“What a useless class; more than ten years later, I still can’t swim!” she says laughingly. “It wasn’t until after graduation that I started hearing from Grace regularly. She’d send me a letter every six months or so, always with nice little gifts. The odd thing was we weren’t even that close. I guess I still can’t say I really know her. I didn’t even know she had a sister.” Maria seems flustered by the discovery.
“What kind of gifts?”
“Oh, random stuff, like an antique jade ring or a pair of fancy sunglasses. Really nice, except they were all hers, clearly things she’d owned for a while. The letters weren’t much, though. Just brief updates of her life. I thought maybe she was lonely.”
A jade ring? Mom used to wear one on her middle finger. For good luck, she would say, twirling it seven times before whispering a prayer. Did Mom give it to Grace at some point? Why would Grace pass it on to a friend?
“Then, when I was down and out, right after Charlie left me, I was four months pregnant with no job, it was Grace who saved me. She took me in, and later even set me up in a house that used to belong to her parents.” Maria pauses, realizing that they were also Suzy’s parents. “I owe so much to Grace. I think she felt sorry for me, because… maybe she thought I was a bit like her, a misfit, a Korean girl with a name like Sutpen.”
“A misfit?”
“She could never stick to a job, temped for years, strange for a girl who graduated Phi Beta Kappa. It’s like she was allergic to a permanent situation—until the teaching job, that is.”
Like me, Suzy thinks. A waste of college education.
Who do you think interpreted for your parents all those times with the INS?
Grace had never let Suzy know. Grace never let Suzy in. If Grace did not speak to Suzy, then Suzy could remain innocent. But is Suzy innocent?
Even at Smith, Grace was completely alone. Even at Fort Lee High School. No one seems to have gotten through, not even Maria Sutpen, with whom her friendship still feels guarded. Perhaps Grace was freer with the man who she claimed was alone, orphaned, just like her.
“What about her boyfriend?”
“What boyfriend?”
“It seems that she went off somewhere to get married, although—”
“Married? That’s ridiculous,” Maria cuts her short, looking dismayed. “Grace is appalled by anything remotely domestic. It’s a stretch for her to even be my baby’s godmother. I pretty much had to force it on her. She certainly wouldn’t be getting married overnight!”
How peculiar that the whole school seems to be aware of his existence when her only friend has no clue.
“She’s never mentioned a guy she was seeing?”
“Back in college, boys from U. Mass. and Amherst were always after her. She never went out with anyone, though. Boys used to say that she was a lesbian. But she had someone from home, some guy who used to come and see her every few weeks.”
“A guy from home?”
“I never met him, but I’ve heard people say he was bad news.
“Why?”
“He picked fights with strangers because he thought they were checking her out. Right on King Street. I remember hearing about it, because in downtown Northampton pretty much everyone belongs to one of the Five Colleges.” Maria pauses. “Why, you think she’s still with him?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s over.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me,” answers Maria, squinting her eyes as if reaching back to a remote past. “She mentioned something about him finally giving up on her. She said that he was better off without her, because he knew too much about her. She looked so lonely when she said it, though. That’s when it occurred to me that she might’ve had some feelings for him after all. I thought he was just some freak stalking her, but maybe they had a real thing. She hasn’t been with anyone since. Especially after what happened to her… your parents.”
“Why do you think she couldn’t?” Suzy mutters, as though posing the question to herself.
“Something in her died with them. She seemed permanently lost without them. Years ago, when she moved back home after college, she used to write to me about how great her parents were, how much she loved them. I remember being envious. My mother died when I was five, and I never even met my father. I know what it’s like to lose parents, but I can’t imagine the pain when you’ve been so close…” Maria stops abruptly, realizing that the pain also belongs to Suzy.
Did Grace really use those words?
That they were great?
Something begins collapsing inside her.
A quiet sinking.
Grace hadn’t even begun facing the truth, Suzy realizes. Moving back home might have been her attempt to bury the truth. Just as Suzy had invented the oceanfront house in her dreams, Grace might have told herself that none of it had happened, that her parents had never used her for their crimes, that they had never violated her conscience.
One day, if you find yourself alone, will you remember that I am too?
“What was his name?”
“I don’t know. She never talked about him except that one time.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“About a month ago, she dropped by suddenly. She said that she was in the neighborhood, which was unusual.”
“Why unusual?”
“Because she never comes to Queens. It’s almost like she avoids it. But that day, she said she was looking around to buy a store. When I asked her what kind of store, she said she’ll tell me later.”
A hundred grand, in one shot. A month ago.
Suddenly, pealing laughter halts the two.
“Mommy!” It is the tiny bundle of mess climbing up the stairs, smiling triumphantly, her mouth smudged in chocolate, and opening her palms to reveal a fistful of crushed cookie crumbs. “Look what I got for you!”
Bursting into laughter, Maria gushes, “Sweetie, thank you so much, that was so nice of you to think of Mommy and Miss Suzy.” She throws one of the bigger crumbs into her mouth and then exclaims, “Yumm, it’s really yummy, but now we’ve got to get you to the ladies’ room to clean up!”
Maria Sutpen seems oblivious, which must be why Grace was drawn to her. Too ordinary, made to be a girlfriend, a mother. She even looks natural in a blow-dried bob. She takes whatever’s given without much ado, even something as odd as a used ring or an entire house. The sort of woman you would find anywhere, whom you would never notice or remember, because, despite her mixed colors and name, she is your average all-American girl.
Finally, Maria looks up, her eyes glazed, as though her world has now ceased but for the little girl in her arms. “Please let me know if you hear from her. I’m worried about Grace. And about the letter, maybe we better wait.”
Suzy makes no response. She barely hears Maria saying, “Since Grace specifically told me not to open it. I mean, she might have left me a message at home by now…” Without letting her finish, Suzy mutters finally, “Was it Grace who gave her the doll, the one named Suzie?”
“My fairy godmother did!” It is little Grace who jumps at the question. “She made me promise to take good care of her, because Suzie’s all alone in the whole wide world!”
22.
ALL SHE CAN SEE ARE LINES. Lines to the entrance, lines for applications, lines for registration, lines for interviews, lines for hearings, lines to public bathrooms which are locked with “Out of Service” signs on all forty-two floors except three. She is not sure what made her come here. Everyone under the sun is here. The fluorescent blue makes everyone look sick. Or perhaps it is the perpetual wait that turns golden skin ashen. Men in stiff black uniforms trot back and forth with patriotic salutes. The objects of surveillance are aliens. Because here, at 26 Federal Plaza, “aliens” is the preferred name for immigrants. Ten-thirty on Monday morning, anywhere in the world would be better than here.