“Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”
She nodded, entering my room and closing the door behind her. Uh-huh. That couldn’t be good. Just when Grams was beginning to eat regularly again, after figuring out she couldn’t sneak cracklins to her room for eternity.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” She perched awkwardly on the edge of my bed.
“Yeah?”
“The old bat has been refusing to go out on our walks. She is not getting any physical activity. I think she is depressed.”
“Depressed?” I echoed.
“Ya know, down. Whatever those psychiatrist people call it. I don’t think it’s a phase. This rough patch is not going to go away, honey pie. I’ve seen this happenin’ over and over, taking care of folks her age. She needs to be medicated. Properly.”
No shit, I wanted to scream until my throat parched. I can’t drag her butt to the doctor’s office.
But I just smiled, as I always did, nodding.
“Thank you, Marla. I’ll handle it.”
A few days later, Professor McGraw called me into her office again.
“I’ll make it swift.” She breezed into the snug room, her signature scent of incense and honey wafting behind her. She took a seat in front of me, entwining her fingers together.
“I decided not to give you an extension on the performance part of your exam this semester, Miss Shaw. Which means, you’ll have to find a way to get into A Streetcar Named Desire and actually go onstage, or you will be failing my class this semester. Mr. Finlay is well aware of the situation. I’ve spoken to him, and he said he is looking forward to sorting this out with you. I’m sorry, Grace, but consider this a favor from me to you. You must face your fears and move forward. Getting on that stage will liberate you. Whatever happened to you …” She shook her head, closing her eyes. “You cannot let it define you. Or stop you. Not anymore. Anxiety is a hungry beast. Feed it, and it will grow. Starve it, and it will die. This is my final decision. I’m sorry.”
Later that day, I had a shift with West. Working alongside him wasn’t ideal, but in order to dodge shifts with him, I’d have to tell Karlie all about what had happened at dinner, and I wasn’t prepared to recite the humiliating scene aloud.
West had been acting weird throughout the shift. Glaring at me every so often, spacing out, opening his mouth to say something then thinking better of it. I stuck to silence, broken only by monosyllabic, work-related requests. Whenever there was a lull between human traffic, I got on my phone and looked for caregivers for Grams. There was also a typed-out message waiting to be sent to Cruz Finlay.
Hi. It’s Grace Shaw. Any chance of landing a last-minute role in the play? ?
Finally, West spat it out. “Look, I’m fucking sorry, okay? Jesus Christ.” He growled as if I’d showered him with wordless accusations. “Regardless, I think maybe it’s for the best if we don’t mess around anymore.”
I didn’t even look up from my phone.
He’d spent the entire week ignoring me, only to give me a half-assed apology, stuffed into a clichéd breakup line?
“Messin’ with you again was never on the menu,” I lied, my eyes still on my phone.
“Fine. Okay. Good.”
He nodded to himself. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked a little out of sorts. Kind of pitiful, actually. He offered me his pinky, blocking my view to my phone.
“Truce?”
I turned around, giving him my back and not bothering to take his pinky in mine.
A cold war was still a war.
West
The week after Mom’s visit slithered like a slimy sci-fi monster out of a sewer.
As soon as Mother got back to Maine, she resumed her hourly phone calls, sending me two emails a day on average. She apologized a thousand times. For blindsiding me, tossing Grace’s cap, asking too many questions, and sending too many emails. She owned up to everything that went down between us ever since I was seventeen. Tried to explain. None of it mattered. The damage had been done. I kept sending money, but I dodged her calls.
Things went from bad to worse. Before I’d seen her face, I could pretend we were okay. But after the dinner blowup, there was no denying whatever had been left of my family was dead at the root. Rotting, sullied, and irreparable.
The cherry on the shit cake was the Texas situation.
The girl, not the state.
Though damn, the state got real hot, real fast.
I’d screwed up with Grace, not only on the day I’d kicked her out, but in the days after, when I couldn’t look at her face. I was so embarrassed.
By the time I gathered the courage to talk to her, it was too late. She treated me like I was air. She’d gotten so good at ignoring me that week, sometimes I questioned my own existence.