23
FOUR KINDS OF PIE
The mattress sank and squeaked, waking Grace with
a start. Her eyes popped open; she was so tired it felt as if her
eyelids were being dragged across sand.
She lifted onto her elbows and
discovered Sam poised on the edge of her bed like Rodin’s
Thinker.
“What is it?” she asked.
He glanced at her with red eyes. “Why
didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you about what?”
He drew back. “About Dad! He’s
really not doing well at all.”
She shot up to sit. “Has anything
happened?”
“Grace, he got lost!”
She dropped back against the pillows.
Yesterday. “I was worried that something
was going on now.”
“I didn’t realize it was this bad,” Sam
said.
His words made her want to pull her
hair out. Hadn’t he been reading her e-mails? Or listening during
phone calls?
He sat up straighter. “I’ve made my
decision, Grace. I’m coming home. For good.”
She tilted a skeptical glance at
him.
“What?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t
I?”
“Because you’d go crazy here, for one
thing. And you and Dad don’t even get along all that well when
you’re together. It’s not like you would be a soothing
presence.”
“I’m bound to be better than this Darla
What’s-Her-Name.”
“No, you won’t. Because she at least
has training dealing with old people. She won’t start weeping when
Dad forgets the word for broccoli.”
He looked offended. “That just took me
by surprise.”
“All along, I’ve told you what’s been
happening.”
“I know, but I didn’t expect him to
have deteriorated so quickly. He even looks rumply. When was the
last time he got his hair cut?”
“A few weeks ago. I don’t like to
badger him. He really hates being nagged.”
“Tough. It’s for his own
good.”
His imperious tone irked her. “He’s not
a different person, Sam. He still has a will of his
own.”
“If he’s the same person, I doubt he
would want to look as if he slept in his clothes.” He shook his
head. “Anyway, there’s no reason I can’t take care of him as well
as anyone else. He’ll hate a home-care person, and you . . . well,
you’ve already had your life screwed up completely by
this.”
At that moment, Grace would have liked
to whip the covers over her head and pretend to be invisible. She’d
barely slept last night for chewing over what Ben had done. Now she
had to deal with Sam envisioning himself as Florence Nightingale.
And Thanksgiving. Why had she even woken up?
Sam glanced over at her, eyes narrowed
and forehead scrunched. “Grace, you’re crumpling
again.”
She sat up straighter. Poor Sam. She’d
cried on Sam’s shoulder most of yesterday. “I just don’t know what
I’m going to do now.”
“What do you mean? It’s decided. You’re
going to go home and get back to your store and your friends and
that other family in Oregon. I’m going to stay here.”
“You can’t, Sam. You have a fabulous
job, a dream job. You would be wasted here. What would you do for
work?”
He shrugged, but she could see the
dread that lay behind his stoicism. “I’ll find something. I imagine
I can land some local gig and write about city planning commissions
and the school lunch menus.”
She shook her head. “There’s no point.
We’ve got Darla. And even if you moved here and found a job, we’d
still need her.” But in her mind, she was thinking, On the other hand, I could
stay. “Anyway, you and Dad together are a train
wreck.”
“That was before.” Her expression must
have been doubtful, because he lifted his chin. “Look, I’ll prove
it. You’ve got enough to do today. Let me take care of
Dad.”
“Sam, Dad was looking forward to your
visit so he could hang out with you. Not so you could harass him
about his hair.”
“I know how to be tactful,” he said,
growing as prickly as their father would have under the
circumstances. “Besides, you’ve got enough to worry about with
dinner.”
“That’s practically all
done.”
He sent her an incredulous look.
“You’ve mastered the art of cooking in your sleep?”
“I didn’t sleep. I got up in the middle
of the night last night and loaded up the turkey. It’s already
baking. In fact, it should be done soon.”
“A little early, isn’t
it?”
“Better too soon than too late.” At
least, that’s what she had been thinking at four in the morning.
She went through the checklist in her head. “I made the cranberry
sauce yesterday, and the stuffing is in with the turkey. The
potatoes are peeled and sitting in water in the fridge, waiting to
be boiled and mashed. Even the table is set.”
She needed to keep focused on today,
minute by minute. If she ran out of tasks, she would just have to
redo things she had already done. Mash potatoes into oblivion and
reset the table until she fell into bed tonight in a stupor. Most
of all, she needed to not think about Ben, or the fact that she was
alone again and two years older than the last time she had had to
date, and that she didn’t feel like dating at all because her life
was unraveling at the seams. She didn’t even know the answers to
the basics anymore—like where she belonged.
“I need to get up,” she
said.
Sam was eyeing Egbert with horror.
“What is that?”
Glancing at the silly melting smiley
face immediately had the opposite effect on Grace. She grinned.
“Egbert. He cheers me up.”
Sam’s gaze then fell on Heathcliff, who
was crouched on one side of her in his brooding chicken pose. The
flaps of fat at the bottom of his belly seeped away from him like a
furry puddle. “Too bad the painting can’t do something for your
cat. He does not look good. Do they make kitty
amphetamines?”
“He’s just old.”
“Pathetically old. You should get him a
friend or something.”
“He has a friend. She’s under the bed.
She’s old, too.”
“Having an old friend under the bed
probably doesn’t do him much good.”
“Those kitties are devoted to each
other. The shelter I adopted them from said they couldn’t be
separated. Heathcliff is probably just glad to know his old
friend’s there.” She gave him a gentle nudge with a sheet-draped
knee. “Kind of like having an old brother in Beirut.”
After Sam left her in peace so that she
could get up and get dressed, she fought the urge to burrow under
the covers and go back to sleep. She craved oblivion. But there was
too much to do today to waste time wallowing in self pity. She
sprang out of bed in the hope that brisk movement would bring on a
more zippity-doo-dah outlook. The strategy worked—at least until
the view of her closet stopped her cold. All her boring
clothes.
No wonder Ben had dumped
her.
After that, every routine seemed to
contain a mental sand trap. In the bathroom mirror she noted
blemishes that hadn’t been there before, and she began to wonder
about teeth bleaching. Amber had perfect teeth.
Downstairs, Sam and Lou were already in
a fracas over his record collection.
“They don’t need rearranging,” Lou was
saying, his voice tense.
“But I could alphabetize
them.”
“I don’t want them alphabetized! I want
them where I can find them.”
She swerved away from the argument, but
of course the idea of music made her start chewing over the
possibilities for Rigoletto’s. If she did decide to stay in Austin
permanently, what would become of the store, and its
customers?
The trouble was, the thought of
Rigoletto’s didn’t pain her like it had before. She didn’t feel the
pull toward Portland that she had during the summer. Yet for so
long, Rigoletto’s had been her baby, her life. Could she give that
up for good?
In the kitchen she was surprised to
find Dominic sitting alone at the table, staring intently at the
salt and pepper shakers. Iago, obviously walked and fed, was under
the table, his backside propped on one of Dominic’s sneakers. The
dog looked up at Grace when she entered the room and smacked his
jaws in greeting.
“Hey.” Dominic’s tone was
somber.
“What’s going on?” she asked him.
“Didn’t I see another car in front of your house?”
“My grandparents are here,” he said in
a monotone.
“That’s great. Must be good to see
them.”
“It’s awful,” he said. “I don’t think
they even wanted to come—they just thought they had to. And now
they’re acting as if everything is normal. Lily’s all dressed up
and keeps trying to impress everybody, but nobody cares, and Jordan
went to a friend’s house. Nobody mentions my mom’s name, or Nina’s.
It’s like they’re trying to pretend they never existed. Sometimes I
even wonder myself, except they had to have existed or I wouldn’t
feel this way, would I?”
“What way?”
“Like someone hit my chest with a
rock.” He started fiddling with the salt and pepper
shakers.
And she thought she had problems. She
sank down in a chair. “Did . . . your mom always do a lot for the
holidays?” She’d almost referred to her as Jennifer, as if they’d
been acquainted. After hearing Ray talk about her, Grace did feel
like she knew her. A little.
“From Halloween on, Mom was always
busy,” he said. “Before Thanksgiving she made food for days. I’d
help her sometimes. We ate leftovers for a week afterward. Last
year was really great. Nina and I made three kinds of pie, and then
Granny Kate brought a pineapple chess pie, so we had four. Just the
pies took up a whole counter. It was crazy. This year Granny Kate
brought two, but Jordan stole one.”
“That’s awful!”
“And now when I’m in the kitchen and I
look at the one sorry pie, I keep thinking about last year. I can’t
help it. Last year was so much better—we had
everything.”
She nodded. Poor Dominic. To lose so
much, so young. She couldn’t imagine how he felt.
He sighed and stood up. “I have to go
back.”
“Come over later, if you have time. Dad
will probably be glad for a rest from Sam and Steven and
me.”
After he’d left, she got up to check
the oven. There was shouting in the next room.
A moment later, Sam skittered in as if
he’d been ejected from the living room by a boot to the rear. “Some
people just refuse to be helped!” he snapped.
“Not me,” she assured him. “You can
help me by hauling this turkey out of the oven.”
He did as he was told, donning oven
mitts and then wincing under the weight of the bird as he pulled
the rack out. “What’s this stuffed with? Gravel?”
She laughed. “I hope not. But I’m never
thinking my clearest at four A.M.”
A car door slammed outside and Iago let
out several sharp barks.
“That might be Emily,” Grace said. “I
should go see.”
“Who’s Emily?”
She was already on the way out of the
kitchen, although she nearly bumped into her dad on the way
through. “I think someone’s here.”
“I know, Dad. I’m heading for the
door.”
“What’s going on in here?” Lou asked,
gaping at the opened oven. “Why is Sam taking the turkey out
already?”
“Because it’s done, Dad,” Sam
said.
“We’re not about to eat, are
we?”
“It doesn’t matter. You can’t let it
sit in an oven forever or it will have the consistency of shoe
leather.”
She left Sam to sort out the turkey
situation with their father and ran to the front door.
The new arrival was only Steven. He
smiled, holding up a foil-covered platter.
“Where’s Emily?” Grace
asked.
“She couldn’t make it. She sent along
something for us, though.”
As the arguing from the kitchen ramped
up into shouting, Grace peeled back the foil on the plate Steven
was holding, revealing a festive ring of three-colored, wriggling
Jell-O. “This is really weird. Did I miss the memo on the retro
Jell-O revival?”
Steven frowned. “What are they yelling
about in there?”
Grace waved her free hand as she took
the plate from him. “Don’t mind them. They’ve been spatting all
mor—”
A clattering crash from the kitchen cut
her words short, and was followed by Sam’s voice, yelling,
“Oh, great! Just great!”
Steven and Grace hurried toward the
kitchen.
Shoulders and heads bowed, Sam and Lou
were standing in the middle of the kitchen in a puddle of turkey
juice, which Iago was frantically lapping up as fast as he could.
The turkey itself was sprawled on its side on the floor, looking
like a crime victim with its stuffing guts spilling out over the
linoleum.
“This could be
a problem,” Sam observed.