Grace

by T. Greenwood

  She glanced at the card in her hand: WILDER MONTGOMERY, REPORTER, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE. Her hands trembled.

  “You’re the owner, right? Babette?” He gestured to the glowing neon sign.

  She felt herself nodding despite herself. “Babette,” she said. Babette, the real Babette, was on her annual trip to visit her brother in Colorado.

  “I’m staying over at the Econo Lodge,” he said. “The one near the interstate?”

  She looked at the business card again. “You live in Florida,” she said, her heart beating hard in her chest.

  He smiled again, his eyes blue, blue, blue. “That’s right. The Sunshine State.”

  On Tuesday afternoon, Kurt stared at the stack of bills on his desk in the shop. When he first took over the shop for Pop, he’d been on top of everything. He paid the business’s bills as they came in, actually feeling a sense of accomplishment each time he signed his name to one of the long business checks in the ledger he kept in the bottom drawer. Now his throat grew thick and his legs itched whenever he pulled the monstrous book out. The custom checks that had once seemed official and professional now just struck him as oversized and pretentious.

  Kurt’s phone buzzed in his pocket. The shock of it was like a Taser. He’d just hung up with Elsbeth and wasn’t expecting a call.

  “Pop?” he said.

  “I need you to come by.”

  “Jesus, what for, Pop?”

  “Now don’t get your tit in a wringer,” he said. “I just need some help making sense of these papers.”

  “What papers, Pop?”

  “Love letters from some lady at the county.”

  “Oh shit, Pop.”

  From what he could gather, Irene Killjoy, the lady from the county, had come at the crack of dawn that morning with papers. Not a condemnation sign, yet, thank God, but a letter signed by every neighbor within a mile radius of Jude’s house, except for Maury Vorhies, who had apparently refused to sign. Theresa Bouchard had spearheaded the campaign and gone to the county, letters in hand. The cleaned-up yard and porch had apparently gone unnoticed, but the raccoons under the porch and the possible rat infestation had not. Neither had the three inoperable, unregistered vehicles in the yard nor the exposed electrical panel where the siding had rotted away. And as a result of the complaints, the county had sent out inspectors, who had quickly come up with a list of thirty-five health and fire code violations.

  Kurt dialed the number Pop had read to him and listened as Miss Killjoy primly answered the phone.

  “It’s uninhabitable,” she said to Kurt. “It poses a serious danger to public safety.”

  “It’s a private residence,” Kurt said. “It’s not a danger to anyone except for my father.”

  “Then you certainly must at least be concerned about his health and welfare.”

  Kurt felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach. “Of course I am concerned. Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “Mr. Kennedy, please. The reality is your father’s home is in violation of multiple building codes, including the presence of numerous fire hazards,” she said. “At this point, it’s become a risk not only to your father but to the public as well.”

  “We’ll get it cleaned up, but I need some time. I’m trying to run a business,” Kurt said. He looked around at the sad shop, at that awful checkbook ledger.

  “Listen, I understand your plight, Mr. Kennedy. And we only want what is best for your father. We can certainly send in some of the residents at the detention center, if you’d like. We frequently use opportunities like this for the inmates to fulfill their community service requirements.”

  The hair on Kurt’s arms bristled. “You’re going to send prisoners into my father’s home? What kind of harebrained plan is that?”

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “Sir, we’ll be sending the inspectors out again in thirty days. If these violations are not corrected, the county is going to take matters into its own hands. I would really consider this as an option.”

  Kurt considered the list of violations Pop had read off to him. He closed his eyes and imagined the inside of his father’s house. It would take an army to get the place emptied out, cleaned up, and brought up to code in thirty days. He wondered if there were any legal loopholes they might find. Like he had money for a lawyer, and calling Billy again would just about kill him.

  He tried to think about who he could ask for help. There were Nick and Marty; they’d practically been like brothers to Kurt when he was growing up. They’d both lay down their lives for him if he asked them to. But neither of them knew about Pop, about how bad things had gotten. He’d be so ashamed for them to see the kind of squalor Pop was living in. There were a couple of guys Pop went hunting with, a few men from his old bowling league, but cleaning up some old man’s crap was hardly on the list of favors Kurt felt comfortable asking for. He didn’t want to involve Elsbeth, so that left him and Trevor. And, hopefully, Maury, who, at least, had been a contractor before he retired. If Beal could watch the shop for a bit, they could get in there and clean. He could get a Dumpster in, though the rental alone would set him back $500 or more. And never mind the problem of what to do with Pop. They would never get that shit hole cleaned out with Pop monitoring their every move. He’d practically thrown a tantrum over a box of his mother’s old Ladies’ Home Journals that were rotting out on the porch.

  They had thirty days. Thirty days.

  He thought about the piles and piles of papers and trash, the mountains of debris teetering on all the flat surfaces of his father’s house, and wondered if he was fooling himself. What he needed to do was to call Billy. There had to be a way to get an extension on the county’s deadline, and Billy was the only lawyer he knew. But asking Billy to help with Pop would be like asking the pope to perform an abortion. Billy had left Two Rivers and never looked back. And the last time Billy and Pop had been in the same room, Pop had nearly killed him.

  Kurt crouched down under the counter and opened the safe. After he spun the knob, listening to the tick, tick of the lock, he leaned his forehead against the cool metal. The thin envelope marked Emergency seemed to mock him. He’d been saving cash, just a bit here and there for years now, since Trevor was born. Five dollars here and there, every now and then a ten spot. He never counted it; vowed never to dip into it. It was his entire life savings. It was not to be touched. The currents in his legs were angry, but he stayed crouching, clutching the envelope, allowing the pain to travel up his legs, across his stomach, and into his shoulders. He held the envelope in his hands, shook his head, and shoved it back in the safe. By the time he finally stood up again, he felt like the wind had been knocked out of him.

  He wrote Family Emergency in Magic Marker on a piece of paper, taped it to the front door of the shop with a piece of electrical tape, and then called for Trevor, who was somewhere deep inside a maze of mufflers and engines. He could see his white shock of hair above the sea of metal.

  “Time to go to Pop’s,” he said, and Trevor slowly emerged from the labyrinth of parts.

  “Do I have to?”

  “Just get in,” he said, exasperated, and threw open the truck’s passenger door.

  He knew right away as he turned down the road to Pop’s house that something wasn’t right. He felt it in the way the leaves hung too far over the dirt road, as if they were closing in, as if the truck might simply be swallowed by the foliage. It was as though he were driving into the mouth of an angry green beast. The electrical storm inside his body was quieted now, but the air outside was tight. He could smell rain. The forecast had said there was a storm coming that might last the next two or three days. The sky looked brooding, angry.

  When they pulled into Pop’s driveway, he could see that all the work they’d done just weeks ago was for nothing. There were overflowing bins of trash all along the drive, a swarm of flies hovering over one open bag that spilled rotten food and papers onto the ground. The warming weather and the incre
ased sunshine made whatever was in those piles start to stink, like something dying.

  The porch steps were littered with coffee cans and empty glass jars, and the front door was almost completely obscured by furniture Kurt didn’t recognize: a big oak dresser and roll-top desk. Goddamn Maury. Another swap meet trip he’d failed to mention to Kurt. Maury had become Pop’s unofficial chauffeur to the weekend swap meets Kurt had pleaded with him to stay away from. Kurt could feel anger rumbling inside him, and the sky rumbled too as if in sympathy. He got out of the truck and slammed the door shut. He motioned for Trevor to stay in the cab.

  He walked up the steps to the house and tried to push the enormous dresser out of the way, but it wouldn’t budge. He cautiously opened a drawer. Bricks. A dozen bricks. He opened the next drawer and the next. Pop was building a fucking fortress of used furniture around his house.

  Kurt managed to squeeze through the space between the bureau and the door and banged hard. “Pop!” he said, knocking. “Pop!” he hollered again and felt something between sickness and fear run through his body: a hollow free-falling feeling.

  He tried the door. It was unlocked, but still the door wouldn’t budge even with the turn of the knob. “Pop!” he said again, feeling panicky. Thunder growled this time, and a stray sliver of cold rain hit his face.

  “Goddamn it, Pop! It’s me. Open the door!” He looked to the window to the right of the door. On the other side of the glass was the living room, but the shades were drawn, the drapes pressed into the window by whatever junk was on the other side. He knocked again and then pushed the door hard with his shoulder, feeling something give. A little. He pushed again, harder this time, and winced with the pain in his shoulder. He pushed his hip into it and finally, he was able to get the door open enough to slip inside. He looked back at Trevor in the truck. The window was rolled down, and Trevor was aiming the camera at him.

  “Put the goddamned camera away,” he said. “And stay there.”

  He slipped through the crack he’d made but was faced with a wall of cigarette smoke and cardboard. Everywhere he looked there were cardboard boxes stacked like strange totems, like a child’s fort. Irene Killjoy was right; a forgotten cigarette and this place would go up in flames in seconds. How could he have not noticed before how dangerous this all was?

  “Pop,” he said again and pushed blindly through the rubble of his father’s life, feeling like he was sinking into quicksand.

  He found Pop sitting at the kitchen table, though there wasn’t an inch of space on its surface. The papers from the county were in front of him. His eyes were filmy and unfocused. He was shirtless, the scar from an old surgery red and angry at the center of his chest. His entire body was speckled with liver spots, as though someone had flung a fistful of mud at him. Kurt felt the tension in his shoulders give a little, relieved that Pop was here, and alive. Kurt said softly, “Pop?”

  Pop looked up but not at Kurt. Instead, he trained his eyes on the ceiling, where the model planes solemnly hovered over him.

  “Pop,” Kurt tried again, moving slowly toward him as he might a wounded animal.

  His speech was slow, careful. “Your mother and I lived in this house forty years.”

  “I know that, Pop.”

  “You and Billy were both born in that back bedroom.”

  Kurt nodded and reached for Pop’s bare shoulder. His skin was hot to the touch.

  “I own this house,” he said.

  Kurt put his arm around Pop’s stiff shoulder, feeling his heart beating hard in his own chest. Thinking about what his mother would think if she could see this now. Feeling shame like something white-hot in his chest.

  “It’s my goddamned home,” Pop said.

  Later that night after Elsbeth and the kids had fallen asleep, Kurt took the phone outside and walked out to the backyard. He sat down on the rusty edge of the slide and looked up at the sky. It had rained all afternoon. A persistent and furious rain. But now, at midnight, it had softened, not apologetic, but at least willing to give a small reprieve.

  He dialed Billy’s number, and because Kurt knew he wouldn’t answer, he practiced what he would say to the machine. But then, just as his lips were forming the words that might convince Billy it was time to set aside old grievances, the words that might soften Billy’s own decade-long storm, his brother answered.

  His voice was soft but tinged at the edges with bitterness. “Kurt.”

  “Hi, Billy,” he said, and the words disappeared. “Listen. Please just listen.”

  Trevor was alone in the art room during lunch on Friday. Mrs. D. had a staff meeting but said that he was welcome to hang out there until the next period started. He sat down at one of the worktables and opened a bag of chips he’d gotten from the vending machine. He’d also snagged an apple from the fruit bowl on his way out the door that morning. He was anxious for her to come back. He wanted her to see the photos he’d taken. The good ones anyway.

  Taking pictures with the camera Mrs. D. gave him was different than taking pictures at the salvage yard. He didn’t think about what he was seeing when he snapped the shots of the starters and alternators and clutches. He didn’t have to, because as soon as he clicked the button, he could see the picture in the display. But when he was taking pictures with Mrs. D.’s camera, he had to really think about things. About centering, composition, she called it. He had to consider the light. She’d told him that in photography, the light is just as important as what you’re taking a picture of. Something ordinary could be beautiful if the light is right. And the other way around. And even then, he had nothing to show for it, just a canister of film, pictures captive inside. He couldn’t wait to learn how to develop them himself. He’d spent every dime he’d made working at the yard so far getting these rolls processed at the Walgreens, and it had taken a whole week for them to come back and his mom had forgotten to give them to him for almost a week after she picked them up.

  “I have no idea why you don’t just get yourself a digital camera instead,” she had said, handing him the fat envelope, still sealed shut. “Even my phone’s got a camera on it. Then you can just print ’em out yourself.” Never mind that they didn’t have a printer, or even a computer for that matter. He didn’t know what she was thinking sometimes.

  He’d grabbed the envelope from her hands and ran to his room. Gracy was in the backyard blowing bubbles; he could see her from their window, the greasy bubbles drifting into the pasture beyond their yard. He sat down on his bed and tore the envelope open. It felt like opening up a Christmas present.

  He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this. For one thing, half of them were overexposed, the faces bright white moons. Eclipsed. The other half were out of focus. The ones of his dad and Pop weren’t anything like what he’d seen in the viewfinder, what he’d imagined, and the ones of the trash before they hauled it away to the dump just looked like pictures of trash. There was one, of a trout skeleton with its head still attached, that was okay, but he was disappointed. His hands were shaking as he went through the rest of the stack.

  He’d taken some silly pictures of Gracy out in the backyard goofing around on the rusty swing set, the one that had been in the backyard since he was her age. There were a half dozen bad ones, but finally, one decent one, one that came close to what he’d seen in his mind. In this picture, she was leaning away, her hair dipping in a mud puddle. The light skipped across the water in this one. Like something alive. You could also see the reflection of the crazy after-rain clouds in the murky water. It was disturbing and beautiful at the same time. After that were six more washed-out, ghostly-looking pictures, and then one he snapped the night after they came home from Story Land. In this one, Gracy was fast asleep, her legs and arms thrown out, her face full of peace. The light from the night-light lit up her white nightie, the white caps of her knees, and one side of her sleeping face. When he looked at the picture, his chest ached. Who would have known that looking at a photo could make your hear
t swell up like that? He yanked out all the bad pictures from the stack and tossed them into the trash can. Then he took the best ones and stuffed them back into the envelope.

  He clutched the Walgreens envelope now, too afraid to take the photos out again. Maybe he’d only imagined they were any good. He wanted to show Mrs. D., but he didn’t want her to be disappointed. Didn’t want her to realize that maybe she’d been wasting her time with him. Didn’t want her to ask for her camera back.

  Mrs. D. came back into the art room, breathing heavily as she tossed her bag onto her desk. She coughed, and it sounded like something awful, like their neighbor’s dog who barked half the night. She’d been coughing all week, but she said she hadn’t missed a day of teaching in forty years and wasn’t about to now. When she finally stopped, she smiled sadly and shook her head. “What have you got there?” she asked.

  He handed the envelope to her, and she carefully pulled the half dozen pictures out with her papery hands and studied them. When she came to the first picture in the stack again, the one of Gracy on the swing, she looked at Trevor and smiled. “They’re perfect, Trevor. They’re marvelous.”

  “A lot of ’em didn’t come out. I need to know more about the shutter stuff you talked about. F-stops. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

  “Trevor,” she said and squeezed his hand. “You are an artist. The rest is just mechanics, technology. You can learn that. But the talent, the vision, is already there.”

  An artist. It felt like he’d swallowed a hot-air balloon, like something deep in his heart was about to take flight. But then he looked out the open door to the hallway where kids were all scattering to their classes, a steady blurry stream. At Mrs. Cross standing in the middle of them, her arms folded across her chest, nodding at them as they made their way to study hall or science or social studies. She caught his eye and he sank down into the seat, the heat lighting the fire beneath the balloon gone cold.

  “Let me show you something, Trevor,” Mrs. D. said and shuffled over to the bookcases by her desk. She pulled out a book and brought it back to his table. Her body shuddered as she attempted to stifle a cough. The Photographs of Lewis Carroll, it said. That was the guy who wrote Alice in Wonderland, Trevor thought. Gracy had the Golden Book version, the golden spine cracked and worn. She opened up the book and pressed it open gently with her palm. The first picture was of a little girl who actually looked a lot like Gracy. Black hair, a torn dress, the same look in her eye ... something wild, like the feral cats that came looking for scraps of food at the junkyard.