Jason had been at the library information desk since he was fifteen, long enough to secure a reputation as the Guy Who Knew Everything. Patrons of the Lakeview Branch had gotten accustomed to him doing everything from finding that obscure book on Catherine the Great to fixing the library computers when they crashed. They loved him for the same reason I did: he had all the answers. He also had a cult following, particularly among his co-workers, who were both girls and both brilliant. They’d never taken kindly to me as Jason’s girlfriend, seeing as how, in their eyes, I wasn’t even close to their intellectual level, much less his. I’d had a feeling that their acceptance of me as a sudden co-worker wouldn’t be much warmer, and I was right.
During my training, they snickered as he taught me the intricate ins and outs of the library search system, rolled their eyes in tandem when I asked a question about the card catalog. Jason had hardly noticed, and when I pointed it out to him, he got impatient, as if I was wasting his time. That’s not what you should be worrying about, he said. Not knowing how to reference the tri-county library database quickly in the event of a system crash: now that would be a problem.
He was right, of course. He was always right. But I still wasn’t looking forward to it.
Once I got to the garage, I went to the shelves where my mom kept her work stuff, moving a stack of FOR SALE and MODEL OPEN signs aside to pull out another box of fliers. The front door of the house was open, and I could hear voices drifting over, party sounds, laughing, and glasses clinking. I hoisted up the box and cut off the overhead light. Then I headed back to the party and bathroom duty.
I was passing the garbage cans when someone jumped out at me from the bushes.
“Gotcha!”
I shrieked and dropped the box, which hit the ground with a thunk, spilling fliers sideways down the driveway. Say what you will, but you’re never prepared for the surprise attack. It defines the very meaning of taking your breath away: I was gasping.
For a second, it was very quiet. A car drove by.
“Bert?” A voice came from down the driveway, by the catering van. “What are you doing?”
Beside me, a bush rustled. “I’m . . .” a voice said hesitantly— and much more quietly—from somewhere within it. “I’m scaring you. Aren’t I?”
I heard footsteps, and a second later could make out a guy in a white shirt and black pants walking toward me up the driveway. He had a serving platter tucked under his arm. As he got closer he squinted, making me out in the semi-dark.
“Nope. Not me,” he said. Now that he was right in front of me, I could see that he was tall and had brown hair that was a little bit too long. He was also strikingly handsome, with the sort of sculpted cheekbones and angular features that you couldn’t help but notice, even if you did have a boyfriend. To me he said, “You okay?”
I nodded. My heart was still racing, but I was recovering.
He stood there, studying the bush, then stuck his hand right into its center. A second later, he pulled another guy, this one shorter and chunkier but dressed identically, out through the foliage. He had the same dark eyes and hair, but looked younger. His face was bright red.
“Bert,” the older guy said, sighing, as he let his hand drop. “Honestly.”
“You have to understand,” this Bert said to me, solemnly, “I’m down in a big way.”
“Just apologize,” the older guy said.
“I’m very sorry,” Bert said. He reached up and picked a pine needle out of his hair. “I, um, thought you were someone else.”
“It’s okay,” I told him.
The older guy nudged him, then nodded toward the fliers. “Oh, right,” Bert said, dropping down to his knees. He started to pick them up, his fingers scratching the pavement, as the other guy walked a bit down the driveway, picking up the ones that had slid there.
“That was a good one, too,” Bert was muttering as I squatted down beside him to help. “Almost had him. Almost.”
The light outside the kitchen door popped on, and suddenly it was very bright. A second later the door swung open.
“What in the world is going on out here?” I turned to see a woman in a red apron, with black curly hair piled on top of her head, standing at the top of the stairs. She was pregnant, and was squinting out into the dark with a curious, although somewhat impatient, expression. “Where is that platter I asked for?”
“Right here,” the older guy called out as he came back up the driveway, a bunch of my fliers now stacked neatly upon the platter. He handed them to me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem.” Then he took the stairs two at a time, handing the platter to the woman, as Bert crawled under the deck for the last few fliers that had landed there.
“Marvelous,” she said. “Now, Wes, get back to the bar, will you? The more they drink, the less they’ll notice how long the food is taking.”
“Sure thing,” the guy said, ducking through the doorway and disappearing into the kitchen.
The woman ran her hand over her belly, distracted, then looked back out into the dark. “Bert?” she called out loudly. “Where—”
“Right here,” Bert said, from under the deck.
She turned around, then stuck her head over the side of the rail. “Are you on the ground?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Bert mumbled.
“Well,” the woman said, “when you’re done with that, I’ve got crab cakes cooling with your name on them. So get your butt in here, please, okay?”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m coming.”
The woman went back inside, and a second later I heard her yelling something about mini-biscuits. Bert came out from under the deck, organizing the fliers he was holding into a stack, then handed them to me.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “It’s just this stupid thing.”
“It’s fine,” I told him, as he picked another leaf out of his hair. “It was an accident.”
He looked at me, his expression serious. “There are,” he said, “no accidents.”
For a second I just stared at him. He had a chubby face and a wide nose, and his hair was thick and too short, like it had been cut at home. He was watching me so intently, as if he wanted to be sure I understood, that it took me a second to look away.
“Bert!” the woman yelled from inside. “Crab cakes!”
“Right,” he said, snapping out of it. Then he backed up to the stairs and started up them quickly. When he got to the top, he glanced back down at me. “But I am sorry,” he said, saying the words that I’d heard so much in the last year and a half that they hardly carried meaning anymore. Although I had a feeling he meant it. Weird. “I’m sorry,” he said again. And then he was gone.
When I got inside, my mother was deep in some conversation about zoning with a couple of contractors. I refreshed the fliers, then directed a man who was a bit stumbly and holding a glass of wine he probably didn’t need to the bathroom. I was scanning the living room for stray empty glasses when there was a loud crash from the kitchen.
Everything in the front of the house stopped. Conversation. Motion. The very air. Or so it felt.
“It’s fine!” a voice called out, upbeat and cheerful, from the other side of the door. “Carry on as you were!”
There was a slight surprised murmur from the assembled crowd, some laughter, and then slowly the conversation built again. My mother smiled her way across the room, then put a hand on the small of my back, easing me toward the foyer.
“That’s a spill on a client, not enough appetizers, and a crash,” she said, her voice level. “I’m not happy. Could you go and convey that, please?”
“Right,” I said. “I’m on it.”
When I came through the kitchen door, the first thing I did was step on something that mushed, in a wet sort of way, under my foot. Then I noticed that the floor was littered with small round objects, some at a standstill, some rolling slowly t
o the four corners of the room. A little girl in pigtails, who looked to be about two or three, was standing by the sink, fingers in her mouth and wide eyed as several of the marblelike objects moved past her.
“Well.” I looked over to see the pregnant woman standing by the stove, an empty cookie sheet in her hands. She sighed. “I guess that’s it for the meatballs.”
I picked up my foot to examine it, stepping aside just in time to keep from getting hit by the door as it swung open. Bert, now leafless and looking somewhat composed, breezed in carrying a tray filled with wadded-up napkins and empty glasses. “Delia,” he said to the woman, “we need more crab cakes.”
“And I need a sedative,” she replied in a tired voice, stretching her back, “but you can’t have everything. Take the cheese puffs and tell them we’re traying the crab cakes up right now.”
“Are we?” Bert asked, passing the toddler, who smiled widely, reaching out for him with her spitty fingers. He sidestepped her, heading for the counter, and, unhappy, she plopped down into a sitting position and promptly started wailing.
“Not exactly at this moment, no,” Delia said, crossing the room. “I’m speaking futuristically.”
“Is that a word?” Bert asked her.
“Just take the cheese puffs,” she said as she picked up the little girl. “Oh, Lucy, please God okay, just hold back the hysterics for another hour, I’m begging you.” She looked down at her shoe. “Oh no, I just stepped in a meatball. Where’s Monica?”
“Here,” a girl’s voice said from the other side of the side door.
Delia made an exasperated face. “Put out that cigarette and get in here, now. Find a broom and get up these meatballs . . . and we need to get some more of these cheese puffs in, and Bert needs . . . what else did you need?”
“Crab cakes,” Bert said. “Futuristically speaking. And Wes needs ice.”
“In the oven, ready any second,” she said, shooting him a look as she walked over to the broom closet, toddler on her hip, and rummaged around for a second before pulling out a dustpan. “The crab cakes, not the ice. Lucy, please, don’t slobber on Mommy. . . . And the ice is . . . oh, shit, I don’t know where the ice is. Where did we put the bags we bought?”
“Cooler,” a tall girl said as she came inside, letting the door slam behind her. She had long honey-blonde hair and was slouching as she ambled over to the oven. She pulled it open, a couple of inches at a time, then glanced inside before shutting it again and making her way over to the island, still moving at a snail’s pace. “Done,” she announced.
“Then please take them out and put them on a tray, Monica,” Delia snapped, shifting the toddler to her other hip. She started scooping up the meatballs into the dustpan as Monica made her way back to the oven, pausing entirely too long to pick up a pot holder on her way.
“I’ll just wait for the crab cakes,” Bert said. “It’s only—”
Delia stood up and glared at him. It was quiet for a second, but something told me this was not my opening. I stayed put, scraping meatball off my shoe.
“Right,” he said quickly. “Cheese puffs. Here I go. We need more servers, by the way. People are grabbing at me like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Monica, get back out there,” Delia said as the tall girl ambled back over, a tray of sizzling crab cakes in her hand. Putting down the dustpan, Delia moved to the island, grabbing a spatula, and began, with one hand, to load crab cakes onto the plate at lightning speed. “Now.”
“But—”
“I know what I said,” Delia shot back, slapping a stack of napkins onto the edge of the tray, “but this is an emergency situation, and I have to put you back in, even if it is against my better judgment. Just walk slowly and look where you’re going, and be careful with liquids, please God I’m begging you, okay?”
This last part, I was already beginning to recognize, was a mantra of sorts for her, as if by stringing all these words together, one of them might stick.
“Okay,” Monica said, tucking her hair behind her ear. She picked up the tray, adjusted it on her hand, and headed off around the corner, taking her time. Delia watched her go, shaking her head, then turned her attention back to the meatballs, scooping the few remaining into the dustpan and chucking them into the garbage can. Her daughter was still sniffling, and she was talking to her, softly, as she walked to a metal cart by the side door, pulling out a tray covered with Saran Wrap. As she crossed the room she balanced it precariously on her free hand, her walk becoming a slight waddle. I had never seen anyone so in need of help in my life.
“What else, what else,” she said as she reached the island, sliding the tray there. “What else did we need?” She pressed a hand to her forehead, closing her eyes.
“Ice,” I said, and she turned around and looked at me.
“Ice,” she repeated. Then she smiled. “Thanks. Who are you?”
“Macy. This is my mom’s house.”
Her expression changed, but only slightly. I had a feeling she knew what was coming.
I took a breath. “She wanted me to come and check that everything’s all right. And to convey that she’s—”
“Incredibly pissed,” she finished for me, nodding.
“Well, not pissed.”
Just then, there was a splashing crash from the next room, followed by another short silence. Delia glanced over at the door, just as the toddler started wailing again.
“Now?” she said to me.
“Well . . . yes,” I said. Actually, I was betting this was an understatement. “Now, she’s probably pissed.”
“Oh, dear.” She put a hand on her face, shaking her head. “This is a disaster.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I felt nervous enough just watching all this: I couldn’t imagine being responsible for it.
“Well,” she said, after a second, “in a way, it’s good. We know where we stand. Now things can only get better. Right?”
I didn’t say anything, which probably didn’t inspire much confidence. Just then, the oven timer went off with a cheerful bing! noise. “Okay,” she said suddenly, as if this had signaled a call to action. “Macy. Can you answer a question?”
“Sure,” I said.
“How are you with a spatula?”
This hadn’t been what I was expecting. “Pretty good,” I said finally.
“Wonderful,” she said. “Come here.”
Fifteen minutes later, I’d figured out the rhythm. It was like baking cookies, but accelerated: lay out cheese puffs/crab cakes on cookie sheet in neat rows, put in oven, remove other pan from oven, pile onto tray, send out. And repeat.
“Perfect,” Delia said, watching me as she laid out mini-toasts at twice my speed and more neatly. “You could have a bright future in catering, my dear, if such a thing even exists.”
I smiled at this as Monica, the slothlike girl, eased through the door, carrying a tray laden with napkins. After her second spill she’d been restricted to carrying only solids, a status further amended to just trash and empty glasses once she’d bumped into the banister and sent half a tray of cheese puffs down the front of some man’s shirt. You’d think moving slowly would make someone less accident prone. Clearly, Monica was bucking this logic.
“How’s it going out there?” Delia asked her, glancing over at her daughter, Lucy, who was now asleep in her car seat on the kitchen table. Frankly, Delia had astounded me. After acknowledging the hopelessness of her situation, she had immediately righted it, putting in two more trays of canapés, getting the ice from the cooler, and soothing her daughter to sleep, all in about three minutes. Like her mantra of Oh-please-God-I’m-begging-you-okay; she just did all she could, and eventually something just worked. It was impressive.
“Fine,” Monica reported flatly, shuffling over to the garbage can, where, after pausing for a second, she began to clear off her tray, one item at a time.
Delia rolled her eyes as I slid another tray into the oven. “We’re not always like this,” she
told me, opening another package of cheese puffs. “I swear. We are usually the model of professionalism and efficiency.”
Monica, hearing this, snorted. Delia shot her a look.
“But,” she continued, “my babysitter flaked on me tonight, and then one of my servers had other plans, and then, well, then the world just turned on me. You know that feeling?”
I nodded. You have no idea, I thought. Out loud I said, “Yeah. I do.”
“Macy! There you are!” I looked up to see my mother standing by the kitchen doorway. “Is everything okay back here?”
This question, while posed to me, was really for Delia, and I could tell she knew it: she busied herself laying out cheese puffs, now at triple speed. Behind her, Monica had finally cleared her tray and was dragging herself across the room, the tray bumping against her knee.
“Yes,” I said. “I was just asking Delia about how to make crab cakes.”
As she came toward us, my mother was running a hand through her hair, which meant she was preparing herself for some sort of confrontation. Delia must have sensed this, too, as she picked up a dish towel, wiping her hands, and turned to face my mother, a calm expression on her face.
“The food is getting rave reviews,” my mother began in a voice that made it clear a but was to follow, “but—”
“Mrs. Queen.” Delia took a deep breath, which she then let out, placing her hand on her chest. “Please. You don’t have to say anything more.”
I opened up another tray of crab cakes, keeping my head down.
“I am so deeply sorry for our disorganized beginning tonight,” Delia continued. “I found out I was understaffed at the last minute, but that’s no excuse. I’d like to forgo your remaining balance in the hopes that you might consider us again for another one of your events.”
The meaningful silence that followed this speech held for a full five seconds, until it was broken by Bert bursting back through the door. “Need more biscuits!” he said. “They’re going like hotcakes!”
“Bert,” Delia said, forcing a smile for my mother’s sake, “you don’t have to bellow. We’re right here.”
“Sorry,” Bert said.