So began their affair. This was not something Grace had ever imagined herself capable of: the lying, the deception, the fabricated alibis that slithered off her tongue with startling ease. Yes, there was the big, foundational lie, but that was different. Her new lies required a constant inventiveness, a creativity and dexterity Grace almost admired in herself. At home, she invented a weekly after-work social, to which David encouraged her to go. Of course she felt guilty. Of course she hated the lies that slipped ever more effortlessly from her tongue. But not once did she hesitate when David asked questions about who was attending or what these evenings had been like. Her mind became a wellspring of lies. She found herself able to concoct the most elaborate stories. It seemed she had a penchant for fabrication hitherto unknown. It was such an easy thing to lie to David: she had, in fact, been doing it their entire life together.
It was wrong, she knew, but after a few weeks she stopped caring. Grace needed Johnny like she needed cigarettes. Seeing him once a week made her brighter, happier, more vibrant in other areas of her life. Having him back, knowing him intimately, having him listen with his attentive gaze to her stories and feelings; possessing him in that way had made her come back to life. The years without him she’d been asleep, she realized now, a somnambulist. Johnny had awakened her to happiness, to life itself. Feeling like a child again, Grace even caught herself skipping down the street one day. At home she was more attentive to David, more patient with Sindi. The baby didn’t tire her as much. Grace felt more energetic than she had in years. She could even be heard humming as she made dinner or washed dishes. David noticed, relieved, and remarked at how well she was settling into motherhood. A false peace descended on their home. David was happy.
In these moments Grace felt terrible about her deception. The funny thing was that she didn’t love David less after Johnny returned. Instead, Johnny had pried her guarded heart wide open, making it bigger and more capable of loving everyone in her life. In her worst moments, Grace rationalized it as good for her family. It was making her happy, and therefore David and Sindi were happier. Where before, she had struggled to relax and enjoy them, now she could fully embrace them with a healed heart, overflowing with joy. Johnny had fixed something in her. Something in that first embrace had gone “click,” and the old stuff, the muck of suffering, flew out of her, leaving her light as a bird. She could dance around the kitchen table with David now, in the midst of the evening chaos, where before she would have brushed off his little gestures of affection.
Others noticed the change too. Mr. de Vries complimented her on looking beautiful one morning. No one had ever told her that before, not even David. It astonished Grace. She started taking more care with her appearance, choosing a new lipstick color and some fresh blush. She had never bothered before. Now she found herself before a fancy makeup counter at a department store in the heart of the city at lunchtime, where a consultant helped her find the best shades for her skin tone. Peering into the mirror, Grace saw Mary looking back through her eyes. So this was what it must have been like to be in Mary’s skin; the admiring glances, the turned heads, the compliments and affirmations. Grace realized with a start that with her new look, she resembled her mother. Yes, she looked beautiful. For the first time, the memory of Mary made her smile. Mary would have loved this, taking her dull daughter to a makeup counter to try out a new look. Oh, Mama, why did you have to leave so soon?
Her hours with Johnny were never enough. They would meet close to Cape Town station after work on the designated night. Sometimes he brought his car, and they drove to the furthest beaches from the city. They couldn’t go to the closer, more popular ones, for fear of being seen. Other times, they walked from one bar to the next down the spine of Cape Town, Long Street, which livened up in direct proportion to the day workers leaving the city. No one Grace knew frequented these parts, and there were enough little hole-in-the-wall places where they could sit, tucked away, drinking and talking. Sometimes they didn’t even talk that much. It was enough for both of them to just be together, Grace leaning her head against Johnny’s shoulder, or feeling his hand resting casually on her thigh in a gesture of possession. Sex happened in Johnny’s car—always a furtive and desperate coupling that left neither of them satisfied, but holding just enough promise that the next time would be better. Grace disliked the empty parking lots and deserted beachside roads, but she couldn’t stop. It made her feel closer to him, sealing the precious bond she thought she had lost forever.
They spoke little about their home lives. Obviously, Johnny knew about David and Sindi, and in the beginning he would ask after Sindi, but Grace always cut him short. She didn’t want her child’s name to cross his lips, and after a while he stopped asking about her. Grace wondered where he lived and with whom—they had never been to his home—and she remembered the woman who had answered the phone that first time she’d called. She had suggested that they go to his place once, but his reaction discouraged her from doing so again. Unreasonably, she was jealous of his life, jealous of the people with whom he shared it in daylight, with whom he could be and be seen freely. For all she knew, Johnny was married. He had said once that he wasn’t, but she didn’t quite believe this. And what if he was married? Would she have the right to be upset and demand an explanation? She, who was lying to and cheating on her husband—what recourse to morality did she have with Johnny? Grace decided that she didn’t want to know about a wife, kids, girlfriends. When they were together, Johnny was hers, and she could stretch each encounter into a lifetime if she leaned in and turned her focus on him. Her soul, her mind, her body—she brought everything, everything into the car with her on their nights alone. She was present and attentive in the manner of a surgeon slicing through someone’s life. If that was the only way she could have Johnny, then so it would be.
They spoke often of Mary. Driving around the upper contours of Signal Hill, the city twinkling below them, they would call her back from the dead and breathe her into the present.
“You know, I loved your mother,” Johnny said one night. “It was like she recognized something in me, something good, that others didn’t see. I mean, at first she was stuck up. Remember that first time I came knocking at your door?”
They laughed at the memory.
“If she’d had a gun, she would have fired it in the air to get rid of me. But once you got to know her…your mother was good to me.”
“How? Tell me how she was good?” Grace implored.
She knew her father had liked Johnny and taken an interest, but Mary? She had not seen any explicit expressions of affection. Mary had softened toward him over the course of their acquaintance, but definitely regarded him as one would the help.
“Did you know she gave me a pair of your father’s old shoes?”
Grace hadn’t known that.
“Yes, she did. I had never owned a pair of shoes besides my school shoes until that day. That was so good of her, to think of me like that. She didn’t have to do that, you know.”
Grace smiled and fingered the cross of gold around her neck.
They sat in silence as headlights blurred into points of swishing light below. Grace felt she could have stayed there forever, in the warm car with soft rain tapping the roof and Good Hope’s smooth love songs on the radio.
“The funny thing was, I never even wore them. Just having those shoes was enough for me. They made me walk a bit straighter somehow.”
Grace turned and smiled at him.
“Your father was a good man too.”
Grace started. They’d hardly ever broached the subject of Patrick after that first night.
“I know what he did was horrible, unforgivable. I can’t even begin to imagine what that did to you. But sometimes people can do the most horrible things, things that define them for the rest of their lives. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some good in them. That doesn’t mean we should forget about that good, the small kindnesses they showed.”
Grace held his gaze. “Don’t you dare talk to me about the goodness in that man,” she said. “What do you know? Just what the hell do you know about living in constant terror, always waiting for the next blow?”
“More than you would think,” Johnny snapped back. Grace retreated. He was right.
“You should go and see him, you know,” Johnny persisted. “You don’t have to make him a part of your life. Just go and talk to him, before it’s too late.”
“What? What are you talking about? What do you know about my father?”
“He’s out of prison,” Johnny replied. “Been out for a while now. I see him sometimes, around the place.”
Grace felt betrayed. Johnny had known this information about Patrick and he had kept it from her. Now he was urging her to go and see him?
“You must be insane!”
“He needs to…”
“What? What the hell do you know about my father’s needs?”
It was clear to Grace now that there was some kind of relationship between Patrick and Johnny. She thought about the letter for the first time in a while. Unable to face its contents, she had locked it away in a little drawer at work. She knew it had to be from Patrick. Johnny was the only other person who could have written to her, but he had never mentioned sending her a letter so she knew there was only one other person who might have contacted her in this way.
Had they been conspiring against her? At this thought, Grace exploded with rage.
“You’ve seen him? You’ve seen that bastard?”
“Yes,” Johnny said calmly. “He lives close to me. He needs—”
“I don’t care what he needs. Did he care about what I needed? A mother—that’s what I needed most. He took my mother away from me, and I will never forgive him. He took everything. I left there without any clothes, nothing. You tell him from me to fuck off!”
They drove home in silence. Grace vowed to herself for the thousandth time to break things off. Johnny was in on something with Patrick. Continuing this madness would almost certainly bring her father back into her life, along with a whole lot of explaining she’d have to do to David. She got out of the car a few doors from home, as was her habit, and slammed the door shut without saying goodnight.
But she couldn’t stop with Johnny, no matter how hard she tried. Every time they parted, Grace quietly resolved to stay away, that this would be the last time. She’d be strong for a few days but that familiar longing would form in her stomach, an emptiness that could only be soothed by him. Grace was in trouble. She was recklessly gambling with her life and the lives of Sindi and David, and enjoying it. Perhaps Patrick had been right, and she had been destined to become the slut her mother supposedly had been.
When these thoughts threatened to overwhelm her, Grace assured herself that everything would be okay. Hadn’t she suffered enough in life, and wasn’t she entitled to this bit of happiness? It was all right to steal some joy with him, her Johnny—he was her first love, and if the horrendous events of the past had not happened, who knew? They would probably have been together and married. If only, if only. Sindi would be his. That was how it should have been—yet another thing Patrick had taken away from her. The mess that was her life was squarely Patrick’s fault.
Despite her resolve to end the affair, it continued. As their three-month “anniversary” came up, they looked forward to spending the stolen night together. Johnny had picked her up from work—a risky move—and they were on their way to Grace’s favorite restaurant in Muizenberg, on the other coast, when the inevitable happened. Grace was laughing, happily chirping away at Johnny as they drove through the city, when they stopped at a red light. They’d become careless, daring the world to look at them, to find out. As Johnny turned to her, Grace leaned in and brushed his cheek with her fingers. It was a simple gesture, not overly demonstrative, but the kind of touch that signaled the sort of intimacy a married woman should have with no one but her husband. A playful, tender gesture at the end of a tiring week and the beginning of an exciting night. Her hand lingered on his face, and Grace turned to find herself looking into the eyes of Gwen, her mother-in-law, who had pulled up at the light beside them. The two women’s faces froze as they recognized each other. No smiles, waves, or acknowledgments were necessary. The weight of Gwen’s silent grasping of the situation filled the car. Both cars moved off as the light changed.
Nausea rose from the pit of Grace’s stomach. She demanded to be taken home—Johnny, puzzled, wanted to know why.
“His mother, David’s mother, she was in that car next to us. She just saw us.”
Johnny grimaced, then tried to reassure her. They hadn’t been doing anything right at that moment, had they? Nothing obviously wrong. Grace had told David she’d be out with friends. Could it not be explained in this way, that Johnny was one of those friends?
“Don’t be stupid!” Grace screamed, tears streaming down her face. “Of course she could see what was going on.”
Johnny’s mood shifted from concern to anger.
“Stop it, just stop it, Grace! Stop crying this instant. You were happy enough to get into this in the beginning, remember? What did you think—that we’d be able to go on like this forever? This was going to happen sooner or later. And what kind of man is your husband anyway to let you go about like this, so freely, every week? Maybe he already knows. Maybe he’s not man enough, or maybe he can’t deal with this. Maybe he’s relieved. Looks to me like he’s turning a blind eye.”
The words felt like a physical blow to the stomach. With anger rising in her throat, Grace cast a fresh eye on Johnny, this Johnny she had never seen before, who had never spoken to her in this sneering tone.
“I’m sorry, Grace, to be so direct,” he said, and now his voice was devoid of malice, “but come on now, surely by now he must be wondering.”
He had no business, no business at all to be talking about David like that, to even have David’s name on his tongue. David, her good and solid David, didn’t need to have his name besmirched like this.
“Don’t you dare!” Grace hissed. “Leave David out of this.”
Johnny laughed a shrill, thin laugh, throwing his head back in exaggeration. The venom was back in his voice as he attacked. “I have to leave him out of it? Me, who has never even met this wonderful man of yours? Who is the one running around on him? If he’s so wonderful, why aren’t you home with him?” Grace had no answer, except her usual demand to be taken home. They drove together in silence as darkness pressed down on the car. Traffic in the opposite lane whizzed past them, throwing erratic strobes of light onto Johnny’s face, cloaking him alternately in darkness, then light. Now you see him, now you don’t—a new game of hide and seek invented itself between them. Johnny lit a cigarette, passed it to Grace, and lit another for himself. Grace inhaled, picturing her carefully constructed life about to come crashing down. At this very moment, David would probably be opening the front door to his mother, happy as always to see her. He would have Sindi on his arm. Right now, he would be leaning forward to kiss his mother on the cheek as he always did; she would enter the house through the hallway, and in the living room she would proceed to destroy Grace’s life. What a fool she had been. She wanted to get away from Johnny immediately, wished she had never set eyes on him that day on the train.
Johnny pulled into an emergency lane at the side of the road, snapped off the car’s headlights, and with an impatient swoop, lit another cigarette.
“I told you, I want to go home,” Grace protested weakly.
“I will take you home, but first, you listen to me.”
His voice bore an authority unfamiliar to Grace. She blinked the tears out of her eyes and sat up, on guard. She was not used to this.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll take you home tonight, but this will be the last time I leave you on the street. Tonight I come up with you, we tell David everything, you pack your bags and we’re gone. You’re leaving him—tonight.”
“Are you mad?”
Grace was starting to feel afraid of this new, assertive Johnny, the one no longer whispering declarations of love but making firm plans. She had no idea who he was, or what he was capable of.
“Where’s the madness in that? We can’t go on like this. Let’s make a clean break.”
“What about my child? Have you thought about her? Where is she in your plan?”
His silence swelled like a fresh bruise, filling the car.
“I’m not just running off with you,” Grace said. “I hardly know you.”
“Oh, you knew me well enough to fuck me.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Like what, the common whore that you are?”
The slap landed on his face before Grace knew what she was doing. She wanted to say something to defend herself, but the words piled up against the inside of her throat, and her tongue became a dead weight. She struggled with the door handle in the dark, desperate to get away from this man. Johnny grabbed the fumbling hand, reining her in.
“I’m sorry, so sorry. Grace. No.” He snatched both of her hands and kissed them. “I didn’t mean that. It was just the heat of the moment. I love you, Grace. I want you to come with me. Leave him. We’ll work out the baby somehow. Just come with me.”
Grace sat back and leaned her head against the headrest. Johnny loved her. She could see it right there, written on his face. She could feel it in the grasp of his hand on hers. But he had called her a whore, the way Patrick had called her mother a whore, and later, Grace too. Maybe this was love. Maybe love grabbed ahold of you and made you so crazy that it wrung the worst shit out of you and made you spit it at the beloved if you thought they were leaving you. Maybe love did that to you. Johnny loved her, of that she was sure. She could feel it, and the rage happening between them was part of it. She had never felt this angry at David. But David hadn’t dislodged her insides and rearranged them quite as Johnny could with just one word. This, here in the car, smacks and tugs and calling your woman a whore, this was love.
And she loved him too, more than anyone. Anyone except Sindi. She loved David, but in a different way. David was her rock, her best friend, but it had become like living with a brother. They were family and always would be, since Sindi bound them in blood, but Johnny—this was the kind of love that knocked you off the course of every known thing. It shook you by the shoulders and woke you up. To look at him was to feel again the course of long-suppressed love rush through her into a well of tenderness. Only Johnny could touch the concealed places of her joy and pain; only he was strong enough to bear these with her. He had relit something inside her that she thought had been snuffed out, woken a spirit that found itself soaring in his presence. She could not, would not, give this up. “Where would we go, if I left? Where do you live? I don’t even know that.”
“Look, you’re going to have to take a bit of the truth here, Grace, to get to the other side, where things will be good for us. I’ve been living with someone. It’s not serious. I never told you because it isn’t really that serious between me and her—I was planning on leaving anyway.”
Inside of Grace’s chest, something splintered. The sound of blood rushing and buzzing dizzied her. Johnny had someone else. He had been going home to a woman, sharing a life, a bed with her. What could she say? She had known it, felt it, but hadn’t been willing to face it. Now the fact slapped her in the face.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I just told you why…it wasn’t important enough. You were going home to your husband every night. Did you expect me to be a monk? It was always going to be over quickly with her anyway. I can leave her tomorrow, tonight even. I told you, it’s not serious.”
“And then what? You leave tonight and then what?”
“We’ll get a place together, you and me, Grace. We’ll get a flat close by to the baby. You’ll be close enough to see her.”
“I’m not leaving her! I’m not leaving my baby. And her name is Sindi! You’ve never even said her name.”
He punched the car window with his fist, sighed, and threw his head back.
“Calm down, Grace. Just think now, logically. We won’t be able to have her at first. But we’ll work it out. You’ll have your baby. Think about it. A life together, out in the open. No more once-a-week, after dark. I know that I can make you happy, Grace.”
He smiled and his eyes lit up. The lines on his forehead softened, and Grace started to feel better. He had come back into her life for a reason: surely it was no accident, meeting him on the train out of the blue like that? She hadn’t even been thinking about him that day, and he came back. And weighing the two men, callous as that seemed, on the scale of her emotions, one thing was clear: Johnny was the love of her life. Once David found out everything about her—her father, her mother, the sordid details; Johnny, the lies—he probably wouldn’t want her anyway. He would realize he deserved better. He deserved a decent, honest wife who didn’t have a past life waiting to explode into the present. He should have a girl from a good, solid home who could match him in solidity and respectability. Not her, not Grace, born in shame and raised on a diet of humiliation.
Johnny knew all of this, and still he loved her. He saw all of her and wanted her. In him, her shame could rest and die.
“Are you sure you want this, Johnny?”
“Absolutely,” he replied. No wavering.
“Are you sure you can take us on, both of us, me and Sindi?”
“Yes.”
So sure and so confident: that settled it for Grace. He loved her. He loved her. He had come back for her, and he loved her. It was always supposed to be him. Fate had thrown a cruel twist into their story, and now they were correcting it.
They drove back to Grace’s home in silence, having fixed their plans. They would go into the house together and confront David and his mother. Or, rather, they would allow those two to confront them. Grace would tell David it was over. She would pack some things for Sindi and herself—it would only take a minute—and they would go to a friend of Johnny’s for the night. They would both take the next day off work. First they would take Sindi to daycare, and then they would find a place to rent. Tomorrow they would begin their new life together: Grace, Johnny, and Sindi.
They arrived at the front gate to find the house shrouded in darkness. Gwen’s car was not parked against the curb next to the gate, where Grace had expected to see it. Surely she had driven straight to David, to share the news with her son? Gwen would not just have come and gone after delivering such devastating news. Surely not?
“Wait, Johnny. Let’s just wait on this.”
“What? Why?”
Grace felt her courage fading.
“Something’s not right; it’s not right to do it this way. I owe it to David to do it on my own.”
“Bad idea. You don’t know what he’ll do. He might hurt you. Let me come with you.”
“What? He’d never do that. He couldn’t hurt a fly. No, please. Let me do this on my own. Trust me, Johnny. Let me go up there tonight one last time and tell him my way.”
“Why? Now that we’ve decided, what could you want there?”
“I owe this to David at least. I know him, I know what to say. He would never hurt me. Just allow me to do this last thing for him.”
Johnny’s eyes darkened but he nodded assent. More words were exchanged, and he agreed to pick her up the next morning at eight. Grace climbed out of the car after an earnest “I love you” and slammed the door with finality. The taillights of his car were two tiny red pinpricks by the time Grace turned to ascend the steps.
This would be the last time she would enter the house as her home. Heavy of heart, for she had loved it here, but compelled by a force much larger than anything she felt for David, she made her way up. Not for the first time, Grace cursed God; a merciless, malignant God who took pleasure in shuffling the cards of their lives in the completely wrong order. This life with David was a mistake. As bad as she felt to hurt him, Grace needed to focus on Johnny, her first love. It should have been him all along.
It should have been him. The thought filled her head as she plodded up the stairs, toward the devastating deed she was forced to commit. It should have been him. The rhythm of her footsteps on the concrete veranda floor. It should have been him. The sound of the key as it turned in the front door lock. It should have been him. The scream of the stars, moon, and night sky retreating from her, as she prepared to do this thing, utterly alone.
The house was dark and quiet, save for the glow of a nightlight at the very back of the bedroom. She entered the living room. David lay sprawled there on the couch, fast asleep. The kitchen was neat, everything in its place, and the living room had been tidied. Grace slipped off her shoes and padded over to the couch on bare feet. She stood, feeling helpless, watching her husband in his sleep of innocence. Her heart swelled with tenderness for him, but she checked it, steeling herself. This should have been Johnny, right here, on the couch. Johnny should have been the father of the little girl asleep in the bedroom. David stirred, sensing her presence, and opened his eyes, soft from the memory of a dream. He smiled. Grace warmed to the crinkles around his eyes. He whispered hello in a sleepy voice. Clearly Gwen had not yet been there.
Grace sat down on the couch, on the spot he had made by moving back for her. How easily they accommodated one another—their bodies had their own language of give and take, each continuously shifting and making space to accommodate the other; each daily making way or leaning in as the other needed. Grace was about to shatter this bond; her heart had started its own personal excruciating breaking. Perhaps this would break them open to let the world in.
David reached for her, and she kissed his outstretched palm, leaving her lips to linger on his skin.
“I need to tell you something, David.”
His arm encircled her waist, pulling her down. “No talking. Just lie with me for a bit.”
Grace obliged, gratefully. A reprieve, ever the gentleman; even in this he was treating her softly.
David moved onto his side, making room for her. She slid in next to him, facing him, savoring the warmth of his hard familiar torso. Grace felt her muscles relax from the warmth of this body she knew and loved so well—every contour, every scar, every weakness. She put her hand, palm open, against his chest, and watched it slowly rising and falling with his deep, sleepy breath. She felt the thump of his heart against her hand; constant, steady, and predictable as the sun. This was the heart she was preparing to crush. Grace closed her eyes and let herself breathe the spicy smell of his cologne. Here she was again, under his wing. It felt like the most natural place to be—easy, comfortable. Here she was, back home, painted with garish makeup and stinking of smoke. She felt good against him, and dirty and cheap. He drew her in. She melted.
“I really have to tell you…”
Her hand lingering against his heart, in the darkness of the room, she tried to find his eyes, but they were closed. He whispered, shhhhh, and kissed the side of her neck. A part of her wanted to stay there forever, safe in his embrace with their daughter securely in the next room. But it should have been Johnny. She forced the image of the young boy with freckled cheeks into her head, conjured up the dark, beautiful face. She took a deep breath.
“It’s okay, Gracie. I already know.”
Her heart stopped. “How…?”
“I can smell it on you. I know you’ve started smoking again. It’s all right.”
Relief, then grief, flooded her body. Oh beautiful, naive David. She did not deserve him.
His warm hands crept under her shirt and circled her breasts. His breathing deepened, and he pulled her toward him with a familiar urgency.
“It’s okay, I forgive you.” He smiled.
Grace was transported back to those first days under the oak trees at university, her longing for him then, the delightful discovery that he longed for her too, the friendship that had slowly built itself into something that all of a sudden, one day, became urgent. After weeks of looking and yearning: the moment when they both had to touch, to move into an accelerated realm of companionship that would blossom into physical love. Their first kiss one night in a friend’s dorm room; their awkward fumbling becoming surer and stronger; the pleasure of his beard against her neck. Beads on the string that threaded their lives together. Her husband. Her baby’s father. She saw it all: the wedding, Sindi’s birth, the tired, sleepless nights that overwhelmed and dragged her into a chasm so deep, so empty, that Grace thought she had lost herself forever. David moved on top of her now, warm breath chasing her neck, while tears streamed down her face. He soothed, cooed, kissed the tears away while his hand worked surreptitiously to undo her skirt. She arched her body toward him, loving him with a fierceness that surprised her, wanting more than anything for this to be enough. She moaned, forgetting about Johnny, Sindi, her mother-in-law. For a time there existed only David. His body by now was naked, and she took in with him the final impressions of the last time.
It was the strangest sensation to one who had felt herself a victim all her life, to willingly inflict the worst kind of pain on one you love. Grace had gone through life blameless, believing that the hand God had dealt her conferred a righteous innocence. Yes, she bore that cross. She loved, she sacrificed, she did for others. She defined herself by this good; felt herself to be a special category of human being by virtue of the loss of her mother. She had protected those charged to her care, except for this day, when she would become the vehicle of destruction for David. Yet she had to do this breaking, inflict this pain, in order to be true to herself. She was sure that if Johnny walked out of her life she would die.
Grace lay with David, their limbs still entwined, and cradled him to her chest as she told him everything. Slowly, deliberately. She started with the day of Mary’s death and ended with Gwen at the traffic lights. She made clear her intention to leave. She would forever after recall the heaving sobs, childlike, into her chest of the beloved face she could not see. And when he finally looked up, the light was gone from his eyes. To watch a life shatter is not easy, more so when you are the cause of that shattering.
David went and came, went and came, in and out of the room. Pleading followed questioning; bargaining followed pleading. Was she sure? He understood how losing a parent that way could fester, unresolved, and make her do things she really didn’t mean to. If he had known, he would have supported her more, been a better husband. How terrible it must have been for her to bear this burden all alone these years.
He could understand, in a way, the thing with Johnny. It was grief, unresolved grief. This stranger had taken advantage of her, how was Grace to know that, blinded as she was by sadness. He could forgive all of it, everything, right then and never speak of it again if she promised to swear off the impostor. Grace couldn’t. By the time light filtered into the living room through the cracks in the blinds, it was over, everything. A joint life, carefully crafted, lay tattered before them, and Grace could not help but wonder: was he worth this, at the same time as she reassured herself that yes, he must be.
It should have been Johnny.
Resignation settled in David’s eyes. He asked Grace to leave the room so that he could make a phone call in private. A damp stain of fear spread across her chest. She left, slipping into the bedroom where Sindi was still asleep, blissfully unaware of the events that would shape the rest of her life. It was going to be okay, Grace told herself. David was angry and sad now, but he’d recover and realize that it was for the best. Who would want to hold onto a halfway love? David’s voice traveled in a low whisper through the kitchen and bedroom. Grace couldn’t make out the words, but she heard the sobbing, the breaking all over again. She stifled the urge to go and soothe him.
A long silence fell on the house, broken eventually by the fall of David’s feet on the wooden floor as he moved toward the bedroom where Grace lay with Sindi. The digital alarm clocked screamed 6:45 am in bright red numerals.
“Pack your things. Now.” He was calm, measured. “Be quick. Don’t waste any more of my time. I want you out of here.”
David threw a canvas tote at Grace, who unzipped it and moved away from the crib to the chest of drawers at the other side of the room. She pulled out some of her clothes and reached into Sindi’s clothes drawer, but David gripped her hand.
“I said pack your bags.” His face hovered close to hers and his lips curled back into a sneer as he spat the word. “Sindi is not going anywhere, do you hear me? Just take your stuff and get out! Now!”
Grace’s courage sank to her feet. This was not how it was supposed to go. She reached out and laid a hand on David’s upper arm to calm him down, but he jerked away violently. He clasped both her hands together and pulled her out of the bedroom. He never raised his voice in front of Sindi. He hadn’t needed to before.
“David, I’m her mother…”
“Now you listen to me, Grace. That child, my daughter, will leave this house today over my dead body. Clear? You can go and be with the fucking love of your life, but you’re not taking my child. Is that understood?”
“David, please. She needs me.”
“Apparently not enough to keep you home nights. God, Grace, look at you. Look what you’ve become. Filth. You disgust me. Get out!”
“David, I understand that I hurt you…”
“Hurt me?” He laughed. The next words cut sharp and deep, mercilessly. “You rip my fucking heart out, and then you want to take my baby? Not happening! Now get out, before I do something we’ll both regret.”
Grace moved back toward the bedroom door, but David blocked her with his body.
“No, no, no! Not with my daughter. Get out, Grace! I’m warning you now. I’ve never lifted my hand to a woman, but as God is my witness, if you don’t get out of my sight this minute, I will.”
Grace felt the line that she could not cross, knew instinctively to push no further.
A key turned in the front door lock. It was Gwen, Grace could tell by the click-clack of her high heels.
“Coward!” Grace screamed at David, enraged and emboldened by Gwen’s presence. “Calling on mommy to come and save you. Why don’t you fight your battles like a man?”
David grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her around, and started marching her toward the front door. Grace screamed, and Sindi, awakened by the commotion, joined in.
Gwen was in the living room. She nodded silently at David, looking away as Grace tried to catch her eye. She moved past the struggling couple to go and soothe her granddaughter. As David forced her toward the front door, Grace could hear Gwen cooing at Sindi, comforting her. For once she had slept through the night, not waking to eat. She must be starving.
“God, David, she’s hungry. Let me feed her at least!”
“No. She doesn’t need you. We’ll manage.”
He unlocked the front door with one hand and pushed Grace toward it with the other. Then with one big, final heave, he ejected her from the front door, slamming it against Grace’s breathless pleas. A few seconds later, he reopened the door, but only to throw out her handbag and coat. The door crunched again, locked. Grace rifled through her purse, searching for her keys—she was not going to leave Sindi without a fight—but David must have already removed them. With sweat dripping down her back despite the cold morning, Grace paced frantically around the stoep. She had lost all sense of decorum, all fear of what anyone might think: she needed to get back inside, back to her daughter. David would have to be reasonable. Words tumbled out of her, shrill and incoherent, punctuating the cold morning air. She heard herself shriek about lawyers, bastards, and bitches, while a small crowd gathered in the street below to watch the unfolding drama.
Grace looked down at herself—she was wearing the same clothes from the night before—so much for her emergency plan. David had not given her time even to pack the tote bag.
“What you looking at! Fuck all of you!” she screamed at the neighbors.
She went through her bag again and found a cigarette; lit it while she moved toward the front window of the house, trying to peer in. She found herself transported back to a spring day on Saturn Street, years ago, in another part of the city, when it had been her on the other side of the door, Patrick pacing the stoep like an animal. And here she was, years later, disgraced, retracing his steps. His words still rang in her ears—“Please, Mary, open the door”—and in that moment her hatred for him solidified and rose up through her, building into a full-throated, raucous shriek that ripped from her throat as it propelled her entire body—a ball of solid hatred—against the front door.
“Open up this door! I want my baby!”
Like pistons, her fists pummeled the wooden door, which refused to budge an inch. No one stirred inside. Grace remained oblivious to the growth in size of the audience down on the pavement. She didn’t care who was watching, what they thought of her. She wanted her baby!
Johnny’s car pulled up at the agreed upon time. Defeated, Grace made her way down the stairs under the collective gaze of the neighborhood and got in. Now they were really talking. They drove away—Grace crying, Johnny consoling—carrying the neighbors’ judgement on their backs. Johnny promised her that this was not the end. He had a friend who had a lawyer friend. They would fight and get Sindi. Grace nodded, but doubted: since when did men who wore steel-toed boots count lawyers amongst their friends? As if reading her thoughts, Johnny withdrew his hand from hers and sped further away from the house that contained her heart, her Sindi.