It must be all the talk about the prostitutes and the dead woman that has Grace feeling out of sorts. Mother heard it too, though from where Grace isn’t sure, but when she arrived to help tidy up after the luncheon, Mother knew.
Outside the kitchen window, the back alley is quiet. From a few doors down comes the whirl of a reel mower, the hiss of someone hosing off his driveway, a neighbor’s clothesline creaking as the lady of the house takes in her sheets and towels. The children in the neighborhood are teenagers or altogether grown and off on their own, so there are no sounds of laughing or running, no children leaping the hedges between houses or throwing rocks in the alley. The late-afternoon air has finally cooled and a breeze blows through the kitchen, in through the open window, out through the screen in the back door. The sweet smell of fireworks blows through every so often. The sharp, cool air should make Grace feel better, and yet something in the house isn’t quite right. She tries not to watch the clock. No need to worry about James today. It’s not payday.
At the sound of tires rolling over loose gravel, Grace checks the clock over the stove-5:30. The car slows as it nears the garage in back of the house. The engine idles and goes silent. James, home from work. Right on time. Always right on time. Again, Grace promises herself to stop watching the clock. James has given her no cause to worry, and she doesn’t, not really. A car door opens and closes, but there is no sign of James at the back stairs. Grace glances down at Mother, who raises a brow as if James has gotten himself into no good in the distance between the garage and the house. James has given Mother no cause to worry either, other than his being a man. When the back door finally swings open, James steps inside, drawing in a gust of the cool air that, for a moment, makes Grace set aside her worries over something forgotten.
With his eyes only on Grace, James crosses the kitchen in three long strides. The smell of grease and oil, the smell of a day at the factory, fills the small room and masks the rich scent of fried onions and the tuna casserole baking in the oven. Taking no notice of the wet floor or Mother, who is still crouched near the sink, James stretches one arm out to the side, his hand cupped as if holding something, and wraps the other around Grace. He pulls her close and kisses the top of her head. His empty hand slides over her shoulder, down her arm, and rests on the baby.
During the day, the oil and steam of the factory dampen James’s clothes and body, and dust sticks to the thick, black hair on his arms, making his skin like gritty sandpaper. He will sometimes apologize for being so rough and coarse, and Grace will touch the hair on his chest or run a hand over his wrist and up his forearm so he’ll know she likes the feel of him. He’s the man she always hoped for, broad enough to fill a doorway, tall enough to look down on most around him, bristly enough that her skin, by contrast, will always feel smooth and young to him. What surprises her still is that he’s also a playful man. He’ll tease her over a ruined roast, chase her with the hose when she is trying to pull weeds from her flowerbeds, or press an ear to her growing stomach as if he can hear the baby inside. Touching the shadow on his lower jaw that has grown since morning, she kisses the rough cheek and frowns at his cupped hand. Shards of green glass sparkle in his palm. He jostles them as if they were a pair of dice.
Two blocks down, where Julia lives in the same style three-bedroom, two-story redbrick house with a porch off the front door and a detached garage out back, she finds broken glass in the alley almost every day. Usually green, sometimes brown. She says that over the past few months the glass has become as regular as leaves in autumn. It’s a sign of their changing neighborhood, one no one talks about. Grace nods in Mother’s direction so James won’t say anything he’d rather not. He greets Mother, drops the glass in the trash basket, letting the shards tumble from his hand one by one, and excuses himself to bathe before supper.
After a quiet meal, Mother gathers her purse and gloves. She’d just as soon not be caught in this neighborhood after dark, she says, and while James sees Mother to her car, Grace runs water to wash the dishes. Something begins to tug at her again. It might be the thought of those women on Willingham, but they are still a bus ride away, a safe distance from Grace’s life here on Alder. Or perhaps it’s the green glass. She has always assumed it was left there by the colored men who cut through the alley on their way to Woodward Avenue. She hears them during the day when James is at work and late at night when he is asleep and she is awake, nursing an aching back. The men always pass at the same time. They have a schedule. It must be the buses that drive their routine.
“You’ve missed a spot,” Grace says, nudging James who has returned to help her with the dishes. Soapy water drips from her rubber gloves.
“It’s time I do some checking, Gracie,” James says, setting the dish aside.
“Checking?”
“Not waiting until things get even worse. Time I get someone in here to tell me what this house is worth.”
“It’s just a few bottles,” Grace says. “A little broken glass.” But she knows it isn’t.
“I’ll find someone who can sell this place for us,” James says. “Someone who can get us a fair price.”
“But what about our friends? I’d hate to leave Julia. And Mother is so close.”
“Should be able to find something farther north with the money we make.” James wraps his arms around Grace’s round belly. His fingers are warm through her thin cotton blouse. “High time we face facts. Things are starting to add up in a way I don’t care for. No good to be the last ones standing.”
Wearing a pair of her nicer heels, Grace is the perfect height to rest against the broadest part of James. His white undershirt is soft against her cheek and smells lightly of bleach. She wants to ask if he, like the ladies who wouldn’t come to her luncheon, is worried the dead woman on Willingham means something to them. “I have brownies,” Grace says instead, because she’s not sure she wants to hear his answer. “Feel like dessert?”
James rolls his rough cheek against the soft spot at the base of her neck. She leans into him and lays her head aside so he can more easily kiss her there.
“And ice cream,” she says, closing her eyes and inhaling the spicy cologne he slapped on after he washed up. “I’ll bet I have some in the freezer.”
And then that nagging feeling, that certainty she had forgotten something or misplaced something, rises up. She drops her chin to her chest and shakes her head.
“Oh, James. Today is Elizabeth’s birthday. She wore the lavender dress. Not the yellow. Because it’s her birthday. The ice cream, I bought it for her. How could I forget?”
While Grace plates a dozen leftover brownies and grabs a gallon of ice cream from the freezer, James pulls the car into the driveway. It’s a short enough walk, but by the time they come home, it’ll be dark, so James insists on the car.
When Mr. Symanski answers the door, his silver hair, usually smoothed straight back, hangs across his wrinkled brow. His white-collared shirt is untucked, his tie has pulled loose at the knot, and his pants are rumpled at the knees. He has shrunk in the year since Ewa died, the kind of withering that happens when a man loses his wife.
“I’m sorry to disturb you so late,” Grace says. “But I realized, after all the ladies left…”
She leans around Mr. Symanski so she can see into the living room, where Elizabeth usually sits in the evenings. She likes the brown wingback that used to be her mother’s. Ewa called it her fireside chair. It stands empty.
“I realized that today is Elizabeth’s birthday,” Grace says.