Forged in Grace (33 page)

Chapter Thirty-Two

I wait only long enough to find out that Marly came through her surgery fine, and that Alan will stay with them, and then I go home. A path has been carved through the refuse downstairs—some of the stacks are gone, and most of the garbage emptied. This swath of emptiness terrifies me. Ma would never do this on her own. I rush down the hall to her room. The cans are all gone from the columns in the hallway. Worse, when I enter her room, the clothing stacks have been consolidated into a massive pile of neatly folded squares. She is sleeping, but her breathing is rattling, too fast.

“
Oh no, Ma,” I say, not sure if she can hear me. I climb up on the bed next to her and lay my head on her pillow, her hair tickling the baldness of my scalp. Her eyes open and light on me, mouth forms the briefest of smiles, but that is all. I can’t say how long it is before awareness tiptoes into my brain that Ma’s breathing is silent. I rest my hand upon her abdomen, I find it still.

She waited for me.

And now, when I am ready to need her, she’s gone.

Grief crawls up to the top of my throat. I feel its weight like a chunk of ice at the back of my tongue. I curl against Ma
’s still form and press my face into her neck. She smells of a gardenia perfume that used to choke me with its rich-sweet musk. Now I don’t mind its scent. Behind my eyes there’s a light. The light expands around me, encircles me in ripples, like a…serpent.
My
serpent, only I don’t feel as though I am controlling it. Its energy is soft and strong all at once, gentle and determined. It moves through me, as though I have become water and it’s swimming my channels. As it passes, all my dark emotions rise and ripple, and begin to dissolve and drift away.
It was my time
. With Ma’s words comes an immense relief. When the serpent passes into a place of pain—my bad right leg, my thumbs, I feel a momentary pop, a static electric charge, and then a cool, almost narcotic relief.

And then I swear Ma
’s arms encircle me, cradles me, swaying me as though I am an infant. I am water, I am earth, I am a pure and untouchable cluster of light, and for one timeless stretch—I can’t call it a moment or an hour—that truth heals me, until it ebbs and drops me into a comfortable darkness so void it might be death.

When I wake again, my body is light, though my heart is still heavy. I hurry down the hall, noticing a smoothness in my stride. My right leg doesn
’t cramp; I have no limp. Soon I stand in the entryway before the antique oval mirror lined with gray silk. I rip the material down, looking into the age-veined silver surface with a feeling of hope so powerful it shames me. And there I am: left side as scarred as ever, right side’s untrammeled inches mocking the rest of me. Though I know it’s an exercise in futility, I lift my hands to find my thumbs as I have known them for thirteen years. So: I have been healed of all the glitchy pains inside, but I’ve been left exactly the same on the outside.

The men from the funeral home are young, efficient and soft spoken. I sign their form and point them to Ma
’s room. In death, all her extra weight seems to have fallen away, and they don’t even break a sweat in lifting her onto the gurney. It’s all I can do not to get into the van with them and follow Ma’s body off to the mortuary where she will be cremated, as per her wishes.

An hour later, after I shove an uncharacteristically cuddly Beatrix off my lap, I let Adam into the house. His familiar face brings tears up.
“I’m so glad you called me, Grace. I wasn’t sure I’d hear from you again.”

Before I can think where to start, he pulls me into his arms. Warmth and relief rush in over the chill that
’s stiffened my limbs. I don’t want to cry, am afraid that if I start, I might never stop, but the insistent beating of his heart and his sturdy grip leave me no other option. “Yes,” he whispers into my neck. “Yes.”

Eventually I pull back, wipe my face, and look at him more closely than I
’ve permitted myself in years. “I can’t believe Ma is gone.”

“
What can I do?”

“
I don’t know. I have to tell you something, first. The reason I couldn’t let you stay when you came to Vegas.”

“
It’s okay, Grace, you don’t—”

“
I can heal people by laying my hands on them. The pain I felt all those years from touching people, I think I was picking up more…impressions…than I could handle and my body interpreted it as pain.”

His eyes assess me as if I am a patient with an unusual complaint.
“You can heal.”

I can
’t read his tone. Is he disbelieving or merely repeating it himself to see if he really understood me? “I discovered it by accident. I think the fire awakened it in me, but I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t tell you. I know what you think of that sort of thing.”

Doubt weighs down his eyes. I need to give him evidence.
“I felt her, you know, in your body, when we touched that first time in Vegas. Your sister. The one who drowned. You carry a lot of pain from that.”

Adam
’s eyes can’t get any wider. “And I’ll bet that broken clavicle that never quite healed doesn’t ache any more, does it? The one you got from a bicycle accident?”

His fingers move unconsciously to the long bone below his throat.
“I haven’t told anyone about what happened to my sister.”

A week passes, and my sense of home is entirely rearranged. My father stands on the doorstep of the house that he once shared with my mother, tugging at the bottom of his jacket, and scratching his neck. I know he
’s afraid to come in. “Hi Dad,” I say, and tears finish the sentence.

Celine comes up the walk wearing a tasteful navy blue dress and heels, and greets me with a hug and kiss. She looks pale, with dark circles under her eyes.
“Oh Grace, I’m so sorry about your mother. I hope you’ll let us be your family.”

I nod. I want to extend to Celine the same kindness she has to me. Perhaps I will visit them on holidays, impress my face on my young sister so that she doesn
’t grow up scared of me. I lead them inside. The carpets are stained and ruined, chewed up by cockroaches and imbued with a funk that will require ripping them out. The furniture is full of holes where cats cleaned their claws, the walls moldy, paint chipped and yellow, but it is empty. It is so, so empty. And being with my father only intensifies the sense of loss. I grab his outstretched hand, and his fingers run across mine as though to soothe an ache. “She’s out of pain, Gracie.”

“
We’re going to lose the house,” I say, because it was his house too, once.

He shakes his head.
“Not if I help, you won’t.”

I squeeze his hand.
“I think I could make it really nice.” This is the closest thing to “thank you” I can manage in the moment.

When Adam arrives, an electric feeling passes through me. I think the world must be able to feel it.

“Well!” Celine and Harlan say at the same moment.

“
Dad, Celine,” I say, “I want to introduce you to someone very special.”

Epilogue

“How is she?” I ask. “Did they say when she can come out of the NICU?”

“
She’s breathing completely on her own,” Marly says, sounding purely joyful. “But she’s got jaundice so she has to be under this special lamp and they want to be sure she’s pooping properly, though she’s drinking the milk I’m pumping. Oh man, you should see the tiny bottles we feed her with—like she’s a kitten.”

Relief courses through me.

“So Alan is…”

“
Not a monster,” she says softly. Though not a saint either. He did turn my furniture upside down, and he was rough with me more than a few times. But most of it was…”

“
Selective truth telling,” I offer for her.

“
I guess. Speaking of which, Drew confessed to me,” she says softly. “I’m sorry he scared you, hurt you, too. I really thought that I was inviting you into a better life, Grace. I pressed charges, and even though there’s no evidence, he confessed. He’ll do some time, though I feel somewhat responsible.”

“
Will you stay in Vegas?”

“
Gram left her house to me, did I tell you? I can live in it or sell it.”

I try to picture the two of us living in this town again, in the emptied houses of the women who loved us best. Could it work?

“I’m naming my daughter after her. And you. Oona Grace.” And then, before I can reply, “I should have told the truth about the fire, about so many things, sooner. You deserved to know it all.”

In this week apart I asked Adam to help me piece together some of Marly
’s erratic behavior. “You’re bi-polar, aren’t you?” I know it’s true.

She sighs.
“I hate the label—because, really, is it all the shitty life experiences that made the brain chemistry go nuts, or is it genetic? My mother always told me I was just like my grandmother, and I thought that meant I was artistic. I hate the meds, but I have to take them if I’m going to be a good mother. And I really want to be a good mother. Do you hate me, Grace?”

I almost laugh, except I don
’t want to hurt her feelings. “Marly, I don’t hate you. No one was ever looking out for you. There’s a lot I didn’t want to know, or to remember. A lot I willingly chose not to see.”

“
Well that’s not what I thought you’d say. I think you
should
hate me for a little while. Just try it on. Not just for the fire, but for all the ways I’ve lied to you. I think you might find hating me productive.”

I can
’t help myself; I laugh. “How will hating you be productive?”

“
I’ll tell you how: I want you in our lives, mine and Oona’s. And I don’t want residual hate spilling out some time down the road when she’s old enough to feel it, too. So please, I beg you, hate me now, good and hard. Blame me. Really soak in it. And when you’re done, even if it takes years, you come back to us. You come back and be my best friend again, and Oona’s auntie, and see that you did the right thing helping me get here.”

I sit quietly for a long time.
“How about I hate the things that happened to you, the lies we’ve both told. That’s about all the hate I can muster.”

“
Gus,” she says softly, his name a segue all its own. “I want to tell you, it was a heart attack, Grace. He had a weak heart from years of drug abuse on top of several other things. You didn’t kill him. Frankly it’s a miracle he was still alive.”

I feel like I
’ve just shed a heavy, wet coat. Tears, which are now all too easily at the ready since Ma’s passing, slip out, and wet my cheeks. “How’d you find out?”

“
I talked to Sara. I knew she’d want to know about his last moments, and though I wasn’t in the room, I reconstructed them for her—let her know he wasn’t in pain. I knew you weren’t in any position to tell her.”

“
You did that?” I’m genuinely touched.

“
I did that,” she says.

“
Well then,” I say. “When do I get to hold that baby?”

“
We’re going to come back to Drake’s Bay for a little while,” she says. “I’ve got to deal with some last paperwork. I want to repaint, have a yard sale. And I’m cutting that damn tree down.”

“
I’ll help. This time, I can even wield an axe. Ceremonially, I mean.” And even though she can’t see me, I lift my arms to show myself, if not her, that for the first time in thirteen years, thanks to this strange force that fire awakened in me, I can raise my arms over my head, can reach toward the future.