Blessing in Disguise (28 page)

He loves me.
The thought came like something she’d always known or perhaps had memorized long ago.

It could be so good with Jack. If ... if ...

“Hey, guys, don’t forget, we still have to get dinner on.” Jack addressed the room, while casting a meaningful glance at Hannah. “Chris and I’ll be in to give you ladies a hand after we bring in some more logs,”

Chris trailed behind Jack at a slouchy snail’s pace. In his rumpled olive flak jacket and baggy jeans, with a shaggy mane that made Grace long to tie him down and run Lila’s dog-clipping shears across his head, he looked like a delinquent being hauled in for some minor offense.

Grace wanted to shake some get-up-and-go into him, but her problem now wasn’t Chris. Watching Hannah leisurely unfold herself from the couch, Grace felt her anxiety return.

“You know, I really love this room,” Grace said, trying to break the ice. She looked away from Hannah at the faded friendship quilt that hung alongside a collection of antique trivets. On the old cherry tea table beneath it sat a blue splatterware pitcher and a hurricane lamp that, judging from its soot smudges, wasn’t just for show.

“My mother decorated it,” Hannah responded matter-of-factly. “It’s what she does for a living, you know. She’s very good at it.”

“I can see,” Grace said evenly. “It’s not everyone who can make a country place homey without its looking like a Laura Ashley ad.”

Hannah’s eyes were flat and unsmiling, her arms crossed over her chest. She was wearing rumpled blue canvas overalls and a flowered shirt, Grace realized belatedly, that might actually have been from Laura Ashley.

In the kitchen, Hannah said, “I can do the pasta. We always have pasta the first night. Only Dad still calls it ‘spaghetti.’ Like have you noticed, when he’s not thinking, he’ll shake a milk carton before pouring? It’s like he’s still a kid, when they had glass milk bottles and the cream rose to the top.”

“They had those when I was a kid, too,” Grace said, dumping lettuce and a plastic bag of anemic-looking tomatoes into the deep enamel sink to be washed. “I never thought it could be any other way.”

Hannah nodded. “Sort of like with records. Nowadays, you walk into Tower Records and all you see are CDs.” She sounded wistful. “Not that CDs aren’t
better.
It’s just ... well, you know ...”

“Yeah, I know ...” Grace said agreeably, knowing it was change itself—
any
change—that Hannah was allergic to.

Hannah, rummaging in the cupboard by the stove, seemed to soften the tiniest bit. Grace could see some of the tension go out of her shoulders. Grace thought of a gun-slinger dropping his hand from his holster. But all Hannah said was, “Uh, Grace ... do you see that jar of spaghetti sauce anywhere?”

Grace braced herself. She didn’t want to fight with Hannah, but Christmas Eve was special. Nervously, she cleared her throat.

“Actually, I thought we’d have something a little more ... festive. I bought some Cornish hens, which won’t take long to bake, and some of that stuffing mix my mother would faint if she saw me using. And sweet potatoes we can throw in the microwave. It’s not exactly Norman Rockwell, but it beats Chef Boyardee.”

A tiny frown line formed between Hannah’s unplucked brows. “But we
always
have pasta the first night,” she insisted.

“Well, since it’s”—
Go ahead, say it. Coward, oh you coward, SAY IT
—“Christmas Eve.”

“We don’t celebrate Christmas.”

“Chris and I do,” Grace said quietly. She held Hannah’s steely gaze, feeling the hammering of her pulse through her whole body. The rushing of the tap filling the sink reverberated like a waterfall in her ears. With her back to the counter, she felt cold droplets prick her forearms where the sleeves of her sweater were rolled up.

“Then why are you
here?”
Hannah asked, her eyes cold with fury.

Slowly, as if moving underwater, or in a dream, Grace turned to crank off the faucet, Hannah’s words lay between them like a gauntlet cast on the worn heart-of-pine floorboards. In the silence pierced only by the hollow ticking of water as it dripped onto the lettuce leaves, she faced Hannah, then said, “I wish I could explain it in a way that you’d understand. So you’d see I’m not trying to take your mother’s place ... or yours. I’m not the enemy, Hannah. I’m not the reason your parents got divorced. I’m not the reason you’re unhappy.”

In the wavy glass of the old cupboard panes opposite her, Grace caught a watery reflection of herself—a small woman with tousled damp hair, her face tense, her mouth drawn tight.

“What do you know about me?” Hannah shot back, a hectic crimson blooming in her cheeks. “You don’t have the slightest idea what would make me happy! If you did, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Well, I
am
here,” Grace snapped.

“I wish you would go away ...
far
away. I wish you’d disappear off the face of this
planet!”

Hannah’s words struck her like a bullet, searing her, making her want to double over with the pain of them. No surprise really how Hannah felt, but hearing it—actually
hearing
her say those words—oh, God, it hurt.

“I don’t think that’s likely to happen,” she said, struggling to keep her voice low. “So you’d better make up your mind—truce, or all-out war?”

Hannah stood clutching a loaf of bread as if it were Grace’s neck she was squeezing. Her eyes hot and red-rimmed, she cried, “You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? You think, just because you’ve fooled my father, you can fool me. Well, my mind’s already made up about you, so you can save your breath ... and you can keep your stupid Christmas to yourself.”

“Hannah!”

At the sound of Jack’s voice booming across the kitchen, Grace jerked around. He was standing in the doorway, an armload of kindling tight against his chest, his face hard with anger.

Hannah whirled, the bread slipping from her grasp as if it were a pass she’d fumbled. She caught it before it hit the floor, and straightened with a jerky motion, her face swollen and splotched with red, her eyes iced over with unshed tears.

“Daddy, I ...” she started to say.

“Not in this house!” he shouted. “I won’t have you talking that way to Grace under my roof, not if you—”

“Jack, please,” Grace broke in, feeling panic closing in on her.

Couldn’t he see how wrong this was, his charging to her defense? How absolutely guaranteed to make Hannah resent her even more? His daughter wasn’t a little girl anymore, a child he could scold for breaking some rule. ...

“—plan on being invited along yourself the next time,” he finished.

Grace heard Hannah gasp.

And, in that instant, she saw the future as clearly as a sign warning motorists of dangerous curves, or an area prone to landslides. At every turn, she’d be tensing, never safe, never knowing what lay just out of sight. God, didn’t he
see?

“Hannah, listen, this whole thing has gotten out of hand. Let’s sit down and talk about it.” Grace was furious at Jack and at Hannah, but even more at herself, for having jumped into this with open eyes and both feet. She started to put out her hand, but Hannah shrank away. The look in her swollen eyes said,
It’s all your fault. Everything. Even my father yelling at me like that.

Then, with a sob and a creak of old floorboards, she vanished, disappearing into the next room as if swallowed up by a magician’s cape, leaving a loaf of mangled bread on the counter ... and a Christmas that was ruined before it had even dawned.

“Are you, like, gonna hide out in here the whole time?”

Hannah looked up from the sheet of binder paper she was folding into an origami giraffe—a trick that Reiko, the daughter of a Japanese publisher, had taught her the summer she turned twelve. She often did it as a way to relax.

Chris was sort of hovering in the doorway of her room, one hand still clutching the doorknob, unsure of his welcome. She felt a flash of annoyance, and wished she’d remembered to latch her door.

But then she scooted over on her bed, where she lay with her back propped against the headboard, her legs stretched out in front of her. “You can come in and sit down if you want to,” she said.

Her eyes were swollen and itchy from crying, and she didn’t really feel like talking to anyone. But, even though Chris was related to Grace, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Chris had to live with her
all
the time, except for the weekends he was with his father. She probably cornered him for hip, heart-to-heart chats about smoking pot (“We did all that in the sixties, and look how it screwed us up”) and sex (“It’s okay, as long as you use a condom”), and embarrassed him by walking around half naked in front of his friends. She would probably be flattered if a guy Hannah’s age came on to her—which could easily happen, given how young she looked, and which made it twice as gross, her being with someone as ancient as Daddy.

“Have they gone up to bed yet?” Hannah was starving. It had to be close to ten by now, but she would have let herself pass out from hunger before admitting that in the last half-hour or so the thought of cold roasted Cornish hen had taken the place of her fantasies about Grace’s being blasted into space aboard a NASA shuttle not due back for at least a hundred million years.

Wouldn’t it be just like Grace to have left a Saran Wrapped plate for her in the fridge, leftover Cornish hen with all the trimmings? No, she’d have a bowl of Rice Chex instead.

“Nuh-uh. They went for a walk. He said he wanted to show her something.”

“In this weather? They’ll probably catch pneumonia.” She knew where they’d gone—the surprise Daddy had been working on for Grace—and that only made her feel more miserable.

“I doubt it. They’re dressed for Antarctica.”

She noticed that Chris had crept closer, a foot or two, the toes of his dirty Reeboks parked at the edge of the braided rug between her spool bed and the pine dresser across from it. He made her think of the dog her family had once had—an Airedale named Trixie who would stand there wagging her stub of a tail like she couldn’t wait for you to pet her, but as soon as you stuck out your hand she’d skitter off and hide behind the couch. She was sure that, if Chris had a tail, it’d be wagging. But she’d have bet her whole Elvis Costello collection that he didn’t have many friends.

“There’s a Scrabble game in the bottom dresser drawer, if you feel like playing,” she said nonchalantly.

He shrugged, but, when she looked up from folding a corner of paper into a head for her giraffe, he was on his haunches, rummaging in the drawer. Strolling over to the bed with the battered Scrabble box under his arm, he might have been Don Mattingly sauntering up to bat, except for the flush creeping up the sides of his skinny neck, and the smile trying to break through the power lock on his jaw.

“Oh, hey,” he said, digging into a pocket of his zippered sweatshirt. “I brought you something.”

It was a bag of complimentary peanuts, the kind they handed out on airplanes. Mom, she remembered, had had a friend who worked for United, and she used to bring home shopping bags full of them. Chris must have found them stashed away in the back of the cupboard, stale probably, but it was nice of him anyway—even if he
had
forgotten she was allergic to nuts.

Thinking about her mom reminded her of how great it used to be coming up here when Mom and Dad were still together. Even Mom would get relaxed, humming while she made up the beds and joking that she hoped they didn’t get snowed in again, because she’d go
nuts
listening to those scratchy old Cole Porter records of Dad’s. The four of them, sitting around the kitchen table after dinner, playing hearts and Chinese checkers, and eating half-burnt popcorn that she and Ben had popped over the open fire.

Hannah felt a fresh sting of tears, and blinked them back. Dumb, stupid, pointless, going over all that old stuff. Her wishing wasn’t gong to bring it back. Heck, if wishing could get you anything, by now Grace would be out there orbiting Saturn.

“Thanks,” she told Chris, discreetly slipping the packet of nuts under her pillow. “Sorry about dinner; did you get stuck with the dishes?”

“Your dad helped. I didn’t know where anything goes.” He cast a quick, almost furtive glance about the room. “You guys come up to the cabin a lot?”

“We used to, when my parents were together. If it were up to me, I’d live here all year long.” Shaker Mill Pond had always felt safe to her, like those places where wild geese could nest without anyone’s being allowed to shoot at them.

“What about your boyfriend—wouldn’t you miss him?”

Hannah felt herself flush. Since that night she’d fled to his house after her fight with Mom, she’d been doing her best not even to
think
about Conrad. She couldn’t,
wouldn’t,
let herself recall every detail of the embarrassing stuff she’d done with him. The only thing she remembered clearly was Con, climbing off her afterwards, mumbling, “You okay?” And her nodding, as if it were no big deal, when the truth was she’d felt like crying ...

“Con and I aren’t like
them,”
she told Chris. “We don’t
have
to be together every spare minute.”

Hannah blinked hard, and looked up at the wall over her bed. Hanging from pegs by their knotted laces were all the pairs of ice skates she’d outgrown since the age of six. Why did people have to grow apart, and everything have to change?

“What was it like ... I mean, before your mom and dad split up?” she heard Chris ask.

“We used to have fun together—well, most of the time. Until Mom started her own business. After that, she was too busy to get away on weekends. At least, that was what they told us. The real reason was that they weren’t getting along.” She turned the Scrabble box upside down, and the wooden tiles cascaded onto the worn candlewick spread. Lining up her tiles, she saw that she’d drawn a Q, but no U. Oh well, maybe she’d draw a U or a blank her next turn. “What about you? I’ll bet you miss having your dad around.”

“I see him practically every weekend. Mostly, we do stuff around the city. But he has this place out in East Hampton. Not like this. More modern, I guess. He’s only had it since the divorce.” He grew quiet, seeming to sink into himself.