Don't Let Me Go

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Talk normal, Billy.”

  “It means it’s too late.”

  They heard the front apartment house door bang open, hitting the wall in the hallway with a crack that made them both jump.

  “Grace!” Grace’s mom screamed.

  Literally. Screamed.

  Grace started to cry. “I don’t like this,” she said.

  Billy put his arm over her, and pulled her close, just as her mom screamed again.

  “Grace! Don’t do this, baby! You still love your mommy, right? You know Mommy still loves you. Right, Grace?”

  Grace cried harder, but silently.

  “Grace! You want to be with me, don’t you, baby?”

  “Tell me again,” Grace whispered. “Tell me again why this is a good idea.”

  “Grace! I can do better, baby! I’ll do better now!”

  “She’ll do better now!” Grace whispered, desperately, sounding as though she knew she was grasping at straws.

  “Fine. If she does, then things will be OK. But she has to do better first. She can’t just promise to do better later.”

  “Why not, again?”

  “Because that never works.”

  “Oh. You were going to tell me again why we’re doing this.”

  “Because it might be the one thing we can do that could maybe, just maybe, shock her back into getting sober.”

  “You’re supposed to call it clean, not sober,” Grace said between sniffles.

  “Doesn’t really matter what we call it. We want her to get better. That’s why we’re doing this.”

  “Right,” Grace said. “But this sucks. I didn’t know this would suck so bad.”

  “Grace!”

  This one was a full-on bellow. The scream of a person fully devoid of options. It reminded Billy of Stanley Kowalski in a ripped tee-shirt, bellowing up to Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire. Because he’d bellowed that line every night for two months, on stage, when he was only twenty-two years old.

  It sent a shockwave through both of them. Billy could feel it conduct, between himself and Grace, like emotional lightning.

  Then they heard the door to the basement apartment slam.

  Grace just kept crying.

  Rayleen came over at five thirty, just as she would have done if she’d been at work all that time. Billy recognized her knock — her one, two, three…pause…four knock — even though he’d never heard it sound so quiet before.

  He opened the door for her. Then he pointed to his couch, where Grace was sprawled, sleeping, snoring slightly and drooling quite a bit.

  “Now that’s a new one,” Rayleen said, quietly, as Billy closed and locked the door behind her.

  “She cried herself to sleep,” Billy said. “Literally. She just lay there and cried for more than an hour. Went through almost a whole box of tissues. And then, well…I guess it just took too much out of her.”

  Rayleen sat on the couch beside Grace and stroked the sleeping girl’s hair.

  “Poor baby,” she said. “Since she’s asleep and all, I was wondering…well, I didn’t know she was asleep until I got here, of course, but I was wondering anyway…can she stay here longer today? Not to freak you out or anything, but…you know.”

  “Um. No. Not really, I don’t. I don’t know the end of that sentence, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Just in case Mom does call the cops.”

  Billy sat next to Rayleen on the couch, his hip up against Grace’s. The girl did not wake up. He hadn’t so much planned to do it. It was more that he suddenly lost the use of his knees.

  “Do you mean to tell me that if the cops showed up right now you’d claim not to know where she is?”

  “When you say it like that, it sounds bad.”

  “It sounds like a jailable offense. I mean, as opposed to just saying, ‘Yeah, here she is, I’m her babysitter and she refused to go home.’”

  “Holy crap, Billy, don’t say jailable offense. You’re right, though,” Rayleen said. “You’re absolutely right. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess today took a toll on me, too.”

  “Lot of that going around,” Billy said.

  Rayleen stood, reached down for Grace, and lifted her off the couch, settling the girl into a fireman’s carry over her shoulder. Grace hung limp, still out.

  “What did you say to her mom?” Billy asked, half wanting to know, half not wanting to.

  “Just pretty much what we agreed on.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  “Oh, she had a few choice names for me. And she kept saying she didn’t believe it was really Grace’s idea. But I think she might be closer to believing it now.”

  Rayleen began to move toward the door, and Billy ran quickly to unlock it for her.

  “Are we doing the right thing?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Billy,” she said. “Hope to God we are.”

  She looked both ways before carrying the girl out into the hall and then unlocking her own apartment.

  Billy watched them go, then locked up tight himself.

  “God,” he said out loud. “A concept like shine. We remember it, but it just seems so distant now.”

  • • •

  He sat up all night in front of the TV, watching old movies. To avoid the beating of wings. But he drifted off about four thirty in the morning, halfway through Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and so they caught him just the same.

  Grace

  It was the following Sunday, and Grace was on her way upstairs to go see Felipe, to give him a message from Rayleen. But when she got up close to his apartment door, she saw the door to Mr. Lafferty’s old place standing wide open.

  She figured she should probably just ignore it, after all the yelling and grabbing that had happened last time she’d tried to get near there, but by that time she’d forgotten the message for Felipe anyway, so that left her with nothing much to do.

  She held still for a long time, trying to hear whether or not there was anyone at home inside Mr. Lafferty’s apartment. Then she heard a big sneeze, and it made her jump.

  She clicked over to the open doorway (she was wearing her tap shoes, because she loved them) carefully, ready for anything. A man in jeans and a red sweater was sitting on a little chair, like a kitchen chair, going through some papers in a filing cabinet.

  He looked up right away and saw Grace there, even though she was being very quiet.

  “Hello there,” he said.

  “Hi,” Grace said, and it came out quiet. Probably because she was just a little bit scared.

  “Do you live around here?”

  “Yeah,” Grace said. “I used to live in the basement apartment with my mom, but I can’t live with her right now because she’s…not feeling good, so I’m sort of mostly living downstairs with Rayleen in apartment D. Who are you?”

  “Peter Lafferty,” he said. “I flew in this morning to go through my father’s things. Not that there’s much here to go through. But, even so. I have arrangements to make, anyway.”

  “What kind of arrangements?”

  He looked right at Grace, like he was trying to decide something, but Grace wasn’t sure what. His eyes were a nice color of green.

  “I have to figure out if he left any instructions. For…Well, things like whether he wanted to be buried or cremated. That type of arrangements.”

  “Oh,” Grace said.

  “Did you know my father?”

  “Yeah, I did. He was nice to me. He did three nice things for me, all in just a couple of days.”

  He looked up at her again when she said that, and Grace could see he was suddenly more interested. She looked at his eyes, and decided that what she’d just said was more interesting to him than anything else.

  “So you knew him well?”

  “Not very well, no. But he was nice to me.”

  “You didn’t…”

  But then it started to seem like he would never finish his thought.

  “What?” Grace
asked, when she had run out of patience.

  “You didn’t spend time alone with him or anything, right?”

  “No, why?”

  “I just wondered.”

  Then he went back to looking through the folders in the filing cabinet.

  “Everybody else thought he was mean, but he was nice to me, so I was thinking maybe it’s that he didn’t like people much, but he liked kids.”

  “You can say that again,” Peter said, like there was some little joke in saying that, but Grace didn’t get that joke.

  Then she couldn’t think of anything more to say, and Peter didn’t say anything more, so it was quiet for a long time.

  Grace looked around the apartment. She’d never seen inside Mr. Lafferty’s before. It looked very clean and well-organized, and the rug was brand new. All the other rugs in this building were years old, actually worn thin in the spots that got walked on the most.

  “That’s a very pretty new rug,” Grace said, thinking it would be a nice thing to say, but then the minute it came out of her mouth she remembered. She remembered what that awful building super, Casper, had said about pulling up the floorboards and putting down a new rug. And then she wished she hadn’t said anything about it in the first place. “Sorry,” she said. “Never mind. Forget I ever mentioned it. I just remembered why.”

  Peter didn’t even look up during any of this, so she didn’t know if she’d upset him or not. She leaned her shoulder on the doorway and watched him for a while, even though what he was doing didn’t seem very interesting.

  After a few minutes he sneezed another big, explosive sneeze.

  “Bless you,” Grace said.

  He looked up then, like he was a little surprised that she would say “Bless you,” even though it seemed to Grace like a normal enough thing to say.

  “Thank you,” he said, pulling a big white cloth handkerchief out of his jeans pocket and wiping his nose with it.

  “I’m sorry if you have a cold,” she said, feeling that she wanted to talk to him more, but not really knowing what to say next.

  “Allergies,” he said.

  “What are you allergic to?”

  “Ragweed and pollen, but it’s winter. Mold. Cats, but I can’t imagine my father keeping a cat, so I guess there must be some mold in here.”

  “Why do you think he did it?” Grace asked.

  She hadn’t known she was about to ask that, and she could feel how much the question surprised them both.

  Peter looked straight into her eyes for a moment.

  Then he said, “Would you like to come in?”

  “OK.”

  She walked into the living room, carefully, as if there might be a special place not to step, and she had better know it, somehow, magically, in advance. She hoisted herself up on to Mr. Lafferty’s couch.

  “I’m sorry if I wasn’t supposed to ask that. Mrs. Hinman said Mr. Lafferty had grown-up kids, but she said none of them even talked to him.”

  Peter Lafferty sighed, the way grown-ups do when they’re trying to decide what to keep to themselves and what to say.

  “Seems a little weird to talk about that,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault. So…I guess…since you know that much anyway…I have three brothers and two sisters. So, six of us in all. And not a one of them talked to our father. Just like what you heard. Hadn’t for more than ten years. I was the only one who would still call him now and again, but a couple of weeks ago he just went too far with me, so I broke off contact. So, there. Now you know.”

  He sneezed another big sneeze.

  “Mold,” Grace said.

  “I don’t know. This feels more like my cat sneeze.”

  “I don’t think Mr. Lafferty had a cat.”

  “No, I don’t suppose so. What about the people across the hall? Do they have a cat?”

  “It’s not two people, it’s just Felipe, but he doesn’t have a cat. Nobody does. I don’t think cats are even allowed in this building. So, do you think the reason he did what he did is because you said you wouldn’t talk to him any more?”

  Peter sighed, and he slid the file cabinet drawer closed.

  “I guess it didn’t help,” he said. “It pretty much left him all alone.”

  Then there was a silence, and, during it, Grace felt she suddenly had the answer to something that was very important, but that had been hiding just beyond her reach for a long time. It was the answer to what was wrong with everything and everybody, which is a lot to suddenly know.

  “That’s it!” she shouted.

  “That’s what?”

  “Nothing. I just figured something out. Something really important. You just helped me figure something out.”

  “I’d like to talk to you some more,” he said, “especially about how you knew him. But…if you’ll just hang on a second. I just have to use the bathroom. Excuse me.”

  Grace waited while he walked through the bedroom and disappeared.

  “Oh, my God,” she heard him say.

  “What?”

  “Guess what I just found?”

  “I give up. What?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he came walking out of the bedroom carrying what looked like a deep plastic tray. Like a storage box, but not as tall, and with no lid. It smelled funny. Bad funny. Like the sharp smell that insulted your nose when you passed by that doorway where some homeless guys peed on the bricks.

  “What is that?” Grace asked.

  “It’s a litter box.”

  “I don’t know what a litter box is.”

  “It’s something you have to keep when you have a cat.”

  • • •

  “Kitty, kitty, kitty,” Grace cooed in her quietest voice.

  She could see him under there, under the bed. He had pretty gold eyes and he was looking at her, but he wouldn’t come out.

  “You’re pretty,” she said. “I like the way the colors change in a line right down the middle of your face. It’s cool.”

  He had blotches of white and dark and an in-between color that was sort of strawberry blond, and Grace could almost halfway remember what you call a cat that looks like that, but the word stayed just out of her reach.

  “Are you scared?” she asked him. “I bet you are, because you never even met me before, but you must be really hungry, too, because nobody fed you for days. Now, don’t try to tell me you’re not hungry, because I know nobody fed you for days, so you can’t fool me. Peter? He must be really hungry. Will you look and see if there’s anything for him to eat?”

  “Then I’d have to come back in,” Peter said from out in the hallway.

  “Please? It’s important.”

  While they were waiting, she whispered to the cat a little more, because her loud voice might scare him.

  After what seemed like a long time, Peter came into the bedroom. He was holding his cloth handkerchief over his nose and mouth like a mask, and in his other hand he held an open can of salmon.

  “Ooh, that’ll be good,” Grace said. “If anything’ll get him out from under the bed, I bet that’ll do it.”

  • • •

  About an hour later, Grace stood in front of Rayleen’s door with the cat purring in her arms. Every now and then the cat rubbed the side of his face against Grace’s jaw.

  She knocked quietly, so she wouldn’t startle him.

  She heard Rayleen call through the door, asking who it was, but she was afraid to call back, because, after all, she had only just very recently gained the cat’s trust. And you have to be careful with the trust of a scared animal, once you’ve finally got it.

  After a minute Rayleen opened the door anyway. Cautiously.

  “Oh, it’s just—Oh, my God. Grace. What have you got there?”

  “My new cat.”

  “Your cat?”

  “Yeah. Mine. Now.”

  “Well, I don’t know where you’re planning on keeping him. Not in here, that’s all I know. Not in t
his apartment.”

  “But he—”

  “Grace. I’m allergic to cats.”

  “Oh, no! Not you, too!”

  “What do you mean, not me, too? Who else is allergic to cats?”

  “Peter. Mr. Lafferty’s son Peter. That’s why I have to take him. That’s why I have to keep him, because Peter is allergic, and also because he has to go home on a plane. You sure he can’t stay here?”

  “My throat will close up and I won’t be able to breathe.”

  “Oh. I guess I have to ask Billy, then.”

  “What about Felipe?”

  “What’s wrong with asking Billy?”

  “You know Billy’s not big on change.”

  “I heard that,” Billy said.

  Grace turned to see him peeking out through the crack of his door, the safety chain blocking her view of part of his nose.

  “Sorry,” Rayleen said, “but…I mean…was I wrong?”

  “That depends. What’s the question in question?”

  Grace said, “Can my new cat stay at your place for now?”

  “Hmm,” Billy’s partially-hidden face said. “Maybe you should ask Felipe.”

  “Told you,” Rayleen said.

  “But you’re home,” Grace said, in her just-at-the-edge-of-whining voice. “You’re home, to take care of him. Felipe has to work. And Mr. Lafferty will be lonely, and he’ll be scared.”

  Grace watched Billy glance up, over her head. She turned around to see Rayleen catching his eye. So they were doing that thing grown-ups do when the kid needs a talking-to, and they’re trying to decide who has to take the job.

  “Honey,” Rayleen said. “Grace. Mr. Lafferty is dead.”

  “Not Mr. Lafferty the man. Mr. Lafferty the cat.”

  Billy said, “You named the cat Mr. Lafferty?”

  “Yeah,” Grace said, proudly.

  “Won’t that be a little weird?”

  “What’s weird about it?”

  “Because it’s the same name as…Mr. Lafferty.”

  “But he’s dead,” Grace said, exasperated. “Like you guys were just trying to tell me about half a second ago, as if I didn’t know that already. So that still leaves only one Mr. Lafferty.”

  “I’m going back in,” Rayleen said. “Before my throat closes up.”

  Grace turned back to Billy. “Can I come in? Please? I mean, we. Can we come in, please?”