“Oh, yeah.” Ty touched the hydrangea and licked blue icing off his finger.
“Ty!”
“Baby, we’re about to eat it.”
“It’s so pretty.”
Ty picked up the knife. “It’s like field-dressing a deer, you just gotta be willing to mess up that perfect exterior.”
“That is the grossest analogy I’ve ever heard.”
I set my hand on his and together we wrecked the cake.
Over coffee Julia told us that she had ordered the cake from a very expensive gourmet bakery and that Dan didn’t know it yet, but he was paying for it. She still had his credit card number on file for the wedding that never was.
“Julia!” I was appalled.
She flipped a hand at me. “He’ll thank me. It lets him be here for you.”
I looked at Ty. One corner of his mouth turned up dryly.
“Maybe you’re right,” I grumbled.
“I know I am.” She turned away to say something to José.
“Argh,” I said to Ty. He squeezed my shoulder.
Ed tapped his spoon on his champagne glass and stood.
“Grace and Tyler, there’s a wedding gift from us waiting for you back at Peg’s. It’s a DustBuster. Not really! It’s something far more useful. You’ll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, we have another gift for you. A reading.”
Boris handed Edward a book. He opened it and I saw the lettering on the spine. The Prophet.
Oh God.
He proceeded with “On Love,” the reading from their wedding that had inexplicably disturbed me. I wished I could put my fingers in my ears and lalala, but that was not an option.
There was all this stuff about love shaking your roots. Threshing you to make you naked. Grinding you. Kneading you. Baking you. And also, FYI, you can’t direct the course of love.
Fair enough.
It was during a passage toward the end that the familiar unhappy twinge began. There was something about being like a running brook. Something about tenderness, and being wounded, and bleeding willingly.
My eyes were watering. I looked around. So were Jean’s and Nathan’s. Allison blew her nose. Ty set a hand on my leg under the table.
Ed finished the reading and he and Boris came around to us. Ed handed Ty the book and he and Boris gave us hugs.
“Congratulations to you, baby girl,” Ed said in my ear. “Be strong together. Be good to each other.”
Beck snapped away with the camera. Then she came over and hugged me, quite firmly.
“Take care of my brother, eh?” She gave me her sharper version of Ty’s sweet smile and graciously left the words or else unspoken. Which I really appreciated.
Then Peg came over and knelt by my chair. “I need to tell you something.”
“Please, no.”
“No, it’s good! I’m going to California.”
“You are? When?”
“Now.” She pointed to a suitcase tucked in a nearby corner.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m going to stage-manage the San Francisco production of the show for a few months.”
I had known she was looking to move on; the show had been running for three years now. Antonio Banderas had left long ago and they had gone through a succession of replacements. Now it was Tony Danza. She was pretty burnt out.
“Who’s going to play Ricky out there?” I asked.
“Javier Bardem, apparently he sings.”
“Oh. That’s what I’m talking about.”
She smiled. “Yeah.”
“I bet he smells good. You’ll tell me, won’t you?”
“The minute I get a whiff.”
I smiled. But she was leaving. “What about Jim?”
“He’ll come out to visit. It’s not forever, I’ll be back.”
“I don’t want you to go, Peg. What about when the baby’s born?”
“You don’t need me for that now.”
“Well, why do you have to go tonight?”
“They want me to start Monday. This gives me a few days to settle in. And it gives you and Ty some privacy, now, and after the baby comes.”
She was so good at big-picture clarity. I hugged her. Held her a long time. “I love you, Peg.”
“I know. Take pictures of the baby and e-mail them to me, okay?”
My back was killing me. And it was taking a long time to get out of the restaurant with all the good-byes and well-wishing.
Bogue asked me where we were going for our wedding night.
“Home.”
He frowned. “What is he, too cheap to take you to a hotel?”
“He offered. But at this point in the pregnancy I just want to sleep in my own bed.”
I had my hand on the door. We were almost out, but Mr. Personality stopped yet again, for a few friendly words with José.
Typical manly small talk, till Ty heard that José was a cop in New Jersey. He looked sharply at José and, suddenly, spoke in tongues. “NJFOP?”
“Yeah, man.” José grinned.
“No shit?”
“No, man.”
Ty laughed and the two of them engaged in one of those complicated buddy-buddy, shoulder-bumping secret handshake things that men are genetically programmed to do. Then they went into a huddle.
I looked at Julia, wondering if she was as mystified as I was.
She smiled tightly and tapped José on the shoulder. “Hey, let’s let these two get on with their wedding night!”
“Oh yeah.” José kissed me and offered his hand in the normal way to Ty. “Congratulations, man.”
I wanted to take the subway home. Ty balked.
“Come on, it’s only a few stops.”
“What if the train gets stuck in the tunnel and you go into labor?”
“That’s not going to happen. I’m not due for four more weeks.”
A man gave me his seat. Ty looked so cute, straphanging in his wedding clothes. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He winked at me. He knew how cute he was.
The woman next to me got off at Thirty-fourth and Ty sat down.
“Where did you get my ring?” I asked. It was lovely and old-fashioned. White gold, carved with a wandering vine.
“It was Gram’s. She used to say it would be for me one day, to give to my wife.”
“Oh . . . Ty. I love it.”
“You’re not going to cry, are you?”
“Of course not!” I said stoutly.
He put an arm around me and kissed my shoulder. We were quiet till we got off at Christopher.
a breath away
Ty was in boxers and a T-shirt. I changed into the cute little nightie I’d bought at the maternity store, covered up by my plaid flannel robe.
We plopped down on the couch and turned on TV Land, just in time for the second episode of Andy Griffith. It was the one where Opie meets this horrible, spoiled boy and starts imitating his awful behavior.
At the second commercial, Ty made an offhanded comment about Andy just needing to give Opie a few licks with his belt. Alarm surged through me. I muted the TV, laid a protective arm across my middle, and turned to him. “I hope you know, this child will not be spanked.”
He looked rather askance at me and smiled like, We’ll see.
“I mean it, Ty.”
“Okay,” he said. “But what if he drinks motor oil? Cuts the heads off all your mums? Calls you a dumb-ass dickhead? Smokes weed in the garage with his buddies at age ten? What if he sets the house on fire?”
With each listed offense I felt increasingly challenged. Ty almost had me rethinking corporal punishment, and the miscreant was still in utero!
“Did you do all that?”
“And much, much more.” He looked frighteningly self-satisfied.
“Well. I will just have to hope that he has more of my genes than yours.”
“Like I said, I guess we’ll see,” he said ominously.
We opened some of our gifts.
From Julia, we had a gorgeous, ornate, completely impractical silver pitcher.
“We’ll use this when we have the Queen over for dinner,” I said.
“Or we could put flowers in it.”
It was depressing, how much prettier his mind sometimes was. “I would have thought of that. In a few minutes.”
Beck gave us a Shark. A freakishly high-powered mini-vacuum, guaranteed to suck up nails, wood chips, gravel, and broken glass.
“What is she thinking?” I asked Ty.
He shrugged again. “She takes no prisoners. Even when cleaning house.”
The box from Ed and Boris contained an expensive juicer and a lifetime Museum of Sex dual membership.
“There’s a Museum of Sex?” Ty was wide-eyed, studying the brochure.
“Down on Fifth at Twenty-seventh.”
“How did I not know about it?”
“That is one of life’s true mysteries.”
“When do you want to go?”
“Before the baby’s big enough that we have to explain the exhibits.”
“I have something for you.” I went to our room and got the small gift-wrapped box.
He took it from me slowly. “I’m sorry. I have something for you, too, but it’s at my parents’.”
“You gave me this!” I touched the wedding ring. I couldn’t imagine anything better.
He unwrapped the box and opened it. “Hey, look at this!”
“It’s stainless steel and has automatic movement so it never needs batteries. It’s the official time keeper for the Indy 500!”
“No kidding! Did you go all the way to Indianapolis to get it?”
“Ha ha.”
He took the watch out of the box and slipped it on his wrist. “It’s excellent! Thank you.”
“Now you’ll always be on time for everything.”
“Absolutely.”
He was smiling. I touched his face. “You know what time it is right now, don’t you?”
He didn’t even have to look at the watch. “Yes, I do.”
It was trying to rain. We lay in bed and watched the sky above the building across the street occasionally illuminate. The lightning was actually striking somewhere in the wilds of New Jersey, judging by the low rumble of the thunder.
“Sing something to me,” I said sleepily. Greedily, having already enjoyed one of the major pros of being married to Tyler Wilkie.
“What do you want to hear?”
“Something romantic. Something . . . old.”
“You sing something to me.”
“No, you.”
He shook my shoulder gently. “Come on! Why does everyone always expect me to do all the singing?”
“You are the professional. Please, this is why I married you.”
“So I’d sing to you in bed?”
“Certainly.”
“I feel so cheap. And I like it!”
“It really is a win-win.”
He sang, quietly. First a little ditty about the dangers of eating too many beans. Then a rude song about breasts. He finished up with “Mairzy Doats,” right up against my belly.
“He can hear this, don’t you think?” he asked.
“Yes, I think so.”
He stayed down there and sang “Rock a Bye Baby” and “Amazing Grace.” He came back up beside me and grinned.
I wound an auburn curl around my finger. “Hey, what was that with José—that NJ thing? Do you know him from somewhere?”
“Yeah!” He shook his head and laughed. “Only I just figured it out tonight. I came offstage in fuckin’ Little Rock, and Dave hands me his phone, says it’s my mom. First she reams me out about not returning her calls. Then she tells me she got this strange text on her cell. No name, just the initials NJFOP. And the text said ‘Grace needs Tyler. ASAP.’ ”
I sat up in bed and looked at him. He set a steadying hand on my leg and continued.
“I flew home the next morning and headed over here to see what was up. That was when I saw you on the street and came up here with you. When I left I called and canceled the last four shows.”
I stared at him. “You mean . . . when you cut the tour short, you . . . you weren’t really sick?”
He shrugged. “It was useful as an excuse, so they wouldn’t sue me.”
“Oh. . . .”
He sat up. “What’s the matter?”
I kissed him all over his face. Big, wet, teary kisses.
“What?” he laughed.
“You just gave me my wedding gift.”
“I did?”
“You came home for me! Early!”
“Well, early, yeah, I’ll take the points for that. But you already knew I was coming back to you.”
I stared at him. Drawing a very large blank.
“You listened to the song, didn’t you?”
The song. Huh? Then I pictured the FedEx envelope buried in my desk drawer. “Oh. . . . Well. Not yet.”
He did not look happy.
“You said it would upset me! And I was very easily upset!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I was kidding!”
“I’m sorry!”
“Well, at least I know now why you still weren’t talking to me. I kinda figured you might, after you heard the song.”
“I will listen to it. I will.”
He lay back down. “Whatever.”
I snuggled close and kissed his shoulder, his hand, his chest.
He shook his head. “Man, if I’d known it would be this impressive, I’d have told you the minute I got here.”
“No you wouldn’t. You were mad at me.”
“Well, what the fuck? That’s how I find out we’re having a baby?”
“I’m sorry. I was so afraid you’d be upset, or wouldn’t care.”
“Gracie.” He sat up again, glowering. He reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. “You’re the one who kept cutting me off all the time! Before I left for L.A.—”
“Ty! I didn’t cut you off, at lunch that day I asked you what you wanted and you couldn’t answer. You couldn’t even look at me.”
“Because I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. All I knew was I wanted to be near you. I wanted you to stop putting me off. And then I came back from L.A. with some clarity and we finally got close, but then suddenly you wouldn’t return my calls.”
“Because you were leaving! I didn’t understand how you could be with me like we were, and then leave like nothing happened.”
“It wasn’t like that. I had a contract. I had to go do my job.”
“You were excited to leave.”
“Come on babe, of course I was! But I tried to talk to you before I left. And after I left. I wanted to ask you to meet me on the road whenever you could.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t gonna leave a message about it for you to ignore. And then when you finally did call me when I was in Minneapolis, you said good-bye before I could even begin to ask. It was real clear you weren’t into me.”
“No, I was!”
“I thought there might be another guy. I knew I had my work cut out, but I was still coming back to try with you.”
“Ty. I didn’t know.”
“Listen to me, Grace. You are the only girl I’ve ever been unable to forget. The only one who mattered. You’ve been messing up my sleep ever since you got down on the floor with me in your dressy clothes and bagged those dogs’ feet. To help a stranger. I left knowing I was gonna have to find out who you were.”
I sat up on my knees. “Your sleep got messed up? Is that all? You smiled at me that morning and wrecked my entire life.”
“You put me in a permanent state of sexual frustration.”
“You did that to me. And you gave me an ulcer. Twice.”
“You made me keep coming back to walk those fucking dogs way past when I needed to financially.”
“You made me abandon my stupid textbook career.”
He thought a long moment
and looked at me triumphantly. “You made me stutter.”
I kissed him all over his face again. Gently. “You got some good songs out of it.”
“My best songs.”
“So far.”
He got quiet. He went away, though his body was still with me. He pointed at my desk. “Can you hand me that pad and pen?”
I got them for him and he started scrawling.
“Do you need help?” I asked. “I could probably come up with rhyming words. But not for orange. Did you know that there is no word that rhymes with orange?”
He looked at me, momentarily intrigued, then turned his attention back to the notepad. “Let me finish this,” he said shortly.
Yikes. I crept out of bed and went to the bathroom.
When I came back into the room, he was no longer writing words. Now he was staring at the wall. Tapping fingers on the bed. Composing.
He surfaced long enough to say, “Bring me the guitar, would you?”
I went and got it from its stand in the corner. Then stood there before him naked and invisible, watching him strum and jot notes. I went back around the bed and got under the covers. Arranged my pillows. Stuck in earplugs. Might as well grab this opportunity for a nap. I knew him. He wouldn’t be writing a song forever.
The wee, dark hours.
I was hopelessly awake. The Bump was doing his calisthenics.
Ty was awake behind me; I could tell by his breathing.
“How did José get your mom’s number?” I asked.
“Your mom called Peg and got my mom and dad’s names and everything else she knew about them. Then José and your mom tracked down my mom’s cell number and he texted her from the New Jersey Fraternal Order of Police.”
I remembered Julia telling me that Ty really cared for me. She must have been talking about how he came home immediately in response to José’s text message. Then she clammed up when she remembered I wasn’t supposed to know they’d contacted him. Oh, Mom. Always engineering life for my benefit.
I turned over and settled against Ty. Rested The Bump on him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “For every stupid thing I ever did. I love you. I love you.”
“Okay.” He rubbed my hip sleepily. “Okay, baby. Me, too.”
The next day he went to the studio for a few hours. I dug out the FedEx envelope, made a cup of tea, put on the CD, and sat down with the lyrics to “A Breath Away.” He had dated them, October 9. Three weeks after he’d left for the tour.
Grace Grows Page 28