The Stars Are Fire(70)

With a pout that could put her in the movies, Claire opens the back door and slides out.


While the children are making Popsicles, Grace watches a man hitch the Buick to a truck and take it slowly down the driveway.


Not having a car means that Grace cannot get groceries with the children in tow. It means not being able to take the kids to the playground or to visit her mother. It means that she is an actual prisoner now, not just a psychological one. But then she wonders: Wasn’t she always a prisoner of sorts? At Hunts Beach, they had a car, but Grace couldn’t drive it. Gene had to take her to a grocery store every Thursday night. But then again, she had neighbors in Hunts Beach, Rosie for one. She had Gardiner’s, where she could pick up the fixings for dinner. And her mother was within walking distance.

Pull yourself together, she tells herself, a week is nothing.


By the fifth day without a car, the pantry holds only canned ravioli, a box of macaroni, a dozen Campbell’s soups, a jar of jelly, and half a box of cornflakes. Grace calls her mother and asks her to bring milk.

Her mother, chauffeured by Gladys, brings with her a carton full of fresh vegetables and fruits and hamburger and milk and bread and cookies she baked herself. Grace receives it as if she were a desperate refugee. She puts on the kettle and the two older women, both in sleeveless dresses, their arms white, the skin loose and damp, sit at the table. Claire climbs up onto her grandmother’s lap, and Tom wanders over to Gladys with a curious look. Gladys produces from her purse two sets of keys and dangles them in front of the boy, who takes them and sits at her feet to play with them.

“Bad luck not having the car,” Gladys says to Grace.

“Especially now that the town pool is open,” her mother adds.

Grace pictures the deliciousness of falling into the water, feetfirst, and having it close over her head.

“But,” Gladys points out, “having two children who can’t swim at a pool might be more work than staying at home.”

“Worth it to get out,” Grace says, pouring iced tea into glasses. She unwraps her mother’s plate of cookies.

This is help, Grace thinks. This is the help that might have come to her rescue at the stone wall. Right here in her kitchen. With the children underfoot, she might even now be able to convey to Gladys and her mother her fears for her own and the children’s safety. Gladys would think her overwrought; her mother would reassure her that once the car came back, she’d be herself again. Both would say as they left that it was only a matter of time.

Time until what? she’d want to ask.


On the seventh day, Grace calls the auto repair company. “Hello, this is Mrs. Holland. I’ve been wondering if you were able to fix my car.”

“Yep, we fixed it good.”

“What was wrong with it?” Grace asks, curious.

“There was a heck of a lot of water in your gas tank.”

“Water?” As if in slow motion, Grace falls onto the chair by the telephone table and bends her head to keep herself from fainting. Sweat breaks out on her palms and face, and she thinks she might vomit.

She sees it with absolute clarity. A man. A garden hose. A Buick.

“You still there?” the repairman asks.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m here. Can you drop it off and I can pay you what I owe you?”

“But…well…your husband didn’t tell you? We sold it.”

Grace stands and spins with disbelief. “You sold it?” she asks incredulously. “But it was mine! That was my car!”

“You’re a mister and missus, aren’t you?” the mechanic asks.

“Well, yes.”

“What’s yours is his, I guess. I called this number to tell you it was ready and he answered and he told us to get rid of it. We did. It’s gone now.”

Grace swallows. Her disbelief turns hard.


Grace walks down the driveway, across the street, through the cut grass and pebbles, and screams into the roar of the surf.


That night, after the children have brushed their teeth, the reality of her situation penetrates. If she is not a prisoner behind bars, she is one in a house she now can’t abide. Every night she will have to sleep in the nursery with her children and the door bolted. The ugliness she has seen in Gene will intensify. Whatever was good in her—as a mother, as a person—will begin to shrivel in confinement.

Grace reads to the children, watches them fall asleep, and then lies on her own cot. She guesses it safe enough to leave the screens open as she did before, but she knows not to let down her guard, not to give in to the pleasure of the gentle breezes that so seduced her on the night she woke with Gene standing over her. She tries to remain in an alert state. She listens to every sound in the house, but all she can hear are the waves crashing on the rocks across the street.


In her dream, she’s a child again, and her mother is knocking on the door. No, it’s her birthday, and her mother’s banging on the door so that she won’t miss her birthday party. Grace sits upright and knows that the person on the other side of the door is Gene. He bangs hard, and the children wake. He keeps up the pounding. Claire jumps out of bed and races to Grace’s cot. Tom, standing, tries to climb out of the crib. Gene shouts, “Grace! Grace! I need you!” A fist on the door again, over and over and over. Grace lifts her children, one to a side on the narrow cot, and holds them tight so that they won’t fall out. Tom crawls on top of her. Claire whispers, “Is that Daddy? Why is he doing this?”