Finding Grace (21 page)

Mr. Preston
came over to see Grace the next morning. My mother had gone out shopping. She bounced out the door in a bright blur of yellow. She has decided to stay with me for a couple of days.

“No doubt Brody will have some wild party while I am absent,” she said as she left. “I daresay I shall have to overlook all manner of evidence when I return—not the least of which will be his dopey grin and extraordinary helpfulness.”

I wandered about the house, tidying. I went out into the garden and picked some flowers.

Mr. Preston sat with Grace for a while and then she nodded off and he joined me on the veranda. We sat quietly. I bit my lip.

“What happened to Grace?”

“She banged her head.”

“Yes, but how?”

“She banged it on the road.”

I squinted out across the street. The sunshine was very bright. A nuisance of cats gamboled in the garden. Prickles was amongst them. They rolled about together, biting and kicking with both back feet. Then they lay indulgently in each other's arms. Mr. Preston frowned.

“Why won't you tell me?”

“Do you have a brother, chum?” he asked me.

“Yes, Brody. It means unusual beard, you know. He's a bit of a dill, but we get on all right.”

Mr. Preston frowned. “Unusual beard.”

“Yes,” I said, blushing, “my mother is whimsical.”

Mr. Preston sighed. Then he began.

“You know I have a brother. He worked in our office, as did my father and as did our father's father before him.” Mr. Preston was drinking tea, Earl Grey, hot. I hate it but tolerate it, because it's what Jean-Luc Picard drinks when he is upset.

“Anthony was always destined for bigger things. He had empires to build, egos to crush.” Mr. Preston was slurping on his tea. He had one ankle on his knee.

“I was beginning to build a relationship with Grace. I think she had finally decided to stop battling with me and we were becoming friends—good friends—but that was all. I was still married.

“I spent time with Grace, we worked closely together, but our relationship was a professional friendship and that was all, as far as Grace was concerned. That was all that I
could offer. So I spent my days being stoically tragic about the whole thing.”

Mr. Preston was quiet. He was perfectly still. I blinked in the sunshine. A gentle breeze played in my hair, blowing it across my face.

“That's how I used to be, you see? Mr. Roll-with-thepunches. I had my share of free lunches. I did favors where I shouldn't and took them in my turn. I greased the wheels on occasion.”

Mr. Preston turned his cup around and around in his hand.

“Now I'm Mr. Patron. I volunteer for any number of community causes—environment groups, progress associations—busy, busy. Now I stand about being stoically tragic on behalf of others and sometimes I even make a difference, which is nice. Sometimes it makes me feel a bit better about my decades of selfishness.”

Mr. Preston paused for a moment and took a deep breath.

My mother's car came careering down the street and pulled up with a jolt in front of the house, behind Mr. Preston's car.

Mr. Preston frowned as he watched her bounce out of the car.

“Hello, Rachel darling,” she said as she threw the back door open and started to gather her bags of shopping.

Mr. Preston quickly strode down the steps and out the gate and took the bags from her.

“Why, thank you!” said my mother, beaming.

“My pleasure,” said Mr. Preston, beaming back.

“Mr. Preston, this is my mother,” I say.

“Miriam,” said my mother.

“I'm Alistair Preston. Pleased to meet you.”

“Alistair,” said my mother. “Miriam,” said Mr. Preston, and then they both laughed. Mr. Preston carried my mother's shopping into the kitchen and helped her unpack.

“My little chum tells me you are whimsical,” observed Mr. Preston.

“Does she?” she asked, winking at me.

I sat on the couch and cringed.

Mr. Preston left. I followed him out to the front veranda.

“You were telling me something,” I prompted.

“About what?”

“About your brother.”

“Oh,” he said. He leaned against the railing with his hip and folded his arms.

“When we were boys,” he began, “I was given a spaniel bitch for my birthday. Anthony, my brother—he could see how much I loved the dog, and set out to steal her from me. For months Anthony trained the dog to come to his call. One day the dog was in the road. I was on one side of the road and Anthony was on the other. There was a car coming along the road, so I called the dog. I just wanted her to be safe. Anthony called the dog from the other side.”

Mr. Preston pulled his hair back from his forehead. He crossed one foot over the other and looked out into the street.

“There was a battle going on. I was looking at Anthony and he was looking at me and the car was approaching. Anthony called the dog again and she went to him.”

Mr. Preston paused for a long while.

“He had won. After that he ignored the dog completely. It was about winning. It was about beating me. We gave the dog away. I couldn't look at her without feeling the betrayal.” Mr. Preston laughed bitterly. “A dog—a bloody dog. I had to attach all these emotional ties to it.”

He shook his head. “Ridiculous.”

He stepped lightly down the steps and out the gate.

“See you,” I said.

He nodded as he opened his car door, climbed in and drove away.

“You didn't tell me he was handsome!” said my mother when he had gone. She fluffed her yellow blouse. “Heavens!” she said. “I think I even felt a little stirring!”

“Mum! Please!”

“Well, I did,” she protested.

Having tired of my continual complaints and obvious distress about having to cook meals, my mother had thoughtfully purchased two cookbooks for me during her shopping trip.

I studied them on the lounge whilst my mother prepared something luscious and far beyond my present level of competence.

The first cookbook,
Banquet in Brief
, was dedicated to meals that could be prepared in a very short time. It seemed to comprise, almost exclusively, recipes for things on toast; for example, cheese on toast. It then substantially increased in complexity to such elaborate dishes as ham, tomato and cheese on toast. I threw
Banquet in Brief
on the coffee table in disgust and picked up the next.

The second cookbook,
Epiconomy
, was dedicated to
low-budget meals and included a great many recipes using mince as the main ingredient. Savory mince seemed to be the hero of the book and wore many guises. It was always distinguishable to the reader, though, because of its consistent savoriness and strong mince undertones.

“Thanks for that, Mum,” I called across the room. “My pleasure, Rachel darling,” she replied from within a cloud of saffron-scented steam.

“I was thinking,” she said, “you could go to the post office.”

“What?”

“Don't say what, say I beg your pardon.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“To look up your friend Anna. Remember? You asked me where she had moved to. They would have telephone directories there and you could look her up.”

I lay on the couch with my arms behind my head and jiggled my feet.

“Amanda is getting married.”

“Oh, really?” said my mother, clattering about in Grace's cupboards.

“To Bozza. Can you believe it?” I said.

“Well, Rachel darling, maybe he makes her happy,” said my mother.

I hrumphed and jiggled my feet some more. “How do you know that he doesn't?” she asked, pausing for a moment to look at me.

“He's titillated by the discoloration of ceramic tiles, Mother! He's not her intellectual equal!”

She put down the saucepan she was holding and leaned against the kitchen bench. “There is this tradition, I don't
know whether you've heard of it,” she began, “where a young woman seeks an amiable fellow who will be able to provide for her and her children, should she choose to have them. Then she dresses in a magnificent frock and promises to be with him forever. It's called marriage, and whilst you have not experienced marriage yourself or by direct observation through me, an awful lot of people do it. I imagine, for some, it would be an enormous comfort to have a piece of paper guaranteeing eternal love.”

I frowned at her and jiggled some more.

“I think you are fabulous, darling, I think you are beautiful and clever, but I must say, you have a propensity to judge everybody by your own standards. It is a bad habit to get into, my love, because you will never be satisfied with anyone.”

“That's not true,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.

“Oh yes it is, my sweet,” said my mother, pointing at me with a slotted spoon.

“I'm very tolerant!”

“Only of people who do exactly as you would have them do.”

Not being able to think of a clever rebuttal, I stomped about on the timber floor in my socked feet. My mother watched me from the corner of her eye and hummed cheerfully to herself.

After half an hour of bad-tempered stomping my mother asked, “Why don't you ask that handsome Alistair over for dinner?”

“Why didn't you ask him yourself?” I replied. I was still a little raw about the “intolerant” remark.

“Well,” she said, “Thai dishes can be so volatile. I wanted to be sure of its scrumptiousness before imposing it upon anyone else.”

“Why don't you ring him?” I said.

“All right then, I will,” she replied.

She shook her hands in the air above her head, allowing gravity to pull the sleeves of her shirt back to her elbows, and picked up my address book next to the phone.

I am eighteen and have recently discovered that I know very little (and am bound to find that I know even less if my mother stays for much longer), but my mother is a living example of the expression “no hide, no Christmas box.” She never hesitates. She shows no fear or reticence. One of the many reasons that I admire her is for her intrepidness.

Mr. Preston was otherwise engaged but agreed to join us on the following night.

“Never mind,” said my mother, serving the Thai (which proved to be as scrumptious as she had anticipated), “I shall just have to cook something as mind-blowingly stunning tomorrow.”

Of all
days, today I dragged out my old, scuffed, dirty Ugg boots. Of all days, today I found my striped beanie with the pompom on top. Today, of all days, Hiro decided to drop around. I stood in the doorway in my beanie and my Ugg boots and quietly dissolved into pure embarrassment.

Hiro smiled with amusement. He followed me as I flipflopped into the lounge room. I couldn't exactly take them off now, could I? The damage had been done. Besides, I knew that underneath I had beanie hair, which was probably worse, on the whole.

I tried to think of something scintillating to say, to show that my intellect was beyond fashion. It didn't work.

My mother was sitting out back with Grace, chattering and laughing.

“I thought maybe we could, you know, walk?” he said to me.

“Walk where?”

“Well, maybe to the music shop? I would like to show you some special songs.”

“OK, I'll just have to check with my mother.”

Check with my mother? How embarrassing. Things are getting worse.

I flip-flopped out the back. “Mum, this is Hiro.”

My mother's eyes flicked toward my beanie and then my Ugg boots, and she grinned.

“Come and sit out here with me, Hiro. Then Rachel can go and discreetly get out of that ridiculous hat,” she purred, patting the seat beside her.

“Umm, actually, my name is Harold,” said Hiro.

My mother's eyes widened just that little bit and then she said, “Well, a rose by any other name and all that. Come and tell me about yourself.”

I almost-ran back to my room and tried to repair my head. It was no use. I piled my hair up in a big heap on my head and fastened it with a clip. I pulled on some jeans and a jumper. I dabbed some powder on my nose and quickly applied some mascara to my lashes. Then I threw my Ugg boots across the room in disgust and pulled on some sneakers.