks.

  Hadley scoots sideways to make room, and Grace leans on the railing beside her.

  In front of them, old-growth firs reach for the bruised midnight sky, creating black sawtooth shadows against the star-studded night. Shoulder to shoulder they look out at the expanse, the soft rustling of the wind through the trees the only sound.

  “Rocking the Walmart blue-light special,” Grace says, taking in Hadley’s outfit of black velour sweats, blue running shoes, and a cheetah-print blouse.

  “I feel like Peggy Bundy. Really? Animal print and velour?” Hadley says.

  Grace shrugs and smirks. She might have accidentally purposely bought the ugliest outfit she could find when picking out a change of clothes for Hadley this morning. Though somehow the woman still looks great. Grace swears Hadley could wear a garbage bag and she would start a fashion trend, suddenly everyone sporting Glad or Hefty to red-carpet events. She’s just one of those women—the kind who, if you leave her alone with a captive FBI agent who’s trying to arrest her, will still manage to seduce him.

  “I can’t believe you slept with him,” Grace says.

  “Me either.” And even in the thin light, Grace sees her blush.

  “You don’t need to gloat about it,” Grace says.

  “I’m not gloating.”

  “You are. You’re gloating all over the place. You’re completely covered in gloat.”

  Hadley’s blush deepens, making Grace want to throw her off the balcony. She wants to be gloating. She wishes very badly that Jimmy were here so she, too, could be covered in gloat.

  Hadley lifts the cigarette to her lips, the end glowing as she inhales; then she tips her head back and releases the smoke into the air, watching as the feathery gauze drifts away, a smile curling her lips.

  “Wow,” Grace says. “I knew you slept with him, but I didn’t know you actually liked him.”

  Hadley brings her face down quickly. “I don’t. I wasn’t . . .” She looks away, the words trailing off, and Grace feels bad for teasing her, because it’s obvious Hadley really does like him, which makes what happened between them less romantic than tragic. He is an FBI agent. She is a fugitive. Best-case scenario is they never see each other again.

  Grace looks back at the mountain scene, watching the night clouds drift across the moon.

  “Where’s your husband?” Hadley says.

  “Afghanistan.”

  “Army?”

  Grace nods.

  A moment of hesitation, but Grace knows it won’t last. Hadley can’t help herself. She’s a yapper and a nosybody. She braces for the question as Hadley blurts it out: “So, why’d you leave? Is he a jerk?”

  Grace takes a deep inhale of the cool air, then slowly lets it out. “Nope. Jimmy’s the nicest guy you’ll ever meet.”

  She can see Hadley looking for more of an explanation, but Grace doesn’t offer one. She doesn’t believe in talking bad about the people you love.

  “That’s not fair,” Hadley says with a pout. “You know everything about me.”

  “That’s because you like to blab.”

  Hadley sneers.

  “Fine,” Grace says. “The short version is Jimmy likes to gamble. It ruined us twice, and the last time, I told him if it happened again, it was over.” Her voice sounds matter of fact until the last word, and she needs to work very hard not to show how much the confession hurts, and she is surprised how much saying the words out loud affects her—like pulling the top off a soda pop that’s been shaken. Though all she’s stated was the simple truth, it feels like a huge expulsion of all the hurt and shame that’s been bottled up inside her for years.

  Hadley’s green eyes grow soft with sympathy, and Grace grows uncomfortable. She’s never liked pity.

  Hadley looks away, and for a long moment they’re silent, until finally Hadley says, “You ever think how different it would be if men were the ones to have the children? Like penguins, reliant on their women to return to the nest to feed them, bring home the bacon or the fish or whatever it is penguins eat, even long after they’re no longer the hottest penguin on the beach?”

  “Iceberg.”

  “Iceberg?”

  “If they were penguins, they would be on an iceberg,” Grace says.

  Hadley frowns at her, and Grace shrugs. “I’m just saying it wouldn’t be a beach. It would be an iceberg.”

  “Wow, Jimmy really must be the nicest guy in the world.”

  Grace sticks her tongue out at her, and Hadley flips her off. It’s all very adolescent, and Grace feels a sudden lightening in her chest, the sensation distinctly uncomfortable, familiar yet far away, the vague memory of a time before her grandmother got sick.

  “You okay?” Hadley says.

  Grace nods, her eyes blinking as her knuckles massage her sternum to clear it away.

  “So, what happened today with you and the kids?” Hadley says. “You were gone a long time.”

  Shrug.

  “You’re not going to tell me? Skipper’s calling you Trout, the most revered name in baseball, and my daughter, who pretty much hates everyone, is following you around like a puppy and hanging on your every word. So what happened?”

  “Maybe it’s my irresistible charm and personality.”

  Hadley scoffs and Grace laughs, the moment cut short by a small whinny from inside the room. Grace freezes, then races inside.

  She scoops Miles up and jiggles him up and down as she reaches into the diaper bag for a bottle. He starts to cry.

  “Stop bouncing him like that,” Hadley says, and Grace realizes she’s followed her into the room.

  Grace switches his position to cradle him in her left arm and sways him back and forth as she continues to rummage through the bag. Miles screams louder.

  “For Christ’s sake, you’re going to give him whiplash. Hand him over.”

  Grace does as she says, her jaw sliding forward.

  Hadley sits on the mattress and drapes Miles over her shoulder. She pats his back as she coos to him in a gentle, soothing tone, and immediately he stops crying.

  Grace stares at her.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Fix his bottle,” Hadley says.

  Grace grabs the formula and hurries into the bathroom to mix it, then races back and hands it to Hadley. A second later, Miles is in her lap, the bottle plugged in his mouth. He grabs onto it with his greedy little fists, sucking furiously.

  “You’re fine,” Hadley says to Grace’s obvious distress. “You’ll get the hang of it. It just takes time.”

  Grace shakes her head. “I suck at it.”

  And Grace can tell Hadley doesn’t mean to, but before she can stop herself, her head moves a fraction up, then down, confirming what Grace already knows, that she is entirely incompetent at the single most important job in the world.

  “Sit,” Hadley orders.

  Grace plops beside her, her hands beneath her rump. Beside her, Miles continues to guzzle, his eyes rolled back in near elation.

  “Here, you take him,” Hadley says, holding him toward her.

  Grace scoots sideways and shakes her head. “He’s happy.”

  Hadley pulls him back, the hand that holds him caressing his foot as he eats.r />
  After a moment, a smile curls Hadley’s lips and she says, “Do you know what I’d be doing if I were home?”

  It’s Sunday night, almost midnight. Grace has no idea what Hadley would be doing, but she knows what she’d be doing. She would be home with Miles, who would be screaming his head off, and she would be trying to comfort him in every way she could think of while praying for him to pass out so she could pass out beside him.

  “I’d be doing this,” Hadley says. “Without Miles, of course. But I would be sitting on my bed after sneaking a cigarette. Only I wouldn’t be enjoying it because I’d be thinking how much Frank hates that I smoke, and I’d be worrying that he might come home and smell it on me. So, I’d be neurotic, sniffing the air and trying to smell my own breath, probably pacing or cleaning. I do that when I get nervous. I clean.”

  “So, for you, this is actually an improvement?” Grace says.

  “A sad statement on my life.”

  “Your life’s not over.”

  “I’m almost forty.”

  “Really? I thought you were older.”

  Hadley’s face snaps up, and Grace smirks an “I gotcha” look at her.

  “Ha ha, very funny. You just wait until your first wrinkles start winking at you in the mirror. We’ll see how much you’re laughing then.”

  Miles has conked out, formula drooling from his open mouth, his hand still holding the bottle.

  “Burp rag,” Hadley says, and Grace hands her a towel.

  Hadley drapes Miles over her shoulder and coaxes several small gas bubbles from him. Grace would have never done that. She would have just let him sleep.

  Hadley notices Grace’s expression. “You need to get the air out; otherwise it causes cramping.” She looks around. “Hand me one of the bath towels.”

  Grace retrieves a towel from the bathroom.

  “Lay it flat on the bed.”

  Hadley lays Miles on the towel diagonally and folds the bottom corner over his feet.

  “He doesn’t like to be swaddled,” Grace says.

  “Of course he does,” Hadley says, pissing Grace off.

  Grace folds her arms across her chest, waiting for Hadley to finish and for Miles to let out a howl. Since he was born, he has hated the constraints of a blanket being wrapped tight around him.

  Hadley finishes and straightens. “There you go, big boy, all set for the night.”

  He is not howling. Rather, he is sleeping soundly, snug in his cocoon, except for his arms, which are slung over his head like a champion.

  “Most boys like to have their arms free,” Hadley says, like it’s no big deal, like everyone knows that. But Grace didn’t know that. No one ever told her that. It’s a miracle, the simplest, most remarkable trick in the world. Miles is entirely content, his face not contorted in the least like it usually is as he wrestles himself to sleep. “You’ll get the hang of it,” Hadley repeats; then she stands and retrieves her crutches. “Well, good night. Another big day tomorrow, hopefully one not nearly as eventful as today.”

  “Thank you,” Grace manages, the uncomfortable feeling in her chest returning.

  Hadley tilts her head. “You do realize it’s the other way around, don’t you? That I’m the one who should be thanking you?”

  Hadley is almost to the door when Grace says, “I’m glad I met you.”

  Hadley turns.

  “Regardless of how this turns out, I just wanted you to know that. That . . . this is going to sound really stupid . . . but the last two days, well, they’ve been kind of fun.”

  Hadley smirks, tilts her head, then straightens it and says, “Was that painful?”

  “Excruciating.”

  Hadley gives a full-wattage smile, then continues out the door, and for a long time, Grace stares at the spot where she was, knowing how dangerous it is to start liking someone.

  She firmly resolves to stop. Miles is her family and her single concern. Hadley, Mattie, and Skipper—they are just people, a random crossing that someday she will look back on with fondness but that tomorrow she needs to leave behind.

  She rubs her knuckles against her chest again, rubbing again at the lightness that is terrifying.

  40

  HADLEY

  The highway winds down from the Sierras, bits of daylight peeking through the treetops. On either side of the road, giant pines soar toward the sky, an imposing, glorious landscape that makes Hadley feel small and her problems very far away. She allows herself to get lost in it—no outside world, no worries, no regrets—only the extreme beauty and the sheer awesomeness of it all.

  But the moment they hit the highway, a strip of asphalt stretched to the horizon between crust-colored landscapes, her recollection of yesterday and everything that has happened over the past three days slams into her, and her emotions rise—disbelief followed by astonishment:

  I am a fugitive from the law. A criminal?

  I slept with Mark! An FBI agent I only just met?

  She knows she should focus on the first, but her brain keeps getting stuck on the second, Mark’s laughter followed by his touch filling her mind and making it impossible to think about anything else.

  Her whole life, she has never been a spontaneous person, always worrying so much about doing what’s right that the chance to do anything remarkable inevitably passes her by. But yesterday . . . yesterday, it was like all that hesitation and second-guessing miraculously fell away, and for the first time, she was entirely unconcerned about messing up or doing something she might regret—bold and fearless in a way she’s never been.

  She thinks about how badly Mark wanted to be good, the way he stepped back as she hopped toward him, his bound hands in front of him, and the look of fear on his face, like she was someone to be scared of, the devil out to steal his soul. And maybe she was.

  She laughs, and Grace looks over, then rolls her eyes and turns up the radio, as if trying to drown her out.

  Hadley turns away and stares at the beige landscape through the window as she replays those remarkable minutes in her mind—twenty? Thirty? Maybe less? So little, and yet transformative. Like she is changing. Or has changed. She glances at Grace and wonders if it’s possible that some of her amazing courage has rubbed off on her.

  So much laughter as they went about it—the fiasco with their clothes, then figuring out how to make it work with his hands tied and the ACE bandage between them. Never has she had so much fun having sex. Usually, it’s such a serious affair, or she’s taken it that way. But it doesn’t have to be serious. It can be fun. And funny.

  But also something else. She tilts her head to think about it, define what she’s feeling. Easy, she thinks, feeling like she’s stumbled upon a great secret. Sex with the right person is easy, like finding the perfect match in a ten-thousand-piece puzzle. Snap. Look at that: we work. So easy.

  Mattie did a report once on seahorses—stunning little creatures that mate for life. They choose a partner to tether their tail to, then float endlessly through the ocean together. But before they make that very important decision, they court, dancing around each other for days to be sure they are compatible, their systems in sync—their rhythms, pulses, and cycles.

  That’s how it was with her and Mark, like they were seahorses perfectly in sync. She smiles as she thinks how in sync they were.

  “Are you kidding me?” Grace says, and Hadley realizes she has giggled again.

  She tries to stop thinking about it, knowing this is no time for such happiness. But she simply can’t help it. No matter how hard she tries, each time she pushes the thoughts away, Mark marches right back in, smiling and laughing and doing things to her—naughty, horrible, wonderful things—without asking her permission at all.

  She is stunned to be feeling this way, like a teenage girl with a runaway crush. But that is exactly how she feels—giddy and breathless . . . perhaps even a little in love.

  Could that be? Love? After so little time with someone?

  She can’t rememb
er the last time she felt this way. Has she ever felt this way? Maybe. Middle school? A crush on the lead singer in a boy band. But not like this, where it is real. Mark is real.

  The station switches to a song about doing it better in the next thirty years, and she nods along with the lyrics.

  Peanut butter and jelly. Ham and swiss. Fried chicken and waffles. For fifteen years, she has struggled, not understanding what she was doing wrong, all of it so hard. Then, wham, like a shade snapping open, everything suddenly so clear. Chemistry, the simple unique magnetism of two particular organisms toward each other. Yesterday, she and Mark were frothing and fizzing and bubbling all over the place, laughing and having fun and holding each other like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  She leans her head against the window and sighs.

  His son is Ben. His daughter is Shelly. She imagines the dog he and Ben will choose. She hopes they get a puppy, or at least a dog that’s young—the chaos of canine adolescence priceless.

  What would it be like to be a part of it? She and Mattie with Mark and Ben and Shelly and a new dog. The idea is far fetched and outrageous, fanciful and delusional, yet also delicious in the way only outrageous ideas can be. Full of charm and possibility, it flutters in her mind like a butterfly, flittering and flickering until it glows so bright her whole mind is filled with it.

  She thinks of the likelihood of ever finding that kind of magic again. She is thirty-eight, and this is the first time she’s felt it—that’s how narrow the odds: one in a hundred thousand, or maybe a million.

  “You okay?” Grace asks.

  “Fine,” Hadley lies, no longer happy at all.

  They lunch along the Truckee River, a picnic of sandwiches and chips bought from a truck stop a few miles back. The river is beautiful, and they are the only ones on its banks. Miles lies beside her on a beach towel practicing his new talent of rolling over, his adroitness at rolling from his stomach to his back much better than the other way around.

  It is Memorial Day. If she were home, she would be at the beach. Every year, the neighborhood gathers in the community’s private cove to play volleyball, boogie board, barbeque, and—Skipper’s favorite—play Wiffle ball. Frank and Skipper love it. She and Mattie hate it.