Grace
It was Friday, last school day before the big event.
Billy had danced her to school every morning, and every morning more and more people had looked out their windows or stepped out on to their porch to watch them go by. Like people knew to expect them by now. Like it was the morning performance of some big show, and everybody wanted to get a good seat. Except they mostly stood.
On Thursday they’d done the tango, and people really seemed to like that.
And Billy seemed OK.
But then it was Friday, and Grace had the big idea to waltz to school. Because it was fun when they waltzed in Billy’s living room, and it had made them laugh.
Billy said again what he’d said the first time, that the waltz takes you more around in a circle. Not so much to school. But Grace was sure they could just take longer steps in the school direction, like they did with the Latin salsa. And she was in one of those moods that involved not letting anything drop.
They were about halfway to school when it happened.
Billy had just spun her around in a twirl, and that nice Spanish-speaking family in the blue house were all watching and clapping, and Grace thought it would be nice to spin Billy, too. She thought the family would like that.
So she reached up high, and he ducked down low, and he spun wildly, really getting into it, lots of forward motion, and then he got his foot caught on a big slab of concrete where the sidewalk was uneven. Grace saw it happen, but there wasn’t much she could do. It just all happened so fast.
He went down like the trees she’d seen in movies about lumber cutting. You know, right after somebody says “timber.” He built up speed on the way down and landed right on his face. Literally. He put his palms down, but it just wasn’t enough to stop his face. Grace could hear the sound all the air made when it rushed out of him. She heard the sound of gasps from the nice family.
“Oh, my God! Billy!”
Grace helped him turn over and sit up. There was a lot of blood coming from his nose. A scary lot.
“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”
But he definitely said it in that way that people say they’re fine when they’re not fine in any way. And by then the family had run out to help them. A nice older man, short and thick, a grandpa type of guy, who brought a handful of tissues, and a woman who might have been his daughter even though she was definitely grown to maybe middle age, and a girl who was a teenager.
Everybody was talking at once, but mostly in Spanish. It was too much Spanish for Grace, but she did get the part where they kept asking if he was OK.
Billy took the tissues, and held them gently to his nose to try to stop the bleeding, but it was too much bleeding, and those tissues got swamped right away. He kept saying he was OK, but they kept asking in Spanish, and Billy kept answering in English, and Grace could see that nobody was getting anywhere with that system.
So she said, “Esta bueno. Billy esta bueno.”
But then she wondered why she even said it when she knew it was just a big lie.
The lady, who Grace didn’t even see leave, came back with a clean dishtowel, and Billy held that to his nose.
“I have to get home,” he said to Grace.
“I know,” she said.
“You can’t go on alone. You have to come back with me.”
“I know.”
“You can wake up Felipe. He’ll walk you.”
“Maybe I should stay home with you today.”
“It’s fine. It’ll stop bleeding. Ask if they want their towel back.”
“I don’t know how to say ‘Do you want your towel back?’ in Spanish.”
“OK. Whatever. Help me up, OK?”
He was still using both hands to hold the towel to his nose, which left no hand to grab him by, so Grace took him by the elbow and pulled. But he didn’t budge. But then the nice grandfather guy took the other elbow and they got him on his feet, even though he swayed hard partway up, and Grace thought he might pass out or something. She couldn’t figure out if he was really hurt that badly, or if looking at tons of his own blood made him feel a little faint, but she figured it was something she could sort out later on.
Billy stood swaying on the sidewalk for a minute, all by himself. Then he held the towel out to the woman, questioningly. As if she might want to take it from him. As soon as he did, a bunch more blood ran down his lip, and he had to wipe it away.
“No, no,” the woman said, waving off the idea. “Is your.”
“Thank you,” Billy said.
“Gracias,” Grace said. “Muchas gracias.”
And they headed off in the direction of home. But then Billy swayed again, so the old grandfather took him by the elbow and walked with them.
Grace could tell Billy was embarrassed and wishing the old man wouldn’t be so helpful. But he was, and there was no way Billy was going to fix that.
The old guy walked them all the way to their front door.
“Gracias,” Billy said.
? ? ?
“Go wake up Felipe,” he said to her.
He was lying propped up on his couch, still holding the towel to his face. The cat was sniffing all around him, like she was worried and wanting to know what was wrong.
“Why? Do you need him?”
“No. You do. To get to school.”
“I’m late anyway.”
“So? Be late. But you have to go.”
“I’m not leaving you, Billy. You need me. Here. Let me get you some ice.”
“Don’t you have a big rehearsal today?”
“Nope,” she shouted from the kitchen. “Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yesterday was our last rehearsal.”
She scooped two double handfuls of ice cubes into a paper napkin and ran them back to Billy. He pulled the towel away, slowly. Like he was scared what would happen when he did. Nothing happened. It didn’t bleed any more. It had finally, finally stopped.
“Oh, my God. Billy. You look terrible!”
Somehow it had seemed like a reasonable thing to say. At the time. She couldn’t have imagined he would take it too personally. Wouldn’t most anybody look bad after falling flat on their nose?
“What does it look like?” he asked quietly.
Grace hated to tell him. The bridge of his nose was swelling up, but that wasn’t the worst of it. His eyes were both going black all the way around. And he had veiny red blood showing inside the corner of one of his eyes. It was horrible. It was hard even to look at him.
“I’ll bring you a mirror. Where’s a mirror?”
“I don’t have one.”
“You don’t have one? Who doesn’t have a mirror?”
“Me,” he said.
He touched the ice to his nose and yelped.
“Have you got any aspirins to take?”
“I doubt it. If I do, they’re probably years old.”
“I bet Rayleen has aspirins. I’ll go look.”
She ran across the hall and opened the door with her key. She took two aspirin from the bottle in Rayleen’s medicine cabinet. Then she thought better of that, and took another two. On the way out of the bathroom, she grabbed Rayleen’s hand mirror as an afterthought. Then she locked up fast and ran them back over to Billy.
“Here, I brought you four aspirins,” she said.
She quietly set the mirror upside-down on the coffee table, hoping Billy wouldn’t notice. She’d begun to doubt whether it was good thinking, presenting him with a mirror.
“Let me see,” he said, pointing to it.
“You sure?”
“Let me see.”
Grace handed him the mirror and stepped back. Billy raised the mirror and stared into it for a long time. Grace wondered what he was thinking, and wished he would hurry up and say.
“Oh, dear God,” he whispered, after a long pause. “How did I get to be so old?”
? ? ?
“I think I should check to see if it’s broken,” Felipe said. “But I gotta warn you. This is gonna hurt like a sonofabitch.”
“Are you going to the hospital if it’s broken?” Grace asked.
“No,” Billy said. “If it’s broken it’ll just have to heal itself.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t even hurt him, then,” Grace told Felipe.
“It’ll heal bad,” Felipe said. “I had a cousin got his nose broke in a towing accident. And he wouldn’t do nothing. He was stubborn like you — no offense — but prob’ly for different reasons. Anyway, it still looks real bad. It healed with a hook, and a big knot. That’s never gonna go away, either.”
“I guess you should check it.”
“OK, now grab hold of my hand and squeeze it really hard. I’m gonna take my other hand and put it on the bridge of your nose and just wiggle it a little bit to see if the part that shouldn’t oughta move moves.”
Grace closed her eyes, because she couldn’t bring herself to watch. She heard Billy yelp. Then she heard nothing, so she opened her eyes. It was all over, thank God.
“It’s not broken,” Felipe said. “Come on, Grace. Let’s get you to school.”
“I need to stay here with Billy.”
“I’ll come back and stay with Billy. You need to go to school.”
Part of Grace had been worried that if she didn’t show up to school that day, and with no explanation, then her teacher might think she wasn’t showing up Monday, either. And Felipe would be good to Billy while she was away.
But then she thought of a really good reason to argue.
“But I can do reiki on his nose all day. And you can’t.”
And that was when Grace heard it. That smooth, nice, calming voice that she liked so much. That everybody liked so much.
“Or I could stay with him and do the reiki,” it said.
Grace whipped around to see that the door to Billy’s apartment was still standing wide open. And in the open doorway she saw Jesse and Rayleen.
Grace literally shrieked with pleasure, and from the corner of her eye she saw Billy stick his fingers in his ears.
“You’re back! I thought you might not get back on time! But you got back!”
She threw herself wildly at Rayleen, startled by how much she had missed her. She nearly bowled Rayleen over when they made contact.
“I’m so glad you’re back!” she shrieked.
Somewhere at the bottom of her mind, she wondered briefly if her mom was downstairs, really clean and awake, sitting up and listening to all this, and, if so, how it made her feel. But her curiosity about Jesse’s mother knocked the thought away again.
She ran at Jesse, and he picked her up so she was just his height, and she rubbed his beard as if it were some kind of lucky charm.
“Jesse,” she said, her voice hushed with respect. “Did your mother die?”
“She did.”
“That’s terrible. I’m really sorry.”
“It wasn’t that terrible,” he said. “It was freeing in a way I probably couldn’t explain. Besides, she was in a great deal of pain. So it was something of a blessing.”
“So…then…is it sort of a little bit OK that I was hoping that, if she had to die at all, she’d die soon enough so you and Rayleen could come see me dance on Monday? Because I felt really bad about that.”
“I think it’s OK,” Jesse said, setting her back on her feet again. “I also think you should let Felipe take you to school now. I’ll stay here and take care of Billy.”
“OK,” Grace said. “That’s good enough. If Jesse’s here to take care of Billy, then I think it’s OK if I go.”
And she marched off with Felipe, satisfied that all would be well in her absence.
It wasn’t until they were nearly halfway to school that Grace noticed she had a good bit of Billy’s blood on one of the sleeves of her sweater.