by Sarah Dessen
“What she means,” Delia clarified from the stove, “is that as a server, it’s your job to blend in and make the partygoer’s experience as enjoyable as possible. You are not attending the event: you are facilitating it.”
Kristy handed me the tray of ham biscuits, plunking down a stack of napkins on its edge. This close to her, I still found my eyes wandering to her scars, but slowly I was getting used to them, my eyes drawn now and then to other things: the glitter on her skin, the two tiny silver hoops in each of her ears. “Work the edge of the room first. If you cross paths with a gobbler, pause for only a second, then smile and keep moving, even if they’re reaching after you.”
“Gobbler?” I said.
“That’s someone who will clear your whole tray if you let them. Here’s the rule: two and move. When they reach for a third, you’re gone.”
“Two and move,” I said. “Right.”
“If they don’t let you move on,” she continued, “then they cross over to grabber status, which is completely out-of-line behavior. Then you are wholly within your rights to stomp on their foot.”
“No,” Delia said, over her shoulder. “Actually, you’re not. Just excuse yourself as politely as possible, and get out of arm’s reach.”
Kristy looked at me, shaking her head. “Stomp them,” she said, under her breath. “Really.”
The kitchen was bustling, Delia moving from the huge stove to the counter, Monica unwrapping one foil tray after another, revealing the salmon, steaks, whipped potatoes. There was a crackling energy in the air, as if everything was on a higher speed than normal, the total opposite of the info desk. If I’d wanted something other than silence, I’d surely found it. In spades.
“If there are old people,” Kristy said now, glancing at the door, “make sure you go to them, especially if they’re sitting down. People notice when Grandma’s starving. Watch the room, keep an eye on who’s eating and who’s not. If you’ve done a full walk of the room and the goat cheese currant stuffed celery sticks aren’t finding any takers, don’t keep walking around.”
“Goat cheese currant?” I said.
Kristy nodded gravely.
“It was just one time, one job!” Delia hissed from behind us. “I wish you all would just let that go. God!”
“If something sucks,” Kristy said, “it sucks. When in doubt, grab some meatballs and get back out there. Everybody loves meatballs.”
“What time is it?” Delia asked, as the oven shut with a bang. “Is it seven?”
“Six forty-five,” Kristy told her, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “We need to get out there.”
I picked up my tray, then stood still while Kristy adjusted one biscuit that was close to falling off the edge. “You ready?” she asked me.
I nodded.
She pushed the door open with one hand, and some people standing nearby waiting for drinks at the bar turned and looked at us, their eyes moving immediately to the food. Invisible, I thought. After all the attention of the last year or so, I was pretty sure I could get used to that. So I lifted my tray up, squared my shoulders, and headed in.
Thirty minutes later, I’d discovered a few things. First, everybody does love meatballs. Second, most gobblers position themselves right by the door, where they have first dibs on anything you bring out, and if you try to sidestep them, they quickly move into grabber mode, although I’d yet to have to stomp anyone. And it’s true: you are invisible. They’ll say anything with you standing there. Anything.
I now knew that Molly and Roger, the bride and groom, had lived together for three years, a fact that one gobbler relative was sure contributed to the recent death of the family matriarch. Because of some bachelorette party incident, Molly and her maid of honor weren’t currently speaking, and the father of the groom, who was supposed to be on the wagon, was sneaking martinis in the bathroom. And, oh yeah, the napkins were wrong. All wrong.
“I’m not sure I understand,” I heard Delia saying as I came back into the kitchen for a last round of goat cheese toasts. She was standing by the counter, where she and Monica were getting ready to start preparing the dinner salads, and next to her was the bride, Molly, and her mother.
“They’re not right!” Molly said, her voice high pitched and wavery. She was a pretty girl, plump and blonde, and had spent the entire party, from what I could tell, standing by the bar with a pinched expression while people took turns squeezing her shoulder and making soothing it’s-okay noises. The groom was outside smoking cigars, had been all night. Molly said, “They were supposed to say Molly and Roger, then the date, then underneath that, Forever.”
Delia glanced around her. “I’m sorry, I don’t have one here . . . but don’t they say that? I’m almost positive the one I saw did.”
Molly’s mother took a gulp of the mixed drink in her hand, shaking her head. Kristy pushed back through the door, dumping a bunch of napkins on her tray, then stopped when she saw the confab by the counter.
“What’s going on?” she said. Molly’s mother was staring at the scars, I noticed. When Kristy glanced over at her, she looked away, though, fast. If Kristy noticed or was bothered, it didn’t show. She just put her tray down, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.
“Napkin problems,” I told her now.
Molly choked back a sob. “They don’t say Forever. They say Forever . . .” She trailed off, waving her hand. “With that dot-dot-dot thing.”
“Dot dot dot?” Delia said, confused.
“You know, that thing, the three periods, that you use when you leave something open-ended, unfinished. It’s a—” She paused, scrunching up her face. “You know! That thing!”
“An ellipsis,” I offered, from the across the room.
They all looked at me. I felt my face turn red.
“Ellipsis?” Delia repeated.
“It’s three periods,” I told her, but she still looked confused, so I added, “You use it to make a transition. Also, it’s used to show a thought trailing off. Especially in dialogue. ”
“Wow,” Kristy said from beside me. “Go Macy.”
“Exactly!” Molly said, pointing at me. “It doesn’t say Molly and Roger, Forever. It says Molly and Roger, Forever . . . dot dot dot!” She punctuated these with a jab of her finger. “Like maybe it’s forever, maybe it’s not.”
“Well,” Kristy said under her breath to me, “it is a marriage, isn’t it?”
Molly had pulled out a Kleenex from somewhere and was dabbing her face, taking little sobby breaths. “You know,” I said to her, trying to help, “I don’t think anyone would think that an ellipsis represents doubt or anything. I think it’s more, you know, hinting at the future. What lies ahead.”
Molly blinked at me, her face flushed. Then she burst into tears.
“Oh, man,” Kristy said.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s not about the forever,” her mother told me, sliding her arm over her daughter’s shoulders.
“It’s all about the forever!” Molly wailed. But then her mother was steering her out of the kitchen, murmuring to her softly. We watched her go, all of us quiet. I felt completely and totally responsible. Clearly, this had not been the moment to show off my grammar prowess.
Delia wiped a hand over her face, shaking her head. “Good Lord,” she said, once they were out of earshot. She looked at us. “What should we do?”
Nobody said anything for a second. Then Kristy put down her tray. “We should,” she announced, definitively, “make salads. ” She started over to the counter, where she began unstacking plates. Monica pulled the bowl of greens closer, picking up some tongs, and they got to work.
I looked back over at the door, feeling terrible. Who knew three dots could make such a difference? Like everything else, a love or a wish or whatever, it was all in the way you read it.
“Macy.” I glanced up. Kristy was watching me. She said, “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”
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br /> And maybe it wasn’t. But that was the problem with having the answers. It was only after you gave them that you realized they sometimes weren’t what people wanted to hear.
“All in all,” Delia said three hours later, as we slid the last cart, now loaded down with serving utensils and empty coolers, into the van, “that was not entirely disastrous. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say it was half decent.”
“There was that thing with the steaks,” Kristy said, referring to a panicked moment right after we distributed the salads, when Delia realized half the fillets were still in the van and, therefore, ice cold.
“Oh, right. I forgot about that.” Delia sighed. “Well, at least it’s over. Next time, everything will go smoothly. Like a well-oiled machine.”
Even I, as the newbie, knew this was unlikely. All night there’d been one little problem after another, disasters arising, culminating, and then somehow getting solved, all at whiplash speed. I was so used to controlling the unexpected at all costs that I’d felt my stress level rising and falling, reacting constantly. For everyone else, though, this seemed perfectly normal. They honestly seemed to believe that things would just work out. And the weirdest thing was, they did. Somehow. Eventually. Although even when I was standing right there I couldn’t say how.
Now Kristy reached into the back of the van, pulling out a fringed black purse. “Hate to say it,” she said, “but I give the marriage a year, tops. There’s cold feet, and then there’s oh-God-don’t-do-it. That girl was freaking.”
Monica, sitting on the bumper, offered what I now knew to be one of her three default phrases, “Mmm-hmmm.” The other two were “Better quit” and “Don’t even,” both said with a slow, drawled delivery, the words running together into one: “Bettaquit” and “Donneven.” I didn’t know who had christened her Monotone, but they were right on the money.
“When you get home,” Delia said to me, running her hands over her pregnant belly once and then resting her spread fingers there, “soak that in cold water and some Shout. It should come out.”
I looked down at my shirt and the stain there I’d completely forgotten about. “Oh, right,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
About halfway through dinner, some overeager groomsman, leaping up to make a toast, had spilled a full glass of cabernet on me. I’d already learned about gobblers and grabbers: at that moment, I got a full tutorial on gropers. He’d pawed me for about five minutes while attempting to dab the stain out, resulting in me getting arguably more action than I ever had from Jason.
Jason. As I thought his name, I felt a pull in my gut and realized that for the last three hours or so, I’d forgotten all about our break, my new on-hold girlfriend status. But it had happened, was still happening. I’d just been too busy to notice.
A car turned onto the road, its headlights swinging across us, then approaching slowly, very slowly. As it crept closer, I squinted at it. It wasn’t a car but more like some sort of van, painted white with gray splotches here and there. Finally it reached us, the driver easing over to the curb carefully before cutting off the engine. A second later, a head popped out of the window.
“Ladies,” a voice came, deep and formal, “witness the Bertmobile.”
For a second, no one said anything. Then Delia gasped.
“Oh, my God,” Kristy said. “You’ve got to be joking.”
The driver’s side door swung open with a loud creak, and Bert hopped out. “What?” he said.
“I thought you were getting Uncle Henry’s car,” Delia said, taking a few steps toward him as Wes climbed out of the passenger door. “Wasn’t that the plan?”
“Changed my mind,” Bert said, jingling his keys. In a striped shirt with a collar, khaki pants with a leather belt, and loafers, he looked as if he was dressed up for something.
“Why?” Delia asked. She walked up to the Bertmobile, her head cocked to the side. A second later, she took a step back, putting her hands on her hips. “Wait,” she said slowly. “Is this an—”
“Vehicle that makes a statement?” Bert said. “Yes. Yes it is.”
“—ambulance?” she finished, her voice incredulous. “It is, isn’t it?”
“No way,” Kristy said, laughing. “Bert, only you would think you could get action in a car where people have died.”
“Where did you get this?” Delia said. “Is it even legal to drive?”
Wes, now standing by the front bumper, just shook his head in a don’t-even-ask kind of way. Now that I looked closer at the Bertmobile, I could in fact make out the faintest trace of an A and part of an M on the front grille.
“I bought it from that auto salvage lot by the airport,” Bert said. You would have thought it was a new-model Porsche by the way he was beaming at it. “The guy there got it from a town auction. Isn’t that the coolest?”
Delia looked at Wes. “What happened to Uncle Henry’s Cutlass?”
“I tried to stop him,” Wes told her. “But you know how he is. He insisted. And it is his money.”
“You can’t make a statement with a Cutlass!” Bert said.
“Bert,” Kristy said, “you can’t make a statement, period. I mean, what are you wearing? Didn’t I tell you not to dress like someone’s dad? God. Is that shirt polyester?”
Bert, hardly bothered by this or any of her other remarks, glanced down at his shirt, brushing a hand over the front pocket. “Poly-blend,” he said. “Ladies like a well-dressed man.”
Kristy just rolled her eyes, while Wes ran a hand over his face. Monica, from behind me, said, “Donneven.”
“It’s an ambulance,” Delia said flatly, as if saying it aloud might get her used to the idea.
“A former ambulance,” Bert corrected her. “It’s got history. It’s got personality. It’s got—”
“Final sale status,” Wes said. “He can’t take it back. When he drove it off the lot, that was it.”
Delia sighed, shaking her head.
“It’s what I wanted,” Bert said. It was quiet for a second: no one, it seemed, had an argument for this.
Finally Delia walked over and put her arms around Bert, pulling him close to her. “Well, happy birthday, little man,” she said, ruffling his hair. “I can’t believe you’re already sixteen. It makes me feel old.”
“You’re not old,” he said.
“Old enough to remember the day you were born,” she said, pulling back from him and brushing his hair out of his face. “Your mom was so happy. She said you were her wish come true.”
Bert looked down quickly, turning his keys in his fingers. Delia leaned close to him, then whispered something I couldn’t hear, and he nodded. When he looked up again, his face was flushed, and for a second, I saw something in his face I recognized, something familiar. But then he turned his head, and just like that, it was gone.
“Did you guys officially meet Macy?” Delia asked, nodding at me. “Macy, these are my nephews, Bert and Wes.”
“We met the other night,” I said.
“Bert sprung at her from behind some garbage cans,” Wes added.
“God, are you two still doing that?” Kristy said. “It’s so stupid.”
“I only did it because I’m down,” Bert said, shooting me an apologetic look. “By three!”
“All I’m saying,” Kristy said, pulling a nail file out of her purse, “is that the next person who leaps out at me from behind a door is getting a punch in the gut. I don’t care if you’re down or not.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” Monica agreed.
“I thought she was Wes,” Bert grumbled. “And I wouldn’t jump out from behind a door anyway. That’s basic. We’re way beyond that.”
“Are you?” Kristy asked, but Bert acted like he didn’t hear her. To me she said, “It’s this stupid gotcha thing, they’ve been doing it for weeks now. Leaping out at each other and us, scaring the hell out of everyone.”
“It’s a game of wits,” Bert said to me.
“Half-wits,” Kristy added.
“There’s nothing,” Bert said, reverently, “like a good gotcha.”
Delia, yawning, put a hand over her mouth, shaking her head. “Well, I hate to break this up, but I’m going home,” she announced. “Old pregnant ladies have to be in bed by midnight. It’s the rule.”
“Come on!” Bert said, sweeping his hand across the ambulance’s hood. “The night is young! The Bertmobile needs christening !”
“We’re going to ride around in an ambulance?” Kristy said.
“It’s got all the amenities!” Bert told her. “It’s just like a car. It’s better than a car!”
“Does it have a CD player?” she asked him.
“Actually—”
“No,” Wes told her. “But it does have a broken intercom system.”
“Oh, well, then,” she said, waving her hand. “I’m sold.”
Bert shot her a look, annoyed, but she smiled at him, squeezing his arm as she started over to the Bertmobile. Monica stood up and followed her, and they went around to the back, pulling open the rear doors.
“Have a fun night,” Delia called after them. “Don’t drive too fast, Bert, you hear?”
This was greeted with uproarious laughter from everyone but Wes—who looked like he would have laughed but was trying not to—and Bert, who just ignored it as he walked over to the driver’s side door.
“Wes,” Delia called out, “can you come here for a sec?”
Wes started over toward her, but I was in the way, and we did that weird thing where both of us went to one side, then the other, in tandem. During this awkward dance I noticed he was even better looking up close than from a distance—with those dark eyes, long lashes, hair curling just over his collar, his jeans low on his hips—and he had a tattoo on his arm, something Celtic-looking that poked out from under the sleeve of his T-SHIRT.
Finally I stopped moving, and he was able to get past me. “Sorry about that,” he said, smiling, and I felt myself flush for some reason as I watched him disappear around the side of the van.
“Where are we supposed to sit?” I could hear Kristy asking from the back of the Bertmobile. “Oh, Jesus, is that a gurney?”