Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship (9781609417291) Page 25

  “Coffee smells good, Jo.” Sarah pulled the cashmere throw across her shoulders, uncurled herself from the couch, and joined Jessie at the kitchen island. “Quick, too. It’s a treat for us at the camp, because it takes so long to brew. We have to grind the beans with rocks.”

  Jessie laughed a nervous little laugh, and then she stopped abruptly. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  Sarah hoisted herself onto a stool, the wooden beads at her wrist clanking. “Takes a lot of firewood to boil the water, too.”

  “Hold on to your wallet, Jessie.” Jo placed the sugar bowl next to the milk pitcher. “If you let Sarah tell you stories, she’ll have you writing a check before the day’s over.”

  “Oh, I’d write you a check,” Jessie said, shrugging. “But it would bounce as soon as it hit the table.”

  Jo caught sight of a bottle in the glass cabinet just by the stove. “Hey, girls—the devil’s on my shoulder. How ’bout a Mexican coffee? What do you say?”

  “Not me,” Sarah said. “A glass of that and I’ll be like the drunken uncle, snoring on the couch.”

  “I’d love to,” Jessie said, managing a small smile, “but I’m driving.”

  “Sugar, one small cup in a two-hour visit doesn’t make a drunk.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t even want to be buzzing, not when Gracie’s in the car.”

  “Bunch of Girl Scouts.” Jo dropped the tea bag into a cup and grabbed another. She tore open the wrapping and was reaching for a third when she paused, her hand hovering over the third cup.

  Not when Gracie’s in the car.

  “Jessie… are you planning to take Gracie out to dinner or something?”

  “Oh…” Jessie stiffened. “Shoot.”

  “Because that’s not such a good idea. Grace needs to keep to her routine and get a good night’s sleep for school tomorrow.”

  Jessie leaned back against the wrought-iron backing of the barstool. “Hey, Jo, I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that. We did make some plans, but…”

  “Listen, sugar, Gracie’s your cousin. I may be the legal guardian, but, trust me, I’m not going to play this as if I’m a divorced mom, negotiating with her ex about visitation rights. By all means, take her out, do something special, but just tell me ahead of time. Sarah will back me up on this: Gracie doesn’t take well to change these days.”

  “Amen,” Sarah added.

  “You know, this whole situation just doesn’t make any sense.” Jessie leaned her elbows on the counter. “It’s just one of a lot of ridiculous things Rachel did. And not the most insane, either.”

  “Hey, it’s a molehill, not a mountain.” On the stovetop, the teapot started to burble. “Just get her home by seven-thirty.”

  “This is not about taking Grace to dinner, Jo. That’s just the problem.” Jessie let out an exasperated-teenager type of sigh that shuddered her entire body. “God, this is so hard. I don’t even know how to say it. So I’ll just say it. Jo, this is about taking Grace home.”

  Jo stared at the tea bag in her hand, waiting for Jessie to continue. The wrapping bore the familiar red logo. Inside, there was that green tag at the end of the string, the kind she’d seen so many times hanging, brown-stained, off the edge of her mother’s own cup in the evenings, after a long day at the factory.

  “What do you mean,” Jo asked, tearing the top of the paper, “you’re going to take her home?”

  The teapot started to wheeze. A soft whistling that, as Jo stood frozen over the empty cups, built up to a scream.

  From upstairs, Mrs. Braun’s faint voice, “So the tea’s ready?”

  “Soon, Aunt Leah.” Jessie came around behind Jo and shut off the gas. “Listen, Jo.” Jessie wrapped a dish towel around the teapot handle and hefted it to the counter, where, with quick, jerky moves, she sloshed boiling water into everyone’s cup but Sarah’s. “I know this might seem sudden to you. Out of the blue.”

  “Out of the blue.”

  “Like, all those weeks ago, when I dumped Grace on you—I feel rotten about that. I just put on her coat and shoved both of you out the door, and I apologize for that. I didn’t handle it well. I never meant to do it with so little ceremony, without giving you the papers and all that, without preparing you… well, for Gracie. And all her quirks.”

  “Quirks.”

  “Try to put yourself in our shoes, Jo. Life was just crazy.” Jessie used the dish towel to vigorously dry the spots she’d spilled on the counter, leaning in close, elbows flying, as words tumbled out of her. “We’d just buried Rachel. My uncle was bedridden, and my aunt was half out of her mind with worry. And there were bills, and paperwork, and the fuss of settling Rachel’s estate, and sorting her athletic equipment, and donating her clothes to the local Jewish Community Center. And for my aunt, just getting out of bed in the morning was difficult. We just didn’t handle it well. We haven’t handled a lot of things well. When you showed up that morning,” Jessie continued, “well, it was just a dream. We so needed help. Gracie was getting pushed aside, over and over, because we were so overwhelmed with Leah’s doctors’ appointments and Abe’s mobility issues. And there you were, to take on the responsibility.”

  A brain freeze. That’s what this was called, Jo thought, this strange inability to comprehend what was being spoken to her. It was what kept Hector, for all his talents, from being a project manager; he said that standing in front of all those suits put him in a brain freeze every time. Until now, Jo hadn’t really understood what he was talking about. Jessie was chattering on—babbling—and though Jo could hear the words, she couldn’t completely comprehend. The thought that kept overwhelming Jo was that Latoya was coming tomorrow, and Jo had to remember to tell her to start Grace on two-digit subtraction so the little girl would catch up to the other second-graders.

  “I know you didn’t expect the responsibility, Jo. I know you thought the whole thing was a mix-up.” Jessie threaded the dish towel through the handle on the refrigerator door, tugging the ends even. “I saw it in your face that day. I know Rachel didn’t give you a clue until you got one of her letters.”

  “Making me Grace’s guardian,” Jo said, through lips gone strangely numb. “Her legal guardian, fixed in ink.”

  “Rachel made some crazy choices.” Jessie ran her fingers through the thatch of her hair, now falling completely out of her ponytail. “I just can’t believe what she wrote in mine. But this thing with Grace, this tops them all.”

  “Jessie,” Sarah interrupted, “I’ve been here three days, and I can tell you that Rachel made a smart choice. Jo’s been amazing.”

  Jo sent a silent hug her way.

  “I don’t mean any disrespect.” Jessie paced the length of the island, swiveling on the toe of her sneaker at the demarcation between carpet and tile. “You have done such an unbelievable job, I can tell. The arrangements you made, the therapist, even selecting a Jewish school for Grace—I can’t tell you how much that means to my aunt.” Jessie paused and met Jo’s gaze across the length of the island. “It’s just that we—my aunt and myself—figured it was time to relieve you of this responsibility, a responsibility that probably should never have been yours. Maybe Rachel… wasn’t thinking straight when she wrote the letter to you. She couldn’t have been. After all, Gracie still has family. She still has us. We thought today might be a good day to… Well, not too much time has passed since we sent her here, so it would be like a little vacation to Grace. Just a little time away from home. Even the lawyer suggested that now would be a good time—”

  “Lawyer?!”

  Jessie froze. The blood left her face. She hugged herself, tightly, and turned away to avoid Jo’s eye. “I… wasn’t supposed to say anything,” she mumbled into her hand. “It was just a consultation. To talk about… options.”

  Options.

  “He told us… it was best to be amicable. He said we should work with you. Do what’s best for Gracie. Contesting a will takes time…”

  Contesting a will.

/>   Jo reeled away from the island, then swiveled on one foot to turn her back to Jessie, to options, to lawyers. She braced her hands on the opposite counter. Her fingers changed color before her eyes, went white around the edges as she leaned harder upon them, to keep herself from hitting the floor. Black spots exploded in her vision, but she couldn’t faint now—she couldn’t faint now—not even in a Southern kind of way. She had to keep her wits about her and try to figure out what was going on.

  Breathe.

  Here was the first simple truth: Life would be so much simpler without Grace. Without Grace, Jo could bring the full force of her concentration to work again. She could find a project for that Indian singer she’d contacted about the Mystery project. She could remove the baby gates that kenneled the condo, reclaim the spare room as a repository for her dry cleaning. She could call up that guy in Accounting with the crest of silky dark hair and bring him home to the massage oils going stale in her bedside drawer and have acrobatic sex with him on the stairs.

  Here was the second simple truth: Grace was an orphaned little girl who clearly loved her family. Grace still referred to her nana’s house as “home.” And, unlike when Jo was orphaned, Gracie still had a family who wanted her.

  It all made perfect sense.

  Just let Grace go.

  It was the right thing to do.

  But here was the last simple truth: For reasons she didn’t completely understand, Jo’s whole body, spirit, and mind balked fiercely at the idea of some lawyer telling her—Grace’s legal guardian—that the best thing to do would be to slip Grace’s arms through her Madeline coat, pat her on the cheek, and let her walk out the door with the Brauns.

  “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me,” Jo said, through her teeth, “that you came here on a lawyer’s recommendation, thinking you’d bring Grace home today. Without even calling me. Without even discussing it with me.”

  “I know, I know. I’m not the bad guy here, Jo, believe me! I know we should have talked with you first.” Jessie shoved the sleeves of her sweater up to her elbows and paced in a tight circle behind her chair “Believe me, I wanted to. But it’s been back and forth with my aunt and me, back and forth. I kept telling my aunt that maybe we shouldn’t bring it up yet, that we should let Grace stay here a little longer… and then she’d argue with me. We’d make plans to talk to you, and then something would happen—a bad blood test for her, or my uncle nearly slipping in the driveway—and she’d concede a few more days. But the issue kept coming up. She won’t let go of it. She insisted on seeing the lawyer.”

  Jessie gripped the back of the stool, bracing herself to continue. “For the past weeks, my aunt has done nothing but worry, worry, worry. She can’t cope with the empty house. It’s not like she doesn’t have enough to deal with, but the house just isn’t the same without Grace in it. Now that Rachel’s gone… well, Grace is really all that’s left in my aunt’s family—she’s the only grandchild. And though my aunt is grateful that she’s had a few weeks to put her own house in order, now that things are calming down, she really wants Gracie back.”

  Sarah stood up and fetched one of the teacups. She brought it to Jessie, urged her to sit down, and then placed the cup into Jessie’s hands. Jessie curled both hands around the warmth, her shoulders sinking. All the while, Sarah’s practiced gaze swept over Jessie’s pale face, tangled hair, rib-fitting sweater, and heavy eyes.

  Sarah gave Jo a long, meaningful look as she rubbed Jessie’s back. “Your aunt isn’t handling Rachel’s death very well, is she?”

  “No,” Jessie conceded, after daring a sip of the hot tea. “None of us are. Aunt Leah and I, we’re just trying to pull things together, one issue at a time. Up until we walked into this apartment building today, I thought I’d convinced her not to bring this up. Honestly, Jo, my aunt thinks Grace’s stay here is a mistake. She just can’t wrap her mind around the fact that Rachel gave custody to you, and she won’t accept it—”

  “But Rachel did give me custody,” Jo insisted. “Legal custody, which will take a heap of time to contest.”

  Jessie flinched.

  “And Rachel did it,” Jo persisted, “because of all you’ve been telling me—because of the pile of issues your aunt and uncle are dealing with.” Information-gathering. That’s what she needed to do. Gather all the facts before making a decision that her heart was resisting with all its might. “Your uncle—is he still bedridden?”

  “He’s better. He’s using a walker now.”

  “And Leah,” Jo insisted, “is still fighting diabetes.”

  “She’ll deal with it for the rest of her life. But all that doesn’t matter. We’ll cope with that. Because I’m in the house now, permanently.”

  “Taking care of Abe and Leah?”

  “And Gracie,” Jessie added, “when she comes back.”

  Sarah stopped rubbing Jessie’s back for a moment. “I thought you were looking for a job? You told me you wanted to be a teacher.”

  Jessie shrugged, finding interest in the tea bag floating in her cup. “I’ll wait for the right position. Family comes first.”

  “So I’m to understand,” Jo said, “that you’re taking care of two elderly people, and now you want to add a child to that?”

  Jessie’s chin tightened, in a way achingly similar to Gracie’s. “I’ll manage.”

  “My lawyer,” Jo countered, “might disagree.”

  Then, abruptly, a wail emerged from Gracie’s room, high-pitched and piercing. The door to Gracie’s room swung open, so hard that it banged against the wall. Gracie tore out of the room, a blur of plaid. She screamed as she ran down the hall to the bathroom, and then she slammed the door closed behind her.

  Mrs. Braun shuffled out of Grace’s bedroom, befuddled, grasping the doorjamb for balance. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t understand.”

  Jo strode into the living room and glared past the rail. “Did you talk about taking her home?”

  “I said nothing,” Mrs. Braun said. “I didn’t even suggest it!”

  “Then why is she so upset?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know!” Mrs. Braun shuffled to the railing and grasped it, out of breath. “She was showing me her room. The dolls that blink. The computer. That Barbie you bought her—oh, Rachel would have your heart on a platter if she saw that, Jo. She’s got a purple blanket on her bed, so I mentioned her room at home, that we’d done a little redecorating—”

  Sarah, from behind Jo, hissed in a breath.

  “—we got her a purple cover with the penguins on it, two things she loves, I couldn’t believe it when I saw it in Target. Then—this.”

  “Change,” Jo said, understanding. “You changed things.”

  “She just collapsed. Right in front of me. Never seen her do that. Not even when…” Mrs. Braun covered her mouth; then, using the railing for balance, she shuffled down the hall toward the bathroom. “Gracie, love, Gracie,” she said, her voice quavering. “Let Nana in now. Be a big girl—”

  “Mrs. Braun,” Jo said, forcing her voice even, “I suggest you leave Grace alone for a while—”

  “But—”

  “She’ll come out of it.” Jo planted her fists on her hips. “And we have to talk.”

  About change. And a seven-year-old orphaned girl.

  “She’s crying,” Mrs. Braun said. “I can’t leave her crying alone in the bathroom.”

  “Maybe I can help.” Sarah slid off the barstool and let the blanket fall to the floor at her feet. “Grace and I had a good time yesterday, pretending her Barbie was a doctor and her stuffed animals the patients.” Under the scrutiny of three women, Sarah shrugged. “I have some experience dealing with kids who are recently orphaned.”

  Sarah glided across the room, swept up the stairs, and laid a hand on Mrs. Braun’s back. Mrs. Braun left with some reluctance. Sarah sank into a curl against the bathroom door, whispering soft words Jo couldn’t quite hear—words that seemed to have a calming effect on the
sobs.

  “I never saw her like that,” Mrs. Braun kept saying, as she made her way across the room to sink heavily onto one of the island stools. “One minute, she was fine, and then the next, boom!”

  “It’s the change,” Jo explained, shoving a teacup toward Leah, as her mind—snapped awake—raced on how to handle what was sure to be a very difficult situation. “You went and made changes to her bedroom.”

  “She loves purple. She loves penguins!”

  “Maybe before.” Jo shoved the sugar and creamer down the table. “But now change is a very bad thing. She’s plumb full of it.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Mrs. Braun exclaimed, tugging her tea bag in and out of the hot water. “But after today, that will be done. When she gets home, everything will go back to normal.”

  Jo tugged the dish towel off the handle of the refrigerator and tossed it across her shoulder. “Okay. First, we have to talk about that. About the idea that you’re just going to take Gracie home today.”

  Jessie stood up. “Jo—”

  “Because, with all respect, Mrs. Braun, I just can’t let that happen—no, ma’am. I don’t give a fig about that lawyer’s recommendation. The last thing Grace needs right now is being yanked out of another home.”

  The memory hit her, full-force, the memory of Jo’s very first foster mother. We can’t handle her anymore. She doesn’t get along with any of the kids. She goes her own way, and laughs when I suggest otherwise. She won’t respond to me at all.

  Jo turned her back to the room, trying to contain the anger, because it wouldn’t help the situation, it wouldn’t help Grace. Jo glared at the stone-tiled backsplash with its edging of green glazed tiles, the ones the designer had chosen to bring out the sage in the granite countertop. She pressed her palms so hard on that countertop that they began to throb, as the hurting words played back in her head.

  You need to take her away. Today.

  “I don’t understand.” Mrs. Braun sounded baffled. “Jessie, you told me Jo would agree, that it would be a relief for her, that she didn’t expect to have custody. I thought this was settled.”