Grace

  “I’m not lying.”

  There was silence, then Joel’s voice softened. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  I breathed out. “Okay, I played hooky. You satisfied?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “How’d you know, anyway?”

  “I waited for you at the bus stop. I wanted to get a malt or something.”

  “Oh.”

  “You spend all your time with that girl.”

  “You have a problem with that?”

  “No,” he said.

  The sadness in his voice made me feel bad. “I’m having a birthday party for her tomorrow. She wants you to come.”

  “Really?”

  “She said so.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Neither of us spoke for a minute, then Joel asked, “Do you want me to come?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “I’m buying a chocolate cake from Heller’s.”

  “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

  CHAPTER Twelve

  I don’t know why we’re

  celebrating my birthday.

  It would have been

  better that I’d never been born.

  GRACE’S DIARY

  WEDNESDAY, OCT. 17

  In spite of my fears, no one arrested me at school the next day. In fact, it appeared that no one even missed me. Only my English teacher, Mrs. Johnson, asked where I was. I said I was sick, which wasn’t a complete lie since I had had a stomachache after lunch. (Though probably just worry-induced indigestion.) Mrs. Johnson made a sharp check in her roll book as I took my seat and didn’t even ask for a note from home. I guess I just looked so squeaky-clean that no one thought I was capable of breaking rules.

  My mom went to the bank on her lunch hour and left the money from my paycheck on my bed, just beating the snowstorm that completely whited out the city for about an hour. It had slowed to a gentle fall by the time I got home from school.

  I got the rest of my money from the jar under my bed, then rode my bike about a mile and a half to the nearest hardware store to get Grace’s present.

  I had decided several days earlier what to get Grace for her birthday. It was the most expensive thing that I had ever bought. I hadn’t considered how I would get it home on my bike. The box it came in was way too big to fit in my schoolbag and too bulky to hold under my arm. I had to balance it between my handlebars and straddle it with my legs. It was a miracle I made it home alive.

  When I got home I stowed the box in the garage. Then I walked to Heller’s, a small bakery just three blocks from our home where I bought a small round chocolate layer cake. It was covered with dark fudge frosting and the woman from the bakery wrote Happy Birthday on it in red icing. She asked if I wanted to put a name on it but I said no.

  I brought it home and put the cake in a travel case in the garage, then I went inside to get Joel. Not only had he decided to attend the party but he had drawn Grace a birthday card and put one of his favorite baseball cards inside. I almost said something about girls not liking baseball cards but for once I did the right thing and just kept my mouth shut. We were about to go out to the clubhouse when my mother stopped me.

  “Eric, we’re about ready to eat. Would you please set the table?”

  “Sure. Just give me a minute.”

  “No, right now.”

  I turned to Joel and whispered, “Go tell Grace we have to eat first.”

  “Okay.” He ran off.

  I got the dishes and was setting them around the table when my mother said, “So Mr. Berg asked me if you have a girlfriend.” Mr. Berg was an assistant manager at Warshaw’s and the last person on the planet I would expect to show an interest in my love life.

  “Why did he ask that?”

  “He said he saw you outside the store with a young woman.”

  My heart froze. I began laying down the silverware. “Must have been someone who looked like me,” I said.

  “He said she was pretty.”

  “Then it definitely wasn’t me.”

  My mother said, “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re a handsome young man, just like your dad. Trust me, someday you’ll have to beat the girls off.”

  I just wanted this conversation to be over. “Sure, Mom. So, what’s for dinner?”

  She smiled at my obvious deflection. “Meatloaf.”

  Joel walked back in the back door.

  “Don’t track any snow in,” my mother said.

  “Sorry.”

  I looked over at him and he winked, which I knew meant “mission accomplished” but looked more like he was having a facial seizure. Joel’s winks were as subtle as a diesel horn.

  That night at dinner my mother recounted the earlier conversation about Mr. Berg with my father.

  “I don’t know why Eric doesn’t have a girlfriend,” my dad said as if I wasn’t there. “I had my first crush when I was twelve.” Then, as if this reminded him of something he said to my mother. “Hon, let’s go to a movie tonight. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “After I do the dishes.”

  “Let the boys do them. There’s an eight o’clock showing of If a Man Answers at the Avalon.”

  “Isn’t that the one with Sandra Dee?” my mother asked.

  “Sure is,” my dad replied.

  She looked at her watch. “We’ll have to hurry.”

  It wasn’t even seven but since my father now walked about as fast as a mummy in the Saturday horror matinee movies, they always gave themselves a lot of time. They left Joel and me sitting at the table—a surprisingly convenient turn of events.

  “Should we do the dishes?” Joel asked.

  “Just until they leave.”

  I filled the sink with soapy water while Joel cleared the table.

  Before they left, my mom came back to check on us. She had dressed up and she cocked her head to one side as she put on her earrings. “I’m so pleased, you boys jumped right on those dishes.”

  “We have homework,” I said.

  She looked at me as if she hadn’t quite heard me correctly, which I should have expected considering how little interest I’d ever shown in my homework.

  “We’ll be back around ten. I expect you to be asleep before we get back.”

  “Okay,” we said in unison.

  She kissed us on our foreheads, then put on her coat. We heard the Bee crank to life and drive away, spitting gravel behind it.

  “Hurry,” I said. I rinsed the dishes and put everything on the drying rack. When I was finished I climbed up on the counter to reach the highest shelf where the matches were kept. My parents never actually purchased matches. My dad would just always grab a handful of free packs from diners and bring them home. I shoved two matchbooks into my pocket, then started looking for candles but couldn’t find any.

  Joel remembered that he’d seen some candles in the Christmas ornament box in the back room and ran off to get them. He returned with a single long white candle that tapered into a point. “It’s all there is,” he said.

  I grabbed a cake cutter, utensils, and three small plastic plates while Joel retrieved his homemade birthday card. We put on our coats and went out to the garage.

  Joel was impressed by the size of my gift. “What’s in the box?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I carried the box, plates, and utensils. Joel carried the cake.

  The snow had been blown in tall banks nearly halfway up the side of the clubhouse. Grace had pushed the snow away from the door to keep from being sealed inside. Outside the clubhouse, I set everything down and shoved the candle halfway into the cake. Then I knocked on the wall. “We’re here.”

  “Come in,” Grace sang.

  I climbed in and Joel handed me the cake. I left the big box outside the door. As usual Grace was wearing her coat. “What a storm,” I said.

  “I almost got snowed in.”

  She stared at the cake.

  “H
appy Birthday!” Joel said as he crawled in. He actually crawled right over to Grace and handed her his card. “I made you this,” he said proudly. It bothered me that he’d gotten to her first.

  She smiled. “Thanks, Joel.” She opened his card. He’d drawn a picture of a girl in a box beneath the words, Happy Birthday Grays.

  “That’s a picture of you,” he said. “Your nose isn’t really that big. I just don’t draw that good.”

  “Thank you.” She opened the card. “Wow, a real Joe DiMaggio card. That’s so special.”

  “You know who that is?” I asked.

  “Of course. This is a very special card.” She turned to Joel. “Thank you, Joel. I’ll always treasure it.” Then she hugged him.

  She was just being nice, I told myself. But she looked pretty happy. Joel looked pretty happy too.

  “I brought a cake,” I said. I handed her the cake. “It’s all chocolate. The frosting and everything. I bought it. Myself.”

  “Thank you, Eric.”

  “We could only find one candle,” I said.

  “Can I light it?” Joel asked.

  Joel was really getting on my nerves.

  “Sure,” Grace said.

  “Okay,” I said. I surrendered a matchbook.

  It took him about a half dozen matches to get it done. I got more annoyed at each spent match but Grace just watched happily.

  “Okay, now that it’s finally lit,” I said, “let’s sing.”

  Joel joined in. “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Grace, happy birthday to you.”

  Grace clapped.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now make a wish and blow it out.”

  Grace turned to me. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to look at it for a while.”

  “Sure. Whatever you want. It’s your birthday.”

  She stared into the flame for a moment then said, without looking at either of us, “I can see things in flames.”

  After a moment I asked, “What do you mean? What kind of things?”

  “I can see the future.”

  That was one thing about Grace: I never really knew if she was telling the truth or if she wasn’t but believed that she was.

  “Like a fortune-teller?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Uh huh. What do you want to know?”

  I felt a little funny. I remembered seeing something like this once on television. There was a proper way to phrase the question. “O, seer of the future,” I said, “what does my future hold?”

  Without acknowledging whether or not I’d asked correctly, she looked intently into the candle, seeming to lose herself to the flame’s irregular swaying. She looked at me and said, “Someday you will be someone who is feared.”

  I suppose I expected about anything but that. Though I liked the idea of being feared, I didn’t believe her. “You must have the wrong guy,” I said. “The only thing that fears me is a donut.”

  “Last summer I saw a grasshopper hop away from him,” Joel said.

  “Enough,” I said.

  “The flame never lies,” she said. “You will be feared.”

  “How about me?” Joel said. “Do me.”

  Grace gazed back into the dancing flame. After a full minute she looked back at Joel. “You are going to be someone famous. Someday people will ask for your autograph.”

  Joel smiled broadly. “Really?”

  “Famous for what?” I asked, even more annoyed that his fortune was clearly better than mine.

  “I don’t know,” she said matter-of-factly. “Joel, I better get your autograph now before I have to pay for it.”

  This is absurd, I thought.

  “Okay,” Joel said. Grace had a pen in her bag and Joel signed the back of the baseball card. “I’ll give you all the autographs you want.”

  “One will be fine, thank you.” She took back the pen, then stowed it with her card in her bag. “All right. I’m going to blow the candle out now,” she said. “Here goes nothing.” Even though there was only one candle, it took her two tries.

  “Darn it,” Joel said. “I’m not going to be famous.”

  “What I see in the candle isn’t a wish,” she said. “It’s just what’s going to happen.”

  All I could see was that Grace was giving way too much attention to my little brother.

  “Now it’s time for my present,” I said.

  “There’s more?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” I climbed halfway outside the door and pulled in the box. It wasn’t wrapped but I had folded its paper sack around it.

  “It’s really big,” Joel said proudly.

  “It sure is,” Grace said.

  “Yeah. I didn’t have a chance to wrap it.” I pushed the box her way. “You take it out.”

  She lifted the box from the bag and set it on the ground for all of us to admire. It was a General Electric brand electric space heater capable of 2,500 BTUs of heating power.

  “This is for me?”

  “Yeah. That should keep it plenty warm in here.”

  “Omigosh!”

  She was clearly more impressed with my gift than she was with Joel’s dumb baseball card.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Kmart. I bought it.”

  “You bought that for me?”

  “Yeah. Let’s try it.” I opened the box and pulled out the heater. It was about two feet wide, two feet high, and the beige color of surgical cabinets with a chrome net face. I set it in the corner, unplugged the nightlight, then plugged in the heater, turning the dial all the way to high. There was the whirring of an internal fan, then the coiled metal filaments began glowing red followed by a rush of heat. For the first time that winter the clubhouse became comfortably warm.

  “That is awesome,” Joel said.

  Grace said, “I’m so happy. I’m going to take my coat off!”

  Her pleasure pleased me. “It works good,” I said. Joel and I took off our coats too.

  I looked over at her and she was looking at me with that look again. The one that made me feel funny inside.

  “You shouldn’t have,” she said, which was what my mother always said to my father on birthdays. “That must have cost a fortune.”

  I nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “I don’t know what to say. You are the best man in the whole world.” Tears welled up in her eyes as she smiled at me.

  Joel looked back and forth between us. “Can we eat the cake?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  I retrieved the cake cutter from my coat and cut three large servings. It was an incredibly perfect moment. I had the admiration of a beautiful girl and chocolate cake. I had never before had the former, rarely the latter, and never simultaneously.

  “Ah,” Grace sighed with pleasure. “This is so delicious.”

  Joel had frosting smeared around his mouth. “Yeah, this is the best cake ever.”

  “There’s plenty,” I said, feeling even more magnanimous than before.

  “We need milk,” Joel said.

  “I have milk,” Grace said. She crawled out and brought back the milk we’d packed in the snow. Grace poured the milk in the tin cup, which we passed around, and then we all had seconds of the cake. Nothing had ever tasted that good to me before.

  “Hey,” said Joel, “what has two humps and lives at the North Pole?”

  “I give up,” Grace said.

  “A lost camel.”

  It wasn’t much of a joke, but for three kids high on chocolate cake it was like the atom bomb of jokes. Grace laughed so hard that milk shot out of her nose, which made us laugh even harder.

  This launched a competition as we each tried to better the last joke. We were laughing so hard that we were crying and Grace kept saying, “I’m going to wet my pants.”

  I don’t know how long we’d been out there; hours I think. Long enough to finish off the cake. That night the clubhouse was the best and happiest place on the entire planet.

  Finally
we ran out of jokes and our laughter faded. “We better go before Mom and Dad get home,” Joel said. Grace and I just looked at each other. “Well, I’m going,” he finally said. He got down on his knees and crawled out.

  “Thanks for coming, Joel,” Grace called after him. “And for the nice gift.”

  “I better go too,” I said. I knelt down at the door.

  “Wait.” Grace put her hands on my cheeks. “Thank you, Eric.” Then she kissed me on the mouth. Not a short peck like one from my mom or Aunt Geniel, but a real kiss that lasted more than ten seconds.

  It was the first time that I had ever been romantically kissed. It was even better than the chocolate cake. When we finished kissing we just looked at each other. I probably looked dizzy. She just looked happy. “This was the best birthday I’ve ever had,” she said.

  “Me too,” I said. She laughed and it was soft and sweet like a wind chime.

  “I’ll go now,” I said.

  She smiled. I think she was pleased to have so disoriented me. “See you tomorrow.”

  I got back down on all-fours. “Bye.”

  “Good night.”

  Joel was still waiting for me outside the door. When we’d taken a few steps he asked, “How much was that thing you got her?”

  “Twenty-seven dollars.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Yeah.” I put my hands in my pocket. “Did you see what she did?”

  “What?”

  “She kissed me.”

  “On the mouth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whoa!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Whoa.”

  He looked down as our boots left deep impressions in the snow. “Was it worth twenty-seven dollars?”

  I smiled. “Sure was.”

  CHAPTER Thirteen

  A guy on the radio said there was a ninety percent chance

  that we wouldn’t be here in the morning.

  GRACE’S DIARY

  MONDAY, OCT. 22

  Monday started out bad and deteriorated so rapidly that I shouldn’t have been surprised that the day ended with the threat of total global annihilation.

  Between first and second period the hoods locked me in my locker. I was in there for nearly twenty minutes before a passing custodian let me out but not until he’d delivered the obligatory lecture.