Mothered (44)

Once on her feet, Jackie rubbed her lower back. Grace felt a little stiff too.

“We’ll come back soon, if you want—and stop for flowers next time,” said Grace.

“Find me a little stone? Doesn’t need to be much more than a pebble.”

Grace wasn’t sure why her mother wanted a stone, but she searched in the dirt bed around the buckeye’s exposed roots.

“Will this do?” She held it out for Jackie to see.

“Perfect. Set it on your sister’s headstone. Doesn’t matter where.” Grace’s face must have asked a question as she placed the little rock on the granite marker. “I learned that from Robert. That’s what the Jewish people do. I like it—stones last longer than flowers.”

Grace took her mom’s arm and guided her back to the paved road. As Jackie waited in the shade, Grace went to retrieve the car.





27


The summer when they were nine and a half, Grace and Hope played outside every day with the neighborhood kids. They’d taken to playing various games in the alley—so Hope, in her motorized wheelchair, could join in. Many of the games were questionable inventions, and they’d prided themselves in not crying when they got poked in the eye with a stick or pelted too hard by whatever objects they were throwing.

Grace was friendly with the local kids, though she wouldn’t have called any of them her friends. Hope bonded with Lizzy that summer—a girl Grace was wary of, her pale, freckled skin a thin disguise for the bully that lurked within. Lizzy spotted the mean thing in Hope, the thing that wanted to see what organs and bones really looked like. When Hope wanted to hurl a swear word at one of the Jablonski brothers and couldn’t get it out fast enough, Lizzy swore at the boys for her. Sometimes Lizzy misinterpreted exactly what Hope was trying to say, but it was usually close enough.

Thinking back on it, Grace weighed the probability that she had been mean too—that all the neighborhood kids, struggling in their own ways to survive, had been one claw short of feral. That summer, for a few short weeks, they became a tribe. Their parents, glad they were out of the house, let them play until the streetlights went on. It felt like eternity. That summer was a dreamscape of endless days, of ruthless, magical victories. Grace mulled on it now, remembering how satisfying it had felt—how she’d come into the house at dusk feeling like a queen, a warrior, a survivor of a battle that crossed stormy seas. She’d crawl into bed with the contented exhaustion of someone immortal, simultaneously aware of her verdant youth.

Now that she knew something about her father, she felt like that again. Invincible. The afternoon with her mother had satisfied something, and as the long day slipped into twilight, Grace had the energy of a coyote emerging from its den to hunt. It had been a long time since she’d spoken to any of her damsels; she used to speak to each of them at least once a week. It was harder now, with her mother in the house—which had been a good thing when Grace was determined to be good. Now she craved the scratchy wrongness of donning an alter ego, the sustenance it gave her, like a vampire savoring a drop of blood.

It wasn’t always about being a prince.

But where to make a call?

Jackie was in the shower. Grace’s bedroom door was shut, and Jackie certainly couldn’t hear her while the water was running. Only once since Jackie’s arrival had Grace made such a call at home, and she’d waited until her mother was asleep and then went downstairs. Waiting would be the safer option, but Grace wasn’t in the mood for safe.

She texted ShyShaina to see if she was up for a call and then huddled on the floor beside the fortress of her bed. If she angled herself toward the outside wall, and with the mattress as a sound buffer, her voice wouldn’t carry. Or so she told herself. ShyShaina responded instantly.

Grace cleared her throat, ready to use her Deep Voice, and placed the call through Skype.

“Hey sweetheart . . .”



Immersed in Shaina’s good news, “Preston” lost track of the time. Shaina had taken some rather miraculous steps toward getting her shit together: after threatening it for months, she changed the locks so her ex-boyfriend would stop dropping in, and she found a full-time job in customer service—an opportunity she hadn’t had before the pandemic. ShyShaina would never have been able to function at a call center—with her nervousness around people and anxiety in busy environments—but now it was a good job that everyone was doing from home. (While Preston passed himself off as an app developer, Grace made a mental note about the possibility that she, too, could consider a customer-service position while she was stuck in quarantine.)

Preston was truly happy for Shaina, a sweet young woman who’d let herself get run over by family and friends alike. She sounded so upbeat and joyful and thanked Preston profusely for his encouragement, which made Grace feel triumphant.

The conversation restored Grace’s faith that anyone could turn their situation around.

Her throat was sore by the time she got off the call. It was hard to talk in the Deep Voice for long periods of time, but Shaina deserved to revel in her successes. When Grace left her room, her mother’s bedroom door was open and the television was on downstairs.

She sighed as she crossed through the living room, forced to accept that her mother had laid claim, by virtue of greater opportunity, to the spot on the couch Grace still considered to be hers. Jackie, oblivious, sat with her legs outstretched, eating a salad.