by Sarah Dessen
“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.
“It is,” I said, running my finger down the edge of the table. “Plus, it’s so different from anything at my house, where everything is just so organized and new. I like the chaos in it.”
“When Bert was a kid,” Wes said, sitting back in his seat and smiling, “he got lost in that garden, trying to take the shortcut back from the road. We could all hear him screaming like he was stranded in the jungle, but really he was about two feet from the edge of the yard. He just lost his bearings.”
“Poor Bert,” I said.
“He survived.” He slid his glass in a circle on the table. “He’s tougher than he seems. When my mom died, we were all most worried about him, since he was only thirteen. They were really close. He was the one who was there when she found out about the cancer. I was off at Myers. But Bert was a real trooper. He stuck by her, even during the bad parts.”
“That must have been hard for you,” I said. “Being away and all.”
“I was back home by the time things really got bad. But still, I hated being locked up when they needed me, all because of some stupid thing I’d done. By the time I got out, all I knew was that I never wanted to feel like that again. Whatever else happened, to Bert or anyone, I was going to be there.”
The waitress was approaching the table now, a plate in each hand. On cue my stomach grumbled, even though I hadn’t thought I was hungry. She deposited the plates with a clank, gave us each a quick second to ask for something else, and then shuffled off again.
“Now, see,” Wes said, nodding at my plate, “this is going to blow your mind.”
I looked at him. “It’s a waffle, not the second coming.”
“Don’t be so sure. You haven’t tasted it yet.”
I spread some butter on my waffle, then doused it with syrup before cutting off a small bite. Wes watched as I put it in my mouth. He hadn’t even started his yet, as if first, he wanted to hear my verdict.
Which was, pretty good. Damn good, actually.
“Knew it,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “Maybe not the second coming, but a religious experience of sorts.”
I was on my second bite now, and tempted to totally agree with this. Then I remembered something, and smiled.
“What?” he said.
I looked down at my plate. “What you just said, that’s so funny. It reminded me of something my dad always used to say.”
He popped a piece of waffle in his mouth, waiting for me to go on.
“We never went to church,” I explained, “even though my mother always thought we should, and she was always feeling guilty about it. But my dad loved to cook big breakfasts on Sunday. He said that was his form of worship, and the kitchen was his church, his offering eggs and bacon and biscuits and . . .”
“Waffles,” Wes finished for me.
I nodded, feeling a lump rise in my throat. How embarrassing, I thought, to suddenly be on the verge of tears at a truck stop waffle house with Tammy Wynette in the background. But then I thought how my dad would have loved this place, probably even loved Tammy Wynette, and the lump just grew bigger.
“My mom,” Wes said suddenly, spearing another piece of his own waffle, “was the one who first brought me here. We used to stop on the way back from Greensboro, where my grandmother lived. Even during the health-food phase, it was a sort of ritual. This was the only place she’d ever eat something totally unhealthy. She’d get the Belgian waffle with whipped cream and strawberries and eat every bit of it. Then she’d complain the entire way home about how sick she felt.”
I smiled, taking a sip of my water. The lump was going away now. “Isn’t it weird,” I said, “the way you remember things, when someone’s gone?”
“What do you mean?”
I ate another piece of waffle. “When my dad first died, all I could think about was that day. It’s taken me so long to be able to think back to before that, to everything else.”
Wes was nodding before I even finished. “It’s even worse when someone’s sick for a long time,” he said. “You forget they were ever healthy, ever okay. It’s like there was never a time when you weren’t waiting for something awful to happen.”
“But there was,” I said. “I mean, it’s only been in the last few months that I’ve started remembering all this good stuff, funny stuff about my dad. I can’t believe I ever forgot it in the first place.”
“You didn’t forget,” Wes said, taking a sip of his water. “You just couldn’t remember right then. But now you’re ready to, so you can.”
I thought about this as I finished off my waffle. “It was hard, too, I think, because after my dad died my mom kind of freaked and cleaned out all his stuff. I mean, she threw out just about everything. So in a way it was like he’d never been there at all.”
“At my house,” Wes said, “it’s the total opposite. My mom is, like, everywhere. Delia packed a lot of her stuff into boxes, but she got so emotional she couldn’t do it all. One of her coats is still in the hall closet. A pair of her shoes is still in the garage, beside the lawn mower. And I’m always finding her lists. They’re everywhere.”
“Lists?” I said.
“Yeah.” He looked down at the table, smiling slightly. “She was a total control freak. She made lists for everything: what she had to do the next day, goals for the year, shopping, calls she had to return. Then she’d just stuff them somewhere and forget about them. They’ll probably be turning up for years.”
“That must be sort of weird,” I said, and then, realizing this didn’t sound right, added, “or, you know, good. Maybe.”
“It’s a little of both.” He sat back in the booth, tossing his napkin on his now empty plate. “It freaks Bert out, but I kind of like it. I went through this thing where I was sure they meant something, you know? If I found one, I’d sit down with it and try to decipher it. Like picking up dry cleaning or calling Aunt Sylvia is some sort of message from beyond.” He shrugged, embarrassed.
“I know,” I said. “I did the same thing.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Really.”
I couldn’t believe I was about to tell him this. But then the words were just coming. “My dad was, like, addicted to those gadgets they sell on late-night TV. He was always ordering them, things like that doormat with the sensor that lets you know when someone’s about to—”
“The Welcome Helper,” he finished for me.
“You know it?”
“No.” He smiled. “Yes, of course. Everyone’s seen that freaking commercial, right?”
“My dad bought all that stuff,” I told him. “He couldn’t help himself. It was like an addiction.”
“I’ve always wanted to order that coin machine that sorts things automatically,” he said wistfully.
“Got it,” I told him.
“No way.”
I nodded. “Anyway, after he died, the company kept sending them. I mean, every month a new one shows up. But for awhile, I was convinced it meant something. Like my dad was somehow getting them to me, like they were supposed to mean something. ”
“Well,” Wes said now, “you never know. Maybe they do.”
I looked at him. “Do what?”
“Mean something,” he said.
I looked out the window, where car lights were blurring past distantly on the highway. It was after midnight, and I wondered where so many people were going. “I keep them,” I said softly, “just in case. I can’t bear to throw them out. You know?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
We stayed there for another hour. In that time, customers came and went all around us. We saw families with sleeping babies, truckers stopping in before the next leg, one young couple who sat in the booth across from us with a map spread out between them, tracing with their fingers the route that would take them to wherever they were going next. All the while, Wes and I just sat there, talking about anything and everything. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d talked so much, really talked. Maybe I never had.
Still, I beat Kristy to Stella’s by about ten minutes. I’d just waved good-bye to Wes and slipped inside, past where Stella was still sleeping, when the guys dropped her and Monica off in the driveway. By the time she got to her room, carrying her shoes, I’d already spread the sleeping bag she’d pulled out for me earlier on the floor next to her bed and changed into my pajamas. She looked entirely unsurprised to see me.
“Good night?” I asked, as she pulled off her skirt and top, exchanging them for a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts.
“No.” She sat down on the bed, pulled a container of cold cream out of the bedside table, and began smearing it all over her face. When it was half covered, she said, “Let me just say this: Sherman, even though he was passed out the entire time, was the best of the lot.”
“Ouch.”
She nodded, screwing the cap back on the container. “Those boys wished they were even ordinary. I mean, it’s so disappointing. What’s worse than ordinary? I feel like I’m working backwards now.”
“Oh, that’s not true,” I told her. “It was just one bad night.”
“Maybe so.” She stood up and went to the door. “But a girl could lose heart in this world. That’s all I’m saying, you know?”
As she went to the bathroom to wash her face, I stretched out on the sleeping bag. If I looked up through the window behind me, I could see the garden and the moon above it. Soon, though, I was too tired to do even that, instead just closing my eyes, only aware of Kristy returning by the sound of the door sliding shut and the loud sigh she emitted as she crawled into her bed.
“It just sucks,” she said, yawning, “when a night is over and you have not one damn thing to show for it. Don’t you hate that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
She harrumphed again, turning over and fluffing her pillow. “Good night, Macy,” she said after a second of quiet. Her voice sounded sleepy. “Sweet dreams.”
/> “You too. Good night.”
A minute later I could hear her breathing grow steady: she fell asleep that fast. I just lay there for a few minutes, staring up at that moon behind my head, then reached beside the sleeping bag for my purse, rummaging around until I found what I was looking for. Then, in the dark, I wrapped my fingers more tightly around what I had to show for my evening—a pencil that smelled like sugar and syrup. In the morning, when I woke up with the sun spilling over me, it was still in my hand.
“Macy? Is that you?”
I put my shoes down on the bottom step of the landing, laying my purse beside them. My mother was usually up first thing on weekend mornings, leaving soon after for the model home to greet potential homeowners. Now, though, it was almost ten, and I could see her in the recliner by the window, drinking a cup of coffee and reading a real estate magazine. She looked idle and still, which she never was. Ever. So she had to be waiting for me.
“Um, yeah,” I said. As I walked across the foyer, I instinctively tucked in my shirt, then reached up to smooth my hair, running a finger down the part. “Kristy made breakfast, so I stayed longer than I planned. What are you doing home?”
“Oh, I just decided to take an hour or so to get caught up here.” She put her magazine on the table beside her. “Plus I just feel like it’s been ages since we’ve had a chance to talk. Come sit down, tell me what’s going on.”
I had a flashback, suddenly, to being at the top of the stairs and watching Caroline come down after a night out, then have to make her way to the living room, where my mom was always waiting to begin a “discussion.” It was always a bit tense, that feeling of certain friction to come in the air. Kind of like this.
I came over and sat down on the couch. The sunlight was slanting through the window, bright and piercing, and in it I felt especially exposed, as if every little flaw, from my mussed hair to my chipped toenail polish, was especially noticeable. I wanted to scoot over to the chair or the ottoman, but thought this would attract even more attention. So I stayed where I was.