The Stars Are Fire(71)

“I don’t know.”

“Mommy, please make it stop!”

“Shhhh,” Grace says.

Gene begins to wail, a sound that starts softly and then rises in ghastly volume. The cry is so haunting that she presses Tom to her chest, Claire to her side, and covers her daughter’s remaining ear with her hand.

Yes, maybe Gene is owed a piteous wail. But not here, and not now. Maybe he wants his life to go back to the way it used to be, but it can’t ever. Grace knows it’s a ploy to get her to open the door.

She has seen his anger, his bitterness, his deception. She believes him capable of anything. He might hurt the children if he thought it would crush Grace. He would certainly hit Grace, she knows that now. If she opens the door, he won’t again believe in her calm voice suggesting they descend the stairs to go to his room where they might this time have sex.

The wailing continues. She wishes she could cover her own ears. Claire makes scurrying motions as if she would bore deeper into her mother. “Make it go away!” she begs.

“It will go away,” Grace says, trying to calm her daughter. “I’ll protect you, no matter what. Just try to go to sleep.”

“I can’t go to sleep. Make him stop!”

“Shhh,” Grace whispers, but inside she’s trembling.


Before she is even out the door, he grabs her by her upper arm. His grip is strong. He puts his weight against the top post of the banister, pulling her along with him. She knows that if he loses his balance, she’ll fall to the floor, too.

“I want answers,” he demands.

“Keep your voice down. The children are scared to death.”

“It was the only way I could get you to come out.”

“Don’t you care about them at all?”

His face is red, and his hair is dirty. His yellow pajamas have stains on them. He doesn’t look like a man who has been lying calmly in a bed.

“I asked about the razor blade, and you didn’t answer me,” he says.

She doesn’t answer him now, either.

“I asked you about the piano, and you brushed me off. A piano doesn’t just float through the air and take itself down a flight of stairs.”

“And a gas tank doesn’t just suddenly fill itself with water!” she exclaims with fury, knowing instantly it’s a mistake to mention the car.

“How did you buy it?” he asks, shaking her arm.

“I worked for it,” she answers, bracing herself with her feet apart.

He seems surprised, but he doesn’t lessen his grip. “You worked? I don’t believe you. Where?”

“In a doctor’s office.”

“That injun?” he asks, his eyes narrowing.

“Yes, that man.”

“I see now. The razor blade was his.”

“No. It isn’t. I don’t know whose blade it was. Are you really imagining I would get a job and bring the boss home to live with me? I worry for you, Gene.”

“You’ve been lying to me all along,” he insists. “How could you not tell your own husband that you once had a job?”

“How could you not tell your wife-to-be that you were marrying her because she looked like your true love?” she counters.

“That’s ancient history,” he says.

“Not to me,” she says. “It’s a fresh cut to me.”

“You want to discuss that now?”

Beyond Gene’s back, Grace sees the door open and Claire put her head outside. Grace shakes her head back and forth in an exaggerated manner and says a loud, “No!”—the message not for Gene but for her daughter.

“I have marital rights,” Gene states, but Grace is unable to respond. She wills Claire back into the room. Go inside and shut the door, she begs in her mind.

“You can’t ignore that,” he adds.

With growing horror, Grace sees that Claire is all the way out of the bedroom and moving toward them.

“Let go of Mommy!” the girl cries as she pushes out her hands.


The fall is so brief, so light, that she doesn’t have time to be afraid. The weightlessness is shocking, the house soundless. Did Claire cry out? Possibly she did. Grace can’t hear Gene. Did he fall, too?

She touches a middle step with her foot, another step with her hip and thigh, and then shoots into the far corner of the landing. She lies still. Messages of pain begin to reach her brain. She grabs the banister and tries to pull herself up. She can’t stand, but she can turn her body enough to see that there’s no sign of Claire. She hears the distinct rhythm of two-stepping below her. Gene, descending.


By the time Grace crawls up the stairs and into the bedroom, she finds Claire on her cot lying faceup with her own blanket over her. Tom is huddled into her side, sucking his thumb and sleeping deeply. Pain hits her. Left wrist, right ankle, and a searing all along her right hip and thigh. She crawls to the space next to the cot and lies down on the floor. She doesn’t have to move right this minute. She needn’t disturb her children just yet.


Claire, subdued, doesn’t mention the night before, even when Grace is icing her ankle in the kitchen. When Grace looked at herself in the bathroom, a purple bruise spread from her hip to her thigh. Her left wrist is swollen and will need ice as soon as Grace is done with her foot.