Chapter Twenty-Seven. Grace #2
“No fun?” Furious, I push up the sleeve of my robe to show him the purple bruise blossoming right above my elbow. “Look at this!”
“Lemme kiss it better,” he coos, leaning toward me, and it is infuriating how unseriously he takes this. How unseriously he takes me.
I take a step back. “Don’t touch me.”
“You’re mad.” I don’t know if it’s my body language or my icy voice, but it seems to dawn on him all of a sudden.
“You’re damn right I am. What would your mother say if she saw this bruise, huh? Or if I told her how you pushed me?” I hold out my hands so he can see the Band-Aids crisscrossing my palms.
“You can’t tell Ma!” For all his bravado, Stanley is a real mama’s boy.
“Why shouldn’t I? You threatened to tell everybody the things we did in private!”
And he hasn’t apologized. He doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong.
“I won’ tell any-body,” he slurs. “I swear. You’re my girl, Gracie.” He reaches out, but I sidestep him. “Don’ be like that! I forgive you.”
I stare at him, dumbfounded. “You forgive me? For what?”
“For bein’ so mean, and not takin’ up for me with Miss Priss. And for sayin’ I was disgustin’. I know you didn’ mean it, though.” He nods, confident, then puts a hand to his swimming head.
If I let him kiss me, my life would go back to normal. Stanley would forgive and forget. Dad would be mollified. I could aim for a job at Mr. G.’s drugstore, money hidden under the floorboards, and a proposal in spring that I’d break by fall.
But the thought of letting him touch me makes me feel like I can’t breathe.
I can’t go back to that.
It’s only been a few hours, but my body is mine again.
“No,” I say. “This isn’t how you treat someone you love.”
Stan blinks at me, bewildered. “But you’re my girl,” he says again. “You always been my girl. We’re gonna get married and make a buncha pretty babies.”
He reeks of beer and cigarette smoke, and he can hardly stand up straight. The idea of making babies with him is revolting.
A gust of wind sends gray clouds scudding over the moon and tugs my hair out of its blond braid. When I tuck the strands back in, my ring catches.
Stan’s ring.
I tug it free and then pull it off my finger. The green yarn wrapped around the band is coming undone.
I remember when he gave it to me. It was three years ago: April of ’44.
We were on the front porch at the main house.
The yellow daffodils were blooming in Ma’s front flower bed, and pink tulips lined the sidewalk.
Everything was rationed because of the war, there were only a handful of girls left at the Harrow Home, but Ma still tried to make things nice.
She’d grown up as Martha Cooper, the lone daughter in a family of rowdy boys, keeping house for her father, and she was good at making do.
Stan and I had been dating since October.
I was a scrawny thirteen-year-old nobody, and I still couldn’t believe he’d picked me.
I went moony-eyed whenever he carried my books between classes or took me for a malted milkshake.
He was sweet. Silly. Even my dad, who was always on me about something lately, seemed to approve.
Stan told me he was going to enlist after graduation.
Go and help win the war against the Nazis.
Then he grinned and held out his class ring and asked if I’d be his girl, if I’d wait for him, and I said, Yes, of course I will, yes!
I’d be honored. He whooped and swept me into his arms and twirled me around.
Then he set me down and kissed me, gently, like I was precious, and I was so happy. It felt like something out of a film.
I thought we would be so happy.
Stan sees the ring in my hand. “No, you keep that! It’s yours. I gave it to you.”
“I don’t want it anymore.” I hold it out to him.
“I’m not takin’ it back.” He knocks my hand away. “This is ’cause of Miss Priss. Before she came along, you and me were good. Better’n good. Perfect.”
“That’s not true. We haven’t been good for a long time.” I drop the ring into his shirt pocket, and his reflexes are slow enough that he doesn’t stop me. “You drink too much, and it makes you mean. And I don’t want to get married! I want to go to college.”
“College?” Stan laughs, incredulous. “What for?”
He doesn’t mean to be cruel. “Because I’m smart, Stanley.”
He squints at me. “Girls don’ need college. You marry me, and I’ll take care of you.”
“I’m not going to marry you.” I shake my head for extra emphasis.
He blinks at me. “We can still kiss, though?” He grabs for me, but he’s clumsy and easy to elude. “We can jus’ kiss. We don’ hafta—” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
“No!” I put my hand up like a stop sign. “Try it and I will punch you in the nose. Remember how I broke Coop’s nose and gave him two black eyes?”
“When did you get so mean?” He pouts. “Where’d my sweet li’l Gracie go?”
“She grew up.” I sigh. I feel like I could sleep for a hundred years. “And she’s tired. She’s really awfully tired. I’m going back in now, Stan. It’s late. I need to get some sleep.”
“I can get another girl,” he threatens, but the words have lost their bite.
“Yeah. You’ll find another girl. But you should be nice to her.”
He waggles his eyebrows again. “I was nice to you. Real nice.”
No matter what I say, he’ll see it that way. Like an honor he bestowed on me.
I’m not blameless. I let him. Sometimes I even pretended to like it.
He never knew the difference.
I might hate him a little for that.
(More than a little, if I’m honest.)
“Sleep it off some before you drive home, okay?” I start to trudge back to the cottage.
“G’night, Gracie,” he calls, already slumping into one of the chaises.
“Good night, Stan.”
I let myself back into the house and into my (our) room. Magnolia is still sawing logs. I slip out of the pink cotton robe, fold it over my vanity stool, and crawl back into bed. My left hand feels naked without Stan’s ring on my finger.
Am I free? Can it be that easy? Or will Stan wake up tomorrow, head aching, embarrassed, and decide to ruin me for the hell of it? Will he even remember our conversation?
Gradually, Magnolia’s snores lull me back to sleep.
I wake suddenly, heart pounding. The room is dark and shadowy. I listen (I remember, panicky, that I left him out by the pool) for Stan bellowing.
!
It’s quiet. Too quiet.
Magnolia’s bed is empty.
She must have gone to the powder room. I bet that’s what woke me.
She sounds elephantine these days, grumbling to herself about her aching back and swollen feet.
And she always slams her armoire shut after she grabs her robe.
(One time she ran into Cooper in the hallway wearing her nightie, so now she won’t even go to the commode without her robe.)
I roll my eyes and roll over and go back to sleep.
Someone is pounding on the door. I sit up, confused.
!
Have we overslept? Are we late for breakfast?
Magnolia’s snugged beneath her quilt, one arm thrown over her face to block out the morning sun.
Someone hammers on the door again.
“Come in,” I call, voice froggy from sleep.
It’s Cooper. He’s dressed for a run in his maroon Greeley High shorts and tank shirt and tennis shoes. But the look on his face! Something’s wrong.
“Gracie, Maggie, you’ve got to get up. Now. Get your robes on, make yourselves presentable.” What does Cooper care whether we’re presentable? “The sheriff will be here any minute.”
I untangle myself from the sheets. “What happened?” I remember how sweaty and sick Dad looked last night. “Is it Dad?”
(God help me, I hope it is.)
A heart attack, maybe. Sudden, like his father.
But they’d call for the doctor, wouldn’t they? Or—the coroner?
Cooper shakes his head. “It’s Stanley.”
I should have kept him here till he sobered up. The roads into town are winding, one lane … What if he hit a deer? Or ran his truck off the bridge and into the creek, or straight into a tree? His reflexes were so slow.
“This is my fault,” I mutter.
Cooper stares at me. “What do you mean? What did you do, Grace?”
Maggie sits up, her blond curls like a bird’s nest. “What happened to Stanley?”
Cooper’s voice is hoarse. “He’s dead. Stan’s dead.”