The lust spread like poison ivy, and as the itching got worse and worse, Grace worried that she wouldn’t be able to leave it alone. Scratching was obviously out of the question; to do so would be to undo her life, to erase herself, to become Amber White. That was not a choice she would ever make. But the new lust crawled around her, forbidden but making a home. Neither she nor Alls ever brought up their conversation in the kitchen again, but when they caught each other’s eyes, Grace was terrified that Riley would see a flash there, would sense that something had happened.
At Christmas, while foraging for extra wrapping paper in the basement, Mrs. Graham showed Grace her wedding dress, hanging in plastic on a rack. “Do you want to see?” she asked Grace, who said yes, of course she did. Mrs. Graham lovingly unzipped the plastic and fingered the lace. “I was just your size,” she said. “Can you believe it?”
Ten minutes later, Grace was wearing the dress, blushing wildly, and Mrs. Graham was crying next to a pile of outgrown sports equipment.
“When you get married, we’ll put flowers in your hair,” Mrs. Graham said.
Grace embraced her, burying her nose in Mrs. Graham’s shoulder and watching the basement stairs for Riley’s feet. She didn’t want him to see her in his mother’s wedding dress. Mrs. Graham’s bridal portrait hung in the dining room. Grace knew it by heart—her downcast eyes, the bouquet of magnolias at her waist. The image of Grace costumed as his mother might be a hard one for Riley to shake. But if Grace could have stayed in the basement wearing Mrs. Graham’s wedding dress forever, she might have.
She had to get away from Alls.
Mrs. Graham unzipped the dress and Grace stepped out of it. She pulled her striped T-shirt back over her head and went upstairs to find Riley, bereft that leaving the house she loved was the only way to keep her place in it.
The next week, when Riley implored her to tell him what was wrong, why she’d been so cranky and irritable lately, she looked into his worried green eyes and told him she was bored and restless in school. That was true. And she’d begun to dread the four years at Garland College that would follow—Riley’s schoolwork outside the art studio was her own thirteenth grade. She’d gone in to the guidance counselor to see where she still had time to apply. Riley could come visit her on the weekends, and she wouldn’t have to live in that bedroom right over Alls and see him every day. Mrs. Busche was surprised by Grace’s request: Was Grace all right? Had anything . . . happened? No? And Grace wanted to study art history still? Garland College, Mrs. Busche said with some pride, had an excellent art history faculty, several of whom were good friends of hers, so unless Grace wanted to go into lab sciences or medicine or something—
“I’m worried I won’t get a scholarship,” Grace said. “And if I don’t, it’ll be way too expensive.”
“But honey, you will get a scholarship. I’d bet my own hat on it.”
“That’s what Alls Hughes thought too.”
“You are not Alls Hughes.” Mrs. Busche closed her lips. There was no gracious way for her to explain why she had said that.
Grace swallowed. “Mrs. Busche, I mean no disrespect at all. It’s just that . . . I’ve looked at Riley’s assignments, and I’m worried it won’t be—that I won’t—”
Only because Grace couldn’t say it aloud did Mrs. Busche understand. “Ah. That you won’t be challenged academically. Well, that is something to consider.” She blinked several times, frowning, as if she were seeing Grace for the first time. “I just thought—well, you’re too late for UT and Vandy, but have you thought about going out of state?”
“No,” Grace lied.
“Well, if you want a truly rigorous academic environment, there is no reason you shouldn’t apply to”—she moved the pile of glossy brochures at her feet into her lap—“Vassar,” she said, pulling the top one open to display the inside as if it were a children’s picture book. “Jane Fonda went to Vassar.”
Grace shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. She felt Riley slipping away with every word of this conversation. “There’s probably no time, anyway.”
Mrs. Busche held up another catalog. “New York University,” she said. On the cover, a frowning boy with dark poufy hair touched a yellow-tipped paintbrush to a canvas taller than he was. “They have an excellent art department as well,” she said. “And all those museums.”
Grace could not imagine Riley coming to visit her in the nowhere wilds of the Northeast, but she could imagine him coming to New York City. Yes, Riley would come to her, and they would go to museums and art galleries together, and she would be able to teach him things, and she would hardly have to come home at all. And the feeling, which she had begun to think of as a secret disease, something progressive and debilitating, would wither, all those miles away. Maybe Riley would want to come too; maybe he would transfer or something. She would become one of those art people, whoever they were, and he an artist. The math was so obvious she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. Of course.
“Woo!” Mrs. Busche said. “Look at you! Won’t that be something?”
? ? ?
Riley made her case for her. “She’s too smart for Garland,” he said to Grace’s parents, sitting on their couch and shaking his head. He looked at them one at a time. “I want better for her.”
What could they say? This little chat had been a show. She didn’t expect their support, any kind of it.
Grace’s numbers were very good, but she had to invent her extracurriculars. She wrote an essay about overcoming her hillbilly upbringing, bogus Appalachian minstrelsy cloaked in upmarket vocabulary. NYU offered her a partial scholarship and suggested she borrow the rest, which turned out to be simpler than getting a library card. She and Riley gloated over her acceptance, but their peers were skeptical, particularly the girls. At the graduation parties, they held their red plastic cups in one hand and worried their promise rings with the other. She was leaving Riley here? Without her? Grace told herself they were just insecure and immature, tying themselves to Garland with their flimsy romances, to their boyfriends with diamond-dust rings from Palmer Family Jewelry & Plaques.
“Let’s get married,” Riley said the morning of her graduation.
“Yes,” she said.
“Now,” he said.
She would turn eighteen in two weeks. “It’s legal on my birthday,” she said.
“I should give you a ring,” he said. “Come on, let’s go buy a ring. I have eighty bucks.” He laughed. “It might have to be a mood ring.”
“Wait,” she said. “Your mom would be crushed. We can’t do it without them. It would be a slap in the face. They’ll think I’m pregnant.”
“You and my mom,” he groaned.
“Then we’d have to keep it a secret,” she said. “From everyone.”
“We know how to do that,” he said, kissing her collarbone.
“And we’ll have the big thing later, like she wants.”
“I love you so much,” he said.
“They’ll put it in the paper though. They run the marriages with the legal notices.”
“So we go somewhere else, some other nowhere a few hours from this one.”
On Grace’s eighteenth birthday, Riley drove them to the Klumpton County courthouse, three hours away. They didn’t know anyone in Klumpton County. They found witnesses among the people waiting for the DMV. Riley started to cry when Grace said “I do,” and then she began to cry at the sight of his crying. Afterward, they split a fifth of Old No. 8 in the car and reclined their seats back, hands clasped and staring at each other, overcome with the weight of their love.
III
Paris
6