by Holly LeCraw
“Oh.” Callie’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Gracie. Oh, baby”—and yet still the beauty of Grace’s smile was hazy, it beat against Callie like a moth softly bumping a screen, did not quite reach her. “Gracie, Gracie,” she said, and finally hugged her because she knew she should, and because she could not look any more at her face. “Gracie.” Her love must exist and she tried to send it to her child but it seemed a heavy package of too-sharp corners, it would not go; she herself was heavy, helpless, and could not give anything, she sat on the bed and laid Grace back down beside her.
There was a knock at the door. “Cal?” She didn’t answer and the door slowly opened. “You decent?” Jed said.
“Yes.” She remembered their script. “As I’ll ever be.”
“What’s wrong?”
“She smiled,” Callie said. “Finally.”
“She did!” Jed swooped down and scooped up the baby. “That’s my girl!” He waltzed her around the room, a huge smile on his own face, and then cradled her in front of him. “Do it again! Yes, my girl—there! There she goes.” He stopped and was quiet a moment, smiling back at Grace. “She’s a genius,” he said.
“Yes,” Callie said. “A little smiling genius.”
“I think she’s going to have blue eyes.”
“Like Mom.”
“Yes,” he said. “Like Mom.” He did not look at Callie. “Hey. Do you want to take a break? Go for a run? Alone?”
“You’re trying to get rid of me?” Callie heard herself say things like this with wonder. A nefarious assistant had taken over her body, one who could imitate her voice, be jaunty and flippant in a way she herself had forgotten. “You just want to get it on with the babysitter,” she said.
“As if.” He raised Grace to his shoulder.
Callie gave him a wicked smile but she herself was lost, she could not feel her own face, these expressions. “Well, I’m leaving Jamie as chaperone,” she said.
“Foiled again.” Jed rolled his eyes elaborately, but she could see he was pleased—he just wanted her to joke, to be her old self. It was all anyone had ever wanted, for her to behave. Surely she could remember how. How to keep the engine of herself running and running. As she walked out of the room her knees almost buckled with fatigue, thinking of how she could not ever let herself stop.
CALLIE LEFT AND THEN, to escape from Toni, Jed took the baby and went for a run himself. Grace dozed off in the jogging stroller, as he had hoped she would, and once she was asleep her peaceful silence seemed to cocoon them both. He went a new route, west toward Yarmouth Port, hoping to avoid Callie, even though he wasn’t sure which way she had gone. He was just guessing. He didn’t see her.
The close muggy air made the sweat stream down his face as he ran. It pleased him. He needed to be alone and to be cleansed.
When he got back, he had a fleeting hope that Toni would have taken Jamie somewhere and the house would be empty—but he heard their voices in the backyard. He almost turned around and ran away again, but he wanted to jump in the pool. He wheeled the stroller down the path to the patio. At first he saw only Toni, spread out on a chair. “Where’s Jamie?” he barked. Toni pointed limply to the sandbox just outside the gate. “Oh,” Jed said. “Hey, bud, you want to go swimming?” Jamie shook his head.
He put the brake on the stroller. With a little luck Grace would be out for another half hour. He walked to the edge of the pool and looked down into the blue. He shouldn’t make a sudden splash, wake the baby—instead he would sink down into the silence, maybe not come up…. He slid into the water. It slipped over him like cool silk. He sighed under water, bubbles gushing from his nostrils, and didn’t rise to the surface until he couldn’t make any more.
Toni had moved to the chair nearest the parked stroller and was sitting up, looking into Grace’s little face. “I want to hold her,” she murmured.
“Leave her be. She’ll wake up soon enough.”
Toni shrank a little. She gestured again at Jamie, who was making revving sounds in the sandbox. “He is way into those trucks,” she said. “I asked him if I could play with him and he said no.” She gave a wounded little smile.
Jed didn’t answer. He heaved himself out of the pool and lay down on a lounge chair without drying off, the water a temporary shield against the heat. He closed his eyes; he was not going to look, again, at Toni’s impossible body. Marcella had never looked like that—she was finer-boned, less sturdy. Less American. If he had met Marcella when she was young—if—not possible—
“I know you think I’m slacking off,” Toni said.
He kept his eyes closed. “No. I really don’t.”
“You do.”
“Toni,” he said, “you have no idea what I think about anything.”
She would be looking back at him openmouthed. He turned over onto his stomach and nestled his head into his folded arms, facing away from her, his eyes still closed. Marcella loved her. They rarely talked of Toni but he had seen Marcella’s face, her eyes, go so soft, glowing, when they had. Marcella had told him to turn around, she had sent him away—
Grow up.
Toni said, “Um, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “I promise.” If only she weren’t there. If he just thought it—go away, go away—
“Um. Is everything okay with Marcie?”
He laughed, in spite of himself. God. “Everything’s fine.”
“That’s good. I guess—things are getting serious?” His eyes still closed, Jed shrugged. “Oh,” she said. “Or not.”
There was another long silence. He felt her waiting. Finally Jed turned his head and sneaked a look at Toni from the shelter of his elbow. Her arms were around one folded leg, her cheek resting on her knee. He had seen Marcella sit just that way. He closed his eyes again. “It’s not really like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Serious, or not. I mean it is serious,” Jed said, wondering why it felt so good to say it out loud. “It is deadly serious. But it’s not going anywhere.”
“Why not?”
“Because it can’t, that’s why.”
He felt Toni trying to think of the right question. Finally she said, “How old is she again?”
Jed hesitated. “Twenty-six.”
“I thought you said twenty-four.”
“I was wrong.”
“And she’s from where?” Toni said.
“Connecticut.”
“I know, but what town?” Toni said, as if this evidence would clarify the impossibility of seriousness.
“I don’t remember,” Jed said. “It doesn’t matter. She’s in Manhattan now.”
“But—”
“It’s just not going to work.” He had never said this out loud either—to whom would he say it? “It can’t ever work,” he repeated, hearing the hardness in his own voice. “Why are you asking me all this stuff?”
He felt he was dancing on the edge of a cliff, and wanted someone to push him over.
“I don’t know,” she said. Finally he opened his eyes again. She was looking at him with a strange mixture of fear, determination, and allure. “Why are you letting me?” she said.
Her eyes were more hazel than Marcella’s. He did not want to notice this. He could almost hear a voice jeering at the edge of his mind—Billy’s, maybe—You could have had this, getting it on with the babysitter, yah, yah, but it was like looking at another country through the wrong end of a telescope, eerily familiar yet completely inaccessible. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the chair. “I guess I’m not,” he said, and forced a smile. He would rather have glared. “I’m done. I’m out of here. Lots of things to do. It’s my fucking vacation—oops. Scratch that.” As soon as he cursed, Toni’s eyes flicked reflexively to the sandbox. Then back to him, panic rising. The gate hung open. Jed looked around. “Where is he?”
Everything in him was stopping, the weird excitement, the ugly black swirl of anger, and then Toni was standing, lo
oking past him. “Stop!” she shrieked, and then behind him there was a splash.
He turned and knew without question that the howling emptiness at the deep end was where Jamie had been standing, and then he was running, only a few steps, more of a leap, and it was odd but he could only feel his feet, first anchoring him to earth and then flexing, pushing, helping him leave it; then he was under water too, his eyes open, swimming down. Jamie was sinking slowly to the bottom, looking dreamy. Jed grabbed his arm, pulled him in; he had not expected him to be so heavy; meanwhile behind him Jed felt another plunge but he ignored it. He had swum all the way to the bottom, they were nine feet down, and he pushed off, all feet again, his lungs were exploding because he had not taken a deep breath before and Jamie was heavy and he could only kick and he seemed not to be moving—but then he felt the fat hollow metal bar of the ladder and that was earth too, and he held Jamie with one arm and pulled himself up with the other and breathed.
Panting, he collapsed into a chair. He was holding Jamie too tightly. “What were you doing?” he cried. “What were you doing? We tell you all the time not to go to the deep end! We tell you all the time!” Jamie was coughing and Jed pounded his back, too hard at first, God, but he had to drive it out of him, any water he had breathed in. He wondered where Callie was and what she would say, and all the things he could not say and could not even think swirled back into a dark seething mass and he shook Jamie and said, “Don’t ever do that again! Do you hear me?”
“Don’t talk to him that way!”
Jed whirled around. Toni was coming up the ladder, her clothes clinging to her, her hair hanging wet on either side of her face. Her eyes looked huge. Under her wet shirt her breasts were high and round and perfect, her nipples hard dots, God, all he could feel for a moment was their firmness on his tongue—God, what was he? What was he? “You were supposed to watch him!” he snarled.
“What about you?” Her face was affronted, amazed.
He let it out, let it go, he was not stopping anything anymore. “It’s your job! It’s your only job! It’s the only reason you’re here!”
Jamie was crying harder and Toni looked at him and her lip trembled. “Buddy,” she crooned, and her arms went out, and to Jed’s amazement Jamie leaned toward her. Jed yanked him back. “I think you should leave,” he said.
“What?”
“You heard me. We’re done here. You can leave. Callie will send you your last check, or whatever. That’s it. We’re done. Get out.”
Over in the stroller, he saw the flail of a little hand, and realized Grace was awake. He would have to pick her up too. But his arms were full of Jamie, and he would not put him down. Toni made a move to the stroller, and it was all Jed could do not to bare his teeth at her. She stepped back. She said, “Callie’s my boss. I want to talk to her.” She lifted her chin and he saw it—Marcella, squaring her shoulders, her face set, the gesture he’d never called pride or stubbornness but rather bravery. It was the same movement and for a moment Toni was Marcella before him and his heart leaped but then she was not.
Grace began to cry, tuning up the way she did when she was hungry. Toni looked toward her, agonized, and Jed saw how easy it would be for him to back down, how quickly Toni would forgive him. But he stood up, clutching Jamie, his wet round head against his cheek. He stepped in front of the stroller, blocking Toni’s view, and whispered, “I’m not kidding. Please get out. Please just go.”
WHEN MARCELLA HUNG UP she found herself literally counting the days. It was Wednesday, he had left on Monday—would she see him Friday?
But he had fired Toni.
He had been contrite, telling her, but she saw that he assumed forgiveness. And she was about to give it to him, to say, Darling, I understand—but then she took a breath, cleared her mind. “You are apologizing to the wrong person,” she said.
She felt his moment of surprise. “I know,” he said. “But—I can’t have her around anymore. I can’t.”
Marcella didn’t answer. She had never been angry at him before, never. It seemed a very long time since she had been angry at anyone. “You were rash,” she said. “She did nothing wrong.”
“Maybe. But it’s done. You don’t understand—it’s better.”
She did not want to think about what he was saying. “I am hanging up now,” she said.
She knew she shouldn’t call the Mashantum house, she was a bad liar. She picked up the phone.
It was Anthony who smoothed the way—something, she knew, he would have been very surprised to learn. He immediately said, “So, are you calling about our daughter’s latest escapade?” She almost said yes—oh, she was no good at this. She pressed her lips together. “Marcella? Are you there?”
“Escapade?” she said.
“Apparently,” Anthony said, “she almost let the little McClatchey boy drown. Jed McClatchey very sensibly fired her on the spot.”
“Oh, now, Anthony, surely she didn’t mean—” Marcella stopped herself. She did not want to say too much.
“It doesn’t matter what she meant or didn’t mean,” Anthony said. Marcella imagined the regular, handsome lines of his face. Every time she spoke to him, it confused her, even now—hearing the voice of a person who was once hers, his tones and verbal gestures as familiar as her own clothes. She heard now that he was furious and also somehow fearful, the fear itself making him angrier. “I’m glad she’s out of there,” Anthony was saying, “do not mistake me. But not this way.” There was a silence. “Marcella?” he said, impatiently. “Here. Talk to her yourself.”
“Hi, Mom,” came a small, sullen voice. In the background, Marcella heard footsteps going away, and a door slamming.
“Darling,” she began, and was astonished to hear Toni start to cry.
“He’s been awful,” she said.
“Jed?”
“No, Dad. He said how could I—did he tell you what happened?”
“You tell me,” said Marcella, and Toni gave an account remarkably similar to Jed’s, repeating over and over, I should have been watching. Marcella felt herself relaxing with an unfamiliar pride. She had been afraid—no, sure—that Toni would lie, not accept responsibility—why was that? When had she decided to have no faith in her own child? “Darling, how scary,” she said. “But it sounds like nothing. The little boy is all right.”
“He—Dad—he said it was unforgivable—but it was only a second—I jumped in too—”
“I know, cara.”
“And Jed was awful. Do you—do you think it’s unforgivable? What I did?”
“Of course not. Most things are forgivable,” she said.
For a moment she could hear only ragged breathing. “I’m sorry,” Toni sobbed.
“Honey, you don’t have to apologize to me.”
“I mean, that I can’t talk—he—Mom, he hates me. Jed hates me. It wasn’t just today. That’s why he fired me. He can’t even stand to be with me.”
Fury and guilt crowded Marcella’s chest. “He was very unfair. But he couldn’t hate you, darling.”
“Damnit, Mom, he does! And I don’t know why! And I—I guess you knew I didn’t hate him—” Toni tried to laugh, but it came out as a hiccup. “I can’t stop thinking about him.”
Marcella heard herself say, “I am coming there.”
“Here?”
“Yes. I am coming to see you.”
“No—I mean, I could go there—but Dad said I have to go out tomorrow and look for another job—and that’s just stupid, he knows that it’s, like, August—I swear, Mom, sometimes he isn’t rational. And he won’t let me take the car—”
“Cara, I am coming there.” She might see Jed. She might see him on the street, on the beach. She would have to turn away. “Right now.”
Toni tried again to laugh, this time more successfully. “What, are you coming to beat him up?”
“Your father?”
“Jed. You’d fight him for me, right?”
“Carina,” Marcella said, “I
’d do anything for you.”
III
It started one day when Callie was standing in the analgesics aisle of the drugstore, Grace beside her on the floor in her carrier. Callie was having trouble remembering what she had come for, but instead of feeling hopeless, as she did these days at the sign of any small failing, she instead felt a blip of strength, almost of comfort, at the sensation of being surrounded by the fruits of modern medicine, something like a book lover would feel standing in the stacks of a library. All the boxes and bottles before her. All the antidotes to pain.
Then she remembered: Jed had asked her to get ibuprofen. She took down a box, but instead of putting it in her shopping basket she held it for a moment. The box was a pleasing shape, like a very small present. It fit well in her hand. She shook it and it rattled slightly, like a toy, muffled by the cotton packing. She tossed it into her basket, and then she saw near it another medicine, one she had seen advertised on TV—a new one that lasted a long time, that was extra strength, revolutionary. It was right in front of her. She looked to her right and her left—she was alone. She took the largest size off the shelf. What would she do with it? It was like a weapon. It was a substitute for the weapons she really wanted, the lethal ones that haunted her dreams like lovers. She knew that this bottle of pills would really do nothing to her, and yet the size of it—five hundred capsules—surely that was worth something? She put this one, also, in her basket. She scanned the aisle and, since she was still alone, chose several more—things she could drink, things she could chew. She knew it all meant nothing and yet she felt a strange, illicit power.
After that, she visited the drugstore often. She accumulated a box of pills that she kept high in her closet, away from Jamie. They seemed as shiny as plastic jewels, treasured, worthless bits that a child might collect—dull nickels, bird feathers, odd-shaped rocks that she could count over and over. She knew, too, that she could accomplish nothing with any of it, that it was a child’s solution to a problem. And then one day it struck her, the thing she had known already, that had been waiting patiently to be found. A different thing. There was a bottle in the medicine chest, it had been there all along—pills from the hospital, from her emergency C-section, the ones she hadn’t taken because adrenaline had made her impervious, she had thought, to pain. The small brown bottle was still almost full. She took it from its ordinary place and buried it in the box of aspirin and Tylenol and cough syrup like a nugget of gold.