15 Picking Up After People
Picking Up After People
Forrest and I were down at the water, gathering up empty bottles of bubble solution and popped water balloons left by Jilly and her friends.
I’d learned by now that children at Lake Catherine—not just Hayward and Jilly but their friends too—left a wake of candy wrappers and pop bottles and abandoned toys behind them when they got bored with playing.
It never seemed to occur to them that there wouldn’t be someone to pick up after them, and they were right.
Forrest was scraping up the last bits of Silly String on the lawn furniture when his friend Evan appeared, still wearing his bike shorts and helmet. Evan had a habit of stopping by around cocktail hour. This time he had a brochure with him.
“The club’s sponsoring a triathlon,” he told Forrest. “Raising money for some good cause or other. I can never keep them all straight. You should sign up.”
“I don’t know,” Forrest told him. “I can handle the biking and running, but that two-mile swim across the lake might do me in.”
“It’s not till Labor Day, buddy,” Evan said. “You’ve got the whole summer to train. Think what it’ll do for your abs. You don’t want to start getting a beer gut, do you?”
Forrest had no beer gut. No doubt he wanted to keep it that way.
“I wasn’t bargaining on spending the summer in training,” he told his friend.
“Look at it this way,” Evan said. “It’ll keep you from dying of boredom.”
I was out on the dock—having moved on to picking up the children’s towels, as I did every afternoon, along with the empty chip bags and juice boxes strewn near the water—while the two men discussed the triathlon plan.
Forrest never treated me like an invisible person, but Evan appeared not to have noticed I was even there.
Now, hearing his suggestion that Forrest might find his life lacking in excitement, I registered a momentary stab.
To me, it was enough just being in this amazing place, getting to spend time together.
Those early mornings when Forrest and I got to talk over breakfast, and odd moments throughout the day when he’d ask about the book I was reading, or check my bike tires, or fix me his special Power Smoothie in the Vitamix, I never got the impression that he felt restless.
I wanted to believe he was having as great a time as I was. Not simply with his family. With me.
“All that training, man. It’s a great excuse for getting out of the house,” Evan said.
“OK, sign me up,” Forrest told him. “Just no training before seven thirty. Early morning’s reserved for Frances and me.”
“Frances?” his friend said.
He hadn’t noticed me. But Forrest always did.
When I opened my journal that night, flipping to a new page, I wrote down what Forrest had said to his friend.
Early morning’s reserved for Frances. After I’d written down the words I read them over a few times.
That single sentence looked lonely all by itself on the page, so I thought I’d write something more, even if it was just wishful thinking.
I think Forrest loves me.