Between Octobers Bk 1, Savor The Days Series (52 page)

The sound of a chuckle pulls me from my
musings. It’s Lily and the homeless woman. They’re laughing over
something Grace did with a bag of dinner rolls. I make a mental
note to ask Lily about it later.

Behind them is another woman, underweight
with missing teeth. She knows Grace through a church charity called
Food Closet. They used to chat about life and her addictions. Grace
listened and never judged her. She says that my wife, the
aggressive retreatist, told her, “Anything worth having is worth
fighting for.” She smiles and I know that, to her the fight is for
sobriety.

Another woman stands before us. She says she
knew Grace from a place she calls The Kitchen. A soup kitchen, run
by a church over in Eagle Rock. Grace did volunteer work there and
always gave her extra bread when she passed through the line. “She
talked to me, not at me,” the woman says as her eyes fill. She
gives her thanks and blessings, and moves along as someone else
steps up.

Maria joins Noah as he takes Caleb towards
the car. Lily listens closely, shifting Ethan from one arm to the
other, as the line that has formed slowly moves.

I take the baby before Lily’s arms give out.
Staring down at his sleeping face calms me. I pretend I’m a fly on
the wall and just listen.

Each person has a story, some way that Grace
affected them with her kindness or her simple honesty when they
needed it. She made them all feel valued just by being who she was.
This is what Noah meant when he said Grace was wrong. The fuzz is
actual people. They may have barely known her, but they loved her.
And she loved them. So, they’re here.

Evan
—

“
She wrote down every detail,” Noah
sets the box on the bed. “Her work schedules, doctor’s
appointments, notes about everything.”

My wife has always had a very fixed method
of thinking, focusing on one matter at a time. It seems, through
these last eight months as she went about her sorted routine, she
was focused on me. She’s filled hundreds of pages with her
thoughts, ideas, things she’d say to me if she could. Journals,
letters in sealed envelopes, and diaries.

I want to read them all, soak up all her
words, but it hurts too much.

I shove the container back beneath her side
of the bed. As my arm comes away, the corner of a small, burgundy
book catches on my buttoned sleeve and flies onto the floor. Open,
calling to me.

When I was fifteen years old, I found a box
of letters whilst nosing through my mother’s closet. Love notes,
they were, from her estranged husband—the delinquent, adoptive
figurehead of what manhood was supposed to be, though he never got
‘round to teaching me anything except what not to do. I counted and
there were thirty letters he’d written to her and she hadn’t opened
a single one. I read through them, though. He mentioned me twice,
both times in reference to how he was unable to pay her support.
Right bastard, he was.

Ronnie and his family, Maria and her sister,
Marcus and his new fiancée, Lily, are in the living room with Noah
and Caleb. I hear them talking. Some murmur weepily, others recall
stories. Nigel barks from time to time for attention.

I take the journal from the floor. The date
in the top corner is the day we met at the museum. I move across to
my side of the bed, nearer Ethan, sleeping in the bassinet she
picked for him.

He’s eaten, had a clean nappy, been burped.
He’s sweet and contentedly sleeping and I can’t even appreciate
him. All I can think is how much he looks like me and how much I
love him and how I’m supposed to do this alone. I know nothing of
babies. I’m all thumbs at preparing bottles. I can’t change him
without gagging. I barely know how to put myself to sleep and I’m
so selfish.

I clutch the aching in my chest as the room
shrinks. My heart burns, a shrieking fear. It digs deep into my
bones, reminding me what a shit I am. How am I supposed to be a
father?

The room distorts as I force air in and out.
Leaping to open the French doors, I step into the back garden.
Breathing in the nose, out the mouth, my head bobs like a balloon
in the cold air. I’m the boy who let go of the string ribbon to
watch my inflatable fly away. Now I’m crying because I can’t get it
back.

I concentrate on slow, deep breaths—it
always worked when I got too high—and feel my way back to the bed.
I set my head down between my knees for a few minutes, until the
dizziness settles. But the knots are still in my stomach.

All my issues might be resolved with a
single solution—I stop the thought right there. I don’t do that
anymore.

More fixed breathing, in slowly, out slowly.
My heart calms, but my head aches.

I’m a grown man, having a panic attack over
a baby—three harmless children, two of which already wipe their own
ass. People have kids every day. And many are born into much less
fortunate circumstances than ours has been—though I can’t actually
think of anything worse—but there’s plenty of money and I can take
time off.

After a bit more deliberation, I decide I’m
not afraid of being a dad, just doing a shit job. Growing up
without my own father left no guideline to gauge an appropriate
course. The only thing I’m sure of is that I love these boys and I
can’t walk away.

Opening the book again, I read over
her feelings, her first impressions. She describes me, a handsome
Brit wearing too much cologne. I flip a few pages ahead to find the
way she felt when I kissed her.
I’m
putty
, it reads,
I want to be
with him every minute
.

I was mesmerized, watching her with her
family. Every part of her day centered on them. She treated her
children’s every word as if they were the most important words in
the world. She explained things to them, answered every question
they had, no matter how ridiculous. They ate dinner together every
night. My mother cooked for other people’s children while I waited
at home, alone.

I decided I was going to marry Grace after
that first night I spent at her house. It was the day Lily told me
Grace was too religious to engage in sexual-congress outside
marriage. I think she was hoping I’d leave her be, but it had the
opposite effect. Something carnal reared and I imagined a hundred
different ways to seduce her over dinner that night. The ideas
became more explicit as we played Quarters.

My silly girl, she thought I’d never heard
of the game. Of course I had. I played it, rather successfully, for
years.

I knew Grace wasn’t ready for what I wanted,
but I also knew I was willing to wait and that surprised me. I’d
never waited for anything, especially women. Then, I got thinking
on how our lives might work together.

It’s a strange thing, to realize your life
is not your own anymore. By virtue of her existence, she’d turned
me upside down. From that point on, I couldn’t imagine myself
without her; and contrary to the way things have turned out, I
still can’t.

I’ll have to make do with the parts she’s
left behind.

It’s a tragedy that so few people
actually knew her. Many knew
of
her, but as Grace so skillfully pointed out, knowing things
about a person is not the same as knowing them. Knowing what a
person might do is different than knowing the why. It’s the whys
that makes them interesting.

I knew Grace’s
whys
right off. She is–
was
the opposite of every other person. She lived
in the same world as me, yet had no calluses. She couldn’t get used
to seeing people in pain. Whether self-inflicted or not, she
couldn’t stand by and watch. She wanted to heal them
all.

Evan
—

The book was Lily’s idea. She’d probably
been kicking it around for a while before she brought it to me. The
first time she brought it up was about three months after.

I was having trouble with Ethan. He’d been
up the previous night, crying and squirming. And no matter what I
did, he wouldn’t stop. Finally around five in the morning, he
passed out.

The next day was busy and I barely got a nap
in before the crying started, again, around ten. Ethan developed a
small rash, so I’d taken him to doctor. Then he started shitting
through everything and I kept having to change him, re-apply the
cream, wash his clothes and sheets. By eleven that night, I was
bloody exhausted and he wasn’t getting better.

We were both having a proper fit by the time
Noah got up. He asked to help and I was out of ideas. He tried
everything he could think—which took all of five minutes—before
dashing next door to wake his aunt.

I swear, the second Lily put her hands on
Ethan, he stopped. It was magic. He just kept staring, sweet and
quiet, as she cooed at him.

“Babies sense your stress, Evan. They don’t
like it.” She’d kept her eyes on him, used the same whispery
manner.

“You’re going to be a great mother,
Lily.”

“I can’t have kids. No, I can’t,” she
smiled, shaking her head, still staring down at Ethan, who smiled
widely back. All gums. “Ah, he’s teething.” She finally looked at
me and pressed a finger to Ethan’s mouth. “See how his gums are
swollen? In a few days, you’ll be able to see little white lines,
the tops of the teeth.” She looked back to Ethan, “That’s why
you’re so grumpy, isn’t it? Why didn’t you say something, Ethan?”
She blew a raspberry on his tummy and his smile widened. “That’s
your culprit, the crying and diarrhea, he’s teething. He might even
get a low-grade fever, but he’ll be fine. The doctor probably
didn’t notice because he’s a little young.”

She started lecturing Ethan on the trials of
trying to grow up too quickly on her way to the nursery.

Grace painted it for him. He hasn’t slept in
there yet. I keep him in the room with Caleb and me so I can watch
them sleep. Ethan’s got a very active mind and makes funny faces
when he’s dreaming. Caleb just can’t sleep alone.

“Grace never told me.” I often wondered
about her vicarious mothering. “Neither did Marcus.”

“It’s not something I advertise.” Lily
pulled a tube from a drawer at the bottom of the changing table. I
don’t use that, either.

“Open this.” She handed me a small white
tube.

I obediently opened it and waited for
instructions. She chuckled, telling me how to lightly apply the
numbing agent to Ethan’s gums. We both laughed at the face he made
and I noticed the tip of my pinky finger was also a little numb.
Lily told me to be careful to follow the instructions and only give
it to him if he needed it, then handed Ethan back before heading to
the kitchen to make coffee.

She decided to stay and watch him so I could
get some sleep. She didn’t ask, but assumed, it’s what’s best for
all of us. Just like she assumed—and rightly so—I was going to move
back in with the boys and help care for them. We never discussed
it, it was simply the way things were going to happen. I was going
to be part of their lives and she let me, even though she didn’t
have to and I didn’t deserve it.

She and Marcus will marry next fall. I’m
sure once I’m able to handle more than the moment I’m living in,
I’ll have something to look forward to.

I cry all the time, like a little bitch, at
everything. Over the kids, mostly, when they do something that
reminds me of Grace. Anytime they do something good. The day Ethan
found his hand.

I started again, then—sleep-deprived,
appreciative, and suffocatingly lonely—as Lily passed me a cup of
tea with milk and sugar.

“You know what might help? If we do
something for her.”

“What do ya mean?”

She sighed, lowering into the chair opposite
me. “Marcus and I were talking and we both think you need to get
some things out of your system.”

I didn’t know what she meant. Rather than
repeating myself, which I hate doing, I waited.

“Evan, you had a whole life mapped out for
you two. And none of us got to say goodbye.” Her eyes watered. “She
was there and then . . . it was so abrupt. To me, that makes it
harder. I feel like she’s hovering over us, like she’s saying that
it’s not finished yet.”

“In my head, I had this whole fairy tale
planned. But we probably would’ve had a fight.”

Lily cracked a smile and she sipped her
coffee. “What about a book?”

“I’m not letting anyone tell the gory
details. Fuck that.”

“No, no,” she waved a hand. “We’d use her
journals. Tell her story, from her point of view. Everything
through her eyes.”

“I’m not that guy, Lily. I’m not . . .”

“She loved you, Evan, and neither of us are
the saints she made us out to be. That was part of her draw. People
either loved or hated her for it.”

“I loved her for it.” God help me, I do.

That very moment it hit me—how much I needed
to express, how much I need my wife. It was the first time I felt
like I could breathe and the first time we really talked about her.
And we started talking as if we were really going to do it, though
I wasn’t convinced. Lily pointed out most of her last year would be
easy to write, because Grace wrote it herself and Lily almost
always knew what she would do, though she could hardly figure out
why, and I could never tell you what Grace might do, but I could
tell her motives after.

Lily and I agreed that someone as rare as
Grace deserved to be known, but I didn’t want me—my shadow, as
Grace liked to say—to dominate the story.

The hardest part would be telling what Sheri
did and we still only know what forensics could tell us. Science is
a wonderful and terrible tool. I love and hate what it tells about
her final moments.