The Truth About Forever

  I wasn’t allowed on these trips—they were, traditionally, estrogen-free—but he often took me down on other weekends, when he needed to work on the house or just felt like getting away. We’d cast off from the beach or take out his boat, play checkers by the fire, and go to this hole-in-the-wall place called the Last Chance, where the waitresses knew him by name and the hamburgers were the best I’d ever tasted. More than our old house, or our Wildflower Ridge place, the beach shack was my dad. I knew if he was haunting any place, it would be there, and for that reason I’d stayed away.

  None of us had been down, in fact, since he died. His old Chevy truck was still there, locked in the garage, and the spare key it was always my job to fish out from the conch shell under the back porch had probably not been touched either. I knew my mom would probably sell the house and the truck eventually, but she hadn’t yet.

  So on Friday afternoon, I came home to find the house completely and totally quiet. This would be good, I told myself. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to get done over the weekend: emails to send out, research on colleges to do, and my closet had gotten really cluttered. Maybe this would be the perfect time to organize my winter sweaters and get some stuff to the thrift shop. Still, the silence was a bit much, so I walked over and turned on the TV, then went upstairs to my room to the radio, flipping past the music channels until I landed on a station where someone was blathering on about science innovations in our century. Even with all those voices going, though, I was acutely aware that I was alone.

  Luckily, I got proof otherwise when I checked my email and there was one from Jason. By the second line, though, I knew a bad week had just gotten much, much worse.

  Macy,

  I’ve taken some time before writing back, because I wanted to be clear and sure of what I was going to say. It’s been a concern of mine for awhile that we’ve been getting too serious, and since I’ve been gone I’ve been thinking hard about our respective needs and whether our relationship is capable of filling them. I care about you, but your increasing dependency on me— made evident from the closing of your last email—has forced me to really think about what level of commitment I can make to our relationship. I care about you very much, but this upcoming senior year is crucial in terms of my ideological and academic goals, and I cannot take on a more serious commitment. I will have to be very focused, as I’m sure you will be, as well. In view of all these things, I think it’s best for us to take a break from our relationship, and each other, until I return at the end of the summer. It will give us both time to think, so that in August we’ll know better whether we want the same things, or if it’s best to sever our ties and make this separation permanent.

  I’m sure you can agree with what I’ve said here: it just makes sense. I think it’s the best solution for both of us.

  I read it through once, then, still in shock, again. This isn’t happening, I thought.

  But it was. The world was still turning: if I needed proof, there was the radio across the room, from which I could hear headlines. A war in some Baltic country. Stocks down. Some TV star arrested. And there I sat, staring at the flickering screen, at these words. Words that, like the first ones Jason had read to me from Macbeth, were slowly starting to make awful sense.

  A break. I knew what that meant: it was what happened right before something was officially and finally broken. Finished. Regardless of the language, it was most likely I was out, all for saying I love you. I’d thought we’d said as much to each other in the last few months, even if we never said it aloud. Clearly I’d been wrong.

  I could feel my sudden aloneness in my gut, like a punch, and I sat back in my chair, dropping my hands from the keyboard, now aware of how empty the room, the house, the neighborhood, the world, was all around me. It was like being on the other side of a frame and seeing the camera pull back, showing me growing smaller, smaller, smaller still until I was just a speck, a spot, gone.

  I had to get out of there. So I got in my car and drove.

  And it helped. I don’t know why, but it did. I wound through Wildflower Ridge, cresting the hills and circling the ground that had just been broken for the newest phase, then ventured farther, onto the main road and toward the mall. I drove in silence, since every song on the radio was either someone shrieking (not good for my nerves) or someone wailing about lost love (not good, period). In the quiet I’d been able to calm down as I focused on the sound of the engine, of gears shifting, brakes slowing, all things that, at least for now, were working just as they were supposed to.

  On my way back, traffic was thick, everyone out for their Friday night. At stoplights I looked at the cars around me, taking in families with kids in car seats, probably headed home from dinner, and college girls in club makeup, blasting the radio and dangling cigarettes out their open windows. In the middle lane, surrounded by all these strangers, it seemed even more awful that I was going back to an empty house, up to my room to face my computer screen and Jason’s email. I could just see him typing it out at his laptop, so methodical, somewhere between condensing the notes he’d taken that day and logging on to his environmental action Listservs. To him, I was a commitment that had become more of a burden than an asset, and his time was just too precious to waste. Not that I had to worry about that. From now on, clearly, I would have plenty of time on my hands.

  As I approached the next intersection, I saw the wishbone.

  Same bold black strokes, same white van. It was passing in front of me now, and I could see Delia driving, someone else in the passenger seat. I watched them move across the intersection, bumping over the slight dip in the middle. WISH, it said on the back, two letters on each door.

  I am not a spontaneous person. But when you’re alone in the world, really alone, you have no choice but to be open to suggestions. Those four letters, like the ones that I’d written to Jason, had many meanings and no guarantees. Still, as the van turned onto a side street, I read that WISH again. It seemed as good a time as any to believe, so when my light dropped to green and I could go, I put myself in gear and followed them.

  Chapter Four

  “So I say, I know that you’re not insulting my outfit. I mean, I can take a lot—already have taken a lot—but I won’t tolerate that. You’re my sister. You know. A girl has got to draw the line somewhere, right?”

  Okay, I thought. Maybe this was a bad idea.

  After almost turning back three times, two drive-bys and one final burst of courage, I was standing in front of McKimmon House, a mansion in the historical district. In front of me was the Wish Catering van, now parked crookedly against the curb, the back doors flung open to reveal several racks of serving pans, blocks of packaged napkins, and a couple of dented rolling carts. Inside, I could hear a girl’s voice.

  “So I do it: I draw the line. Which means, in the end, that I have to walk, like, two miles in my new platform sandals, which gave me blisters you would not believe,” she continued, her voice ringing out over the quiet of the street. “I mean, we’re talking deserted roads, no cars passing, and all I could think was—grab those spoons, no, not those, the other ones, right there—that this has got to officially be the worst first date ever. You know?”

  I took a step backwards, retreating. What had I been thinking, anyway? I started to turn back to my car, thinking at least it wasn’t too late to change my mind.

  Just then, though, a girl walked to the open doors of the van and saw me. She was small, with a mass of blonde ringlets spilling down her back, and with one look, I just knew it was she I’d heard. It was what she had on that made it obvious: a short, shiny black skirt, a white blouse with a plunging neck, tied at the waist, and thigh-high black boots with a thick heel. She had on bright red lipstick, and her skin, pale and white, was glittering in the glow of the streetlight behind me.

  “Hey,” she said, seeing me, then turned her back and grabbed a pile of dishtowels before hopping out of the van.

  “Hi,” I said. There was more I was going
to say, entire words, maybe even a sentence. But for some reason I just froze, as if I’d gotten this far and now could go no further.

  She didn’t seem to notice, was too busy grabbing more stuff out of the van while humming under her breath. When she turned around and saw me still standing there, she said, “You lost or something?”

  Again I was stuck for an answer. But this time, it was for a different reason. Her face, which before had been shadowed in the van, was now in the full light, and my eyes were immediately drawn to two scars: one, faint and curving along her jaw line, like an underscore of her mouth, and the other by her right temple, snaking down to her ear. She also had bright blue eyes and rings on every finger, and smelled like watermelon bubble-gum, but these were things I noticed later. The scars, at first, were all I could see.

  Stop staring, I told myself, horrified at my behavior. The girl, for her part, didn’t even seem to notice, or be bothered. She was just waiting, patiently, for an answer.

  “Um,” I said finally, forcing the words out, “I was looking for Delia?”

  The front door of the van slammed shut, and a second later Monica, the slow girl from my mother’s party, appeared. She was carrying a cutting board, which, by the expression of weariness on her face, must have weighed about a hundred pounds. She blew her long bangs out of her face as she shuffled along the curb, taking her time.

  The blonde girl glanced at her. “Serving forks, too, Monotone, okay?”

  Monica stopped, then turned herself around slowly—a sort of human three-point turn—and disappeared back behind the van at the same snail’s pace.

  “Delia’s up at the house, in the kitchen,” the girl said to me now, shifting the towels to her other arm. “It’s at the top of the drive, around back.”

  “Oh,” I said, as Monica reappeared, now carrying the cutting board and a few large forks. “Thanks.”

  I started over to the driveway, getting about five feet before she called after me.

  “If you’re headed up there anyway,” she said, “would you please please please take something with you? We’re running late—and it’s kind of my fault, if you want the whole truth—so you’d be really helping me out. If you don’t mind.”

  “Sure,” I said. I came back down the driveway, passing Monica, who was muttering to herself, along the way. At the back of the van, the blonde girl had pulled out two of the wheeled carts and was piling foil pans onto them, one right after another. When she was done she stuck the towels on top of one, then rolled the other over to me.

  “This way,” she said, and I followed her, pushing my cart, to the bottom of the driveway. There we stopped, looking up. It was steep, really steep. We could see Monica still climbing it, about halfway up: it looked like she was walking into the wind.

  The girl looked at me, then at the driveway again. I kept noticing her scars, then trying not to, which seemed to make it all that more obvious. “God,” she said, sighing as she pushed her hair out of her face, “doesn’t it seem, sometimes, that the whole damn world’s uphill?”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking about everything that had already happened to me that night. “It sure does.”

  She turned her head and looked at me, then smiled: it changed her whole face, like a spark lighting into a flame, everything brightening, and for a second I lost track of the scars altogether. “Oh well,” she said, leaning over her cart and tightening her fingers around its handle. “At least we know the way back will be easy. Come on.”

  Her name was Kristy Palmetto.

  We introduced ourselves about halfway up the hill, when we stopped, wheezing, to catch our breath. “Macy?” she’d said. “Like the store?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “It’s a family name, actually.”

  “I like it,” she said. “I intend to change my name as soon as I get to a place where nobody knows me, you know, where I can reinvent myself. I’ve always wanted to do that. I think I want to be a Veronique. Or maybe Blanca. Something with flair, you know. Anybody can be a Kristy.”

  Maybe, I thought, as she started to push her cart again. But even five minutes into our friendship, I knew that this Kristy was different.

  As we came up to the side door it opened, and Delia stuck her head out. She had on a red Wish Catering apron and there was a spot of flour on her cheek. “Are those the ham biscuits? Or the shrimp and grits?”

  “The biscuits,” Kristy said, pushing her cart up against the side of house and gesturing for me to do the same. “Or the shrimp.”

  Delia just looked at her.

  “It’s definitely one or the other,” Kristy said. “Definitely.”

  Delia sighed, then came out and started peering into the various pans on the carts.

  Kristy leaned against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. “That hill is a killer,” she said to Delia. “We’ve got to get the van up here or we’ll never get everything in on time.”

  “If we’d left when we were supposed to,” Delia said, lifting the lid of one pan, “we could have.”

  “I said I was sorry!” Kristy said. To me she added, “I was having a fashion crisis. Nothing looked good. Nothing! Don’t you hate it when that happens?”

  “And anyway,” Delia continued, ignoring this tangent, “they have strict rules about service vehicles up here by the garden. The grass is apparently very fragile.”

  “So are my lungs,” Kristy said. “And if we do it fast, they’ll never notice.”

  Monica appeared in the open door, holding a cookie sheet. “Mushrooms?” she asked.

  “Meatballs,” Delia said, without looking up. “Put three trays in, get another three ready.”

  Monica turned her body slowly, glancing at the oven behind her. Then she looked at Delia again. “Meatballs,” she repeated, like it was a foreign word.

  “Monica, you do this every weekend,” Delia said. “Try to retain some knowledge, please God I’m begging you.”

  “She retains knowledge,” Kristy said, a little defensively. “She’s just mad at me for holding us up, and that’s how she expresses it. She’s not good at being forthright about her emotions, you know that.”

  “Then go help her, please,” Delia said in a tired voice. “With the meatballs, not her emotions. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Kristy said cheerfully, pulling open the door and going inside.

  Delia put her hand on the small of her back and looked at me. “Hi,” she said, sounding a little surprised. “It’s Macy, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know this is probably a bad time—-”

  “It’s always a bad time,” Delia said with a smile. “It’s a bad business. But I chose it, so I can’t really complain. What can I do for you?”

  “I just wondered,” I said, then stopped. I felt stupid now for holding her up, when so much else was going on. Maybe she had just been being nice when she’d said she would hire me. But then again, I was already here. I’d climbed that hill. The worst she could do was send me back down. “I just wondered,” I said again, “if the offer still stood. About the job.”

  Before Delia could answer, Kristy reappeared in the doorway. “Meatballs are in,” she said. “Can I get the van now?”

  Delia looked down the driveway, then shot a glance in the front window of the house. “Can you? No,” she said.

  “It’s just one hill.” Kristy rolled her eyes. To me she said, “I’m a terrible driver. But the fact that I admit it, shouldn’t that count for something?”

  “No,” Delia said. She looked down the driveway, then at the house, as if weighing the pros and cons, before digging into the pocket of her apron to pull out some keys. “Once it’s up here, unload fast,” she said to Kristy. “And if anyone starts freaking, pretend you had no idea about the rules.”

  “What rules?” Kristy said, reaching for the keys.

  Delia shifted them out of her reach, holding them out to me instead. “And Macy drives. Period. No argument.”

  “Fine,” Kristy said. “Let’s ju
st do it, okay?”

  She turned on her heel and started down the driveway, bouncing a bit with each step. Even from a distance, you could-n’t help but watch her: maybe it was the boots or the hair or the short skirt, but somehow to me it was something else. Something so electric, alive, that I recognized it instantly, if only because it was so lacking in myself.

  Delia was watching her, too, a resigned expression on her face, before turning her attention back to me. “If you want a job, it’s yours,” she said, dropping the keys into my hand. “Payday’s every other Friday, and you’ll usually know your schedule a week in advance. You’ll want to invest in a few pairs of black pants and some white shirts, if you don’t have a few already, and we don’t work on Mondays. There’s probably more you need to know but we’re off to a rocky start here, so I’ll fill you in later. Okay?”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  Kristy, already halfway down the driveway, turned her head and looked up at us. “Hey, Macy!” she yelled. “Let’s go!”

  Delia shook her head, pulling the screen door open. “Which is to say,” she said to me, “welcome aboard.”

  At the library, I’d had two weeks of training. Here, it was two minutes.

  “What’s most important,” Kristy said to me, as we stood side by side at the counter, piling mini ham biscuits onto trays, “is that you identify what you’re carrying and keep all crumpled-up napkins off your tray. No one will pick up anything and stick it in their mouth if it’s next to a dirty napkin.”

  I nodded, and she continued.

  “Here’s what you need to remember,” she continued, as Delia bustled past behind us, putting down another sheet of meatballs. “You don’t exist. Just hold out your tray, smile, say, ‘Ham biscuits with Dijon mustard’ and move on. Try to be invisible.”

  “Right,” I said.