Nineteen
“You busy?” Grace asks.
It’s the middle of the night, and there’s a storm raging outside. Grace follows the familiar path of the house in the dark and finds Mom in the living room surrounded by scribbled-on paper.
Mom looks up, hair clipped back and round, multicolored glasses perched on her nose. There’s a bottle of wine on the coffee table and an empty glass. “Last-minute changes to the seating chart,” she says, gathering the mess up. “You’d think getting married would be easier the second time around. What’s up?”
Grace steps in hesitantly. “Do you have a second to talk?” she asks. It is not just insomnia that keeps her up, but the thought of business unfinished. Of reconnecting with the people important to her, except there is still a girl left. A girl that hunts monsters and blooms roses.
Mom moves her papers aside so Grace has room to sit. “More than a second, kid.”
Grace sits. She plays with her nails, bites her thumb. Tries not to pull at her skin. She left the slime Heather suggested upstairs and wishes she had it. It reminds Grace of quiet mornings in a car with Sani. “I reached out to Professor MacMillan,” she says, “about jobs. About looking into some teaching opportunities.” She takes a deep breath. This is her choice that she made. “I told her I wanted to look in the New York area.”
“Ah.” Mom leans back, surveying Grace. “With your wife, the elusive Yuki.”
Grace plays with some of the tendrils that have come out of her pineapple bun. “I have to—” She shakes her head. “I want to make things right with her. I just left because I was scared. I left her behind.” She looks at her mom. “It feels terrible to be left behind because someone has their own issues to work on.”
Mom swallows hard, pulling her legs up and mimicking Grace’s posture. “A feeling you’re familiar with, huh?”
Grace shrugs. “I just never understood it,” she says. “It felt like you were always on an airplane, off to another place to find yourself. I never understood why you had to go away. Why finding you had to be so far away from me. Why—” It’s hard being this honest. It’s hard opening up your wounds to prying eyes. “Why couldn’t it include me, you know?”
Mom lets out a long exhale and fixes her gaze out of one of the big bay windows. The rain outside swells into a Florida storm where the wind beats against the screen door and the trees look like they might shake apart.
“There’s a lot I could say,” Mom says. “There are a lot of things I’ve said to my therapist that have been long overdue for you to hear. But I don’t want to make any excuses to my kid.” She meets Grace’s eyes. “It was never about you, but you’re right. You should have been a part of it. I was so focused, for a long time, Porter, on being my greatest self, that I didn’t even realize I wasn’t being my whole self. And my whole self includes an amazing daughter that needed to know both her parents were supporting her, and were proud of her, and loved her. That she was not second. You have never been second for me, and I should have done so much more to show you that.”
“Yeah,” Grace says, voice warbling. “Yeah. I needed to hear that, I think.”
“It was a long time coming.” Mom reaches out for her. “You were in good hands, you know, all the times I’ve been away traveling the world. Colonel did a damn good job with you. From the moment you came screaming into this world, he said he’d move mountains to make things easier for you, things I couldn’t always understand. He’d burn down the world for you.”
It’s Grace’s turn to avert her eyes. The rain comes down in a thick, humid curtain. The wedding is soon, and she makes an idle wish that the stormy weather lets up for it.
“I know,” she says softly, squinting through the window. “I do know that.” She is trying to know that and understand it. It does not mean that either of her parents are perfect or that she will always agree with them. It means that all three are on their own journeys, and sometimes the paths will intersect, and sometimes, they will not. “Thanks for saying it.”
“Sometimes we have to say things we should have said a long time ago,” Mom tells her. “We want to make excuses or rationalize or say we had good intentions.” She raises her eyebrows. “What would you say to Yuki if she asked you why you left her behind?”
And isn’t that the big question? Grace is making plans to move back to New York in the next few months. She wants to get to a place where being vulnerable and honest and scared doesn’t feel like she’s at her worst. They are just things that make her up, like the stardust and ashes of the universe. “I think I have to figure that out,” she says. “I wanted to find my way and be better, and I cut her out. She was—she is—a part of it.”
“Well, Grace Porter,” Mom says, “maybe that’s something she needs to hear from you.”
The words stay with Grace. She finds herself curled up on the small nook in front of her bedroom window as night drags on. There will be no sleeping here, not when she feels this buzzing need under her skin. She pinches and pulls at her homemade slime, trying to distract herself from her anxiety, and feels fireflies beneath her skin. This is a habit she is still working to break, like all the other terrible habits she is trying to break.
What would you say to Yuki?
She presses the record button on her phone. Suddenly, Grace finds herself desperate to create that same intimacy she felt the first time she heard Yuki on the radio. Like someone was seeing her, the deep-down, wretched part of her. The part that was monstrous and lonely and pushed aside. “If I could say anything to you,” Grace starts, “I would say that this is scary. Talking to someone you can’t see and hoping they are there, hoping they are listening. That’s terrifying. I don’t know how you do it.” Would Yuki even listen to this? Would she see Grace’s name and swipe this recording right into the trash?
“I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’m afraid of failing. The thought of it makes me feel sick. I’m afraid of not being perfect, which my therapist would say is ridiculous. Nobody is perfect. Not me or you or my parents or our friends. Not the people that rejected me, and not the people that will see that I have claimed the stars as mine. The first class I ever took, I knew astronomy was mine. The same way I saw you that night in Vegas in that overpriced, overcrowded bar and claimed you as mine. My wife, my siren, my lonely, monstrous creature.”
She hopes Yuki will listen.
“I talked to my advisor. I told her I wanted to look at some faculty positions, some teaching opportunities, in New York. Maybe it’s presumptuous of me. You might not even want to see me again, but I—” Her nails dig into her palms. “I’ve spent a long time trying to be the best. The best daughter, the best protégé, the best astronomer. Anything less meant I was doing something wrong. Any deviation from my perfectly crafted plan was wrong, and fuck, how I almost stuck that landing. But then I stormed out of the interview for the job I was groomed to get. For a job I was never going to actually get. And then I married you. How could the great Grace Porter recover from that?
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to say to you. I don’t want to give you excuses or rationalizations or good intentions.” Mom’s words echo in her head. “I was terrified. I was scared. I wanted to be the best, even if it meant working myself into the ground. Even if it meant breaking my back to prove I deserved a seat at a table I had no desire to sit at. Even if it meant leaving you behind. If I could say anything, it would be that I’m sorry. You asked me before I left what best meant for me, and I’m still learning what that looks like. But I know it means I take care of myself. It means I’m kind to myself. It means I support my friends and my family, and I don’t let the guilt take over when they support me back.”
Please be listening, she thinks. “I know it includes your midnight radio show and all the lonely creatures and monsters and stories that come with it. It includes your weird-ass roommates, our friends. It includes you, Yuki Yam
amoto, because best for me means being happy and—God—being in love with you.”
Grace feels out of breath by the time her mind catches up with her tongue. She feels like she has run an entire marathon, and the finish line is right there, if only she can keep going for a little bit longer. “Are you there, Yuki? Are you listening? Because there is so much I want to say to you, and I made a promise in a chapel in the desert that I don’t plan on breaking. Till death do us part, we said. That bejeweled priest asked if I, Grace Porter, took you, Yuki Yamamoto, to be my lawfully wedded wife, and by every power I have within me, by the endless and thunderous universe, I do, okay? I do.”
Grace ends the recording and sends it before she can doubt herself. Like how people send their wishes up to the moon and wait for an answer, Grace sends hers to join them. Please be listening, she thinks. I am here. I am here. I am here.
Twenty
The day of the wedding finally comes.
Grace’s arms and legs are sore from helping set up the outdoor wedding tent and wobbling on ladders to string up extravagant fabrics and lights and little flowers.
She’s in her room making sure her suit is immaculate. It’s a deep purple, the color of nightfall. She went to the African braiding shop like Heather suggested, and they put her hair in thick, jumbo box braids. The woman put purple and silver threads in them that twinkle and glimmer when they catch the sun. The braids hang down Grace’s back, and she glows when she looks in the mirror.
Thankful for a mild temperature day, the suit makes her feel put together and settled. “What do you think?” she asks.
Meera leans in, her face too close to the screen. “Come closer to the phone, and do a turn,” she commands. “Move back a little. It’s tailored so well.”
Grace sighs. “My father is military. You think I’m not a stickler about my suits?”
Meera rolls her eyes, smiling quickly when she realizes Grace can see her. “You’ll look so good when you’re dancing at the reception,” she says dreamily. “Some beautiful woman will twirl you, and your suit jacket will flare so perfectly.”
Grace frowns. “Where did this beautiful woman come from?” She straightens her bejeweled choker in the mirror. “There is no beautiful woman dancing with me. Just Kelly, and like, Mr. Cooley, who doesn’t know how to keep his hands to himself.”
“Did you tell him you’re a lesbian?”
“I told everyone I’m a lesbian,” she says. “Maybe he thinks it’s a phase.”
“Well, tell them to back off,” Meera says loyally. “You look amazing, by the way.”
Grace smiles. She sits at the vanity, so she can actually talk to Meera for a second instead of yelling at her from across the room. “Thank you,” she says. “You know I wish you were here, right?” Ximena and Agnes arrived yesterday afternoon. They’re only staying for the weekend, and Graces wishes they could stay longer, or that she was going back with them to Portland.
Meera shrugs, ducking her head. She’s taken over Baba Vihaan’s office to talk to Grace, and she looks unbearably small in the middle of all his things.
“Meera,” she says, her voice gentle. “You know that, right?”
Meera nods quickly, and when she looks up, her face is contorted into something that is supposed to be a smile. “I know,” she says, mouth trembling. “It’s just—ugh. Yeah, I know.”
“Tell me,” Grace says quietly. She is trying; she is trying so hard to be here and present. She is trying to be the best friend she can be. “You can tell me.”
She’s not expecting it when Meera starts to cry.
“Hey,” she breathes out, reaching for the phone like she can touch her. “Do you need Raj? What’s wrong?”
Meera hiccups, carefully wiping her eyes. “He’s not here,” she gets out. “He’s at another meeting for the new tea room, and soon he’ll be living in Boston. He’ll be in Boston, and soon enough you’ll be in New York for good, and it’ll just be me here.”
“That’s not true,” Grace says carefully, though her chest feels tight. “Baba Vihaan is there. All your cool, young and hip college friends are there.” She pauses, mouth twisting playfully. “Agnes and Ximena are there,” she teases, “and I know they loooove being around you.” Meera covers her face with her hands, embarrassed.
“Shut up,” she mumbles. “God, you’re as bad as Raj.”
“Older sibling privileges,” Grace says. “It’s our job. You know what else is?”
Meera sighs, fiddling with her hair. “What?”
“Not leaving you.” The sincerity of the words comes from somewhere deep inside her. “Even if we’re not there, we haven’t forgotten about you. You don’t just stop being our little sister.”
“I know,” Meera says, sounding stronger than she did a few minutes ago. She meets Grace’s eyes and nods. “I know. Now go away. I’m going to call Agnes and Ximena so they can show me the wedding decorations.”
“You could have just asked me to show you,” Grace complains. “You guys are going to be so gross and cute, aren’t you?”
“Shut up,” Meera says. “As if you don’t know Ximena is, like, ridiculously beautiful inside and out, and Agnes is the coolest, kindest person ever. I’m hanging up now. Bye!” The call disconnects.
Grace laughs and slips her phone into her pocket. She decides to take a short walk around the groves, on the side hidden away from the guests. She will breathe in the smell of citrus and earth, and she will breathe out all her anxiety and swirling thoughts.
But by the time the guests start arriving and people begin looking for her, all Grace has done is work herself up into an anxiety spiral about officiating. And, her shoes are dirty.
“Them things look a mess,” Saffiya says, when Grace greets her at the front of the tent. “Go inside and clean yourself up, Grace Porter.”
“I have to—” she starts, but Saffiya snatches the wedding programs out of her hand. “Fine, I’m going. Thank you.”
She cleans herself up. She knocks the dirt off her heels, dabs sweat off her forehead and tries to remember her speech.
Somehow, she makes it back outside in one piece. She feels stuck in her head, and it’s hard to breathe. It feels like she’s inside a washing machine, spinning around so fast that everything on the other side of the glass blurs.
Heather says to focus on one thing when she gets like this. Focus on one thing, Grace, and hold on to just that. Only, there is not just one thing to worry about now. Grace is officiating a wedding. Guests begin to sit, watching her for direction. Mom and Kelly are depending on her to do this perfectly. She is trying so hard and—
“Hey,” someone whispers, grabbing her arm.
Immediately, Grace relaxes. She knows that voice. She knows that shampoo and that lotion and that presence next to her. “Ximena,” she says. “Fuck, I’m—”
“Freaking out,” Ximena finishes. “Yeah, I could tell. But Kelly is on his way down, and the music will start soon, so you need to get it together.”
Grace blanks out. “I can’t,” she says, shaking her head frantically. “Oh my God, I can’t do this.” She grabs Ximena’s hand tightly. “Why did they ask me to do this? I don’t—I’m not—”
“You can,” Ximena says firmly. “You are.” She’s in a bright pink dress that pops against her brown skin. Her thick, curly hair is pushed into a high puff. “What did Heather tell you?”
“Focus on one thing,” Grace parrots obediently, feeling dizzy. “There’s too many things. What am I supposed to—”
“Focus on me,” Ximena says. She points to a row near the front where Agnes slouches down and gives them a lazy wave. “That’s where we’ll be. Focus on me and Agnes, okay?”
She gives Grace a push, so hard that Grace stumbles to the front of the tent just as Miss Darla starts to play the opening notes on the piano. Grace looks back at Ximena, wide-eyed.
“Go,” she whispers loudly, so Grace goes.
She takes her carefully typed-up paper out of her breast pocket. It has been opened, folded and opened again. It opens for the last time just as Kelly appears at the end of the aisle and walks up.
She takes a deep breath.
She tries to smile as he makes it up to the front next to her. “You look wonderful,” he says, leaning in carefully. “Do you need me to hold your hand?”
Grace glances at him, just as the curtains pull back and reveal Mom, ready to make her walk down the aisle. “Why would I need you to hold my hand?”
He looks down. “So that only one of them is shaking,” he says blandly, and Grace grips one hand around her wrist in response. “Suit yourself.” He adjusts the cuffs on his neat, pressed suit and tucks some gray-brown hair behind his ears. “Mine are shaking, too, just so you know.”
“Thanks anyway,” she murmurs, and she refuses to look at him when he laughs, quiet and low.
Mom walks down the aisle as Miss Darla plays the wedding march. She doesn’t falter, doesn’t stumble as she walks toward them. Grace wonders if she was this sure walking down the aisle toward Colonel. If her eyes were this wide. If her cheeks were flushed with heat and happiness just like this.
Grace commits it all to memory.
Mom reaches them as the music ends. She has makeup on, enough that her eyes sparkle and her mouth is a pretty apple red. She smiles at Grace first, then Kelly, and Grace thinks, I am a part of this. I am a part of this moment and this happiness. I am not left behind, but in the thick of it.
“We are gathered here today,” she says, in the hush of the crowd, “to wed two people that have found love.”
Her hands shake. She meets Ximena’s eyes and watches her whisper, “I love you so much it hurts.” She finds Agnes, who has sunglasses on but is smiling wide, despite how much she is trying to project a devil-may-care attitude.
“There are a lot of things I don’t know about my mom,” she says, glancing down at her paper and deciding to go off script. “There are so many things I don’t know and so many things I am discovering by being here. I am learning that she works hard in the groves, never asking anything of anyone that she wouldn’t do herself. I am learning that she drinks one, sometimes two, glasses of red wine every night, and she prefers company while she does it.”
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