Say Goodnight, Gracie Read online

  “How long have you been standing there?” I asked.

  “Long enough. You walked right past me.”

  Oh.”

  “You don’t look too good.”

  “I have a headache. Compliments of Jimmy Woolf.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. . . . Did you ever just have one of those days?”

  “Sure,” she said, smiling. She walked over and gave me a tug on my hair. “How do you think I broke my toes? Come on inside; tell me what’s going on.”

  I followed her into the office. “I need to borrow some money. Jimmy left me stranded in the city without any way to get home.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Jimmy,” my aunt said. She sat down on the edge of her desk and took a pack of Tareytons out of her jacket pocket. “What happened exactly?”

  “I don’t know!” I slumped down into the chair in front of her desk. “I don’t know what happened exactly! Jimmy blew his audition at the Shubert this afternoon and I was trying to . . . I just wanted to make him feel better! What’s so terrible about that?”

  “He took it out on you?”

  “Are you kidding? He said some stuff to me—he wanted to make me feel bad! You should have seen the look on his face!” I could feel my eyes starting to fill up again. “Shit . . .”

  “Okay,” my aunt said quietly. “It’s all right. Here.” She pulled a couple of Kleenexes out of the box on her desk and handed them to me. I really felt like a jerk. “You and Jimmy will straighten things out—you always do.”

  “We had a pretty good thing going, and he screwed the whole thing up.”

  “Don’t you think a friendship as good as yours and Jimmy’s can withstand a little denting?”

  “What I think,” I said, “is that you should haul Jimmy Woolf in here and see if maybe there’s another personality lurking around in his body, because he is definitely not himself.”

  My aunt lit her cigarette. She tilted her head slightly and looked at me. Whenever she looked at me that way, I was sure she could read my mind.

  “Did you walk all the way over here from the Shubert?”

  “Yeah.”

  She smiled. “Your mother would love that.”

  I blew my nose. “She doesn’t have to know.”

  “How’s your headache?”

  “Compared to my day? Terrific.”

  “Tell you what—why don’t you stay over with me so you don’t have to make the trip home tonight, okay? I’ll call Fay and tell her you’re spending the night.”

  “That’d be nice. Thanks.”

  There was a knock on the door. Mrs. Getz, who was a nurse and a friend of my aunt’s, poked her head in.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a call on line two—sounds kind of important.”

  “Who is it?” my aunt asked.

  Mrs. Getz looked at me. “That friend of yours, Morgan—Jimmy, isn’t it?”

  “Jimmy’s on the phone?” I said. “What does he want now?”

  Mrs. Getz smiled. “He wants to talk to your aunt; that’s all I know.”

  My aunt put out her cigarette. “Thanks, Betty.”

  Mrs. Getz left. My aunt reached for the phone.

  “What are you doing?” I said. “You’re not going to talk to him, are you?”

  “You want me to hang up on him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Why don’t you go out to the nurses’ station and ask Mrs. Getz to give you a couple aspirin for your headache, okay?”

  “I’m staying right here. Go ahead and talk to him; I don’t care. This might be interesting.”

  My aunt picked up the phone. “Jimmy? This is Dr. Hackett. . . . Yeah, I know. She came here. Uh-huh. . . . Let me put you on hold for a second, Jimmy; I’ll see what I can do.” She punched a button on the phone and looked at me. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “No! Why should I?”

  “He sounds upset.”

  “He’s upset!”

  “Do you want to talk to him or not?”

  “No! I don’t know. I’m not sure. . . .”

  My aunt picked up her stethoscope. “I’ll meet you downstairs. I promised the E.R. doctors I’d stop by and take a look at one of their patients before I go home.”

  “Hey, what am I supposed to do about Jimmy?”

  She thought a moment. “If you decide to talk to him, punch line two. Otherwise he’ll be on hold for the rest of his life.”

  I sat and stared at the phone for a couple of seconds. Then I took a deep breath and picked it up. I punched line two.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Morgan . . . look . . . Christ, what’d you take off like that for?”

  “You know why, Jimmy.”

  There was a pause. I could hear him breathing. I could hear traffic, like he was calling from a pay phone.

  “Well, how are you going to get home? I’m just a few minutes away; I’ll pick you up, okay?”

  “I’m staying over at my aunt’s tonight.”

  “Do you think she’d mind if I stopped by?”

  “I’d mind, Jimmy.”

  “Look, I was upset earlier! Who wouldn’t be? You know how much that audition meant to me!”

  “That’s a hell of an apology, Jimmy.”

  “God, what do you want from me?!”

  “You try to figure it out,” I said. “And when you do . . . call me.”

  I hung up quietly. I knew Jimmy had been trying to tell me in a hundred different ways how sorry he was, but I wasn’t ready to be friends again. Not yet. I guess I thought that making him feel bad would make me feel better, but all it did was make my head pound harder and leave me with an empty feeling that just wouldn’t quit.

  Getting even isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

  6

  My aunt lives in a town house on the Near North Side of Chicago. When we got home, we parked in the garage and went in the back through the kitchen. Mrs. Rassin, my aunt’s housekeeper, was standing at the butcher block chopping up vegetables for dinner.

  “Well,” she said. “Look who’s here.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Rassin. What are you making?”

  “Vegetable soup.”

  My aunt picked her mail up off the kitchen table and looked through it. “Morgan’s going to stay over tonight. . . . She’s had kind of a rough day.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Rassin said. “Are you hungry? Some soup might taste good.”

  “Uh, I don’t think I can eat anything, Mrs. Rassin. I just want to lie down for a while and see if I can get rid of this headache.”

  “You’d be surprised what a little soup can do. I’ll bring a tray up to you.”

  My aunt looked at me and winked. “I’m going to take Morgan upstairs and get her settled.”

  “Oh, Dr. Hackett, the Danzigers called; they can’t make your dinner party tomorrow.”

  “Hmm . . .” She picked up a piece of chopped carrot and popped it into her mouth. “I’ll invite another couple. Maybe your folks would like to come,” she said to me.

  After we were on the stairs and safely out of Mrs. Rassin’s earshot, I said: “You know how Mrs. Rassin is. In a minute she’s going to bring up a bowl of soup and sit there to make sure I eat it, and Aunt Lo, I just can’t eat anything right now.”

  She laughed. “I know. Mrs. Rassin thinks soup cures everything. What do you want?”

  “A Coke?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  My aunt has a very comfortable guest room. A guest room is supposed to be for guests in general, but I think I used it more than anyone else. A lot of my stuff from home was crammed into that room: stereo, records, books, tapes. I kicked off my shoes and flopped down onto the antique four-poster and stared at the ceiling. No problem making myself at home here.

  “You’re going to need something to sleep in tonight,” my aunt said. She picked up the quilt folded at the foot of the bed and tucked it around me. “I’ll get some pajamas out for
you.”

  “How come they needed you down in the emergency room this afternoon? Was it a suicide attempt or something?”

  “Why?”

  “I just think I’d feel better if I knew there was someone on the face of this planet who had a crummier day than I did.”

  “Someone did have a crummier day than you did. Jimmy.”

  “That jerk. I’m glad I hung up on him.”

  “I think you’re mad at yourself for hanging up on him.”

  “He’s a turkey, and I don’t talk to turkeys!”

  I could tell my aunt was trying not to laugh. She has this great warm laugh, and she laughs easily, too. “You know why Jimmy acted like such a turkey, don’t you? He couldn’t handle having you see him mess up.”

  I thought about that. I reversed the situation in my head: If I had messed up at an audition, who’s the last person I’d want out there in the audience? Who’s the last person I’d want walking beside me, trying to be understanding about the whole thing? Jimmy, of course.

  “Dr. Hackett?” Mrs. Rassin hollered. “Your beeper’s going off!”

  “Damn,” my aunt said. She sat down on the bed and grabbed the phone off the nightstand and dialed a number. “This is Dr. Hackett—what happened? . . . Okay. . . . All right, I’m on my way.” She was on her feet in a tenth of a second. “Honey, I’ve got to go. Try to get some rest, okay? I’ll leave something with Mrs. Rassin in case your headache gets worse.”

  After my aunt had gone, I thought a little about calling Jimmy and trying to patch things up, but then I decided it was too soon. I just wasn’t sure what to say to him anyway. Then I started worrying about a bunch of crazy stuff: Like maybe what had happened between us was too big and maybe things wouldn’t ever be set right again. I closed my eyes and tried to shut off the mental gymnastics, but my brain wouldn’t settle down. I was sorry my aunt had had to go, because I wanted to talk some more and straighten out some things going on in my head.

  But other people needed her too.

  7

  “I didn’t think you’d ever wake up,” Mrs. Rassin said when I opened my eyes. She walked over to the windows, opened the curtains, and the room suddenly filled with sun. I put my hands over my eyes.

  “Gaa! What time is it?”

  “Almost noon. Your aunt’s been gone for hours. She said just to let you sleep.”

  “I didn’t hear her come in last night.”

  “She didn’t come home until midnight. It must have been a heck of an emergency, too; she really looked exhausted.”

  I threw the quilt off and sat up. My clothes looked like I’d bought them at a K Mart reduced table and then slept in them in a scrunched-up ball for about a hundred and fifty years.

  “I don’t suppose Jimmy called, did he?”

  “No—was he supposed to?”

  “I don’t know. I guess not.”

  “Come on downstairs; I’ll fix you something to eat.”

  “I can’t eat anything when I first get up, Mrs. Rassin.”

  “You and your aunt! You know what her idea of breakfast is? A cup of coffee and a cigarette! I’ve been trying for years to get her to take better care of herself, but try to tell a doctor anything—”

  “Okay, Mrs. Rassin, okay. I’ll eat. Just for you.”

  We settled on a grilled cheese. I spent the rest of the afternoon watching Rocky-and-Bullwinkle reruns, cutting up cheese cubes for my aunt’s party, thinking about Jimmy, and pondering the relative stupidity of the male-female relationship. It took me a good three or four hours to realize I was going to have to put my pride in my back pocket and make the first move. I brushed the cheese crumbs off my hands and picked up the phone. I had our conversation all planned. I was going to be really big about the whole thing while Jimmy fell all over himself trying to apologize, but it didn’t quite work out that way.

  His mother answered the phone:

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mrs. Woolf. Is Jimmy there?”

  “No, he’s out right now, Morgan; he’s doing some shopping for me.”

  “How’s he feeling? About the audition, I mean.”

  “Well, he’s pretty philosophical about it—you know how he bounces back.”

  “He seemed kind of upset yesterday.”

  “Did he give you a bad time after the audition? He mentioned something about your not driving home with him—”

  “Well, I guess neither of us was in a very good mood. Would you ask him to call me? I’m at my aunt’s.”

  “As soon as he gets back. It shouldn’t be too much longer.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Woolf.”

  My aunt came in about six. She was loaded down with her briefcase, medical bag, and two shopping bags from Saks.

  “Now this looks intriguing,” I said. “What did you get at Saks?”

  She dumped everything beside me. “I got a few things for you so you’d have a change of clothes.”

  “You did? What? Can I see?”

  “Mm-hmm . . .” She took a cigarette out of her coat pocket and lit it. “I talked to your mother last night—she and your father are coming to the dinner party tonight.”

  “Aunt Lo, I thought you weren’t going to smoke anymore—”

  “I’m tapering off. This is my last one.”

  “I’ve heard that before.” I emptied the shopping bags. I started lifting lids and taking out tissue paper. She’d gotten me a short-sleeved angora sweater and a pair of wool slacks; also some sexy underwear that was all one piece.

  “That’s a teddy,” my aunt said. “Your grandmother says she used to wear one when she was young—”

  “I love it! Aunt Lo, you didn’t have to do all this—”

  “I wanted to.” She sank down onto the couch. I watched the stream of smoke from her cigarette, and I looked at her. Mrs. Rassin had been right: She really did look exhausted.

  “How was your emergency last night?” I asked. “Mrs. Rassin said you didn’t get in till late.”

  “It’s all under control.” She never specifically mentioned any of her patients. I knew she was a good psychiatrist, partly because she was a good listener, but mostly because of her common sense. You could talk and talk and talk to her and she could cut right through to what you were trying to say, or trying not to say. I thought maybe she had picked up this talent in medical school, but my father said she had always been that way, even as a little kid.

  “Is your sweetie going to be here tonight?” I asked. “The famous Dr. Petrie?”

  A slow smile crept over my aunt’s face. “Mm-hmm.”

  “What was it like?” I said. “You know . . . when you first knew you were in love with him?”

  “It was very romantic,” my aunt said. “We’d been talking about the upcoming flu season, as I recall, and he looked deeply into my eyes and said: ‘Loey—let’s inoculate each other.’”

  “What really happened?”

  “Well,” she said, leaning forward to tap her cigarette against the inside of the ashtray, “I haven’t gotten the flu yet, have I?”

  I gathered up my new clothes and stuffed them back into the shopping bags. “I think I’ll go upstairs. This conversation is definitely getting X-rated.”

  I went up to the bathroom and peeled off my wrinkled clothes and took a quick shower. I was really in the mood for a good party. I just wanted to be around people who were laughing and talking and having fun, as opposed to one slightly demented seventeen-year-old dancer who’d obviously forgotten how to put his finger in the phone and dial. I grabbed a big, thick towel and took my time drying off, then I stepped into the teddy my aunt had gotten me. It was white and silky and had lacy cutouts on it. Wearing it made me feel like a very sexy person, which is a feeling you don’t get when you wear cotton underpants with little pink flowers all over them. I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered if anyone of any import would ever see me wearing this. So far the only people who had ever seen me in my underwear were the other girls in my gym class, an
d half of them didn’t even believe in underwear. I adjusted the straps, and when I turned around and looked over my shoulder to see how I looked from another angle, I heard a familiar voice.

  “It looks as nice from the front as it did from the back.”

  I whipped my head around and saw Jimmy standing there.

  “Jesus!” I said.

  Jimmy looked around. “Is He here too?”

  8

  “What are you doing here?” I yelled.

  “Enjoying the view.”

  “God!”

  “You’ve got to stop name-dropping like that, Morgan.”

  “Jimmy, do you mind?” I grabbed my new sweater and held it in front of me.

  “Oh, come on. I’ve seen you with a lot less on. Remember the time we took a bath together?”

  “Hardly,” I said. “And neither do you. We weren’t even three at the time.”

  “Some things you don’t forget. Not if they’re memorable enough.” He wandered into the room and stretched out on the bed. “Well, are you going to stand there half naked, or are you going to get dressed?”

  I frowned at him and pulled my sweater on. “What are you doing here?”

  “Your aunt invited my parents and me to dinner.”

  “She what?”

  “Didn’t she tell you?”

  “No, she did not! If I had known that . . . if I’d had even the slightest inkling you’d be coming, do you think there’s even the remotest possibility I’d be standing here now?”

  “It’s a little hard to take that speech seriously, Morgan, when you’re standing there without any pants on.” He picked up my slacks and threw them to me.

  “You acted like a real bastard yesterday, Jimmy.”

  “God, your language—”

  “You think I’m kidding?” I pulled my pants on and zipped them up. “You think I can just forget some of the stuff you said to me?”

  “Morgan . . . look . . . you know I didn’t mean any of that stuff—”

  “You meant it.”

  “You know what it’s like to make a total jackass out of yourself and know your best friend’s out in the audience watching?!”

  “You didn’t make a jackass out of yourself until after the audition, Jimmy.”