“May.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
Harper took another step. That fucking cunt. “Not really.”
The Bitch looked at Harper before throwing her cigarette onto the sidewalk. “Well, don’t worry,” she said, grinding the butt with her mauve pump. “You’ll find Mr. Right one day.”
“I’m not worried,” Harper said, walking toward the gate, her hand on the latch. “Take care.”
It wasn’t Harper’s social graces that stopped her when The Bitch spoke again, louder and a few steps closer.
“Isn’t it great Jamie’s come home for Grace?” She watched Harper carefully.
Slowly, Harper’s head turned toward the living room, her consciousness capturing every detail. She hadn’t seen Jamie; she’d looked for him at the cemetery, and again as the house filled with people, but there was no sign of him.
But now, hovering between Mrs. Weasle and her worst nightmare, Harper finally saw Jamie through the sliding glass door. He was inside. Talking with Stowe. He held a plate of fruit with one hand and Grace with the other.
“Alone”
Heart
Grace was expected back to school midway through the second week of spring classes, so Harper unpacked her apartment. She wanted everything to be as easy as possible. In between gathering syllabi and buying books, Harper unloaded boxes until she got Grace’s place in order. Things had to be perfect.
So much had happened since Grace’s scream, since the immobilizing news of Dean’s death, Harper didn’t want there to be any reminders. No shattered glass from her outburst, no smashed phone. With a hanger, she finagled the receiver’s battery from under the fridge, and she even put rugs down in the kitchen so Grace’s bare feet wouldn’t recall the way the tile felt against her legs that morning.
Hanging pictures and breaking down boxes was also therapeutic—anything to keep the image of Jamie’s big hand in the middle of Grace’s back out of Harper’s mind, anything to push away The Bitch’s outlandish allegations.
Although the timing was bad, Harper’s art class had been a wonderful escape, as had her budding friendship with her teacher Ruthie. They were the only things that got Harper through January. Even though she had a full load her last semester, she signed up for advanced ceramics in the spring anyway.
On the day Grace was to return, a date circled with a yellow highlighter on Harper’s calendar, Ruthie asked to see Harper after class.
Harper waited for the other students to leave before approaching Ruthie’s desk. Over her spectacles, perched on the end of her nose, Ruthie watched Harper walk the aisle toward her.“How are you?” Ruthie asked, pulling off her glasses. Two gem-laden cords kept them centered on her chest.
When Harper missed class after Dean died, she had shared with Ruthie the reason why; Harper told her how worried she was about her best friend Grace. Then, about a week later, after Ruthie caught her crying in the bathroom during a break, Harper admitted that she, too, was having a hard time keeping it together.
“All right,” Harper said now, setting her books down.
As Ruthie hoisted her body up to sit atop her desk, her bracelets clanged against the wood. “How was the funeral?”
Harper envisioned the flowers on Dean’s casket, blue hydrangea, and the fresh dirt piled next to his plot. “It was…
sad,” she said, tracing the rim of a fired pot on Ruthie’s desk.
“Very sad.”
“How’s your friend?”
“So-so, I guess. Haven’t seen much of her. She’s been busy with her family and stuff, you know.”
With her hands, Ruthie reached back and let her aging hair free from the rubber band. Harper was surprised by how different she looked with her hair down; even more attractive.
“When will Grace be back?”
“Any minute.”
“Any minute?” she asked. “I won’t keep you then.” Ruthie jumped off the desk and reached into her bag. “Here,” she said, jotting a number down. “Call if you need anything. If you need to miss class or,” she smiled, “if you’re having another meltdown.”
Practically jogging, Harper moved as fast as she could
through the student union on her way home. What had only been weeks felt like years and Harper worried about the distance, about the things Grace’s mother had said, about the damage that had been done.
Across the street from Grace’s building, Harper stopped when she saw Grace through the kitchen window. With childish enthusiasm, she jumped up and down with her backpack.
“Graaaaacie!” she screamed.
Harper took a shortcut, hopped the small perimeter fence and ran through a bed of ivy to get to the door. All worked up, she tried to catch her breath, her cool, before knocking. Finally ready, Harper clenched a fist and lifted her hand, but Grace opened the door before she could knock.
Even though all Harper wanted to do was wrap her arms around Grace, she waited, again, when the door swung open and their eyes met.
“Hi,” Harper said, still a little winded.
Grace held out her arms and Harper leapt into them.
Finally, Harper thought.
It was almost the hug she’d been waiting for.
Harper lit candles on the table while Grace warmed bread for dinner. Beyond unpacking her stuff, she had stocked the fridge with Grace’s favorite things: persimmons, bangers, strawberry jam, scones, herbed goat cheese. She even made a special trip to the European market for clotted cream.
During dinner, as the girls sat across from each other, there was a cloudy void in Grace’s eyes, one that chewed on Harper’s insides as they ate.
“How are you doing?” she finally asked.
Grace tore off a hunk of bread. “I don’t even know anymore,”
she said, dipping it in the soup. “Everything’s numb.” She pulled her arms into her sweater and shivered.
“Are you glad to be back?”
She watched the news over Harper’s shoulder. “I’m not really glad about anything to be honest.”
Sitting together, they were like old dorm buddies who hadn’t seen each other in years, unsure where to pick up. Could she reach across the table and hold Grace’s hand? She hadn’t dared and hadn’t expected the emptiness, the shell of a woman before her.
Since they’d gotten together, she’d seen the hollowness before, the distance at unexpected moments, the mysterious tears which sometimes followed. She didn’t always understand them, but the energy she was feeling this time was different. There was a dark, unsettling permanence about it now.
They went to bed early. Grace sat on the edge of the mattress for a few moments setting her alarm clock. Gently, Harper slid off her slippers, but kept her pajamas on, following Grace’s lead even though they’d always slept in the nude.
After the lights were out, Harper inched her way over. There were so many things about Grace she missed—the sleepy noises she made and the smell of her damp skin under the covers.
Harper stopped shy of touching her.
In the darkness, she waited, wanting to ask more of Grace, needing to know what the last month had been like, if it had been a slow burning hell for her too. Harper knew it had. Even though she’d been hurting, Grace’s grief was much bigger than hers; it hardly fit in the small space between them.
And Harper needed answers about Jamie. They hadn’t spoken about it; Harper told herself she wouldn’t bring it up right away.
She had to know if Jamie was moving back to Arizona. Or if he already had.
Once her eyes adjusted, Harper could see Grace facing the window, her back to Harper. Timidly, Harper touched her arm.
Grace grabbed her hand and kissed it as she pulled Harper closer.
“I’ve missed you,” Grace whispered.
Holding back tears, Harper kissed Grace’s shoulder and waited again. But just as quickly as she’d had reached for Harper’s hand, Grace fell asleep.
Harper woke sometime in the night in an empty be
d. Where Grace had been, the covers were pulled up to her pillow. If not for the fuzzy glow framing the bathroom door, Harper would’ve thought she dreamt Grace’s return.
Harper got up and listened at the door. “Grace?”
When there was no answer, she spoke louder and tried the handle. “Are you okay?”
The stillness was even thicker near the light. “Grace,” Harper warned, raising her voice, “I’m coming in.”
With cautious steps, she opened the door and found Grace neck deep in the bathtub, curled on her side.
She stood over her coiled body, examining the naked scar on her shoulder, the bulbs of her vertebrae. Grace finally flipped over.
“What are you doing?” Harper asked, lowering the toilet seat, sitting down.
“Soaking.” Grace studied the faucet, stuck her big toe in the dripping hole. “I just felt like a soak.”
Harper watched Grace’s lips move and then her breasts bob in the clear water, wondering who Grace wanted her to be. Her lover? Her best friend? She wasn’t sure it was either. “Well,” she whispered. “I guess I’ll let you soak.”
As she stood, Grace stopped her. “Wait,” she said, reaching for Harper. “Stay.”
Later that morning, as Harper sat across from Grace in the bathtub, her body pruning, she told Harper she was leaving school and had come to get her stuff.
“How will that make things better?” Harper first pleaded, anger before desperation. “Putting your life on hold for what?
Dean wanted us to be together.”
“What do you mean?” Grace asked, her forehead perspiring, the circles under the eyes even deeper when she narrowed them.
“I mean…Dean would want us…to be together.”
“I need to be there for Mummy,” Grace said.
Grace’s dad had recently opened an office in Edinburgh and would be there through the summer, Grace explained. The anguish was too much for Cilla to bear alone, Grace said—Cilla had collapsed at the grocery store and had driven off the road twice, one time slamming into a cactus. The airbag had broken her nose.
Harper listened to everything Grace said, but only heard what she needed to hear: she was still the most important thing in Grace’s life, despite her having to leave. It was contrary to every choice she was making, but Harper trusted what she said.
She had no choice.
Crying, Grace told her it was the hardest decision she’d ever made, one she labored over for weeks. She loved Harper and she loved U of A, but it was what she needed to do. It was her duty.
When Grace had said all there was to say, Harper helped her dry off. In Harper’s mind, she begged Grace not to go, told her that she couldn’t make it without her and no matter what was better for her mom, Harper’s needs were more important.
But the words never made it to her lips; she just took it all in, being the sympathetic friend Harper now knew she needed, not the enraged woman who was watching the love of her life slip away.
After Grace fell asleep, Harper put on grubby clothes and went to the dumpster to retrieve the boxes she’d unpacked. With one foot on the edge, she leveraged herself up. It reeked of soured milk and cat shit, but she went in anyway. She had to.
When her feet hit the pile of rubbish, it compacted and she sank. Harper tossed a broken desk lamp out of the way before launching the first box to the street. The paper bag between her and the next box ripped open and spilled brown bananas and dirty tampons on her clogs. This was disgusting, Harper thought, and useless. The boxes were unsalvageable.
Leaning against the filthy wall, Harper covered her face with her sleeve and gagged. She looked at the dawning blue sky and
then at Grace’s window, still dark. Asleep in a ball on the couch, Grace didn’t know she had even left.
For the most part, she had kept herself together while they spoke in the bathroom, but now, alone in the garbage attempting to recover what was left, she was powerless. She was tired of being the strong one, the one who made all the sacrifices, the one always left behind.
Through her tears, it was the glitter that caught her eye, its twinkle amidst the waste. It was a card she’d sent to Grace from Germany.
For weeks, she had held onto it before mailing it. She’d not been sure it was appropriate, afraid it might seem presumptuous; depending on how you read it, it could be a love note, or, as Harper justified, a card for a friend you missed so much you’d stopped eating. The glitter was authentic, crushed glass made by a local artist. She’d purchased it at a flea market on the pier in Den Haag.
Harper fell to her knees, wiped the grime on her jeans and held the card with both hands before digging deeper. As she dug in the heaping pile of decay, there were others; the briefcase where Grace kept all of Harper’s things had been emptied.
She had thrown all of them out, hundreds of them. Grace had dumped everything.
In the putrid dumpster, Harper sorted through her words remembering each card, each reason behind them—their one month anniversary, Grace’s birthday, just because, just because, just because. Under the cards, Harper found other mementos, too: the stocking Harper made her one Christmas with their names in a heart written in puffy paint, now dripped with egg yolk; a sombrero from their trip to Tijuana was smashed in; the dried flowers Grace had pressed from their hotel room in Amsterdam were nothing but broken stems in the dumpster now.
Harper gathered all the letters and brought them to her chest.
As she wept with reality, as she peeled back all the layers of denial that had been keeping her insulated, she was struck by the awful truth.
Grace’s leaving wasn’t about her mother.
It was about Harper.
“I Shall Believe”
Sheryl Crow
Nearly a month passed before Harper saw Grace again.
The call she’d been waiting for finally came a week after Valentine’s Day, a night Harper had spent drunk at the bar by herself. She was in her PJs, her hair greasy and wound into a bun. Prior to her trip to the bar, she hadn’t left the apartment in days.
“Mummy’s going to London tomorrow and we can have the house all to ourselves,” Grace said. “Can you come up this weekend?”
What a silly question it was. Harper would’ve dropped everything for Grace; in fact, she already had. Slowly, as the semester passed, Harper had skidded into a deep depression, the kind that sneaked up on you when you’ve unknowingly gone from feeling sorry for yourself to entirely shutting out the world.
Every time she spoke with Grace—in the mornings and once or twice at night—it only seemed to compound her condition, piling more weight on her shoulders. On the phone, she tried to sound upbeat each time:
“You shot an eighty-two on the course today? Wow!”
“I’m dying to see that play.”
“I didn’t know Madonna had a new album out.”
0
Whatever made Grace happy made Harper happy. Well, almost.
By the time Grace invited her to visit, Harper had lost interest in school, a first in her four years at U of A. And she’d completely pulled away from Gamma Kappa; she couldn’t hang out at the house or even walk by. The one time she’d stopped to pick up mail, she was sure she heard Grace’s laugh coming from the kitchen. She sprang from the couch and rounded the corner, only to find a group of freshmen pledges.
Even though she avoided most classes where she’d have to interact with others, Harper did go to her photography lab because she would’ve been missed. It was her major and it was a small group, only four of them. The summit of her college career—everything she’d worked for culminated in senior studio.
But she had purposefully dodged Ruthie’s class since the day she’d pulled her aside. She wasn’t ready to see Ruthie; she wasn’t strong enough yet.
Ready or not, Ruthie knocked on Harper’s door the same day Grace called with her invitation.
Completely unprepared, when Harper saw Ruthie through the peephole that afternoon, she called out
“Just a minute,” ran to the bathroom and quickly tried to pull herself together. Aside from Harper’s dirty hair, her eyebrows were unplucked, her legs unshaven, and her teeth had little sweaters on them.
“I apologize for just dropping by like this,” Ruthie said, standing a safe distance from the door. She wore a long purple sundress and colorful bracelets stacked on one another.
“It’s fine,” Harper said, now wearing wrinkled jeans and a Wildcats baby doll tee, her teeth brushed.
“I’m sorry,”—Ruthie’s eyes were lowered—“I don’t want to impose.”
“You’re not imposing,” Harper said. “I’m just surprised to see you. That’s all.”
“I wanted to make sure you’re okay,” Ruthie said. “I haven’t seen you in class.”
Harper invited Ruthie in. Holding a Post-it note with Harper’s address, she tentatively stepped inside. “I’ve tried to
call, but there was no answer,” Ruthie said. “I was just…I was worried.”
At the beginning of the semester, Harper had installed a caller ID box and hadn’t been answering many calls, especially those coming from campus. She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
Ruthie pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “Sorry it’s so dark in here,” Harper said, cracking the blinds. Sun sprayed thin stripes of daylight across Ruthie’s face and onto the living room wall. Harper tried to justify her absence. “I’m sorry I’ve missed class. I haven’t been feeling well.”
Ruthie shook her head. “Missing class isn’t a big deal. I’m just concerned about you. I know you’ve been going through a lot.”Sitting next to Ruthie, Harper actually felt some peace of mind. Ruthie had a soothing affect, one of those people that, just by their presence, made you feel that everything was okay, that things were less of a big deal. Harper’s mom had that affect on her too, and being with Ruthie made Harper miss her more than usual.
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