Adventures with Max and Louise (33 page)

“I’m not trying to be mean. I have a point.” He pats the rumpled grass, trying to get me to sit.

I look down at him. “Look, I already told you the answer, and I’m tired of whatever game you’re playing. I live with my father because he needs me. Can we start back now? Food Fest is tonight. So, if you’re finished playing shrink, maybe you can pack up and take me home. Here’s your shirt. Thanks.”

He won’t get up. My first impression of Wolf was right: he is an annoying eccentric better left swinging in his own weird world.

Leaving him sitting in the grass beside the climbing gear, I trudge down the goat trail. My legs and fingers hurt. This expedition would have been so much more fun with Chas. We could have strolled through the forest, not wasting time scaling rocks that didn’t even need climbing. He would have turned off his cell phone and brought something wonderful to eat. I reach the foot of the boulder convinced that this trip and telling Wolf about my mother was a huge mistake. I’m so glad I didn’t kiss him.

“I know why you stayed at home, Molly!” Wolf yells down from the top of the rock. I look up. All I can see is his shadow. The bump on his shoulder must be a coiled climbing rope. He’s wearing the shirt I threw on the ground. I shield my eyes, not bothering to answer. Holding my hands palms up, I shrug and turn around.
Whatever,
I say with my body. I keep walking.

The word echoes over the forest four times before it becomes indistinct. “You did it out of guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, guiiiilllt . . .”

Guilt.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

T
HE ONLY SOUNDS
in the forest as we hike back to the van are singing birds and our feet, crunching on the lightly packed dirt and rocks. Wolf’s eyes furtively scan my face every few minutes. I remain stubbornly silent, hearing the word
guilt
echoing over and over again. When he’d caught up to me on the trail, he’d known enough not to talk. He fell into step behind me. We’d been walking this way, breathing hard and silent, for the past forty minutes.

The hardest thing to fathom is that he is right. From the moment I stomped into the forest away from his ugly word,
guilt,
I could see how I’d crouched down, afraid of enjoying life, because I’d done something wrong. I’d driven the car. I’d crashed it. The idea is so simple, so powerful; I don’t know what to do with it besides put one foot in front of the other, to move. I want to sit down and bawl like a baby but not in front of him. Every ounce of me is focused on making it home.

Wolf stops to adjust his heavy backpack. “Look, I’m sorry,” he starts to say but stops until he has my full attention. He’s tired. “I had no business psychoanalyzing you back there. It’s just that I could feel your guilt from the moment I met you. I mean, of course, I couldn’t put a finger on it, but you have this, I don’t know, for lack of a better word, spirit, I guess. And you seem so bright and funny and absolutely charming, but . . .” He smiles wistfully. “Sad, really sad.”

I start crying. He’s right.

“You didn’t do anything. It’s not your fault. You were just a kid.”

I abandon any semblance of dignity. Tears gush from my eyes. I’ve been carrying a backpack full of guilt for ten years. It weighs a hundred pounds.

“You were a fifteen-year-old kid with a learner’s permit. Nobody could have stopped that car from hitting you. It wouldn’t have made any difference who was driving. It could have been anyone. Anyone.” He takes a deep breath and stares into the woods before looking at me again. “Life turns on a dime. One day, life as we know it falls off a mountain, and we have to go back down and pick up the pieces.”

The stupid thing is, I’m barefoot, standing in mud. My climbing shoes gave me blisters, so I took them off. Dropping the shoes, I fall into his arms. There is nothing else to do. We stand there on the path for I don’t know how long. My nose is running, and I can’t stop crying. He’s stroking my hair, and my head rests on his fleece shirt. My whole body shakes and trembles, but the forest keeps on breathing, sighing, and rustling around me. It comforts me, like the distant memory of my mom singing me lullabies. I concentrate very hard, almost hearing her. “
Hush, little baby, don’t say a word. Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. . . .”

My sobbing keeps going, not because of what Wolf has brought to light but because of what I’m missing. The thing that fell down the mountain was my mother, and she’s not getting up. No amount of glue or metal pins or tape or cooking or guarding my father like a watchdog is going to bring her back. It’s just me. But somehow the woods make it better. The light flickering through the trees colors the woods in a hundred shades of yellow and green, colors you can’t find in a cooking pot.

As my breath slows and my senses settle, I feel the mud squeezing in my toes, hear the music of the birds as they flit from tree to tree, the distant trickling of an unseen stream, and Wolf’s breathing, even and steady. He smells of soap, damp leaves, and coffee. He is as solid as a rock.

By the time I pull my face away, his flannel sleeve is a soggy mess. I snort with a half-laugh, half-sob. “Oh, I’m sorry. It looks like I blew my nose on your sleeve.”

“Yeah, next time we go climbing, I’ll bring Kleenex. You might want to . . .” He motions for me to wipe under my eyes. “You got a little raccoon action going on there.”

My shirtsleeve comes away looking like I rubbed a dirty car. “Nice.” I look up at the tree canopy and blue sky and inhale. “Whew, what was that?”

“Relief?” He grins.

I exhale deeply. “I don’t know. It feels like the beginning of something. But first I’m going to pick up the pieces.”

“Whose?” he asks gently. “Because it’s always been about your family, hasn’t it?”

We stand awkwardly in the path. He takes a step back. I suck in a deep breath and exhale, pulling myself together. “Mine, definitely mine.” I keep track of my breath, calming down, feeling his eyes on me. “How’d you learn so much about grief?”

His eyes are fanned with crow’s-feet. “I didn’t. I’m just good at paying attention.” He glances at his watch. “I hate to say this, but your dinner starts in four hours.”

Wiping my face one more time, I rescue the climbing shoes from the mud, squeezing the pale brown water back into the stream. “Okay, let’s get back.”

We hike back quietly, each absorbed in our own thoughts. I want to thank him, to ask him if he pays this much attention to everyone but I’m stunned and exhausted. I still carry the backpack of guilt but one stone fell out. Maybe more will follow. Maybe I can dump the whole damn thing out in the river. Who knows?

When we reach the van, Wolf loads all the climbing gear while I rest on the bench beside the trailhead sign. I read the notices about bears, snow closures, wondering if I’ll ever want to come back to this place. What will my life feel like with this knowledge?

Wolf slams the back of the van, crunches across the gravel. “Ready?”

“Wolf, thank you, really. I don’t know what to say.”

He opens the passenger side door to the purple van with a flourish. It creaks with reluctance and I climb in. He leans in until I can feel his breath; I’m sure he’s going to kiss me. Instead he smoothes the bangs off my face, gives me a tired grin. “Anytime, princess, anytime.”

Even though I’ve always thought calling a grown woman princess made her seem spoiled rotten, it sounds like a compliment coming from Wolf.

W
E DRIVE INTO
the city in silence, taking turns flipping the radio stations. We sing along to Eric Clapton’s “Layla” quietly. Neither one of us says anything when the song ends. Wolf changes the stations until he finds “American Baby” by the Dave Matthews Band, waiting for the thumbs-up or -down. Both thumbs way up. This kind of talking works. I wish he’d kissed me. I wish he’d leaned in and kissed me, and then I’d know what it feels like. Then I’d know what I’d missed.

I’m painfully aware that this is the end of something; that whatever happened on the mountain stays there. He’s leaving, and I’ve got Chas.

As we pull into my driveway, I am completely self-conscious. I felt so close to him on the mountain that anything I say now will be banal. We are like lovers in the light of day, vulnerable. But we’re not lovers, I remind myself. And we’re never going to be. Max has reminded me a thousand times that Chas is the sure bet, the one true, real thing. And he’s right.

“No, he’s not,” Louise says.

Shut up,
I think.

Wolf is agitated, ready to leave. He doesn’t even bother to help me gather my bag in the back. I slam the dented purple back door shut and walk around to the sidewalk, smiling at him through the open window.

“I don’t know what to say. Thanks, I guess.” I still haven’t completely processed how guilt stunted my life. I reshaped myself not because of the death of my mother but because I was driving; because I survived. Because I thought that if I turned in as soon as I heard the sirens, if I’d driven better, if I’d reacted faster, if I hadn’t insisted, relentlessly, on driving, she’d still be alive. And I was wrong. During the drive I’ve thought about this but new beginnings don’t flip on like lights. They emerge slowly like a developing picture. I try to picture my new beginning.

Wolf waves from the driver’s seat, hands impatiently drumming the wheel. “No problem. I just hope you’re happy.”

“Will I see you before you go?”

He shakes his head. “I’m not going to Food Fest. To tell you the truth, working in the restaurant has been pretty confining. I’m gonna take some bigger remodeling jobs, spend more time outside,” he says, looking out the window as if he wished he were back on the mountain right now. “I’ve already said good-bye to mom. I don’t want to belabor it.”

“So then . . .” This is awkward. “I guess I’ll see you when you get back.”

“Sure, yeah,” he says before putting the van in reverse and backing down the driveway. I watch the van until it turns the corner at the Navone’s house.

I’m standing at the door trying to remember where I put my keys when I hear the van chugging back up the street. I check my bag to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. Wolf jumps from the passenger seat and strides up the walkway.

“I forgot something,” he says, holding my head on either side. He kisses me: a long, lingering, heady kiss. “Good-bye Molly.”

I’m left there, stunned and confused, teetering between being flattered and furious. He’s half way back to his car when he stops, pivots on his heels and stares intently at me. “One question.”

“Shoot,” I say, going for breezy, as if I get kissed like that daily.

“Who was the boy at the dance?” Wolf asks. He rubs his arms. Instead of looking thrilled that he’s kissed me, he looks tired and in need of a hot shower.

I frown, puzzled. “What boy?”

He cocks one dark eyebrow over his hazel eyes. “The one Martin tried to talk you into dancing with, with the snotty girlfriend in high school.”

I take my time replying, “Chas.” Why is everything suddenly so quiet? Where are the sirens, the wailing dogs, the construction noises?

He nods. “Thought so,” he says, turning on his heels. “It’s poetic really. Ten years and you can finally make that dance. Have fun.”

As I watch Wolf climb into the van, I realize that it was a rhetorical question. He knew that Chas was the boy at the dance when were up on the mountain. He knows our lives will swerve in vastly different directions. He knows that whatever happened on the mountain, it’s over. The street noises start up again, led by the coughing sputter of the Shaggin’ Wagon as it lurches down the street. I want to sit down on the front steps and think about everything that’s just happened. I look at my watch. Three hours until Food Fest.

Chapter Thirty

“D
AD,
I
’M HOME!”
I call into the hallway, praying the echoing dark house is empty. I want to fall onto the couch and cry for a good half hour. To go back and pick apart my memories and see where exactly guilt led me to skip college, stay home, shove my cookbook manuscript away and insist on being called Diner X instead of Molly Gallagher, a name I’ve always liked. Instead, I run on autopilot, picking up an overflowing pile of neglected mail. Better to move forward. If I stop to cry now, I’ll never make it to Food Fest. I put myself on the “focus now, cry later” plan.

“Honest to God, I’m away for one day and the whole house falls apart,” I say, getting into the spirit of my emotionally disconnected plan.

Along with the usual junk mail and bills is a small velum envelope. In the corner is a tiny silver return address that says “Skyline Tower,” Chas’s address. Very tasteful; here’s a man who never in a million years would be caught in the Shaggin’ Wagon. Penned on the top is a note from our neighbor, Mrs. Tate: “Came to my address,” in scratchy black ballpoint. The woman can’t even get a pen to work.

“Oh great,” I sigh. Mrs. Tate is a notorious scatterbrain who puts her garbage out three days after the collection date and always brought us birthday cakes months after our birthdays. God knows how long she’s had it. It is postmarked five days ago.

I open the envelope, slipping out a single monogrammed CWB card tied with a black grosgrain bow tie. The writing slants across a creamy rectangle:
Pre-Food Fest drinks at my place. 5:00 p.m.

There’s his strong, black signature in my favorite Bick Flair beside a smiley face with two tiny horns. The smiley face with horns can mean two things: let’s make some mischief, or, given our previous sexual fiascos it could mean, let’s have a quickie before Food Fest. I glance at the watch on my mud-flecked arm. It is after four. I don’t have time to worry about the smiley face’s headgear. I’m due at the restaurant for Food Fest at four-thirty. I need to shower, change and make a few stops along the way. Of course, I can always shower at Chas’s and ask Denise to run to the grocery store for lemons. She is coming tonight and owes me about nine million favors.

Searching my bag for my cell phone, I cuss like a sailor when I realize I’ve left it in Wolf’s car. It’s too late to call him. Finding the remote phone in dad’s office, I make calls in my bedroom while digging out my dress and tossing combs, deodorant, jewelry, notebooks and what I hope are matching shoes into a bag.