Grace threw the covers back and jumped out of bed, tiptoeing barefoot to her mom’s bedroom door. She peered in, barely breathing. Her mom did not wake up.
She tiptoed over to the yellow message pad by the phone, slowly and quietly tore off one sheet, and wrote a message on it in her best block printing.
YOU NEVER TOLD ME WHAT I WAS. YOU STARTED TO TELL ME. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU WERE GOING TO SAY?
LOVE, GRACE
She unlocked the door silently, stopping to be sure nothing stirred in her mom’s room, then vaulted upstairs, folded the note in half, and slipped it under Billy’s door.
“Hi, Billy, hi, kitty,” she whispered through the door. “I love you.”
Then she ran back home and jumped into bed before her mom could possibly have time to wake up.
• • •
When Grace woke the following morning, her mom was already in the kitchen making oatmeal, which was disappointing. Not the oatmeal — Grace liked oatmeal — but the not having any time to sneak away. After all, she’d only promised not to sneak away while her mom was outside smoking. She hadn’t said a word about six o’clock in the morning.
Grace padded to the kitchen table and sat down, frowning, and her mom quick stubbed out a cigarette.
“I thought you were only going to smoke outside.”
“You were sleeping, so I thought it’d be OK. I thought that was just when you were around.”
“Well, I’m around now, and it stinks in here, and I hate it.”
Grace’s mom sighed.
“Fine. Tomorrow I’ll take my morning cigarette outside.”
“Thank you.”
Grace knew her mom was trying extra hard now. Cooking three meals a day, vacuuming the rug, picking her up right on time from school. And Grace knew why, too. She was trying to do every single mom-thing right to make up for the one really important thing she still refused to do.
“I don’t want to go to school today,” Grace said. “I feel sick.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m sick to my stomach.”
Grace’s mom put a warm hand on her forehead.
“You don’t have a fever.”
“I didn’t say I did. I said I was sick to my stomach. Will you go to the store today and get me ginger ale?”
“Yeah. OK. After breakfast. I guess I could.”
“Good. I’m going back to bed.”
Grace lay in bed and listened to her mom washing the dishes from the breakfast nobody had bothered to eat. Then she heard their apartment door open.
“I’ll be back in, like, ten minutes, Grace.”
Was her mom really going to walk out the door without extracting a promise from her to stay put? And, if so, was it a trap? Would Grace stick her head out into the hall only to be ambushed by an angry mom?
Grace heard the door slam shut again, and the deadbolts turning from the outside with her mom’s keys. She held still, barely breathing, then slunk out of bed and crept to the window, where she watched her mom’s legs disappear down the block.
Grace ran to the door, threw it open, and bolted up the stairs to Billy’s door.
She almost knocked. For one breathless, excited moment, she almost knocked on his door. But then she remembered what her mom had said about getting him arrested. In which case he would die. Seriously. Even if Jesse and Rayleen figured out how to get him out a day or two later, it was Billy, and Billy would still die.
She ran her finger carefully under the bottom of his door and touched the corner of an envelope. She pressed down on it and pulled, and it slid out into the hall at her feet. She grabbed it and ran back to bed, careful to lock the same deadbolts she had unlocked when leaving.
She lay in bed, fingers trembling a little, and tore open the note.
Yes, I remember. You were the shiniest thing I’ve ever seen. That’s what I was going to say. That you were the shiniest thing I’ve ever seen.
Love, Billy
When Grace’s mom got home, Grace heard her rattling around in the kitchen, and she could even hear the fizz of the ginger ale when her mom took the cap off the bottle.
A minute later, her mom stood in the bedroom doorway, smiling sadly.
“I’m sorry if this whole thing is making you so miserable you have an upset stomach,” she said. “So…I was just thinking…maybe a little bit of a compromise is in order.”
“What kind?” she asked, too hopeful.
“Never mind. It’ll be a surprise. You’ll see.”
Billy
The pounding on his door nearly stopped Billy’s heart. He instinctively looked down at himself. He was still in bed. He was wearing his rattiest pajamas. He ran a hand through his hair. He hadn’t brushed it for days.
“Who is it?”
“Eileen Ferguson.”
She didn’t sound any happier. Her tone filled Billy’s sore gut with nails and ice.
“What do you want?”
“I came for Grace’s cat.”
Billy lay frozen for several seconds, then got up and made his way to the door. He breathed deeply three times before opening it.
She looked startled to see him. She actually took one step back. He must look a fright, he realized, with his black eyes turning yellow, and no make-up to hide the truth. But he didn’t have time to care about that now.
“You’re taking the cat?”
“It’s Grace’s cat.”
“Well. Yes. But she’s become accustomed to a certain standard of living. Are you going to take care of her?”
“Grace will take care of the cat.”
“Grace has no idea how. She’s never so much as fed her.”
“She’ll figure it out.”
Billy pulled a big, deep breath and thought about Jesse, and how he’d handle a situation like this.
“I am responsible for the cat,” Billy said evenly. “I can’t just hand you the cat. There’s more to the cat than just handing her over. She needs her litter box, and her litter. And the little scoop you use to clean it. And she needs her food and water dish, and her wet food, and her dry food, and her brush. And unless I get to instruct Grace in her proper care and feeding, the cat leaves this apartment over my dead body.”
Billy’s heart pounded as he waited for her reply, and it made him feel weak, as though he needed to sit down. He had no strength for a confrontation.
“Tell you what,” Eileen said, brushing back her hair the way she tended to do when angry. “You give me the cat. I’ll take her downstairs to Grace—”
“Why isn’t Grace in school?”
“None of your business. I’ll give the cat to Grace. And you put all that other stuff out in the hall. And I’ll come get it in…about…an hour. And that’ll give you time to write out a note for Grace about feeding and stuff.”
Billy blinked too many times, too quickly.
It had never occurred to him that he might have to give up the cat.
He called her with the special “psst” sound he used to announce the serving of wet cat food, and she came running. He scooped her up, turned her on to her back, and buried his face in the soft fur of her belly.
“Bye, kid,” he whispered. “Take care of yourself.”
He handed her over to Eileen, but the cat panicked and leapt down again. He picked her up and tried again. But she refused to be held by Grace’s mom.
“She doesn’t like you,” Billy said.
“That’s a load of horseshit.”
“She probably feels your anger. It scares her.”
“Just give her to me. I’ll hold tighter this time.”
“No,” Billy said. “Send Grace.”
“I’m not—”
“Stand right here and supervise if you want. But I either hand the cat to Grace or she doesn’t leave this apartment.”
Billy looked right into her eyes. She glared back at him, as if considering a suitable response — one that might or might not involve fisticuffs. Then she turned and sto
mped off down the stairs.
A minute later she stomped back up with Grace by her side. Billy’s heart fell to see Grace. She looked terrible. Downhearted and downright sick. Well, she must be sick, literally sick, or she wouldn’t be home from school.
She padded up to his open doorway in her bare feet, looking up at him with her face open and soft.
“Please, Mom,” Grace said, her voice breaking Billy’s heart. “I’m worried Billy’ll be too lonely without the cat. Please?”
“Just take the cat,” her mom said. “You’re always complaining how I won’t let you keep your cat and I won’t let you see your friends. Take the damn cat.”
Billy bent down and placed the cat in her waiting arms.
“Take her,” he said. “It’s OK.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You sure you won’t be too lonely without the cat?”
“I’ll be OK.”
Then Grace’s mom grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her along the hall and down the stairs.
Billy closed the door and gathered up everything that belonged to Mr. Lafferty the Girl Cat, attaching sticky notes to each item to indicate when it was to be used and how. Then he stacked it all in the hallway outside his door. As a final afterthought, he dragged out the plywood dance floor, managing to lever it up at a sharp angle to get it through the door.
Then he put himself back to bed, listening as it was all dragged and carried away.
It was lonely without the cat.
• • •
Twelve lonely days later, Rayleen announced that Jesse would be flying home soon.
“He’s going to come over in a minute to talk to you himself,” she said, settling comfortably on his couch. She’d begun to stay for long visits since the cat moved out. “But I just wanted to talk to you alone for a minute first.”
Billy sighed, and waited, and let the information filter down into his gut. It was hardly unexpected. That was the best he could say for it. And he knew it must be a much greater hell for Rayleen, who was, after all, his girlfriend.
“Well,” Billy said, in his best attempt at circumspection, “it’s not like we didn’t know it would happen. Sooner or later. Is he leaving you with the car?”
A long silence. A silence freighted with some important subtext, but Billy could not imagine what it was. After all, it was just an old junker of a car.
“I’m going with him,” Rayleen said.
And they sat.
“We’ve been talking about it for a while now,” she said. “But I didn’t know if I could bring myself to abandon Grace. But now we can’t see Grace anyway…And, look, I feel really bad about leaving you, too. It’s not that I don’t get that this probably feels like an abandonment to you, too. But—”
“But I’m a grown man,” Billy said. “I may not do the world’s best job at it, but I’m an adult. And it would be lunacy for you to stay here just for me. Absolute lunacy.”
“Thank you,” Rayleen said, “I really appreciate you taking it this way. It’s just that…I just keep thinking maybe this is the last train to happy. And I better get on.”
“You better,” Billy said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Billy said. “Just go be happy. Just get on the damn train.”
• • •
Later on that same lonely day, Jesse came over by himself, to say a proper goodbye. He held a paper grocery sack in one hand.
“I brought you three presents,” he said, in that voice Billy could no longer recall how to live without. “Well, two and a half. They’re not new. They’re hand-me-down presents, because I’m almost out of savings. I need to go home and get back to work.”
He handed Billy the bag.
Inside Billy found a pair of red-silk pajamas, which he realized with a jolt must have been Jesse’s, and the partially burned sage stick.
“That’s not an invitation to live in pajamas twenty-four seven,” Jesse said.
“I’ll try not to take it as such. Thank you. Is the sage stick the half?”
In which case one whole present was still missing, but it might seem ungrateful to say so.
“Oh. The car,” Jesse said. “We’re leaving the car. I was going to leave it to you, but we talked it over and decided it would be more of a burden to you than anything else. You’d have to go to the DMV and get it in your name, and get your license back, and pay for insurance. So I signed it over to Felipe, with the understanding that it’s really for the three of you. You and Felipe and Mrs. Hinman. So I guess that’s a third of a present. He promised to drive the two of you to the grocery store at least once a week.”
“That’ll be nice for Mrs. Hinman.”
“That’s what we thought,” Jesse said. “I think it’s hard for her to walk.”
“It is.”
“We thought it’d be nice for you, too. That delivery service can’t be cheap.”
“It costs almost as much as the groceries,” Billy said.
“Something to remember us by.”
And then he stepped in and embraced Billy. And it hurt so much that Billy almost couldn’t embrace him back. And not because of his ribs, either, though they still ached some. But in time he did manage to fulfill his side of the hug.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you guys.”
He’d been trying not to say it. But sooner or later it had been bound to break through.
“You won’t be without us,” Jesse said. “We’ll just be a lot farther away. And you’ll have to start checking your mailbox again.”
“I can do that,” Billy said.
• • •
Three lonely days later, they were gone.
• • •
In the four lonely days that followed, Billy and Felipe and Felipe’s shy girlfriend Clara and the building super, Casper, moved Mrs. Hinman downstairs into Rayleen’s old apartment, which seemed to make her happy.
And seeing Mrs. Hinman happy made Billy feel just the tiniest bit less lonely. But like everything else, good and bad, the feeling passed along on its own.
In the lonely weeks that followed, Billy now and then heard unfamiliar voices in the hallway as two new couples moved in.
Once he stuck his head out into the hall and said hello to one of the couples, a young Hispanic boy and girl who didn’t look a day over seventeen. But it seemed to alarm them. So he gave up on that and went back to being lonely.
• • •
Two lonely months later, Billy found another bright yellow note tucked under his door.
It said, in Grace’s careful block printing:
MR. LAFFERTY THE GIRL CAT MISSES YOU. AND SO DO I.
LOVE, GRACE
The words had been written inside a border, a little pen drawing. At first Billy took it to be a stylized heart, even though the top lobes were too pointy, and the series of loops all around it didn’t seem to fit the heart motif. Later he realized it was a pair of wings, the loops depicting feathers.
He wrote a note back.
Remember how you said you’d always find me? Well, don’t ever forget that. Please.
Love, Billy
But it sat under his door for more than a month, and Grace never seemed to manage to get away to retrieve it. So in time he took it back and threw it away.
• • •
Three lonely months after that, Felipe came to his door, and sat with him, and talked to him, and announced that he was moving in with Clara.
“It’s just that her apartment is so much nicer than mine. Bigger, and in a better neighborhood. And with both of us paying one rent, we’ll have a lot more money. Maybe even enough to get married. She’s putting herself through cooking school, did I tell you? She’s gonna be a chef. Not a lot of lady chefs. ‘Specially not a lot of Chicana ones. That’s a big deal, you know?”
They sat for a time.
Billy made a pot of coffee.
“I’m not trying to take the car. I know it belongs to all of us. If you
want, I’ll leave the car.”
“What would I do with the car? I don’t even have a license.”
“We won’t be so far away. It’s like a fifteen-minute drive. I’ll come back once a week and take you and Mrs. Hinman to the store. I won’t let you down on that.”
“I know you won’t.”
He poured Felipe a mug of black coffee, and poured himself a mug with more than an inch of room for cream. He took more cream in his coffee now that he didn’t have to have his groceries delivered. A lot more.
“It’s not that I don’t feel bad leaving you here,” Felipe said. “I do. It’s just that…”
“It’s just that this might be the last train to happy. And you want to make sure to get on it.”
Felipe chewed that over for a moment.
“I guess. I wasn’t thinking of it like a train. But something like that. Yeah.”
“And you should,” Billy said. “You should get on the damn train.”
• • •
A lonely month after that, Billy bumped into Grace and her mom in the hallway on his way out to check the mail. They must have been coming in from school.
He was wearing his red-silk Jesse-pajamas, and his hair was uncombed.
Grace’s eyes lit up to see him. But they still didn’t look anything like Grace’s eyes before. When she was thriving.
“Billy!” she shouted.
“Stop talking to him,” Grace’s mother said, and steered her down the basement stairs by the arm.
Billy peered over the railing, and Grace looked up at him and waved sadly, and he waved back.
He locked himself into his apartment, made coffee, then realized he had never checked the mail, and had to do it all over again.
It was worth it, though, because he’d gotten a letter from Rayleen.
She said, among other things, that they had a foster kid now, that his name was Jamal, and he was only four, and his mom had just died from an overdose. But she said Jesse was working his famous Jesse magic on him.
“I don’t doubt that,” Billy said, out loud to his lonely apartment.
And, also, as both Jesse and Rayleen always did, she enclosed a letter to Grace, for Billy to pass along. If. If he ever saw her.
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