first fighting Grayson, then my aunts, and then waiting for Gram to weigh in with her opinion. I feel like a dishrag that has been twisted dry.
Gram says, “I admit I did think of Angel raising the baby, when I first knew you were pregnant. After all, she and Johnny have wanted a child so badly, and tried so hard.”
“They should adopt,” I say loudly. I don’t like this turn in the conversation.
“I was taught, growing up, that if you find yourself pregnant at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, you leave home for a few months, have the baby, and give it to a family member to raise. In a way, it’s a nice tradition when it doesn’t go awry like with the O’Connor family. All of the children are well loved, everyone who wants a child ends up with one, and the family stays together.”
“Sure, if you’re prepared to pay for the years of therapy that kid’s going to need when he finds out the truth. And odds are he will find out the truth, I’m sure.” I don’t like the sound of my voice; it is angry and rasping.
“I agree.”
“You do?”
“I can’t bear to see any more children in this family hurt.” Gram turns her face away from me. She stares out the window. Twilight has fallen, the landscape is gray with shadows.
I lean forward in the loveseat, trying to get a good look at her. “Are you all right, Gram?”
She keeps her eyes on the window. The shadows from outside and inside meet on her profile, but her voice is normal. “I’m meeting some girls on the hall for dinner in a few minutes, and I need to get ready. I’ll call you tomorrow, Gracie. Take your check out of the desk on your way out.”
I cross the room, open the desk drawer, and look down on the check laid neatly on top of a pile of papers. From that distance, the thin piece of paper might be a letter, or a quick note. On the top left, under the date, is my name: Gracie Leary. On the line beneath it, written in my grandmother’s neat script, is the monthly sum we agreed I would need. Below that is my grandmother’s name: Catharine McLaughlin, the inevitable bottom line.
I look over my shoulder at my grandmother. She is still facing the window. I wonder what she is seeing, what she is remembering. It is clear that to her I am already gone. I fight the urge to call her name, to draw her back to me, to surprise her, to tell her something she doesn’t know. But I don’t have any idea where to begin, so instead I pick up the check, fold it, slide it into my pocket, and do as she has asked.
LILA
I woke up the morning after Easter changed, and changing. I felt as if some sort of dam had broken inside me and I was now being tossed around on the rapids and eddies of myself. I knew I was far beyond the point of stopping the motion; I had no choice but to give in.
Literally, I woke up that morning feeling awful. As if someone had hit me across the back of the head with a steel pipe. I ran my fingers over my scalp feeling for a bump. Finding none, I took the risk of opening my eyes. There was searing daylight, and it was then that I remembered what had happened. I remembered where I was.
“Good morning, Doc,” Weber said from behind me.
I rolled over. We were lying on plaid flannel sheets. There was a poster of Lynda Carter dressed as Wonder Woman on one wall, and a poster of Bon Jovi on the other. “Oh my God,” I said. There was a swollen feeling in the back of my throat. I imagined that the alcohol had burned my esophagus, leaving an inky trail from one end to the other.
I had gone to the Green Trolley after the Easter gathering, and I had drunk vodka because I had been told it tasted like nothing, and that’s what I wanted to feel, nothing. The man next to me had continued to talk and talk and talk while I drank, and when I had drunk enough, I went home with him to his apartment above the hardware store on Main Street.
“I always knew we were going to get together, Doc. I just knew it. This was fate.” Weber was lying on