Grace Above All

by Jane St. Anthony

  “It’s about two hundred degrees in that place. There must be an open window. If they haven’t cracked one, they’ll roast soon.”

  Polly looked defiant. “Okay, okay, I’ll go look.” She glared at Grace and walked slowly toward the side of the house.

  “We’re going to make up a story to tell Chuck,” Grace said to Pinky and Beth. “It will be really funny. Can you do it?”

  5

  Bernadette squinted into the sun when she emerged from Hilda’s house fifteen minutes later.

  “The visit is over,” she announced. “I told Hilda that we’d be back in a couple of days. The old girl doesn’t get much company.”

  She walked around the car to the driver’s side and opened the door.

  “What are you so happy about?” she said over the top of the car to Pinky. “Bethie, cat got your tongue, too?”

  “Grace told us a funny story,” Beth said with a straight face.

  “Must have been a good one.” Bernadette wriggled her shoulders before sliding into her seat. “We had a good old visit, but I think Hilda has cooties in there. Now it’s time to see if Chuck burned the cabin down.”

  Pinky and Beth scrambled into the seat behind Bernadette, leaving the front seat and the station wagon’s third row open. Grace ambled to the back of the car and turned the door handle. Was this really happening? It wasn’t as if Bernadette had twenty kids. She had five. She had brought four of them to Hilda’s. Now she was leaving with three.

  It was funny. The sad thing was that there was no one to share it with. Grace reflected on the injustice of being twinless. Two herselves would appreciate how great she was. As a second choice, Polly could laugh with her, except that Polly was the victim.

  “Here we go,” Bernadette said as Grace pulled the door shut. “Ready or not.”

  Would Bernadette blame Grace for forgetting Polly? Did a fog of cigarette smoke, pots of coffee, nightly beer, and excessive naps make you incapable of counting to four? Was Bernadette a mess because she liked those things, or did she like those things because she was a mess? Grace’s thoughts shifted to poor Polly. What would she, Grace, do if she were left behind?

  “Gracie, do we need anything from the store?” Bernadette called back as they turned onto Main Street.

  “Hot dog buns,” said Grace as a flat-front building with high windows came into view. It might have been a prison except for the word STORE in red letters. The O was an apple in peeling paint. A hardware store next door provided a bench for a few elderly men in flannel shirts.

  “Where are all the kids?” Beth asked, taking in the hardware society.

  “Mom, look, ice cream!” Pinky screamed.

  “Icey Ices,” Bernadette said. “How could I forget?”

  Grace turned in her backward-facing seat to look through the front windshield. Just ahead, two poles created a V, arms holding a giant ice-cream cone. The vanilla scoops were weathered down to the metal in patches.

  “Please, Mom, can we stop?” Pinky begged.

  “You just had lunch.”

  Pinky didn’t answer. He wouldn’t say that his lunch was a saltine from the Dark Ages, Grace knew. Bernadette might start railing about lack of appreciation. She might sail right by Icey Ices.

  “Oh, I suppose we can get ice cream,” Bernadette said, turning sharply into the parking lot. “I’m made out of money, after all. Get out and order. Gracie, here’s some cash.”

  As if they were magnets, Beth and Pinky were pulled to one of the two screened windows. Pinky, a graduate of second grade, read the words out loud with pride.

  “Cones,” he said solemnly, fixated on the menu nailed between the Order and Pick-up windows. “Vanilla. Chocolate. Strawberry.”

  Grace heard Chuck’s voice in her head. “Bones,” he would read for “Cones.” “Godzilla. Cheetah. Ratberry.” Or something worse. Whoever couldn’t read would start to cry. Bernadette would yell at Chuck. That was last summer. He didn’t seem to have matured.

  “I want vanilla,” Beth said to Pinky as if she were telling him a secret.

  “There’s more stuff on the menu,” Pinky said.

  “A vanilla cone is the best,” said Beth.

  Pinky stood in front of the Order window, which reminded Grace of the confessional at church. “I coveted my neighbor’s root beer float four times,” she imagined saying to the girl behind the screen.

  “Two vanilla cones,” Pinky said very slowly and clearly.

  “Throw a Coke on there,” Bernadette said, coming from behind them. “Large. What’s the matter with you, Gracie? Nothing for you?”

  Grace felt as if someone’s fist was in her stomach. Why was she upset? No one else was. The joke on Polly wasn’t funny anymore. She could blurt something out and act surprised, as if she had just noticed that her sister was missing.

  “Gracie, you don’t want anything?” Bernadette asked.

  Beth walked up to Bernadette. “Mommy, where is Polly?”

  “Polly?” Bernadette did a slow 180-degree turn to scan the street in front of Icey Ices. “Polly, where are you?” she yelled as if Polly had outwitted her by becoming invisible. “Grace, where is your sister?” she demanded, hands on hips.

  “I don’t know,” Grace said, trying to look dumbfounded. “She was playing by herself at Hilda’s.”

  “Get in the car. Everybody. Now!” Bernadette commanded.

  Pinky and Beth looked as if they had been told to lie under the wheels.

  “My ice cream,” Beth sobbed.

  “Hold those cones!” Bernadette called to the girl behind the screen. She started the car before anyone was in it. Grace pushed Beth from behind, fearful that Bernadette would drive away with only half of Beth inside. Bernadette had the instinct to find her offspring, even though she would blow smoke all over them once they had been retrieved.

  As the car careened around Hilda’s corner, Polly came into view. She was sitting on the flat brown grass, her head hanging. Bernadette honked and startled Polly into looking up. Her face was streaked with tears.

  “You left me,” she said, putting her face down on her arms as the car jerked to a stop in front of her.

  “Get in, Pol,” said Bernadette.

  Polly rose slowly and opened the station wagon’s middle door. She didn’t seem to notice that she would be squashed in with her siblings. Everyone scooted over as if Polly had something contagious.

  “Polly, Polly, Polly,” said Bernadette, shaking her head as she pulled away from Hilda’s crumbling curb. “You have to pay attention. Bethie is the only one who noticed you were playing hide-and-seek with yourself.” She turned the car radio on.

  Polly stared at Grace with bewilderment, then put her hand in the book bag she always carried and produced a small jar. She held it low.

  “Liniment,” she said in an almost inaudible voice. “And I saw Gunda.” She turned and looked out the window.

  “What was she like?” Grace whispered.

  “She scared me.”

  “Because she was scary or because she did something to scare you?”

  “Both. You owe me fifty cents.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Not now.”

  “Later?”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re back at the Ices,” Beth said in her soft voice. “We’re going to start again.”

  6

  “What’s for lunch?” Chuck demanded when everyone had filed back into the cabin.

  “You’re fifteen years old and you can’t get your own lunch?” Bernadette said. “Please, Chuck.”

  Grace brushed by him. “We not only had lunch, we stopped for ice cream.”

  “No fair.”

  “You should have gone with us,” said Grace, wondering at his lack of originality. In their family, “no fair” was meaningless.

  Bernadette opened the refrigerator and then the little door on the freezer compartment. She banged a couple of ice cubes out of the tray and put them into a jelly glas
s, filled it with Tahitian Treat, and went to the porch.

  “We had fun, didn’t we, Polly?” Grace asked as she sat down. Would Polly play?

  “Of course we did,” Polly said. “How could we not have fun? Hilda had all those candy dishes. It was better than Halloween.”

  “I thought you had lunch,” Chuck said, pulling a chair out for himself at the table.

  Grace winked at Beth.

  “We had hot dogs for lunch,” Beth said. “Fat ones.”

  “You had hot dogs and candy?” Chuck wailed. “And you didn’t bring anything for me?”

  Grace could almost taste a juicy hot dog. She couldn’t be the only one still hungry after a cracker-and-ice-cream lunch.

  “We played games, too,” said Pinky.

  “What games?”

  “What was that game I liked, Grace?” Polly said, flashing distress.

  “Bingo. With little pieces of corn that go on the squares.”

  “Bingo,” Pinky repeated.

  “That’s a stupid game,” Chuck said. “It’s for old people.”

  “It’s fun when you get prizes,” said Polly.

  “I don’t see any prizes.”

  “We won candy bars. I ate three. Hilda buys boxes of them,” Polly said.

  “What about that Grunda person?”

  “Gunda,” Grace corrected him. “She was interesting.”

  “Right.” Chuck sneered. “She’s Mom’s age. How interesting could she be?”

  “She read our palms,” said Grace. “She said we have a brother who won’t finish high school.”

  Chuck turned away in disgust. Then he turned back. “Well, maybe I’ll go next time. Just so you can’t make up any more stuff about what happened.”

  “I hope we can go back tomorrow,” Beth said, the words falling sweetly.

  “Me too,” Pinky said.

  Pinky and Beth fell asleep late in the afternoon. Grace checked on them to make sure they were really out before she went down to the beach with Polly.

  “Tell me everything that happened from the second you left us,” Grace said to Polly, who drew in the sand with a stick.

  “Why should I? You still owe me fifty cents.”

  “Just tell me, Polly. You know you’re going to.”

  Polly shot Grace a pursed-lip look, then began making deeper lines in the sand. “I went around to the side of the house. A window was open in the back room.”

  “What about the screen?”

  “There wasn’t one. That’s why I picked it.”

  “Then what?”

  “I had to find an opening between these really heavy curtains. It was dark in that room. The inside door was shut, but I could hear Mom’s voice.”

  “Then?”

  “I felt a dresser top with little jars and bottles on it. So I picked up a couple and smelled them. That’s how I found the one I brought outside.”

  “What about Gunda?”

  “I figured she was napping.”

  “So you got the jar,” Grace said. How could she have a sister with more nerve than she had? Especially a younger one. Especially Polly.

  “I could tell it was something stinky, so I put it in my pocket. Then I started for the window—just a couple of steps—and something grunted.”

  “Grunted?”

  “It was Gunda. She was trying to talk, but I couldn’t understand her. It was just a lot of sounds,” Polly said, looking wretched.

  Grace took heart. Polly could act brave. But she wasn’t brave inside.

  “My eyes must have gotten used to the dark,” Polly continued. “I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help it. That Gunda, or whatever it was, sat up in bed and saw me. She was kind of like a box with a head on it, and she stared at me as if she couldn’t figure out what I was. Then she made that sound again.” Polly scrunched her face up in misery. “I was so scared that I got tangled up in the curtains. I had to feel for the opening again. Then I fell through the window. But I got up and ran. When I made it to the street, the car was gone.”

  The water lapped gently. It didn’t seem to be the same water that had taken Beth out so far earlier in the day. Everyone was safe. That made Grace feel generous. She decided to give Polly a break.

  “You didn’t get caught, Polly,” she said. “Think of that.”

  “That is something, isn’t it, Grace?” But Polly didn’t look relieved.

  7

  When Grace woke up the next morning, she heard Pinky ask Chuck to take him swimming.

  “Can’t do it today, Pinky,” Chuck said. “Got plans.”

  From underneath her sheet, Grace directed her voice at Chuck. “Plans to lower your IQ by the hour,” she said.

  Pinky didn’t say anything. Grace imagined his disappointment. Little kids loved big kids, and big kids forgot that little kids existed. She would have to threaten Chuck into doing something with Pinky soon.

  “Frankie’s dad is taking us into town after they finish cleaning fish they’re going to catch this morning. We’re going bowling.”

  “I was in that town, and there’s no bowling unless you want to knock over some guys in flannel shirts.”

  “Not Bagley. Ravensville. The big town.”

  “As if I care.” Not only had Chuck gotten out of going to Hilda’s, now he was hanging out with Frankie. Frankie, the only reason to be at this cabin, had not been seen by her for twenty-four hours. Grace opened her eyes and looked at the sunlight through the sheet. Don’t give up, she said to herself.

  The day seemed to be the longest in Grace’s life. Bernadette napped. The little kids made sand castles and swam with their feet touching bottom. Polly read with her feet in the water. Grace stared at the horizon. Chuck came home as Grace began making supper, even though it was only four o’clock. She was opening a can of beans when he barged through the door.

  “You wouldn’t believe how much fun we had,” Chuck said, as if he had forgotten who Grace was and thought she would care about his day. “When I got my third strike, Frankie’s dad bought a bag of chips just for me. He said it would slow me down, you know, even out the competition.”

  Polly slept on the frayed braided rug, a line of drool escaping from her mouth. Pinky and Beth sat across the table from each other, a Chinese checkers game in between them. Pinky was writing the rules on a sheet of paper as they made them up.

  “That makes sense,” Grace said to Chuck. “If your fingers got any fatter, they wouldn’t fit into any bowling ball in the world.”

  She thought about Frankie as she stirred the canned baked beans. Why hadn’t he asked her to go bowling? He should have. For starters, she could swim faster than Chuck. So it followed that she would be the better bowler, if you considered bowling an athletic skill. Second, she was more entertaining. But Frankie wouldn’t know that.

  Maybe she wasn’t as cute as she needed to be to attract boys. She wasn’t Natalie Wood, but she wasn’t a cyclops, either. Some people thought her hair was weird. Todd Marconi called her “Catsup and Mustard” before he flunked fifth grade and wasn’t in her class anymore.

  “May I have supper?” Beth asked.

  “Sure. Hot or cold hot dog?”

  “What are you going to have?”

  “Hot.”

  “I want mine hot, too. May I have a bun?”

  “There aren’t any, but there’s some bread around here. We’ll make a bun.”

  “Oh, good,” Beth said, looking pleased. “We can wrap the hot dogs up.”

  “Right. Do you want some beans?” Grace asked as she put them on Beth’s plate.

  “Do we have any grapes?” said Pinky.

  Pinky was a hard case. When she was eight, Grace had taken care of Pinky as well as the baby, Beth. Now it was different. Sometimes Pinky got to be a kid. Other times, Grace told him to take care of himself.

  “All right, but you get the silverware out for everyone first. It’s in the drawer by the sink.”

  Pinky began rooting around in the drawer whi
le Grace continued dishing up four plates. Bernadette and Chuck could get their own supper.

  After the kids had eaten their hot dogs in bread blankets and the beans and grapes, Grace told them to clear the table while she went down to the beach. That would keep them busy for about thirty seconds.

  “Hey, Red,” called a voice from the Hale property as Grace headed for the wooden steps. Grandpa Ernest Hale waved a neighborly greeting at Grace.

  “Hi,” she called back, wondering where Frankie Hale was. She ran down the stairs. Stomach on the warm sand, chin on her overlapped hands, she looked over the water. The waves were intoxicating. But the days loomed long and full of family she couldn’t shake off. At home she had friends, a phone, a bike that made life bearable. Here she could read, but she couldn’t read all day long. She could walk, but without a destination. She could bake, but Chuck would eat most of whatever she made.

  Tentative footsteps descended the steps to the beach. Perhaps it was Polly coming to strike a deal? Grace lifted her head and looked at the bare legs on top of the bare feet that weren’t her sister’s. Cut-offs, T-shirt, a neck with Frankie’s head on it.

  “Hi,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” Grace said, because that was the only word she could find in her mouth. A giant hand clutched her throat.

  “Me either.” Frankie swallowed hard and toed the sand for a minute. “I’m not doing much.”

  “There’s not much going on, I guess.”

  “I guess not.” Frankie paused. “Is Chuck down here?” He looked past Grace at the lake as if expecting to see Chuck waving out there.

  “No,” Grace squeaked.

  “So he’s in the cabin?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose I can find him there.”

  “I suppose.”

  “See you around,” Frankie said.

  Grace watched Frankie turn back toward the cabin and climb the steps. What had happened? Frankie wanted Chuck for his friend, and she was left with Hilda and Gunda and Bernadette and the kids. Grace put her forehead on the sand.

  Footsteps ran down the stairs lightly. Pinky approached Grace’s head, which Grace didn’t bother to raise.