Screwed. Part 10

"I'm sure it's delicious. I hope you didn't act like that in front of your mother."

"Not to her face."

Charlie walked in carrying the turkey carca.s.s on a huge silver platter. "Ah, the man of the house. Grace, how did you train him so quickly?"

"Shock collar, and lots of positive reinforcement," Grace said.

"I'm into discipline," Charlie said, baring his teeth and growling.

"Enough," Jennifer said, clapping her hands over her ears. "You two need to get a room already."

Charlie cleared his throat and flipped the switch on the coffeemaker. "I'm just going to finish clearing and bring in dessert. Grace, why don't you and Jennifer go sit down and relax in the dining room."

When Charlie was out of the room, Jennifer whispered, "Either he's trying to impress you, or he's channeling Martha Stewart. Which is it?"

Grace shook her head. "He's not gay. He says things, and the way he looks at me sometimes .... There's no way. And he had a girlfriend when he was living in Paris."

"Elton John used to be married ... to a woman. I'm just saying."

"He's not gay. I'd bet you anything," Grace whispered just as Charlie came through the door, juggling plates and bowls.

"The dining room is that way," he said, putting down the dishes, picking up two pies and disappearing through the swinging door.

Jennifer said, "Let's go meet the in-laws. And by the way, it's a bet. I want proof, straight proof. Bring me his boxer shorts."

After another hour of laughing and more eating, Thanksgiving was over at the Teitelbaums'. Charlie jumped up. "Aunt Helen, you and Vera and George are dismissed. Jennifer, Grace, and I will clean up."

"But sweetheart," said Vera, "there's so much to do, and I'm an old pro. It won't take me long."

"Absolutely not," said Grace. "You made such a wonderful meal. The least we can do is wash a few dishes."

"Don't argue with them," said George.

"Goodnight, children. Thank you for letting the old people go to bed. I must admit I am a bit tired." Helen blew a kiss and went upstairs.

Charlie clapped his hands together once. "Okay, Jennifer, you wash, I'll dry, and Grace can count the silver to make sure we didn't accidentally throw anything away."

"Why do you get to be in charge?" Jennifer demanded.

"It's his house," Grace pointed out. No wonder Jennifer couldn't attract a guy.

"Sorry, sir." Charlie saluted. "I await your orders."

Not expecting Charlie to give in so quickly to her brattiness, Jennifer said, "What you said was fine, but why can't we stick everything in the dishwasher? You have two of them."

"The detergent will ruin the sterling, and the gold trim on the plates will wash away in the dishwasher," Charlie explained.

"That's stupid."

Grace laughed. "That's all you've got?"

Jennifer scowled and turned the hot water on full blast, squirting way too much dish soap into the sink. After she'd washed exactly two dishes, her cell phone buzzed with an incoming text. "That's my mom. She says I have to come home and wash her dishes. Sorry."

"Why are you smiling?" Grace asked. "Dishes are dishes."

"Not true. Our c.r.a.ppy dishes aren't made of gold and our stainless steel silverware can go in the dishwasher. See you later. Grace, remember what we talked about. And Chuckles, you wash and let Grace dry."

With one last evil cackle Jennifer was out the door, and Grace and Charlie were alone in the quiet kitchen. "You heard the boss. Here's the towel, unless you're tired, and then you should go to sleep. I can finish this myself."

"Charlie, I'm pregnant, not sick. And there's no way you're doing all of this cleanup yourself." Grace s.n.a.t.c.hed the towel from Charlie's hand and stationed herself next to the sink. "Let's get to it."

"It's so bright in here. Can I turn off some of the lights?" Charlie flicked off the big fixture over the marble island. With just the lights on over the kitchen table and the sink, it was almost romantic, in spite of the piles of dirty dishes and leftovers. "So what were you and the mean girl talking about before?"

"Nothing," said Grace quickly.

"You expect me to buy that?" Charlie rolled his eyes.

"It was nothing. Just Jennifer being Jennifer."

"She doesn't like me, does she? She thinks I'm kind of a freak, which I guess I am. It's just so different here than it is in Europe."

"No, she likes you." Grace tried to figure out a way to put Jennifer's bet to rest without humiliating herself and Charlie. "She just thinks it's impossible for anyone to be as nice as you are - there must be something else going on underneath the surface."

"Like what?" Charlie asked, blowing a handful of soapsuds at Grace.

"I don't know," Grace said, knowing how dumb she sounded when she tried to play dumb.

"Maybe I'm nice to you because I like you," Charlie said, wondering if his sudden attack of bravery was a consequence of being alone together in the dimly lit kitchen, or more likely, the four gla.s.ses of wine he'd drunk with dinner.

"I like you, too," Grace said.

"I kind of think I might like you more," Charlie said, drying his hands on the towel Grace was holding, pulling her towards him.

The kitchen light flipped on, and Helen was standing in the doorway. Grace and Charlie stepped away from each other, and the wet towel fell to the floor.

CHAPTER 14.

"Tell me again why we're in the children's section of the bookstore," Jennifer said as a toddler ran up to her, threw his arms around her knees, and then backed away crying and hiccuping, having realized that he was not hugging his mother. "It's so noisy ... and sticky, and the chairs are really, really tiny."

"Don't you listen to anything I say? I've decided that I don't want to have contact with Molly while she's growing up, but I do want to give her a birthday present every year, so I want to buy all of them now, and then her parents can give them to her."

Books were such an important part of Grace's life, and she wanted to share her favorites, which she had read over and over, with Molly. They had been milestones in her own childhood, and she knew that even if she couldn't sit at the end of her daughter's bed and read these books out loud, Molly would be able to feel her love flowing through the words of E. B. White and Beverly Cleary. Even if Grace couldn't be there, knew she shouldn't be there, she realized she had a lot of things she wanted to share with the bean.

"Are they going to tell her they're from her real mother?" Jennifer asked.

"Biological mother," Grace corrected. "I hope so. Whatever happens, I just want Molly to know what she means to me."

The whole parent-child thing was never far out of Grace's thoughts, not just because of Molly, but also because of the mess with her own mother and father. It had never occurred to her before the bottom dropped out of her world back in August that the relationship that had defined her life could be shattered as easily as her father's coffee cup on the slate floor of the sunroom.

"You could have ordered them on Amazon. It would be way easier than crawling around in munchkin land."

As much as Jennifer adored Grace, she was having trouble relating to her friend's overflowing love for what Jennifer still considered to be nothing more than a bean, albeit a girl bean. Of course, she knew the baby was more real to Grace, who could feel the little b.u.g.g.e.r swimming around in there, but she couldn't understand how Grace could feel so strongly about this baby when Nick was the father. She knew it wasn't the baby's fault that she had a f.u.c.kface for a dad, but how could Grace fall in love with the thing that had pretty much trashed her life? If Jennifer were in Grace's shoes (not that that would ever happen, considering she was nearly eighteen and had never gotten past first base), she would have run to the abortion clinic without a backwards glance. In Jennifer's eyes, two wrongs definitely didn't make a right, and bringing an unwanted child into an already overpopulated world, even if some yuppie couple was waiting to carry it off into the sunset in their BMW SUV, was definitely a second wrong. Under no circ.u.mstances would she ever share these secret thoughts with Grace. What good would it do to second-guess Grace's decision, which, as tortured as it was and as complicated as it had made her life, was for her clearly the right way to deal?

"But this is fun for me. I wanted to do this because I want to remember the buying part of it, since I won't be around for the reading part."

In five or six years someone else was going to be reading Stuart Little to her daughter. Grace wouldn't be there to hear Molly giggle when Stuart's father lowers him down the drain to retrieve the ring or ask the question she had asked her own mother - how can human beings give birth to a mouse? When she thought about those moments, Grace was plagued with second thoughts about her decision, but then Jennifer's sometimes grating but always practical voice would cut in, telling her that giving up her own life to raise a child she wasn't ready to have was the opposite of good parenting. And then Grace would be jolted back to reality - giving her baby to perfect strangers wasn't how it was supposed to be, but when you f.u.c.k things up you're not allowed to f.u.c.k things up more by being selfish on top of it.

"I get it," Jennifer said, even though she didn't. "Why don't you record your voice reading a book out loud? Those two kids who gave up their baby for adoption on Teen Mom did that when they went to see their baby for her first birthday. It was kind of cool."

"Maybe. I'll have to talk to the adoptive parents about that. They might think that's too pushy."

A pleaser from birth, Grace was always worried that she might say or do the wrong thing and offend someone. Maybe if she'd been less worried about pleasing Nick ... no point in wandering down that road again. It always led to the same place: the inn of self-loathing and depression, which always had a deluxe room for her.

"But it's not their baby until you say so, so don't you get to make the rules? They want your baby, so won't they do whatever you want, as long as they get to take the baby home in the end?" Looking around at the little kids crawling all over the floor, way more interested in stacking the books like building blocks or wiping their boogers on the carpet than in actually reading, Jennifer wondered what all the fuss was about.

"I don't care about having control. I care about doing the right thing for Molly. Nothing else matters."

Grace's certainty about protecting her baby sustained her. If she did everything right from here on out, maybe she could make up for all the things she'd done wrong before. It was an overly simplistic karmic equation: spreading your legs for a stupid boy you hardly knew canceled out by behaving irreproachably for the rest of your life.

"All right. Give me a job so we can get this done and get the h.e.l.l out of here." The bookstore, teeming with tiny bodies, looked like an ant farm, and Jennifer was starting to get itchy.

"Here's your half of the list." Grace tore the sheet of paper she was holding in two and gave one piece to Jennifer. "You get the baby books."

Jennifer looked at the piece of paper in her hand. Goodnight Moon, Welcome to Busytown, D. W. the Picky Eater, Horton Hears a Who, Yertle the Turtle, Caps for Sale, Harvey's Hideout, and I Love Me.

Leaving Jennifer to her a.s.signment, Grace headed for the middle grade and young adult sections. Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, the entire Ramona series, the Little House on the Prairie series, The Twenty-One Balloons. Then on to books for teenage Molly. To Kill a Mockingbird; anthologies of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, and O. Henry; Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca; The Time Traveler's Wife; and The Namesake. That should get Molly through her eighteenth birthday.

Grace handed the clerk an American Express Platinum Card. "Do you think you could gift wrap them?"

"Of course. All together?" the saleswoman asked.

"No, each one separately, if it's not too much trouble."

"Since when do you have a platinum credit card?" Jennifer asked. Her own parents kept her on a tight budget. Cash and carry all the way.

"Mrs. T. gave it to me." Living with Aunt Helen apparently had perqs beyond gourmet meals and fancy cars.

"Getting disowned by your parents doesn't look so bad from over here. I'm always broke," Jennifer said.

"Yeah, but your parents love you, talk to you, let you sleep in your own bed." Grace would trade any amount of money to have her parents love her without reservation, without preconditions. "I'm willing to bet your father never called you a wh.o.r.e." Almost more than anything else, Grace couldn't get over her parents' contempt for her. It almost felt like they'd been waiting for her to screw up so they could say what they'd really felt all along.

"I think I'd be okay with that if I could have a credit card without a spending limit," Jennifer replied, covetously eyeing the gray plastic rectangle.

"As much as I appreciate everything Mrs. T. has done, and Charlie's pretty amazing, I miss my parents."

"You miss being screamed at and told you're nothing but a no-good s.l.u.t? I didn't know you were a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t."

"Shhh. Keep your voice down. Remember where we are," whispered Grace. At the word s.l.u.t a woman with a toddler glowered in their direction.

"Sorry. Well?" Jennifer whispered loudly.

"I don't miss the mean stuff, but I do miss how it used to be, before."

"That ship sailed. You'll never be able to go back there." As she said it, Jennifer bit her tongue. She didn't know for certain that Grace's relationship with her parents was irreparable. Miracles happened every day.

"Here you are miss - um, ma'am," said the sales clerk as she placed two large shopping bags filled with Molly's books on the counter. Was a pregnant girl who looked fourteen but was using a platinum card a 'miss' or a 'ma'am'?

CHAPTER 15.

Snow floated silently past the windows, like feathers from some extraterrestrial pillow fight. Helen's attic was a cozy refuge from the real world, and Grace and Charlie treated it like a secret clubhouse, sprawling at either end of an enormous and ancient leather sofa. They talked, read, and listened to music, their feet meeting under an antique, moth-eaten striped wool Pendleton blanket. It was heaven, and Grace wished they could stay up there forever. No one could hurt her in this cluttered fortress, and for an hour or so every evening, she could block out the daily torture being meted out by the suddenly high-minded, moralistic students at Silver Lake High School.

"You're more than halfway there." With each pa.s.sing day, Grace seemed a little bit sadder, and Charlie was trying to think of ways to lift her spirits. Pointing out the light at the end of the tunnel couldn't hurt, although nearly four months seemed like a long time, even to him.

"So what? I'm used. I'm damaged goods. Who's going to want to get involved with a girl my age who's already had a baby? I only did it once, but I'm screwed for life." Grace was too depressed to recognize her own bad pun.

"It's going to take some time, but you'll get past this. I know it's a huge trauma, but once you graduate, no one has to know about it unless you tell them. I'll never tell anyone. You can go off to college and make a fresh start."

Charlie was finding himself more attracted to Grace every day. He kept reminding himself that this girl was a walking nuclear disaster. She had a bowling ball under her sweater. And her parents had kicked her out. And she wasn't Jewish. But he couldn't help himself. The kiss that they had almost shared on Thanksgiving haunted him. All he could think about was how soft her lips must be, how sweet she must taste. It was sick and perverted to have those kinds of fantasies about someone who was pregnant, not even by him, and yet every time he looked at her, he imagined what she must look like naked - all perfect curves and glowing skin. He should gouge his eyes out for having such wicked thoughts. It had gotten so bad he could no longer wear his shirt tucked in when she was around. Like in middle school, when his body had a mind of its own, and the woman in the hairnet with the wart on her nose behind the counter in the cafeteria would say, "You wanna breast or a thigh?" and he would get a raging b.o.n.e.r, even though she looked like a witch and was talking about fried chicken.

What was driving him? Was it Grace's sweetness in the face of the s.h.i.t blizzard that was her life that he found so incredibly appealing? Or was he just h.o.r.n.y and desperate? Maybe - and he hoped this wasn't the case - he was falling for a girl who had way more checks in the cons column than in the pros column. Whatever the reason, he wished he had better control over the part of his brain that controlled his s.e.xual fantasies.

"I don't just mean mentally. I've got stretch marks everywhere. It's gross, take my word." Grace held up her hands. "And my fingers look like those sausages that come in the little cans."

Even her stretch marks and swelling sounded hot to him. Without thinking, Charlie grabbed her hand and lightly kissed each fingertip. "You don't look disgusting. You're incredibly beautiful, even with that tiny ball under your shirt. And in a few months, your body will be back to normal, and who cares if it's not exactly like it was before? Did you plan on joining a nudist colony or making a living as a stripper?"

Grace blushed, wondering if Charlie could actually think about her as something other than the guest of honor at a nine-month pity party. The Thanksgiving almost-kiss might have been an aberration - he had drunk nearly an entire bottle of wine. Realistically, what decent boy would want anything to do with her after what she'd done - she was an untouchable, and no purifying bath or magic word could change that. Doing it with Nick had ruined what should have been the most special part of her life. s.e.x would never be the intimate, transcendent experience she had read about in novels and seen in movies.

And after what had happened with Nick, Grace had been certain she would never feel that way again about a boy. Not only did she no longer trust boys in general, she didn't trust her own feelings about them. Every kiss, every touch would take her back to Nick's Grand Cherokee. Whatever her future held, it was hard to imagine falling in love with someone, ever actually making love to someone.

But Charlie was different. He didn't avoid her eyes when she looked at him, and he didn't seem horrified by what she had done, or that she looked like a monster truck in stretch denim. In fact, when they were together, she felt pretty much like her old pre-Nick self. At first Grace had a.s.sumed he was nice to her to please his aunt, and it was obvious he felt sorry for her. Over the last few months, they had spent so much time together, doing homework, taking long walks, and talking about everything under the sun. Sharing a house, sharing Helen, they had become extremely close. He really was like a second Jennifer, but without the sharp tongue, and it was impossible to forget how cute he was.

Now he had said she was beautiful, and such a compliment wasn't something a guy said if he was just being polite. Or maybe well-mannered, private school boys did toss flattering remarks around, and she was reading too much into it. Maybe she was just desperate for a little validation after so many months of self-loathing, and he was just the kind of person who would see how needy she was and try to help her feel better. Teenage girls, even pregnant ones, spent a tremendous amount of time worrying about whether or not they were pretty. There were so many reasons for him to be nice to her that were more likely explanations than that he was actually attracted to her.