that belong in the same puzzle.
Gracie smiles in the same soft, polite manner she has in the picture, as if she doesn’t know what to make of this. “Thank you, Gram,” she says. “It’s sweet.”
“I remember that afternoon,” Lila says. “We had just finished fighting over the last cupcake. I threw up right after the picture was taken.”
Kelly says, “I remember that day, too. You were both a piece of work. No sooner was I done being angry at one of you than the other would act up.” She laughs, and sets down a tray of cookies on the coffee table. It’s her first moment of stillness all afternoon.
You see, my mother says to me, you are doing something now. It’s not too late. You’re showing them what to do, what to hold on to. Catharine, you’re not as hard or as useless as you think you are.
The room feels lighter now. Meggy hasn’t said anything negative in at least ten minutes. The boy with the crew cut sitting by my knee has turned Lila into a kitten. Mary is leaning against her mother on the couch, allowing Theresa rare contact. Gracie is ripping open the second present, the larger box. It is the baby blanket that I knitted out of the softest yarn I could find. Gracie holds it up for everyone to see and then drapes it over her belly, as if to warm the baby inside her.
“I didn’t know you could knit, Mother,” Kelly says. “It’s lovely.”
“I taught myself,” I say.
“Gram, I love it. It’s perfect,” Gracie says, and then she starts to cry.
She cries into the blanket first, and then into Grayson’s handkerchief, and then into a sheet of paper towel someone gets from the kitchen. Her pale cheeks are wet in no time. She cries as if she’ll never stop. At first everyone just stares at her, and then at the floor and the ceiling and one another, trying to give her some privacy. I can see that this is something that she needs to do, so I just leave her be, but I can see how much her tears upset the others in the room.
The McLaughlins are not big criers, but when one of us is moved to cry, it is done alone, the noise muffled into a pillow. The way Gracie is crying, unabashedly, tears pouring down her cheeks, her breath caught in sobs, is completely unfamiliar. It bothers me at first, too, I have to admit. She should pull herself together at least until the party is over, but she doesn’t seem to be even trying to find control. She has completely let go and forgotten we are here. I can’t tell for certain what kind of tears she is shedding. She appears to shift from almost laughing to sobbing so hard, I worry that it is bad for the baby.
“Gentle,” I say, “gentle.”
Grayson still has his hand on her shoulder, and Kelly crosses the room and rubs Gracie’s back in the smooth circles a mother uses to comfort an upset child. Gracie doesn’t seem to notice.
“Do you want to go outside for some air?” Grayson says.
“Is she all right?” Meggy says.
“The baby,” Angel says.
Gracie doesn’t seem to hear anything. She does not respond. Her eyes are shut and she rocks back and forth slightly. Her cheeks are shiny and the tears keep falling.
It occurs to me then that this is how I should have cried when I lost my baby girl, and again when I lost the twins. I should have released my tears instead of holding them in. I shouldn’t have been embarrassed or worried over appearing weak. I should have given my children, my babies, that much. And besides, as the tears go on, Gracie does not look weak to me. She looks honest. There is something of my mother and my first child in her eyes, and I can see the unborn child that she already loves there, too. In that moment I can see everything, everyone, the entire McLaughlin family, shining out of her tear-stained face.
“Oh dear,” Angel says. She looks next to my chair, and I notice that that is the direction Meggy is looking in, too. And Theresa. And even my mother. They are all looking at Lila, their eyes beseeching. Asking for something.
“What?” Lila says. “What do you think I can do?”
“Go see if she’s all right,” Meggy says in a low voice.
Lila shrugs, but she walks over to Gracie. She crouches down in