Authors: Elizabeth Bass

Wherever Grace Is Needed (12 page)

BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed

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“How did it go?” Grace asked.

Crawford looked exhausted, and perhaps Dominic had exhausted himself through osmosis because he let out a sigh and said, “There’s a lot of wood out there now! It’ll make a huuuge pile. What’re you going to do with it all?”

“That’s up to Crawford. It’s his.”

“I’m gonna sell it.” Crawford looked up at Grace. “You should take some first, though. Y’all have a fireplace, right?”

Her first instinct was to say that they really didn’t need to be setting fires on purpose. But then she realized how crazy that was. Life couldn’t stop. Her dad had always loved having fires in the winter, especially during the holidays. “Yeah, we do. That would be great.”

“I hate the thought of winter,” Dominic said. “I don’t want to even think about having to go back to school in a few days, and starting sixth grade.”

“Sixth grade!” Crawford laughed. “Come
on.
Sixth grade is, like, no pressure.”

“I hate my school,” Dominic said. “I wish I could go to public school, but my parents went to this school, and so all of us are supposed to go there until high school. We have to wear uniforms, and all mine are gonna be too small.”

“There’s a solution to that problem,” Grace said. “It’s called new uniforms.”

“Yeah, but then I have to ask someone to take me to buy them.”

“Wouldn’t your dad take you? Or Jordan?”

Dominic’s eyes were huge. “My sister? Are you joking? I don’t want my sister buying my clothes!”

“Just to drive you there,” Grace explained. “She wouldn’t have to follow you into the dressing room.”

“Jordan doesn’t drive,” Dominic said.

“Your sister, the girl with the blue hair?” Crawford asked. “How old is she?”

“Sixteen,” Dominic said.

Crawford slammed his ginger ale down on the table so hard that a little fountain of pop spurted out. “She’s sixteen and she doesn’t know how to drive? Why didn’t she take driver’s ed?”

“She did. But she never drives.”

“As soon as I can,” Crawford said, “I’m going to get a license, then a car, then a job, then an apartment.” He ducked his head. “I mean, after I graduate, I’ll get an apartment. Then I won’t have to ask anyone’s permission for anything, or be shuttled from house to house.”

“I hear that,” Grace said.

Crawford looked surprised. “Were your parents divorced?”

She nodded. “When I was really little. And then my mom moved to Oregon and I had to go with her, even though I wanted to stay here with my brothers.”

“See?” Crawford said. “That sucks yangers.”

Dominic nearly spat out his ginger ale. “You shouldn’t say yangers in front of Grace!”

“Sorry,” Crawford said.

“No, you were right,” she said. “It sucked. Yangers.”

The front door shut, and Grace left the boys for a moment. In the living room, she found her dad alone, intently scratching Iago’s ears.

“What happened to Uncle Truman?” she asked him.

“He left. He told me he and Peggy plan to get married.”

She flopped into her usual chair. “They’re nuts.”

“So you knew.” He frowned. “Did you tell me about their engagement already?”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t know why. I guess I didn’t want to upset you.”

His head snapped up and his eyes suddenly focused on her like laser beams. “Why? Why shouldn’t they? They’re not getting any younger.”

“Why
should
they? What’s the matter with the way things are?”

“They’re lonely.”

“Okay, but do they have to suddenly become simpering lovebirds? Cooing at each other in restaurants and exchanging rings?”

“What are you talking about?”

Oops.
She had just assumed that Truman had spilled all the beans about that incident. “When I was with Wyatt at the Salt Lick, I saw Uncle Truman give Peggy a ring.”

“Did you congratulate them?”

She shrugged. “After a fashion.”

“You should have told me,” he said.

She should have, she saw that now. But that had been the night of the fire. The ring incident hadn’t seemed too important after that.

For a moment she thought her father was going to go upstairs to be alone. He was putting on a brave face, but she knew that deep down he really had to care about what he’d just heard. Instead of leaving, however, he lifted his head and called out, “Who’s up for a game of chess?”

Lickety-split, Dominic appeared and settled himself in the martyr’s chair. “Today I’m going to win,” he said.

Lou chuckled. “Just keep telling yourself that, son.”

Crawford drifted in and pulled up a stray dining room chair to observe the game for a bit. Grace put on a record, and after that the only sounds were Mozart and Dominic’s anguished groans until a light knock sounded at the door.

“I wanted to bring your plate back,” Lily said when Grace opened the door. “From when you gave me the cookies.”

Grace reached out and took the flimsy plastic platter she’d bought at the dollar store, which hadn’t even cost a dollar. “Thanks. You didn’t have to trouble yourself.”

“I know.”

Lily stayed rooted to the welcome mat, her arms held tightly at her sides. There was something different about her. Finally, Grace pinpointed what it was: lip gloss. And instead of a ponytail, her hair was brushed straight and ornamented with a red headband. She peered around Grace’s side to check out the scene inside and then gazed pointedly at Grace.

“Would you like to come in?” Grace asked.

“Well . . . okay,” Lily replied, as if Grace had talked her into it.

A
DULT
E
DUCATION

T
he thought of school starting made Jordan sick to her stomach. Junior year. In ten years of school, even leaving out kindergarten, she’d never had to face that first day by herself.

She’d always sneered at Nina and her methodic annual back-to-school preparations. Every August Nina wanted—and got—new outfits for school, which would hang in a place of honor on her side of the closet for weeks like a new fall collection awaiting its big unveiling. And no one took school supplies more seriously than Nina. Ever since first grade, the annual pilgrimage to Target had stretched out five times longer than necessary because Nina angsted forever over which box of crayons she wanted, and debated three-subject versus five-subject notebooks, and took forever deciding whether it was really worth splurging for the protractor with all the circles and curlies.

Then there were the lists. God, the lists! Sometimes Nina had even written them up on poster board, decorated with stars and ribbons:
Seventh grade goals . . . Ten mistakes I made as a freshman that I will not repeat sophomore year . . . Resolutions for an awesome sixth grade!!!

If Nina hadn’t been funny and popular, she would have been the biggest dweeb on the planet. (She would have been Lily.) But somehow Nina had made compulsive geekiness seem like an endearing mental illness. It used to drive Jordan crazy, but now she would have given anything to be draped over her twin bed, watching Nina sitting on the floor designing one of her stupid posters.

As long as Nina had been there, Magic Markering her way toward academic and social success, Jordan had felt as if she had a toehold on the success ladder, too. She could be snide and slack off, knowing that Nina would intervene if she were about to lose her way completely. It was hard to claim a place in a family as big as theirs. Nina was the mature one, Lily was the brain, Dominic was the baby, the cute one. Jordan had coasted along, sloshing around in the middle until she’d discovered she could be the edgy one, the troublemaker, because Nina would always be there to anchor her from going too far wrong. In the past two years alone, Nina had prevented her from: failing Algebra I, wearing a yellow kimono to Spring dance, failing geometry, and losing her virginity to Wayne Loscalzo.

Now she just felt adrift. She had no one to talk to . . . no one she wanted to listen to, anyway. No one to save her. All her friends were morons. Not one of them had called her this summer—which was probably because most of them thought she was in Little Salty. Also, she
had
sort of chased them away. Before school had ended in May, her friend Abbie had made this big point of telling Jordan that because she was being
so totally
melodramatic, everybody was really tired of her moods. So Jordan had told her and all of her other so-called friends where they could go.

She didn’t want to see any of those people anyway. Nobody knew what she was going through, and even if they did know, what would it matter? No one could help her. Nothing anyone could say would make her forgive herself. She could only hope that somehow, someday, she would forget.

At the vegetarian restaurant near her house, she ordered a carob-soy smoothie to go. While the woman behind the counter was making it, Jordan sat down on the bench by the door. On the windowsill behind her, there was a little pile of fall course schedules for Austin Community College. She picked up one and flipped through it. God, she wished she were in college! Why couldn’t she be one of those really smart kids who could test out of the last few years of high school? It was the one thing she envied Lily for—Lily had skipped third grade, so she would graduate when she was seventeen.

Jordan pored over the art class listings. The school offered a lot of bogus stuff, including two levels of tie-dyeing and lots of beading. But there was wood carving—that sounded cool. She had never really done any carving or sculpting except a cat made out of modeling clay at school. Her school’s piddly little art class was so lame. Every year it was the same thing. Collages, still-life drawing, watercolors. Lame.

Her gaze traveled down the page and then stopped.
Oil Painting—Levenger.

Jed Levenger was teaching at ACC?

She read the course description and felt her chest squeeze painfully at the unfairness of it all. She
would
be stuck doing poster board collages while the rest of the world got to do really interesting stuff. Unless . . .

She was flipping through the catalog to see what the requirements were for taking a class when the waitress brought her the smoothie.

On the walk home, she read the beginning of the booklet, where it talked about registration. It said high school students could take classes, they just wouldn’t get credit. The real hiccup was, you had to get parental permission.

Oh, and there was a small matter of $105 to register, plus another $30 for materials. She shouldn’t have sent all that money to her grandparents. Now she’d have to go begging.

She began plotting the best time to talk to her dad about giving her the money and permission. He was usually in his best mood when he was walking out the door in the morning—escaping. The downside of mornings was, while he might be in a reasonable mood, this was also the time when he was most likely to forget whatever you said to him.

When she opened the front door to her house and stepped inside, her breath caught. The house was filled with piano music—it sounded as though her mom was back, sitting at the piano. But in the next moment, she realized the music was coming from their dad’s study. It had to be a recording.

She crept to his office door and opened it slowly. Her father was at his desk, leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed.

That music! It was a piece her mom had played sometimes, a simple but mournful song, not like the intricate classical pieces she usually favored. Jordan’s throat tightened and she had to suck in hard to take a breath. It actually sounded like her mom.

Her dad’s eyes popped open. Seeing her, he tipped forward and lunged for his mouse. A click of his forefinger and all sound ceased. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said.

“That was Mom playing. It had to be.”

His nod was barely perceptible. “I recorded her once.”

How could he stand to listen to that recording? Or maybe a better question was, how could he keep himself from listening all the time?

“Was that Chopin?” Her mother had tried to teach her piano, but Jordan didn’t have any talent or interest in that kind of music. Although now she wished she’d at least tried a little harder to absorb some of what her mother had been trying to teach her.

“Erik Satie,” her father told her. “ ‘Gnossienne.’ Where have you been?”

She felt a pang. He so obviously didn’t want to talk about her mom. At least not with her. Which was understandable, she guessed.

“I was at Mother’s Café, getting a smoothie. Why?”

“I don’t know . . . I came home at five-thirty and no one was here.”

“You’re usually not home till six-thirty,” she reminded him.

“Do you know where Dominic and Lily are?”

“Do I look like Nanny McPhee?” she fired back.

He blew out a breath, and with that sigh she could feel any hope of taking Jed’s painting course evaporating.
Way to go, Jordan.
“Tranquilize, Dad. They’re probably with Grace.”

He blinked in that absentminded way he had. “The woman who lives with Professor Oliver? What would Dominic and Lily be doing over there? I thought he just went over to walk the dog.”

It took an effort not to shake her head. “Well, yeah, but Dominic also likes to hang out there, along with some kid named Crawford.”

“The teenager with the chain saw?”

Jordan made a face. “I don’t know anything about a chain saw. He’s just a boring-looking normal nobody kind of a guy. Completely beige.”

“So what’s Lily doing over there?”

“You’d have to ask her,” Jordan said. “I don’t know why Lily does anything.”

His expression was thoughtful. Maybe this wouldn’t be the worst time to ask him for a favor.

“Hey, there’s this art class at ACC I want to take on Saturday mornings.”

His brows rose. “
You
want to get up early on Saturdays?”

She hated it when adults were sarcastic. As if nothing was more important to a teenager than sleeping late. And as if she was just an average teenager. “The teacher’s a guy who taught at my camp last summer. I’d really like to go.”

He mulled it over for a few seconds. “Sounds like a possibility.”

She might as well get the big obstacle out of the way. “It’ll cost around a hundred and fifty dollars,” she warned him.

“We’re not paupers, Jordan. If it’s important, the money’s not a problem. We’ll see.”

He looked back at the screen of his computer. Back to work. Music off, Mom forgotten, daughter . . .

Dismissed.

She hesitated a moment, wondering if she should salute and leave, but decided to dig in her heels. “Who’s we?”

He glanced up again. “What?”

“I asked, who’s
we?
” She gestured around the room. “There’s me, and my mind’s made up, so that leaves you. Did you mean
‘I’ll
see’? Or were you just trying to make me feel bad?”

His eyes widened. “Why would that make you feel bad?”

“Because that’s what you used to say when you meant you and Mom would have to confer.
We’ll see.
But now Mom’s not here anymore and whose fault is that?”

“Jordan, would you—” He stopped whatever he was going to say and lowered his voice. “It was just something I said, okay? Without thinking.
I’ll
see what I can do for you.”

“What you could do for me is let me take this stupid class so I’ll have something to do with myself besides wishing I’d never been born. Ever since the accident—”

Her father wheeled his chair back and lurched to his feet, cutting her off. He yanked his wallet out of his back pocket. “A hundred and fifty?” He pulled out a handful of twenties and tossed them across the table at her. “Here.”

“Oh, thanks. Very kind of you to offer,” she sassed back, knowing she was pressing her luck. She couldn’t help it. He’d practically thrown the money at her to get her to shut up.

“I’m giving you what you asked for,” he said. “What more do you want?”

I want someone to tell me it wasn’t my fault. To forgive me.

Did he really not know?

Her adrenaline was pumping and there were tears in her eyes, but she forced herself to remain calm. She stepped forward and then took the money. “I need special permission from you. You might even have to go register with me.”

“Just tell me when.”

“I’ll call them tomorrow and find out,” she said.

“Fine.”

They both stood frozen, facing each other as if they were each waiting for the other to say something conciliatory. After a few seconds, he fell back into his desk chair and returned his focus to the screen.

She made a dash for the door.

“Jordan?” he asked.

She stopped, her heart in her throat, praying he would say something to her that would make her hate herself a little less.

When she turned, though, his face was screwed up in puzzlement. “Do
you
ever hang out next door with Grace?”

She drew back, then let out a laughing breath. “I’m bored, but I’m not
that
bored.”

BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed

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