Free Every Time We Say Goodbye by Jamie Zeppa Page B

up the small metal box. She kept her mind empty and let her hands remember. They found the pieces, turned and fitted and snapped them into place.
    “Good.” Theresa took the finished clock from her. “Thank you, ladies. You can go now.” She tapped Grace’s shoulder. “I’ll take you to the office. Mrs. Thurman will have some papers for you to sign.”
    “To sign?” Grace’s hands fluttered to her cheeks. “I have a job?”
    Theresa laughed and pulled open the door for her. “You have a job.”
    On the way back from the factory, she stopped at a department store and spent a long time looking at the toys. She ran her hand over painted wooden blocks: Danny already had blocks that Frank had made him. She plucked the strings of a small wooden guitar and pushed a train along a track. Finally, she picked up an odd plastic shoe on wheels. She ran it along the shelf, and suddenly the top flew open and a soft brown dog popped up. Grace paid with the money that Frank and Vera had given her to hold her over. She already had a job. She could already buy something for Danny. She asked for a box and took the toy straight to the post office.
    Back at Mrs. Barr’s, she called home. “I have a job in a clock factory,” she told Vera. “How is Danny?”
    “Already? That’s wonderful, Grace.”
    “Is Danny all right?”
    “He’s fine. He’s sleeping.”
    “I sent him a present. It’s a toy dog in a shoe. For his birthday coming up.” It hurt her throat to say it when she wouldn’t be there for it.
    “Why are you wasting your money, Grace? He has toys. Here, talk to your brother.”
    Frank said, “Well, well. A working woman. Congratulations, Grace.”
    “How has Danny been, Frank?”
    “He’s been good! He was singing away in his crib this morning when I got up.”
    “What did he do today?” she asked. She needed to know what time he had woken up, what he had played with, when he had eaten, whether he had made that face when he ate his carrots, because sometimes he didn’t. But Vera had taken the phone. “We’d better say goodbye,” she said. “This is costing you a fortune. Write us and tell us how you are doing.”
    “I’m going to call later,” Grace said, “so I can talk to Danny.”
    “Don’t be silly, Grace. He’s a baby. He can’t talk on the phone.”
    Grace put down the phone and stood in the kitchen of Mrs. Barr’s boarding house. Through the French doors, at the other end of the dining table, Mrs. Barr was making a note in a ledger. Today she wore a lime green robe, long and silky, with a matching scarf holding up her tower of black hair. Smoke trailed her cigarette. “Sign here,” she said, and pointed to the entry under
Grace Turner: March 15: Telephone. Ten mins
.
    Grace wrote her name. Her arms were heavy and she was afraid she would cry. She shouldn’t have come. Danny was there and she was here. He would look for her and she would be gone. He wouldn’t understand why, and she couldn’t even tell him.
    “Who’s Danny?” Mrs. Barr asked, and Grace looked up, startled.
    “You kept asking for Danny on the telephone.” She twisted her lower lip sideways so that she didn’t blow smoke directly into Grace’s face. “Is Danny your fella?”
    Grace laid the pen down and closed the ledger over it. Yesterday, Mrs. Barr had told Grace, “I treat my girls like my own,” but Grace didn’t want to be one of Mrs. Barr’s girls. There were pillows of soft flesh under Mrs. Barr’s eyes, but the eyes themselves were hard and glittery. Also, Grace knew she hadn’t been on the phone for more than five minutes.
    “No,” Grace said. “I don’t have a fella.”
    Mrs. Barr steered another line of smoke sideways. “Well, you certainly seemed worried about him, whoever he is.”
    Grace shook her head. “I’d better have a bath and get to bed so that I’m rested for tomorrow.”
    “Actually, it’s not your bath night,” Mrs. Barr said. “Your night is Tuesday. But I think