Delaney Waters asked me if I ever think how easy it is for someone to change your life. At the time I thought it was one of the silliest questions I’d ever heard. I was thinking a religious conversion, or some love-at-first-sight nonsense. She was talking more subtle changes. Like the way you’d make your twos with a loop instead of a point. Or how you’d start looking at thrift stores for a certain type of shoe, turn up the volume when you’d hear a certain tune, take one street instead of another. These things don’t change you for others, but they change you all the same.
I met her on the first day of sixth grade, which is hardly unordinary, but I’ll never forget how she claimed her desk, just waltzed through the classroom to the desk closest to the window, unpacked her things. She sat down and stared out the window as if somehow she belonged out there, somewhere else. While the rest of us were running around, screeching about our vacations, judging each other’s outfits, counting our pencils, she was sitting, staring confidently out the window, unbothered by any of us. Then she flipped the cover of her sketchbook open and started writing something, or drawing, probably drawing. And when Miss Hilsden started her welcome-to-the-class spiel, she stopped midsentence to wait for Delaney to finish drawing. “We usually put our books away when the teacher starts talking,” Miss Hilsden told her.
“Okay,” Delaney said, but she kept drawing for a few more seconds before looking up at her and flipping the book closed.
“Do you remember your first day of sixth grade?” I asked her once. This was not long before the day I left her on the swings.
“I remember I was the most popular girl in the whole school,” she said. And she laughed as if she were being ridiculous. “People remember whatever they want. It’s all just made up.” But I’ll never forget watching her that first day. The other girls were watching her out of the corners of their eyes too, wondering how a girl could be so unworried. I remember hoping I would be her friend, looking around at the other girls and finding them hoping the same. The boys too, I might as well say it. None of us talked to her that first day, so I get her joke. But really she remembers it the same as I do.
As hard as I try, I can’t remember the first time we spoke to each other. I remember a time—it had to be pretty soon after that first day, because I feel nervous when I think of it. There’s nothing I should be nervous about now, obviously, but it’s as if I can feel my eleven-year-old nerves rising up as I sit here. I was slipping my knapsack into my locker when I noticed Delaney coming toward me with the same knapsack. I’m not sure how I hadn’t noticed it before then. Every day I could feel her walking behind me to her locker—she walked with the same confidence with which she looked out the window. As if nothing outside of herself even registered. I stood there mentally wrestling with whether I should or shouldn’t make the joke, then finally decided. “Nice knapsack,” I said.
“Oh, thanks.” She held it out in front of her to look at it, then looked at mine, and the joke was there. “Same to you,” she said. No wait. She said, “Great minds…” Just like that. She left the end off, like I knew what was coming. And I guess I did, ’cause we laughed like we were getting away with something as she touched my shoulder with her hand. Then I remember the other girls looking at us with those darts that said, I hate you for leaving me out of it.
There’s that time we played four square at recess. It must have been early in the craze ’cause there were only the four players in the box, plus a line of eight or ten other kids waiting to get in. I remember I was king—some of us tried to call it queen when a girl was there, but it never stuck. Delaney was kitty-corner from me and Jack Benson was three or four back in line, throwing little stones at Delaney every time the ball was kicked to her. One time he hit her head with a stone and she missed the ball, so she went after him in line, kicking him in the knee. “Why you gotta be such a dweeb?” she said.
“You’re out,” he screamed. “You missed it. You missed.”
“She’s not out you jerk,” I said. “Stop being such a dweeb or I’ll kick you out.” The king could do things like this, in extreme cases. When I said it, the rest of the kids cheered and I got a little embarrassed, not used to being so bold. But Jack got even more embarrassed, while Delaney had this proud little smirk, so I said, “He’s such a nerd sometimes,” and we laughed and I kicked the ball to her. I think this was a first time too, but then I don’t know where the confidence would have come from. I was never the go-getter in any relationship. I always waited until I was sure they wanted it before I declared my loyalty.
We had arranged, a bunch of us girls, to meet at the downtown Famous Players to watch some movie or other. I can’t remember the movie. It wasn’t the point. The point was that we were old enough to say our sisters would be there to watch us—or in my case, Delaney’s sister would be there—and our parents would say, “Oh alright, but stick together.” Looking back I’m sure my mother doubted our truthfulness, but I think she felt comforted by the lie, telling herself there was an older sibling there to watch us. Most times, though, we’d split from them as soon as possible. We’d choose a different movie, or just walk around the mall instead, try on shoes we thought we’d never be able to afford, suck on jawbreakers till our jaws hurt.
I remember Jenna was coming this time. And Shayna. April and Rebecca. Probably a few others. But when I got there, it was only Delaney waiting. There’s still a nervousness that lingers with this memory, but excitement too. I was always wondering what she thought of me, what the other girls thought too, and if I was as important to Delaney as she was to me. I liked having the other girls there, to show off for, but felt a certain privilege when I got to spend time alone with Delaney. Though this was pretty early on. The feeling dwindled the more we hung out.
Anyway, we stood there waiting, just chatting and giggling and looking for the others until probably ten minutes after the movie had started. “Let’s just ditch ’em,” Delaney said. “I’m not missing the movie just ’cause these girls can’t get here on time.” We went in, sat in the front row and laughed till we just about peed ourselves in our seats. We stayed until the credits rolled up and the film ran out and the guys came in with their brooms and asked us to leave so they could clean up the popcorn.
On our way out Delaney said, “It’s kinda nice the others didn’t show. Don’t have to try so hard.” I looked at her to see what she meant, but her mom pulled up and she ran to the car, waving before she crawled into the back seat. Thinking about it now, it’s possible she might’ve said it to any of the girls—if I hadn’t shown up and someone else had. But back then it meant she was glad it was just us. She wanted it to be just us. She chose me. Somehow.
After that I wasn’t as nervous around Delaney. Whether she had meant to or not, I felt like she had declared me her best friend, and this declaration was enough for me. While the others were showing off, vying for her attention, I’d just sit and relax. She’d catch my eye and I’d smile a little, making a secret joke of the other girls. And when they’d talk about her while she wasn’t there—“She totally has to like Jackie Benson. Look at the way she flirts with him”—I’d set them straight—“She doesn’t even. She’s got a boyfriend from the next district over. She told me.” She told me, I’d say, and the other girls would look at me funny, trying to figure out if I was lying, then deciding to believe me, sulking a bit.
It’s not that we didn’t like each other. I had sleepovers with Jenna or Sam, and we’d stay up half the night laughing so hard we got the hiccups. Or if I was walking home, I’d always walk with Shayna, who lived one block over from me. And we wouldn’t even mention Delaney, or boys or grades. All of us liked each other, sure, but at that age we were ruthless. We thought the schoolyard was the entire world, and we were jostling to the top of it with our cute smiles and our new shoes and our cutting remarks. The guys would be wrestling or playing tackle football, and we’d be huddled together, laughing and ripping each other’s self-esteem to shreds.
Delaney didn’t seem to worry about any of this. Oh, she could cut you down. Better than most. But the other girls would purse their lips, trying to glare holes through you just for a second, then laugh it off—not entirely convincingly—with a little flick of their hair. Delaney, if anyone ever tried to go after her, would just laugh in your face, making you feel small for even having said anything. It was like she knew she was at the top. We all did.
So Delaney being top, and telling me things she didn’t tell the others seemed to make me number two without even having to try. I just had to say, “She told me.”
And she did tell me. She called me once, not long after the movie night, and said, “Meet me at that little park by the 7-Eleven?” I said sure, and ran over to wait on the swings.
She came riding up on her bike, hopping off while it was still going, letting it roll into the rocks and fall over. She sat in the swing next to mine and pumped her legs until she got the swing going so high it screeched at the top, before she flew back down. The way the rust on the chain rubbed the bar, it screeched. I swung beside her for a few minutes until she jumped off her swing to land in the rocks.
“I broke up with my boyfriend,” she said. “He dumped me,” she said. “Started going out with my sister.”
At the time I had never had a boyfriend. Delaney talked about hers, but in a funny sort of way. Like an imaginary friend almost. But one she made invisible on purpose. We knew about him, but would never see him. And we knew it was supposed to be that way.
“He didn’t even say why,” she said. “Just showed up and asked, ‘Is Abigail home?’”
This turned out to be a regular occurrence. She had a way of making the boys like her. She had this wild blonde hair that seemed to drive them nuts, and she knew how to bring attention to herself, how to give out the right amount of her attention before snatching it away, making them work for it. And they worked for it. Well, at least, worked more for her attention than for mine, that’s for sure. The problem was with boys she wasn’t ruthless. If they worked hard enough, she’d fall for them. Like legitimately fall for them. Even at twelve—that first time she told me on the swings—I could see she was devastated. She refused to look up from the rocks, no matter how much I wanted her to. I wanted her to look at me, to confide in me, or something. Anything. I wanted to tell her the guy was a joke. He was obviously an idiot. She was perfect.
Instead we just sat there. Until finally she told the rocks the story of how she had met him. I let the swing stop swinging and I let her tell it. Her mom had organized a Tupperware party. One of the other moms—a weirdo her mom should never have invited in the first place—called last minute to say she’d love to come, had been looking forward to it, would hate if she had to miss it, but her sitter cancelled, could she bring her son?
They bounced on the trampoline. Delaney’d double-bounce him so high his eyes would bulge and he would lose control of himself, falling through the mat and getting stuck in the springs. They lay on the tramp while the sun set. Then they went in to watch a movie. But she left him on the couch and went up to her room, waited for him to leave. He stole her number out of his mother’s address book as soon as he could without his mother noticing. He called, asked “May I please speak to Delaney?” “Mom thought he was a prince,” she said. Then whispered, “Abigail,” as if she were making a wish.
This Delaney—the Delaney at the swings—was a completely different girl than the everyday Delaney. I felt invisible, as if she’d be there telling her stories breakup after breakup whether I was sitting there or not. Yet she called me each time. “Meet me at the swings?” So I knew she needed me there. Her wild and confident self who didn’t seem worried about anything at school or with the girls would slip away, and instead here was a girl burying bits of her heart under playground rocks while I sat on a swing and listened. Eventually she’d say, “Oh he’s just a boy,” or “He was kinda weird anyway,” and she’d hop on the other swing and swing till it screeched.
Once she said, “You know, it doesn’t matter who you are, they’ll always get tired of you.” I think I said, “What?” or “Hmm?” I’m sure I didn’t ask her to explain. But I remember she started speaking at nearly the same time that I did. “If they like you ’cause you’re crazy, they’ll leave you for someone boring. If you’re smart, they’ll want stupid. Ditzy, they want brains. They always want the opposite of what they fall in love with.” And for a long time after this conversation she didn’t have a boyfriend. She just stopped.
I’m sure she was mistaken. Surely there must be men who fall in love with a girl, a woman, and love her forever. But all of a sudden it’s forty-some years later, and I can still feel the pressure of that conversation in my stomach. The fear planted in that little girl on those swings—the fear of being found unsatisfactory, of being left behind—has grown into this great big life of solitude. The fear of being left alone has held me firmly in the arms of loneliness for far too long.
I did have my chances, I’m sure I did. Even back then. In the summers, we’d go to Wally’s Wacky Waterslides. They set up on the outskirts of town, three slides winding down the old Patterson Hill until they landed in a pool at the bottom. I remember talking about them at school—“Did you see the tunnel slide? That one goes in a full circle. There’s like a five-foot drop.” We’d beg our parents for the three dollars. Or we’d wait until Saturday to collect our allowance. We’d mow the lawn every day, weed the garden even. It was new back then. We were desperate to race down those slides.
It was guaranteed that Jack Benson and his buddies would be there. I have no idea where they found their three dollars every day, but I never went a single time without seeing them. They’d be there to pull our hair, or smack our ice creams over or throw our sandwiches to the seagulls—that first year at least. They were there to chase us up the stairs, to race us down the slides, to splash us, to pretend to drown us, to lay their towels next to ours, making fun of us for trying to get a tan.
I assumed they were after Delaney, and most of them were. But once, as we lay panting on the grass having just escaped the deep end as they tried to pull us under, Delaney said, “Boy, Jack sure can’t get enough of you.”
“Yeah right,” I said. But a whole new world was opening up. One in which I might be important—to a boy. One wherein the things I did—flicking my hair, wiping water from my eyes with the back of my hand, straightening my bathing suit straps, pulling out a wedgie, or even the way I ate my sandwich, licking the jelly off its sides before it all slopped out into the grass—could be noticed by someone, could be thought about and analyzed, remembered for years to come, talked about, reminisced over. I doubt all this went through my head back then, but for the first time ever I considered that maybe I was number one to somebody. “They’re only flirting with me because you’re here,” I said.
“No, Jackie couldn’t keep his hands off you over there.”
“Oh please. Jackie Benson? I would never,” I said. But when I looked over at him, he was there looking back at me, for a second at least, before he looked away and ran into the pool.
It’s almost stupid thinking about it all now. There’s certain people in this world who just happen to find the other half of themselves, and step into line next to them for a life of togetherness. The rest of us, the majority I’m sure, spend our lives running ahead and slowing down, never quite able to sync. One of you needs to sit still until the other realizes he just needs to sit down beside you.
Jack spray-painted a section of the tube slide black. At least I think it was him. He said there was a section of the fence over behind the bush he could squeeze through, and he just had to climb the metal structure and sit on the one bar and paint. For me, there was no reason not to believe him. He was always talking about his midnight escapades, and once I even went with him—this was years later, just after we had graduated high school. We went under this bridge on the highway just before leaving town. He took out a bunch of spray paint and painted. I didn’t know he even still did stuff like this. Some of it was beautiful. Before then, I’d never noticed graffiti at all. It just seemed like a mess on the side of the road, or wherever. But this was beautiful. I couldn’t tell what it was, of course, but it pushed me backwards, opened my eyes just a bit wider, stretched the world out a little. “Whatcha think?” he said when he finished. He looked at me so eagerly, as if he needed my answer to keep going.
Or wait. He must have said, “You like it?” ’Cause I just stood still for a minute, tried to figure out this look on his face, then said, “Yeah.” One word. I might have used more if the question were what do you think.
Anyway, he laughed. A weird little laugh, like he was asking me to stop lying to him. Then he pulled out a black can and painted over his handiwork. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, why I just stood and let him cover it up. When I remember it now, I run up to him, I grab his arm before he’s even done shaking the can, I tell him I love it, I couldn’t bear to live in this world without it, now that it’s here.
But I didn’t. And for years following, that black rectangle, whenever I drove past it, was like a broken toe that healed up all funny. I’d forget about it all day, until I pulled off my sock, and the strangeness of the toe put the memory of the pain back in my head.
It was a long time later—when I saw the city crew sandblasting the walls under that bridge—that I had the idea that the black section of the slide was actually Jack’s artwork, that he had spent his nights pouring his soul out onto public canvasses of all sorts, then hiding it under layers of black.
There were four or five sections painted black before Wally must have gotten fed up, and had the whole thing painted black. So then you were alone when you slid down it. It was hot, ’cause of the sun. It was uncomfortable. You were hot and alone and it stretched the slide longer so you wondered if you’d ever reach the bottom. We basically stopped using the tunnel slide. “Do you ever think how easy it is for someone to change your life?” Delaney asked not long after Jack painted the slide black.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well Jackie Benson changed our lives just by painting that stupid slide. It’s not even fun anymore.” And for some reason—I was still young—I thought change must be a good thing. I thought she was saying Jack had changed her life, what a wonderful thing. I thought she was laying claim. I think I’ll have him she was saying.
“I still like that slide,” I said.
“Yeah, but we used to love it.”
We didn’t go to Wally’s as much after that. When we did go, it was mostly just to lay in the sun and show off our suits. Delaney was careful to turn every fifteen minutes to get an even tan. She’d close her eyes as if she were asleep, but she was still aware of everything around us. “It’s pretty dead today,” she’d say. Or “What’s with these little kids?” Or “Why don’t the two of you just go out already?” as I was watching Jack come rushing out of the mouth of the tube slide. She’d turn on her stomach, undo her bikini top if the boys were close.
We were just about sixteen. We would have grown out of the water park anyway, I’m sure. But back then, as I sat beside Delaney, watching the kids laughing and splashing, and forgetting any sort of real world, I blamed the black tunnel slide. I blamed Jack, I guess. And Delaney too. We could have ignored the black, made it into a wild adventure. Why were we just lying there, showing off—as if there was anything for me to show. Sometimes we wouldn’t even get into the water, just pay the entrance fee to bake in our bikinis.
I brought a flashlight. I guess it was the last time we went. Delaney pulled up to my house, I was about to go running out, but on the table by the door was an old flashlight. I still couldn’t tell you why, but I threw it in my bag and ran out to her. It must have been for the tunnel slide—there’s just no other reason to think of, even if I try—but I don’t remember having the idea until we got to the park and were sitting down to tan.
“We should take this down the tunnel,” I said.
“Why’d you bring that?”
“Don’t know. Just grabbed it on the way out.”
“You want to go down that bad?”
“No. Who cares. I bet it’d look cool though.”
“Totally,” she said, and she got up quick, started toward the slide. “Like a shot of sunlight or something.”
She was more excited than I was, I think. Well I’m sure she was, but I was taken aback. I watched her practically skip to the stairs, looking all around the park as if she thought everyone would be watching us, congratulating us on our great idea, getting out of the pool to follow us up to watch the experiment. “I totally wanna go first. But it was your idea.”
“You can go if you want,” I said. ’Cause I was trying to figure out why she was so desperate.
“No. You’ve got to do it. Just make sure you sit up at the end so you’re going slow. So you don’t get it wet at the bottom.”
She was running up the stairs, talking, talking, talking about the best way to hold the flashlight, or what it would feel like to be a ball of light in the darkness. “We’ll be a shooting star,” I think she said. I remember I was just about to go down, standing at the top looking into the darkness. A thought was forming in my head—something about our roles reversing, how Delaney must have felt something like this when we all started following her—when I heard her scream, “Jackie!”
I turned around and there was Jack, grabbing the flashlight from me and jumping into the slide, disappearing around the bend before I could really process what was happening. I jumped in after him, but he was always faster than me when we raced, and I knew I wouldn’t catch him. The edge of the light was just past my reach, and I started hoping he’d just be able to keep it out of the water.
It seems weird remembering all of this. I was always so aware of Jack. Even when I wasn’t looking for him, I seemed to feel him, like I knew where he was at all times, somehow. I used to lie in bed imagining him out on his bike, racing around corners, holding his arms out to let the wind blow his hair back, slowing when he gets to his house, leaning his bike against the garden shed, sneaking in the back door, throwing his sweater on a hook, creeping up the stairs, taking his clothes off, lying down in bed, looking out his window, falling asleep. And I think I believed he was actually doing these things. I’d wait till he fell asleep, in my own imagination, before I could actually fall asleep. And I guess I secretly felt he probably did the same with me, or something similar. Even days we didn’t say a word to each other I felt I had spent the day with him.
Then all of a sudden the slide lit up, and there was Jack, sitting up, stopped, twisted around to wait for me. I was going too fast. I slammed into him. He yelled something. My big toe burned and pain shot through my foot. The light flickered off. I rode the rest of the slide in a daze while he screamed as if he’d been shot in the arm. I felt his legs kicking under the water as I splashed into the pool. I surfaced in a cloudy mist of blood.
Jack was holding his nose, still screaming, blood dripping down his hands. The chlorine was sucking up the blood, destroying the evidence. “Everyone out,” the lifeguard was yelling. “We’re gonna have to shut ’er down for a bit. Give me that flashlight. Why would you take that down a waterslide? Give it here. You kids are ridiculous.” Delaney came down the other slide, the open one. We packed up our things and left.
For probably two weeks before school started back up, Delaney and I met at the swings after dinner every night, or if we were already together we’d walk over there and swing, talk, gossip. I wish I could remember more of those conversations. She didn’t have a boyfriend then, I remember, so we probably talked about all the boys. She’d talk about Jack. And I would too, I guess. But I could never figure out if she actually liked him or not. She always talked about him in association to me—but she’d remember the smallest little details of him. I remember her saying something like, “Isn’t it weird how you can tell he’s only fake smiling ’cause he’s got a dimple when he’s really smiling? Like when he’s smiling at you?” As if she never stopped watching him, trying to sort him out.
So I’d steer the conversation elsewhere. I just can’t remember where. We’d sit and chat until we were too cold or too tired, then I’d walk her home on the way to my house. But the last day, the day before school was to start, I was shivering and so was she, so I said I was going to head home, which one of us always said. But instead of hopping down off the swing to follow me home, she just sat, then said, “I think I might stay here for a minute.”
“Aren’t you cold?” I think I asked her. And she just shook her head. “Alright,” I said, and went to sit back in the other swing.
“You can go,” she said, and I looked at her, “if you want.” And something made me think I had to leave.
I don’t remember what I thought as I walked away. Certainly nothing about never seeing her again. Probably something about Jack. I feel like there should be something here, some memory of her telling me why, explaining, even complaining about how she’d miss it here or something. But there’s nothing. What I do remember is being startled, slightly, as I reached the edge of the park and heard the swing screech. I thought it was a person screaming at first, Delaney maybe, but when I stopped it continued in a slow, steady rhythm. I couldn’t see Delaney through the darkness, but I could hear her swinging, high enough so the rust on the chain rubbed the bar and screeched. Screeched. Screeched. On its way down. I still hear it, in dreams, far away in the distance somewhere, Delaney screeching at me from the swings.
Four years I knew Delaney Waters, and the next day at school I felt panicked. At least I feel panicked as I remember it. I remember Jack running up to me with a big goofy smile, trying to get me to notice the dried-grass-green bruises under his eyes, I guess, and me telling him to move outta the way. I remember pretty much running to homeroom, searching the room for her, waiting for her to pop out of the corner with her crazy hair, being confused when she wasn’t anywhere. I was forced to sit next to Jenna and one of the boys. I remember snapping at Jenna—“How am I supposed to know?”—when she asked where Delaney was. But I couldn’t have known she was gone. I probably figured she was in a different homeroom, which would have been strange, and bothersome, but hardly as shocking as realizing she just wasn’t there.
I sulked to myself until lunch, tried to find her in the hall, in my classes. I stood in the lunch line and couldn’t believe I hadn’t found her. I took my lunch and sat at our table. There was a table that was unofficially saved for Delaney. And me, I guess. Usually I’d wait for her, or she for me, and we’d go sit there in the corner. The other girls would filter in after us. Some would even ask permission, which we would laugh at. We really didn’t see ourselves as better than anybody. Though I guess I saw Delaney that way, so I didn’t blame them.
I didn’t wait this time. Just sat. And after a few minutes, Shayna and Jenna came over with their trays and stood in front of me and said, “You want some company?” Everyone waiting.
My thought process after they asked me this question is so familiar to me now, all these years later, but this must have been the first time it happened. They’re treating me like Delaney, I need to answer, how would Delaney answer? “Whatever. If you wanna sit, sit.”
And in this way I’ve lived out my life, forever wondering what Delaney Waters would think of me, as if somehow our minds have been connected all these years, as if she were still there pushing my hand up to give the answer, persuading me to go to talk to random boys at the mall, convincing me ol’ Jackie Benson was in love with me, had been pining for me all these years. She pops into my consciousness every so often, bats her eyes a little, says, “This way now.”
In truth, I heard from her only two times after she left, with two of the shortest letters ever written. The first was her wedding invitation, sent to my parents’ old place on Lone Street. My dad called, said he had run into Mr. Cooper, who had bought our old place off my parents. Cooper told him some official-looking letter had arrived with my name on it. I wasn’t too worried about it. Until I got a phone call from Jack Benson.
Jack had gotten out of Macleod a few years before this. Moved to the city to go to school and stuff. Jack and I had hung out in high school, and a bit after we graduated, but it didn’t turn into anything. The boys—like the girls—just kind of slid me into Delaney’s number one spot. I didn’t believe it at first, but the girls would whisper about how the boys looked at me, and I definitely had more boys following me around, asking to sit at my table, even with Delaney gone. And one day, one of them actually asked me out on a date. I wish I could remember who was first. You’d think an old lady would be able to remember who she went on her first date with. But all I remember is it wasn’t Jackie.
I remember I was so caught off guard by the question that I just said yes right away. I looked at him and said, “Sure. If that’s what you want.” Of course he took me to the movies, sat us down in the back, tried to move in for whatever he thought he could move in for. And that’s when Delaney pops up and says, “This is why you gotta make ’em work for it.” So I said, “Whatcha doing?” and he just slumped back down into his seat and started eating all the popcorn like it was the first time he’d ever tried it. I told him I needed the ladies’ room and left him there. And I carried on through high school making the rest of the guys work their tails off for my attention.
I was ruthless. It wasn’t like it was a game or anything. I even thought I liked some of them, didn’t enjoy leading any of them on, or whatever it was. I was just pretending. Pretending to be Delaney, pretending to know what I was supposed to be doing, to know who I was. And even Delaney hadn’t been able to keep a guy interested. I’d let them kiss me sometimes, but I knew when to get out. Before they did. Before I became unsatisfactory.
I think Jack saw through it all, though. At first, I thought he really had liked Delaney, not me. As soon as she wasn’t around, he steered clear of me, letting the other boys try me out. But I’d catch him—like I used to—looking at me from across the room. Or I’d turn around and he’d be following me up the stairs, looking up at me. It was these moments on the stairs I liked best, ’cause he wouldn’t dart his eyes to the side these times. He’d give a quick smile, as if he had wanted me to catch him, then wipe his nose on his sleeve, or scratch the back of his neck, or make a face like he was picking something out of his teeth with his tongue. I’d turn around to check if he was there even when I knew he wasn’t.
When he did talk to me, it was to remind me of some party, or to ask if I was going to the city for the fair. Once he told me not to go out with Jerry Donoghue, said Jerry wouldn’t stop if I asked him to. I told him to mind his own business, said I’d go out with whoever I wanted to. Though I didn’t ever go out with Jerry when he asked.
After high school, it was pretty much only if we ran into each other that Jack would talk to me. Like after the party at Vanessa’s house when he asked if I wanted to see his artwork. “Come on. There’s a bunch of us going,” he said. And eventually I went with him. Of course there was no one else. We drove around town in the dark listening to some weird jazzy stuff on the radio. Then he pulled over, shook up a spray can and painted, asked me if I liked it, then painted it over in black.
I don’t know how many times I’ve replayed this night in my head, and if I did know, I probably wouldn’t tell anyone. I just have no idea what Delaney would have done. I think I’ve decided she wouldn’t have let him cover it up. I just don’t know how she would have stopped him, what she would have said. I sometimes think my entire life would be different if I had made him leave it.
So anyway, he calls me up. I’m probably thirty-two, thirty-three. He says, “Hey, how ya been? This is Jack Benson. I was wondering if you got an invitation to Delaney’s wedding.”
I told him I hadn’t, tried to think of something—anything—else to say, but couldn’t.
“You still live at your old place?’
“No. We moved.”
“Might be there. She sent mine to my parents’ house. I was hoping you were going. I gotta cut through Macleod on the way to Woodson. Thought we could go together.’
“She lives in Woodson?”
“The wedding’s there at least.”
“Well, I’d like to.”
“The invite says I can bring a plus-one,” he said, and I stood there holding the phone with my mouth open. “Would you like to be my plus-one?” he said.
“Sure. Yes. I would.”
We settled on a time for him to pick me up and I told him how to get to my place. Then I drove to my old house on Lone to see if there was an invitation. I don’t know what I was expecting. Probably a thick envelope filled with years of regret, explanations. I wanted an explanation, why she’d left me to be on my own, why she’d moved to Woodson—Woodson, goddammit, it’s less than three hundred kilometres away—and didn’t bother to visit, or call, or write. Until now.
The envelope was small, greeting-card sized, addressed to Miss Lucy Frazier. I took it out to my car, slipped my finger under the seal, and pulled out the card. Just a card. I could bring a plus-one too if I wanted. She was marrying Jeffrey Browne. In the envelope—it must have fallen out of the card—there was a small slip of paper. “You have to come. I’m changing my name to Browne.”
I still have it.
Jack picked me up early the day of the wedding. The ceremony was at three. Jack said we should get there early enough to grab lunch. He’d never been to a wedding where the food was good, or if it was good, offered more than minuscule portions.
I only remember bits and pieces of the day. I’ve made an effort to put it out of my mind. Though now that I’m writing it down, the fog is lifting a little. I remember all my clothing strewn about my bedroom before he got there. I can’t for the life of me remember what I ended up wearing. I threw it on when I heard his car pull up, as I heard him knocking on the door.
Woodson looked like the perfect place to get married. Skinny little roads with oversized trees planted a century ago in nice rows so the leaves hung over the streets, old Victorian houses with wraparound porches, white picket fences, dogs barking. The church, once we found it, was nearly exactly what I had pictured, untouched by the present except for a large ramp with a stainless steel railing added alongside the staircase, the rest of it probably 150 years old, stained glass windows, a steeple stretching, trying to reach higher than the others. No cars in the parking lot, though, except for one. And when we pushed the big wooden doors open, there was a little wet-floor sign in the foyer with a single sheet of paper taped to it. Browne/Waters wedding cancelled, it said. Nothing else.
Jack walked straight past it as if it weren’t there, saying, “That’s a shame,” as he pulled open the chapel doors and walked halfway up the aisle. Here, I could invent all kinds of meanings. As I watched him in his black suit, just a little too big for him, as if he hadn’t quite grown into it after all. As he turned to look around the chapel. As he pulled a hymnal from the back of one of the pews, flipping through it quickly, his thoughts elsewhere, obviously. As he sat and leaned back, staring at the sloping ceiling, the cedar beams. As he said, “Ever worry about finding that perfect girl? Or guy, I s’pose?” By then I had followed him deeper into the chapel. But he seemed to be inside himself, not really speaking to me. From the pews, he asked the question to the front of the room, to the cross hanging on the wall. “Not just a good person,” he said, not worried about my answering. “I’m talking about The One. The One that keeps the wheels spinning, the world turning. Makes you wanna tie your tie in the morning.” He turned around then, smiled, though he still seemed far off.
I walked down the aisle and slid in beside him. I believed he was talking about me, I know I did, but as I remember it, I felt guarded, hesitant to slip in under his arm in the pew. But then, there I was, and there was his arm around my shoulder, pulling me into him; there I was letting my head rest against him, thinking this must be why Delaney had brought us here. There he was laying his cheek on top of my head and whispering, “Are you ever afraid you missed it?” I turned my head to look at him, and he was looking straight at me, and I was thinking, This man is about to cry, and then I was thinking I should kiss him, I should’ve kissed him a long time ago, why haven’t I kissed him?
And he said, “I’m still married, Lucy,” and I felt myself blushing all over like I was gonna burn up and away in a brume right there in the chapel.
I don’t remember what we said after that. I’ve made myself forget it, mostly. There was a baby. Or there was supposed to be. His wife might have lied about it, but that’s beside the point, isn’t it? He was so tired of waiting, couldn’t wait forever. They rushed everything. But he’s a good man, goddammit… I shouldn’t have been so bloody oblivious if I was so in love with him. I was too busy pretending to be Delaney-goddamned-Waters that I couldn’t see what was right there in front of me.
On the way home, I asked if he still painted. The question kept turning in my mind, gathering speed, growing larger, until it just crashed out of my mouth: “You still paint?” louder than I expected.
“What? Sometimes. Hardly ever. Not really.”
Nothing else. The whole way home.
I drove to Woodson to find Delaney two weeks later. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of her at all—her in the present moment, the Delaney who invited us to her wedding and then cancelled it. I had thought about her, sure. On the way home, what she would do, say. “He’s just a guy,” she’d say. “They’re all the same,” she’d say. But then that girl, the one showing me the proper reaction to things, is fifteen. Not thirty-three, and no doubt devastated.
Woodson seemed older. As if two weeks were all it needed to decompose. The picket fences were greying, the paint chipping off them. The trees had all but died, their gnarled branches trying to reach across, rip a limb off the next one over. There was one dog growling at a man hurrying past on his afternoon jog. The houses were all tan and fading earth tones, trying to blend into oblivion. I went to a little diner on the main drag, ordered some soup, asked them if I could use their phonebook. There weren’t any Waters at all. I left before they came back with my soup, drove home.
Mr. Cooper died at 109. Apparently he had outlived his relatives, or anyone who would have missed him, because it wasn’t until the neighbours smelled something coming from the house—so strong it kept them awake at night—and called the police, who later called my father when they couldn’t find any relatives because there was a stack of junk mail in the kitchen addressed to Thomas Frazier.
I went over to the house to gather up my father’s thirty-some years of junk mail, which did happen to include a couple of actual letters. One addressed to me in a pink envelope that had no doubt been sitting there for a long time. No return address. My name, Lucy, scrawled above the street number. One sheet of loose-leaf folded inside, one side scribbled over, every second line totally blacked out. A stupid little message on the other side. I read it aloud to myself in Mr. Cooper’s kitchen, the same kitchen where I used to answer the phone, wrapped up in its springy cord as I lay on the floor talking to Delaney, making plans to meet at the swings.
I’m sorry I missed you and Jack at the wedding. It ended up that I felt like I was planning it all just so I could see you two. I was relieved when it was called off. Jeffrey was in love with Abigail. I wish I could have seen you again. Goodbye Lucy.
No signature, but a P.S. that said, You ever think of trying glowsticks?
I looked around the kitchen, spotless, every dish hidden neatly behind cupboard doors, or thrown out by then I suppose, I didn’t look. I tried to remember what it was like living in this house, smaller now, somehow, the walls moving gently forward, squeezing me out the window and into the yard where I had sat in my flowing sundresses, dreaming of what things might be like sometime in the future. Nearly forty-five years ago, was it?
And as I stare out the window, watching my younger self, I can’t remember what she wanted, back then, the picture she would have had of the woman today inside watching her. What do you want to be? they ask you at every stage of your life. My answer, at this age, is a sigh, a glance at the dust on the floor, and a run of my fingers through my hair to the back of my head.
I started writing that evening. I was writing to remember, to be reminded. I started with Delaney who has kept me company all this time, but who was really only brought along through the years by my own imagination. She grew up. Became a woman. Made her own regrets. Moved on.
Wally’s Wacky Waterslides had been closed for years by the time I found Delaney’s letter, but some quick internet searching pointed me to a park just outside Mount Pleasant, a city close enough I could make a day trip out of it. I also found Jack. I typed in his name as a joke, a stupid thing I might have done in my twenties had I had the chance. But there he was, only the fifth Jack Benson down the list, a picture of him standing in front of a giant mural, a story about him picking his artwork back up again after an old friend reminded him he loved it. The death of another friend—within weeks of Jack’s divorce being finalized—all but forced him back into it, making everything bearable. The story ended with a link to his website, which had a section with his contact information.
I dialled the number in the same sort of joking state, not really believing the phone would ring, that it was his number I was calling, that it would be him picking up the phone, or that I’d have to say something when he did.
“Jack here,” he said, which made the joke unlaughable, flipped over onto me.
“Hi,” I said, and then, “Hello,” as if I needed to make up for the squeaky little hi.
“Hi?” he said, as a question.
“Hi. Uh. This is Lucy. Um…”
“Lucy.”
“Yes. Lucy. How are you, Jack?”
“I’m fine. Doing fine. How’re you?”
“Yes, fine,” I said. I stood there, not knowing what to say. I pictured his face, a mixture of that teenage face with his thirty-something face in the chapel, his face from the internet elbowing in, trying to make room for itself too. The silence must have lasted three or four full seconds, or maybe longer, or shorter, before he said, “How are you?” in a different voice, one that made me feel it might have been okay for me to call him.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m… I wasn’t sure you’d be home.”
“Oh. Yeah, I’m pretty nearly always at home these days.”
“Yes. Of course. Me too.”
“You still in Macleod?”
“Yes. Still here. Though I’m going to Mount Pleasant tomorrow.”
“Mount Pleasant? To live?”
“No, no. Just… I got a letter. From Delaney.”
“Delaney? Recently?”
“No. Well, not really. It was at my old place the last twenty-some years. It must’ve been a few weeks after the wedding.”
“Oh my God. How’d you find it? What’d it say?”
“Nothing really. Sorry ’bout the wedding. She missed us. Said I oughta use glowsticks.”
“Glowsticks?”
“I wasn’t sure wha—”
“On the waterslides.”
“Yes. I think that’s… How’d you know?”
“I’ll come with you.”
“What?”
“To Mount Pleasant. I’ll pick you up and go with you.”
“That’d be close to six hours for you. Both ways.”
“Doesn’t matter. Wouldn’t miss it.”
He was at my house by eight in the morning. Must’ve left at 5 a.m. I heard his car door close, and I looked out the window to see him hurrying up the walk. It might as well have been him as a teenager running across the playground, mischievous little smile, wild hair—darker back then, of course—his eyes searching, wondering what’ll happen next. I imagined this so many times—Jack walking up my walk to pick me up, take me out—that it hardly seemed strange, but it occurred to me, as I watched him walk all the way up to my door, wiping something off one of his shoulders, preparing to knock, that this was the first time he had ever actually done it.
I smiled when I opened the door. I’m sure I was smiling before I opened it—my perfectly straight smile that always surprised me if I ever caught it in a reflection, how different it was from what I imagined—but I wasn’t conscious of it until the moment he smiled back. I think I might have even blushed. Of course I blushed. Forty-five years late.
“Luce,” he said, and I told him just a minute and went upstairs to grab my coat from the bedroom.
In the car, we chatted. I felt much more at ease than I should have, than I imagined I would have. I kept thinking of our last drive, thinking that heavy awkwardness would start rising up from the floor mats, suffocating us. I rolled the window down, just a bit, to try to ward it off as long as possible.
Finally he asked if I got a lot of mail from Delaney. I told him I had gotten two letters, and he was quiet. So I said, “Do you?” before my mind started dreaming up all kinds of ideas. About him getting one every week, or something terrible like him writing her again and again, desperate for a response.
He said, “I also got two letters.”
“Were they as bleak as mine were?”
“What’d yours say?”
“Well I told you the one. And the other was in the wedding invitation. It said I had to come to the wedding ’cause she was changing her name to Browne. That’s it.”
And Jack laughed. “Sounds like her. Turning things all dramatic.”
“Yeah,” I said, not knowing what else to say, and not knowing if I actually agreed.
We sat for a while, looking out the windows.
“Mine said I should be with you,” he said, in the moment after I had stopped thinking about the letters, decided we were done talking about it. I kept staring out that window.
“She said bring Lucy. To the wedding. In the invite. She said she had a vision of us two… No. Of the two of us. In a little blue bungalow. I’m standing in the door, asking how I look, and you straighten my tie and say ‘There now.’ It is Lucy Frazier straightening Jackie Benson’s tie that makes me believe true love is even possible in this world. That last bit’s word for word,” he said. “Memorized it.”
I sat. Scratched my head. Thought how grey and wiry I was already. Thought how everything was sagging, into something much different than it once was. Thought I would cry. But decided not to. After all of this I wasn’t going to cry. Is this the vision she had? Two old… Too old. Not old the way we thought of people this age back then. But certainly too old to be running off to the waterslides on our first date, if this was even supposed to be a date. Glowsticks, goddammit. Is this what she had wanted? Is it what I wanted? Dust on the window. Tree after tree after tree. Power lines dipping. A crow. A cow, on its own in the shade. Maybe I would. Cry. He was probably waiting for it.
“You wouldn’t have to change your name.”
“What?”
“If you don’t want to.”
“I—”
“I wouldn’t mind if you did either.”
“I—”
“It has got a bit of a bounce to it.”
“Jack—”
“It’s been a lot of years I know that—”
“It’s just—”
“But I think—”
“Jack—”
“Just… Okay. You go.”
And as we danced this way, trying to step in line next to each other, I had this memory. I’m young. So young. Walking down the hall in our old elementary school. There must be others in the hall, but now it’s just me walking toward Jack. He’s still got that preadolescent chub he had. And that one missing tooth. I’ve got my lopsided pigtails. We could just step aside and go around each other. But instead we lock eyes, and he steps to his right, me to my left. Then I step to my right and he to his left. And we do it again, and again, until we just stop. And my knapsack falls from my shoulder. And it’s as if the memory, this whole car ride, the whole trip, is about this knapsack. Because it’s green. With little white butterflies all over it. Jackie doesn’t do anything, doesn’t bend over and pick it up for me, doesn’t slam into me, doesn’t do anything at all. Just smiles a little, maybe says sorry, but I doubt it. Just walks past. The knapsack, though, was green. It wasn’t pink. It wasn’t the knapsack Delaney had, the one that brought me to her.
And I’m comforted, as the cool wind blows in from the open window, by this memory from before Delaney Waters walked the hallways of my mind, by this moment that was just me and Jack. Before anything else. Just me and Jack. Jack Benson.