Mothered (17)

There it was again. The olive branch. And Grace believed her this time.

“I’m just saying . . . maybe the perfect thing doesn’t come along. But maybe you look at who you have, and maybe you find a way to make that enough.” Jackie smiled, but there was something sad about it. She started rocking forward, ready to push herself out of the sofa’s pillowy nest. Grace and Miguel jumped up, grabbing her hands to help her stand. “Thanks hon. I’ll give you kids some private time. Miguel, it was an absolute pleasure, and I’m so glad Grace has you for a friend.”

Miguel gave her a cordial hug. “Thank you, Miss Jacquelyn. It was so lovely to meet you, and I’ll see you again soon.”

Grace felt her mom’s lips on her cheek as Jackie leaned in to kiss her. “Good night, hon.”

Unsure how to reciprocate, she simply said, “’Night, Mom. Thanks for dinner.”

Miguel and Grace resumed sitting but remained alert, listening to every footstep as Jackie made her careful way up the stairs. Finally a door closed—the bathroom door, Grace was pretty sure. Alone at last, she grinned at her best friend. He lifted an eyebrow, and his face expressed a collage of thoughts. Grace probably had just as many, but it was a long, strange moment before either of them spoke again.





11


“Well, that was a little . . . uncomfortable.” As if her empty goblet were to blame for the evening’s lesser moments, Grace angrily pushed it toward the far side of her midcentury modern coffee table. Her eyelids felt too heavy, and she regretted having opened the second bottle of wine.

“Worse than you feared? Better?” Miguel kept his gaze on her as she really considered how his introduction to Jackie had gone.

“Not bad exactly. Except for the humiliating stories. But . . . I get it, I see the good parts, I really do, but she’s all over the place. And it’s a little, it’s a little . . .” She sighed and flopped back on the sofa. “She confuses me.”

“I can see that. But I think she’s trying—I think she means well.”

“Maybe. Sometimes.”

“I know I’m not really one to talk, but I can see it better with your mom.” He paused and waited until Grace met his eyes. “She might not be the same person you grew up with.”

Grace nodded. “That’s confusing too. Because then I don’t know who she is.”

“Give her a chance. It’s only been a week.”

A door opened upstairs. And another door creaked as it was closed, though it didn’t audibly click into place. Grace imagined her mother with her ear to the crack, eavesdropping. The opening and closing doors were enough to set the air in motion, and Grace caught a whiff of the fetid smell, the flowery rot that emanated from her mother’s things.

Grace locked eyes with Miguel, blinking again and again as a grin tried to vandalize her face.

“What?” he asked with a laugh.

“Would you ever consider it? What she suggested?”

“Having kids together?”

She nodded.

“I don’t know. Would you?”

Grace gave a lazy shrug. “I mean, if you . . . I’m not sure if I’m at that place yet, of really figuring out how—or if I should, really—have a baby.” It was a noncommittal answer. And she certainly wasn’t going to pursue such a thing while her mother occupied her second bedroom (a nursery?). But raising a child with Miguel . . . it wasn’t the worst idea. “You’re by far the longest relationship I’ve ever had with a man. And a great friend.”

He gave her a flirty smile. “Queer Platonic Partnership? Gay man and an ace woman.”

“If I’m going to be in a QPP, I don’t need a man for that.”

Miguel burst out laughing. “There you go! Now you’re getting in the spirit of the thing!”

She gave him a smirk. He blew her a kiss. Done with the baby talk, his attention flitted back to the photographs of Hope. Openly interested now, he angled his body so he could see them better, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Grace imagined how he saw her sister.

The smile like a scream. The jumble of half-grown teeth. The spittle at the corners of her mouth. In the two portraits, the photographers had her sitting on something, a love seat or bench, supported with well-placed cushions. In the candid shot, her motorized wheelchair was fully visible, as were her thin, unreliable legs.

“Why were you running away?” he asked.

Caught off guard, Grace zeroed in on the picture, on herself, a slight blur behind her sister’s wheelchair. No one had ever asked her that, though it seemed obvious that she was, indeed, running away. Jackie hadn’t taken many pictures of them—and this one, Grace remembered, was taken by the tall boyfriend who came in and out of their lives for a year or two.

“Do you think Hope looks happy?” she asked, evading Miguel’s question but genuinely interested in his assessment. “That’s why Mom always liked this one, why she had it framed. She thinks Hope looks full of . . . glee.”

Miguel stood and approached the photograph to get a better look. “I guess. I don’t really know anything about her. You don’t think she looks happy?”

“She was happy, I don’t doubt that. But I see something else too.” She glanced upstairs, worried again about the eavesdropper. When she turned back to Miguel she whispered, “Things were weird sometimes. With Hope.”