When Grace finally spoke, her voice was as rough as if she had just woken up. “You need to go now,” she said.
He didn’t answer her. Grace closed her eyes. Finally, she felt the bed move. She listened to the sounds of his dressing: legs shuffling into pants; the mocking zip of his fly; his feet shoving into shoes; the relief, finally, of his arms shrugging into his coat. When she heard the door click shut, she turned toward the wall and began to sob.
? ? ?
She had her pillow over her head when Kendall came in the next morning, but she wasn’t asleep. Grace pushed off the covers and got to her feet, wanting to pee before Kendall got in the shower.
“God,” Kendall said as Grace passed. “What happened to you?”
When Grace came out, Kendall was wrapped in her bathrobe, her dress slung over the back of her desk chair. Grace saw her glance at a pile on the floor and realized that it was her dress—Jezzie’s dress—lying there in a sloppy heap.
“Oh no, sorry about that,” she said, shaking it out to hang it up.
Kendall raised her eyebrows. “It’ll need to be cleaned anyway.” Grace must have flinched, because Kendall quickly added, “Mine too. Smoky and sweaty and disgusting.”
Grace sat on her bed and stared at her thighs, which looked as frail and dry as if she’d had the flu.
“What is it?” Kendall said.
“What?”
“Wait, did you—”
Grace shook her head furiously.
“No, no,” Kendall said, a glint in her eye. “Something happened.”
Someone began to pound on their door. “Don’t move,” Kendall said, slipping into the hallway as if Grace might try to escape. She came back with Lana, whose face gleamed with excitement, though Grace hadn’t even heard them whispering.
Kendall stood at the foot of Grace’s bed, her hands on her hips. She had the faintest smile on her lips. “Did you fuck him?”
“No!” Grace said, her voice all air.
“You did! Oh my God, you so did!” Kendall cried.
“Shit,” Lana said. “This was the friend?”
“Best friend,” Kendall said. “Of her husband!”
When they saw that Grace was crying, they sat down on either side of her, and Lana rubbed her back. She put her head on Grace’s shoulder and shushed her maternally.
“Wow,” Kendall said. “Who would’ve thought? Little Miss Small-Town America. Mrs., I mean. Come on, stop crying. Nobody died.”
“I’ll get you some tissue,” Lana said. Grace nodded, snot running down her lip.
“Well, something like this would have happened sooner or later,” Kendall said. “Long-distance relationships are doomed.”
“Please stop,” Grace blubbered. “I can’t—”
“I mean, I didn’t realize you were even into him—”
“Kendall,” Lana scolded from the doorway, but when Kendall stopped, Grace began to sob again, bigger and bigger, as if a magician were pulling a mile-long scarf from her throat. She gasped for breath, and when she looked up, she saw that Lana was standing in the doorway with her video camera.
“It’s okay,” Lana said, encouraging her. “Do what you feel.”
Paris
14
He might have forgiven you,” Hanna said.
Grace laughed sadly. She hadn’t wanted to be forgiven. She hadn’t wanted him to find out. They were irreconcilable desires. You had either one impulse or the other, and Grace had always had the other.
She and Hanna were sharing a bottle of Hanna’s wine on the balcony of her minuscule Belleville studio. Grace was accustomed to spending her evenings by herself, and she was surprised when she accepted Hanna’s invitation. But Mme Freindametz was off this week, and she had not forgiven Grace for snapping at her. Now that Grace had put a lock on her bedroom door, her landlady was visibly hostile.
Tonight, when Hanna had asked Grace if there was any news from home, Grace had taken a glug of her wine and told Hanna that she had slept with a friend of her husband. The cliché was painful to spit out.
“No good would’ve come of telling him,” Grace said now.
“You would have broken up, like people do. You think he knows?”
Grace nodded. “He must.”
“And that’s why you’re so terrified of him,” Hanna said to herself.
Grace knew this fork in the road: to tell Hanna that Riley was no one to be afraid of, or to nod easily and say Yes, exactly. Don’t think, she told herself. Just do it.
“He wasn’t abusive,” Grace said. “I’m sorry I told you that.”
“Oh.” Hanna blinked in surprise. “I see.”
“He would have been devastated. I thought lying to him was kinder—protecting him.” Ah, that wasn’t quite right, but she had said the main thing. She had made the correction. She was trying.
“Well, to protect his love for you.” Hanna sounded older suddenly, and newly prissy.
“I’d worked so hard to earn it,” Grace said. “And then to lose it over one thing—”
“Earn it!” Hanna cried. “What an American way of looking at it. You people think you deserve every happiness.”
Grace tipped up her glass of wine and finished it. “Our founding fathers said we do.”
Hanna peered at her, unsure if she was serious. Grace rolled her eyes, and Hanna sat back again.
“I’ve never told you about Nina,” Hanna said.
Nina—it sounded familiar somehow. Then Grace remembered: Antonia. She waited, anxious for Hanna’s confidence. Grace had confided in her, after all.
“I was helpless to her,” Hanna said. “Every hour I spent near her seemed to vanish in a second. I could never get enough.”
Hanna tilted her head back to rest it on the couch behind her and blinked up at the ceiling. “As soon as she left the room, it was as though the heat were switched off. I wanted to know everything about her, every detail of her life, her biography, her interests, her movements. Each thing I learned was a little piece of candy. And I always wanted more.”
A week ago, Grace couldn’t have imagined Hanna in love. To be in love was to lose control, and Hanna, on the surface, at least, always exhibited perfect control.
“The way you are in love is the way you are in all things,” Hanna said. “And the way you are in all things is the way you are in love. Sloppy, messy in life? Sloppy in love. Need to pin down every detail?” She pointed at herself. “That’s me in love—no laziness.”
Grace didn’t want to think about how she was in love.
“The woman I loved was a liar. So in life, in love. I see it in you too.” Hanna pointed at Grace. “Untrustworthy.”
Grace’s mouth fell open. Hanna had accused her as if it were a joke, but she hadn’t meant it like one.
“Lies beget lies,” Hanna went on. “Like little bunny rabbits. They make more lies, wherever they go. They can’t help it—pop, pop, pop, all over the place, little baby lies that grow up into big lies and make their own lies—”
“Look,” Grace said. “I was young, and I fucked up, and I left, and I’m sorry. People make mistakes. They do crazy things when they’re in love.”
“You’ve told lies, I bet, you don’t even realize you’ve told. Like an addict! They just fall out of your mouth, like you’re breathing them.”
Grace recoiled. “What is this obsession with lying all of a sudden? Everyone lies. You try not to but you do. I’m no worse than anyone else. You’re a forger, for God’s sake.”
“Used to be. Now I’m very frank, all the time. Now I don’t bet what I can’t afford to lose.”
? ? ?
One week had passed since the boys were paroled. Nothing.
Grace saw the possibility that there would always be nothing, but she couldn’t really grasp it. She tried to settle into the ambiguity, which she knew could last forever. If she didn’t, the terrible uncertainty of where they were and what they were doing, feeling, thinking, saying would surpass anything they could ever do or think or say.