Page 96 of Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon
“But, the other day, I passed through the pet aisle at Giant on my way to get bread, and I found myself wondering what Harry Styles might want for Christmas. The dog, not the British guy. I’m sure he’s doing fine. That thought actually inhabited my brain. Buying a present for a dog.”
“Okay. That’s nice.”
“I don’t even really like kids, either,” he says. “My niece is adorable, I guess. My brother wears her like she’s a front-hanging backpack. Anyway, I built my whole adulthood around not wanting to have kids of my own. It was our thing, Brynn and me. But right now, I’m so emotionally invested in Ian’s art contest that if he doesn’t win, I’m gonna call a bomb threat in to his school. And Bella likes me now. Seriously. We connected. Have you noticed that? Before you came downstairs, she gave me this. She made it at school.”
He takes a piece of construction paper out of the front pocket of his hoodie. It’s a cotton ball snowman with buttons and an orange triangle nose. She wrote“Henry”across the top in crayon.
“And you,” he says. “Grace, I really think—”
“Henry, let me stop you, okay, and point out that I’m the fourth thing on that little list of yours, and one of those things is a dog.”
“Oh, shit,” he says. “Right. Can I reorder those? Actually, can I start again…again?”
“Henry.”
“I’m not happy yet, Grace,” he says. “I’m not miserable anymore, though. And I think that’s because of you.” He looks over at the stairs. “Them, too, yeah, admittedly. And Harry Styles. But mostly you. And I’ve been paying attention. You seem less miserable, too. Alittle. You’re swearing less.” He points at my jeans. “You’re not wearing your sweatpants as much. You’ve started going to Edgar Allan’s more. Maybe that’s, at least in part, because of…me?”
He’s wrong. Iammiserable, and I’m probably always going to be, because everything I thought I knew about everything crumbled under the weight of four thousand emails between my perfect husband and some woman. Henry’s miserable, too, and he’ll realize that again when the novelty of me and my kids and my dog wears off.
“We could love each other, Grace,” he says. “Maybe?”
I take a step toward him, fists clenched, surprised how angry this has made me. “Love? How the hell’d you come up with that?”
He flinches. “We could be happy,” he says.
“You need to understand something, Henry. You and me—we don’t get to be happy, okay? Not anymore.”
“But—”
“You’re lonely. I get it.” I wave my hand over my head. “And all this. The kids, the dog. Me and whatever youthinkI am. We’re life rafts, and you’re reaching for us because right now we look just a little better than drowning.”
“What?” he says. “That’s not true at—”
“The kids like you,” I say. “Not sure how you converted Bella. Well done. And I like you, too. You’re nice. But I don’t want to be some guy’s life raft, okay? It’s exhausting. I’ve got my own fucking problems. Go find Meredith and tell her she’s wrong about you and me. Or, I don’t know—go find someone else. Go to California. Just get out of here and start over. Because this isn’t gonna work, Henry. It can’t.”
All of that sounded harsher than I meant it to, and seeing Henry recoil, literally wounded, makes me wish I’d chosen nicer words. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
“All right,” he says. “I understand.”
He puts on his coat. The mice startle when he picks up the humane trap. The cold that rushes into the house when he leaves lingers after he’s gone.
It’s a Wonderful Life
I know very little about meteorology, but I feel like when I was a kid weather people were just guessing. At least five times that I can remember, Cal and I woke up on random mornings in the winter and looked outside to find it had snowed in heaps overnight and school was canceled and we were in for a morning of Toaster Strudels andThe Price Is Right. Everything is scientifically modeled now, though, predicted to within tenths of inches, and it’s so anticlimactic. Like today, Monday, three days before Christmas. The snow started this morning, as advertised. So far, it’s no big deal—an inch, maybe—but more’s coming.
“Folks, I’m not kidding,” the weather guy said while I was getting dressed earlier. “This storm is here to stay. Santa better get Rudolph’s nose charged up, because Baltimore’s in for our first white Christmas in more than two decades.”
I was tempted to roll my eyes and say, “We’ll see,” but the blobby mass racing toward Maryland from the frozen middle of America left little doubt. Sometimes I miss not knowing things. I grabbed the remote and flipped away from the news only to findIt’sa Wonderful Lifeon one of the movie channels.Is it, though?I wondered. Maybe for some people.
I’m walking now through FellsPoint, which is a mess, because the streets are cobblestone and plowing cobblestone doesn’t work. I took the water taxi over from Federal Hill. Four consecutive nights at our row house have passed without incident. I’ve cleaned, watched TV, unsuccessfully scoured the internet for an animatronic Black Santa to buy because I miss the one by my apartment. Mr. Ross came over last night with two Natty Bohs to make sure I hadn’t stuck my head in the oven, which was considerate, and we watchedJeopardy!together. And yes, I know Brynn is dead, but I’m going to keep calling it “our” row house a little longer, because I’ll be putting it up for sale after the holidays. Soon it’ll be full of someone else’s ghosts.
There’s a pretzel stand up ahead with a sign that says, “Closed for The Snowpocalypse.” I use it as a shield for a moment and check my phone. I texted Ian earlier to see if they’d announced the contest winner yet. He replied:
noooooo! we have assembly at noon then we are on break i’m not supposed to use my fone at school thoooo!!!!
I haven’t spoken to his mom since she said what she said, and she made it sound like I might never again. After I see how Ian’s contest turns out, I’ll stop texting with him. I’ll miss him, and I’ll miss little Bella, too, and Harry Styles. Mostly, though, I’ll miss Grace. I already do. So much that it hurts.
You’re gonna win, buddy. I just know it.
