Out of the Box

I lay in bed that night with Mac’s gun box heavy on my chest, the frayed strips of old percale sheets still intact, a cloth cross over my heart. I picked a spot on the ceiling and addressed it.
            “Help. Please.”

            Remarkably, I got a few hours sleep. The green numbers on my clock radio glowed 2:36 when I heard a door open slowly, carefully, somewhere in the house. Inside me, my heart bulged, made my skin feel tight. My eyes stung. Dang it! I need more time! 

            I heaved myself up, the gun case solid against me. I peeked out the window beside my bed. My eyes bridged the seven feet between my house and the Macs.’ I squinted at their Venetian blinds. They formed a solid white wall. I whimpered.

            Nothing stirred outside except the rain that was starting to fall. It had been so long since we’d had rain. A stair creaked and I clenched every part of me. I let go of the box and winced as it thudded against my thighs. I picked it up and shook it close to my ear. Felt and heard the weapon’s weight slide left, then right, inside the box. 
            In the moonlight I focused on the cloth bow and whispered. 
            “Maybe just seeing the gun’ll make him stop. I mean really, I don’t have to kill him. I can just point it at him. Shoot him in the leg if I have to.” The thought of his maroon blood creeping across my beloved pink and green tulip-basket quilt, staining it forever, gave me pause. “Or, I can do what I always do. Roll on my side. Squeeze my eyes shut. Pretend to sleep.”

            I gulped nothing and rapid-blinked tears. Wished tonight was tomorrow. Then it occurred to me: if I don’t stop it this time, the bad thing’ll go on forever and I—

            I gritted my teeth. Balanced the box on my knees, pinched the end of one of the strips. Waited. I focused on my doorknob. The shine of the moon was so bright, surely I’d be able to see the knob twist. Then I'd yank the cloth strip. Flip the latch, fling the box open. Ready, aim—

            I held my hand in front of my face. Even in the half light, I could see my fingers were a blur. Oh, no! What if my gun hand shakes so bad I miss his leg and kill him? Think! What else? What else can I do? I tore at my thumb nail with my teeth. Then I knew. 

          I shoved the gun box off my lap. Tossed back the covers and tiptoe-ran the eight or nine feet to my parents’ bedroom. I barreled through the door and bent over their bed. Pounded the mattress between them.

            “Wake up! Make him stop! Now!”

            As I watched my parents climb out of their separate slumbers, somewhere in the house I heard a door shut slowly, carefully.

~~~

Gracie's eyes never left my face as I told my story. Tears leapt from her chin to her lap where her hands worried a hankie.

            “You did wonderfully, Pet," she said when I finished. She gathered me into her arms and spoke against my shoulder. "I’m so proud of you, so glad for you.”

            I melted against her and wept for what seemed like forever. All the while, she poked through my hair with her age-dry fingers, releasing every tangle.

            “Go home and fetch the box,” she said finally. “We’ll have pie when you get back.”

            After we ate, licked our plates, and put our dishes in the sink, Gracie led the way to the living room. She patted the spot beside her on the sofa.

            “Have a seat,” she said. “Bring the box.”

            After I settled beside her she told me to open it. I tugged at the rag ribbon and drew it away. Undid the little brass latch. When I lifted the lid, I gasped. There was no gun. Instead, there was a glass pie plate and an index card that turned out to be Gracie’s secret recipe for strawberry rhubarb pie. Underneath that was my dresser cloth, the one she said I’d need some day.

            I shut my mouth and faced Gracie, eyes wide. “It’s not a . . . ”

            Gracie nodded, smiled slightly. “I know. Mac came up with the plan. I hoped it might work, prayed it would. Oh, how I prayed. Thank God it did.”

            I held my ribs tight and grinned. “Mac saved me,” I said. “I thought it would be you, but him saving me from beyond the grave? That’s really cool, don’t you think?”   

Remembering Grace

Who knows when and where Gracie went to the bathroom? Not me. She never once held up her finger and said, “Excuse me while I use the little girls’ room.” I was afraid to ask if she and Mac even had one so whenever I had to go, I’d tell her, “I think I hear Mom calling. I better see what she wants. Be right back.”

            Maybe Gracie had a pee bag tucked inside her girdle like some old folks do. Or perhaps the green shed that Mac built against their back fence before I was born was actually an outhouse. It didn't really matter though since Gracie and I spent most of our time in her living room and kitchen. 
            In the living room, instead of regular chairs, there were two chaise lounges with gleaming silver frames. The cushions were glossy fake leather the color of Christmas trees. If I hovered my mouth an inch from the surface and blew, a milky fog would appear. When I wiped it away, I could see black capillaries in the pine shine.

            There was a sofa in the room too, in front of the window that paralleled our house, but I never sat on it. It was made up with flowered sheets and a pink quilt so I figured Gracie slept there. You don’t just walk into someone’s house and plop down on their bed. That’d be rude. I wasn’t sure where Mr. Mac slept, maybe on the second floor all the way to the left. I had no way of knowing because Gracie never took me up there.

            Most days I’d lay on the left lounge, ankles crossed, and Gracie’d recline on the right one. In the summertime we’d watch Phil Donahue in the mornings and Beverly Hillbillies in the afternoon. After supper I’d run back over and we’d watch Lawrence Welk. While we watched the tube, Gracie’d make lace doilies or embroider dresser scarves. I’d nibble my nails. Sometimes she’d rock herself to standing, go over to the mantle, and fetch one of her collectible miniature pitchers, the ones painted to look like American presidents.

           She'd hand it to me. “Hold this, Pet, instead of biting your nails.”

            “I don’t go too far down,” I’d say. “I just nip off the raggedy pieces.”

            One time she held up a dresser cloth by its top corners. "Ta da!" she sang.
            I shook my head in wonder. Gracie made the best French knots ever.

            “Do you have a hope chest, Pet?” she said.

            I shook my head. “No, ma’am. What’s a hope chest?”

            Her eyebrows flew up then the corner of her right eye fluttered. She did the exact same thing whenever she heard someone take the Lord’s name in vain.

            “A hope chest is what a young lady uses to store things she’ll need later in life, when she’s married.”

            I scrunched up my nose, stuck out my tongue.

            “Then I don’t want a hope chest. No way I’m getting married. I’ve lived all my life with three brothers I don’t like much and a daddy I do. That’s enough men for me. I wanna be like you when I grow up. Live all by myself with a blue parakeet named Dicky Bird.”

            She clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth, closed my right hand in hers, and led me upstairs for the first time in my life. We entered the first door on the right. There was a bed against one wall, a dresser across from it, and an ironing board over to the side, under a window. When Gracie bent to plug in the iron, I almost asked why she didn’t sleep up here since it was so pretty, but something pinched my lips and kept me quiet, a rare thing.

            I smiled at the black and white portrait of her and Mac that hung on the wall. He wore a dark suit and Gracie was in a dress, same as always. I imagined the dress was cobalt blue and its crouton-looking pattern, butter yellow. I went over to stand in the sunbeam that was pouring through the window. I squinted against the light as I pulled a deep breath into my lungs through my nose. When it came back out, it seemed frayed and silvery gray. I super duper wished Mr. Mac was still alive. He was a big man and the world had seemed safer with him in it, right next door.

            Gracie left the room for a minute, to get water for the iron. While she was gone, I turned around slowly in the middle of the room, tried to memorize the details in case she never brought me up there again. I bet Mac and Gracie slept in this room every night of their married life, fifty some odd years, him and her nestled together like quotation marks.  Maybe that’s why she slept down in the living room now. Because she missed him so. Perhaps it hurt her heart to lay all alone under their wedding ring quilt that still had someone's teeny pencil marks on it, between smooth and cool, bleached bright white by the sun, percale sheets. Or perhaps this was a shrine to Mac and she only visited once a week or when she had pressing to do. I searched the room to see if maybe she had a small candle to light in remembrance of him like they did at the big Catholic church I could see from one of my bedroom windows. My best friend Karen had taken me to mass there once.

            I traced the picture frame then used my pointer finger to cover the place where Mr. Mac’s heart had been.

            “I always had a feeling about you, Big Mac,” I said inside my head, “that I could ask your help with anything and you’d give it.” For some reason though, I’d never asked him for anything, never did manage to work up the nerve.

            Gracie smoothed the dresser cloth along the length of the ironing board. Licked two fingers and pounced them on the iron’s surface. Her spit sizzled. She covered her needlework with a clean, white cloth and set the iron on top of it carefully.

            “We’re going to press this,” she said, even though I was pretty sure she’d be the only one ironing, “and then we’ll wrap it in tissue paper. I’ll keep it here with me until you’re ready for it.”

            I didn't argue because something about her tone assured me I wouldn't win. Gracie knew stuff. I don't know how, but she did. In that moment, studying that picture, I wondered if Mr. Mac did too.