Circle of Grace, page 9
Grace went into the kitchen. The others followed her and continued the conversation around the table while Grace put pork chops in the skillet to brown.
“Doesn’t he know anything but football?” Liz said.
Tess rolled her eyes. “A man who looks like that doesn’t have to know anything about anything.”
Liz retrieved a brick of cheddar cheese out of the refrigerator drawer and a box of crackers from the cabinet. “I don’t get it,” she said, sitting down at the table again. “How can Lovey fall for a guy who has nothing on his mind but sports?”
Grace turned from the sink and set a pot of potatoes on the back burner. “I don’t think that’s the only thing on his mind.”
“You got that right,” Tess said. “Look at him. Look at her. And tell me this has to do with some kind of intellectual compatibility.”
Liz handed a cracker and a slice of cheese to Grace. “So it’s just chemistry?”
“I doubt if Mr. Tight End knows diddly-squat about chemistry.” Grace left the chops to finish cooking and came over to the table to sit next to Liz. Lovey’s new boyfriend had stirred up the cauldron of unwelcome thoughts and memories inside her. She needed to frame her response carefully, to keep things light, so she wouldn’t reveal the anxiety that surged through her veins. “I have to admit, he is handsome—and charming, if you like jocks. But are we really comfortable with the idea of them sleeping together—right here in this house?”
“What difference does it make if they’re doing it here or somewhere else?”
“Probably none,” Grace said. “It just feels—I don’t know. Wrong.”
Liz grinned at her. “Are you telling me that if a hunk like Bo Tennyson came into your life and swept you off your feet, you wouldn’t have sex with him?”
“Well, for one thing, Lovey’s Bo is not the kind of guy I’d be attracted to,” she said. “But even if I were in love, I wouldn’t sleep with a man before marriage.”
“Even if it meant losing him.”
“If it meant losing him, then he wouldn’t be the kind of person I’d want to be with.”
“Damn, Grace, haven’t you ever heard of the sexual revolution? You’re still living in the nineteenth century!”
“Maybe so.” Grace got up and went back to her pork chops. “But as I recall, Liz, you once defined love as a chink in the armor where the knife sticks in. Sex outside—I mean before—marriage is risky. Lovey could get hurt. She could even get…pregnant.” She speared one of the chops with a vicious stab of the fork and flipped it over.
“So tell me,” Liz muttered, “where’d you come by all this omniscience? Do you always think you’re right?”
Grace forced a smile. “Of course I always think I’m right,” she quipped. “If I didn’t think I was right, I would think something else.”
Liz let out a snort of derision. “What about you, Tess? What’s your take on having our little house turned into a love nest?”
Tess shrugged. “I have to admit, I’m with Grace on this one.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I think you need to have a real relationship, a commitment, before you get into that kind of intimacy. And even though Lovey says they’re already talking about getting married, they haven’t known each other long enough to make a decision like that.”
“Besides”—Grace tested the potatoes with a fork—“people aren’t always what they seem to be.”
Liz cut a glance at Grace, and she averted her eyes. “So, Tess, you want to be the one to tell her that she and Mr. Tight End need to rent a room?”
“No.” Tess shook her head. “As much as I’d prefer that Lovey would think this through more, I’m not her mother, and I can’t go laying down the law to her.” She turned and looked at Grace. “And neither can you, Grace. We may wish she’d make wiser decisions, but we can’t be the celibacy police for her.”
Grace nodded and pretended to concentrate on mashing the potatoes. But she didn’t agree with Tess. Not by a long shot.
Grace lay awake in the dormer, listening to the sounds coming from the bedroom below. Tess was snoring softly on the other side of the room.
Once in a while, Lovey had said. Bo wouldn’t be here very often. Just now and then, when he could manage to get away.
Grace didn’t know how he did it, between classes and practice and weekend football games. But he was there at least once a week, sometimes two or three times. He would roar in at ten or eleven at night and get up the next morning just in time to take a shower and use up all the hot water.
It was bad enough having his clothes and play books and beer cans scattered all over the downstairs. Pizza stains on the couch and shaving scum in the bathroom sink. But for Grace, the worst of it by far was what she endured after the lights went out.
For weeks it had been like this. Night after night, grunts and moans and muffled shouts from the two of them downstairs. The headboard slamming against the wall, and Grace upstairs trying to shut out the images that came to her in the darkness. Because in her mind’s eye, Bo and Lovey weren’t the primary players. It was Daddy, and that Ryerson woman.
She felt a little like a voyeur, straining her ears in the darkness. She didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to know what they were doing, what Daddy had done with that woman—and how many others? But her imagination wouldn’t leave her alone.
Every time she heard them having sex in the bedroom below, a seething rage rose up in her—anger at Lovey for letting Bo take over their house, fury at her father for his infidelity. She’d had enough. And yet, much to her dismay, the noises also brought up unsettling feelings in her, longings she couldn’t seem to conquer.
She shifted in bed and tried to force the unwelcome pictures from her mind. At last the house grew silent, and she dozed.
At four A.M. she awoke to the sounds of someone moving around in the kitchen. Grace certainly didn’t want to confront Bo in the middle of the night, probably in his boxer shorts—or worse. But if it was Lovey, this might just be the chance she had been waiting for.
She sneaked down the stairs on bare feet. The kitchen lights were off, but when she peered around the doorpost, she caught a glimpse of a seersucker bathrobe, pale blue in the light from the refrigerator.
“Lovey!” she hissed.
Lovey turned, looking rumpled and sleepy. “Grace! What are you doing up?”
“I heard a noise.”
“Sorry. I woke up and was hungry. Is there anything left from dinner? Bo ate most of my steak.”
“I made chicken and spinach pasta,” Grace whispered. “There, on the third shelf, in the small glass dish.”
“Thanks. Want to join me?”
“No. I think I’ll just have a glass of milk and a couple of cookies.”
Lovey spooned some of the leftover dinner into a pan and set it on the stove. “Should I add water?”
“Maybe a little, to keep it from sticking.”
Lovey waited until the pasta was heated, then came to sit with Grace at the table. “You OK, Grace? You seem—I don’t know. Funny.”
“I’m fine. But I’m glad I found you here—alone. I want to talk to you about something.”
Lovey took a bite of the chicken. “This is fabulous, Grace. Really good.”
“Thanks.”
“OK, go on,” she said around another mouthful of pasta. “What do you want to talk about?”
Grace took a deep breath. “You and Bo.”
A faraway look filled Lovey’s eyes. “He’s wonderful, isn’t he? He’s so—”
“Yes, he’s so everything,” Grace interrupted. “But, Lovey, have you really thought about this? About you and him, I mean?”
“What’s to think about?”
Grace felt her pulse begin to quicken. “I don’t know how to say this, but—” She paused. “What you’re doing with Bo is wrong.”
“Wait a minute.” Lovey held up a hand. “If this is about me sleeping with Bo—”
“Yes, it is.” Grace rushed on before Lovey could protest. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you have to listen to me. You don’t know this guy. You think you do, but you don’t.”
“What’s gotten into you? You’re acting crazy.”
To tell the truth, Grace was feeling a little crazy. Her heart was thudding painfully against her rib cage, and she felt as if some kind of explosion was building up inside her. She couldn’t control it; it was going to break out—
“People can deceive you, Lovey,” she said in a rush of conviction. “They can hurt you and betray you in ways you can’t even begin to imagine. Bo is handsome and charming, all right, but if he’s sleeping with you, what makes you think he’s not sleeping with other girls? Or what if he becomes an alcoholic? He already drinks a lot. What if he turns into a drunk and continues sleeping around when—”
“Stop it!” Lovey slammed her fist down on the table. “Grace Benedict, don’t you DARE try to undermine my relationship with Bo! You’re jealous, that’s what it is. Jealous because I’ve got a boyfriend and you don’t. We’re friends, Grace, and if you want to keep it that way, you’ll mind your own business and not meddle in mine. Bo loves me, and I love him. We’re planning to be married. But in case you haven’t noticed, the whole world isn’t required to live up to your standards.”
“Jealous, am I?” Grace gritted her teeth. “You think I’d want somebody like Bo Tennyson? Someone who looks good on the outside but is rotten to the core? Someone who’d ruin my future and—”
“What gives you the right to determine what my future should be?” Lovey interrupted, her voice tight and strained. “Who appointed you the moral lawgiver for the rest of us? Who died and made you God?”
Lovey pushed her chair back and stood towering over Grace in the dim light.
“Let’s forget this conversation ever happened,” she said, her voice low and laced with ice. Then she shook her head. “No, let’s not forget. Let’s act like this conversation never happened. Let’s go on and be friends and never speak of it again. But remember this night, Grace. Remember it for a very long time. And when you’ve been in love and faced this question for yourself, come back and tell me how your standards worked out for you.”
Then she stalked out of the room, leaving Grace alone in the early morning darkness.
-11-
IN TOUCH WITH YESTERDAY
Alone in the dark, with the circle journal still unopened in her hands, Grace marveled at how clear the memories were. She didn’t need to read the journal to recall those days, to relive the feelings.
She had never told anyone the truth about her father. And now, thirty years later, Lovey’s challenge still echoed in her ears. When you’ve been in love and faced this question for yourself, come back and tell me how your standards worked out for you….
Grace had faced the question, finally. And she had failed the test—failed it miserably.
Pride. Fear. Shame. An impossibly high tripod setting her up for a spectacular fall.
Grace opened the journal, thumbed through a few pages, and began to read the entries from their fourth year after graduation. Tess had gone off to Iowa to attend the famous Writers’ Workshop there. She was loving it, she wrote in the journal—she had finished her degree and was finding her voice, reveling in the creative high that came to her when she was writing.
Liz had moved to Atlanta to work with Coretta Scott King at the Martin Luther King Center, founded shortly after King’s death in 1968. Her entries were filled with hair-raising descriptions of protests, confrontations with the law and even the Klan, jail time, philosophical musings on methods of nonviolent action. Liz was in heaven. She was making a difference.
And Lovey. Lovey had married Bo, and the two of them were obscenely happy. She had pasted in a copy of his rookie photo, looking handsome and disheveled and macho in his purple Vikings uniform. It was unlikely he’d get to play much during the regular season, Lovey said in her distracted, rambling way, but the money was great and their house was beautiful and he loved the attention, and she was beginning to make friends with some of the other players’ wives, and she thought she might be pregnant. The Minnesota winters could freeze the quills off a porcupine, she wrote, but their love would keep them warm.
Grace could practically recite this litany by heart, so often had she read it. And every time she had the same reaction—an inner trembling, like an attack of hypoglycemia.
She knew what came next. Her own entry, in the flourishing handwriting of her youth:
You’ll never believe what has been happening in my life since I wrote last. I’ve met the most wonderful man—a handsome, intelligent, gentle soul. He comes into the library almost every afternoon, and I’ve been helping him do research for a new book he’s writing on religious beliefs and practices of Native American Peoples. He’s a historian, a professor at the university. He asked me out to coffee when my shift was over, and ever since we’ve been seeing each other regularly.
At first our conversations centered mostly on his research, and then gradually we began to talk about other things—more personal things. He has this deep, rich baritone voice, and this way of using his hands…well, I could listen to him for a lifetime. And he’s handsome, too, in a professional sort of way. He’s got dark hair with just a touch of silver at the temples, and incredible blue eyes that seem to look into my very soul. I think he’s in love with me. I know I’m in love with him.
But you can’t rush these things. We both need to be sure. He’s older than I am—almost fifteen years older—and has had some heartbreak in his life that keeps him from opening up to love. And yet the spark is there. More than a spark. More like a wildfire.
His name, by the way, is Michael.
There was a space, and then a new date—three weeks later.
Michael and I were married yesterday in a small ceremony in a chapel up in the mountains. I’m keeping my own name—Michael wants me to feel like I’m my own person and not just an adjunct to him. He’s so amazing.
I wish I could’ve had all of you there as my bridesmaids, but there simply wasn’t time. Once Michael decided to ask me, everything moved so fast. He said he didn’t want to take the chance that I would change my mind (as if I’d let someone like him get away!), and didn’t want to spend another moment apart. He is so very romantic, and so loving. The kind of person I’ve always envisioned meeting. Mama adores him. And I think that, finally, all my dreams are beginning to come true….
Grace stared at the page, wondering how on earth she could have written anything like this, even thirty years ago. This stuff was several notches above Lovey in the Department of Nausea, the kind of postpubescent tripe you’d expect in a Harlequin romance. She could almost see the cover—the muscular, steel-jawed hero grasping the lithe, golden-haired heroine by the shoulders, leaning down to kiss her.
Besides, that wasn’t the way it happened at all.
Grace looked up from her post at the circulation desk to find a man standing there with a pile of books in his arms. He was smiling, but his eyes—bright blue with crinkles around the corners—looked sad. A description leaped to her mind: ocean-deep, fathomless eyes.
She pushed the sentimental thought away and stood to her feet. “Checking these out?”
“Yes.” He heaved the pile onto the counter and fished a library card out of his wallet. “I’m Dr. Michael Forrester. And you are—”
“Grace.” She pointed to her name tag. “Grace Benedict.”
“Well, Grace Benedict, I’m happy to meet you.” He shook her hand, holding on a little longer than was absolutely necessary. “You’re new around here?”
She nodded and began to sort and stamp the books. Bam. Bam. Bam. “I’ve been here a few months.”
“I haven’t seen you,” he said. “I’d have remembered.”
His voice was low and deep, smooth as oil and heavy as honey. She didn’t dare look up. “I’m a research librarian, so I mostly spend my time in the stacks. One of the circulation workers is off sick today.”
“A researcher, hmmm?” He leaned on the counter, and she noticed that there were suede patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket. He dressed like a college professor, smelled like cologne and pipe tobacco. She generally didn’t approve of smoking, but this scent was intoxicating.
“Miss Benedict? It is Miss, isn’t it?”
She jerked her head up. “Yes.”
“But Miss Benedict is so formal. Mind if I call you Grace?”
“Of course not.” She ducked her head again and resumed her task. “Dr. Forrester, these two are restricted noncirculating books, for library use only. I’m sorry, but—”
He chuckled. “If I’m going to call you Grace, the least you can do is call me Michael.” He leaned closer, pointing at a list taped to the lower level of the counter. “I’m on the special permission list, as you can see.”
“Oh. Yes. All right.” His nearness upset her equilibrium, and she stammered like a schoolgirl. “OK. I’ll just—ah, sign them out to you, and—”
“Grace.” He laid a hand on her arm. “I don’t bite. Really I don’t.”
“Of course.” She let out a nervous laugh. “These are due back in two weeks, and—”
“I’m in here every day,” he said. “I won’t let you down.”
The unexpected intimacy of his words caught her off guard, as if he were making a solemn vow, a personal promise. Her hand shook as she returned his library card.
“Grace, I need to ask a favor.” He grinned, showing white teeth that overlapped slightly in the front. A charming, youthful smile. “I’m doing research for my new book—”
“Oh? You’re a writer?” Grace cringed as the words came out high-pitched and childish. How stupid could she possibly sound?
“I’m a history professor, actually, but I’m currently on sabbatical. My new project is a study of the religious practices of Native Americans, and I was hoping you might be able to help me.”
“Help you?” she said idiotically. “Me?”
