Joel looked at Grace and gently squeezed her hand under the table. He sent a signal that it was finally OK for her to tell her story, her new story – a compelling blend of truth and fiction that had been created and finely tuned over the past week.
"I'm still looking for work," Grace said. "Right now I'm taking care of a relative who lives in the university district. She's been kind enough to offer me room and board until I find a job."
"What do you want to do?" Rachel asked.
"I'd like to eventually get into teaching, or perhaps work in a public library. I may take some classes at the university this fall."
"What did you do in Oregon? Did you grow up there?" Rachel asked. "Your accent sounds vaguely foreign, like Australian or South African or something."
"It's more like something. I've lived most of my life overseas. My parents were missionaries. My mother was English. Some of it rubbed off."
"When you say were and was . . . do you mean to say that they are no longer living?"
"They were killed by a drunk driver a few years ago. When they died, I went to Portland to live with an elderly friend and her husband. They more or less raised me until I could live on my own."
Rachel covered her open mouth with an open hand.
"That is awful. I am so sorry."
"Thank you. It was difficult at first, but I found a way to manage."
"Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
"No. It's just me."
Rachel shook her head.
"Do you have any friends in Seattle?"
"I have Joel."
Rachel gazed empathetically at Joel Smith's new Number One. She set her menu to the side, reached across the table, and grabbed Grace's hand.
"Well, you have more than Joel now. You have another friend right here. If you ever want to get out and have some girl time, just let me know. I'll show you around this town."
Grace smiled.
"Thank you. That means a lot."
Rachel withdrew her hand, grabbed her wine glass, and raised it high.
"To new friends."
"To new friends," Grace said.
The women clinked their glasses.
Rachel took a sip and gave her new friend a warm smile. The female bonding was complete. She then turned toward Moneybags and gave him a frosty glance.
"What?" Joel asked. "What did I do?"
"You've done nothing yet – and it had better stay that way."
Adam grinned.
"You'd better hold on to this one, Joel Smith, and you'd better treat her right," Rachel said.
She glared at Joel.
"Or you'll have me to deal with."
CHAPTER 23: GRACE
Thursday, August 10, 2000
Grace glared at the ugly plant and wished it a violent death. She had stabbed it at least three times with a Cape Cod weeding tool but had failed on each occasion to pull it free from a vegetable garden owned and sometimes operated by Francis and Cynthia Smith.
Cindy laughed as she approached the hired help.
"I take it you didn't garden much as a girl."
"I didn't garden much, period."
Cindy gave her helper a curious smile.
"That's odd. I thought all children played in gardens. How did you spend your youth?"
Grace gave Joel's mother a surly look.
"I attended Bible school," she snapped.
Cindy laughed again.
"Oh, dear," she said. "And I thought Joel had it rough."
The older woman grabbed the garden instrument and quickly removed a weed that had pushed its way between two rows of peas. She tackled a second intruder and then a third.
"It's really easy when you get the hang of it."
Grace looked at Cindy Smith with awe and affection. She saw not only a kind and giving mother who had raised the man she loved but an older incarnation of the college friend she had left behind. She saw both Joel and Ginny in this remarkable woman.
"I think I'll stick to harvesting," Grace said. "It doesn't require any special skill."
Cindy smiled.
"OK. You do that. You finish the peas while I pick through the zucchinis."
Grace returned to her peas but didn't harvest more than a few before she stopped. She wiped dirt from her jeans and glanced again at her gardening instructor.
"Mrs. Smith, can I ask you a question?"
Cindy threw a weed in a nearby bucket and turned toward Grace.
"Of course you can," she said. "You can ask me anything you want, so long as you call me Cindy. Only the paperboy calls me Mrs. Smith."
"OK," Grace said. She took a deep breath. "What was Joel like as a boy?"
Cindy placed her weeding tool on the ground and motioned to Grace to come her way.
"Come over here. Let's sit on the bench. I don't want to have this conversation sitting on my knees."
The two women got up from the ground and sat on a wrought-iron-and-pine bench that abutted a five-foot cedar fence. The fence encircled a large landscaped lot and an even more impressive redbrick Georgian mansion in Seattle's Madison Park neighborhood.
"That's much better," Cindy said.
She removed a pair of gardening gloves and settled into one end of the large and surprisingly comfortable seat. A bright sun broke through the clouds, providing welcome warmth on what had been an unusually cool summer morning.
"You want to know what Joel was like as a boy? Well, I'll tell you. He was hell on wheels, that's what. He was a handful from the day he was born."
Grace smiled.
"I suspected as much."
"Don't get me wrong. He was a good boy, but he never played by the rules."
"He got into trouble?"
"He looked for trouble."
"Can you share some stories?"
"Oh, I can share plenty."
Grace beamed.
"I'm listening."
"Let's see," Cindy said. She sighed and looked away for a moment, as if trying to recall the greatest of Joel Smith's Greatest Hits. "I remember that his grade-school years were fun."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, in the fifth grade, for example, Joel went through a phase where he thought cats and dogs should have the right to roam free, like animals in national parks. This was after he saw The Adventures of Milo and Otis. So one day after school, when most people were still at work, he went around the neighborhood and opened the gates to dozens of yards. He must have liberated fifty dogs."
Grace brought a hand to her mouth and stifled a laugh.
"Then there was his stab at collective bargaining. When he was fourteen, he organized a strike against a teacher who had given him too much homework. It was so bad at one point that the principal had to intervene."
Cindy stretched her legs and extended her arm along the top of the bench.
"He also gave officials a fit at Westlake. When he was a junior, he insisted on taking three girls – all cheerleaders from another high school – to homecoming. Students could not bring dates from other schools unless they had first obtained permission. It was a rule that had been in place since at least the 1960s, when I went there. But Joel just ignored it and made a big stink when the dance chaperones stopped him at the door. He argued that bringing more than one date to a dance was as morally just as having more than one wife. He even cited Scripture."
Grace tried to keep it together as she reeled with laughter. She could picture each and every episode. They were totally in keeping with the Joel Smith she knew.
Cindy put a hand on Grace's shoulder.
"As I said, he's been a handful. But he's a good boy. He has a good heart," she said, "and I know for a fact that he loves you very much. I've never seen him like he is now."
Grace nodded. She knew what Cindy said was true, but she didn't mind hearing it – just as she didn't mind hearing the terrible tales from Joel's past. They were all a part of a man who was now center stage in her life. Grace smiled to herself. She and Joel had even atte
nded the same high school, nearly sixty years apart. How amazing was that?
"I know. He's changed a lot even in the short time I've known him. He's much more serious and thoughtful," Grace said. "I think that's a good thing."
Cindy smiled at Grace for a moment, looked away, and then returned to her with a more reflective expression. She too apparently had something on her mind.
"Now that I've filled you in about my terror of a son," she said, "perhaps you can return the favor and tell me about someone who has always been a mystery to me."
"Who's that?"
"My mother."
Grace lowered her eyes. She should have seen this coming. She knew from conversations with Joel that Virginia Gillette Jorgenson had been fiercely protective about her past. Ginny had apparently shared little about her college days, even with the people she had loved the most.
"What would you like to know?"
"I'd like to know everything. What was she like? Was she popular? Did she do well in school? Did she have many boyfriends? Did you two get along? What was Tom Carter like?"
Grace sighed.
"You ask a lot of questions. I hope I can answer them all."
"Take your time. I'm not going anywhere."
"Ginny was my best friend, Mrs. Smith . . . Cindy. She was my roommate and my mentor. She was the sister I never had. I trusted her implicitly. One of the hardest things about leaving the past was leaving her. I still miss her."
Cindy looked away as moisture formed in her eyes.
"As for the rest, yes, she was popular. She was admired and respected not only by students and faculty but also by men in the community. I'll never forget the time she gave me a tour of the newsroom of the Sun. The male editors and reporters treated her with the kind of deference that was rare in those days. I think they knew that she was going to amount to something someday."
"What about Tom?" Cindy asked.
"Has Joel told you much about him?"
"No. He's kept to himself about the past. I think he wants to protect me from things that might prove upsetting. As you can see, though, I'm more than capable of handling the truth."
"Tom Carter was a good man," Grace said. "He was kind and funny and generous and he loved Ginny even more than I did, which is saying a lot. But he was also troubled. He fretted constantly about the war and being drafted. He was afraid that if he were ever called to fight he would not measure up to other men. He didn't want to let Ginny down."
"I understand he was friends with Joel."
"They were best friends," Grace said. "Joel saved Tom from some bullies his first day in Seattle and Tom rewarded him by taking him home. Mel Carter gave him a job and a place to stay. Before long, Joel and Tom were inseparable. They were a joy to watch."
Grace put a hand on Cindy's knee.
"Tom Carter was more than just a decent man and Ginny's fiancé. He was the glue that kept our circle of friends together," Grace said. "He's the person who introduced me to your son, Mrs. Smith. He's the reason I'm here."
CHAPTER 24: GRACE
Sunday, August 20, 2000
They left the little house with loaded stomachs and expanded minds, thanks in part to Penelope Price. The old woman had served a delicious roast to Grace and Joel and then talked their heads off for more than two hours on the subjects of politics, baseball, and street crime.
Grace smiled to herself as she thought of her new friend, employer, landlord, and cousin. Penelope had been good to her, very good to her. She wondered how she would ever repay a stranger who had kindly and needlessly kept her off the streets.
"I like her," Joel said. "I see why you like her too. She reminds me a lot of Ginny just before she died. Nobody fusses over food like that anymore."
"She's lonely," Grace said. "She sees her daughter several times a week, but it's not enough. She needs daily contact. She needs someone living in her house. That's why I came back. I wanted to take care of her. I wanted to repay her for the kindness she'd shown me."
Joel threw his arm around Grace as they stopped on a street corner and waited for traffic to pass. Having come directly to Penelope's from church, each was overdressed for a long walk through the university district. Joel wore a button-down shirt and khaki slacks, Grace a pink dress she had picked up in Portland.
"Where do you want to go?" Joel asked.
"Let's just wander. I like not knowing how a walk will end."
"Then let's do what Katie liked to do in college. Let's go north and east and then south. Let's walk through the campus and see if we can scare up a few ghosts."
The stroll through the university did indeed bring back memories. When she approached the education building a half hour into the walk, Grace thought of all the friends and acquaintances she had made studying to be a teacher. She had loved her time here, even if that time now seemed impossibly distant and largely irrelevant to her present circumstances.
She knew that if she wanted to become a teacher in the twenty-first century, she would have to start college from scratch. She doubted that she would be able to credibly claim credit for coursework completed during the Roosevelt Administration.
"Do you miss it?" Joel asked.
"Do you mean the campus?"
"I mean all of it: the campus, your classes, your friends, 1941."
Grace grabbed his hand and pulled him next to a large oak tree, a tree that towered above the sidewalk and provided much-needed shade on a day when the mercury climbed above eighty. When they reached the base of the oak, she put a hand to his face.
"I miss familiar things," she said. "I miss people I knew, people I loved. I miss the slower pace. I miss a world where people actually talked to each other and didn't spend most of their day interacting on electronic devices that I'll probably never understand. But I don't regret leaving. Following you was the best decision I ever made."
Grace studied Joel's reaction and saw that he was pleased.
He smiled, kissed her gently, and held her tightly under the tree for fifteen blissful minutes. He seemed as happy and contented as she had ever seen him.
As they continued their stroll through the campus, however, Grace noticed subtle changes. Joel smiled less and spoke less. He started to fidget. He displayed little interest in the buildings, shops, and public places they had often visited – even the Phoenician Theater.
Grace found this surprising. The Phoenician, a Prohibition-era colossus that occupied nearly an entire block on the Ave, had been the source of many pleasant memories. They had gone on several dates here and seen movies ranging from Road to Zanzibar to Citizen Kane.
It was here, in the now dilapidated theater's balcony, that they had escaped their troubles and judgmental minds and fallen in love. This is where a friendship had taken a wonderful turn.
"This is another thing I miss: the movies," Grace said. "I can't tell you how much I enjoyed coming here. This place isn't much now, but it holds so many memories."
"It does," Joel said, increasing his verbal output of the past five minutes by two words.
As they walked northward along the Ave, toward the intersection with Forty-Seventh Street, Grace again noticed that Joel seemed withdrawn. She watched his face, which bore a serious expression, and then his right hand, which he had stuck in his pants pocket. He moved his hand in and out of the pocket, as if reaching for something that had fallen through a hole.
Grace grabbed his left hand and led him toward a bench near a corner that was all but sacred ground. She had first laid eyes on him here, as a college junior celebrating her twenty-first birthday with Katie and a group of sorority sisters.
She had greeted the unkempt stranger with a friendly wave as she waited to cross the busy street. He had responded by touching his hat. Within weeks, the unlikely pair from different eras and backgrounds would be inseparable.
"Let's sit," Grace said. "I'm tired and could use a rest, particularly a rest on a bench that has such sentimental value."
Grace sat down on the bench, drop
ped her purse to the side, and turned her head when she heard a car honk in the background. Leave it to an impatient cab driver, she thought, to spoil the tranquility of a near-perfect summer afternoon.
Sensing that Joel had not yet joined her on the bench, Grace asked him to sit even before turning away from the honk-happy cabbie on Forty-Seventh. She blindly reached for him, fully expecting to place her hand on the tall, dark-haired man who had escorted her through the streets of northeast Seattle. But instead of a handful of Joel, she got a handful of air.
When she turned to face the missing man, she found him not on the bench or standing in front of her but rather down on one knee. He wore the face of a man on a mission.
Joel reached into his right pants pocket and retrieved a gray velvet box. He opened the box and pushed it toward Grace as if offering her some sort of compensation for nearly an hour of what some women might call emotional neglect.
Grace knew, however, that this was more than a spur of the moment gesture. She had been a participant in a similar scene once before, on May 31, 1941, when a Navy ensign named Paul McEwan had dropped to the same knee. She smiled at Joel but didn't get a chance to speak. He cut her off the second her mouth opened.
"Don't say a word, Grace – not yet."
Tipping slightly to one side, Joel put his free hand to the ground to regain his balance. He then placed the same hand on Grace's knee and resumed where he had left off. Two college-age couples watched and smiled in the distance.
"You know the importance of this bench, Grace. This is where we met. This is where my life changed. This is where we started, and it's where I want to start again."
Grace glanced quickly at the four witnesses in the background. One of the young women covered her mouth with arched hands. The other pointed toward the bench with her eyes and then glared at her male companion, as if to tell him, "That's how it's done." The young men simply nodded and smiled. When Grace returned to Joel, he was in full proposal mode.
"I can't promise you perfection. I can't promise you riches. Hell, I can't even promise I'll make my car payment next month. But I can promise you one thing: I will love you, I will honor you, and I will cherish you until the day I die."
The Show (Northwest Passage Book 3) Page 10