by Sarah Dessen
I heard a door slam off to my right and glanced over to see Delia standing on the front porch of a white house, her arms crossed over her chest. “Macy?” she called out. “Is that you? Oh, God, I forgot to tell you about the hole. Hold on, we’ll get you out. I’m such an idiot. Just let me call Wes.”
“I’m on it,” Wes yelled back, and she put a hand on her chest, relieved, then sat down on the steps. Then, to me, he added, “Hold tight. I’ll be back in a second.”
I sat there, watching as he jogged down the street, disappearing into the yard of the house at the very end. A minute later an engine started up, and a Ford pickup truck pulled out to face me, then drove down the side of the road, bumping over the occasional tree root. Wes drove past me, then backed up until his back bumper was about a foot from mine. I heard a few clanks and clunks as he attached something to my car. Then I watched in my side mirror as he walked back up to me, his white T-shirt bright in the dark.
“The trick,” he said, leaning into my window, “is to get the angle just right.” He reached over, putting his hands on my steering wheel, and twisted it slightly. “Like that,” he said. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, putting my hands where his had been.
“Have you out in a sec,” he said. He walked back to the truck, got in, and put it in gear. I sat there, hands locked where he’d said to keep them, and waited.
The trucked revved, then moved forward, and for a second, nothing happened. But then, suddenly, I was moving. Rising. Up and out, bit by bit, until, in my headlights, I could see the hole emerging in front of me, now empty. And it was huge. More like a crater, like something you’d see on the moon. A doozy, indeed.
Once I was back on level ground, Wes hopped out of the truck, undoing the tow rope. “You’re fine now,” he called from somewhere near my bumper. “Just keep to the left. Way left.”
I stuck my head out the window. “Thank you,” I said. “Really.”
He shrugged. “No problem. I do it all the time. Just pulled out the FedEx guy yesterday.” He tossed the tow rope into the truck bed, where it landed with a thunk. “He was not happy.”
“It’s a big hole,” I said, taking another look at it.
“It’s a monster.” He ran a hand through his hair, and I saw the tattoo on his arm again, but he was too far away for me to make it out. “We need to fill it, but we never will.”
“Why not?”
He glanced over to Delia’s house. I could now see her coming down the walk. She had on a long skirt and a red T-shirt, her feet bare. “It’s a family thing,” he said. “Some people believe everything happens for a reason. Even massive holes.”
“But you don’t,” I said.
“Nope,” he said. He looked over my car at the hole, studying it for a second. I was watching him, not even aware of it until he glanced at me. “Anyway,” he said, as I focused back on my steering wheel, “I’ll see you around.”
“Thanks again,” I said, shifting into first.
“No problem. Just remember: left.”
“Way left,” I told him, and he nodded, then knocked the side of my bumper, rap-rap, and started back to the truck. As he climbed in, I turned my wheel and eased around the hole, then drove the fifty feet or so to Delia’s driveway, where she was waiting for me. Right as I reached to open my door, Wes’s truck blurred past in my rearview mirror: I could see him in silhouette, his face illuminated by the dashboard lights. Then he disappeared behind a row of trees, gravel crunching, and was gone.
“The thing about Wes,” Delia said to me, unwrapping another package of turkey, “is that he thinks he can fix anything. And if he can’t fix it, he can at least do something with the pieces of what’s broken.”
“That’s bad?” I asked, dipping my spreader back into the huge, industrial-size jar of mayonnaise on the table in front of me.
“Not bad,” she said. “Just—different.”
We were in Delia’s garage, which served as Wish Catering central. It was outfitted with two industrial-size ovens, a large fridge, and several stainless-steel tables, all of which were piled with cutting boards and various utensils. We were sitting on opposite sides of one of the tables, assembling sandwiches. The garage door was open, and outside I could hear crickets chirping.
“The way I see it,” she continued, “is that some things are just meant to be the way they are.”
“Like the hole,” I said, remembering how he’d glanced at her, saying this.
She put down the turkey she was holding and looked at me. “I know what he told you,” she said. “He said that I was the reason the hole was still there, and that if I’d just let him fill it we wouldn’t have the postman pissed off to the point of sabotaging our mail, and I wouldn’t be facing yet another bill from Lakeview Tire for some poor client who busted their Goodyear out there.”
“No,” I said slowly, spreading the mayonnaise in a thin layer on the bread in front of me, “he said that some people believe everything happens for a reason. And some people, well, don’t.”
She thought for a second. “It’s not that I believe everything happens for a reason,” she said. “It’s just that . . . I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It’s the universe’s way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It’s how life is.”
We were quiet for a second. Outside, the very last of the sunset, fading pink, was disappearing behind the trees.
“Still,” I said, putting another slice of bread on the one in front of me, “it is a big hole.”
“It’s a huge hole,” she conceded, reaching for the mayonnaise. “But that’s kind of the point. I mean, I don’t want to fix it because to me, it’s not broken. It’s just here, and I work around it. It’s the same reason I refuse to trade in my car, even though, for some reason, the A/C won’t work when I have the radio on. I just choose: music, or cold air. It’s not that big of a deal.”
“The A/C won’t work when the radio is on?” I asked. “That’s so weird.”
“I know.” She pulled out three more slices of bread, putting mayonnaise, then lettuce, on them assembly-line style. “On a bigger scale, it’s the reason that I won’t hire a partner to help me with the catering, even though it’s been chaos on wheels with Wish gone. Yes, things are sort of disorganized. And sure, it would be nice to not feel like we’re close to disaster every second.”
I started another sandwich, listening.
“But if everything was always smooth and perfect,” she continued, “you’d get too used to that, you know? You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you’ll never really enjoy it when things go right. I know you think I’m a flake. Everyone does.”
“I don’t,” I assured her, but she shook her head, not believing me.
“It’s okay. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught Wes out there with someone from the gravel place, secretly trying to fill that hole.” She put another row of bread down. “And Pete, my husband, he’s tried twice to lure me to the car dealership to trade in my old thing for a new car. And as far as the business, well . . . I don’t know. They leave me alone on that. Because of Wish. Which is so funny, because if she was here, and saw how things are . . . she’d flip out. She was the most organized person in the world.”
“Wish,” I said, reaching for the mayonnaise. “That’s such a cool name.”
She looked up at me, smiling. “It is, isn’t it? Her real name was Melissa. But when I was little, I mispronounced it all the time, you know, Ma-wish-a. Eventually, it just got shortened to Wish, and everyone started calling her that. She never minded. I mean, it fit her.” She picked up the knife at her elbow, then carefully sliced the sandwiches into halves, then fourths, before stacking them onto the tray beside us. “This was her baby, this business. After she and the boys’ dad divorced, and he moved up North, it was like her new start, and she ran it like a well-oiled machine. But then she got sick. . . .brea
st cancer. She was only thirty-nine when she died.”
It felt so weird, to be on the other side, where you were the one expected to offer condolences, not receive them. I wanted my “sorry” to sound genuine, because it was. That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.
“I’m so sorry, Delia,” I told her. “Really.”
She looked up at me, a piece of bread in one hand. “Thank you,” she said, then placed it on the table in front of her. “I am, too.” Then she smiled at me sadly, and started to assemble another sandwich. I did the same, and neither of us said anything for a few minutes. The silence wasn’t like the ones I’d known lately, though: it wasn’t empty as much as chosen. There’s a entirely different feel to quiet when you’re with someone else, and at any moment it could be broken. Like the difference between a pause and an ending.
“You know what happens when someone dies?” Delia said suddenly, startling me a bit. I kept putting together my sandwich, though, not answering: I knew there was more. “It’s like, everything and everyone refracts, each person having a different reaction. Like me and Wes. After the divorce, he fell in with this bad crowd, got arrested, she hardly knew what to do with him. But then, when she got sick, he changed. Now he’s totally different, how he’s so protective of Bert and focused on his welding and the pieces he makes. It’s his way of handling it.”
“Wes does welding?” I asked, and then, suddenly, I thought of the sculpture. “Did he do—”
“The heart in hand,” she finished for me. “Yeah. He did. Pretty incredible, huh?”
“It is,” I said. “I had no idea. I was talking about it with him and he didn’t even tell me.”
“Well, he’ll never brag on it,” she said, pulling the mayonnaise over to her. “That’s how he is. His mom was the same way. Quiet and incredible. I really envy that.”
I watched her as she cut another two sandwiches down, the knife clapping against the cutting board. “I don’t know,” I said. “You seem to be pretty incredible. Running this business with a baby, and another on the way.”
“Nah.” She smiled. “I’m not. When Wish died, it just knocked the wind out of me. Truly. It’s like that stupid thing Bert and Wes do, the leaping out thing, trying to scare each other: it was the biggest gotcha in the world.” She looked down at the sandwiches. “I’d just assumed she’d be okay. It had never occurred to me she might actually just be . . . gone. You know?”
I nodded, just barely. I felt bad that I didn’t tell her about my dad, chime in with what I knew, how well I knew it. With Delia, though, I wasn’t that girl, the one whose dad had died. I wasn’t anybody. And I liked that. It was selfish but true.
“And then she was,” Delia said, her hand on the bread bag. “Gone. Gotcha. And suddenly I had these two boys to take care of, plus a newborn of my own. It was just this huge loss, this huge gap, you know.”
“I know,” I said softly.
“Some people,” she said, and I wasn’t even sure she’d heard me, “they can just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me . . . I don’t know. I didn’t want to fix it, to forget. It wasn’t something that was broken. It’s just . . . something that happened. And like that hole, I’m just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remembering and getting on at the same time. You know?”
I nodded, but I didn’t know. I’d chosen instead to just change my route, go miles out of the way, as if avoiding it would make it go away once and for all. I envied Delia. At least she knew what she was up against. Maybe that’s what you got when you stood over your grief, facing it finally. A sense of its depths, its area, the distance across, and the way over or around it, whichever you chose in the end.
Chapter Six
“Okay,” Wes said under his breath. “Watch and learn.”
“Right,” I said.
We were at the Lakeview Inn, finishing up appetizers for a retirement party, and Wes and I were in the coat closet, where he was teaching me the art of the gotcha. I’d been sent by a woman to hang up her wrap and found him there, perfectly positioned and silent, lying in wait.
“Wes?” I’d said, and he’d slid a finger to his lips, gesturing for me to come closer with his other hand. Which I’d done, unthinkingly, even as I felt that same fluttering in my stomach I always felt when I was around Wes. Even when we weren’t in an enclosed, small space together. Goodness.
In the next room, I could hear the party: the clinking of forks against plates, voices trilling in laughter, strains of the piped-in violin music that the Lakeview Inn had played at my sister’s wedding as well.
“Okay,” Wes said, his voice so low I would have leaned closer to hear him if we weren’t already about as close as we could get. “It’s all in the timing.”
An overcoat that smelled like perfume was hanging in my face: I pushed it aside as quietly as possible.
“Not now,” Wes was whispering. “Not now . . . not now . . .”
Then I heard it: footsteps. Muttering. Had to be Bert.
“Okay . . .” he said, and then he was moving, standing up, going forward, “now. Gotcha!”
Bert’s shriek, which was high pitched to the point of ear-splitting, was accompanied by him flailing backwards and losing his footing, then crashing into the wall behind him. “God!” he said, his face turning red, then redder as he saw me. I couldn’t really blame him: there was no way to be splayed on the floor and still look dignified. He said, sputtering, “That was—”
“Number six,” Wes finished for him. “By my count.”
Bert got to his feet, glaring at us. “I’m going to get you so good,” he said darkly, pointing a finger at Wes, then at me, then back at Wes. “Just you wait.”
“Leave her out of it,” Wes told him. “I was just demonstrating. ”
“Oh no,” Bert said. “She’s part of it now. She’s one of us. No more coddling for you, Macy.”
“Bert, you’ve already jumped out at her,” Wes pointed out.
“It’s on!” Bert shouted, ignoring this. Then he stalked down the hallway, again muttering, and disappeared into the main room, letting the door bang shut behind him. Wes watched him go, hardly bothered. In fact, he was smiling.
“Nice work,” I told him, as we started down the hallway to the kitchen.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “With enough practice, you too can pull a good gotcha someday.”
“Frankly,” I said, “I’m a little curious about the derivation of all this.”
“Derivation?”
“How it started.”
“I know what it means,” he said. For a second I was horrified, thinking I’d offended him, but he grinned at me. “It’s just such an SAT word. I’m impressed.”
“I’m working on my verbal,” I explained.
“I can tell,” he said, nodding at one of the Lakeview Inn valets as he passed. “Truthfully, it’s just this dumb thing we started about a year ago. It pretty much came from us living alone in the house after my mom died. It was really quiet, so it was easy to sneak around.”
I nodded as if I understood this, although I couldn’t really picture myself leaping out at my mother from behind a door or potted plant, no matter how perfect the opportunity. “I see,” I said.
“Plus,” Wes continued, “there’s just something fun, every once in a while, about getting the shit scared out of you. You know?”
This time I didn’t nod or agree. I could do without scares, planned or unplanned, for awhile. “Must be a guy thing,” I said.
He shrugged, pushing the kitchen door open for me. “Maybe,” he said.
As we walked in, Delia was standing in the center of the room, hands pressed to her chest. Just by the look on her face, I knew something was wrong.
“Wait a second,” she said. “Everyone freeze.”
We did. Even Kristy, who normally ignored
most directives, stopped what she was doing, a cheese biscuit dangling in midair over her tray.
“Where,” Delia said slowly, taking a look around the room, “are the hams?”
Silence. Then Kristy said, her voice low, “Uh-oh.”
“Don’t say that!” Delia moved down the counter, hands suddenly flailing as she pulled all of the cardboard boxes we’d lugged in closer to her, peering into each of them. “They have to be here! They have to be! We have a system now!”
And we did. But it was new, only implemented since the night before, when, en route to a cocktail party, it became apparent that no one had packed the glasses. After doubling back and arriving late, Delia had used her current pregnancy insomnia to compile a set of checklists covering everything from appetizers to napkins. We were each given one, for which we were wholly responsible. I was in charge of utensils. If we were lacking tongs, it was all on me.
“This is not happening,” Delia said now, plunging her hands into a small box on the kitchen island hardly big enough for half a ham, let alone the six we were missing. “I remember, they were in the garage, on the side table, all ready to go. I saw them.”
On the other side of the kitchen door, I could hear voices rising: it was getting more crowded, which meant soon they’d be expecting dinner. Our menu was cheese biscuits and goat cheese toasts to start, followed by green bean casserole, rice pilaf, rosemary dill rolls, and ham. It was a special request. Apparently, these were pork people.
“Okay, okay, let’s just calm down,” Delia said, although rustling through the plastic bags full of uncooked rolls with a panicked expression, she seemed like the only one really close to losing it. “Let’s retrace our steps. Who was on what?”
“I was on appetizers, and they’re all here,” Kristy said, as Bert came through the swinging door from the main room, an empty tray in his hand. “Bert. Were you on ham?”
“No. Paper products and serving platters,” he said, holding the one in his hand up as proof. “Why? Are we missing something? ”
