The year Grace turned eleven, she again stood in line on the Fourth of July to board the Ste. Claire, but rather than entertaining worries over soiled brass railings, she had thought of the boy, young man, with the easy laugh and dark hair. Or she likes to believe she thought of him, that she remembered him from the year before. The ladies’ shoulders were still fortified by pleats and pads, their waists still sculpted, their frames tall and proud. But when the ship’s horn called out, Mother said nothing about it being no time for sorrow.
It was a different girl in James’s arms that year. Grace stood on the edge of the open-air dance floor, holding her hair at the nape of her neck, and she heard him before she saw him. He spun by, holding a dark-haired girl this time, spinning, twirling, faster with each pass. Grace had watched him, imagining how happy the girl in his arms must have been. She must have felt safe in his hands. Mother and Father danced that year too. It was the only year Father took Mother in his arms.
The floor pulsed underfoot as Grace watched the dancers. James says he remembers a little blond girl standing alone, the wind pulling at her hair. He says he spun by and ruffled that head of hair because even then, he knew she was special. Grace doesn’t remember him ever catching her eye or giving her a wink or a nod. But she smiles when he remembers and says she remembers too.
That was the last year Father would board the Ste. Claire. He, like others, like James, went to war in the months that followed. This is why the whole country had been bracing itself. This is why the ladies loosened their hair and wore stout shoulders in their suits. Wives and mothers rode streetcars to Michigan Central, waved good-bye to their husbands and sons as they boarded outbound trains, so many of them never to be seen again. By the next Fourth of July, Grace knew Father would never come home.
Downstairs, James bangs about in the kitchen. He came home an hour ago and will have made coffee and read the newspaper. It’s what he does every night. Grace has told him he’s drinking too much coffee and smoking too many cigarettes. There’s all that food, she says, knowing the ladies are filling the church tables every day and night. Eat. You’re wasting away. He’ll watch a ball game if there’s one showing. More and more of the games are airing on the television. Hardly any reason to go to the ballpark anymore. Grace blinks when the bedroom door opens and light from the hallway brightens the room. She slides into a sitting position, her back resting against the headboard.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” James says, yanking out his shirttail and unbuttoning his shirt.
Grace doesn’t have to ask. She need only inhale as if she’s about to speak.
“Nope, nothing,” James says, and lays a hand on Grace’s stomach. “How’s my little guy tonight?”
“She’s fine,” Grace says. Her smile comes easily and for a moment, things feel as they are meant to.
Pulling his black leather belt from his trousers, James hangs it from a hook on the back of the bedroom door and sits on the edge of the bed. Propping one foot on the opposite knee, he pulls at the laces on his boot.
“Did you have a good evening?” he says, not mentioning the police who visited at suppertime.
“I wish I could do more. It’s so quiet here on the street. Everyone’s helping but me.” Because she’ll go again another day and doesn’t want James to forbid it, she doesn’t tell him about the trip to Willingham or the pierogi or the women.
After taking off his first boot, James removes the second, bends to the closet floor, and hooks both on the shoe rack-right boot on the right side, left boot on the left. When he rises, a white leather shoe dangles from one finger.
“It was yours?” he says. “That shoe in the garage was yours. Here’s the mate.”
Grace doesn’t remember returning the single shoe to the closet. It should have been thrown away with the other clothes. It must have been there, hanging from the shoe rack since the night the man came for her.
“How about that?” Grace says. “I guess it was.” She smiles and shrugs because she is always the one to misplace the keys or her favorite hairbrush or one of Mother’s recipes.
It seems that it happened so long ago, that several weeks and months have passed since the men came. But it’s only days. Grace can count them on one hand. She wakes every morning, thinking so much time has passed. Things she should remember, memories that should be clear and sharp, have faded, even disappeared, as if many months separate then from now. It must feel this way because time is supposed to heal her. That’s what Mother said, so Grace’s mind is speeding it up, tricking her into thinking weeks and months have ticked by. But the slipping away isn’t because of the healing. That moment and those men seem far away, distant, because Grace is so changed. Not in a small way. Not in a passing way that happens over a day or a week. She is entirely changed. She is changed in a way so large it would usually take months and years to emerge. Surely something so huge must show through. Mother said not to tell, but surely James will see it.
The shoe dangles from James’s finger. He rotates it from side to side, inspecting it from all angles. He’s thinking, perhaps wondering about the police who said something terrible happened in the garage, perhaps remembering what the officer with the soft curls said about a woman suffering a horrific attack. Without saying anything else, James lowers himself to one knee and slides the shoe onto the round wire that will hold its shape.
“Shame,” he says. “We’ll buy you a new pair.”
Grace scoots down between the sheets, and James slides in next to her. Tomorrow, she’ll go to Willingham Avenue again. If the women ask, she might tell them what really happened. They would look at her a moment, maybe sigh, and then say it’s not so bad. Seen worse. Resting one hand on James’s chest where she can feel it rise and fall, Grace nestles against him in such a way that her head fits perfectly on his shoulder, and she thinks of Orin Schofield sitting in his chair in the back alley, waiting, maybe even hoping, the colored men pass. Earlier this evening, after Mrs. Williamson would have washed up her supper dishes and Mr. Williamson would have fallen asleep listening to the radio, Mrs. Williamson tied a blue scarf around her thinning hair, walked out her back door, across the alley, up to Orin Schofield’s house, and returned to him his rifle.
The twins have been asleep for a few hours and still Bill isn’t home. Since the search for Elizabeth first began, all of the husbands have been coming home late, but tonight Bill is later than the rest. Well over an hour ago, Julia heard the thud of car doors, footsteps on concrete, front doors slamming and locking as the other husbands came home. Still, no sign of Bill.
A new kind of worry settled over the ladies cooking and serving at the church today. All day they whispered about visions of a colored man wrapping a large hand around Elizabeth’s thin wrist, dragging her into a car, leaving her somewhere to die. With word of the arrest, the ladies could no longer assume, even pretend to assume, Elizabeth wandered away. It wasn’t a tragic accident. Whatever happened to Elizabeth could happen to any one of them.
The dining-room window has been fully dark for at least two hours when a stream of light flashes across the small window in the front door. Julia only guesses at the time. She never checks the clock. Better not to know. Overhead, the girls’ room has been quiet for some time. A car engine rattles in the driveway and falls silent. The light disappears. Keys jingle in the lock. The front door swings open.