Chapter 23 #2
At eleven-fifteen, after Glenn left, Ada walked through the staff hall to the equipment closet. She did not, this time, knock. She turned the handle. She came in.
Wes was at the metal shelf. He had a wrench in his back pocket, not his hand. He had, in his hand, the small folded piece of paper from this morning, and he had been reading it.
He looked up when she came in.
He did not, this time, put the paper back in his coat.
He held it out to her.
She did not take it.
She said, “Berglund.”
“Halloran.”
“My mother is making — my mother is making the brioche-bread pudding for Friday.”
“Halloran.”
“With raisins.”
“Halloran, that is — that is the highest version of brioche-bread pudding she makes.”
“I know.”
“I have been — I have been doing the math on whether I would be allowed to ask for the brioche-bread pudding for at least four weeks. I had decided I would not be allowed for at least another six weeks. She is making it on Friday.”
“She is making it on Friday.”
“Ada.”
“Yes.”
“I am going to be very calm about the brioche-bread pudding when I get to the table on Friday. I am going to say Eilis, thank you for the brioche-bread pudding, and I am going to eat it without crying at your mother’s table.
But I would like you to know, here in the equipment closet, that there is a version of me that is going to be a little ruined by the fact that your mother made it the first Friday I have been invited to the house.
I am being put on the list, Halloran. I am so happy. ”
She did not, in the equipment closet, for one half-second, do anything.
Then she stepped into the closet.
She took his face in her hands.
She kissed him.
The kiss was — the kiss was a closet kiss.
It was brief. It was warm. It was, by mutual long-standing agreement, the version of a kiss that two people who worked at the same rink in the same building could give each other in an equipment closet on a Saturday morning at eleven-seventeen, which was the kind of kiss that says I see your face.
I am going to see it on Friday. I am going to see it for the rest of our lives.
She pulled back.
He held her face for one extra beat.
He let her go.
She said, “Berglund.”
“Yes.”
“Pick up the wrench. Fix the thermostat. I have a noon lesson. I will see you in the lobby at two.”
She walked out of the closet.
She did not, in the staff hall, look back.
She did not, in the lobby, look back.
She went and taught her noon lesson — an eleven-year-old named June, who was working on her three-turn — and at one-thirty she went into the kitchenette to wash her thermos, and at two she met Wes at the lobby bench, in their coats, and they walked, side by side, in the early-spring cold, out of the Barn and across the parking lot and along the harbor road, in no particular hurry, hand in hand.
They went past the long stretch of frost-burned salt grass.
They went past the turnoff with the gravel lot with the screen of black pines.
They did not, today, turn off into the lot.
She had earned that — the turnoff was no longer a place she needed to keep visiting in private, because she now had a person to whom she could, on any morning in April, say I would like to drive past the turnoff today, and he would say let’s drive past the turnoff, and they would, on the way, drink coffee from the small Penalty Box paper cups in the cup holders of his truck, and the turnoff would be a place they went past on their way to other places.
They walked all the way to the small unloved town pier.
The pier was the pier her father had walked at sunrise with the wrong coffee.
The pier was the pier she had stood on a week before her first kiss with Wes Berglund, when she had admitted to herself in the cold that she had stopped being able to think about him as a campaign.
The pier was the pier Wes had walked to, alone, the afternoon after she had said the sentence in the green room — Wes was the backup plan — and stood looking at gulls until his hands were cold.
The pier was, today, a place they walked at two in the afternoon in late April with the harbor a clean blue and the salt smell of the water clean against the wind.
They stood at the end of the pier.
He put his arm around her, the way he had not put his arm around her in any public place yet, because they had agreed, today, that the pier in April was a place that was, in some small way, his and hers and not the town’s.
She leaned, very lightly, against his coat.
He did not say are you all right.
He did not say I love you.
He had said I love you in the equipment closet at eleven-seventeen and that was, today, sufficient.
He said, very quietly, “Halloran.”
“Berglund.”
“I am — I am going to be ready, on Friday, for the brioche-bread pudding.”
“Berglund.”
“Yes.”
“I have one more piece of news. I did not put it in the note this morning. I am — I am only telling you on the pier.”
“Yes.”
“Joanna — Joanna told me on Wednesday. The director-of-skating-arts position is — the position is going to have an office. A small one. In the staff hall. Joanna is moving the printer to the kitchenette to make room. The office is — Wes, the office is the room across from the equipment closet.”
“Halloran.”
“Yes.”
“That is — that is the closest office to my closet.”
“That is the closest office to your closet.”
“I am — I am going to be — I am going to be useless to the rink as soon as that office is open.”
“Berglund.”
“Yes.”
“You are going to be exactly as useful to the rink as you have always been, and I am going to be in the office across the hall asking you, directly, to fix my thermostat at least once a week so that you have something to do.”
“Halloran.”
“Yes.”
“That is — that is the entire — that is the entire shape of the rest of my life that I want.”
“Good.”
“Halloran.”
“Yes.”
“Then I am — then I am keeping it.”
She turned, slightly, against his coat, and looked up at him at the end of the pier with the harbor behind him.
She said, very quietly, “Wes.”
“Yes.”
“I am also keeping it.”
He kissed her, very lightly, on the forehead, the way he kissed her in the doorway of his bedroom on the nights she slept on his couch in his apartment over Frank Nakamura’s hardware store, which were, by April, more nights than not, and they stood for a long moment at the end of the pier, and the cold water moved under them, and a gull, somewhere over their heads, did a slow yellow turn, and the bell on the buoy out by the harbor mouth rang once.
She thought, very faintly, about the small kept stone under her sternum, and found it had gone quiet.
Not gone. Quiet. A key, maybe, instead of a weight.
She kept it.
They turned. They walked back up the pier.
They got into his truck. They drove home — to the apartment over Frank Nakamura’s hardware store, where, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, by mutual arrangement, they cooked dinner together; and to the small clapboard rental on Pillsbury Street, where, on the other nights, by mutual arrangement, they cooked dinner together; and on Fridays they went to the Salt & Sugar to her mother’s kitchen, where the brioche-bread pudding would, by tradition, be on the table by six.
The east wall, at the rink, behind them, was still leaking.
Wes would be back in the morning at four-twenty to empty the bucket.
He had set his alarm.
He would answer it.
And, somehow, impossibly, he had been chosen.
He drove home.
She rode shotgun.
The bell on the buoy rang once more behind them as they turned away from the harbor and pointed the truck up Pillsbury Street.
It was, on every count, enough.