Grady
She looks so tired.
I’ve seen that exhausted, dazed look in my mother’s eyes before, and I can’t think about that year of hell. Watching my mother slip away before my eyes after she lost the love of her life, battling my own grief and trying to take care of her. I had Carl before. Now it’s just me, and I don’t know if I can do this alone.
As if working on some canine sixth sense that she needs extra protection, Ares immediately parks himself next to her chair and stays there, even when I head to the kitchen. I make her some tea and Mom tells me the details of the accident.
Carl had been working overtime, pulling an extra shift at the plant, because he and Renée had a new baby, and he hated for money to be tight. It was raining, he’d likely been tired, and the other driver - who was drunk - hit his truck head-on, spinning him into the concrete overpass. By the time they got him to shock trauma, he’d already slipped into a coma, and he died within an hour of arriving at the hospital.
“Gina from the funeral home called,” Mom says. “They can do the service on Thursday morning. I’ve written a list of people who need to be called, and I’ve told Renée to think about anyone she needs to let know about it.” She sounds lost, distracted. Worse than when my dad died, which scares me. “Janice is coming over after work to make the calls for us.”
Roly-poly little Janice, my mother’s closest friend, sets my teeth on edge on a normal day but is just the person you want around in a crisis. I have no doubt she’ll call every person on that list in ten minutes flat and then start organizing the wake. As annoying as she is, she’s always been great to my mom, and she’s nothing if not efficient.
“People will bring food, but we’re going to need some paper plates and plastic cutlery.”
“I’ll make a list,” I offer, but my mom pulls one out of her pocket and hands it to me. I realize that while I was packing and driving, Mom was already organizing the details as best she could, probably in an attempt to distract herself from her pain.
“You have a suit?” she asks absently.
Just like a mother. “Yeah, Ma. Got a suit.”
“You know Cassie’s staying all week?”
Ah, there it is.
I wondered how long it would take my mother to mention my ex-wife. I glance at the clock. Forty minutes. She’s slipping. I chalk it up to the grief.
“Yes.”
“Good of her to come,” she murmurs.
“That’s Cassie.”
“Yeah, it is. She’s a wonderful girl.”
“Ma,” I warn her. We’ve been down this path more times than I care to think about, but today I can’t do this with her.
She waves her hand at me. “I’m not starting. I’m not. I’m saying, is all. So many women I know can’t stand their sons- and daughters-in-law. I’m lucky you and Carl were sensible about women.” She sips her tea. “I got so lucky with you boys.” Her eyes glisten and I’m overcome by a wave of sadness for my mother.
Just the thought of losing Chloe or Caden leaves me breathless with pain. I know that my brother being an adult doesn’t make that pain less for my mother. Maybe it makes it more, because she’s lost both a son and a friend in Carl.
I clear my throat. “Maybe I should go get that stuff before Cass and the kids get here. Will you be okay?”
She nods. “I’ll be fine. Janice will be here soon.”
When I stand, Ares looks at me but remains in place. Even the jingle of the car keys doesn’t move him from my mother’s side. He’s firmly rooted there, a steadfast sentinel, the look in his eyes telling me that he’ll come if I command him but he hopes I’ll let him remain where he’s needed. And because my dog is one of the wisest creatures on the planet, I let him stay.
* * * *
The thing about a loved one’s death is that everything is incredibly hectic just at the time you feel you can’t possibly deal with anything else. Maybe shock is the body’s way of giving you the time to handle things like life insurance policies and funeral arrangements and notifying employers. It feels like a horrific dream I can’t wake from. Luckily, everyone I speak to has been unfailingly polite.
When I call about my brother’s truck, the sympathetic wrecker driver bends over backwards to accommodate us. “When you get a chance, man,” he says when I tell him I have to plan my brother’s funeral and take care of his wife and four kids before I can come and clean the personal effects out of his vehicle. “No charge for the storage as long as someone gets it out by the end of the month. I knew your brother. He was a great guy. I’m sorry for your loss.”
My loss
. Loss is supposed to feel empty, but I feel as though my insides are filled with lead. When I leave Mom’s I wander around the grocery store for a full hour with everything on her list in the basket, certain I’m missing things we need. I buy sugary breakfast cereal for the kids, kinds I’m not even sure they’ll eat. Batteries. Toothpaste. Treats for Ares. Five different packs of gum. I don’t even chew gum, but I figure someone might need it.
Then I call Renée, who sounds so rough when she answers the phone I drive over immediately. When I get there she’s still in her pajamas, dark smudges like bruises under her uncharacteristically tired blue eyes. Her mother had come and collected all the kids except Sophie, who’s still nursing. I send Mom a text to let her know what I’m doing and sit with my brother’s widow a while.
Renée’s one of the happiest and strongest people I’ve ever met, but at the moment she’s a shadow of her former self. Her ethereal beauty combined with her grief gives her a ghostly appearance, almost as if she could disappear in front of me. Right now she’s as fragile as a dragonfly’s wing. Her flaxen locks fall around Sophie like a curtain as she smooths her infant daughter’s eyebrows with her index finger.
“She frowns in her sleep,” she murmurs. “Such a worried little face. Carl always—” The words catch in her throat and she blinks and looks down at her baby. “She isn’t going to know his voice,” she says with quiet horror. “Carl’s voice. Sophie won’t— The kids will forget…”
“No, sweetheart.” I shake my head. “You have a hundred recordings of Carl, easily, and so do I. No one’s going to forget Carl’s voice.”
She nods absently, all her fears whooshing back out of her and leaving her sagging in the chair.
“I think I’m going to put her down and take a nap, Grady. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m heading back to Mom’s, anyway. I was thinking if it’s okay we might take the big kids out tomorrow. Chloe and Caden would love to see them.”
“There’s a fall festival downtown this weekend. Face painting, hayrides, that sort of thing. Your guys would probably like it, too.” The complete absence of happiness in her eyes destroys me. Carl would hate seeing his woman broken and grieving. He worked so hard to make her happy, to make her laugh and smile every single day. He loved her enough that he’d want her to move past all this sadness and have her smiles and laughter back. I just wonder if she ever can.
I nod. “We were going to go to the pumpkin patch at home. Kids’ll love it.” I squeeze her hand as I head for the door.
“Thanks, Grady,” she murmurs.
“Sure thing.” I leave her to her nap.
On the way back to my mother’s I dare to allow myself a glimmer of hope that I can go with the kids to the festival. Cassie will do anything that Renée suggests for her children, so the fall festival is a given for her. But whether or not my presence will be welcome is another story altogether.
Nonetheless, I’m determined to try. We’re both here all week, and I want to make the best of it. If I can’t have her back - and I know that’s next to impossible, just as I know I’ll never stop wanting it to happen - then I’ll settle for friendship. Before another decade goes by, I want Cassie back in my life.
Cassie
Despite killer traffic and a cramped neck that was so painful I almost made Chloe take the wheel, I got us to Delaware in decent time. We pull up to Donna’s little brick house and into the driveway, and then I’m following the kids through the front door as I’ve done so many times in the past.
The difference, of course, is that Grady is here now. My stomach clenches as I consider what to say to him. I practice a wobbly smile and plaster it on my face when it seems passable enough, and I walk to the door willing myself not to faint on the walkway.
Standing in Donna’s foyer always makes me feel seventeen again. She hasn’t changed a thing in this house, not in all these years, and it’s both disconcerting and strangely comforting. It even smells the same, a faint mixture of lemon-scented household cleaner, chocolate chip cookies, and vanilla candles.
But Donna looks much older. Losing her son has ravaged her, leaving her beautiful blue eyes sunken and her posture stooped. She’s only sixty-seven, but today she looks a decade older. It’s not until the kids surround her in a silly “Nana group hug” that some light crosses her face. I’m glad we’re here for a bit, because her babies are exactly what she needs right now. She squeezes the two of them tightly, and for a moment she looks completely at peace.
Chloe kisses her cheek and murmurs, “Are you okay, Nana?” I’m proud of her being sweet to her grandmother, but if I’m honest I’m also a bit jealous - all I ever get from her is a bunch of snark.
“I’m hanging in there, sweet girl,” Donna says, fluffing Chloe’s long brown hair and giving her a squeeze. “Your daddy’s on a store run for me, but when he gets back I’ll have him help you with your bags.”
“I’ve got it, Nana,” Caden volunteers, though he’s never unloaded the car on his own before. I raise my eyebrows at him as he asks me quietly for the keys and he widens his eyes at me as if to say,
Mom, it’s cool, I’ve got this.
I’m reminded that Grady and Carl didn’t grow up to be the men they became because Donna did everything for them. She had high expectations for her boys, especially without their father around. She was a single parent, underpaid and overworked, and they had to chip in a lot. I always secretly thought Donna made Grady and Carl men before their time, but maybe learning to be men was exactly what they needed after they lost their dad. Maybe it gave them a sense of purpose.
At home, Caden isn’t treated like the man of the house. I treat him and Chloe equally in terms of expected duties. But as I watch my son puff up with pride when he drags our suitcases in singlehandedly, I realize I should e-mail Grady and see what he thinks. Maybe giving Caden a few more duties around the house would be good for him. I’m lost in this thought when I hear my son cry out in a decidedly boyish voice, “Hey, Dad!”
I’ve still got my back to the door, and I feel him before I see him, that invisible thread that once connected us reminding me that some ties can never be broken. I shouldn’t still react to him this way, but I do. I
feel
him, which is why I can never be around him. After all this time, it’s still too raw.
When Grady and I got divorced, I hired a lawyer and negotiated a firm custody arrangement which I said was based on my concern about Grady’s ability to care for two small children more than a couple days a month. Though my concern was genuine, that arrangement was just as much about my need for control of the situation and my fear of maintaining strict boundaries with Grady. I knew I was weak when it came to him. I had to stay as far away from him as I possibly could.
As the years passed, although we never went back to court, we maintained the arrangement. Grady’s visitation schedule of every other weekend meant that we both got some free time (handy when I was dating Adam) and I didn’t have to see Grady very much at all. By the time Chloe was a teenager, I was almost always at yoga when Grady picked the kids up, so I saw him even less.
And God, I had to work hard not to notice him when I did see him. I’m only human. My ex-husband is a good-looking man by most anyone’s standards: Six feet, two inches tall with dark curls, blue eyes, and gloriously freckled skin that turns golden in the summer. He’s been an athlete all his life, and I know he still runs. You can tell by looking at him that he’s a well-maintained man.
Usually, he comes to my door and stands respectfully just inside the foyer while I call for Chloe and Caden and retreat to the kitchen where I can offer him a drink (that he never accepts) and feign cleaning while he collects the kids and leaves. If I’m dropping off or picking up I usually stand in his doorway behind the kids and then beat a hasty exit. Any substantial conversations we have are via e-mail, which was something I started after our separation at my lawyer’s advice to protect myself. I knew that Grady would never screw me over with our custody agreement, but it became an easy way to deal with him and not have to actually face him.
Eleven years later, here we are. I haven’t spent any significant time with him since our divorce, really, and now I’m standing in his mother’s living room, prepared to be under the same roof with him for an entire week.
What in the hell am I thinking?
When I turn he says, “Hi Cassie. Thanks for bringing the kids.”
If he was anyone else I’d hug him tight and offer my condolences about his brother. Instead, I mumble, “Yes, of course.” Then I turn to Donna and embrace her tightly while Grady stands with his hand on Caden’s shoulder. Somehow I can’t force myself to hug him, even though I feel completely stupid. It’s just too awkward. But he is the bigger person, because he closes the distance between us when I’m done with Donna and pulls me in for a quick, one-shoulder squeeze.
It lasts all of two uncomfortable seconds, that hug. It’s over in a flash, but I’m conscious of my own heartbeat, the sound of my breath, the solid warmth of Grady’s chest as he holds me to him and the sudden coolness when he releases me. It’s both strange and familiar, just like the feeling of stepping into this house, and I don’t know what to do with the burning in my chest that it prompts.
Luckily my brain takes over where my body fails me. I refuse to give head space to something that was socially necessary, no big deal, and over in a flash. I brush it aside. I force my head to disconnect from the strange sensations in my body. The only thing I allow myself to linger on is the fact that I didn’t cowboy up first and Grady had to be the grownup. That, more than anything, irks me. I’ve always held the upper hand there and I have no plans to give up that control.
I can already tell it’s gonna be a long week.