Finding Grace (23 page)

“Ahh, no,” he said, wistfully. He looked up at me and gave me a wink. “So tell me about young Rachel here,” he said, smiling.

“She is my
favorite
daughter,” said my mother, reaching over and patting Mr. Preston on the leg.

“I'm your only daughter,” I call out from the kitchen.

“Yes, and you're my favorite one.”

She rose regally from the lounge to serve the meal.

As she placed it on the table, she said, “There now, does that not look divine? I hope you enjoy this, Alistair. It's one of my best.”

“I did all the cooking,” I protested.

Mother put her hand over her heart and fluttered her eyelids dramatically. “How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child,” she quoted.

While we ate, my mother continued to show off shamelessly. She spoke animatedly and Mr. Preston and I watched with appreciation.

After the meal they sat together on the lounge while I prepared Grace for bed. I could hear their laughter from where we stood in Grace's bedroom.

I sat next to her on the bed for a little while.

“Good night, Gracey,” I said.

She looked through my face for a moment and I leaned forward to smooth down her hair.

“You knew who I was today,” I said to her. “That's something, isn't it?”

I kissed her on the forehead and turned out the bedside lamp.

I walked into the kitchen to make coffee for my mother and Mr. Preston.

My mother sat on the couch with one knee hugged against her chest. They were talking quietly together.

“Yes, my children do give me a great deal of pleasure,” she was saying, softly. “The first time I saw Rachel's face, that changed my life forever. Children do that. I looked down at her and thought, hey, there's a little wee part of me. I'm quite ferocious about her—about them both.”

I put the coffee on the table before them and settled in on the corner of the lounge next to my mother.

“Did you ever think of having children?” my mother asked Mr. Preston.

He sat still for a moment and frowned. “My wife would bring it up on occasion and we would talk about it. I would say that I wanted to be there more often and be able to take time to spend with the child and that I couldn't do that while I was working this way and could we put it off just one more year while I got things settled at work.”

My mother leaned forward and poured the coffee.

“All that was true,” Mr. Preston continued, “but I was also selfish and wanted her to myself and knew that any child would take her attention away from me.”

My mother handed him a cup of coffee. “Yes, men are greedy and completely egotistical for the most part, but at least you are able to admit it.”

Mr. Preston smiled and took the coffee from her.

“So what about children and Grace?” asked my mother.

Mr. Preston turned to me. “How do you know about that?”

“She didn't,” I replied, pointing to my mother. “Grace's sister told me, though.”

“She's the cat's mother,” said Mr. Preston, and took a slurp of his coffee. “One day Grace phoned me and asked me to come to the house. She had … fallen pregnant to Anthony. That's my brother. She wanted to ask me what to do. I was such a
dear friend
, you see? Should she tell him about the child? How would he respond? Would he look after her? We sat here in this room.”

Mr. Preston sniffed. He brought a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his nose. “Oh dear.”

My mother leaned forward and refilled his cup.

“I, of course, knew that Anthony would not be interested in Grace anymore. The cost to Grace was irrelevant. The cost to me … well.”

Mr. Preston picked up his cup and drank noisily. “I felt I had to tell her the truth,” he said. “I should have thought about it for a while but I didn't because I was cranky.”

My mother leaned toward me and put her hand on my knee.

“That must have been pretty rough,” she said.

Mr. Preston blew his nose. “Yep,” he said, “it was pretty rough. Anyway, what can you do? It's all over now.”

“What happened after that?” I asked.

“Oh, she got angry with me, she said I was jealous. She said I was too weak. She said I was trying to hurt her. We shouted at each other for a little while.”

Mr. Preston closed his eyes and ran his thumb and index finger across his eyebrows.

“That was the last thing we said to each other before the accident. I was angry, she was angry. We both said mean things. I have a really shocking temper.”

My mother nodded. “Classic Type A personality.”

He looked up at me and said, “Can I have a Scotch or something? This is all a bit much.”

I stood up and walked into the kitchen and made us all a drink, bringing the bottle back to the table with me.

“Anyway, I knew that Anthony was taking another girl
out that night, you see? I also knew that he took them all to the same place. I dragged her out to my car. She was still yelling at me. We got into the car. For a little while she tried to argue with me. She called me names, but as she watched where we were going, as we approached the waterfront, she became very quiet.”

Mr. Preston downed his drink and held it out to me for another.

“There used to be a little restaurant on the waterfront. It doesn't exist anymore since that whole area has been redeveloped. My father would take us there every so often, Anthony and me. He was very friendly with the owners—a Chinese family. It was very simple. It was really just at the back of a house, between warehouses. They didn't have a license and eventually the council closed it down. My father and I, we had some mates on the council. We held them off as long as we could—encouraged them to turn a blind eye.”

He looked at me. “I used to grease the wheels on occasion, you see?”

He poured himself another drink. “They didn't speak English, so you pretty much ate what they gave you. There were about thirteen tiny courses, all authentic. There were only about five tables. There were no fancy tablecloths, no fancy cutlery. It was just good food, good wine, a great view out over the water.”

Mr. Preston swirled the last of his Scotch around in his glass.

“It used to be a special place for my father and Anthony and me—just the boys. But after my father died, Anthony started to take his girls there. That really pissed me off. Excuse me.”

Mr. Preston took his handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose again.

“I pulled up at the curb a little way from the restaurant and we walked. The road is very narrow and there are a lot of trucks coming to and from the docks. The ships are unloading there twenty-four hours. Grace was moving very slowly. Her face was white and pinched. She knew what she was going to see. I knew she didn't want to see.”

Mr. Preston took a deep breath.

“We came to the restaurant along a narrow dark street. Grace was moving slowly, like a sleepwalker. We went past the warehouse and rounded the corner. Anthony was there, sitting at the farthest table closest to the water with a very pretty, very young girl. He likes them young.

“I looked at Grace. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. Flooding down. They were sliding down her neck. Her mascara was running. I remember thinking that I'd never seen her makeup run.

“Anthony looked up and saw us standing there. He saw Grace standing there on the path outside his special restaurant. Beautiful, elegant Grace, with tears rolling down her face.”

Mr. Preston was crying. He rubbed his face with the back of his hand.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “you know I think about this all the time. I don't normally cry.”

“That's all right,” said my mother, leaning over the table toward him. “It's very refreshing, actually. Please go on.”

Mr. Preston took another deep breath and refilled his glass.

“Well, then Anthony turned back to the girl he was with
and placed his hand over hers on the table,” Mr. Preston said, placing one of his own hands across the other.

“Grace gave out a small whimpering, whining noise. It was an animal noise. It was the sound of … of
pain
. She doubled over, clutching her stomach as if she had been hit.”

Mr. Preston wiped his nose again with his handkerchief. Tears were coursing down his cheeks. He talked with his eyes closed.

“This is the moment that I will remember for the rest of my life. Every day, this scene occurs over and over in my mind. I wake up to this image every morning of every day of my life.

“Grace staggered backward. Grace stepped back into the middle of the road. I can hear the blast of the horn. I can see the headlights on Grace like some … like some ghastly spotlight. Grace's head turning to see the truck bearing down. Her face lit up in the darkness. Now I can hear brakes screaming and the screaming from my own mouth.

“The truck couldn't have been moving very fast. It was a narrow street with lots of corners. Big trucks are coming through there all the time, loading up from the ships. They all move faster than they should. A fully loaded truck takes such a bloody long time to stop, you see?”

Mr. Preston still had his eyes closed. The tears were falling down his cheeks and splashing onto his shirt.

“Grace tries to move forward but twists on her ankle and she's falling down, like slow motion. She puts her arms up in front of her. For an instant her face is in shadow out of the truck's headlights. She's falling, falling even before the truck hits her.”

He opens his eyes again and takes a swig of his drink.

“I feel pain. I feel strong pain and realize that I have dropped to my knees on the path. I feel the breath rush out of my lungs. For a moment I'm on my knees on the path with no air in my lungs. I'm watching the truck pulling up. I'm thinking she's going to make it!

“The truck is almost stopped when it hits her. I don't know, maybe if she hadn't been off balance already …

“The truck hits her and she hits the road. She just kind of crumples. Her head strikes the road just above the temple.”

Mr. Preston taps his middle finger on the temple just above his left eyebrow.

“I scrabble over to where she is lying. I don't bother trying to get to my feet. I get there on my hands and knees. I can hear a noise coming from my throat, I can't breathe. I lift her head and hold her to me. Her eyes are closed. There is a graze on her cheek. She looks all right to me. Thank Christ, I'm thinking to myself. Then I shift and I can see her properly in the headlights of the truck. Her eyes are blank—they're just blank. There is blood coming out of her ears—a lot of it.”

Mr. Preston looks up at us. He wipes his face with his handkerchief.

My mother is sitting on the couch next to me with tears sliding down her cheeks.

My mother
went home this morning. I miss her already. Now it's just Grace and me again. I think she liked the hullabaloo of people around her.

Grace and I sat on the front veranda in the sunshine.

Hiro arrived at about ten. He brought Grace and me a croissant and we had a little picnic on the front steps. I managed to get through the whole meal without spilling anything or falling over, so I'm fairly proud of myself. He asked me to a film festival they're holding at uni next week.

“There are some animations,” he said. “Do you like animations?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling.

After breakfast, Kate, Suzette and the dreadlock boy turned up. We sat on the front veranda talking and drinking coffee. The dreadlock boy had some reggae CDs in his bag and we listened to them for a while. Hiro and the dreadlock boy sat together on the grass and talked about music.

“I think music is more pervasive and powerful than religion,” the dreadlock boy said.

“Oh, you talk a lot of crap,” interrupted Suzette.

“No, you don't understand,” said the dreadlock boy, turning to her, “every culture has music. It plots the course of our evolution. Music represents the ideology of the people and the times.”

“OK, you nong. What about “She Bangs'?” asked Suzette.

“Well, that's a perfect example of a completely hedonistic society obsessed by the female form, incessantly using sexuality to sell superfluous products to increasingly excessive and television-anesthetized consumers.”

I walked inside to boil the jug again and when I came back out, Herb and Bill were leaning over the fence talking to Kate.

“Morning, Miss Rachel,” said Herb, waving to me.

“Morning, Herb,” I replied.

Standing in the doorway, I looked around and saw people relaxing in my front garden. I realized that I have started to make friends. All these people have come here to spend time with me. They feel comfortable with me. They even like me.

Suzette was sitting on the arm of Grace's chair. While
she was talking she leaned down and absently stroked a strand of Grace's hair out of her eyes. The gesture was somehow carefree and affectionate at the same time. It made me smile.

“Do you know what you want to do now?” Kate asked me when I sat down.

“I think I want to work with people,” I said. “People with acquired brain injuries like Grace.”

Kate nodded. “You'll be good at that,” she said.