by Sarah Dessen
I tried not to think about this, though, as I hit Reply and thanked him, saying I’d be sending along some links to financial and admissions stuff we needed to work out. No response. In fact, the next time I heard from him was three weeks later.
Emaline,
I am so sorry to have to tell you this, but due to unforseen circumstances, I will not be able to supplement your tuition to Columbia. It was always my hope and intention to help you, but some things have occurred that make it impossible. I hope you understand.
Supplement? I thought. Not only was the deal off, it had never been what I thought in the first place. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that the tone—distant, almost automated—sounded not unlike messages I’d received from the schools that had rejected me. All that was missing was a We regret to inform you.
So that was that. Columbia had been a long shot. I’d gotten there, and now it was being pulled away again. Sucker. To make matters worse, it was too late to apply for financial aid, which I’d assumed I wouldn’t need. And while we theoretically could have taken out a loan, all I could think of was my dad, who never bought anything on credit, paid his bills in full each month, and expected all of us to avoid debt with the same vigilance we did pedophiles and rabid animals. I could only imagine his face when I told him we’d need to borrow about as much as he’d make in a full year. Luckily, I didn’t have to. When he and my mom sat me down after dinner the next night and told me there was no way we could afford Columbia, I wasn’t surprised. After all, it had never been their promise.
So East U it was. I had a full ride, it was a good school: you didn’t have to have a degree to see it was a no-brainer. That night, I sat at my desk, looking at that full shelf of college prep books, all lined up in a row. Thanks to ongoing budget cuts, they numbered more than the entire collection on the subject in my school’s media center. Just as I thought this, I had a flash of my mom graduating eighteen years earlier, while I watched from my grandmother’s arms. How different our lives were, then and now. She’d wanted so much for me: the moon and more. But maybe, right now, the moon was enough.
So it seemed fitting, really, that the moon was out and shining through the corner of my window as I pulled up the Columbia Web site and notified them I wouldn’t be attending in the fall. After all that hard work, it was so easy. Just a couple of clicks, some keystrokes, and done.
As for my father, there were no more e-mails, no explanations: he was just gone, Bigfoot all over again. At times, I found myself questioning his very existence, even though I knew I had, in fact, spotted him, with my own eyes.
And while I kept my initial acceptance message from Columbia in my inbox for a while, looking at it didn’t really make me sad. Instead, it was the lack of e-mails. How pathetic I felt logging in to my account, hoping to see my father’s address atop the new messages. The weirdness of donating all those books to the media center, now that I didn’t need them anymore.
Mostly, I felt stupid for falling for his big talk, the very thing my mother had warned me about. Even from a distance he’d taken me in, and I’d gone, gullibly and willingly. In my less masochistic moments, I reminded myself that I, a girl from Colby High, had gotten into an Ivy League school. That had to count for something. I just wasn’t sure what it was.
But life went on. And the one person who knew that best of all, always, hadn’t gone anywhere. She was always bragging, telling anyone who would listen about my full scholarship to a great school. Squeezing my shoulder as she passed by me as I sat on the couch watching TV. Smiling from across the dinner table when Amber said something typically ridiculous. Stopping outside my closed bedroom door for only a moment, yet always just long enough so I knew for sure she was there.
3
“I’D JUST LIKE to say again how thrilled we are that Andy will be joining our family in August. Here’s to the bride and groom!”
There was a burst of applause as Mr. Templeton held up his glass, followed by a collective “Awwww” as the happy couple leaned in for a kiss. Off to the right, Luke’s mom stood watching, face flushed, tears visible in her eyes. A beautiful moment.
I looked over at Luke, who was standing beside me in a collared shirt I was sure he had put on only under serious duress. “I am so glad we are going to college,” he said. “Because this next year, at this house, when all this is over and my mom has nothing to do? It’s going to be scary.”
“That,” I said, as his parents hugged Andy, then Brooke, “is a really poor attitude.”
“My mother,” he said in response, “has already told me that I have to wear tails to this wedding. Tails. In Colby. We’ll be like all those people we mock.”
He meant the ones who came here for destination weddings, most often in spring and summer. They set up chairs and little arches decorated with flowers on the beach, then were surprised when it was windy and the bride’s veil took flight and everyone looked ruffled in the pictures. After complaining endlessly about all our caterers and vendors—hopelessly backwards compared to wherever they came from—they more often than not left wedding cake smeared into the furniture and a trail of broken dishes behind in their rentals. There was no denying people like this were part of an industry many in Colby depended on for their living. Which did not mean we couldn’t make fun of them, at least a little bit.
“Maybe,” I said, as there was another round of applause, “she’ll ditch that idea and let you all wear Hawaiian shirts and white pants instead.”
“Only if the bridesmaids wear flip-flops and carry single sunflowers,” he replied. These were things we had witnessed so far this summer alone.
“I would be happy,” I offered, “to decorate a bunch of shells with their initials and wedding date to scatter across the beach. Oh, and fill a bunch of little bags with sand for favors.”
He held up his hand, stopping me. “You joke, but they’re talking about releasing butterflies.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Told you,” he said, shuddering. “Scary stuff.”
Really, it was kind of fun to see Luke bent out of shape. Spend enough time—like three years of your life—with Mr. Easygoing, it was hard not to feel superneurotic in comparison. His attitude, though, was one of my favorite things about him, even if did make me examine my own psyche more than I preferred to. He was not bad to look at, either.
I stepped closer to him, kissing his cheek, and got a familiar whiff of chlorine and sunshine. I loved that smell. “You poor baby. I hope you survive this.”
“I think I’ll need extra emotional support,” he said, then gave me a real kiss, right in view of some elderly relatives passing by on the way to the appetizers. I could see their startled faces from the corner of my eye as he was pulling me in, but once his lips hit mine, relatives and everything else fell away. All this time and he could still make my heart jump, just like that first kiss in the fall of freshman year. Best-looking guy in school—no, just best guy in school—and he wanted me. Sometimes I still couldn’t believe it.
“I think I know who’s next,” someone trilled from behind us, breaking this thought even as I was having it.
Luke pulled back, grinning at me. “Look at that. Engagements are contagious.”
“So is the plague,” I said, and he laughed out loud.
“Luke? Honey?” A beat later, his mom was beside us, one hand on his arm. “We’re running low on ice. Can you run down to the Gas/Gro and get some?”
“Sure thing,” he said. Mr. Accommodating. To me he said, “Want to ride along?”
“Not so fast,” Mrs. Templeton said, switching her grip to my arm. She was a grabber, always had been. “I think you two can stand to be apart for ten minutes. I need Emaline’s help in the kitchen if we ever want to serve this dinner. Some of these workers the caterers brought are worthless.”
Uh-oh, I thought. Luke gave me a look, which I ignored, focusing instead on his mom’s perfect updo, which was bouncing slightly in front of me as she led me up to
the house. As we climbed the side steps to the kitchen, I saw it was crowded with people: Luke’s dad was arranging steak and salmon on a platter, his younger sister Stacey was taking pans from the oven, and a woman in black and white, clearly hired, was busy piling rolls in a big basket. Only one person was standing still, doing nothing, and of course it was Morris.
“We’ve got to get this food out,” Luke’s mom said to me over her shoulder. “Can you find the salads and bring them to the table? Oh, and there are a couple more bottles of wine in the pantry, I think the bartender might need them by now.”
“Right,” I said, negotiating around Luke’s dad, who gave me a wink, hoisting his tray of meat and fish. I spotted the salads on the counter by the fridge and made a beeline over to them, grabbing one before walking up to my best friend, who was busy holding up the fridge and examining his fingernails. “Morris,” I hissed. “What are you doing?”
He looked up at me. “What do you mean?”
I shoved the salad into his hands, hard, making him jump. “Do you realize you are the only one in this entire room not working right now?”
“I’m working,” he said. This I ignored, grabbing the other salad bowl and sticking it under my arm before ducking into the pantry to grab the wine.
“Come on,” I said. He just looked at me. “Now.”
We went out onto the deck and down the stairs, heading to the rows of tables that were set up in the backyard, tiki torches lined up between them. All the way, just behind me, I could hear Morris’s signature shuffle-lope. It was a sound I knew well, mostly because despite the fact that we’d known each other since grade school, he had not once ever been in front of me. He was that freaking slow.
“What’s your problem?” he asked as I plunked the salad bowl onto a table by a stack of plates. He was still holding his, would not put it down unless directly instructed to do so. “You and Luke in a fight or something?”
“Do you even know how much I had to stick my neck out for you to get this gig?” I demanded. “Robin did not want to hire you. I basically begged her.”
“Why’d you do that?”
I couldn’t take it anymore: I grabbed his salad, putting it on the table. “Because,” I said, “Daisy told me you were desperate for work.”
“I wouldn’t say desperate,” he replied.
“Clearly not. Because if you were, you’d actually be, you know, working.”
Most people, having been spoken to this way, would be chastened. Or at least react. But this was Morris, so he just looked at me. “She told me to bring in the salads and bread. I did. I was awaiting further instruction.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do you really always have to be specifically told everything? You can’t see a need and jump in to meet it?”
“Do what?”
“Morris?” I turned. It was Robin, the owner of Roberts Family Catering, who had owed me a favor. Now I was pretty sure I was in her debt. “Did you unload those napkins and plates from the van?”
“Uh-huh,” he told her.
“Yes,” I corrected him, not that he heard me.
“Are they”—she glanced at the serving station, now lined with platters of food—“here?”
“You didn’t tell me where to put them.”
Dear God, I thought, as Robin—and I—looked over at the driveway where, sure enough, the plates and napkins were stacked on the pavement, right next to the van. “Go,” I said to him. “Go get them and bring them to her.”
“You are in a bad mood,” he observed, but now, finally, he was moving. Shuffle-lope, shuffle-lope. I shook my head, then headed over to Robin, who was busy pulling foil and cling wrap off her various dishes.
“Don’t say it,” she said, before I could even begin to apologize. “I’m too busy right now.”
“Let me help, at least,” I told her, coming around the table. I found some tongs, stuck them in the dishes, then lined up the dressing cruets someone else had just dropped off.
“You just did more than he has in two hours,” she said in a tired voice.
“I’m sorry.”
“He’s worthless.”
“I know.”
Now she stopped, giving me an incredulous look. “Then why in the world did you ask me to hire him for a big job like this?”
“I was trying to help …” I trailed off as Morris approached, the napkins and plates in hand, “a friend.”
“Must be a good one,” she said.
I nodded as she gestured to Morris to put the stuff he was carrying at the end of the table. Then I went over to stand beside him and began opening up the plates. After a beat—or three—he joined me.
I wished this was the first time I’d taken heat for Morris, but our entire relationship—forged in third grade, when he and his mom briefly lived next door—had pretty much revolved around him screwing up and me making excuses for him. The best I could figure is that I never got to have a puppy, and being friends with Morris was kind of like the same thing. He could be cute, and fun, but also at any moment ruin your favorite shoes and pee all over your floor. So to speak.
Still, I should have known better, especially after last summer. That was when I’d had the bright idea of convincing my dad to hire Morris to tote boards and supplies and be a general gofer on his job sites. He’d had back surgery in the spring—twenty years of driving nails takes its toll—and the doctor told him he needed to take it easy, or at least easier. Morris had just been let go from his job at Jumbo Smoothie for eating too many toppings, among other things, so I went to bat with my dad, convincing him to give him a shot. The first day, Morris backed the company truck into a gas pump, left half the crew’s lunch order on the counter at Sliders & Subs, and took, by my dad’s count, approximately fourteen water breaks. I wanted to die.
“He moves so slowly,” my dad said that evening, popping his ritual first beer. He still seemed incredulous, even hours later. “It’s like he’s got a disease or something.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“And you have to tell him everything,” he continued, not hearing me. “Not just, say, ‘go fill the gas tank.’ More like: ‘Park the truck. Remove gas cap. Fill tank with gas. Remove pump. Replace gas cap. And don’t hit anything on your way out.’”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
He shook his head, downing another sip. “I was going to let him go, but I told him he needed to work off the cost of getting that dent fixed. So I guess I’m stuck with him.”
“I’m—” He gave me a look, and I stopped myself from apologizing again. “I’ll pay the dent cost. It’s my fault he was there in the first place.”
“No, no,” he said, waving me off. “You’ve done enough for him. I’ll deal with it.”
I expected Morris to be fired by the next week. But he wasn’t. Instead, my dad kept him on, which was worse, because I had to hear him complain about Morris every single night. How slow he was. How he couldn’t bang a nail without hitting his own hand or someone else’s. He couldn’t dig a decent hole, remember a simple order, drive a stick shift. The list went on and on, and every item on it made me cringe.
“So fire him,” I said finally, over dinner in mid-June. “Please. I’m begging you. I can’t take this anymore.”
Across the table, Amber snorted. If Margo was the goody-goody and I was the perfectionist brain, she was the wild child. Prone to tattooed older boyfriends, never making it home by curfew, and blowing all her money on beer or clothes, she was usually the one getting it from one or both parents, and loved it on the rare occasions when someone else was.
“Oh, I will,” my dad said. “I’m just waiting until I find someone else to replace him. He’s better than nothing.” A pause. “I think.”
The weird thing was, he never did let him go. The excuses evolved: it was too much trouble to train someone new, another guy quit, and then the summer was practically over. But even after all the complaining, Morris was still doing odd jobs around the house after school an
d on weekends. Maybe my dad kept him around because he knew his backstory—no father in the picture, Mom less than invested, to say the least. Or perhaps he just had the same helping gene I did, even though we weren’t blood related. Whatever the reason, I didn’t question his tolerance of Morris, if only because of how much I hated it when anyone did the same to me.
Now, I glanced over at him. He was putting forks in a basket, one at a time. “Morris. Please. Just dump the box in, okay?
“Huh?”
“Forget it.”
I could see Luke now, pulling up with the ice. He parked, then got out of the car and went around to the trunk, laughing as someone called out to him. It’s funny how two people can grow up in the same town, go to the same school, have the same friends, and end up so totally different. Family, or lack of it, counts for more than you’d think.
“You sure you’re okay?” Morris said, opening another box of forks. “You seem … weird.”
I swallowed, glancing over at Robin, who was barking orders. “My father called today.”
“Really.” I nodded. “What’d he want?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t called him back.”
He considered this, then said, “Maybe he has a graduation present for you.”
I made a face. “Kind of late, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “Better late than never.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, was basically Morris’s mantra. But that was the weird thing: I could handle him being slack because, well, it was just how he was. I expected more from everyone else. Especially my father.
With the college issue finally settled, life had slowly gotten back to normal, as much as it could with the final days of high school winding down. Even though we’d left things awkwardly weeks earlier—to say the least—my father had been instrumental in my college process, and I’d always intended to invite him, Leah, and Benji to graduation. So in late May, I wrote their address on one of the thick, creamy envelopes and popped it with the others into the mailbox. He never responded. Whatever it was we’d shared all those months, clearly, it was over.