Alix Ohlin - Inside

She could sleep here a few minutes, she thought, before going home.

The sound of a door closing made her open her eyes. And there was Tug’s mother, a little old lady stepping down the cobbled pathway that led from the house to the street. Wearing a dark red raincoat, her head bent against the rain, she was clutching her purse to her stomach as if she, too, felt sick. She was heading for the maroon Honda that Grace had parked behind, but with her head down and the rain starting to fall harder, she wasn’t likely to notice her sitting there. Then the front door opened again and another woman came out — this one blond, pretty, and much younger — and Grace’s stomach bucked again. She had seen Marcie at the funeral service too.

As if she could hear Grace’s thoughts, Marcie glanced down the street at her car. Barely seeming to register the rain, she looked right at Grace, her expression indecipherable. All Grace could think was how pretty she was.

When the wipers swished, clearing the windshield, Marcie’s eyes met Grace’s, and she stepped off the path, walked over to the car, and knocked on the driver’s-side window. And Grace — feeling as though this were a dream — rolled it down.

“I recognize you,” Marcie said. “You were at the service.”

Grace nodded, her tongue gummy and thick. Marcie was waiting for her to say something, her eyebrows knitted.

Swallowing, Grace said, “I was a friend of Tug’s.”

Marcie grimaced. “I’ll bet,” she said.

It wasn’t what Grace was expecting. “Excuse me?” she said.

The other woman glanced at Tug’s mother’s car; the engine was on, the taillights glowing red in the rain. When she looked back at Grace, she shrugged in a strangely airy way. “You know,” she said, “my husband had a lot of friends.”

Grace didn’t know what this meant, and didn’t want to, either. “I see,” she said softly.

“Oh, do you?” Marcie was still standing there bent over, her head down at Grace’s level, a position that couldn’t possibly have been comfortable. Her cheeks were flushed. Rain was dripping into the car. “That’s good,” she went on. “I’m so glad you see.”

Grace flushed now herself. In her grief over Tug, in her need to see where he came from and trace his roots in the world, she had forgotten that those roots were, of course, planted in other people. “I’m sorry to have troubled you,” she said.

“Right,” Marcie said.

Grace wondered what she was doing here, and where she was going with Tug’s mother. Tug had told her that when the marriage had fallen apart she’d gone to live with her parents in Hudson.

“I’ll be going,” Grace said.

“So soon?” said Marcie. “We just met.”

“What?” Grace said.

“Did you come from Montreal?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Grace had no idea how to answer. All she felt was embarrassment and regret. The woman’s voice was taut with anger, and her eyes burned feverishly. She kept staring at some spot just to the right of Grace. It was as if she knew that Tug had once sat in the passenger seat, slumped against the door.

“I think I’d better go,” Grace said, waiting for Marcie to step back so she could roll up the window and back away. But instead, Marcie moved her head even closer, and Grace could see that her eyes were ringed with dark circles or maybe smeared mascara. In front of them, the taillights on the other car faded, and Tug’s mother got out and walked over.

Marcie straightened up. “Joy,” she said with a bright, false smile, “this woman is a friend of Tug’s.”

Grace was mortified. She hadn’t really planned what she might say to Tug’s parents — if anything — but whatever fantasy existed in her head, this wasn’t it. A sick feeling washed over her like the sudden onset of flu, and she clenched her abdominal muscles and prayed to be delivered from this moment. As the older woman bent down, her face next to Marcie’s, Grace turned her head and retched onto the passenger seat.

“Oh, dear,” said Tug’s mother. “You’d better come in.”

Fifteen minutes later she was sitting on the sofa in Tug’s childhood home, cradling a cup of tea in her hands while three strangers sat around her in postures of fake repose. It was pouring outside, the rain loudly lashing the windows, and Grace was nauseous and hot. No one spoke. Tug’s father, a tall, rangy man with short-cropped white hair, kept glancing longingly toward the den, where an afternoon hockey game was playing on TV, the sound of the crowd rising and ebbing in the background.

Grace looked around the room. She couldn’t imagine Tug sitting on this furniture or running through this room as a child. The couches were dark pink and flowered, and white vases sprouting plastic flowers sat on doilies on the side tables. Everything smelled of Lysol.

One night, in bed, Grace had told Tug about her divorce, and about how Mitch had moved his things out of their apartment so quickly and thoroughly that she’d felt like she was being robbed. When she saw his frantic packing she resorted to stealing a few small things from his boxes — a photograph of him as a child, a teapot that had belonged to his mother — just so she wouldn’t feel like the entire world they’d built together was disintegrating completely. And then he put his stuff in storage and went off to the Arctic, leaving no phone or contact information, and she felt doubly bereft: both divorced and abandoned. Tug had shrugged. “When you realize you’re in the wrong place,” he’d said, “it makes sense to get out.”

His mother now peered at her. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some aspirin?”

“No, thank you,” Grace said.

The politeness was epidemic. At least with Tug’s parents. Marcie sat in an armchair and glowered, her legs crossed tightly.

Grace had already apologized several times, and now sat with her head swimming, wishing she had stayed at home. “Do you have any saltines?” she said.

“Let me check, dear,” Tug’s mother said. She practically ran into the kitchen, delighted to have a mission, and Grace could hear her opening and closing cupboards. Joy was a short, round woman with kindly green eyes. Tug resembled her more than his father — the same curly hair, the same sloped shoulders. Amid the nausea, another physical pang coursed through Grace’s chest. She missed his body, the warmth of his arm flung over her in sleep, the smell of his hair and skin.

Joy came back with a plate of Peek Freans cookies fanned decoratively on a plate. “Will this do?” she said. “I’m afraid we don’t have any crackers.”

“Perfect,” Grace said. “I’m so sorry about this.”

“We told you to stop saying that,” Tug’s father said gently. For all his kindness he was also appraising her, keeping his distance, much as Tug always had. He waited while she slowly ate a cookie, forcing it down. “So,” he said once she’d finished, “how did you know him?”

Grace bowed her head. Of course she would tell them everything; that was the price of being here. “I met him skiing one day, on the mountain. We became … friends.”

Marcie sighed, a long, sad whistle.

Tug’s mother ignored her. She was sitting very straight in her chair, her hands cupped together in her lap. Her dignity was immense; so was her pain. “My son was very fond of skiing,” she said.

“Yes,” Grace said. “We went a few times later, too. This winter.”

“You were with him,” Joy said slowly. “This winter.”

“Yes,” Grace said again.

At this Tug’s mother and Marcie exchanged a look.

Grace was deeply at sea, lacking any footing in the conversation, and wished desperately that she hadn’t come. She blamed Tug for not telling her much about his family, for being so mysterious, for being gone. Yet seeing his parents in front of her, the crazy quilt of features that had combined to produce him, was for a moment like having him in the room, and she was glad of that.