GRACE AND GRAVITY

by Jamie Hennick

It’s Christmas Day and I’m with my partner’s family for the holiday, yet I’m in a room away from the Christmas tree glow, fielding hushed phone calls from my mom, dad, and sisters who are home together. I just can’t believe he’s gone, my mom says, her voice sad but clear of tears. How strange it was to hear his voice after so many years, they say, and the eerie coincidence that the call came on Christmas Eve—the holiday we used to spend with my mom’s side of the family. We’d only found out about Gary’s lung cancer a few months before and it was hard to imagine him gaunt or frail—he was always an overpowering presence, the uncle with a lot of opinions, the uncle who regaled us with stories about driving cross-country in his ice cream truck. 

He hadn’t been that uncle for at least a decade, having morphed into a controlling, antagonistic version of himself. He was one of two of my mom’s estranged siblings—Gary and her sister Trish—who seized legal control over the care of our grandmother after her dementia diagnosis, incrementally and inexplicably cutting my mom out of any decision-making about Grandma’s care. Our mother was, practically speaking, Grandma’s primary caregiver, and spent multiple days a week by her side in the nursing home, cleaning her room, helping her eat, holding her hand. But she rarely crossed paths with Gary or Trish, whose visits were infrequent. If there was an emergency, the nursing home would call Gary or Trish and my mom would be the last to know.

How is Mom? How is Mom? How is Mom? is my refrain and my dad and sisters take turns reassuring me that she is okay, and then my mom does the same, acknowledging the gift of Gary’s apology, the sorrow that it hadn’t happened sooner, and the cold fact that we’d already been grieving his absence for almost a decade—this was a second exit.

Gary and Trish weren’t the only ones we’d lost. On my mom’s side of the family, I used to have three aunts, three uncles, and six cousins. Three of those cousins lived far away, but three lived a couple of towns over from us and for a while, we grew up like siblings. We saw them often, our moms “letting” us get together to play for hours in one of our backyards while they sat outside, sipping iced teas with lemons, and chatting. At our house, we would flank either side of the house and take turns hi-yah-ing playground balls over the roof to those on the other side. At theirs, we pruned in their above-ground pool all day—jumping and diving and screaming and inventing game after game after game—until the mosquitoes bit us bloody and forced us inside. Max was the oldest; Max was my age; Max was my dear friend.

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On the morning of the funeral, my sisters and I crowd into our old bathroom to get ready, like we did in high school—hip to hip vying for space in front of the mirror. In old tradition, we knock on the wall—baa ba ba baaa ba—to our parents in their adjacent bathroom and wait for their response—ba ba—before resuming our brushing, our powdering, our mascaraing.

“When’s the last time you talked to Max?” Zoe asks. 

“Probably at Uncle Lou’s funeral,” Molly says. “What was that? 2010? Thirteen years ago?” I set down my mascara, Zoe pauses her toothbrush. I know what Max looks like from Facebook—older, taller, hair that grew long during college and then was chopped short again. I think about how he watched his father, Uncle Lou, die of cancer for a decade; I think about my own dad in the room next door and a nagging guilt returns—I’ve tried to measure the magnitude of Max’s loss, but it’s an impossible equation.

“I unfriended him on Facebook after the last exchange.” My face flushes remembering my third and final attempt to team up with Max to facilitate some kind of reconciliation between our mothers. I’d reached out after seeing Trish at 

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Grandma’s assisted living facility while visiting with my mom. She’d walked into Grandma’s room and started a visit with Grandma as if we weren’t there, ignoring our greetings and screaming at my mom to stop being so combative. Outside in the parking lot, I’d pleaded with Trish to talk to me, but she’d cowered into her car, avoiding eye contact and, if I’d been inches closer to her car, she would have run over my foot on the way out. Max said it never happened.

“When was that? Five years ago?” Zoe asks, smoothing dabs of foundation under her eyes.

“Yeah—he gave the same bullshit again about how he has to take his mother’s side. He told me my story wasn’t possible because that’s not what his mom said.” Recounting the day conjures a vicious frustration that blooms red across my face. The answer was always the same from Max—a weak finger always pointing at an impasse, and a litany of reasons deeming reconciliation impossible—his mom did nothing wrong. 

“The last time I talked to him was when he visited me when I was abroad and he told me the story about when he called Grandma a bitch,” Zoe says. She spritzes the back of her neck with a travel vial of perfume. We cough in its exhaust. 

“When do you think the last time they saw Grandma was?” Molly asks as she leans into the mirror, examining her skin.

I think of Grandma in the nursing home and our promise not to tell her about Gary. These days, Grandma doesn’t remember the month, or the pandemic, what town she lived in. Introducing this truth would necessitate reintroducing it on every subsequent visit. Even imagining it felt like a heavy toll: Gary died, Gary died, Gary died. 

“Who knows,” I say, thinking of all the trips we’ve made collectively to spend time with Grandma. I think again of Uncle Lou and remind myself that visiting Grandma is our choice and is no one’s obligation, but that alone is not what’s complicated about Max. 

I look at my sisters’ faces in the mirror, then at our elbows all in a line. I jab Molly to move over, she jabs me back.

“I’m not going to talk to Max,” I declare—I want them to hold me accountable. 

“I’m not about to perform. What are you up to? Oh wow! Nope. Not gonna do it.” 

But my words collide with a wall of want. I want to. I want to tell him about the binder I found in my parents’ house of our Harry Potter fan fiction. I want to reminisce with him about the confidence we shared that we would beat J.K. Rowling to write the next sequel. I want to point to page after page, moment upon moment of poignancy. Harry Potter and the Mirror of Erised—a novel that explores the depths of human desire and sense of self. The labyrinth of questions we’d mapped in our chapter outlines: Harry discovers himself (Harry is made of water); Harry discovers another (Harry is made of paper); Harry loves Hermione (but he loves Ron too). I want to puzzle over our fifthgrade scrawl, map ourselves to the clues from our former selves. I want to hover with him over a notebook with colored pencils and pens and finish our project—I can’t do it alone. 

“Let’s stick together,” Molly says. I lift up my dress to examine a run in my tights.

Zoe sidles behind us to the closet and fishes out some Tums. “Anyone want any?” she shakes the bottle at us and our stress-sour stomachs. 

“Fuck yeah,” I say and pour some into my mouth as if shooting back whiskey. Molly does the same. Then Zoe. 

Fuck yeah, we say, donning ourselves in our armor of humor, revving our ferocity, preparing for the funereal battleground. Objective: protect our mother. We shimmy around each other and take drinks straight from the faucet to wash it all down. 

At the funeral we do as Molly suggested and huddle in the back corner of the large and yellow room where we can keep an eye on the door. I put a face mask on, though my sisters, who are teachers, do not see the need. Aunt Rhea thanks us profusely for coming and we understand that my sisters and I are a pleasant surprise. A pang of grief arrives like a sore tooth as we hug her, sharp and to the bone. She presses her wet face into our shoulders as if no decades stood between us, as if we were still growing children. She hugs our mom, pulling away only when someone asks her about a floral arrangement. My mom shakes her head as she walks away and we put our arms around her, thinking of all the times Rhea stood by while Gary yelled. Our parents file seamlessly into the receiving line. None of us had cried yet, but for a moment, I think I might. Not for Gary, though. Probably not for Gary. 

Trish bristles past us, Max hooked on her elbow, steadying her towards her spot in line. Our other cousins, Max’s siblings, are not there, but Max’s partner, who I recognize from social media, is. Trish speaks sternly to Max, directing him to move a chair from one place to another until finally lowering herself to sit. Her hair is gray and wiry, her eyes dark and vacant. My mom leans over and says Hello but Trish doesn’t look up. 

There are multiple TVs glaring brightly in the center of the room, like marquees, scrolling through old photos. Gary and Rhea on their wedding day. On 

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vacation. Gary golfing with friends. Gary and Grandma. Always with that smirk. Barely looking at the camera, barely looking away.

Others filter into the room, a constant flow of ghosts from another lifetime. Many are happy to see us, and others are happy to meet us, Gary’s nieces, for the first time. What a great guy, they say, so sorry for your loss. We thank them all because yes, we’ve been sorry for quite some time. 

Max stays near Trish until she’s settled. His hair is long and curly, a far cry from his bowl-cut days. His jeans, clean and starched. His partner is dressed similarly and has thick glasses that keep slipping down his nose. Before I catch myself staring and look away, I see the boyfriend rest a reassuring hand on Max’s shoulder. I see Max look back, catch his boyfriend’s eye. They smile at each other and it is brief and it is subtle but it is certain and I want to tell him how happy I am to see him.

Eventually Max and his boyfriend make their way over to us. His hello is syrupy, as if he practiced beforehand. He turns to Zoe, opens his arms for a hug. So good to see you, he says. Zoe keeps her distance, patting his back and then hugging his boyfriend too. He hugs Molly next. She hesitates before folding into his embrace. They talk. I cross my arms. I am a wall. But when he turns to me, suddenly his face is close, and I am transported to the days spent scubaing along the bottom of the pool: mapping constellations in the liner with small rocks from the driveway; our whisper-woven manipulations of our younger siblings—the almighty garage troll; their scampering wet feet from the pool to the porch, asking for juice through the screen as if at a drive-through; hanging from the pool’s edge, chlorine filming to our lips, our skin, our hair, drying under a perfect summer sun; mother arms handing paper cups of pink lemonade through swinging screen doors; pitter-patter sprints back to the pool’s rocky moat; tiptoes on prickles of dried, dead grass, handing us the cool liquid, some of it sloshing into the pool and dissipating before we could take notice. No troll today, we’d declare. The relief on their little faces, the joy when they cannonball back into the water. Long, lost, best, friend. 

Hey, he says but it is my own voice that rumbles through me like thunder— I’m not going to talk to him. I harden. Pull my arms closer. The heartaches my mom has endured; Max’s complicity. I think of Grandma, who doesn’t know that her first-born has died. How she’ll never know because we’ll never tell her. How we’ll go visit her after the service. How we all brought a change of clothes so she won’t ask, Why are you all in black? Gary’s words reverberate like a solemn call to worship: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry; I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m trying; I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. All that he put us through. I’m not going to talk to him—but Max’s eyes are earnest and when our gazes meet, it’s as if on a tenuous old bridge, I think I recognize love.

He’s inches away; I miss him intensely. I could grab him and never let go and I want to smile, to talk, to love. But when he opens his arms, I am still. Stoic. Unflinching. There is something else in me; hate is too strong a word. I’m both mortified and proud of my resolve and also I want to undo it, to never have done it, but I cling to my decision, as if another gash in our relationship will heal all the others. Embarrassment flashes across Max’s brow and before I can change my mind, it’s too late and his arms return to his sides, hands to his pockets, and he says okay and I sputter out, Nice to see you and I’m not sure if I’m lying. I want to introduce myself to his partner and it’s a shame he’ll know me like this. I want to ask Max if he’s seen Grandma lately, to ask him if he knows that she’s dying too.

Uncle Lou used to throw us screaming gleefully into the sky from the pool and that was the happiest I ever saw Max—in midair exhilaration. How fun it was to sink like a cannon on the way down all the way to the bottom and spring back up like fireworks.

Max nods as if it’s been nice to see me too and I point to my mask to explain, as if COVID were the reason, and I hug many other people that day and when it’s all over, we leave without saying goodbye.

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Jamie Hennick is a queer literary fiction writer and poet based in DC. An alumna of the Southampton Writers’ (2022) and Wesleyan Writers’ Conferences (2008, 2014), and Juniper Institute (2024), Jamie is currently working on a collection of short fiction that explores the dimensions of nonromantic intimacies, grief, sisterhood, and memory. She earned her MFA at American University, along with the Myra Sklarew Award for remarkable originality in a prose thesis. Her work can be found in The Dickinson Review, The Colorado Review (online), and The Palisades Review, among others.