The Truth About Forever (25 page)

"Come on," I said, as Monica nodded, seconding this. "It's
Wes
."

"Exactly." Kristy turned and walked back to the mirror, bending in to inspect her cleavage. "I mean, there aren't a lot of benefits to living out here in the middle of nowhere. But that is definitely one of them."

I shook my head, exasperated, as I went over and sat down on the bed. Monica lit her cigarette, reaching up to dangle it halfway out the window, the smoke curling up past the panes.

"Is that why you are being so difficult about tonight?" Kristy asked as she flopped down beside me, glancing through the open doorway down the hall at Stella. An hour earlier, when she'd settled in front of the TV, she'd begun dozing immediately. Now, by the looks of it, she'd moved on to full snooze.

"What?"

She nodded toward the window. "Our Wesley. I know you guys have some sort of weird thing going on, with that game you play and everything—"

"It's called a friendship," I said. "And no, it has nothing to do with that. I told you, I'm on a break. I'm not interested in hanging out with some new guy."

"Unless it's Wes," she said, clarifying.

I just looked at her. "That's different. He's in a relationship, too, so it's not weird or anything."

Her eyes widened. "Oh, my God!" she said, slapping a hand over her mouth. "I
totally
get it now."

"Get what?"

She didn't answer me. Instead, she leaned over the bed, rummaging beneath it for a few seconds. I could hear things clanking against each other—what did she have down there?—and glanced at Monica, who just exhaled, shrugging. Then Kristy lifted up her head.

"You and Wes," she said, triumphant, "are just like
this
."

She was holding a book, a paperback romance. The title, emblazoned in gold across the cover, was
Forbidden
, and the picture beneath it was of a man in a pirate outfit, eye patch and all, clutching a small, extremely busty woman to his chest. In the background, there was a deserted island surrounded by blue water.

"We're pirates?" I said.

She tapped the book with one fingernail. "This story," she said, "is all about two people who can't be together because of other circumstances. But secretly, they pine and lust for each other constantly, the very fact that their love is forbidden fueling their shared passion."

"Did you just make that up?"

"No," she said, flipping the book over to read the back cover. "It's right here! And it's totally you and Wes. You can't be together, which is exactly why you want to be. And why you can't admit it to us, because that would make it less secret and thus less passionate."

I rolled my eyes. Monica, across the room, said, "Hmmm," as if all of this actually made sense.

Kristy put the book on the bed between us. "I have to admit," she said wistfully, crossing her arms over her chest, "an unrequited love is so much better than a real one. I mean, it's perfect."

"Nothing's perfect," I said.

"Nothing
real
," she replied. "But as long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential." She sighed, the same way she'd sighed at seeing Wes running by without a shirt: with emphasis, and at length. "So romantic. No wonder you don't want to go out with Sherman."

I was distracted, thinking about what she'd said, until she got to this last part. "Sherman?" I said.

She nodded. "That's John and Craig's friend. He's visiting from Shreveport."

"Sherman from Shreveport?" I said. "This is the guy you're determined I go out with?"

"You can't judge a book by its cover!" she snapped. When I slid my eyes toward
Forbidden
, she grabbed it up, shoving it back under the bed. "You know what I mean. Sherman might be very nice."

"I'm sure he is," I said. "But I'm not interested."

She just looked at me. "Of course not," she said finally. "Why would you be, when you have your very own sexy, misunderstood pirate Silus Branchburg Turlock to pine for?"

"Who?"

"Oh, just forget it," she said, getting up and stomping out of the room. A second later the bathroom door swung shut with a bang. I looked at Monica, who was staring out the window, her face impassive as always.

"Sherman." Saying it aloud, it sounded even more ludicrous. "From Shreveport."

"Donneven?" she said slowly, exhaling.

"Exactly."

And so it was that at ten-fifteen, when John and Craig and Sherman from Shreveport pulled into the driveway, headlights flashing just once before going dark again, I crept outside, following Kristy down the stairs. Stella didn't stir as Monica eased the door shut behind us, then started over to the car, the guy in the passenger seat climbing out to meet her. Kristy waved at the driver, who waved back, then turned to me. There was someone else in the backseat, but I couldn't make out a face: just a form, leaning against the window.

"Last chance to change your mind," she said to me, her voice low.

"Sorry," I told her. "Maybe another time."

She shook her head, clearly not buying this, then pushed her purse up her arm. "Your loss," she said, but she squeezed my arm as she started over to the car. "Call me tomorrow."

"I'll do that," I said.

As she got closer, the guy driving smiled at her, then opened the back door. "Watch out for Sherman," he said as she started to get inside. "He started his night a few hours ago, and now he's already out."

"What?" Kristy said.

"Don't worry," the guy told her, getting back behind the wheel. "We think he puked up everything he had in him already. So you should be okay."

Kristy looked at the slumped body beside her, then at me, and I raised my eyebrows. She shrugged before pulling the door shut and waving to me as the car slowly backed out of the driveway and up to the road, the engine chugging softly.

Which left me alone in the quiet of Stella's garden. I was about to get into my car, then changed my mind, dropping my purse through my open window and instead starting down through the sunflowers and into the thick of the dark, fragrant foliage.

Everything in the garden felt so
alive
. From the bright white flowers that reached out like trailing fingers from dipping branches overhead all the way down to the short, squat berry bushes that lined the trail like stones, it was like you could feel everything growing, right before your eyes. I kept walking, taking in clumps of zinnias, petunias, a cluster of rosebushes, their bases flecked with white speckles of eggshells. I could see the roof of the doublewide over to my right, the road to my left, but the garden seemed thick enough to have pushed them back even farther on the periphery, as if once you entered it moved in to surround you, crowding up close to hold you there.

I could see something else up ahead, something metallic, catching the moonlight: there was a clearing around it, rimmed by bobbing rambler roses. Stepping through them, I found myself at the back of a sculpture. It was a woman; her arms were outstretched to the side, palms facing the sky, and lying across them were slim pieces of pipe, the ends curving downwards. I moved around it and stood in its shadow, looking up at the figure's head, which was also covered in the thin, twisted pipes, and crowned with a garland made of the same. Of course this was one of Wes's, that much was obvious. But there was something different, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then, I realized that the sculpture's hair and those bits of pipe it was holding all ended in a washer bisected by a tiny piece of metal: every one was a flower. Looking at it from the top, where the moonlight illuminated those curling pipes, to the bottom, where the sculpture's feet met the ground, I finally got it that this was Stella, the entire figure showing the evolution of that thick, loamy dirt moving through her hands to emerge in bloom after bloom after bloom.

"Macy?"

It was the gotcha of all gotchas. The gotcha of all
time
, even. Which somewhat justified the shriek that came out of my mouth, the way my heart leaped in my chest, and how these two events then repeated themselves when a flock of tiny sparrows, startled by my startling, burst forth from the sculpture's base and flew in dizzy circles, rising over the rosebushes and disappearing into the dark.

"Oh," I said, swallowing, "my God."

"Wow," Wes said. He was standing by the path, his hands in his pockets. "You really
screamed
."

"You scared the shit out of me!" I said. "What are you doing out here, lurking around in the dark?"

"I wasn't lurking," he said. "I've been calling your name for five minutes at least, ever since you walked in here."

"You have not."

"I really have been," he said.

"You have not," I said. "You snuck up and got your big gotcha and now you're just so happy."

"No," he replied slowly, as if I were a toddler having a totally unjustified tantrum, "I was on my way out and I saw you dropping your purse through the window. I called your name. You didn't hear me."

I looked down at the ground, my heart calming now. And then a breeze gusted up over us, the flowers behind Wes leaning one way, then the other. I heard a whirring noise above me and looked up at the sculpture. As the wind blew, the curved flowers in the figure's hands began spinning, first slowly, then faster, as the garland on her head began to do the same.

Wes and I just stood there, watching it, until the wind died down again. "You really scared me," I said to Wes, almost embarrassed now.

"I didn't mean to."

"I know."

Everything was settling back to how it had been: my heart, the flowers in the figure's hand and her garland, even the sparrows, which were now clustered on the rosebushes behind me, waiting to come back home. I started back over to the path, Wes holding aside one trailing branch so I could step through.

"Let me make it up to you," he said, as he fell in step behind me.

"You don't have to," I said.

"I know I don't have to. I want to. And I know just the way."

I turned back and looked at him. "Yeah?" I asked.

He nodded. "Come on."

Apologies come in all shapes and sizes. You can give diamonds, candy, flowers, or just your deepest heartfelt sentiment. Never before, though, had I gotten a pencil that smelled like syrup. But I had to admit, it worked.

"Okay," I said. "You're forgiven."

We were at the World of Waffles, which was located in a small, orange building right off the highway. I'd driven by it a million times, but it had never occurred to me to actually stop there. Maybe it was the rows of eighteen-wheelers that were always parked in the lot, or the old, faded sign with its black letters spelling out Y'ALL COME ON. But now I found myself here, just before eleven on a Saturday night, holding my peace offering, a pencil decorated with waffles, scented with maple, that Wes had purchased for me at the gift shop for $1.79.

The waitress came up as I lifted my menu off the sticky table, pulling a pen out of her apron. "Hey there, sugar," she said to Wes. She looked to be about my mother's age, and was wearing thick support hose and nurses' shoes with squeaky soles. "The usual?"

"Sure," he said, sliding his menu to the edge of the table. "Thanks."

"And you?" she asked me.

"A waffle and a side of hash browns," I told her, and put my menu on top of his. The only people in there other than us were an old man reading a newspaper and drinking endless cups of coffee and a group of drunken college students who kept laughing loudly and playing Tammy Wynette over and over on the jukebox.

I picked up my pencil, sniffing it. "Admit it," Wes said, "you can't believe you've gotten this far in life without one of those."

"What I can't believe," I said, putting it back down on the table, "is that you're
known
at this place. When did you start coming here?"

He sat back in the booth, running his finger along the edge of the napkin under his knife and fork. "After my mom died. I wasn't sleeping much, and this is open all night. It was better than just driving around. Now I'm sort of used to it. When I need inspiration, I always come here."

"Inspiration," I repeated, glancing around.

"Yeah," Wes said, emphatically, as if it was obvious I wasn't convinced. "When I'm working on a piece, and I'm kind of stuck, I'll come here and sit for awhile. Usually by the time I finish my waffle I've figured it out. Or at least started to."

"What about that piece in the garden?" I said. "What did that come from?"

He thought for a second. "That one's different," he said. "I mean, I made it specifically for someone."

"Stella."

"Yeah." He smiled. "She made the biggest fuss over it. It was to thank her, because she was really good to Bert and me when my mom was sick. Especially Bert. It was the least I could do."

"It's really something," I told him, and he shrugged, that way I already recognized, the way he always did when you tried to compliment him. "All of your pieces have the whirligig thing going on. What's that about?"

"Look at you, getting all meaning driven on me," he said. "Next you'll be telling me that piece is representative of the complex relationship between agriculture and women."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "I am not my sister," I said. "I just wondered, that's all."

He shrugged. "I don't know. The first stuff I did at Myers was just basic, you know, static. But then, once I did the heart-in-hand stuff, I got interested in how things moving made a piece look different, and how that changes the subject. How it makes it seem, you know, alive."

I thought back to how I'd felt as I started into Stella's garden earlier that night, that tangible, ripe feeling of everything around you somehow breathing as you did. "I can see that," I said.

"What were you doing out there, anyway?" he asked. Across the restaurant, the jukebox finally fell silent.

"I don't know," I said. "Ever since the first day Kristy brought me there, it's sort of fascinated me."

"It's pretty incredible," he said, sipping his water. The heart in hand on his upper arm slid into view, then disappeared again.