Don't Let Me Go (40 page)

“I’m having a little trouble,” her mom said, “with how you haven’t even said you’re happy to be home. Or that you’re proud of me for my thirty days. I worked hard for those thirty days. And you’re so bent out of shape about some neighbors and a cat that you don’t even seem to have noticed. You haven’t even told me I did a good thing.”

Grace sighed.

“That part was good,” she said.

Her mom threw up her hands, literally, and stomped away.

• • •

Yolanda came by the following day after work. About six thirty. And she brought a pizza. Pepperoni and double cheese.

“Thanks,” Grace said, and took one slice.

“Whoa,” Yolanda said, more or less to Grace’s mom, because Grace had walked away by then. “She been like this ever since—”

“No,” Grace’s mom said. “Sometimes she’s even worse.”

“How ‘bout a family chat?”

“I don’t want to hear it again,” Grace’s mom said.

“I’ll chat,” Grace said.

Grace sat on one end of the couch with her pizza, and Yolanda sat at the other end. Grace’s mom stayed at the kitchen table, lit a cigarette, and looked the other way.

“I hate it when you smoke in the house,” Grace said.

“I know you do,” her mom said. “But you don’t always get your way.”

“I don’t ever get my way,” Grace said.

“Hey, hey, whoa,” Yolanda said. “Chatting, not bickering. Useful chatting. Eileen, Grace just told you how she felt about something, and you totally blew her off. You want to do that one over?”

Grace’s mom sighed.

“I know I used to smoke outside. And I know you liked that better. But now I feel like I have to watch you every minute. I feel like if I turn my back for even that long you’ll go running to see one of the neighbors.”

“So? Would that be such a terrible thing?”

“Whoa, whoa, Grace,” Yolanda said. “Useful chatting. If your mom promises to go back to smoking outside, do you promise not to go anywhere while she’s gone?”

Grace sighed. Sniffled.

“Yeah, OK.”

“Listen to her,” Grace’s mom said. “She sounds like a wrung-out dishrag. We used to be great together. We used to be all we needed, just me and Grace against the world. Now she’s moping around like a sick puppy because I won’t let her see those awful people.”

“They’re not awful people!” Grace shouted.

“Eileen! Foul!” Yolanda barked. “Do that one over.”

“OK. Fine. I’m sorry. Because I won’t let her see her friends. She used to be happy with me. Without all those other people. And now look at her. She looks like she just lost her best friend.”

“I did,” Grace said.

Grace’s mom turned her back and smoked more ferociously.

“Yeah, she looks bad,” Yolanda said. “She was really coming alive for a while there. And now she looks like a plant you forgot to water. Every time I look over at her, I expect to see a dead leaf fall off. Don’t you want her to thrive?”

“I want her to thrive with
me
,” Grace’s mom said, her back still turned.

“That’s selfish.”

“F—. Screw you, Yolanda.”

“Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be. Now listen here, little missy. Yeah. It used to be just the two of you, how lovely. But then you took a powder. And that wasn’t Grace’s fault. Now she has new people in her life, and it’s a damn good thing, because without them, she’d either be dead or in the system. You wouldn’t get her back for a year, minimum. She’s here because some people took over for you. You can’t undo that. She bonded with them, and you can’t subtract them no matter how hard you try.”

“Watch me,” Grace’s mom said, stamping out her cigarette on a plate left over from dinner.

“OK, let me put it another way. You can subtract them from Grace’s life, even though that sucks and it’s not fair in any way. And I can’t stop you. But you can’t subtract them from Grace.”

“She’ll get over it,” Grace’s mom said. Quietly. Almost as if she might be crying a little, but Grace couldn’t tell for sure.

“Well, let’s see,” Yolanda said. “Grace? Are you ever gonna get over it?”

“No.”

“She says she’s never gonna get over it, Eileen.”

“People always say that. But then they do.”

“You’re breaking your daughter’s heart. I strongly advise you to consider a compromise.”

“I don’t want to compromise.”

“Nobody ever does,” Yolanda said. She picked up another slice of pizza on her way out the door. “Call me if you need me, Grace.”

“She doesn’t need you!” Grace’s mom shouted. “She just needs
me
!”

Yolanda tilted her head a little, and raised one eyebrow in a funny way.

“Call me if you need me, Grace,” she said again.

“K,” Grace said.

Then Yolanda let herself out, and Grace snagged three more pieces of the pizza and locked herself in her room for the night.

• • •

When Grace woke in the morning, the sky was barely light. She lay still a minute on her back under the covers, watching the tiny bit of light bleed through the curtains over her bed. In her head, she replayed Monday’s dance, right up to the part where her mom grabbed her elbow and snatched her away.

Grace threw the covers back and jumped out of bed, tiptoeing barefoot to her mom’s bedroom door. She peered in, barely breathing. Her mom did not wake up.

She tiptoed over to the yellow message pad by the phone, slowly and quietly tore off one sheet, and wrote a message on it in her best block printing.

YOU NEVER TOLD ME WHAT I WAS. YOU STARTED TO TELL ME. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU WERE GOING TO SAY?

LOVE, GRACE

She unlocked the door silently, stopping to be sure nothing stirred in her mom’s room, then vaulted upstairs, folded the note in half, and slipped it under Billy’s door.

“Hi, Billy, hi, kitty,” she whispered through the door. “I love you.”

Then she ran back home and jumped into bed before her mom could possibly have time to wake up.

• • •

When Grace woke the following morning, her mom was already in the kitchen making oatmeal, which was disappointing. Not the oatmeal — Grace liked oatmeal — but the not having any time to sneak away. After all, she’d only promised not to sneak away while her mom was outside smoking. She hadn’t said a word about six o’clock in the morning.

Grace padded to the kitchen table and sat down, frowning, and her mom quick stubbed out a cigarette.

“I thought you were only going to smoke outside.”

“You were sleeping, so I thought it’d be OK. I thought that was just when you were around.”

“Well, I’m around now, and it stinks in here, and I hate it.”

Grace’s mom sighed.

“Fine. Tomorrow I’ll take my morning cigarette outside.”

“Thank you.”

Grace knew her mom was trying extra hard now. Cooking three meals a day, vacuuming the rug, picking her up right on time from school. And Grace knew why, too. She was trying to do every single mom-thing right to make up for the one really important thing she still refused to do.

“I don’t want to go to school today,” Grace said. “I feel sick.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m sick to my stomach.”

Grace’s mom put a warm hand on her forehead.

“You don’t have a fever.”

“I didn’t say I did. I said I was sick to my stomach. Will you go to the store today and get me ginger ale?”

“Yeah. OK. After breakfast. I guess I could.”

“Good. I’m going back to bed.”

Grace lay in bed and listened to her mom washing the dishes from the breakfast nobody had bothered to eat. Then she heard their apartment door open.

“I’ll be back in, like, ten minutes, Grace.”

Was her mom really going to walk out the door without extracting a promise from her to stay put? And, if so, was it a trap? Would Grace stick her head out into the hall only to be ambushed by an angry mom?

Grace heard the door slam shut again, and the deadbolts turning from the outside with her mom’s keys. She held still, barely breathing, then slunk out of bed and crept to the window, where she watched her mom’s legs disappear down the block.

Grace ran to the door, threw it open, and bolted up the stairs to Billy’s door.

She almost knocked. For one breathless, excited moment, she almost knocked on his door. But then she remembered what her mom had said about getting him arrested. In which case he would die. Seriously. Even if Jesse and Rayleen figured out how to get him out a day or two later, it was Billy, and Billy would still die.

She ran her finger carefully under the bottom of his door and touched the corner of an envelope. She pressed down on it and pulled, and it slid out into the hall at her feet. She grabbed it and ran back to bed, careful to lock the same deadbolts she had unlocked when leaving.

She lay in bed, fingers trembling a little, and tore open the note.

Yes, I remember. You were the shiniest thing I’ve ever seen. That’s what I was going to say. That you were the shiniest thing I’ve ever seen.

Love, Billy

When Grace’s mom got home, Grace heard her rattling around in the kitchen, and she could even hear the fizz of the ginger ale when her mom took the cap off the bottle.

A minute later, her mom stood in the bedroom doorway, smiling sadly.

“I’m sorry if this whole thing is making you so miserable you have an upset stomach,” she said. “So…I was just thinking…maybe a little bit of a compromise
is
in order.”

“What kind?” she asked, too hopeful.

“Never mind. It’ll be a surprise. You’ll see.”

Billy

The pounding on his door nearly stopped Billy’s heart. He instinctively looked down at himself. He was still in bed. He was wearing his rattiest pajamas. He ran a hand through his hair. He hadn’t brushed it for days.

“Who is it?”

“Eileen Ferguson.”

She didn’t sound any happier. Her tone filled Billy’s sore gut with nails and ice.

“What do you want?”

“I came for Grace’s cat.”

Billy lay frozen for several seconds, then got up and made his way to the door. He breathed deeply three times before opening it.

She looked startled to see him. She actually took one step back. He must look a fright, he realized, with his black eyes turning yellow, and no make-up to hide the truth. But he didn’t have time to care about that now.

“You’re taking the cat?”

“It’s Grace’s cat.”

“Well. Yes. But she’s become accustomed to a certain standard of living. Are you going to take care of her?”

“Grace will take care of the cat.”

“Grace has no idea how. She’s never so much as fed her.”

“She’ll figure it out.”

Billy pulled a big, deep breath and thought about Jesse, and how he’d handle a situation like this.

“I am responsible for the cat,” Billy said evenly. “I can’t just hand you the cat. There’s more to the cat than just handing her over. She needs her litter box, and her litter. And the little scoop you use to clean it. And she needs her food and water dish, and her wet food, and her dry food, and her brush. And unless I get to instruct Grace in her proper care and feeding, the cat leaves this apartment over my dead body.”

Billy’s heart pounded as he waited for her reply, and it made him feel weak, as though he needed to sit down. He had no strength for a confrontation.

“Tell you what,” Eileen said, brushing back her hair the way she tended to do when angry. “You give me the cat. I’ll take her downstairs to Grace—”

“Why isn’t Grace in school?”

“None of your business. I’ll give the cat to Grace. And you put all that other stuff out in the hall. And I’ll come get it in…about…an hour. And that’ll give you time to write out a note for Grace about feeding and stuff.”

Billy blinked too many times, too quickly.

It had never occurred to him that he might have to give up the cat.

He called her with the special “psst” sound he used to announce the serving of wet cat food, and she came running. He scooped her up, turned her on to her back, and buried his face in the soft fur of her belly.

“Bye, kid,” he whispered. “Take care of yourself.”

He handed her over to Eileen, but the cat panicked and leapt down again. He picked her up and tried again. But she refused to be held by Grace’s mom.

“She doesn’t like you,” Billy said.

“That’s a load of horseshit.”

“She probably feels your anger. It scares her.”

“Just give her to me. I’ll hold tighter this time.”

“No,” Billy said. “Send Grace.”

“I’m not—”

“Stand right here and supervise if you want. But I either hand the cat to Grace or she doesn’t leave this apartment.”

Billy looked right into her eyes. She glared back at him, as if considering a suitable response — one that might or might not involve fisticuffs. Then she turned and stomped off down the stairs.

A minute later she stomped back up with Grace by her side. Billy’s heart fell to see Grace. She looked terrible. Downhearted and downright sick. Well, she must be sick, literally sick, or she wouldn’t be home from school.

She padded up to his open doorway in her bare feet, looking up at him with her face open and soft.