Full of Grace Read Free Page B

see, he bought Mom one-carat diamond studs for her birthday. That would be one-half carat for each ear—I mean, Al’s successful, but he’s not Donald Trump, okay? At the same time hebought me diamond studs of the same quality that were one-third of a carat each, because I have an extra hole in my right ear. Mom’s face fell when Dad slid the little velvet box toward me at Mom’s birthday dinner, and it was obvious that the thrill of the moment had been diluted for her. Same thing happened when Dad bought my convertible. He bought Mom a BMW sedan. She wanted to know if he thought she was too old to drive a convertible. Big Al couldn’t understand Mom’s edgy resentment, but I am sure some shrink would have had a ball with it. I didn’t really blame her for her ambivalence about these double-edged swords of gratuitous gifting. Anyway, there’s probably a pill that could help her, but that would be the last thing I would suggest to anybody.
    “I’ll see you for the Fourth,” I said.
    You know how you always wish that you came from the perfect family? That they were wealthy, classy and smart, but never pretentious? That they were all good-looking, stylish, funny and never cruel? Well, keep wishing, right? There was no Ralph Lauren ad layout waiting for me to step in on Hilton Head.
    It was about six in the evening when I arrived at my parents’ home and steam was still rising from the grass. We’re talking ridiculous steaming Tennessee Williams–Somerset Maugham kind of heat. I pulled my duffel bag from the trunk and looked at the house. Mom was right. Dad’s little construction project looked terrible.
    Here’s a little more on him: Big Al was supposed to be retired and he relocated the family to Hilton Head for the multitude of golf courses. He loved golf so much you would’ve thought his father had run the PGA and that he had caddied for Arnold Palmer or somebody. For years he talked nonstop about Hilton Head, the weather, the blue skies and the various challenges of each course, one more fantastic than the next. But to be perfectly honest, in a little over a year he got sick of golf and then there was the problem of Nicky. My little brother, Nicky, is a handsome devil, but he’s not exactly Albert Einstein. It took him eight years to graduate from Caldwell College in New Jersey with an associate’s degree in communication. Most people would be a doctor after eight years in college. Not my brother. He has a degree in skirt.
    Anyway, true to his amazing nature, Big Al opened his second business so that Nicky could have a career and something to inherit someday. In New Jersey, Dad was in the paving business, mostly parking lots. In Hilton Head, he called himself a hard-scaper, which still entailed the pouring of asphalt from time to time. It was actually more gentrified, as they did work with all sorts of new materials that resembled that which they weren’t. Cement that looked like bluestone, cement that looked like sandstone, et cetera.
    You had to love my father. Everyone did. And I had always been his favorite. Until the advent of Michael. Maybe he couldn’t stand the thought of his little girl having a man and a sex life. Maybe he was jealous. Or maybe he was just old-fashioned and didn’t approve of his daughter sharing a home with a man without the benefit of marriage. I knew the fact that Michael was Irish didn’t help. Anyway, life delivered Big Al and me to a Mexican standoff. It was stupid because everyone was entitled to live their lives the way they wanted to, weren’t they? No. The truth is that you could, but there were consequences and the Big Chill from Al’s corner was mine. I thought I had compromised by agreeing to live nearby in Charleston. We could see each other often enough and I could still live my life. But the fact of the matter was that I could have been living in Patagonia and if Connie yelped I would’ve jumped on a plane. The familial choke chain had no respect for