The Truth About Forever

  “No,” Bert said. “It’s where the gurney used to be. That’s just a cot I put in until I find something more comfortable.”

  “A cot?” Kristy said. “Bert, you’re entirely too confident about this car’s potential. Really.”

  “Just get in, will you?” Bert snapped. “My birthday is ticking away. Ticking!”

  Wes was walking back to the Bertmobile as I dug out my keys and started toward my car, passing the van on my way.

  “Have a good night,” he said to me, and I nodded, my tongue fumbling for a response, but once I realized that saying the same thing back would have been fine—God, what was wrong with me?—it was too late, and he was already getting into the Bertmobile.

  As I passed the van, Delia was in the driver’s seat fastening her seat belt. “You did great, Macy,” she said. “Just great.”

  “Thanks.”

  She grabbed a pen off the dashboard, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled napkin. “Here,” she said, writing something on it, “this is my number. Give me a call on Monday and I’ll let you know when I can use you next. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, taking the napkin and folding it. “Thanks again. I had a really good time.”

  “Yeah?” She smiled at me, surprised. “I’m glad. Drive safe, you hear?”

  I nodded, and she cranked the engine, then pulled away from the curb, beeping the horn as she turned the corner.

  I’d just unlocked my door when the Bertmobile pulled up beside me. Kristy was leaning forward from the backseat, hand on the radio: I could hear the dial moving across stations, from static to pop songs to some thumping techno bass beat. She looked across Wes, who was digging in the glove compartment, right at me.

  “Hey,” she said, “you want to come out with us?”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I really have to go—”

  Kristy twisted the dial again, and the beginning of a pop song blasted out, someone shrieking “Baaaaby!” at full melodic throttle. Bert and Wes both winced.

  “—home,” I finished.

  Kristy turned down the volume, but not much. “Are you sure?” she said. “I mean, do you really want to pass this up? How often do you get to ride in an ambulance?”

  One time too many, I thought.

  “It’s a refurbished ambulance,” Bert grumbled.

  “Whatever,” Kristy said. To me she added, “Come on, live a little.”

  “No, I’d better go,” I said. “But thanks.”

  Kristy shrugged. “Okay,” she told me. “Next time, though, okay?”

  “Right,” I said. “Sure.”

  I stood there and watched them, noting how carefully Bert turned around in the opposite driveway, the way Wes lifted one hand to wave as they pulled away. Maybe in another life, I might have been able to take a chance, to jump into the back of an ambulance and not remember the time I’d done it before. But risk hadn’t been working out for me lately; I needed only to go home and see my computer screen to know that. So I did what I always did these days, the right thing. But before I did, I glanced in my side mirror, catching one last look at the Bertmobile as it turned a far corner. Then, once they were gone, I started my engine and headed home.

  Chapter Five

  Dear Jason,

  I received your email, and I have to say I was surprised to learn that you felt I’d been

  Dear Jason,

  I received your email, and I can’t help but feel that maybe you should have let me know if you felt our relationship was

  Dear Jason,

  I received your email, and I can’t believe you’d do this to me when all I did was say I love you, which is something most people who’ve been together can

  No, no, I thought, and definitely, no.

  It was Monday morning, and even with two full days to craft a response to Jason’s email, I had nothing. The main problem was that what he’d written to me was so cold, so lacking in emotion, that each time I started to reply, I tried to use the same tone. But I couldn’t. No matter how carefully I worked at it, by the time I finished all I could see was the raw sadness in the lines as I scanned them, all my failings and flaws cropping up in the spaces between the words. So finally, I decided that the best response—the safest—was none at all. Since I hadn’t heard from him, I assumed he’d accepted my silence as agreement. It was probably just what he wanted anyway.

  As I drove to the library to begin another week at the info desk, I got stuck behind an ambulance at a stoplight, which made me think, as I had pretty frequently since Friday, about Wish Catering. I’d already had to confess about my new job to my mother, after she found my wine-stained shirt in the laundry room soaking in Shout. That’s what I get for following instructions.

  “But honey,” she said, her voice more questioning than disapproving, but it was early yet, “you already have a job.”

  “I know,” I said, as she took another doubtful look at the shirt, eyeing the stain, “but I bumped into Delia on Friday at the supermarket, and she was all frazzled and short-handed, so I offered to help her out. It just kind of happened.” This last part, at least, was true.

  She shut the washer, then turned and looked at me, crossing her arms over her chest. “I just think,” she said, “that you might get overwhelmed. Your library job is a lot of responsibility. Jason is trusting you to really give it your full attention.”

  This would have been, in any other world, the perfect time to tell my mother about Jason’s decision and our break. But I didn’t. I knew my mother thought of me as the good daughter, the one she could depend on to be as driven and focused as she was. For some reason, I was sure that Jason’s breaking up with me would make me less than that in her eyes. It was bad enough that I assumed I wasn’t up to Jason’s standards. Even worse would be for her to think so.

  “Catering is just a once in a while thing,” I said now. “It’s not a distraction. I might not even do it again. It was just . . . for fun.”

  “Fun?” she said. Her voice was so surprised, as if I’d told her that driving nails into my arms was, also, just that enjoyable. “I would think it would be horrible, having to be on your feet all the time and waiting on people . . . plus, well, that woman just seemed so disorganized. I’d go crazy.”

  “Oh,” I said, “that was just when they were here. On Friday night, they were totally different.”

  “They were?”

  I nodded. Another lie. But my mother would never have understood why, in some small way, the mayhem of Delia’s business would appeal to me. I wasn’t even sure I could explain it myself. All I knew was that the rest of the weekend had been a stark contrast to those few hours on Friday night. During the days, I’d done all the things I was supposed to: I went to yoga class, did laundry, cleaned my bathroom, and tried to compose an email to Jason. I ate lunch and dinner at the same time both days, using the same plate, bowl, and glass, washing them after each meal and stacking them neatly in the dish rack, and went to bed by eleven, even though I rarely fell asleep, if at all, before two. For forty-eight hours, I spoke to no one but a couple of telemarketers. It was so quiet that I kept finding myself sitting at the kitchen table listening to my own breathing, as if in all this order and cleanliness I needed that to prove I was alive.

  “Well, we’ll just see how it goes, okay?” my mother had said as I reached over and turned on the washer. The water started gurgling, tackling the wine stain. “The library job is still your first priority. Right?”

  “Right,” I agreed, and that was that.

  Now, however, as I walked in to begin my second week of work—even though our shifts began at nine, and it was only eight-fifty, Bethany and Amanda were, naturally, already there and in place in their chairs—I felt a sense of inescapable dread. Maybe it was the silence. Or the stillness. Or the way Amanda raised her head and looked at me as I approached, her brow furrowing.

  “Oh, Macy,” she said, with the same slightly surprised tone she’d used every day I’d showed up, “I
wondered if you would make it in today . . . considering.”

  I knew what she meant, of course. Jason wasn’t one to spill secrets, but there were a couple of other people from our high school at Brain Camp, one of whom, a guy named Rob who squinted all the time, was good friends with both Amanda and Jason. Whatever way it had gone, clearly this break wasn’t just my secret anymore. Now, it was Information, and as they were with everything else, Bethany and Amanda were suddenly experts.

  “Considering,” Amanda said, repeating the word slowly as if, by not rising to the bait, I must not have heard her, “what happened with you and Jason.”

  I turned so I was facing her. “It’s just a break. And it has nothing to do with my job.”

  “Maybe so,” she said, as Bethany put a pen to her lips. “We were just concerned it might, you know, affect your performance. ”

  “No,” I said. “It won’t.” And then I turned back to my computer screen. I could see their faces reflected there, the way Amanda shook her head in a she’s-so-pathetic way, how Bethany pursed her lips, silently agreeing, before slowly swiveling back to face forward.

  And so began my longest day yet. I didn’t do much of anything, other than answer an all-time high of two questions (one from a man who stumbled in, unshaven and stinking of liquor, to ask about a job opening, and another from a six-year-old concerning how to find Mickey Mouse’s address, both of which were, at least in Bethany and Amanda’s opinion, not worth their time, but fully suited to mine). All this made it more than clear that last week, I’d been an annoyance to be tolerated. Now I was one easily, and rightfully, ignored.

  It was just after dinner and I was following routine, wiping down the kitchen countertops, when the phone rang. I didn’t even reach for it, assuming it was a client calling for my mother. But then I heard her office door open.

  “Macy? It’s for you.”

  The first thing I heard when I picked up the kitchen phone was someone sobbing, in that blubbering, gaspy kind of way.

  “Oh, Lucy, honey, please,” I heard a voice saying over it. “You only do this when I’m on the phone, why is that? Hmmm? Why—”

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Macy, hi, it’s Delia.” The crying started up again fresh, climbing to a full-out wail. “Oh, Lucy, sweetie, please God I’m begging you, just let Mommy talk for five seconds. . . . Look, here’s your bunny, see?”

  I just sat there holding the phone, as the crying subsided to sniffling, then to hiccuping, then stopped altogether.

  “Macy,” she said, “I am so sorry. Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” I told her.

  She sighed, that world-weary exhale I already associated with her, even though we hardly knew each other. “The reason I’m calling,” she began, “is that I’m kind of in a bind and I could use an extra pair of hands. I’ve got this big luncheon thing tomorrow, and currently I’m about two hundred finger sandwiches behind. Can you help me out?”

  “Tonight?” I said, glancing at the clock on the stove. It was 7:05, the time when I usually went upstairs to check my email, then brushed and flossed my teeth before reviewing a few pages of my SAT word book so that I wouldn’t feel too guilty about camping out in front of the TV until I was tired enough to try sleeping.

  “I know it’s short notice, but everyone else already had plans,” Delia said now, and I heard her running water. “So don’t feel bad about saying no. . . . It was just a shot in the dark, you know. I dug out your mom’s business card and thought I’d at least try to woo you over here.”

  “Well,” I said, and the no, I can’t, I’m sorry, was perched right there on my tongue, so close to my saying it that I could feel my lips forming the words. But then I looked around our silent, perfectly clean kitchen. It was summer, early evening. Once this had been my favorite time of year, my favorite time of night. When the fireflies came out, and the heat cooled. How had I forgotten that?

  “. . . don’t know why you’d want to spend a few hours up to your elbows in watercress and cream cheese,” Delia was saying in my ear as I snapped to, back to reality. “Unless you just had nothing else to do.”

  “I don’t,” I said suddenly, surprising myself. “I mean, nothing that can’t wait.”

  “Really?” she said. “Wonderful. Oh, God. You’re saving my life! Here, let me give you directions. Now, it’s kind of a ways out, but I’ll pay you from right now, so your driving time will be on the clock.”

  As I picked a pen out of the jar by the phone, pulling a notepad closer to me, I had a sudden pang of worry thinking about this deviation from my routine. But this was just one night, one chance to vary and see where it took me. The fireflies were probably already out: maybe it wasn’t just a season or a time but a whole world I’d forgotten. I’d never know until I stepped out into it. So I did.

  Delia’s directions were like Delia: clear in places, completely frazzled in others. The first part was easy. I’d taken the main road through town then past the city limits, where the scenery turned from new subdivisions and office buildings to smaller farmhouses to big stretches of pasture and dairy lands, plus cows. It was the turn off of that road, however—which led to Delia’s street—where I got stuck. Or lost. Or both. It just wasn’t there, period, no matter how many times I drove up and down looking for it. Which became sort of embarrassing, as there was a produce stand I kept driving by—-its sign, painted in bright red, said, TOMATOES FRESH FLOWERS PIES—wherean older woman was sitting in a lawn chair, a large flashlight in her lap, reading a paperback book. The third time I passed her, she put the book down and watched me. The fourth, she got involved.

  “You lost, sugar?” she called out as I crept past, scanning the scenery for the turnoff—“It’s a narrow dirt road, blink and you’ll miss it,” Delia had said—wondering if this was some sort of induction process for new employees or something, like hazing or catering boot camp. I stopped my car, then backed up slowly. By the time I reached the stand, the woman had gotten out of her chair and was coming to bend down into my passenger window. She looked to be in her early fifties, maybe, with graying hair pulled back at her neck, and was wearing jeans and a white tank top, with a shirt tied around her ample waist. She still had the paperback in her hand, and I glanced at the title: The Choice, by Barbara Starr. There was a shirtless man on the cover, a woman in a tight dress pressed against him. Her place was held with a nail file.

  “I’m looking for Sweetbud Drive,” I said. “It’s supposed to be off this road, but I can’t—”

  “Right there,” she said, turning and pointing to a gravel strip to the right of the produce stand, so narrow it looked more like a driveway than a real street. “Not your fault you missed it, the sign got stolen again last night. Bunch of damn potheads, I swear.” She indicated a spot on the other side of the drive where, in fact, there was a metal pole, no sign attached. “And that’s the fourth time this year. Now nobody can find my house until the DOT gets someone out here to replace it.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s terrible.”

  “Well,” she replied, switching her paperback to the other hand, “maybe not terrible. But it sure is inconvenient. Like life isn’t complicated enough. You should at least be able to follow the signs.” She stood up, stretching. “Oh, and on your way, watch out for the big hole. It’s right past the sculpture, and it’s a doozy. Stick to the left.” Then she patted my hood, smiled at me, and walked back to her lawn chair.

  “Thank you,” I called out after her, and she waved at me over her shoulder. I turned around in the road and started down Sweetbud Drive, mindful that somewhere up ahead there was both a sculpture and a big hole. I saw the sculpture first.

  It was on the side of the narrow drive, in a clearing between two trees. Made of rusted metal, it was huge—at least six feet across—shaped like an open hand. It was encircled by a piece of rebar with a bicycle chain woven around its edges, like some sort of garland. In the palm of the hand, a heart shape had been cut out, and a smaller h
eart, painted bright red, hung within it, spinning slightly in the breeze that was blowing. I just sat there, my car barely crunching over the gravel, and stared at it. I couldn’t help but think I had seen that design somewhere before.

  And then I hit the hole.

  Clunk! went my front left wheel, disappearing into it entirely. O-kay, I thought, as my entire car tilted to one side, this must be why she called it a doozy.

  I was sitting there, trying to think of a way I could get myself out somehow and save the embarrassment of having to make such an entrance, when I looked up ahead and saw someone walking toward me from a house at the end of the road. It was just getting dark, so at first it was hard to make them out. Only when he was right in front of my wildly slanting front bumper did I realize it was Wes.

  “Whatever you do,” he called out, “don’t try and reverse out of it. That only makes it worse.” Then, as he got closer, he looked at me and started slightly. I wasn’t sure who he’d been expecting, but obviously it was a surprise seeing me. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi.” I swallowed. “I’m, um—”

  “Stuck,” he finished. He disappeared for a second, ducking down to examine the hole and my tire within it. Leaning out my window, at the odd angle I was, I found myself almost level with the top of his head. A second later, when he looked up at me, we were face to face, and again, even under these circumstances, I was struck by how good looking he was, in that accidental, doesn’t-even-know-it kind of way. Which only made it worse. Or better. Or whatever. “Yup,” he said, as if there’d been any doubt, “you’re in there, all right.”

  “I was warned, too,” I told him, as he stood up. “I just saw that sculpture, and I got distracted.”

  “The sculpture?” He looked at it, then at me. “Oh, right. Because you know it.”

  “What?” I said.

  He blinked, seeming confused, then shook his head. “Nothing. I just thought maybe, um, you’d seen it before, or something. There are a few around town.”

  “No, I haven’t,” I said. The breeze had stopped blowing now, and in the stillness the heart was just there in the center of the hand, suspended. “It’s amazing, though.”