Page 67 of Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon
We laugh, and I enjoy a fleeting moment of forgetting that he’s dead.
Tim started telling dad jokes to make the kids laugh—especially Bella, who loved them—but he used them on me, too, because he said my begrudging laugh was his favorite of my laughs.
Why did the scarecrow win an award?
Oh Jesus, why?
Because he was…outstanding in his field.
I groan and think about how much I miss him.
Oh, and by the way, appropriate or not…you really did look fantastic.
When?
He looks down at my dress.
I know you didn’t mean to, but, when you’re a thing of grace…you just can’t help it.
I smile, and Harry Styles squints up at me.
“Mind your business,” I tell him.
I put the funeral dress back in its spot and push on. A raincoat I forgot I had, a ski jacket, a doctor’s coat from an old Halloween costume. Then I pass something very red: a dress I’ve worn two or three times, tops. I bought it while day-drinking on a trip to Atlantic City with my sister and a few girlfriends before I had the kids.
I take a sip of rosé and wonder how Henry’s date is going. Then my phone rings.
Meredith got a ride earlier from either Ginny or Gabby—it’s unclear which—so I’m waiting with her now on Thames Street for her Uber to arrive.
As she hops back and forth from one foot to the other, she asks, “Are you good at identifying types of cars?”
“I’d say I’m about average,” I tell her. “Bet I can pick out a Toyota Tercel, though.”
According to her Uber app, Chantelle, her driver, is three minutes out.
“Are your ears ringing, too?” she asks.
“What?” I say.
“Are your…” She laughs. “Oh, right. The Horse You Came In On might be my new favorite place in Baltimore, by the way.”
“Not bad, huh? I haven’t been there in years.”
We’re about a hundred feet from the bar’s front door, which means we can still hear the band inside roaring through the loudest set of Christmas songs ever played. Best we could tell, they’re a mix of members from various local metal groups who’ve teamed up for one night to murder holiday classics.
“This city,” she says. “It’s got grit.”
I think of L.A., like my own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and feel a pang for my loud, messy hometown even though I haven’t even left it yet.
When we got to The Horse You Came In On earlier, Meredith and I tried to have a civilized conversation. Screaming things like, “So, what did you study in school?” at each other grew tiring, though, so we squeezed our chatting in during the ten-second breaks between songs. When that eventually failed, too, we resorted to hand signals and facial expressions. Then, during a version of Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” that sounded like a car crash, Meredith took my hand and pulled me into a little clearing in the crowd to dance.
“I’m not sure this is danceable!”
“What?”
“Nothing!”
Surprisingly, though, it was, and I learned that Meredith, like every tall woman I’ve ever met—Brynn included—isn’t a very good dancer. It didn’t matter, though, because the sneaky charm of bad dancing is underrated. She inches closer to me now as a cold gust moves across Fells Point. Her glasses have a magnifying effect, highlighting the contrast between her blue eyes and dark brown hair.
