Flux, chapter 16

Chapter 16: Transport Flux

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December 2009

Grace agonizes over taking her mother’s car keys. She’s become so frail in recent weeks. Maybe they should bump the nurse up to every day. Francesca’s mind is sharp and her will is strong as ever, but her body shrinks by the day. And who can blame it, the bony battleground losing a war waged by the medical-industrial complex?

What was Grace thinking with all those scattershot job applications? She can’t leave Baltimore, not while her mother is . . . she can’t even finish the thought. Nor fend off the darker one that follows: soon enough, she’ll be free to move anywhere.

There’s also Barbara to consider, and the project itself. The dean’s paltry year isn’t nothing. If Grace sticks it out, who knows where those twelve months might lead? She—they—will make good contacts at the AGU Conference. Networking can open doors.

If only she weren’t so tired. Sisyphean dreams disrupt what little sleep she manages on her impossible schedule. Last night, she pushed a dogsled piled with bulky blankets and provisions up a hill heavy with snow. Before that, it was a mobile lab in a wagon full of her custom air monitors. At some point, she always stumbles, the load teeters backwards, and she wakes breathless and shaking.

Grace drives her mother to an oncologist appointment. The doctor delivers unadorned facts with brisk compassion. She calls Francesca “honey” and pats her arm and says, “There are other chemo drugs we can try, but I don’t want to hurt you more than help you.” Grace feels an affinity for this woman whose professional tools swing between help and harm.

The radiology won the skirmish with the cancer cells in Francesca’s brain, but now a new regiment is mustering in her lungs, her liver and bones. Opportunistic bastards. The docs won a few battles, but cancer will win this war.

That night, Grace sits at her mother’s bedside. Francesca’s body barely registers beneath the duvet. They each say how stunned they are, then falter. What more is there?

“You’re taking this so well,” Grace says. It’s not what she would have expected from her proud, self-sufficient, controlling mother.

“I’m screaming inside,” Francesca says. Her brown eyes outshine her wan smile. Even with sharpened cheekbones and red-rimmed eyes, her face is beautiful.

Grace wonders how she would react if she had a doctor announce the end of the line. Such finality begs her to slow down. To take it all in. But more details demand her attention. There’s hospice to contact. Francesca’s insurance and mortgage and bank accounts and will to put in order. Her wishes for the end to be documented. Friends and contacts to be listed for notification. And what about the house, the furniture, her clothes, her car, cremation or not, where she wants to be buried?

Grace wakes in the dark from another Sisyphus dream and drifts into her mother’s room. The tiny sleeping form is washed pale by a streetlight. Grace leans against the dresser listening to Francesca’s steady slow breathing. She pictures her mother doing the same for her as a baby. Francesca’s face is untroubled, peaceful. When Grace’s legs grow stiff and her lower back aches, she drifts downstairs to make coffee.

While it brews, she pokes through her mother’s kitchen desk. In the middle drawer, she finds a photo of the two of them at her college graduation. She’d forgotten Francesca was there that day. Grace’s boyfriend Bill had cut her long hair into a short, wide bob the night before. Now she remembers, her mother called him Guillaume, which he thought was a compliment, but Grace heard the dig. Francesca didn’t bother to hide her dislike of him. He was an older grad student and they lived together “in sin.”

The heat that day had saturated excitement and pride with the sadness of endings. Grace is a veteran of transitions, but that same sadness always teases at the edges. She ended with Bill weeks later, after they’d signed a lease together in New Haven and she found him in bed with one of his advisees.

The picture’s focus is soft and blurred, like the memory. As the photographer, her father’s presence is mirrored on both their faces. Grace squints off-camera. Her mother’s expression radiates pride and self-consciousness.

Despite Grace’s rocky history with her father, he did champion her achievements. His vicarious need formed a solid bedrock that Grace both craved and ignored. Her father’s gaze always felt too bright, too charged with his own unachieved ambition. Grace had learned to skirt the wattage of her father’s demands the way anyone avoids looking directly at the sun. Still, her resentment blinded her.

Her mother’s face in the photo echoes her own determination. Holding it lightly between fingers, she feels her father’s disappointment in them, his two most vexing, unfinished projects. Now, Grace can’t distinguish her own ambition from her mother’s ambition for her. An odd panic creeps in that it will die when she does.

Grace makes breakfast. The soft-boiled egg comes out well for a change. When she brings it up to her mother on a tray with applesauce and half an English muffin, three dogeared postcards line the night table.

“You sent them from Belize,” her mother says. They picture garish blue-green water, azure skies, perfect palm trees.

Sophomore year of college, her mother funded the winter term study trip. Grace forgot she sent cards, but the blue ballpoint scrawl is hers.

The back of Greetings from BELIZE reads:

Core sampled in mangroves

Studied juvenile snapper, grouper and lobster in habitat (snorkeling)

People saw manatees but not me yet

Snorkeling feels like flying

Another card, a beach and palm trees with the cartoon title, Beautiful Belize, says:

Watched great blue herons all afternoon, I felt their movements in my body, it was wild

The third card, The Great Blue Hole, reads:

I love it here!

I’m the luckiest person to do this work!

It’s like our findings are the voice of this place

The awestruck joy buffets Grace. She has no memory of such happiness. All she writes now is papers for journals and funding proposals. “This one. You must have thought I was high the whole time.”

“You were happy. I loved hearing about it.”

Grace rubs her eyes. Her mother’s head is bent, her bony, veined hands folded on the breakfast tray. The food is untouched. She’s becoming Yoda. Even her ears stick out.

“Did I send any others?”

Francesca shakes her head no. Her wig is slightly askew. Her cheeks are pinked with rouge.

At her mother’s insistence, Grace bundles up and walks to the Hickory Street Garden to help Evelyn and Marianne wrap the fig trees for winter. It’s been an unusually cold week. The wind from the harbor pushes her up the hill. She wonders why anyone would bother growing a warm-weather tree in a cold climate.

It’s a whole production. Several volunteers organize tools and materials. Eight fig trees of four varieties need to be pruned, staked, mulched, and wrapped. Evelyn claims Grace and a young woman to help her.

“Grace, I want you to meet Alisha, my granddaughter. She got her degree in environmental engineering last May and started a business cleaning up polluted industrial sites.”

“That’s impressive,” Grace says, and means it. The thought of this young woman, daughter of scrappy Curtis Bay, willing to clean up the messes of the past and eager to engineer a better future, fills her with hope.

“Okay, ladies, I’ve got this one pruned. Time to wrap,” Evelyn says. She pulls burlap from a large roll and demonstrates. “This here’s a Hardy Chicago, but we don’t take chances. She’s come through beautifully every year. That’s it, keep wrapping down the trunk.”

Marianne drops off four metal stakes and a mallet. Alisha pounds them in a square around the tree. With the extroversion of an entrepreneur, she launches into her story. “I tried to find a job in my field, but this economy . . . I got nowhere. Working at Starbucks wasn’t for me. I saw a need and went for it.”

Grace asks what sites she’s working, and they fall into easy conversation. They wrap chicken wire around the stakes and layer in dead leaves, straw, and woodchips from a wheelbarrow. Despite the cold, the mulch gives off a smooth, loamy smell. “This’ll keep her feet warm,” Evelyn says. “Nothing worse than cold feet in the winter.”

For the last step, Grace climbs a stepladder and drops a heavy black tarp over the tree. “I feel like a serial killer in a snuff film,” she says, picturing the tree suffocating. Which makes no sense, since it’s dormant.

Alisha laughs. “Weird, isn’t it? The trees are used to it, though. They rely on us to protect them.” She wraps twine around the tarp and ties it off. “We take care of them and, come summer, they take care of us.”

Finals are over. A light snow enchants everyone for twenty-four hours before drizzle melts it into grime. Grace battles her ennui over the pile of papers and exams she’s expected to review. Grades are due in three days and she doesn’t care. She’d give everyone a B, but the uptight ones will complain. Ninety percent of them are uptight. GPAs matter more than learning.

Grace has been spending most nights at Francesca’s, so the practical thing is to give up her place and move in with her mother. She’s managed to dodge Ned’s offers to help her pack, but tonight, on the eve of her move, he insisted on bringing dinner.

Her lease isn’t up till June, but her landlord, a day trader whose side hustle is online poker, accepts her leaving with the good humor of a third-generation son of Baltimore. “I’m just surprised that anyone was willing to pay me actual money for such a dump. Hell, I should thank you for helping to pay my mortgage.”

He even promised to refund her full security deposit if she left the twinkle lights she’d fished out of the dorm dumpster and staple-gunned between the window and door frames. “Place looks better now than it ever has.”

She cranks the plug-in radiators up to high, since she won’t be there for the electric bill. No forwarding address has always served her well.

Besides the sheet of plywood spanning between a dorm fridge and her file cabinet dresser, the only furniture in the place is a futon, an overstuffed chair of threadbare orange corduroy, a battered bookcase, and a low coffee table with a vaguely Midcentury Modern look. All alley finds the week she moved in. Barbara gave her four giant throw pillows that Brett had banished from their place. “They really work,” she’d said, like a shabby-chic style maven on a. video about quirky Bohemian décor. Grace sprawls on them to read and eat. Other than a few drunken flings, she has entertained no one here.

She flits around straightening, anxious that Ned will see how she lives, annoyed at herself for caring. At least the twinkle lights give it a festive holiday feel. Along with the wreath that she fished out of the dumpster after move-out two days ago, imagining this very scene.

“So this is where the magic happens,” Ned says, riding a gust of cold wind inside.

“Hardly. My lab is where the magic happens. This is where I eat and sleep.” She’s embarrassed at the mention of sleep and then irritated with herself. In all her life, she’s never been self-conscious about a guy. Until now.

He sets the carryout bags on the plywood table beside her hotplate and admires the mocha coffeepot. “This yours?”

Her cheeks go hot imagining him making her coffee in the morning. “It’s . . . It was my mother’s. She insisted.”

He nods and replaces it on the burner with care. “How’s she doing?”

Grace shakes her head. “Not great. I told her I’m moving to save money, but really, I need to be there more. Her decline has been . . .”

He places his hands lightly on her shoulders. Her eyes go hot, and she squeezes them shut to seal in the surge of emotion. “I’m sorry, Grace.” The light pressure of his hands is soothing. He kisses the top of her head and steps back. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. You have too much on your plate and her I’ve barged in with all this. I thought we could go see the lights on 34^th Street, but only if you want.”

She draws a deep breath. “It’s fine. I could use the company.” She gestures to the bottles of Pelligrino he brought. “Classy.” She plucks two mismatched glasses off a shelf.

He smiles. “Nothing but the best.” He fishes a ziplock of lemon wedges out of a bag.

They clink glasses and drink.

He pivots to take it all in. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”

“Yeah, it’s breaking my heart to give all this up.” She pulls a handful of books off the shelf and drops them into an empty liquor box. “I’ve been too busy to pack yet.”

He touches her arm. “Leave it. We can knock this out in an hour. After we eat.”

“Really, I can manage.”

He turns her with gentle hands on her upper arms. He’s close, maybe a foot away, face half shadowed, eyes reflecting the twinkle lights. “I know you can. But this will be more fun, I promise.” Her body pulses like a gong rung by the wind.

Ned plays Christmas mix tapes on the boom box he brought. They sit on the pillows at the coffee table to eat Thai and drink sparkling water. They share favorite Christmas memories, fondness for snow, plans for the holiday break. Ned has two weeks off and expects to do “a whole lot of nothing.” Hélène will be with her mother and stepfather in Florida. Grace has no plans other than being with Francesca and worrying about her career.

Near midnight, she struggles to her feet. She stamps the blood back into her legs. “These boxes aren’t going to pack themselves.”

He joins her, staggering a little. “Okay, I’ll take the books, you do the . . .” He looks around. “What else is there to pack?” He laughs. “Dr. Grace Evans, how do you have so few possessions?”

“I was a Zen monk in a former life.”

“If anyone can pull off orange, it’s you.” He gives her a long look. “My god, you’re beautiful.”

She laughs. “I didn’t think you could get drunk on mineral water.”

“I’m drunk all right, but not from the water.”

His arm grazes hers, sending a twisting rope of desire down her center. She shakes her head. Not Ned. He’s too . . . good. Too good. Isn’t he?

While her head debates, her body decides. She reaches for his hand and pulls it to her lips, eyes on his. His palm tastes of salt and sweet orange. His eyes drift closed and he moans deep in his throat.

She takes his index finger into her mouth to fondle it with her tongue. His eyes open slowly with pupils too large to focus. A long moment passes while she gazes at him and tastes each finger, holding his hand in hers with exquisite concentration.

She releases the hand and studies him. His lips are parted and he hasn’t moved. Is he afraid? Embarrassed? Did she cross a line? Does he even want this?

He answers by running both hands through her hair and moaning again. Her body responds without consulting her. With a hand on either side of his face and a sigh, she stands on tiptoe to take his mouth with hers, fierce and insistent.

He crushes her to him, running both hands up and down her body, stroking and squeezing her curves and soft places.

Aroused by the feel of him, by his taste and smell and heat, her heart beats fast and thready like a sprinter after a race. She shuffles backward until her foot finds the futon, then pulls him down.

Being sober presents a challenge. Men enjoy Grace’s wildness in bed. She can be dominating, naughty, up for anything. More than one has told her she fucks like a man, which she takes as a compliment. No strings, no boundaries. But she feels oddly self-conscious with Ned.

Before they undress, he stops. “I haven’t been with a woman in over a year.”

She tugs at his shirt. “It’s okay. It’ll come back to you.”

He holds her hand to stop her. “It’s not that. I had a fling with a woman at work. We agreed it was casual. But then she also started seeing a photographer I work with a lot, at the same time. It . . . well, it hurt. I hated myself for being jealous when that wasn’t the deal.”

Too much talking. This is a mistake. Does he mean to negotiate terms first? For Grace, sex is like a good workout at the gym. Muscular exertion, a little cardio, and if lucky, endurance. After, you shower, together, ideally. Alone, if he’s spent or, God forbid, asleep. Strict rule: men never sleep over. Too complicated.

Ned is faltering, nervous. This would be easier if they were drunk. Or at least tipsy.

“My anger and resentment affected my work,” he says. “I enjoyed her company and the sex was great, but I broke it off after an agonizing month of embarrassing outbursts. I was surprised at how relieved I was, after all the drama.”

She studies Ned in the dim light, wishing she knew why he was telling her this. Her shower is a tiny prefab unit in the corner, a coffin standing on end. No way will they both fit in that.

Hoping to get back on track, she shucks her clothes. At first, he watches, but then turns away and undresses with his back turned.

With his fingertips lightly tracing her thigh, he touches a sadness deep inside that she’d long ago locked in a room and forgotten. His request to slow down and meet his eyes cracks open a creaky cobwebbed door to the sadness room. Being seen by him, really seen, prompts an urge to hurry through it, or to push him away and flee. She’s been in enough unsafe situations to recognize danger, but he’s so far the opposite of a threat, she’s confused. His depth of innocent acceptance would be a burden from anyone else. With Ned, what you see is what you get. He’s trusting and uncomplicated.

Her confusion is beguiling. After years of performative, get-needs-met sex, she feels like a first-timer. Everything she thought she knew about sex is erased. Her usual go-to moves would desecrate the moment, mock his openness, violate his trust.

“Grace, where’d you go?” He kisses her nose, although her entire naked body is now laid out before him, aching with need.

She opens her eyes and there he is, propped on one elbow. The desire in his kind eyes is tempered by something . . . Hesitation? No. Fear? Not quite.

“What?” she says.

“You’re . . . magnificent.”

She is suddenly hyper-aware of her nakedness. She’s not cold, but moves to cover herself.

He stops her. “I mean it. I want nothing more than to make love with you. All night.”

“And in the morning.”

“Then, too, yes.”

“But?”

“No buts, no way.” His sweet smile. “I’ve been dreaming of this moment. It’s . . . not at all how I imagined.”

There it is. He’s already disappointed. The door to her sadness room swings wide open on rusty hinges. Tiny birds black as the river Styx swarm out. She clings to the release, calls it relief. Moves to turn away from the danger of intimacy.

He touches her clavicle to draw her back. “Grace. I can’t. I don’t . . . I . . . won’t do this without being fully honest with you.”

Okay, here it comes. A request. A demand? Why do men always—

He touches her cheek and kisses her lips. Lightly at first, then deeper, ending in a sigh. “I . . . I’m in love with you, Grace. This . . . isn’t a casual fling for me. It’s real. And pretty terrifying.” He rests his forehead against hers. The warmth there melts her brain a little. Softens her resistance.

She ducks her head and squeezes her eyes closed to peek into the sadness room. Shocked by her bravery. Sunlight illuminates an empty, white, birdless space. A safe space. She nods. “Okay.”

He lifts her chin, meets her eyes. She sees it all there: love, fear, hope. “Okay? Do you . . . ? Are you . . . ?”

She squirms, afraid the black birds will return. “Ned, this isn’t—”

He stiffens. “It’s okay. I . . . come on too strong. I’ve been told that.” His smile falters. He pulls the sheet over his lap, looks away. “I thought I’d have better self-control tonight. I came into this evening resolved to—”

“Seduce and bed me? Check and check.” She traces her hand down his chest. “Ned, you’re overthinking this.” The birds circle to suggest letting him go. He’s already touched parts of her that have never been touched, that she barely knew existed. No good can come of that. But her body rebels. She feels reckless. She wants to take and take. And to give. She wants this. She wants Ned.

She leans over to kiss him. “Louis Armstrong said if it feels good, it is good.”

He closes his eyes and nods. “Did he have any quips for when it feels amazing?”

“Shhhh.” She touches his warm, soft lips. “Stop talking.” She pushes him to the bed to straddle his waist. “I promise to respect you in the morning. As long as . . .”

His face clouds with worry.

“You’ll still help me move?”

His smile lights both their faces. He reaches for her. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

In the night, while he’s asleep, she whispers, “I love you, too, Ned,” to feel it on her lips. It feels good. Very good.

With a tenderness that surprises her, Grace nudges the black birds back into the sadness room, their home, though she has yet to understand their origin or purpose. She closes the door with a wonder-laced softness, presses her body into Ned’s warm, broad back, and falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Next chapter ➡️

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Belize beach at sunrise

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