“Come here and cover me with kisses,” she said, and the girls giggled and wrapped their arms around her neck.
“Honey, welcome home,” Victor said, hurrying out from the kitchen and pulling her into another hug. Alice followed behind him, holding Natalie perched on one hip. Alice was smiling, but it looked forced.
“Hello, Grace,” Alice said.
“Hi,” Grace said breezily.
She and Alice hadn’t ever resolved their spat over Alice’s redecorating project. It was a typical pattern for them. They’d argue, and rather than reconcile, they’d just keep their distance from each other for a while, and eventually they’d forget to be mad. Now Grace was in the uncomfortable position of being indebted to Alice for coming to watch the girls all week, while not yet ready to forgive her stepmother.
“Come here, Nat,” Grace said, reaching out for her youngest daughter, but Alice stepped back, moving the baby out of Grace’s reach.
“I really don’t think you should hold the baby just yet,” Alice said. “What if you have another one of your attacks and end up dropping her?”
Grace’s cheeriness at being home instantly evaporated. “I’m fine, really,” she said evenly, stepping forward and pulling Natalie from Alice’s arms.
Alice’s mouth thinned into a disapproving line, but she remained silent while Grace cooed down at Natalie, who was kicking her dimpled legs and grinning up at her mother.
“She’s started sucking her toes,” Victor announced proudly, as though Natalie had started solving quadratic equations.
“Always a useful skill to have,” Grace said, laughing down at her baby girl.
After dinner, the men tag-teamed the kid’s bed routines—Louis gave the baths and Victor read the stories—and Alice finished up the dishes. Grace had been firmly instructed by everyone that she was not to exert herself, so she decamped to the family room, where she curled up in her favorite armchair—a battered old leather club chair from the thirties that she scored at a thrift store—with the stack of interiors magazines that had arrived during her absence. She flipped through a few pages of one issue—green was the in color this year, she noticed, and wallpaper was still popular. As usual, her pleasure at seeing the pictures of beautiful rooms artfully arranged was dampened by a pang of regret that it wasn’t her work on display, her design that the writer was gushing over.
And then suddenly she remembered.
Oh, shit! The stain!
Grace had forgotten all about the chocolate-milk stain that she hadn’t been able to get out of the sofa. She’d meant to camouflage it before Alice’s next visit—maybe with an artfully draped throw or a large pillow—not anticipating, of course, that she’d be unconscious in the hospital when her stepmother arrived.
But when she looked over at the spot where the stain had been on the right back cushion, it wasn’t there. Grace peered at it, confused. She stood and walked over to the couch so that she could get a closer look. Maybe Louis had flipped the cushions around—but, no, the stain was completely gone. Scrubbed clean.
Grace knew instantly who was responsible: Alice. But rather than feeling pleased that the ugly stain on her newish sofa had come out, Grace just gritted her teeth. It wasn’t just the stain. It was one more way for Alice to feel superior, one more failure for her to keep track of, Grace thought, feeling ruffled as she settled back down on her chair.
Just then, Alice breezed into the room. “Do you have everything you need?” she asked Grace. “I know the doctors said you’re supposed to be taking it easy.”
It was an innocuous-enough statement, yet the underlying tone was unmistakably critical. It was as though Alice was taking Grace’s convalescence as a personal insult.
“Fine, thanks,” Grace said. She lifted up her magazine and attempted to hide behind it.
But Alice was not to be put off so easily. She sat down on the now stain-free sofa, facing Grace. Alice was wearing a white sleeveless cotton sweater and perfectly ironed blue seersucker capris. Grace wondered, as she often had, how the woman managed to get through the day without a single wrinkle.
Freak, Grace thought. The woman is a freak.
“Actually, I’m glad to get you alone for a minute. I have a bone to pick with you,” Alice said pointedly.
Gah. When Grace was a teenager, those words—I have a bone to pick with you—had always struck fear in her heart, as they were inevitably followed by a lecture about Grace’s weight (too heavy), or clothes (too slutty), or attitude (bad), or school performance (merely average), or any other area in which Grace fell short of Alice’s expectations. That was to say, pretty much everything Grace did, including breathing, which, Alice had informed her on occasion, she did too loudly.
Grace put down her magazine. “What does that mean, anyway? ‘A bone to pick with you’? Where do you think that came from? Do you think it dates back to cavemen, beating one another with dinosaur bones?” Grace asked, in an attempt to distract Alice from her bone-picking.
It didn’t work.
Alice sighed heavily and brushed some invisible lint off one of the pillow cushions.
“I know I’m not your mother,” she began. “But I like to think that we’ve formed a special relationship over the years. And I think I’ve earned the right to offer you the sort of guidance your mother would have given you, had she lived.”
Oh, Christ. I know I’m not going to want to hear whatever it is she’s about to say, Grace thought. And yet, perversely, Grace couldn’t bring herself to stop Alice. It was like worrying at a canker sore—as much as it might hurt, you can’t leave it alone.
“I know no one wants to say anything that might upset you, but I think it’s time you heard the truth,” Alice continued.
“The truth,” Grace repeated.
“Yes. The truth. And don’t look at me like that.” Alice held her hand up, palm facing out. It was an imperious gesture and had the effect of making Grace want to slap her.
“Because the truth is, if everyone wasn’t so worried about you, what with the coma and all, they might actually tell you how furious they are at you for being so stupid,” Alice continued. “Thank goodness you were alone when you fell! What if you’d been holding Natalie and you dropped her? Or what if you’d been driving with the girls in the car when you had one of your attacks? What then?”
Grace shuddered at this grim thought, and her guilt over the danger she’d posed to her daughters momentarily edged out her annoyance with Alice.
“Please don’t,” she said quietly. “I can’t bear to think about that.”
“Well, I think you should think about it. I think you should think long and hard about how much damage you could have caused. As it was, you were lucky. You only hurt yourself. What if something had happened to one of those girls? You would never have forgiven yourself.”
“I know. I was very lucky,” Grace said, struggling to keep calm.
“I don’t think you do know. Have you thought about what this has done to Louis? What you’ve put him through? Or the girls? Or your father?”
“Alice. Please. I know how lucky I am that my girls weren’t hurt. You don’t think it makes me sick to my stomach that it could have been one of them lying in that hospital instead of me? That I could have been the reason they were in there? You don’t think I know how stupid I was? I know I screwed up. I know that.”
Alice crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “I should hope so,” she said severely.
Grace’s anger, contained until that moment, suddenly flowered. “You know, Alice, it’s not exactly like you’re blameless in this,” Grace said slowly.
Alice’s face puckered in surprise. “Me? I fail to see how any of this is my fault.”
“Oh, you don’t, do you? So the fact that you spent pretty much my entire childhood lecturing me about my weight, and putting me on one diet after another, and weighing me, and then making me feel worthless for not being stick-thin—that wasn’t your doing?”
“What I’ve al
ways told you is that staying thin requires discipline. You need to exercise and be careful about what you eat. I never suggested that you could lose weight just by drinking some tea,” Alice said scornfully.
“Actually, yes, you did. You were the one who told me about that tea in the first place.”
“I did not.”
“Yes, you did. Christ, Alice, you never let it go. You have this way of always making me feel worthless just because I don’t measure up to your standards. So if I have weight and body-image issues, well, I lay at least some of the blame at your feet.”
Alice sighed dramatically. “Oh, Grace. You always have to paint me as the evil stepmother. I would have thought you’d have grown out of that by now.”
“And I would have thought you’d have stopped being such an insufferable, hypercritical bitch by now!” Grace retorted.
“Grace!” Victor Fowler strode into the living room, his face pale with shock. “Don’t talk to your mother like that.”
Alice, predictably, burst into tears. It had been her favorite move back when Grace was a teenager and Victor caught the two feuding. Alice would cry, and Victor—always uncomfortable with conflict—would take his wife’s side.
“She’s not my mother,” Grace said flatly.
“I’m not staying here. She’s always hated me…never appreciated me…has always resented me…,” Alice said between great heaving sobs. She stood and threw herself in Victor’s arms, burying her head on his shoulder. “I want…to go home…not staying another minute in this house…”
“Shhh. Shhh.” Victor patted Alice on the back. Grace swallowed hard and crossed her arms.
“Grace, I think you should apologize,” Victor finally said.
Of everything her father could have said at that moment, this was the one thing that made Grace the angriest. Flashes of the injustices, large and small, that had scarred her childhood came rushing back to her. Alice counting out the number of baby carrots Grace was allowed for lunch every day. Alice refusing to buy Grace the bikini she wanted, insisting that with Grace’s hips, she was better off in a one-piece. Alice turning away two of Grace’s classmates who were selling Girl Scout cookies door to door, saying with a tinkly little laugh, “Grace doesn’t need the extra calories.”
No, Alice hadn’t always been awful, not all of the time. There were some good memories too, wedged in among the painful ones: Alice taking her to the Breakers for tea when Grace was eleven, just the two of them, as a special treat. Alice in attendance at Grace’s dance recitals, jumping to her feet to applaud Grace’s solo. Alice on Grace’s wedding day, doing up the satin buttons that ran down the back of the gown and then, when Grace spun around, announcing that she’d never seen a more beautiful bride. (Although this last memory was a bit marred by the fact that Alice had suddenly narrowed her eyes and said, “The dress is a bit tight in the bust, though. Have you put on weight since your last fitting?”)
But the inconsistency was almost worse; it had just given Grace false hope that Alice would suddenly look on her with softer eyes and hand over the one thing Grace had always wanted from her stepmother: her approval.
“I’m not sorry. In fact, if anyone is owed an apology around here, it’s me. She,” Grace pointed at Alice’s back, “owes me an apology for belittling me for years. And you,” Grace turned her finger to her father, “owe me an apology for inflicting her on me.”
At this, Alice sobbed even louder and then turned and rushed dramatically from the room. Victor stood and watched his wife go, before turning to face his daughter. Grace had expected his expression to be thunderous, but instead he just looked tired. Resigned. Defeated.
When Victor finally spoke again, his voice was quiet and controlled. “I know she can be inflexible. I know that, Gracie. I’m not blind. And I know…I know she didn’t always make things easy for you when you were growing up.”
These words jolted Grace. He knew? He knew what Alice had put her through, knew how unkind she’d been, knew that she’d spent years—years—picking at Grace, tearing her down, undermining her self-esteem? Yet he’d never once stuck up for Grace. Not once. He’d always taken Alice’s side after every fight. Alice would cry, Victor would calm her, and then Grace would be forced to apologize. Time and time and time again.
“But she’s my wife,” Victor said simply, raising his hands and then dropping them to his side. “She’s my wife.”
That was his explanation. Brief, but complete. And Grace knew it was all she’d ever get out of him.
“Then I suppose you’d better go after her,” Grace said quietly.
Later that night, after Victor and Alice had left—the latter making a dramatic, tearful exit—Grace lay in bed, trying to read a paperback novel. But the story wasn’t holding her attention, and her mind kept drifting back to Alice and their conversation.
“Nat’s down, the girls are asleep. My work here is done,” Louis announced, as he walked into the bedroom.
“I should feel more upset,” Grace said distractedly, flinging her book aside.
“Are you having one of those conversations in your head again?” Louis said. “Because it sounds like I’m coming in on the middle of it.”
“I’m talking about Alice. Usually she makes me nuts. I mean, she makes me crazy even when she’s not saying anything, when she’s just sitting there, twitching silently. Fighting with her should make me insane, right? Especially since she pulled the whole drama-queen routine and my dad took her side, yet again. I should feel upset. But I don’t. It’s weird. I actually feel sort of…peaceful.”
“It must be the drugs. Didn’t they load you up on painkillers at the hospital?” Louis said, climbing into bed next to her. He stretched and then turned over on his side to face her.
“No, that’s not it. I think I’ve just finally started to reach a place where she doesn’t get to me anymore. Or at least not as much as she used to.”
Louis didn’t say anything, although his eyebrows arched in a way that made it clear he found this hard to believe.
“I’m serious,” Grace insisted. “I spent my teens hating her, and my twenties mad and resentful that my father married her, but now I’m tired of feeling angry. I don’t like her, and I probably never will, but not liking her doesn’t have to control my life,” Grace explained.
In reply, Louis leaned forward and kissed her gently. “Good,” he said.
“Not that I’m giving up the right to complain about her from time to time,” Grace added quickly. “Because she is still the most annoying woman to ever live.”
Louis laughed and kissed her again, this time letting his lips linger against hers. Grace reached up and gently rested the palm of her hand against his cheek as she kissed him back. There was a knock at the door. Grace’s lips, still pressed against her husband’s, curved into a smile.
“Which one of the munchkins is that?” she whispered.
“Shhh. If we stay quiet, maybe they won’t hear us,” Louis said.
“Mama,” a voice piped up, muffled through the door. “Daddy?”
It was Hannah. Their middle daughter had never been a good sleeper, from the time she was a colicky infant.
Does any of us ever really change? Grace wondered. Or are we just born the way we’re born and carry that personality with us through our lives?
And then Grace wondered where she would have ended up had her mother lived and had been the one to raise her, instead of Alice. Would she be a happier person? More secure? Thinner? Would she have married Louis, had the girls? Maybe—but, then again, maybe not.
Mothers matter. This much I know, Grace thought. For better or worse, we matter.
“Come in, baby,” Grace called back.
The door swung open, and their pink-pajama-clad daughter came running in, her mess of brown curls streaming behind her. She climbed up on the bed.
“Hi,” Hannah said brightly. She looked alarmingly wide awake. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“So I see. Do you want to li
e down with Mama?” Grace asked.
Hannah grinned in reply and then climbed over her mother, snuggling in between Louis and Grace.
Grace wrapped her arms around Hannah, closed her eyes, and breathed in her little-girl scent, luxuriating in the deliciously solid feel of her daughter pressed against her. Someday these nighttime visits would stop, and the girls wouldn’t let her cuddle them. The realization caused Grace a sharp jab of pain. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that Louis was smiling in the direction of the door.
“We have another visitor,” he said.
Grace looked over, and Molly—grumpy and half-asleep, her dark hair sticking up in every direction—was standing in the doorway.
“What’s everyone doing in here?” Molly asked sleepily. And then, without waiting for an invitation, she clambered up over the end of the bed, settled down next to her sister, and closed her eyes. She seemed to fall asleep instantly.
“That’s two of the Three Stooges,” Louis said. As if on cue, Natalie started to fuss, her cries clearly audible over the baby monitor. They both waited to see if she’d settle back down, as she sometimes did, but the grizzling turned into a squall. Louis sighed and stood up.
“Might as well bring her in here,” Grace said. She rolled her eyes upward in mock exasperation but was secretly enchanted with the idea of having all of her family around her, lying close.
Louis returned a few minutes later with the baby in his arms. Natalie grinned when she saw her mother. Grace reached out, and Louis gently laid Nat in her arms.
“Do you think she’s hungry?” he asked, as he climbed back in bed with a groan. “I could go get her a bottle.”
Grace felt a momentary pang of guilt. She hadn’t been able to nurse while she was in the hospital, and Nat ended up having to wean much earlier than Grace had planned. She’d nursed the other two girls until their first birthdays.
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