The Saving Graces Read Free

my
Brittany
spaniel.
"Terry?" She saw her son behind me and frowned in puzzlement.
"Mom?" Well, no, what he actually said was, "
Mo-
?" If he'd gotten his mouth closed in time, my shoes could have been saved. But up came a disgusting stream of half-digested M&M's, Mounds, Milky Ways, and vodka, and most of it landed on my one-day-old, dove-gray suede Ferragamos.
Isabel rushed outside. Right behind her came Gary. I can't remember what I thought of him that first time. Not much-husband, older, short and stocky, nondescript. He ended up taking care of Terry, and Isabel ended up taking care of me.
I've sat in her kitchen a thousand times since that night. Isabel isn't like any friend I've ever made, and, at first, even though I was drawn to her and liked her a lot, I couldn't imagine us ever being close. She was older, for one thing-only eight years, but it seemed like much more. It's because she's from another generation, Isabel says, but I think it's something else as well. Some people are born knowing things the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn. Then, too, she looked so much older, with her streaky gray hair in a bun, of all things, and no fashion sense whatsoever. (I've helped her a lot with her sense of style over the years.) But she was still beautiful. To me, that night, she looked like an aging Madonna - I don't mean the singer. This was in 1987, so her real troubles hadn't even begun, but already there was sadness in Isabel's face, and serenity, and that lit-from-within quality that's so extraordinary to me.
And I . . . well, my life was busy and full with part-time teaching and a full course load, as well as a thesis to write for my M.Ed., but I was still a bit lonely. And maybe. . . in the market for a mother. Not that I haven't got a mother. As my husband says, Oy, have I got a mother. What I mean is-I might have been in the market for a little mothering.
Emma says I don't understand irony, but I believe this is the definition of it: except for Isabel, none of the Saving Graces has ever had children, and the only one who wants any is me. And I can't. Plus-this is ironic, too-I think Isabel and I were born to be mothers, and yet we both had rather cold parents. I'm dying to be a mother, to be mothered. And she mothers everybody, but who mothered her? No one.
On second thought, perhaps this isn't ironic. Perhaps it's just pathetic.
She made me take off my pantyhose and put on a pair of clean socks-Terry's-and she gave me a mug of hot mulled cider to sip while she cleaned my shoes in her powder room sink. When she came back, we had the nicest, most comfortable conversation. She asked me all about myself. In particular, I remember telling her about some of the scrapes my two brothers used to get into as teenagers, and how they've both turned into pillars of the community, as the saying goes. I said that so she wouldn't worry too much about Terry being on the road to ruin. I didn't stay long, but as I was l eaving, it occurred to me that she'd found out a lot more about me than I had about her.
Terry came over the next day with a very nice apology, and also an invitation to dinner. So that's how it started. Isabel and I became friends. When we weren't visiting in each other's house, we were walking Lettice and Ernie in the dog park, or playing tennis together, or going for drives in the country. I cried with her when Terry decided to go to college at McGill in Montreal. She listened to every detail of my husband's long, shy courtship. After she walked out on Gary, she and Grace lived in my spare room for three weeks, and when she got cancer I felt as if it had happened to me. I can't imagine not knowing Isabel, can barely remember what my life was like before I met her.
A year or so after Terry's Halloween escapade, we were sitting on the linoleum floor, drying our dogs after their last bath of the summer, when Isabel said, "Leah Pavlik, you spend too much time with me in this kitchen. You ought to go out and play