8. Chapter Eight Grace
Chapter Eight: Grace
His name is Carmelo. He's Italian. He walked me home last night, and I stood at my door and said his name just to say it. Then I went inside, locked the door, and stood in my kitchen with my back against the counter for four minutes without moving.
I counted. Four minutes.
Staring at the wall above the stove, spine pressed into the counter edge, finger tapping the laminate beside my hip, replaying the walk. Three blocks. The cold. His arm next to mine. The third block, where my knuckle hit the back of his hand and my heart raced.
Like a teenager with a crush.
Pathetic.
Four minutes of standing in my kitchen thinking about the back of a man's hand.
I need to get a grip.
The pill goes down with cold water from the tap in the glass I finally washed this morning, which is the most productive thing I've done since waking up.
I eat half a banana and throw the other half away because it's brown on one end.
Then my routine begins… get dressed, tie my hair back, and walk to the bodega.
Rosa tells me I look tired, asks if I'm eating, tells me my hair looks like I slept in a wind tunnel.
I drink the coffee, leave the two dollars, and walk to work.
Carmelo doesn't come in.
The door opens at five thirty-eight. A couple I don't recognize walks in chattering animatedly. Five forty-five, a regular, the lawyer who comes alone on Thursdays. Five fifty-one, a family of four. Six oh-two, the door opens again and my eyes go to it before my brain tells them to.
A man picking up a takeout order. My stomach drops an inch, and I'm furious that I give a shit if he comes in.
Javi is behind the bar tonight. He's watching me watch the door without saying anything about it, which is infinitely worse than if he called me out.
"Stop looking at me," I say, passing the bar with a bread basket.
"I'm not looking at you."
"You're looking at me by specifically not looking at me. It's worse."
"I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm making a Manhattan."
"You're making a Manhattan and judging me."
"I would never judge you, Grace. I'm simply observing that you've checked the door eleven times in twenty minutes and it's not even six fifteen."
"Counting is judging."
"Counting is math."
I deliver the bread basket. I don't check the door again.
Ugh, fuck. I do check it again. Twice. Three times.
He doesn't come. By seven o'clock I've stopped because the dinner rush is full and I'm running the floor and there's no room in my brain for anything except the job.
Table nine orders the branzino. When Marco's plate comes up through the pass, I look at it and think about the first night Carmelo sat at table four and ordered it.
The second time. The third. The time I told him the pork shoulder was better, and he changed his order without hesitation because I told him to.
A man who doesn't speak, who communicates in single words and silences and nods, listened to his waitress recommend a different entrée and just said yes.
I pick up the plate and carry it to table nine. Hands steady. Face professional. My finger taps the underside of the plate twice.
The fragment comes at eight fourteen.
I know the time because I'm standing at the POS entering a dessert order and the clock on the screen says 8:14 PM.
Then I'm not at the POS anymore. I'm somewhere else.
Not a place… a feeling. The sensation of being lifted.
Arms that aren't mine wrapped around a neck.
I'm small, smaller than I am now, face pressed against fabric.
Underneath the fabric is skin, and the skin smells like tobacco and something sweet, something warm.
There's a voice above me speaking words I can't make out, but the cadence is familiar.
The rhythm is familiar. The voice is safe and I am safe and I am being carried somewhere, and the arms around the neck are mine, and I am very, very young.
Three seconds. Maybe four.
Then I'm at the POS again. The clock still says 8:14 PM. My hand is on the screen, my finger tapping the edge of the terminal fast. The dessert order is half-entered and the tiramisu is spelled wrong because my fingers hit the wrong keys somewhere inside whatever just happened.
I delete the order and retype it. My hands are shaking, the tremor deep, in the bones of my fingers, not visible on the surface. I submit the order, walk to the kitchen, and stand in the hallway between the dining room and the pass.
One, breathe. Two, breathe. Three, breathe.
Tobacco and something sweet. A voice I can't identify. Arms around a neck.
This isn't the first time. The flashes have been happening for years.
Brief, formless, gone before I can truly remember them.
The yellow light last week in bed. The rough cold texture under my hands.
They come and go and I let them go because there's nothing to hold on to.
No narrative, no context. Just sensation without source.
But this one was different. This one had a person in it.
Someone was carrying me. Someone whose neck I was holding.
Someone who smelled like home and whose voice made me feel safe in a way that doesn't connect to anything in my memory, because my memory starts at thirteen and there is no one in it who carried me.
Marco yells for the tiramisu pickup. I grab the plate, deliver it, smile, ask if they need anything else. They don't. I walk back to the bar and shake my head at Javi before he can ask.
At home, I sit on my bed and call the Marinos.
I should have called last week. Didn't. Should have called the week before that. Didn't do that either. The guilt accumulates slowly, not because I miss them or want to talk to them but because they raised me and that is supposed to mean something and I can't figure out why it doesn't.
Paul picks up. "Hello?"
"Hey, Paul. It's Grace."
"Grace. Hold on." A rustling sound, the phone being transferred.
He didn't say how are you or it's good to hear from you.
He said hold on and handed the phone to Linda, because Linda is the one who talks to me.
Paul has always been the one who hands the phone to Linda.
In eleven years, I can count the number of full conversations I've had with Paul on one hand, and every single one was about logistics.
What time to arrive for Christmas, whether I needed money for school supplies, the name of the pharmacy where my prescription gets filled.
He's not a bad man. He's just not anything to me. I'm not anything to him. We've both accepted it without ever saying it out loud.
Linda picks up. "Grace. Hi, sweetie."
She calls me sweetie. Always has. It's never felt like anything. Not cold, not warm. Just a word she chose at random.
"Hi, Linda. How are you?"
"We're good. Paul's been busy with the yard. The forsythia is blooming early this year, you should come out and see it."
I won't come out and see it. She knows I won't. She offers because offering is part of the script. I decline because declining is part of mine.
We both move on.
"Maybe soon," I say.
"That would be nice. How's work?"
"Good. Busy season."
"Are you taking your vitamins?"
Every time. Every call, every visit, every interaction. Are you taking your vitamins. The first real question she asks, before are you seeing anyone, before any of the things a mother would ask a daughter. The vitamins come first.
"Yeah," I say. "Every morning." I don’t say that sometimes I forget and take them when I’m home at night, because then I will hear a whole lecture on timing being important to their effectiveness.
"Good. That's important, Grace. You know how you get when you don't take them."
I don't know how I get when I don't take them.
I've never not taken them. I've been on this prescription since I was thirteen and have never missed a day.
Linda says this—you know how you get—and I've never questioned it.
She's my foster mother. She got me the prescription.
She knows my medical history better than I do, which isn't saying much because I don't know my medical history at all.
"I know," I say. "I take them."
"Good. And you're eating?"
"Yes, Linda."
"Because last time you visited, you looked thin. I worry about you in that apartment by yourself."
She doesn't worry about me. Or maybe she does, but it's the wrong kind — not love, just diligence. A task on a checklist. Make sure she takes the pills. Make sure she's eating. Make sure she's stable. Check in monthly. File the report.
Except I don't know about the reports. I don't know about any of it. I just know that talking to Linda feels like filling out a form, and I've stopped trying to explain why.
"I'm eating fine. Work feeds me."
"Okay, sweetie. Well, Paul says bye. Call us if you need anything. And Grace?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't forget the vitamins. I know you think you don't need them, but you do. You've been on them since you were a girl and your body depends on them. You’re about due for a refill, I’ll fill it for you, pick up at the house in a week. Don't try to go without."
There's an urgency in her voice that isn't there for anything else. Not for the eating, not for the visits. Just the vitamins. The one piece of this arrangement she treats with actual weight. I've never thought about why.
"I won't forget," I say. "Bye, Linda."
"Bye, sweetie. Take care."
I hang up. Four minutes and twelve seconds. Four minutes for eleven years of relationship. That's about right.
I put the phone on the nightstand, lie back on the bed, and look at the ceiling.
The fragment from earlier is still in my body.
I wonder who it was. I wonder if it was real or if my brain made it up like some kind of wish-fulfillment, a manufactured memory to fill the blank space where the real ones should be.
I wonder if the vitamins have something to do with it.
If the anxiety medication I've been taking for eleven years is the reason I can't hold on to these flashes.
The reason they come and go without leaving a trail.
I don't follow the thought. I never follow the thought. Following it would mean questioning the pills and questioning Linda and questioning the entire foundation of the only life I remember. If I pull that thread, what's underneath?
Nothing. There's nothing underneath. There can't be.
I close my eyes. I think about Carmelo. The back of his hand. The warmth of him walking beside me. My name in his mouth at my door, just "Grace," and it sounded different than it does from anyone else.
My finger taps my collarbone. One. Slow. Two. Slower.
I fall asleep thinking about his voice and don't dream about anything I can remember.