Your lips turn up. “I love you, Grace Marie Carter.” I turn around, but I’ve only taken one step when you grab my hand. “Call me before you go to sleep.”
When I get back inside, Nat and Lys are sitting cross-legged like two Buddhas, waiting for me.
“What did he want?” Lys asks.
“For me to ditch you guys and come hang out with him for a few hours.”
“And you said no,” Nat says. “Right?”
“Of course I did. What kind of friend do you take me for?” I grab a tree-shaped Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup from our pile of candy. “Were you guys talking behind my back while I was gone?”
“Hell yes, we were,” Lys says.
“I can’t believe you didn’t apply to NYU,” Nat says. She reaches for one of the stuffed bears on her bed and hugs it to her.
“I love him. We’re practically engaged,” I say. “I don’t want to be on the other side of the country for four years.”
“Are you forgetting the part where he called you a slut? Oh, yeah, and a bitch, too, if I remember correctly,” Nat says, pursing her lips.
“He feels really bad. About everything. I promise.”
“That’s what you said last time,” Lys says softly.
“I’m sorry to say, he’s lost the best friends’ stamp of approval,” Nat says.
“Please don’t hate my boyfriend. It would so suck if you guys didn’t get along.”
Lys throws an arm around my shoulder. “Then he better not give us another reason to.”
TWENTY-SIX
I don’t quite know how bad things are between my mom and The Giant until the beginning of February. Something fucked-up is going on, but I only get hints of it, like I’m watching their relationship between the slats in a wooden fence.
I rarely see them in the same room together and most nights he comes home late from work, snarling.
I swear to God, Jean, you nag me about fixing the van one more time …
Fine, leave me. Let’s see how well you do in the real world.
Maybe it’s time your fat ass got a job.
One night I throw my history book down in disgust and march out to the living room.
“Don’t talk to her like that,” I say, my voice trembling.
I can’t watch him whittle down my mom so that she’s nothing but Silent and Subservient Wife.
The Giant turns around, the drink in his hand sloshing over the side. The lamp by the couch throws his shadow on the wall by the fireplace. He looms over us. Fee fi fo fum.
“Shut the fuck up, Grace.”
I glance at my mom, but she just stands there, her eyes shifting to a picture on the mantel, ignoring me. In it, Beth, Mom, and I are jumping on a trampoline, our mouths wide open with laughter. A pre-Giant day.
“Mom…,” I say. She looks at me and just shakes her head.
Sam starts crying and I pick him up, holding him to me. I take him back to my room, away from the arguing.
It seems like every night there are raised voices behind shut doors, the sound of breaking glass. Twice now I’ve caught my mom organizing the kitchen cupboards in the middle of the night. Last week it was the garage—a complete makeover that she began on a Wednesday at midnight when she was trying to find her sewing kit. She doesn’t get up early in the morning anymore—sometimes she’s still in bed when I get home from school. One minute she’ll be smiling, the corners of her mouth pulled tightly across her face (Roy bought me flowers—isn’t that sweet?). But the next, there are shadows under her eyes and she moves around the house like an old woman (I’m just tired, that’s all).
It’s a Saturday afternoon and I have to go to work, but I can’t leave my brother alone. My mom has been in the bathroom for over an hour.
“Mom?”
I knock softly on the bathroom door. Nothing.
I knock again, louder this time. “Mom? I have to get going.”
I press my ear against the door. The shower is still running.
I open the door a crack. “Mom?”
I can see her blurred outline in the frosted glass door of the shower.
“Mom.” Now I’m annoyed. “I have to get to work. I already fed Sam lunch and—”
Then I hear it above the water—sobbing. I don’t think. I yank open the shower door, panicked, thinking of you and razors and blood. My mom’s sitting on the tiled floor, huddled in a corner, her knees drawn up against her chest, her long hair plastered to her head. She looks up, her face distorted, eyes red.
“What happened?” I ask. “Are you okay?”
She just shakes her head, lowering her forehead to her knees. Her sobs push her shoulder blades together, as though she’s trying to fly without wings.
I’m already dressed for work, but I don’t care. I step into the shower and crouch in front of her. I’m soaked through in seconds. The hot water must have run out forever ago. The sharp stream rushing out of the showerhead is freezing and I reach up to turn it off. In the sudden silence her breathing is ragged. She’s shivering uncontrollably—even her teeth are chattering. They sound like pearls being rubbed together.
“Hey,” I say, gentle. I forget all the times she’s called my own sobs overdramatic. I forget that I’ve been punished for my tears. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”
I reach out and place my hands on her elbows. Her skin is cold, refrigerated.
I’ve only seen her like this once before. When I was ten, there was this brief period when my mom and dad were maybe going to get back together. He was sleeping over every night and taking us out to dinner. Then one day he was gone. So was the can of money my mom had been putting cash into for months. We were trying to save up to go to Sea World.
She’s mumbling something over and over.
“What?” I say, leaning in.
“I give up,” she says softly.
The words fall out of her mouth, heavy and dead. Tears spring to my eyes.
“No you don’t,” I murmur. “You never give up.”
I think about Mom before The Giant, before he smashed our world to smithereens. The way she’d throw overdue bills in the trash and take us to McDonald’s, or how she cheerfully marched my sister and me a mile after our car ran out of gas. We sang Christmas carols even though it was April.
My hand reaches toward her without my permission and I run my fingers through the strands of her hair, dark brown like mine. I don’t let myself think about how just a few days ago she pulled my hair, hard. I’m tired of your attitude, Grace Marie. I don’t even remember what she was so mad about. I forgot to take out the trash, something like that.
“Mom.” I shake her a little and she lifts her head.
“He’s angry no matter what I do,” she says, not to me but to herself. Fee, fi, fo, fum.
Her face crumples and she starts crying again. I wish Beth were here. She’d know what to do. I look at her, helpless.
“What did he do?”
She shakes her head. I reach over and grab a towel off the rack.
“Let’s get you dried off.”
Her mascara and eyeliner have bled over her skin so that it looks like she has two black eyes. She struggles to stand, as though her legs are too weak to hold her up. I put my arm across her shoulders while she wraps the towel around her body. She can’t seem to stop shivering.
Once she’s out of the shower she looks at me.