The Stars Are Fire(76)

Grace’s mother visits twice annually, Christmas and summer. Because the journey, by train and bus, takes three days, Marjorie makes a vacation out of it, staying overnight in hotels that appeal to her. Now there’s a plan in motion to launch a ferry from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, which will cut the time in half.

The deck chairs are perched on an invisible dividing line between Grace’s house and Rosie’s so that they can hear the children. The first warm evening of the season envelops them after a winter Grace can describe only as gray. She thinks Gray ought to be a season of its own—running from early January to late April. “Happy Gray,” she could write to someone on a note card.

“Iced teas,” Tim calls from the porch.

“That was fast,” says Rosie when Tim reaches them.

“I just tell them to jump in bed.”

“And they do that for you?”

Tim smiles. “I confess I took advantage of the novelty of the situation. I skipped the bath and told them a short story. Then I lifted them high in the air and plopped them into their beds.”

“That wasn’t the deal!” Rosie cries. “Now I’ll have to bathe them in the morning. They were filthy.”

“Nothing that’ll kill them. Anyway, I came out here because I have an idea for you.”

Grace raises her glass. “First iced tea of the season,” she says to both.

“Drink it slowly,” warns Tim. “It’s really a watered-down Dark and Stormy.”

“What’s the occasion?” Rosie asks, sniffing her drink.

“I was thinking that you need a break.”

“A break?” Rosie asks as if she doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

“A break, a trip. You and Grace could go to Halifax for the weekend.”

“Both of us?” asks Grace. “Who would watch the kids?”

“We’ll let the mothers fight over them.”

Rosie takes a long sip. “I have to say…I could really use a break. It’s been a hell of a long winter. How about you, Grace?”

Rosie and Tim go to Halifax once a year, but Grace hasn’t been yet. Apart from her semiannual journeys to Gene’s house, she hasn’t been much farther than the next town over, where a market and shops line a small main street.

Halifax. A city. Just her and Rosie.

“Yes,” she says.


The first trip Grace made to Gene’s house with the children, this time stopping to eat and sleep, she couldn’t catch any air as she mounted the steps to the front door: She dreaded what she might find behind it. Sarah, the nurse, who was no longer wearing a white uniform, ushered Grace and the children into a room that smelled floral despite the absence of flowers. Gene was sitting upright in a chair and had been fitted with a glass eye. The skin on the left side of his face no longer looked raw, but instead scarred, which was somehow better. He wore a cap and had cut his hair short so that his head no longer looked as lopsided as it had. The most astonishing change, however, was the moment he bent forward in the chair and stood. In a freshly ironed shirt and pressed trousers, he held Tom’s hand and walked with him and Claire into the kitchen, where Grace guessed a snack awaited.

“He’s improved so much!” Grace couldn’t help blurting out.

“He works hard at it,” the nurse replied.

“Does he?”

Grace suspected it was all Sarah’s doing. “How are your funds?” she asked. “Do you need anything?”

The nurse blushed. “We don’t need anything. Gene has his inheritance now.”

We.

Inheritance.

Grace didn’t betray the fact that she hadn’t known about an inheritance. She thought, as she observed Sarah, that possibly she and Gene had fallen into a mutually satisfying relationship: Gene had a “wife”; Sarah’s financial future was set. Or was Grace selling the nurse short, and she truly loved the man? A man who had not spoken to Grace when she entered, or even acknowledged her existence.

Grace understood then that she was dead to Gene, and a great weight was lifted from her.


Grace is content. Sometimes happy. Rarely troubled or anxious except when the children are sick. She knows the money from Merle’s jewelry will run out in time, but she hopes that she can get Claire into school in the fall, thus allowing Grace to look for a job to supplement that income. She’ll still have Tom during the school hours, though it’s possible she could find a babysitter to allow her to work for some of them. At first she thought she might try to be a receptionist at a doctor’s office, but after Christmas and the camera, she began to dream of becoming a photographer for the local newspaper. She’s noticed that they often use stock photos, some of them years old, when they print their stories. She doesn’t know what such a job would pay, but she doesn’t need much. Food and clothing, a babysitter, gas for the car, heating and electricity, and, of course, film for the camera. Both the house and the car are paid for. Even if she could earn thirty dollars a week, she might be able to make it. For some assignments, she could take the children with her.


Grace tries to decide what to pack for her trip. She may as well take her best dresses since she knows Halifax will be more sophisticated than the village in which they now live. Because the temperatures will be changeable, she decides to wear her lined raincoat, a dull khaki. She livens that up with a red leather bag and a pair of red pumps. She refuses to wear rubbers to the city. She puts her spectator pumps in the suitcase along with a navy purse in case she ruins the red shoes. How odd to pack for only one person.