Grace (9 page)

Her pleasure pleased me. “It works good,” I said. Joel and I took off our coats too.

I looked over at her and she was looking at me with that look again. The one that made me feel funny inside.

“You shouldn't have,” she said, which was what my mother always said to my father on birthdays. “That must have cost a fortune.”

I nodded. “Pretty much.”

“I don't know what to say. You are the best man in the whole world.” Tears welled up in her eyes as she smiled at me.

Joel looked back and forth between us. “Can we eat the cake?”

“Sure,” she said.

I retrieved the cake cutter from my coat and cut three large servings. It was an incredibly perfect moment. I had the admiration of a beautiful girl
and
chocolate cake. I had never before had the former, rarely the latter, and never simultaneously.

“Ah,” Grace sighed with pleasure. “This is
so
delicious.”

Joel had frosting smeared around his mouth. “Yeah, this is the best cake ever.”

“There's plenty,” I said, feeling even more magnanimous than before.

“We need milk,” Joel said.

“I have milk,” Grace said. She crawled out and brought back the milk we'd packed in the snow. Grace poured the milk in the tin cup, which we passed around, and then we all had seconds of the cake. Nothing had ever tasted that good to me before.

“Hey,” said Joel, “what has two humps and lives at the North Pole?”

“I give up,” Grace said.

“A lost camel.”

It wasn't much of a joke, but for three kids high on chocolate cake it was like the atom bomb of jokes. Grace laughed so hard that milk shot out of her nose, which made us laugh even harder.

This launched a competition as we each tried to better the last joke. We were laughing so hard that we were crying and Grace kept saying, “I'm going to wet my pants.”

I don't know how long we'd been out there; hours I think. Long enough to finish off the cake. That night the clubhouse was the best and happiest place on the entire planet.

Finally we ran out of jokes and our laughter faded. “We better go before Mom and Dad get home,” Joel said. Grace and I just looked at each other. “Well, I'm going,” he finally said. He got down on his knees and crawled out.

“Thanks for coming, Joel,” Grace called after him. “And for the nice gift.”

“I better go too,” I said. I knelt down at the door.

“Wait.” Grace put her hands on my cheeks. “Thank you, Eric.” Then she kissed me on the mouth. Not a short peck like one from my mom or Aunt Geniel, but a real kiss that lasted more than ten seconds.

It was the first time that I had ever been romantically kissed. It was even better than the chocolate cake. When we finished kissing we just looked at each other. I probably looked dizzy. She just looked happy. “This was the best birthday I've ever had,” she said.

“Me too,” I said. She laughed and it was soft and sweet like a wind chime.

“I'll go now,” I said.

She smiled. I think she was pleased to have so disoriented me. “See you tomorrow.”

I got back down on all-fours. “Bye.”

“Good night.”

Joel was still waiting for me outside the door. When we'd taken a few steps he asked, “How much was that thing you got her?”

“Twenty-seven dollars.”

“That's a lot of money.”

“Yeah.” I put my hands in my pocket. “Did you see what she did?”

“What?”

“She kissed me.”

“On the mouth?”

“Yeah.”

“Whoa!”

“Yeah,” I said. “Whoa.”

He looked down as our boots left deep impressions in the snow. “Was it worth twenty-seven dollars?”

I smiled. “Sure was.”

MONDAY, OCT.
22

Monday started out bad and deteriorated so rapidly that I shouldn't have been surprised that the day ended with the threat of total global annihilation.

Between first and second period the hoods locked me in my locker. I was in there for nearly twenty minutes before a passing custodian let me out but not until he'd delivered the obligatory lecture.

Then as I went into class, my math teacher stopped abruptly in the middle of his lecture and told the whole class to turn and look at me. He said that since I had disrupted the entire class with my tardiness I owed them all an apology and an explanation of why I was late, which, of course proved to be of great amusement to my fellow students. I would have liked to have pointed out to my teacher that the only reason there was a disruption of his class was because he stopped teaching in order to embarrass me but I knew how far that would get me. Probably to after-school detention.

Never believe things can't get worse. At lunch I slipped on a slick of water in front of the whole cafeteria. My tray flew up in the air, and I ended up wearing most of my lunch. As was customary at Granite, everyone applauded. I ducked out of the lunchroom to clean the spaghetti sauce off my shirt. So not only did I get humiliated in front of the entire ninth grade but I didn't have anything to eat either.

When I got home from school my mother was waiting to take Joel and me to see the dentist, who discovered three cavities in my molars, which prompted a ten-minute lecture on proper dental hygiene. We got home just in time for me to hop on my bike and ride to work.

 

When the universe has conspired to create the perfect, crappy day it only reasoned that I would be scheduled to work with Dean.

Around ten o'clock a wino stumbled in. Which, since the Queen was located just off State Street, was a fairly common occurrence. They usually just asked for a glass of water, grabbed a handful of soda crackers, then asked if we had any extra food lying around. Mr. Dick had made it very clear that we would be fired if we gave food to “hobos and other vagabonds.” “Give them food,” Mr. Dick said, “and those people will flock to the Queen like seagulls to a landfill.”

This man didn't ask for anything. He was holding a brown bottle and staggering a little. I suppose he just wanted an audience. Dean and I had started closing. I was in the front wiping off counters while Dean mopped.

“Hey, buddy. You hear the news?” he said, a broad smile revealing gaps where his teeth were missing.

“What news?” Dean asked without looking up.

“This is the end.”

“The end of what?”

“Everything!” He began laughing as he stumbled back out the door.

“Bum,” Dean said.

 

Twenty minutes later Dean, still mopping, said, “Hey, corndog, doesn't that skuzz bucket out there belong to you?”

I looked out. To my embarrassment, the Bee was in the parking lot. I walked to the door, wondering what it was doing here.

“Better tell your mom to move it. Dick told us to throw away all the trash in the parking lot.”

“Shut up,” I said.

My mother had climbed out of the van and was walking toward me. I unlocked the door and opened it, preferring to meet her away from Dean. She wore a grim expression.

“What's up, Mom?”

“You need to come home.”

“I can't. We're not done yet.”

“It doesn't matter, you need to come home. Now.” My first thought was that she'd found Grace.

“Have you heard the news?” she said.

I shook my head.

“I'll tell you when we get home. Is there anyone else here?”

“Dean.”

She stepped inside. “Dean, I'm Eric's mother. I'm taking Eric home with me. You need to go home too.”

Dean just held the mop handle and stared, not sure what to make of her. “We're not done. We'll get in trouble if we don't finish.”

“Trust me, it doesn't matter. Just get home as soon as you can.”

“What's happening, Mom?”

“Just come.” I followed her out to the Bee. She wasn't crying but she was close.

“I brought my bike…”

My mom drove around the side of the Queen, and we put my bike inside the van. On the way home she said, “I love you, Eric.” Something about the way she said it frightened me.

When I got home Joel was still up. Joel was
never
up past 8:30. He was sitting in the living room across from my father. Obviously whatever was happening was really bad. I was even more afraid.

My mother sat down between Joel and me. My dad began talking.

“Tonight, President Kennedy said on the television that the Russians have been sending atom bombs to Cuba. The Navy has been ordered to stop all Russian ships sailing to Cuba. What this means is, there could be a war.”

I looked back and forth between my parents. “You mean with atom bombs?” I asked.

My dad nodded. “It looks like it.”

Like all kids of our generation, we knew about atom bombs. We were practically experts on them. In school we watched black and white films of mushroom clouds and nuclear winds and pictures of smiling adults walking quickly and in an orderly fashion to fallout shelters. We had been religiously schooled in bomb drills, climbing under atom-bomb-resistant desks with our hands laced securely over the back of our necks. There were bomb shelters in every neighborhood. The possibility of a nuclear holocaust was just something we carried around in the back of our minds, like an overdue library book.

In a bizarre way, we thought atom bombs were kind of cool. They were a gift of modern technology, like color TV and frost-free refrigerators, and in those days anything modern was good. Even if it could kill you.

People would even drive to the Nevada desert to watch the underground bomb tests and would joke about who was the most radioactive. Looking back, we were just nuts. We were like toddlers playing with a grenade. I'm amazed civilization survived.

As my father spoke, Joel's eyes grew wider and wider. Even he had seen pictures of explosions from atom bombs. He'd even seen films of hydrogen bomb explosions like the one at Bikini Island, which, by contrast, made the atom bomb look like a firecracker.

“We're going to have a family prayer, then I want you to go to bed,” my dad said.

“Can I sleep with you?” Joel asked my mother.

“Of course.” She looked at me. “Eric?”

“I'm okay,” I said.

We knelt down and prayed. Afterward my mother reminded us to brush our teeth, which, under the circumstances, seemed absurd but, in a way, hopeful. We hugged, then I brushed my teeth and went to my room alone. I turned off the light and crawled in bed waiting for my parents to go to bed so I could tell Grace. My mother came in and sat on the side of my bed. “Are you afraid?”

“Yeah, a little.”

She leaned over and kissed me. “President Kennedy will take care of us,” she said. “He has children too.”

As soon as my mother left and I heard her door shut I went to the bedroom window and climbed out. I ran to the clubhouse and knocked on the wall. “Grace.”

She turned on the light as I climbed in.

“What's wrong?”

“It's really bad,” I said. “President Kennedy said on TV that the Russians have atom bombs in Cuba. There might be a nuclear war.”

She stared at me. “Is that for real?”

“Yeah. My mom and dad told us, and they looked really scared. Here, you can hear for yourself.” I turned on the radio. At first there was just a blast of static. I ran my finger over the plastic knob until I heard talking. A couple of men somberly discussed President Kennedy's address. We listened for about five minutes. As they spoke, Grace looked more and more afraid. I turned it off. We were both quiet for some time.

Finally she said what we were both thinking. “I don't want to die.”

“Me neither.”

“It's so unfair. We didn't do anything. We're just kids and we might die because of something we have nothing to do with.”

We were both quiet and the only noise came from the heater.

“I don't think we're going to die,” I said. I didn't sound very convincing. I wondered if it had been such a good idea to tell her. Maybe it would be better if none of us knew. There would just be a big flash and before you could say, “What was that?,” you'd be gone. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

“If we do die tonight,” she said, “I don't want to be alone.” She looked so frightened and vulnerable. “Will you hold
me
?”

I put my arms around her and she laid her head on my shoulder. After five minutes or so I turned off the light. The glow of the heater bathed the room in amber radiance. We lay back on her mattress and I held her until she fell asleep.

In the middle of the night I woke to her talking in her sleep. She was crying, “Please don't, I don't like that. That hurts.” Tears were streaming down her face.

I gently shook her. “Grace, it's okay. You're dreaming.”

She stopped and opened her eyes and for the longest while just looked at me. Then she snuggled her head into my chest and went back to sleep.

I don't know how long it was that I just looked at her. She was so beautiful. I gently stroked the hair back from her forehead. Then I kissed her and pulled her into me as I fell back asleep.

 

I woke before Grace did. The dawn light was stealing through the cracks around the clubhouse door. It was another half hour before Grace's eyes fluttered and opened. She looked at me, then brushed her hair from her face. “We're still here,” she said.

“Yep.” Then I realized we were still here. “What if my mother's looking for me? She'll
kill
me.”

Grace lay her head back on my chest. “Just tell her the truth.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Not about me. Just tell her you slept in the clubhouse because you thought it might be safer.”

“But that's stupid.”

“No mother would ever get mad at her kid for that.”

I don't know how Grace knew these things but I figured she was right. She usually was. I kissed her on the forehead. A few minutes later I crawled out of the clubhouse and made my way back to the house.