Mothered (40)

“Grace!” Mommy sounded super angry, but Grace was less afraid of her than of Hope’s new magical powers. Her muscles came back to life, and she sprang from the bed.

When Grace got to the living room Mommy was standing at the front door, which stood wide open. Grace scurried to her side, and together they watched Hope, giggling, sailing up, up, and away into the sky. She cleared the top of a mighty oak tree and kept floating farther away, her thin pajamas aglow against the black moonless sky.

“Hope!” her mother called. The night swallowed her cry, yet Hope’s laughter wafted down to them.

It was sad watching her sister drift away, and a tiny bit scary, but Grace knew Hope was feeling happy and free.

“Bye!” Grace waved.

“What’s wrong with you?” Mommy turned on her, snatching her shirt beneath her throat. Grace gagged, struggling to breathe. Her mother’s snout curled in hate, revealing a wolf’s sharp fangs. “I was counting on you! You promised me you were reliable! How could you let me down like this?”

Should Grace have done more? To keep her sister from slipping away?





25


“That one’s just too easy,” said Miguel, crunching a bowl of granola on the screen of Grace’s laptop. “Isn’t that exactly what Allison said to you?”

“Pretty much.” Grace sipped her coffee. The words had actually hurt more coming from Allison than dream Mommy. When Grace called to tell her about needing to quarantine for two weeks she’d expected Allison to be understanding, even if disappointed, given the new world norm. Grace hadn’t anticipated that Allison would go full mean boss and say, without apologizing, “This isn’t working out.” Now Grace didn’t have a job to return to. Every time she thought this year couldn’t get any worse, fate lumbered in like a tipsy Hold My Beer meme. It was getting old.

“I think your dreams are trying to do you a favor, processing all the shit you’re going through.”

“Maybe.” Grace lifted her foot onto her desk chair. Her toenails looked gross. Uneven and dirty. “I need a pedicure.”

“Don’t we all.” Coco meowed on screen, pushing her nose toward Miguel’s yogurt. “What are you gonna do today?”

Grace shrugged. It wasn’t like the first time when everyone had gone into lockdown at the same time. Then it had seemed okay—almost like a communal activity—to watch garbage TV all day and fret about the future. No one understood then what was happening or how long it would go on. There was a lot they still didn’t know, but Grace had already maxed out on isolation and boredom; she dreaded having a witness to her bad habits this time around. Jackie had taken the news of the loss of Grace’s job and their need to stay home together with stoic resolve.

“Everyone restarted too soon,” Jackie had said. “No one wants to follow the rules.”

The rules were barbaric. Avoiding everyone who wasn’t in your immediate household. Letting businesses die. The people who delivered all their stuff had to keep working so everyone else could stay home. And the medical staff still had to help the sick, even when their sicknesses could have been avoided with a little common sense. Meanwhile, people canceled their cancer treatments and stopped doing the things that had once kept them sane.

Grace knew she was in this predicament because she’d been too eager, too desperate to have some kind of normal fucking social life.

As if reading her thoughts, Miguel said, “I’ll be more diligent this time, about wearing a mask.”

“Me too. It’s hard to know what to do when the thing you’re afraid of is invisible. And you never saw it arrive, so how do you know when it’s gone?”

Miguel nodded.

“So what are you up to, to pass the time?”

“I’m looking for some new hobbies.” His demeanor brightened, and Grace realized her lassitude had been bringing him down. “They can’t be expensive hobbies, as I have to watch my pennies. So no home redecorating or filling the apartment with houseplants—Coco would probably destroy them anyway. I’m thinking of maybe baking or cooking? At least those are semipractical and I can literally eat the expense.”

Grace laughed. But she was reminded of the previous night’s dream and her conversation with Hope, her assumptions that her sister would have less ordinary fantasies. In a similar way she expected Miguel to desire more exotic hobbies.

“Or maybe I’ll get serious about my dating profile and really try to build a connection with someone,” he said. “Maybe it’s easier to start a relationship now, with fewer distractions. And don’t say—”

Of course Grace thought online relationships were beneath the dignity of someone as good as Miguel, but she skirted the subject. “You could focus on your painting? Or . . . lots of places are putting classes online, cheap, available to everyone.”

“You mean, follow through on one of those interests I bring up from time to time?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh Grace, don’t you know I only bring those up to sound like an engaging, well-rounded person? I really am a cat dad who just wants to eat cupcakes—I don’t even want to make them, let’s be real.”

Grace burst out laughing. “I love you, lovey.”

“I know you do.” He blew her a kiss.