“Our lawyer,” Malcolm explained. “His name is Ransom Gardener. The only things he grows are fees.”
Every so often, Gardener showed up with a younger man named Mike Leiber. Unlike the lawyer, who always wore a suit and looked serious, Leiber had long stringy hair and a beard, arrived in jeans and untucked shirts, and never said much. But when he spoke at the kitchen table, everyone listened to him.
Malcolm and Sophie never explained who he was but after his visits they were a strange combination of seriousness and relaxation. As if they’d just taken a hard exam and had done well.
Twice a month or so, Malcolm and Sophie took Grace to nice restaurants and Grace wore clothes Sophie bought for her that she’d never have chosen.
She stretched to try new foods when Malcolm and Sophie offered them to her. Even if something looked unappealing, she didn’t complain, just the opposite, she smiled and said, “Yes, please. Thank you.”
Same for the clothes. They came wrapped in tissue paper and bore the labels of stores that sounded expensive, some with French names, and she could tell Sophie had taken a lot of time finding them.
Grace thought of them as costumes. Dressing up for the part of Good Girl. She began to wonder when the play would end but got bad stomachaches when she thought too much about that. Chasing those thoughts out of her brain, she concentrated on the good things happening right now. Sometimes concentration gave her a headache.
As part of fitting in and being easy to live with, she began brushing her hair a lot, until it shined like Sophie’s and one day Sophie gave her a brush from England that she informed Grace was made from “boar bristles” and guess what, it made Grace’s hair even shinier so she resolved to pay special attention to what Sophie said.
Being clean and smelling good was important as well, so she showered every morning and sometimes a second time before she went to bed. Flossed her teeth and brushed twice a day, the way she’d seen Sophie do. When a few hairs sprouted in her armpits and she detected faint odor coming from them, she looked in her medicine cabinet and found a brand-new container of roll-on deodorant and began to use it regularly.
Somehow, someone — no doubt, Sophie — had known what to do.
Shortly after she began living with them, they brought her to a woman pediatrician who examined her and gave her shots and pronounced her “fit as an Amati.”
Same for an extremely old dentist who cleaned her teeth and told her she was doing “an excellent job with your oral hygiene, most kids don’t.”
When her shoes grew tight, Sophie took her to a store on a street called Larchmont where the salesman treated her like a grown-up and asked her what style she preferred.
She said, “Anything.”
“That’s a switch, usually kids are demanding.” This remark aimed more at Sophie than Grace.
Sophie said, “She’s an easy girl,” and hearing that, Grace filled with warm, sweet feelings. She’d passed her own test.
When the three of them were together, she made sure to look into their eyes when they spoke, pretended to be interested in what they talked about when she wasn’t. Mostly she was interested. In their discussions of history and economics, of how people behaved alone and in groups. Usually they began including Grace in the conversation, but soon they were talking past her, allowing her to just listen, and she didn’t mind that one bit.
They talked about art and music. About how bad certain governments were — Nazism, communism, Malcolm pronouncing that any kind of “collectivism is simply a way to control others.” They discussed what kinds of societies produced what kinds of artists and musicians and scientists and how there wasn’t enough “synthesis between art and science.”
Every discussion sent Grace running to her dictionary and she figured she was learning more just being with them than from the homeschool curriculum.
When they asked her opinion, if she had one she offered it briefly and quietly. When she had no idea, she said so and more than once Malcolm nodded approvingly, saying, “If only my students knew enough to admit that.”
Sophie: “If only everyone did. Starting with pundits.”
Another word filed for future investigation.
Malcolm: “Pundits are nitwits, for the most part.”
Sophie: “Any self-designated expert is by nature fraudulent, Mal, no?” To Grace: “That applies even to this guy and myself. Just because we have fancy professorial titles doesn’t mean we know any more than anyone else.”
Malcolm: “Anyone including you, Grace.”
Grace shook her head. “Maybe I know more about being twelve but you know more about almost everything else.”
Laughter from across the dinner table.
Sophie: “Don’t be so sure, dear.”
Malcolm, chortling: “Looks like we fooled her.” He leaned over, as if to tousle Grace’s hair. Stopped himself. He never touched her. Grace was thirteen and in all the time she’d been living here, physical contact between her and Malcom had been limited to accidental brush-bys.
Sophie occasionally touched her hand, but not much else.
Fine with Grace.
Now Sophie put down her silver salad fork and said, “Honestly, dear, don’t sell yourself short, you know more than you think you do. Yes, experience is important. But you can gain that. All the experience in the world won’t help an idiot.”
“Amen,” said Malcolm, and he speared another lamb chop.
Sophie had served up a platter of chops along with tossed salad, thick fried potatoes, which Grace found delicious, and brussels sprouts, which smelled and tasted to her like something dying.
Sophie: “Don’t eat the sprouts. I’ve cooked them poorly, they’re bitter.”
Malcolm: “I think they’re fine.”
Sophie: “Darling, you think canned sardines are gourmet fare.”
“Hmmph.”
Grace ate another yummy piece of potato.
Especially with Sophie, Grace was careful not to overdo the good-manners stuff because Sophie was good at spotting fakes. Like with antiques in the magazines she subscribed to. Sometimes she’d look at a picture of furniture or a vase or a sculpture and nod approvingly. Other times, she’d say, “Who do they think they’re kidding? If this is Tang dynasty I’m Charlie Chaplin.”
In general, Grace was polite but normal about it. Following a rule she’d set for herself a long time ago.
If people like you, maybe they won’t hurt you.
Sometimes, mostly at night, alone in her big, soft, sweet-smelling bed, snuggling under a down comforter, sucking her thumb, Grace thought about Ramona.
The slimy-green pool.
That inevitably connected to Bobby in his bed, air tube hissing.
Terrible Sam. His brother and sister, scared as squirrels fleeing a hawk.
When those thoughts invaded Grace’s brain, she worked hard to throw them out — to evict them, a word from her vocabulary lesson that she liked because it sounded hard, mean, and final. Finally, she figured out that the best way of clearing her brain was to think of something nice.
A delicious dinner.
Recalling Malcolm saying she was brilliant.
Sophie’s smile.
Being here.
Two months after her thirteenth birthday — an event celebrated at the fanciest restaurant Grace had ever seen, in a hotel called the Bel-Air — she discovered something other than sucking her thumb that helped her feel peacefuclass="underline" touching herself between her legs, where hairs were sprouting like grass. Feeling dizzy and nervous, at first, but afterward warm and soft in a way she’d never experienced.