The Rules of Love & Grammar (2 page)

“Maybe, but you had a long friendship before that. And they always say a romance that grows out of friendship is the best kind.”

I study the photo, Peter's eyes, warm and friendly, gazing back at me. “Hmm. Is that what they say?”

“You know the romance part would have lasted a lot longer if things hadn't happened…the way they did.” She swallows the last few words, her voice becoming quiet, and I know what she's thinking.
If things hadn't happened the way they did the next day. With Renny.

“Hey,” she says, steering the conversation in a lighter direction. “You've seen all of his movies, right?”

“Yeah, I've seen all three.”

“Me too,” she says. “I liked
Paris Love Letter
the best.” She grabs my mug of coffee. “I'll heat these up.” She walks to the microwave, and I watch the cups revolve on the platter. “He was always such a movie nut. Like you. Remember how he used to sneak us into the Dorset Playhouse? He'd buy a ticket and go in, and then we'd knock on the side door and he'd open it?” She hands me my coffee and sits down. “God, he was cute.”

The memory makes me laugh. “I can't believe we never got caught.” When the playhouse closed a few years ago, I couldn't help but wonder if they'd gone broke from kids like us sneaking in over the years, but I know that's absurd.

Cluny leans back in the chair, crosses her arms, and gives me a self-satisfied glance. “It's more than a coincidence, you know.”

“What's more than a coincidence?”

She gestures at the newspaper. “Peter, back in town. You back in town. At the same time.”

“So we're both in town at the same time. Don't give me any cosmic mumbo jumbo, Cluny. There's nothing so strange about that.”

She sits up straight. “Are you kidding? The odds against it must be a billion to one. It's happened for a reason. You were crazy about him. He was crazy about you. You need to see him. It beats sitting around here by yourself, eating pints of ice cream.” She looks at the ice cream container as though she might try to confiscate it.

I grab the container and pull it to my side of the table. “That's ridiculous. I wouldn't even know what to say. Too much water under the bridge. That was a long time ago.” I pick up the spoon.

“Oh, come on,” she says. “Time has no meaning when it comes to love.” She puts her hand over her heart.

“Where did you get that? From one of your Louise Hay books?”

“No, you always used to say it. Back in high school. Remember?”

I point my spoon at her. “Well, you shouldn't listen to everything I say. Besides, I don't think it would be a good idea to see Peter. It might be uncomfortable. You know, because of the way things ended.”

Cluny is about to protest, but I cut her off. “Look, my apartment won't be fixed for three weeks. So while I'm stuck here, my plan is to sleep, eat junk food, read trashy novels, go to my dad's party, and try to forget for just a little while that right now my life is a total mess.”

“Grace, come on, this is
Peter
we're talking about. We used to bribe Renny to drive us around town looking for him. That's how crazy you were about him, remember?”

I remember. Of course I remember.

“By the way,” she adds, “today that would be considered stalking. And we'd probably be arrested.”

“Yeah, they've ruined everything fun.”

I gaze out the kitchen window, onto the swath of grass that pushes the land toward the sound. A small sailboat whizzes by in a puff of wind. I look at the wooden table, at the scratches and cracks that have collected over the years. They look like the lines a fortune-teller might read to predict the future. I wonder what they would say about mine.

Cluny leans closer. “And this will be a good distraction. Something to help take your mind off Scott and your job and your apartment. Plus, I'd love to see Peter again. Get the details on what he's been doing all this time. It's so exciting that he's back in town.” I can feel her staring at me. “Don't tell me you haven't thought about him.” She sounds a bit smug.

She's smug because she's right. Of course I've thought about Peter. Long before I began to see his name appear in magazines and entertainment blogs, there were things that reminded me of him, things that made me wonder where he was and what he was doing.
Twister
would come on TV, and I'd think about the night we went to the Dorset Playhouse and watched it from our favorite seats in the balcony. Or I'd be in a luncheonette and hear someone order a coffee milk shake, and I'd remember the afternoon at the Sugar Bowl when we drank so many coffee milk shakes we were both awake all night, jittery, talking to each other on the phone. Or I'd hear “Claire de Lune” on the radio, and I'd think about the day I heard Peter playing it on the piano in the empty high school auditorium.

Cluny looks at me. “Yeah. I thought so.”

I shake my head. “No, it's not like that. Of course I've thought about him, Cluny. But I got over him a long time ago. I had to. You know that.”

“We should go see him,” she says. “We'll find out where he's staying. It'll be like solving a mystery. Just like when we were kids.”

“Are you going to dig out your detective handbag?”

She sighs. “I wish I still had it. Remember all the great stuff we put in those things? Tweezers? Handkerchiefs?”

“Those big magnifying glasses we got at the stationery store?”

“From that salesman who always had the horrible dandruff.”

“Remember how we bought those little black notebooks?” I say. “For jotting down clues?”

“God, everything was a clue. What about that time in fifth grade when you thought the man and woman who lived at the end of your street were bank robbers hiding from the police?”

“Well, they looked suspicious,” I say, feeling the need even now to defend myself. “Come on, the wife, with all those weird hats and the sunglasses. She was
always
wearing sunglasses.”

“She had an ocular disease.”

“Even so.” I give a dismissive wave. “And what about the husband? He always seemed so wary of everyone.”

“Grace, they were retired schoolteachers in their eighties.”

“Oh, so retired schoolteachers in their eighties can't also be criminals?”

She gives me a skeptical look. “Besides, the husband was in a wheelchair.”

“Yeah, but he was fast in that thing.”

She taps a few crystals of sugar into her coffee. “I'll tell you what I also remember.” A sly smile crosses her face. “How you rang their doorbell and told them you were collecting for the Red Cross.”

I'd forgotten that. “Oh my God, yes. So I could peek inside for stolen money. I thought they might have a safe.”

“And they believed you. They actually gave you ten dollars.” Her voice is full of awe, even now.

I raise my hand as though I'm taking an oath. “Which, I might add, I immediately turned over to the real Red Cross.”

“Yes, you did…after you dusted it for prints.”

“Well,” I say, “a detective's gotta do what she's gotta do.”

Outside, the wind chimes jingle, and a breeze sends a branch of hydrangea tapping against the screens. I feel a little wistful for the old days, a little sad to have lost that time in my life when the tiniest burst of imagination could power an entire summer day.

“I think we were great detectives,” Cluny says. She's silent for a moment. Then she adds, “We could resurrect our skills and find Peter.”

I try to think of a way to convince her, once and for all, that I'm not interested, because I can sense what she's going to say next. “Cluny, he's married. I read that a long time ago. And he probably has two gorgeous children.” Everybody else does. Why not Peter?

“He
was
married,” she says. “But he isn't anymore. He's divorced.”

“He's divorced?”

Cluny's eyes light up as she perceives a spark of interest. “Yesssss,” she whispers.

“Oh, forget it!” I catch myself. “I'm not doing it. Besides, I just want to stay home.”

She sighs. “I know. In your pajamas.”

“Yes.” I hitch up my Santa bottoms.

“Eating ice cream.”

“And why not?”

“Whatever you say, Grace. But, just so you know, cookie crunch is like a gateway drug. It leads to coffee toffee and chocolate-chunk chip and all those varieties that are much more dangerous. It's a slippery slope.”

“Okay, just tell me this.” I pick up the newspaper article and point to the photo. “How do you know for sure he's divorced?”

She winks. “Google, baby. How else?” She moves her fingers as though she's typing. “And, yes, I cross-checked the information on several different sites. All very reliable.” She raises an eyebrow. “By the way, do you have any idea how many results come up when you Google
Peter Brooks movie director?
”

I take a sip of coffee. “Five hundred and twelve thousand, something like that.”

Cluny tilts her head and gives me a long, hard stare. “Oh, so you
do
know.”

Damn it, she
should
have been a spy.

She narrows her eyes. “Good guess, Einstein. I'll pick you up tomorrow at ten. Dust off your detective handbag.”

T
he next morning, I wake up bright and early again, to the tune of nail guns on the roof. Mom has already gone to work, but she's left another note in the kitchen. Although it's still two weeks before the party, she's got me tackling her to-do list. First task: find the plastic coolers she says are in the garage. That's easier said than done. My parents are genetically incapable of throwing away anything.

I head out the kitchen door and across the lawn to the garage, where I take inventory. Dad's blue Chrysler and my old yellow Volkswagen Beetle sit in two of the three bays. In front of the cars is a large space filled with things my parents can't part with. It looks as though a tidal wave came to shore and swept out again, leaving its debris—a rusted hot-water heater; a motorbike without an engine; two pink porcelain lamps with frayed wires; a mahogany table missing a leg, with the splintered half of a Louisville Slugger baseball bat as a prosthesis; old car tires; tennis rackets; gardening equipment; a microwave oven with no door; cans of paint labeled Versailles Blue; and two stacks of plastic coolers with hinged lids are just a part of what's there. The garage is our own Sargasso Sea.

I manage to clear a path to the coolers, and when I lift off the one on the top of the pile, what I see behind it makes my breath catch in my throat. It's Renny's racing bicycle. Although I can still see bits of the names Schwinn and Paramount, the frame, once a bright cherry red, is covered with dust and grime. The tires are flat and cracked, and the material on the sidewalls is flaking off. The wheel spokes, once shiny silver, are dark gray and speckled, and the chain is encased in rust. The bell Renny loved, with the blue enamel flower, is still on the handlebar. But when I pull the ringer, all I hear is a grinding sound.

I remember the summer Renny and I bought our bikes; she was twelve and I was ten. After weeks of stopping by the Bike Peddler, the cycling shop in town, and studying the different models, I decided on a new Raleigh Mercury, white with orange and gray trim. Renny had been eyeing the Schwinn for a while, even though it was secondhand. We trotted into the store, our pockets bulging with cash we'd saved from chores like dog walking, weed pulling, and window cleaning, supplemented with money from Mom and Dad, and we walked out with the bikes. I'll never forget how proud and grown-up we felt, having made our first big purchases on our own.

I look at the Schwinn now, and I can see Renny, the way she used to bend over the handlebars in her Peace Corps T-shirt, her long legs pedaling defiantly, probably to the tune of some teenage-angsty Tori Amos song playing in her head. Her tawny hair would fly behind her as she breezed down a hill, turning a corner ahead of me.

Often, on sunny summer mornings, she'd say,
Come on, we're going for a ride.
We'd fill our water bottles, stash sandwiches and fruit in our baskets, and we wouldn't come back until evening. Usually we'd ride with a particular destination in mind—a friend's house, the beach, or the Hickory Bluff Store and the dock. But sometimes the destination would find us.

One Saturday when I was thirteen, we rode to Miller's Orchards, a farm in Dorset where apples have been grown for more than a century. We bought cheese and crackers and juice in the market, and then we walked into the orchards, where the trees grow in rows on a hundred and fifty acres of green land and the branches stretch their arms toward the sun. As we picnicked, the sky began to rumble and turn purple, and before we could reach the parking lot, it started to pour.

We ran inside the market, and the woman at the cash register gave us each a black plastic trash bag to wear. She cut holes in them for our necks and arms. The ride home was crazy, with rain pelting our heads and water running down our hair, into our eyes. The trash bags flapped in the wind, and the puddles splashed up and soaked us, but we laughed and screamed the whole way. I often think of that day when I think about Renny. I look at it as a kind of high-water mark in our relationship, because it was after that when things started to change.

I move the rest of the coolers out of the way and stare at the bike. I still can't believe it's here. I thought my mother had donated it to the thrift shop years ago, when I told her she could take my Raleigh there. I pick up the Paramount as though I'm moving a patient in critical condition, and I carry it outside.

“Are you really planning to ride this?” Cluny asks as we lift the Schwinn into the back of her Jeep and close the tailgate.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the bike. It's been years since I've ridden one, unless you count the stationary bikes at the gym, and I don't even get on those very often.

I slide into the passenger seat. “I don't know. Right now I just want someone to clean it and get it running again.” It almost hurts to look at it the way it is.

Cluny turns on the radio—some station comes on with wind chimes and flutes and the sound of breaking waves, the kind of thing you'd hear if you were getting a massage. Gravel rumbles under the tires, and the dream catcher hanging from the rearview mirror sways as we head down the driveway to the green mailbox at the end, followed by the faded sign bearing the words Private, No Trespass, the
ing
having fallen off years ago.

Cluny turns onto the road, and we leave behind the little peninsula people often refer to as Hammond's Point because the property has been in Dad's family for three generations. The road meanders along the water, a brackish breeze sweeping in through the windows. I look for glimpses of blue where the sound peeks in from between the houses and trees. Most of the homes in the neighborhood are old colonials or farmhouses—many, like ours, from the eighteen hundreds. The lawns are sprawling, adorned with sturdy oaks and maples that have seen generations of children swing from their branches or scuttle up their trunks for a better view of the water.

Turning away from the sound, we travel the next few miles up and down hills flocked with the dense growth of summer and the faint smell of honeysuckle. I remember how Mom used to clip honeysuckle sprigs and put them in jelly jars for Renny and me when we were kids, the yellow and white blossoms dangling like little bells, the scent perfuming our bedrooms.

We round the bend where the white-shingled Presbyterian church sits proudly at the end of a large, green rectangle of lawn.

“They finally put up the new steeple,” I say. The old one caught on fire a few years ago, and the church had to raise the money for a replacement.

“I think it looks good,” Cluny says.

I liked the old one better, but I don't say anything. The new steeple seems a little too modern, and I wonder if it's even made of wood or if it's been molded from some synthetic fire-resistant product.

On Wallach's Road we pass an antique red clapboard house, once a dance studio and now the home of Bellagio, an Italian restaurant. I think about all the
pliés
and
relevés
I did in that little studio, when I was seven and eight, trying to learn ballet. People are eating pizza and chicken Marsala in there now, ordering ravioli and eggplant parmigiana.

We drive by the trio of Victorian houses that are home to Elephant's Trunk Antiques, Nutmeg Market, and Sage Hardware. The structures, with their porches festooned in gingerbread trim, sit back from the road, nestled together like girls in white party dresses waiting to be asked to dance.

Cluny glances at me and grins. “Has your dad bought anything new at Sage lately?”

“No, thank God. At least, I don't think so. Mom keeps a pretty good eye on that.”

Sage Hardware is one of my father's favorite stores, although he's always had a complicated relationship with tools. Years ago, Mom finally decreed that he could only go in there and look—that he couldn't buy anything because he might hurt himself again. One summer, when I was nine, he decided he wanted to build birdhouses, and not from kits but from scratch. He went to Sage and bought a bunch of tools, went to the lumberyard for the wood, and then he came home and promptly cut himself with a saw, resulting in twenty-one stitches in his finger and a lecture from the emergency room doctor about tool safety.

Now he only goes in to browse. He likes to pick up hammers, drills, and soldering irons; to open sets of wrenches and admire their sleek, silvery designs; to check out stud finders, flashlights, and fasteners; and to chat with the sales guys about sockets and ratchets. I've caught him in there a few times, pining over storage boxes and workbenches. He's even written poems about the store. “Zeal,” inspired by the saw incident, was about the fine line between knowing when to be careful and when to let yourself go.

We make a quick stop at the harbor, where Cluny and Greg keep their Boston Whaler. A half-dozen boats glide by, heading down the river toward the deeper waters of the sound, their engines gurgling in low, throaty voices. Across the river, stately old homes with dormers and gables and filigree porch railings sit on wide, green lawns that wander down to seawalls.

I follow Cluny into the Hickory Bluff Store, where the collection of boating equipment and beach-related odds and ends hasn't changed. While she buys an oyster knife, I peer into a mahogany case with a dusty glass top, heartened to see there's still candy inside and recalling how Renny and I would buy M&M's and Snickers bars here and eat them on the dock out back while we dipped our feet in the water. Without even looking, I know there's an old refrigerator full of bottled drinks on the far wall and a room off to the side where they sell bait. It's comforting that these things are still the same.

When we drive into town, however, it's a different story. I immediately notice a new awning over the Sugar Bowl, the luncheonette where all the kids hung out when we were in high school.

“When did they put that awning up?” I ask, pointing to the yellow building with the pink geraniums in the window boxes.

“I don't remember,” Cluny says, taking a quick glance. “In the spring, maybe. I think the blue and white looks pretty.”

I'm not so sure, and I wonder what was wrong with the old yellow and white one.

We pass a children's clothing store called Twenty-One Balloons. It must have sprung up since the last time I was in town, back in the fall. I try to remember what business used to be there, but I can't.

Cluny parks, and we lift Renny's bike from the Jeep, pushing it slowly down the sidewalk to the Bike Peddler. Bells jingle when I open the door. Bicycles of various styles and colors and sizes, from tricycles to tandems, sit in racks on the floor and hang from the ceiling. Cycling clothes, helmets, water bottles, baskets, bells, and other accessories are wedged into every square inch of space, and the air is heavy with the smell of rubber.

“This place looks so different,” I whisper. It seems a lot smaller. Or maybe it's just because I've grown up. It's probably been twenty years since I've set foot inside here.

“I think the old guy who owned the business when we were kids sold it,” Cluny says. “What was his name? Scooter something?”

“Dees,” I say. “Scooter Dees.”

I walk the bike toward the checkout counter in the back, past a man in a navy T-shirt. He's talking to a woman and her daughter, but he looks up and glances at me with soft, brown eyes.

“I'll be with you in a minute,” he says, and then he smiles.

One side of his mouth edges up a little more than the other. A lock of dark-brown hair falls onto his forehead. Around six feet tall, he's got the build of a tennis player, lean and muscular. There's something vaguely familiar about him, but I can't place his face. I'm guessing he's around my age, but he doesn't look like anyone I remember from school.

I lean the Paramount against the side of the counter and follow Cluny around the shop as she browses.

“Greg was in here last year,” she says. “Buying bikes for the girls.” She picks up a yellow reflector from a basket of accessories, looks at it, and puts it back. Then she leans toward me, lowering her voice. “I was just thinking. I know you've got rent to pay and bills, and I know your parents will always help you out, Grace. But if you ever need money or anything, Greg and I are here to lend a hand.”

This catches me off guard. I feel grateful, but I also feel a little uncomfortable, especially because my parents made the same offer. Does everybody else know something I don't? Am I never going to find another job?

“That's really nice of you, Cluny. But I'll be fine. I got some severance pay when I lost my job.” I leave out the fact that I've already spent a lot of it on bills. “And I have a fair amount of money saved up.” That's also a lie, but I could never borrow money from a friend, especially from Cluny. It's the kind of thing that can destroy a relationship.

“Oh, I'm sure you've put away money for a rainy day,” she says, a little too quickly, as though she's not totally convinced. “But if you run into any problems, you know we'll help. I mean, what are friends for?”

I thank her, unable to meet her eyes.

As we step closer to the counter, I notice a stack of flyers on the top and I lift one off the pile.

“Hmm.” I dig into my handbag for my black Sharpies and pull out the one with the fine point. I remove the cap, releasing the pungent odor of whatever it is they put into Sharpies to make the ink last forever. Then I change the first
e
in the word
complementary
to an
i
.