Grace Grows

by Shelle Sumners

“I hear you.”

  “And Bill. What is it with him? He’s so deadpan. Doesn’t he feel?”

  “He’s just doing his job.”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “If you’re not careful with Bill he’ll transfer you to the New Jersey office. And I would miss you.”

  I sighed. “It doesn’t feel good, Ed.”

  “Listen. It would be nice to try to save the children, but first we have to put the oxygen mask on ourselves.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know, when you’re on a plane and they give you those instructions—”

  “Boy, you are really bugging me.”

  “It’s just a fact, Grace. We can’t fix everything.”

  His complacency was driving me crazy. But Edward grew up a gay black kid in Texas in the late seventies, and probably had a lifetime of sublimating injustices and sad things he couldn’t change. You’d think I’d be that way, too, from some of the hard stuff in my childhood. But I grew up watching my mother forge platinum out of rust. It was going to take me a while to accept this imagine thing.

  We said good-bye at the corner of Seventy-ninth and Columbus.

  “Grace!”

  I turned around. It was Tyler Wilkie, half a block behind me. I waited till he caught up.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.” He was wearing his fatigue jacket and knit cap, and had a canvas guitar case strapped to his back. “Are you headed home?”

  I nodded.

  “You shouldn’t go alone,” he said. “I’ll walk you.”

  “Thank you, but that’s really not necessary,” I said.

  “I’m going this way anyway.”

  I shrugged and started walking.

  He caught up. I looked at him sideways. “You play the guitar, too?”

  “Yeah. Mostly guitar. I play piano if they have one.”

  I could see our breath. I wound my wool scarf around my neck an extra rotation and pulled it up over my ears. “Are you from Texas?”

  He laughed. “No!”

  “Then where?”

  “The Poconos. Monroe County. Why?”

  “You just sound kind of . . . Southern, or countryish, or something.”

  “Maybe you’re mixing up small-town Pennsylvania with Southern.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. And now you live in the city?”

  “Yes, ma’am, for six whole days.” I looked up at him, probably kind of sharply, and he smiled. “You’re by far the nicest person I’ve met.”

  I laughed. “Six days? Are you serious?”

  “Dead serious.”

  “Why’d you come?”

  “To see if I can get people to listen to my music. Maybe get some paying gigs.” He looked at me. “How long do you think I should give it?”

  “Gosh, I have no idea. . . .” How old could he be? Nineteen? “Maybe you should go to college first.”

  “I tried that already.”

  “Oh? Where’d you go?”

  “Community college. For a year. I didn’t like it.”

  “Well . . . maybe it just wasn’t the right school?”

  He shook his head. “School’s not for me. Not now, anyway.”

  The light changed as we came to the corner of Amsterdam and we crossed the street. I couldn’t imagine taking such a gamble, moving to Manhattan with no education.

  “Well, I hope it all works out,” I said. “You’re certainly very talented.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’ll probably need to give it some time.”

  “I been thinking five years, and then I’ll know.”

  “Oh, yes.” I felt somewhat more cheerful for him. “And you’ll still be young, you can go back to school.”

  “I won’t be that young,” he laughed. “I’m twenty-eight.”

  Twenty-eight? He couldn’t be my age, with that boy face. “I’m the same age,” I said. “For some reason, I thought you were a lot younger.”

  “Really?” he said. “I figured we were about the same, or maybe I was older. When’s your birthday?”

  Turned out he was older. By two months.

  We came to Broadway and before the walk signal came on he took my hand and pulled me into the crosswalk. Halfway across we had to dash to the corner to miss being tagged by a homicidal taxi driver. It didn’t bode well for Tyler Wilkie surviving five more days, let alone five years.

  My building was just a couple of blocks up. “I’ll be fine from here. Thank you.”

  “Okay,” he said, blowing into his cupped hands and pulling his collar up around his ears.

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  “Forty-seventh, between Ninth and Tenth.”

  “You can get the train right there.” I pointed to the subway entrance across the street.

  “Oh yeah, thanks. Well, ’bye, Grace.” He leaned down. To my embarrassment I reflexively leaned away, and the kiss he must have been aiming at my cheek landed on the tip of my nose. We both laughed.

  “ ’Bye. Thank you.” I headed across Seventy-ninth.

  Halfway up the block I peeked back over my shoulder. He had bypassed the subway and was walking briskly down Broadway, head down, hands tucked under his arms.

  Steven was on the couch, watching The Matrix. He probably had a rough day. He rewatched The Matrix the way I rewatched Chocolat. And how about that Carrie Ann Moss!

  “How long have you been home?” I asked, shedding my coat.

  “A couple hours.”

  Steven is a big, bearlike guy, six-four. Solid. Gentle, with kind blue eyes. I sometimes jokingly called him Even Steven.

  I kissed him lightly on the cheek and went to bed. I didn’t want to disturb him in the middle of the “I know kung fu!” scene; it was probably recalibrating his entire outlook on life.

  On Friday morning I stepped out the door directly onto something bulky lying on the doormat. My umbrella, it turned out, with a single pink gerbera daisy rubber-banded to it and a folded piece of notebook paper tucked underneath. The spelling was appalling, but the words were nice.

  Grace!

  Here is your umbrela. You rock for letting me use it! It is great to be treated like a human being by someone in this city. I got another job besides dogwalking. Come on over to the cafe Sofiya sometime and I’ll slip you a cappechino!

  Love,

  Tyler Graham Wilkie

  Cell #5702439134

  I folded the letter back up, dug Lolita out of Big Green, and tucked it between the pages.

  lunch with Julia and my subsequent urge for cloistration

  Once a month on a Friday my mother comes to town to buy me lunch and direct my life. She hasn’t lived in the city for twenty years, so she also uses our lunch meetings as an excuse to check out new restaurants. Yesterday I received e-mail instructions to meet her at a Malaysian place in midtown, close to my work.

  I am a punctual person; I always arrive on time, if not a little early. But I will never arrive earlier than Julia Barnum.

  When I joined her at the table there was already a milky Thai iced tea sweating at my place setting. She stood and enveloped me in the smell of freesia and expensive hair product. She works out daily and her embrace is wiry; she has beaten me at arm wrestling twice. We sat and unfolded our napkins.

  “Has something bad happened?” She anxiously pushed coppery bangs out of her face.

  “No!” I said. “Why do you always ask me that?”

  “You always look a little tragic when I see you. I’m starting to think I should take it personally.”

  Best not to overdeny. I smiled and sipped my tea. “Everything’s fine.”

  She perused the menu. “You need to cut your hair, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “What looks good?” she asked.

  “The ginger chicken?”

  “Don’t you want to try something spicy? Maybe the beef in chili sauce?”

  “Okay, sounds good.”

  “Or how about som
ething with tofu?”

  “That will be fine.”

  She slapped down her menu. “Stop agreeing with me!”

  My mom is a county prosecutor in Trenton, New Jersey. She is crafty and convincing and inexhaustibly determined to win, and no matter what I choose from the menu, she’ll try to talk me into something else just for kicks.

  “Sorry,” I shrugged.

  She rolled her eyes and ordered for us when the waiter came.

  “So, how is Steven?” She pushed her hair back again, and her silver bracelets jingled. My mother is beautiful, fifty going on thirty, always flawlessly turned out, whether dressed to prosecute, or as today, to persecute (kidding!), in jeans and sweater and boots.

  “He’s good. Still going to Munich and D.C. a lot.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound too bad. Actually, kind of perfect, don’t you think?”

  For my mom, men were a troubling necessity. She resented her attraction to them but was practical about it. We needed their sperm and their willingness to wet-vac a flooded basement, and they wanted things from us that we could trade for those commodities.

  She radiated approval, however, when we talked about Steven. She didn’t care that he was divorced and almost ten years older than me, she just loved that he was a patent attorney for a major pharmaceutical corporation. I know I’m making her sound mercenary, but this is one of the ways I know my mother loves me, her excitement over my potentially secure future.

  I told her something next that I thought would really thrill her.

  “How are you putting that much of your paycheck into your 401K? What about your rent?”

  “Steven pays the mortgage.”

  “But you pay half, yes?”

  “I tried at first, but he tore up my checks. He says it’s not fair because it’s his place, and we’re not married yet, and he doesn’t need my help. So I pay the utilities and buy the groceries and bank the rest.”

  “But you are getting married, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe. We’re going to evaluate when we’ve been living together for a year.”

  “When will that be? Spring?”

  “April.”

  My mom shook her head.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “I’m trying to decide.” The food came, and she picked bits of green chili out of her beef curry with the tines of her fork and piled them on the edge of the dish. “On one hand, I think it’s great you have the opportunity to save, in case things don’t work out with him. But decent, secure housing is the foundation of a lasting relationship. If you help pay the mortgage, he will subconsciously value you more when it comes time to consider getting married.”

  As usual at our monthly luncheon I was developing heartburn, and I had yet to take a bite of my chili shrimp. “Does everything have to be so calculated?”

  My mom set her fork down and leaned over her plate toward me. “Grace. Do you remember your childhood?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know if you actually do. We struggled.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m just saying you should keep your eyes open and think ahead. If I had done that, things might not have been so bad for us.”

  “They weren’t so bad, Mom.”

  She picked up her knife and fork and diced up a chunk of curried beef. “You’re sweet.”

  “Mom, what’s the big deal about marriage? You did it once and it sucked, right?”

  “Not until the surprise ending. And you’re going to be smarter about it than I was. Look at it as a business arrangement, Grace. Strategize.”

  She was loving me, in her way. And I felt sorry for the painful things that had hardened her. Still, I took a moment to do that thing I’ve done a million times since I was thirteen. I smiled and nodded at what she was saying. And silently, effusively thanked God or The Heavens or Whomever that I was not like her.

  Saturday, and I was headed for the Cloisters. The gardens would be barren now, but I could be alone for a while and soak up the quiet. Gaze at the reliquaries and tapestries and recharge my tranquility battery.

  Steven had been to the Cloisters with me once and considered that to have filled his medieval monastery quota for life. He liked a bit of mindlessness on the weekend and wanted to stay home and play with his Wii. I kissed him, bundled up, and walked out the door just as Tyler Wilkie was letting Blitzen and Bismarck into Sylvia’s apartment.

  “Hey, Grace!”

  “Hi.” I smiled back.

  He stood in the doorway, unleashing the hounds. “Where you going?”

  “The Cloisters.”

  He tossed the leashes inside and pulled the door closed behind him. “What’s that?”

  “A museum. Medieval art.” We started down the stairs together.

  “That sounds cool. Can I come?”

  I faltered on the first landing. Could I politely say no? “Well, sure . . . if you want. It’s kind of a ways on the train, you might have other things you need to do this afternoon—”

  “I’m free all day!” He waved his hands expansively. “Not counting the dogs.”

  He opened the door for me downstairs and when we got out on the sidewalk he pointed at Big Green. “Do you want me to carry that for you?”

  I shifted the bag to my other shoulder. “Oh, no, I’m fine, thanks.”

  “It looks kinda heavy.”

  “It’s just my wallet, cell phone, keys, a book.”

  “Looks like you got a lot more than that in there.”

  “Well, also emergency snacks, things like that.”

  We headed down into the subway. “Emergency snacks? You can buy something to eat just about everywhere in this city.”

  “I like to be prepared.” I knew I might sound huffy and decided to explain. “One time I was on a train that was stuck between stations for three hours. I was glad to have a protein bar with me.”

  “Three hours, no shit?”

  I slid my MetroCard through the reader and went through the turnstile. He was still on the other side digging around in his coat pockets, so I found my backup card and held it across to him.

  “Hey, thanks, I’ll pay you back.”

  I waved a casual hand and smiled. “My treat. Welcome to New York.” I tucked the card away and we headed down the platform.

  We stood there awhile. He was wearing the same thing as the first day we met, a fatigue jacket and jeans and Converse sneakers and a knit hat. I saw a plaid flannel shirt peeking through the turned-up coat collar. His throat looked vulnerable in the chill. He needed a warm scarf.

  He saw me looking at him and smiled that insanely appealing smile. He had such a nice face, so good-natured. Warm eyes. I couldn’t help smiling back.

  “You look pretty,” he said.

  I flailed my hands and muttered something about my beat-up old shearling jacket.

  “You had all that makeup on, last time I saw you. And your hair,” he picked up a strand and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, “I didn’t realize it was so long.”

  Okay, so the guy was a player. I could handle it. I’d been flirted with before.

  “Yeah.” I pulled a band out of my pocket and whipped my hair into a ponytail. “I need to cut it.”

  “I just cut my hair, right before I came here.”

  “Cut it yourself, did you?”

  “Yeah. My friend Bogue said I couldn’t come to New York City looking like a freaky redneck. We were drunk and he was showing me some pictures in GQ magazine, telling me I should try to look metrosexual.”

  It was impossible not to laugh. “How long was it?”

  He held a flat hand about an inch below his shoulder.

  “That’s pretty long. What’d you cut it with?” I figured a steak knife.

  “My sister’s fingernail scissors. It took a fuckin’ long time! Especially doing the back. And then I get here and see these long-haired men, all over the place. And nobody here gives a rat’s ass what your hair looks like, anyw
ay!”

  Unless it looks like a rat’s ass, I thought, remembering him hatless the other night at Herman’s. I smiled.

  “What?” he said.

  “I’m just . . . so happy that you have that hat.”

  He told me a lot more about himself during the twenty-minute train ride to Inwood. His childhood best friend/fashion adviser, Bogue (rhymes with Vogue, appropriately enough), had come with him to the city. They’d found an apartment on Craigslist—a fifth-floor walk-up that was basically a twelve-by-sixteen room. They were sharing it with a female performance artist named Rash.

  “Rash?” I asked. “As in a skin problem, or imprudent?”

  “Im what?”

  “Foolhardy. Impetuous.”

  “Oh, yeah, foolhardy . . .” he mused with a little smile. He nudged my leg with his. “You know a lot of big words. What are you, an English teacher?”

  “Close. I edit textbooks and reference materials.”

  “No shit!” He laid an arm across the back of my seat. “So there’s a gigantic brain hiding behind that lovely face.”

  I gave him what I hoped was a rather dry look.

  “What?” he laughed.

  “See, the words gigantic brain pretty much destroy your intended effect. I picture nineteen-fifties sci-fi, The Woman with the Gigantic Brain. That kind of thing.”

  “That is definitely not what I intended,” he said, pressing his leg against mine.

  “I have a boyfriend.”

  He withdrew his arm from behind me and leaned forward, elbows on knees, clasping his hands. He looked at me sideways. “I figured. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  We were coming to our stop. He was probably regretting riding all the way up here with me now. “You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to. The downtown train should be here soon.”

  “Why wouldn’t I? I want to hang with you and see the medieval art!” He seemed genuine, maybe even a little offended.

  He looked duly impressed by the neo-medieval castle on the hilltop in Fort Tryon Park. Admission to the Cloisters was pay-what-you-can. I paid the full twenty dollars and saw Tyler give five dollars that he probably couldn’t afford.

  As we climbed the long flight of stairs to the entrance I felt a twinge of excitement. I was so used to coming here alone, but since this guy was here with me, I might as well show him some of the things I especially loved.