They finished the meal. No one wanted any apple pie. Grace let the others clear the table and set the dishes to soak. She was done with them and with trying to make them behave. Her father offered to give them some of the leftovers. No one wanted them either. It was early dark by now and Grace went out to the car and started it and turned the lights on, waiting for the others.
Michael and Les came out together and got in without speaking. They seemed to recognize the extent of her mood. Les turned the radio on, then off again. She drove to Michael’s, or rather, to the house of the friend he was now staying with, having had to move on from the previous friend’s. This friend’s house was in the seedier part of campus, a district of houses allowed to run down until only students of the most careless sort would live in them, moving in and out every few months. A string of blue Christmas lights sagged across the front porch. One of the downstairs rooms showed lights behind the curtain, or rather, the piece of fabric stretched across the window. Grace wasn’t sure who lived there. Somebody in the band, she thought. The place had the look of a musical crash pad. Michael opened the car door but didn’t get out. “So, anyway . . .”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Grace said, and Michael told Les it was good to meet him and Les said the same. Michael got out and they watched him go down the walk and up the front steps. The door opened and admitted him and then closed again.
“Are you mad at me too?” Les asked. They were circling back from the residential neighborhoods through campus itself, its streets quiet for the holiday and its enormous redbrick buildings vacant under the glare of anticrime lights. It looked like a civilization that had suffered some plague or other catastrophe, everything intact but abandoned.
“No, I’m not mad at you. I’m not related to you.”
They left campus behind. Les’s street was one of those the city had tried and failed to call Old Town. It had never caught on. It was a district of workingmen’s cottages and newer, but still elderly, single-family homes, interrupted by the occasional apartment building, like Les’s, where a developer had fought the zoning code and won. Grace parked the car at the curb, stopped the engine, and got out.
“You’re coming in,” Les observed, shutting the car door behind him.
She was. She followed him up to the front door and into a small lobby with a number of metal mailboxes on the wall. He worked the lock to an inner door and stood aside to let her enter. He said he lived on the second floor. They climbed a short flight of concrete stairs. Like all such buildings it had an industrial look to it, although that had to do with budget, not design. Les unlocked the apartment door, saying something about things being sort of a mess, he wasn’t exactly an A1 housekeeper.
“I don’t care,” Grace said, and she didn’t. She waited for him to switch on the lights in the living room with its oversized television and shapeless upholstered couch. There was a small kitchen behind it. A weight bench was set up in one corner. The heavy denim jacket he usually wore was draped over a chair.
“Bathroom,” Les said, walking down a small passage. He switched on another wall light. “Bedroom.”
A queen bed took up most of the space. It was made up with a plaid cotton spread of the sort that people bought for young boys’ rooms, that is, with nothing about it that could be accused of being too decorative or girly. Grace took off her coat and hung it on the doorknob. She sat down on the bed and bent to remove her boots and socks. She pulled her sweater overhead, unhooked her bra, and tossed them aside. Les said, “Whoa.” She stood up enough to unzip her pants and pull them and her panties over her hips and kick her ankles free of them. You were supposed to ask about condoms at this point but she had reached the limits of her nerve, getting this far, and she didn’t trust herself to speak.
Les was already out of his shirt and working at his belt buckle. His chest was narrow and unmuscular but deeply furred. “You want a drink or anything?” She shook her head. “Then move your ass over.”
When he was out of his clothes he said, “So now you know what I look like and I know what you look like.” Naked, he was even skinnier, all collarbones and knees and elbows. His penis looked small but it wasn’t yet hard. Now he lowered himself onto her and rubbed himself against her.
When he tried to kiss her, she turned her head away. “No? How about here?”
He lowered his mouth to one breast and sucked at the nipple. When he drew away he said, approvingly, “Getting hard,” and turned his attention to her other breast. With his head below hers she saw how thin the gray hair was, pulled tight over the bare scalp, and the very ugliness of the sight was part of what aroused her, along with the shock of what she was doing, the very last thing she would have expected of herself, which was probably why she wanted it.
His hand was between her legs and his fingers entered her, pushing hard, and she wanted that too, she wanted nothing gentle or skilled, just insistence and shame. When he lowered his head to use his mouth and tongue on her, she tried to push him away. It was too much, she was too self-conscious and it never worked, but he had her pinned down so there was no escaping, and then it did begin to work. Always before when she came it was a matter of focus and effort and a sense of pushing through a barrier. Now it was like something pulled out of her against her will.
“You make a lot of noise,” he told her. “Who would have thought you’re that kind. You need a rest? Then it’s my turn.”
How brief it was, this respite, and how quickly the rest of her life rushed back in to fill the blessed empty space she’d made with her body. She closed her eyes and felt him shifting his weight, changing position, and she readied herself for what would be required of her. Who would have thought she was this kind. But she had hardly escaped any part of her life at all, even for a moment. Because she would never manage to break free from her family or cast off its legacy of unhappy women.
VI. GRACE
The week before Christmas, Grace met her father for lunch at a franchise Italian restaurant, the kind of place that was one big commercial for itself. Lunch had been her idea, this particular restaurant her father’s. There were placards on easels, full-color, oversized representations of food that wanted nothing more than to be devoured. The servers wore signs below their name tags, ASK ME ABOUT OUR SHRIMP SPECIALS! The menu was composed of so many choices, so many combos and platters, so many adjectives and yummy options, it either inflamed appetite or bewildered it, as it did for Grace. It would feel like sitting down to eat paper pictures of food.
Her father was late. Grace waited by the entrance, occupying her attention with the restaurant’s holiday decorations. There were evergreen garlands set with twinkle lights. A Della Robbia–style wreath of fruit, groupings of red candles, silver bells. She’d always loved Christmas decorations, even the impersonal commercial variety like these. She’d driven past her parents’ house one night last week. Her father had not put up any sort of Christmas lights or items. She hadn’t really expected him to but she’d wanted to see it for herself, so as to get over anything sentimental or wounded.
Here was her father, coming in with the cold day at his back, looking around for her. The entrance was crowded and he didn’t see her until she stood up and waved at him. “Gracie, sorry, they dragged me into a conference room just when I was trying to get away.”
“No problem, they’re just now getting to us on the list.” The place was mystifyingly popular, or maybe there was no mystery, just advertising. Once they were seated in a booth in one of the noisy side rooms, once they’d gotten out of their winter coats and had the oversized menus under control, they sat back and smiled at each other, as if willing away their miserable awkwardness. Before her mother died, Grace couldn’t remember the last time she and her father had gone out on their own together, for lunch or for anything else.
“You look good,” her father pronounced, and Grace said thanks, and that he did too. Although he didn’t, especially. He seemed distracted, skittish, as if he expected to be in
terrupted or called away. He might have had a cold or something else that had inflamed his nose and turned his skin blotchy. They had not seen each other since Thanksgiving. Unless one of them made some effort, today’s lunch might be their Christmas.
They studied the menus. When the waitress came, Grace ordered minestrone and a salad. Her father said he’d try the sausage rigatoni. Grace dug into the shopping bag she’d brought. “This is for you,” she said, handing over a wrapped package. “And here, cookies. I made some of them and some came from the store’s bakery.”
“Thanks, honey. Should I open it now? No, I want to save it.”
“Sure, you can open it later.” It was a watch, the kind with annoying features that registered your heart rate and allowed other people to track you down. It was something he didn’t yet have. It was the sort of gift her mother would have bought for him.
He looked embarrassed. “I was going to write checks for you and your brother. I’m not feeling the holiday vibe, you know?”
“That’s fine, Dad.” It wasn’t fine.
“It’s been a hell of a year.”
“It absolutely has.”
“You keep thinking you’re back on track and then, pow, right in the kisser.”
The waitress brought bread sticks, hot, puffy fingers of dough, and some dipping sauces. Grace put one on her plate but didn’t eat it. Her father said, “How’s your friend, you know, the one I met?”
“Les? He’s fine too.” He wasn’t fine. Pow, right in the kisser.
“You’re not encouraging him, I hope.” Grace gave him a withering look and her father raised his hands in protest. “Never mind, just asking. It’s hard not to have an opinion.”
“Yeah, but it’s not that hard to keep it to yourself.”
“Forget I said anything. I guess I’ll help myself to some of these fine bread sticks.”
Two days ago Les had called while Grace was still at work, trying to get her to come over. “I can’t, you know I’m working.”
“Tell them your boyfriend needs a blow job.”
“You’re not my boyfriend.”
“Well, he probably needs a blow job too.”
She’d made some excuse and gone to his apartment. She thought that something was wrong with her, perhaps it had always been wrong and it was just now surfacing.
Her father asked her how work was, and Grace said it had been busy, and her father complained that his work was impossible, really, they wanted the impossible from him. He had been complaining about work for as long as Grace could remember. But then, the only thing she ever said about her own work was, busy. “How’s Michael?” her father asked, as if it was a casual question, and Grace said that she didn’t know. “Well, if you see him, tell him to give me a call, OK?”
“You can’t call him yourself?”
“You know how things are,” her father said vaguely. And she did.
Whose fault was it? Each blamed the other. The two of them were warring states, bound up in their historic grievances. How long had it been going on? Probably ever since her father looked at Michael and saw him as a reproach. They were too much alike, as Grace’s mother said, and it was both their similarities and their differences that irritated them and set them against each other, each reflecting back at the other an imperfect version of himself.
“Just tell him to call. No big deal.”
“I don’t like being put in the middle of things.”
“It’s better if it comes from you,” he said, and Grace knew this was true.
She said, carefully, “Maybe if you weren’t drinking when you talked to him.”
“Excuse me, what’s this in my glass? Iced tea.”
“All right.”
“You make it sound like I’m the one who wrecked the car and got arrested and had to be hauled off to the rehab ranch.”
“All right, never mind.”
“You want to worry about somebody, worry about him. I’m just hoping he’s OK.” Her father looked around the room, taking note of the other tables. “You’d think we’d have our food by now. Everybody else does.”
At least there were times that one or both of them, her father or brother, had these tentative impulses, hoping to blunder into some kind of reconciliation. At least they had the peculiar and intimate connection of their long hostility.
Because Grace had no such bond and never had. Not with any of them. Something was wrong with her, and perhaps it had always been wrong.
Their food arrived. Her father’s pasta was an enormous piggy portion, immobilized by melted cheese. He offered her a bite. “Oh, sorry, forgot. Vegetarian.” Grace’s soup had been revived by a microwave and was too hot to eat. She tried one spoonful and scalded her tongue.
She started in on her salad. It was hard to taste anything. She felt pointlessly sad, the way she had been sad as an adolescent, without any one particular reason and with no cure for it, unless the reason was the falsity of everything around her: the facsimile of family, the approximation of holiday cheer, the impersonation of Italian food.
One thing you could say about Les Moore and their often brutal sexual usage of each other: it didn’t pretend to be anything other than what it was. He knew what she looked like and she knew what he looked like. Yin and yang. “I guess you’re not so much better than me after all,” he said, and she guessed that was true. She did not deserve anything better.
How was Michael? Grace had not really wanted to know, even as she tried to find out. The times she’d attempted to reach him by phone, her messages and texts weren’t returned. Screw him, but that didn’t get her off the hook. She wasn’t sure where Michael was living, or rather, sleeping. There wasn’t any news of the band that she could track. Either they weren’t getting any bookings, or else they had broken up and reformed under a different name, as happened often enough. Every so often one of Michael’s friends would show up at the food store, or she’d run into them around town and she’d ask about him.
The friends were always noncommittal. Yeah, he was OK. He was keeping busy with the music. He was staying in this place or maybe that one. They weren’t sure. Grace couldn’t tell if they were covering for him, protecting him, or they just weren’t paying attention. Grace tried his Facebook page but he hadn’t touched it in months. How worried should she be? Maybe he just needed a break from family. That wasn’t so hard to imagine.
She and her father finished their meal. Her father said that his pasta had been pretty good. A place like this, you always knew what you were going to get. There were some nights he called in a dinner order and picked it up on the way home from work. He said it was a nice break from his own cooking. “Well, it’s not cooking, not really. Lots of microwave action.”
“Yeah, I can believe that.”
“There’s that whole big kitchen that hardly gets any use.”
“Uh-huh.” She was thinking about Thanksgiving.
“You could move back in. Put it to good use.”
“You don’t like my food, remember?” It occurred to her that he was serious. “No,” Grace said, shaking her head. “Honestly, no.”
“Why not? I’ve been thinking about it. It would save you money. There’s plenty of space. Come and go as you please.”
“No Dad.” It seemed incredible that he should ask. “I like where I am now. I like my privacy.” Privacy being the excuse of last resort.
“Just consider it. That’s all I’m asking.”
“You know what’s a better idea? Michael.”
“Michael is never a better idea.”
“All right, but don’t pester me about this. I don’t want to move.”
“Look, you’re not married, you don’t seem like you’re on track to get married anytime soon—”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Take it easy, I only meant, you haven’t settled down. It’s been all right up until now to live in some crummy apartment—”
“It’s not crummy.”
&nbs
p; “—so maybe, now don’t get me wrong, you could still get married and have children of your own, nothing would make me happier, and you’re a very attractive girl. But time marches on, you know? And men don’t always go for the headstrong types.”
“You think I’m an old maid?”
“Did I say that? Maybe you’re just one of those modern women who goes her own way. So you might want a little more comfort. Stability. You might want to consider that.”
“God.”
“We could help each other out.”
“No,” Grace said, and they stared at each other across the table. She saw how needy, sad, and infuriating he was. How he would always go about everything wrong. And what did he see when he looked at her?
That was the end of their talking, although it would take more words for them to get themselves up from the table and walk out of the restaurant and away from each other.
* * *
“What’s the matter?” Les asked her the next time they were together. He’d gotten out of bed to find a cigarette, and turned to look at her. “Don’t say ‘nothing.’ ”
“I don’t know. Everything.”
“Not much of a clue.”
“Do men not like independent women? Smart women?”
“What brought that on?”
Grace shook her head. Nothing. Everything.
“Well I’ll tell you the awful truth, you can get away with more when you have stupid whore girlfriends like I mostly had. Of course you have to tell them what to do every minute, and that gets old.”
It served her right for asking. Stupid whore girlfriends; who talked like that?
“But hey, you’re not like them. You’ve got brains, I respect that.”
“Maybe I’m not as smart as I thought I was.” She was about to complain that her job was not anything that required much intelligence, but stopped herself. It was complicated, complaining to a man who worked in a factory, which you might look down on, except that he earned much more money than she did. Of course, working at the health food store wasn’t meant to be a way of life for her. She was supposed to advance to something more high-powered. Except that she gave no indication of doing so anytime soon.
A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl Page 26