State of Grace

by Sandra Moran

  I raised my eyes to look at her. She was hunched forward, her curls obscuring her face. I watched as she raised her hand to her mouth and then, resisting the temptation to chew on the nail, returned it to her lap.

  “I dream about her at night,” she said.

  “What do you dream?” I shifted uncomfortably, unsure if I really wanted to hear.

  “I dream about all of us together at the Nest.” She laughed. “Do you remember how hard it was getting all those boards up into the tree? You had the hammer and Grace and I would tie the boards onto that rope and pull them up to you so you could nail them into place?”

  I smiled at the memory. “You guys had blisters on your hands from the rope. And you complained for weeks.”

  Natalie nodded. “But not Grace.”

  “She never complained,” I said and then exhaled slowly. “If she had, we might have been able to help her.”

  Natalie looked quickly up at me. Her brown eyes were wide. Rather than speak, she reached out for my hand and I grasped it, clutched it even. Her palms were hot and moist, though I wasn’t sure if it was from the heat of the day or our conversation. The freckles stood out in stark contrast to her pale skin and I found myself mesmerized by their randomness. It was only when I heard her sniff that I realized she was crying. I looked at her and longed to hug her. For some reason, though, I couldn’t make my body move to comfort her.

  We were both silent for several minutes, Natalie crying and me staring off into space. The birds twittered on the branches above us, and from my mother’s flower garden came the quiet hum of the bees.

  I was the one to break the silence. “Where do you think she is?”

  “Heaven,” Natalie said automatically. “The Bible says she’s in heaven, looking down on us, watching over us.”

  “But how do you know that?” I asked quickly.

  Natalie frowned and shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. It’s just what happens when you die. You go to heaven with God and his angels.”

  I tried to imagine Grace in heaven, on a cloud with angels and a smiling, grandfatherly man with a long, white beard. “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully.

  “The Bible says so,” Natalie insisted. “You just don’t believe it because your Mom doesn’t believe in God. It’s true, though. There is a heaven. And she’s there.”

  “I want to believe it,” I said. “I just . . . I don’t know. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “I don’t like it either,” Natalie said with a final sniff. “But there’s nothing we can do about it.” She raised the bottom of her shirt up and loudly blew her nose. Her rounded belly showed whitely above her shorts.

  “That’s gross,” I said as she rubbed the snot into the fabric.

  Natalie grinned. “Don’t tell me you haven’t done it before.” She looked around the tree house. “So, are we going to make that window or what? I’m thinking over there.” She pointed to the wall that overlooked the Spencers’ yard.

  “Okay,” I said with more enthusiasm than I felt. It wasn’t a resolution, but it was a start. “Let’s do it.”

  Chapter 11

  I can tell you the exact day that I began to hear Grace’s voice. It was a Tuesday afternoon, almost two months after her murder. School had started just a couple of weeks after her funeral and for those of us in Grace’s class, those first few weeks were surreal. There were whispers about what had happened, about the investigation. That I had discovered her body made me somewhat of a celebrity. But the fact that I didn’t want to talk about it or share the details of what I had seen made some of my classmates almost angry.

  Natalie, to her credit, ran interference, providing bits of information she gleaned from her father. And because of this, teachers and students turned to her for information. But as time passed and late summer turned into fall, conversations around town became less and less about Grace’s murder and more about the minutiae of life. People moved on. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I found myself obsessing about it. I missed her in death like I never did when she was alive. And, I was perhaps a better friend.

  Even though I knew my mother would ground me forever if she ever found out, I started sneaking to the clearing in the woods to sit in the Nest and look down at the murder scene. It wasn’t that I wanted to. For some reason, I felt like I had to. I was compelled. And apparently I wasn’t the only one. Wads of Kleenex, drained whiskey bottles, and cigarette butts littered the ground. Some of it, I knew, was left by older kids who went “to see where they found that dead girl.” But most of it was left by Grace’s mother.

  The thought of Mrs. Bellamy sitting alone in the woods made me sad. Finally she was paying attention to her daughter, but it was too late. I imagined Grace’s mother sitting on one of the rocks, smoking, crying, and drinking. According to Natalie, she had ended her relationship with Reggie and was mourning her daughter by going to the clearing and drinking until she passed out. Natalie said her father had taken Mrs. Bellamy home more than once. I never actually saw her during these vigils. I never really saw anyone, until early September when the young man I had seen at the edge of the cemetery began to come to the clearing. He was, I was soon to find out, Tommy Anderson. And he’d known Grace much better than any of us had realized.

  I was in the Nest and had fallen asleep. My nightmares had become nightly occurrences and I was perpetually tired—constantly struggling against the fog in which I seemed to move. The voice was what woke me, a whispered hiss, commanding me to wake up—that “he” was coming. I jerked awake. The voice had been Grace’s and for several disoriented seconds, I looked around, expecting her to be there. Suddenly, a dark head popped into view.

  “Gotcha,” the stranger said with a sly grin and jerked his head in the direction of the clearing. “I saw your bike.” He pulled himself through the entrance and sat with his legs dangling through the hole. There was no chance of escape. My heart pounded. My legs tingled with fear. I was trapped.

  “I’m Tommy,” he said as he dusted his hands off on his jeans. He glanced up. His eyes were a brilliant, arresting shade of blue that was mesmerizing. “Tommy Anderson.” When I didn’t answer, he cocked his head slightly and raised an eyebrow. “You’re Grace’s friend, right?”

  I nodded, confused as to how he knew who I was.

  “Which one?” he asked.

  “Birdie,” I whispered and then cleared my throat and spoke again, louder, “Birdie.”

  “Right.” He nodded as if he knew all about me. “Grace talked about you. She talked about both of you, but especially you.”

  I was surprised. I swallowed nervously. “You were at the cemetery.”

  He laughed, a brittle sound that held little humor.

  “Yeah. Shitty day, huh?”

  “You . . . knew Grace?”

  He nodded.

  “She didn’t tell us she talked to you,” I said. “Just that she saw you walking through the woods.”

  He grinned almost wolfishly and suddenly I felt like he wanted to eat me up. I thought about my mother’s scenarios. None of them applied here. Tommy must have seen the panic in my eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” he said and held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He grinned. “Seriously.”

  “I’m not scared,” I said with more assurance than I felt. “I was just . . .” I swallowed nervously and shrugged in a way I hoped appeared casual.

  “I used to come here to get away from my grandparents,” he said. “Grace came here to get away from her mom and that asshole.” He studied me for several seconds, as if gauging how much I knew about life in the Bellamy house. “I didn’t know she was here at first,” he continued. “But one day I was down there practicing.” He pointed down, through the trapdoor of the Nest, at the ground. “I had this hunting knife that I was trying to teach myself how to throw. And she was up here watching. She sneezed. Scared the hell out of me.” He grinned. “Made me mad, too, you know? I felt like a fool. I told her to come down. And t
hen when I saw it was just a little girl, we started talking.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Lots of things,” he said. “We talked about her mom and the new boyfriend. Her friends. You. My grandparents.”

  “Who are your grandparents?” I asked.

  “Bea and Elmer Sullivan,” he said. “My mom is, or I guess, was Cindy Sullivan until she married my dad. I’m here for the summer.” He smirked. “My folks sent me here to keep me out of trouble.”

  My scalp tingled. “What do you mean?”

  He looked down through the trapdoor at the ground between his legs, shook his head, and twisted one side of his mouth into a grimace. “Long story. You don’t want to know about that. It’s not all that interesting.”

  “Did you talk to Grace about it?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “She was easy to talk to.”

  He stared down at his hands, his expression sad. “I miss her.” Tommy flexed his fingers. “She was just a kid, but she was smart in a weird way. She understood things—know what I mean? I told her things I’d never told anybody. I don’t know if it was because she was just a kid or what, but, she was easy to talk to.”

  His use of the past tense reminded me of the fact that she would never come back. He returned his gaze to his hands and I looked down at the flaking scabs on my knees and shins.

  “I found her,” I said, finally, surprised and unsure why I volunteered this information to a stranger. From the corner of my eye, I saw Tommy’s head jerk upward.

  “You did?” he said. “What did she—I mean, how was she—what did you do?”

  “I don’t remember, really. I—stared at her and then ran to the Mercantile and—I don’t remember all of it. We called the police and Natalie’s dad came out and . . .”

  Tommy exhaled loudly. “That’s . . . wow. So . . . you saw the murder scene.”

  I fingered the white piping on my shorts. Unwelcome images of Grace’s body leapt into my mind and I pushed them away.

  “Did you see the knife and her . . .” his voice trailed off, but something about his tone caused me to look up.

  “I saw everything,” I said, again surprised I was telling Tommy more than I had shared with my classmates or my family.

  His face flushed slightly and he looked away. “What did the police say when they saw it?”

  “I don’t remember,” I said honestly. “Natalie’s dad was, I don’t know, upset and I was standing on the path with my mom.”

  Tommy stared at me, his interest making me uncomfortable.

  “Birdie, you need to get out of here.”

  The voice was unmistakably that of Grace. The back of my neck prickled as if she were standing right behind me and I turned to look over my shoulder. There was no one there. I returned my attention to Tommy, who still was waiting for details.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said and then added quickly. “Look, I’m really tired. I think I’m going to go home. My mom will be waiting for me.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push.” He looked at me significantly and then said, “I’m going to be around for a couple more weeks if you want to talk or hang out. We could meet here.”

  “Thanks,” I said quickly, eager to get away. “I don’t know if I’ll really be able to. My mom doesn’t want me wandering around by myself after what happened. And I shouldn’t come here, you know, alone.”

  He grinned again. “Sure. I get it. But you wouldn’t be alone. You’d have me here.”

  I nodded but didn’t reply. He shrugged and then lowered his body down through the entrance. I watched the top of his head as he climbed down and then, when on the ground, looked up. Carefully, I lowered myself to the first rung and slowly climbed down. Tommy watched my progress.

  “I know I’m a little too old for tree houses,” he said as I stepped off the last rung onto the ground and turned to face him. “But that one’s not bad. Grace loved it. You know, she slept here when things got crazy at home.”

  Though I had suspected as much, I had never known for sure—hadn’t asked. The fact that this stranger knew more about Grace than I did made me angry. And slightly jealous.

  “I know,” I lied, my tone almost defiant. “So, I guess I’ll see you around.”

  He stepped back to let me pass.

  “Yep—at least for a couple of weeks,” he said again, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time. “Then I’m heading back to Chicago. My dad has a job lined up for me at the company he works for.”

  I walked over to my bike, picked it up, and was walking it across the clearing to the path when I heard him say my name. I turned. He stood at the base of the tree, his hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans. His head was cocked slightly to the side. His smile was sad.

  “Listen, I’m really sorry about Grace. I know she was your friend. She cared about you a lot. I hope you know that.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He nodded but didn’t say anything else. I turned back to the path and hurried out of the clearing. There was something unsettling about Tommy, but also something that I recognized in him—the same sort of sadness I saw in Grace. The same sort of sadness I saw in myself.

  I paused at the foot of the small hill and turned to look backward. He stood in the same spot as when I had left him. He raised his hand in a half-wave and I nodded at him before turning and walking away.

  Even though he scared me and even though Grace’s voice in my head warned me not to, I couldn’t stop myself from sneaking away to meet Tommy. His connection to Grace, his understanding about a part of her life I had purposely avoided, and his grief were like a magnet to me. I couldn’t not see him. Sometimes it was for just fifteen minutes. Other times I concocted an after-school activity that afforded me a couple of hours of free time. Tommy was often already there, or, if not there, would arrive shortly after I did. Our conversations were at first stilted and uncomfortable—but after the first few times, we began to open up to each other.

  It was a strange relationship. He was seventeen and I was eleven. In other circumstances, we wouldn’t have had much to talk about. But in this instance, because of Grace, we seemed to be on the same level.

  He did most of the talking, sharing stories about his friends in Chicago, his family, and his grandparents. He talked about wanting to learn to drive. He admitted that he had gotten into trouble more than once—that he had hurt people. But, he said, Grace’s murder made him want to change.

  “It’s like I said that first day,” he said on our last afternoon together.

  He was pacing around the clearing, talking and gesticulating. In the short time I had known him, I had seen his moods swing from calm and gentle to hyperactive and talkative. We were, of course, talking about Grace.

  “We connected,” he said. “I can’t explain it, but her death changed me. It made me want to be a better person. I don’t want to make the same mistakes I did before.” His eyes were intense and his face flushed as he turned to look at me. It was when he was like this that I became most uncomfortable—and it was when I most acutely felt Grace’s anxiety on my behalf.

  “I gotta go,” I said when he finally stopped for a breath. “It’s getting late and I have to go home before Mom freaks out.” He paused in his pacing and looked at me as if he had forgotten that I was there. I tried to smile, unsure how to terminate our friendship. “It was . . . nice getting to know you.”

  “Hey, yeah,” he said and his voice softened. “I’m going to miss you, Birdie. You know, you remind me a lot of her. I liked hanging out with you.”

  “Me, too,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I meant it.

  “So, can I write you? Or call sometimes?” He spoke the words quickly, nervously. “I mean, just to say ‘hi.’”

  I thought about how I would explain to my mother letters or phone calls from a boy she had never met. My response sounded noncommittal even to my own ears. “Yeah, I’ll get your address from
your grandparents.”

  Tommy smiled, recognizing that the words were empty, and then shrugged.

  “Well, Birdie,” he said. “It’s been nice knowing you.” He moved quickly toward me, his arms spread. The sudden movement startled me.

  “Run!” Grace’s voice boomed in my head.

  I wanted to scream, but all I could manage was a garbled squeak. I started to run toward the path. Tommy was quicker and cut off my escape.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said as he grabbed my arm. “What are you doing? What’s wrong?” He grabbed my other arm and turned me unwillingly to face him. He smelled of sweat and something spicy. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said softly. “I wasn’t going to hurt you. I just wanted to give you a hug good-bye. That’s all.”

  My breath came in gasps and I felt the pulse throb in my temple. Tommy craned his neck and tipped his head to the side to try to look into my face. I had the strange sensation that he was going to kiss me. I kept my eyes trained on the big, white letters of his AC/DC T-shirt. After a second, he released my arms and stepped back. “I just . . . well . . . bye.”

  “Bye,” I mumbled and then turned and ran out of the clearing. My heart felt like it was trying to jump out of my chest. My head pounded and I felt the contents of my stomach rising up. Too scared to stop, though, I ran until I was within a hundred yards of the Mercantile. I turned to look behind me, but no one was there. I stopped, and tried to control my breathing. He had just wanted to hug me good-bye, I told myself. That was all. Still, I shivered.

  I never talked to anyone about hearing Grace’s voice—not even with Natalie, who had taken me on as her personal project. While all I wanted was to be alone, she was determined to make things the way they were before Grace’s death. Each day at school, we would walk the halls before and between classes, talking with other kids. Natalie carried the conversations, keeping me involved, but not requiring me to really participate. By sheer force of her personality, she kept me a part of the social structure of our small school even though I struggled to feign interest. Inside I felt flat and disconnected.