Grace
“You think Henry’s sadder than us or less sad?” Ian asks.
“Buddy, it’s not a competition.”
He’s standing on the couch, which I’ve asked him repeatedly not to do because it’ll ruin the cushions, but he does it anyway because kids are weird. “I know. But what do you think?”
“Probably sadder,” I say.
“Why?”
I’m swiffering because Harry Styles’s spikey little hairs have mingled with the dust bunnies at the corners of the living room to make domestic tumbleweeds. “We’ve got each other,” I say. “You, me, Bell Bell. Henry doesn’t really have anyone else.”
I hadn’t worked that out in my head; I just said it because it seemed easier than explaining the Tiers of Sadness to a kid.
I’m probably right, though. I’m sure Henry has friends.
Co-workers. Parents. He said something about a brother.
Grief like ours, though, is an exclusive, shitty little island.
I could hear it in his voice fifteen minutes ago: Henry was all alone.
“What’s this movie about again?” Ian asks.
“It’s a holiday movie,” I say.
“Like Die Hard?”
“Imagine the opposite of Die Hard.”
Disappointed, Ian eats a handful of microwave popcorn mixed with Goldfish crackers.
I agreed to let him stay up and watch with Henry and me under the strict condition that he first state for the record that men shouldn’t be allowed to trade women.
He’s excited, I can tell, because this is something different, and so many of our nights are the same.
Harry Styles is excited, too. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but he knows something is going on, so he keeps attacking the Swiffer pole.
“Will you stop it!” I tell him. Then I realize that I’m kind of excited, too. This could be…fun?
“But isn’t it kinda late to have a friend over?” asks Ian.
“Who are you, the cops?”
He’s not wrong, though. When I hung up the phone, it dawned on me that inviting a virtual stranger to the house might not be the safest decision I could make.
I was worried about him, though. Here on Grief Island, it’s the little things that get you: a favorite song, a movie they loved, an old jacket hung on a hook.
For example, I still haven’t opened Tim’s work laptop.
The school’s IT director, LeRoy, dropped it off a few days after the funeral.
Apparently Tim had saved about a million pictures on the hard drive that LeRoy thought I might like to have.
It’s been on my nightstand ever since, just waiting to mess me up.
There’s a noise outside. Harry Styles’s ears shift to alert mode, and I gently take his snout in my hand. “Dude, don’t,” I say because Bella is asleep.
To his credit, instead of barking, Harry Styles releases a soft cry that sounds like an old woman screaming into a throw pillow.
“Good boy.”
When I open the front door, Henry looks startled on our stoop. “Oh,” he says. “Hi.”
Then the dog shoots through my legs and happily jumps on him.
“ ’Ello, mate,” says Henry in an okay British accent as he crouches to pet the dog.
Ian is at my hip now.
“Hi,” says Henry. “Ian, right?”
“Yes. Hi.”
Henry gives me a once-over. “You weren’t kidding about the sweatpants, huh?”
“I never kid about sweatpants,” I say. “Look at you wearing jeans. You going to the Met Gala later or something?”
“My tux is at the cleaners,” he says.
Henry stops petting the dog and stands, so Harry Styles headbutts him in the shin.
“He likes you,” says Ian. “He’s not always this nice to people.”
This is a bald-faced lie—Harry Styles is an absolute whore for love—but it’s sweet that Ian is emotionally aware enough to get that this guy could use a win.
Jeans, canvas sneakers, a sweatshirt that’s a little too big.
I’m warming to my mom’s assessment of Henry—he really is cute in his own way. But Jesus does he look sad.
“I like your tree,” he says, peeking in through the door.
“Thanks,” I say. “We put it up yesterday. It’s basically December, right?”
“Why aren’t there any lights or ornaments at the bottom, though?”
We all look at the barren bottom third of our tree. I’m realizing now that the whole thing lists to the right.
“We tried,” I say. “But Harry Styles can’t be trusted.”
“He ate an elf ornament,” says Ian.
I’m also just realizing that Henry is still technically outside. “You can come in, you know,” I say. “You’ll be able to see the TV better.”
He pauses, shoves his hands into his pockets. “Actually, I got a little anxious on the way here. I realized that I just sort of invited myself over. Plus, I’m basically a stranger. If you’d rather do this some other time, I could…”
And now I like him a little more because he, too, is wondering if this is weird.
“Henry,” I say. “Just shut up and come in.”
Henry settles on the lounge chair after some pacing and a stressful moment of despair when he seemed not to know whether he should take off his shoes. I told him that if I can wear Crocs, he can wear whatever he wants.
“Look,” I say now, coming in from the kitchen. “I found you some rosé.”
“Oh, thanks. I drink other things, though. Not just rosé.”
“I get that that’s probably true,” I say. “But in my business, you mark people by the first drink they order. So, you’re Henry Rosé forever now.”
“Your place is really nice,” he says, looking around, and I guess Ian isn’t the only one telling nice lies. Our house is two stories, built sometime in the ’50s, I think. A small yard, nicked-up wood floors, endless clutter.
“Do you want some popcorn fish?” asks Ian. “It’s popcorn with Goldfish in it.”
“Definitely,” says Henry. “Oh, that reminds me.” He digs into the pocket of his jeans. “I brought some M&M’s.”
“Oh awesome,” says Ian. “We can mix them in!”
“And I was thinking. If you wanna watch a different movie, Grace, I’m flexible.”
Then Ian blurts, “Can we watch Die Hard?” and it knocks the air out of me.
Henry is about to be a go-along guy and say “Yeah” or “Sure, whatever,” but I stop him with a small shake of the head.
I’m already remembering how Tim would sometimes sleep in a wife-beater tank top like Bruce Willis’s character and refer to himself as Detective John McClane.
Or how he once kept a body count of dead bad guys—twenty-three—or how he always whispered along with the dialogue.
Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker. The worst thing about husbands is that you don’t realize all the things you love about them until they’re dead.
Henry doesn’t know any of that, but somehow, he gets it, and we share a look over Ian’s oblivious head.
“You know, on second thought,” he says, “I sort of had my heart set on The Family Stone.”
Ian shrugs and sits on the couch, and Harry Styles jumps up to join him. I mouth thank you to Henry, then tell him that I’ll get him some popcorn fish. “It’ll pair nicely with your lady wine.”