Page 24 of Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon
“Do you want me to punch you in the face?” she asks, which I take as a no.
We watch for a while. Grace, who’s kept her anti–The Family Stonerhetoric to a minimum, slides out of her Crocs and puts her feet on the coffee table. Ian shifts in his sleep, mutters something, and Grace asks, “Did you and Brynn ever think about having kids?”
It’s such a personal question, but she’s in her pajamas, rubbing her feet together in their fluffy wool socks, so it somehow feels natural—like we’ve skipped a few steps in getting to know each other.
“We talked about it a lot,” I say. “Eventually we decided we were happy enough being just us.”
Grace slow blinks. “So, you were just gonna spend the rest of your lives bathing in money and doing whatever the hell you wanted?”
“That was the plan.”
“Monsters,” she whispers. Then she tells me that this movie is one of those movies that makes her wish for snow, and it’s funny because I was thinking the same thing.
Her eyes are drooping because she’s fading fast now, as promised, but she perks up again when the dinner scene starts—thatdinner scene. She eases Ian off her shoulder and scootches to the edge of her cushion. “Oh jeez,” she says. “Here we go.”
The whole cast is gathered around the table, smiling, and pre-dread rises up from my stomach. Diane Keaton laughs as she talkslovingly about her kids, especially her gay son. “True,” she says. “I did—I did desperately hope that you wouldallbe gay. All my boys, and then you’d never leave me.”
“Don’t say it,” Grace whispers.
We’re powerless to stop it, though. The family banters, Luke Wilson makes a silly joke, and everyone laughs. Then Sarah Jessica Parker says, “You didn’t reallyhopefor gay children, did you?”
I wince, and Grace groans as she sinks slowly back into her spot with Ian and the dog. “What’d I tell ya?” she says.
“I mean, it’s always been cringey,” I say. “But…yeah, you’re right.”
She scratches Harry Styles’s ear and smiles, her eyes back to drooping. “I like that you’re sufficiently horrified,” she says. “We can still be friends.”
Three minutes later, she’s asleep.
Because it’s easier to forgivepeople in movies than it is in real life, Sarah Jessica Parker totally redeems herself. Beaten down, made the villain by these insufferable hipsters, she hands each member of her would-be fiancé’s family a gift. And when those gifts are begrudgingly unwrapped, I see what I always see: framed black-and-white photos of a young, pregnant Diane Keaton. And now I’m crying, which Brynn would’ve found hilarious because the first time I ever sawhercry was during this exact scene when we first watched this movie together.
“I’m not crying,” she whispered all those years ago.
“So, allergies?”
“Shut up.”
Harry Styles watches me from his spot between a sleeping Grace and Ian, concerned.
“I miss her,” I whisper, and his thin tail twitches.
When the credits roll, I’m not sure what to do. Waking Grace all teary-eyed just to say goodbye would be awkward. Then again, ghosting with a bunch of popcorn-fish bowls lying around would be rude.The least I can do is straighten up, so I gather our dishes. Harry Styles joins me.
On the way to the kitchen, I stop at the wedding photo, focusing on Grace this time instead of Tim. Somehow I’d forgotten how pretty she was until she opened the door earlier. Sweatpants and Crocs be damned, attractive is attractive, and there she was looking up at me with big green eyes and a bored half smile, hands on her hips. In the photo, though, on her wedding day, she was smiling in full, bright-eyed radiance, and I look away from her body in that form-fitting white fabric because it feels like I’m betraying Brynn.
My hands are full, so I flip the kitchen light on with my elbow. The first thing I notice is a laminated photo of Harry Styles—the human one—tacked to the wall above the dog’s food bowl, which is funny. The second thing I notice is a corkboard opposite the fridge. Pinned up alongside some coupons are maybe ten pieces of artwork. When I step closer, I see Ian’s signature at the bottom right corner of each one. There’s a drawing in colored pencil of this house. There’s a sketch of a raven, too. The eyes are off, because bird eyes are difficult. It’s nice work, though, and so is the drawing next to it of a bicycle.
Then I see Harry Styles lunge at something. And when I look down and realize that that something is a mouse, I’m so startled that I shout and drop the bowls. They’re plastic, so they don’t shatter, but they’re as loud as fireworks against the wood floor. I shout again when a second mouse darts out from under the kitchen table and makes a break for the fridge. A third mouse follows the second one, and I yell, “Jesus Christ!” just as Grace and Ian come running into the kitchen.
“What the hell happened!” asks Grace.
“There was a mouse!” I say.
“A mouse?”
“Three, actually.” I look around in case there are more. “You…I think you have mice.”
“Yeah, I know,” says Grace, annoyed. “Why’d you scream? They aren’t tarantulas. Henry, you scared the hell out of me.”
