Grace Grows (17 page)

“Hell yeah. That, and I was thirsty. And I like a good buzz.”

“Aren’t you worried that you’ll do something embarrassing if you drink too much?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Nah.”

He ejected the Joe’s Pub CD and popped in another one. As we drove through increasingly pastoral and mountainous terrain we were surrounded by the elegant voice of Bryan Ferry singing “More Than This.”

“Isn’t it funny,” I said, “that we both like old music? I don’t know that many people who do.”

“Yeah, me, either.”

“Why are so many songs about love?”

“What’s more important than love? And what expresses love better than music?” He looked at me like I would be graded on my answer.

“Nothing?”

“I’m glad you understand. Hey, try to stump me,” he said. “Name something old you really love and see if I know it.”

“Okay, but I’ll sing it. Just a few words.”

“Okay. Don’t make it too easy.”

I sang snippets of Dire Straits, Gerry Rafferty, Elton John, Pink Floyd, and the Kinks, and he came back with the next line, every time. He was unbeatable. Then I totally stumped him with “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

“Ha!” I said. “I guess you’re not all that into country music.”

“Are you kidding? I know my Willie.”

“Who doesn’t?”

He reached for me with vengeful, goosing fingers. I shrank against the door.

“Careful,” I laughed, “you’re going to lose a digit. And you need them. STOP!” We were veering into the next lane. “Would you put both hands on the wheel, please!”

The drive turned out to be surprisingly short, less than two hours door to door. We got off I-80, passed through Stroudsburg, and kept going until we had left the two-lane highway and were bumping along a gravel road deeper and deeper into wilderness. The banjo strains from
Deliverance
crept into my consciousness.

The house was a big old Victorian that might have been lovely, were it not so Pepto pink. With lavender trim.

“Hey, they painted the house,” Ty said.

“What color was it before?”

“Orange.”

A white delivery van and a large motorcycle were parked in front of a carriage house that leaned alarmingly. “Don’t go in the garage, okay?” He unbuckled his seat belt. “We think it might fall down.” He put his guitar on his back and picked up his duffel bag and my overnight bag and headed up the front walk.

I stopped to look at the motorcycle. It was impressive. A big, shiny, blue-and-chrome Harley, sporting a black leather saddlebag embossed with a skull and crossbones.

“Ty? Whose motorcycle is this?”

He came back to me and spoke in a low voice. “My dad’s. Don’t touch it, he dusts for fingerprints.”

“Is he a Hell’s Angel?” I whispered.

He smiled and whispered back, “No. He’s in a Harley club.”

I didn’t see the difference. I’d Google it when I got home.

I followed him past our old friend the gazing ball, now crowning a verdigris-encrusted pedestal in a leaf-strewn flower bed. He stopped short of the porch steps and turned to me.

“Hey, I just realized . . .”

“What?”

“Well, that.” He pointed at my engagement ring. “You’ll have to take it off, eh? We don’t want to freak everyone out.”

“Oh.” I looked at the ring. “Yeah.” I worked the ring off and slid it deep into the pocket of my jeans.

a country herbal

The house was dark and quiet, with high, ornate tin ceilings. It smelled weird, like a mix of cooking chicken and some pungent herb.

“Hello?” Ty called out.

We walked through the downstairs, which was furnished in a mix of elegance and kitsch. Lovely old pieces like an antique mahogany dining room table inhabited the same space as a circa-1970 wood veneer china cabinet with faux-bamboo accents.

Ty whistled a loud tune as he led me upstairs to his former bedroom. Whatever it may have looked like in his childhood, it was now tidy and generic, with fresh yellow walls and a flowered quilt on the double bed. A faded Monet print was tacked up over the old desk, the surface of which was etched with, among other words and phrases,
Tyler Graham Wilkie
,
TGW
, and
bite me
.

“I was pissed at my dad,” Ty said, tracing the words with a finger-tip.

He opened the closet for my jacket and I saw that it was full of his history—sports trophies, stacks of albums, tapes and CDs, and an old record player.

I was struck with a sad, hollow feeling. Envy. How wonderful it must be to spend all your childhood in one place. I had no childhood home to revisit, unless you counted my dad’s loft. But I had never felt very comfortable there. And my old stuff—my yearbooks, my cassette tapes, my Beanie Baby collection—who knew where it all was? My mom’s attic, maybe.

“What’s up?” Ty said.

“It’s nice, your room.”

“I haven’t lived here in ten years.”

“But it’s still your room.”

He nodded at the Monet print. “I think it’s yours, now. Looks like my mom prettied it up for you.”

“Where did you live, when you moved out?”

“In Bogue’s family’s pool house for a year, then in town, in different apartments and houses. Let’s go get a beer.”

We ran into his mom and dad in the hall, coming out of their bedroom.

“Grace Barnum!” Jean was pink-cheeked, pulling her blond hair into a ponytail. When she hugged me I saw that she’d missed a button on her blouse. Nathan nodded at me and shook Ty’s hand. He and his wife both had red eyes and smelled like pot. Which explained half of the herbal/cooking chicken smell.

“We just got here and we’re thirsty,” Ty said.

“Oh, yeah, we’re starving!” Jean said. “There’s beer and other stuff in the fridge. Help yourselves. We’ll eat supper about seven.”

I glanced at Ty, who winked and whispered, “That’s why I whistled. So they wouldn’t come out of there chasing each other down the hall butt-naked.”

We got beers and chips and went down to a musty-smelling basement decorated in early-American rec room, with an ancient TV, a foosball table, a brown plaid couch, and a red beanbag chair.

He flopped down on the couch and ripped open the Tostitos while I looked around at framed pictures of Ty engaged in various sports: baseball, football, track.

“You were very athletic, weren’t you?”

He shrugged. “I did all right. My sister was the real athlete. She kicked ass in basketball.”

There was a photo of her airborne, in the middle of a layup. She looked like a fierce Viking goddess, lean and muscled. “What’s her name?”

“Rebecca.”

“Who’s older?”

“Me. By two minutes. But she was bigger and louder. They said she practically shoved me out.”

My eyes were drawn to a picture of Ty dressed in the garb of a Hasidic Jew, with a big fake gray beard. His arms were in the air and his mouth was open.

“
Fiddler on the Roof
?”

“Yeah.”

“Were you
Tevye
?”

“Yeah.” He looked embarrassed. “They cast me ’cause I was a senior and I could sing. Couldn’t act for shit.”

“This is bound to come out in the media as your legend grows.”

“Not if I destroy all the evidence first.”

“There will be a lot of yearbooks to burn.”

He shoved a chip in his mouth. “It’s the videos showing up on YouTube that I’m really worried about.”

I clapped my hands, excited. “I know the first thing I’m doing when I get home!”

I kicked the beanbag chair a couple of times to plump it up before sinking into it. I hadn’t sat in a beanbag chair in a good ten years. I closed my eyes. “Okay, I’m going to be here awhile.”

It got quiet. I opened one eye. He was reading the back of the chip bag.

“Is Rebecca coming for the party?” I asked.

“Yeah, she told my mom she wasn’t going to. She hates family reunion shit. But I used a little reverse psychology on her.”

“Oh? What’d you do?”

“Well, it’s a simple formula. First I called and left a cryptic message on her phone about needing to talk about something.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And of course, being my sister, she called me right away. But I let her leave a message and didn’t get back to her for a day or two, to let the mystery build.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And then when she called again, I answered. I told her I didn’t want to hurt her feelings but I thought it would be a good idea if she didn’t come to the birthday party. Why? she says. Well, you know how bad you get on Gram’s nerves, I said. It might ruin the whole thing for her if you showed up.”

“And what did Rebecca say?”

“She told me to cut the reverse psychology crap and said she’d already decided to show up just to put a bee in the old woman’s hat.” He laughed. “She always catches on to my shit. She’s way smarter than me.”

“Unlike
me
!” I rose from the beanbag chair in wobbly, majestic outrage.

“Hey, what are you talking about?” Ty paused, hand in the chip bag, all careful, blank innocence.

I kicked the leg that was dangling off the edge of the sofa.

“Ow!” He sat up.

“You let me wonder for a whole month what the hell you wanted to talk to me about!”

“Well, you could’ve called and asked me what was up! I had to finally come walk the damn dogs to get you to bite.”

“And then all that ‘my grandma will be so impressed with a smart girl’ crap.”

“Now, that is absolute truth. I swear it.”

“You are nefarious.” I snatched the chip bag and retreated to the distant side of the foosball table.

“Use that word with my grandma, it’s perfect. And if you want to correct my grammar, that’s fine, too. You know I love it when you do that, Grace.”

I ate a few chips while glaring at him and trying to decide how mad I really was. He got up and meandered over to the table. Tucked his hands in his pockets. And then casually pulled out my kryptonite:
the smile
.

I looked away. “Should I go home?” I wondered out loud.

“Hell no, woman!” He spun a handle on the table. “You should play foosball.”

I beat him two out of three games before Jean called us for supper.

He stopped me at the bottom of the stairs. “Listen, I told my mom you and I are mostly just friends.”

“Mostly?”

“I thought that sounded more believable. Anyway, what I’m saying is you don’t have to put on too big of an act in front of her and my dad.”

“Okay. What about your grandmother?”

“I definitely want you to lay it on some for her benefit.”

“What do you mean, lay it on?”

He thought about it.

“I could hold your arm once in a while,” I suggested. “Will that do?”

“Yeah, okay, but if you’re too subtle she might miss it.”

“Okay. I’ll try to be obvious.”

“Great! Thanks!” He grinned and shot up the stairs ahead of me, two at a time.

We ate in their dining room at the beautiful old table set with a lace cloth and a mix of what must have been family heirloom china and everyday dishes. Nathan pulled out a chair for me, saying, “Jean wants you to sit here.” He returned to the kitchen, taking Ty with him.

My setting was pretty. The plate was old, with scratched gold paint around the rim and a wreath of rosebuds.

Ty came in and set two covered dishes on the table. “I sure hope you’re hungry.” He took the seat across from me.

Nathan brought in a platter of roasted chicken. Jean followed with a basket of rolls. They sat at the ends of the table and smiled at me. Even Nathan. Ty looked like he wanted to laugh.

“Well, Grace,” Jean said, “it’s a week early, but this is a meal of thanksgiving. To thank you for being there for Ty with the appendix.”

“Oh.” My face was getting hot. “It was just what any of his friends might have done.”

“Well, I know you gave him a lot of comfort. Isn’t that right, hon?”

“Yeah,” Ty said. “A kiss before surgery from Bogue would have been kind of depressing.”

“You might not have wanted to come out alive after that,” Nathan observed.

“Anyway,” Jean said. “You are a darling girl and we thank you.”

A darling girl.
I looked at my napkin. Smoothed it across my legs. Picked at a bit of loose thread peeking out from the hemmed edge.

“Gracie,” Ty said softly. “It’s all right.”

Jean came and hugged me with one arm and made comforting sounds while she blotted my face with her napkin. Nathan cleared his throat.

“Sometimes she leaks,” Ty said.

While we ate roast chicken, rice with gravy, green beans, creamed corn, and buttered rolls, Ty told us about the coming months. He’d be going to Los Angeles after Christmas to make the record. Once singles had been decided on, there would be music videos to make. By summer he’d go on tour, playing colleges and festivals.