Forged in Grace (20 page)

“
No, stop and get burgers.” She chews her lower lip. “I’m fucking starved.”

She cries all the way to the In and Out Burger, stopping only long enough to eat. My appetite is gone; I can barely manage my chocolate milkshake. The crying picks back up on the way to the apartment, and she wipes her face with flimsy napkins from the takeout bag. When we reach the apartment she looks almost as bad as the night she was beaten, puffy and dark-eyed, make-up half-smeared around her face. Sonya is waiting outside the building, smoking a cigarette and pacing. I give her credit for coming back.

Marly takes one look at her mother and breaks into further sobs. “No,” she shakes her head at her mother, then turns her back. “I can’t. I just can’t do this with you.”

Chapter Eighteen

A tumbling, clanking sound like raccoons tripping through the neighbors’ recycling wakes me an hour earlier than I’d planned to rise. Every drawer and cupboard in Marly’s kitchen is open, half of their contents sprawled on the floor in little piles—bowls and silverware and glasses on one side, boxes of cereal and cans of soup and spices on another. She is on her knees, head jammed in the oven, body quivering. It takes me a second, body twitching but dull with sleep, to realize that she is in there cleaning, not trying to off herself.

The scent of cleaning chemicals rises in a plume behind her.

I clear my throat, so as not to scare her. She doesn’t seem to hear.

“
Marly,” I whisper, and she bangs her head into the top of the stove with a moan of pain.

“
Oh, Grace!” She pulls back and sees me. “I’m sorry, didn’t mean to wake you. I just realized how dirty this kitchen is.” It’s a kitchen that never so much as acquires a sticky countertop because she wipes it down several times a day.

“
I don’t think those cleaning chemicals are good for you,” I say, trying not to sound scolding. I reach forward and brush off tiny black particles floating on her scalp.

“
Ha!” Her words whip through the air. “Chemicals—they’re either keeping us alive or they’re killing us, right? Multi-billion dollar industries trying to convince us of one thing or the other.” Her eyes are bright and wide, and she’s tapping her fingertips together, some weird version of sign language.

“
Have you had coffee?” I’m slightly alarmed at the speed of her words.

“
Not yet. Let’s go get some. I don’t have to be at work until ten, but you, young lady—” She wags a finger at me in an uncharacteristically silly way, “—have a healing today. I’ll drop you.”

“
Let me at least get dressed.”

Marly looks down at her own white cotton nightgown with surprise, as though she forgot she was wearing it.
“Oh,” is all she says, but nods and begins to move toward her room.

“
Can I put all this away for you?” I call after her.

“
No need,” she calls back. “I’m going to label the shelves, reorganize, reclaim!”

I stand in the kitchen, feeling comfortable in its clutter, with an urge to empty the remaining cabinets, pull the boxes and mugs and jars of sauce around me like a cocoon.

“Marly, could you slow down just a little?” I plead.

She swerves into the right hand lane, cutting off a driver in a big black suburban who honks. She flips him the bird and I bite the inside of my cheek tasting blood and half-expecting him to chase us down and threaten a fight.

Somehow we make it to a restaurant—my eyes are closed half the drive—sliding into a parking spot like TV vigilantes.

Marly tosses her hair out of her face as she gets out of the car.
“Ever have a morning where you just wake up and you think: ‘Life is short, and I’m not going to squander it’?”

Do I?
“A few months ago, I’d have said no.”

Her bright eyes are on me.
“But now it’s better, right? Everything’s better since you came.”

Her smile is infectious—my own lips curl up.
“Yes, now I feel like I’m not just squandering my life.”

She nods, then turns and begins walking toward the restaurant, Amici
’s.

I realize she
’s not waiting for me only after she’s halfway there, and hobble after her to catch up. I’ve put on my going-out-in-public wig, with the soft red waves, where the hair drapes nicely over my bad side.

It
’s only 9:00 a.m., but we’ve stumbled into some sort of hybrid bar/café/casino. Faux Italy appears to be the theme—fake olive trees, Italian flags and posters of Sophia Loren tacked all over the walls. Red plastic booths that sigh and stick beneath our thighs. There’s a bar with a TV playing a black and white movie, where four men sit like movie extras, each with a near empty drink already, one also with a cup of coffee.

In the far back of the restaurant there
’s a mini-casino—poker tables, roulette wheels and a small bank of the old-fashioned slot machines with the pull-down handles. Patrons are there already, too.

“
I was expecting Starbucks,” I say.

An unexpected waft of cinnamon hits my nose. Marly inhales theatrically, shoulders rising to her ears.
“Oh god, they make the country’s, no,
the planet’s
best waffles here.” She slaps the table for emphasis. “Loser used to work here. I think he had them put a love potion in the waffles to woo me.”

Usually Marly eats rabbity salads and tiny chunks of cheese, so I didn
’t figure her for a waffles girl.

A jukebox near the entrance clicks over and begins to play
“That’s Amore.”

“
God, Grace, we should take you on the road—the traveling transcendental healer. Can’t you see it? I bet those Midwestern towns where everyone’s bred on milk hormones and dies young of cancer would pay big buck for your skills.” She’s sitting up straight and looking past me, as though she can already see it.

“
I’m happy here.” I smooth the unwrinkled folds of my skirt just to have something to do with my hands.

She nods vigorously, her unkempt hair sliding into her face.
“Of course, but what about New York? Grace, don’t you see how we can parlay this into something bigger? Where do you want to go? Have you ever thought about the places you’d like to see? Paris? Rome? The white sand beaches of Monte Carlo?”

“
Alaska.”
Wide, white expanses of snow, cool mist, air so crisp it needs moisturizer.

She cocks her head and frowns.
“Really, Alaska, that’s it? I think the Eskimos have their own natural form of healing.”

“
I’ve never seen snow,” I say. “Not in person. Never went sledding, never skied or even got to make a snowman. My mom hated the cold and my dad…went along with her.”

Marly frowns.

“Or even just Glacier National Park, Montana. I want to see those big, hulking cliffs of ice—there’s something so vast and beautiful about ice.”

Marly clutches herself, shivers, as though I
’ve invoked the cold.

“
I’d have thought with your penchant for all things white you’d like snow.”

“
Ice is lonely, Grace. Nothing grows in snow. It’s death in white. Your heart beats slower, your body doesn’t want to move. No, give me fire any day!” She looks at me as though she’s challenging me to say something. “Campfires, firewalkers, fake fireplaces,” she amends, suddenly throwing her arms around me. Unprepared, a vision:
pulse and pound, music moving us.
She releases me and it’s gone, though I can feel it still rippling inside me.

We order waffles that come heaped in fresh whipped cream and strawberries. Strong coffee. We eat until we are gorged, until my belly feels it will rival Marly
’s.

With a twinge of panic I note the time:
10:00 a.m. “Don’t you have to be at work?”

Marly shrugs. The jukebox clicks over to Madonna
’s “Like a Virgin.” Marly squeals, pushes out of the booth and jumps to the floor. There’s a small square of dull wood obviously reserved for dancing. Marly—dressed for work in a sexy, shimmery green tank over a long flowing skirt—begins to do just that. Despite being nearly six months pregnant, or perhaps because of it, she’s radiant—breasts pressing out of her tank, belly obscured by the skirt. She looks like a free-spirited hippie girl.

Now the guys at the bar are whistling and clapping. One of them is youngish, in a way that makes me nervous—he looks like he never went to bed last night, dressed in an expensively crisp silky shirt and rumpled pin-stripe slacks. I slap down cash for our breakfast and make my way to her on the floor, with every intention of getting her out of there.

Before I reach her, a waiter approaches her with a shot glass, pointing back to the bar when the young guy raises his own shot glass.

Marly
’s hand closes around the glass. She smiles at it as though it just magically appeared in her hand, then frowns at it like it’s poison. I’m close enough now to take it from her, grab her elbow and slide her out of this place I hope never to return to, when she does it: knocks back the shot in one tilt.

I grasp her arm, aware that I
’m squeezing too hard. The music seems louder suddenly. I’m tired and afraid and the memory vision is so strong that I am powerless to the weight of it, the last time we ever got to go out together, thirteen years ago.

The club was all pulse and pound, music so loud we couldn’t hear ourselves talk, lights just dim enough to blur the edges—a sea of gyrating silhouettes. It made me think of the Roman orgies I was not supposed to have read about in a book my mother didn’t know I had, tucked far back in my closet. Our mostly bare legs in high heels were enough to get us in despite our age. Inside, I was lost in a sea of bodies, terrified that I’d lose Marly.

Beside her I felt like the tin man, barely able to bend my joints, but I didn’t care. Marly pulled me to her, danced against me as though we were lovers, then flipped behind me, slipping her body down mine in a wriggle. Men watched appreciatively, and I felt as though in some way, I belonged to her—we were for each other.

The night whittled down to a blur, and then we were stumbling outside into the chill whip of Bay air with two guys—both dark haired and moist eyed, complimenting us, cajoling us to come back to their place.

I fell asleep on the drive, awakened by Marly’s insistent grip on my fingers, pulling me out, up a staircase that overlooked the water of Sausalito. Men with money, my mind vaguely registered. A clean, spacious, well-decorated apartment. Two big leather couches, and the guy with Marly—Rick—pulling her down onto it, her on his lap. Mine—Brady—excused himself to use the bathroom. I stood, transfixed at what unfolded before me. Marly tossing off her silky black tank as though it was an old skin, not at all disturbed that I stood there watching her. Rick’s face pressed into her breasts, hands unfastening her bra, and then, hot tongue encircling her nipples. She gasped, I gasped, as though I was her, as though he was touching me.

An unbuckling of pants. I wanted to call out to her: wait!

Brady returned, his hands at my waist, his mouth on my neck. He pressed, hard as steel against me.

Rick’s pants were still on, I was relieved to see, Marly grinding upon his lap, both of them locked at the lips. I wanted suddenly to wrench her off, to push Brady away and run. There was an essential wrongness to this.

Brady nuzzled in, spun me around and jammed a hand between my legs, a finger finding its way where none had before. “Ow!” I said. “Too fast.”

“
Hey, just relax,” he said. “It’s ok. I’ll go slow.”

The alcohol haze was wearing thin. Suddenly I felt a clean, cold sobriety snake over me. We had made a terrible mistake.

I had.

Brady gently pushed me into the leather recliner at our side, leaned into me, breathing heavy, eyes glazed. I shook my head.
“No, no, I’m not ready,” I said. “Please.”

“
It’s ok, I’m a nice guy,” he said, hands continuing their trek.