Read Full of Grace for Free Online Page A

rules, Regina. You’re Italian, you go to church, you have really nice kids that do the normal stupid stuff but they are seriously nice kids…”
    “Not so hot in school,” Frank said.
    “Not that terrible, Frank.”
    “You cook, you keep a nice house…”
    “Uh! The house is a disaster all the time!” Regina said.
    “Whatever! When Connie and Big Al and Nonna look at you and Frank, they are thrilled. Connie and Nonna say novenas of thanksgiving and Big Al spreads his feathers like the NBC peacock. They look at me and think, Oh my God, where did we go wrong?”
    “No, they don’t, Gracie,” Frank said. “You’re paranoid.”
    “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know what to think. All I know is thatevery time Michael’s name is even breathed, the sharks start to circle like there’s blood in the water. They don’t know what he’s been through.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well for one thing, he had a little brother that died when he was just two months old.”
    “Mother of God!” Regina said. “Let me tell you what that can do to a family!”
    “What did he die from?”
    “They think it was SIDS. I mean, you can imagine, right? His mother was never the same. And he grew up terrified of little kids.”
    “So needless to say, he’s a little ambivalent about having a family? Am I right?” Frank said.
    “You got it! And I don’t blame him. He says his mother became very morbid, and when his father died, that was it for her. She started fading away.”
    “Look,” Frank said, “you have to live your life. And think about this: If Big Al, who still suffers from the terrible twos, can adjust to living with his mother-in-law under the same roof for the past ten years, he can get used to anything. And anybody. Kids or no kids. Stem-cell research. Humph. So what? Scientists will always search for answers. That’s their purpose.”
    “He has worked with bone marrow, too,” I said.
    “Look, I’m a nurse,” Regina said, “and I’m a Catholic. I understand the Church’s objection—they don’t want the medical world to clone life to be used as an organ bank or to create life designed to be destroyed. Who does? But so far, nobody’s cloning anybody. Maybe a couple of Korean doctors.”
    “Who Michael says will probably be exposed for fraud…”
    “Who knows? I think everyone knows it’s an ethical conundrum. It’s the biggest ethical conundrum since a woman’s right to choose! All that said, if I had a child who was critically ill and their disease could be reversed with stem cells, you’d better believe that I’d be on line for stem cells. I see too many children get sick and die that shouldn’t.”
    Everyone fell silent then. Regina’s words summed up the larger partof the issue with a stunning succinctness. No one disagreed and no one applauded. Stem-cell research was a grave concern of Regina’s because she was a devout Catholic living in the medical community. As a philosophy professor, Frank had wrestled with the ethics of it. And me? I was in love with a man whose general livelihood already compromised the affection of my parents and grandmother.
    “It’s late,” Frank said.
    Regina and Frank hugged me and said good night.
    I struggled to find sleep but was consoled that I had something like allies in Frank and Regina. It had been a long time since I had felt at home with my family, and what tormented me into the early hours of morning was the why of it. Indeed. Why? Well, I was willing to admit I had changed. I loved Charleston society and the way my friends there lived. I loved my work and traveling like a billionaire. It made me feel like one. And getting away was my specialty. My parents had remained the same, and if anything had become even more provincial. But the real kernel of the problem didn’t lie with them and I knew it.
    I was afraid that if Michael met them, he would love me less or maybe stop loving me completely.
    I wondered what Frank would have said if I had told