Chapter 7
There were no pictures.
I checked again, for the fifth time within the last five minutes, and there was nothing.
Before, Shane had sent a lot of images from wherever he happened to be and I liked to see them for the first time and then go back and look at them more, too.
He had taken one of the opposite side of Lake Michigan, the view from Wisconsin.
There were sunrises and sunsets over various cities and towns, different shots of the flat landscapes of middle America through airplane windows, and a big variety of football fields.
I had felt like I’d traveled, too—I hadn’t, and I probably wouldn’t, but it had felt that way.
Now there were no pictures. It was hard to believe that my stupid sister had ruined what was a nice friendship with a few dumb remarks about our crazy family and how I was a heartless gold digger.
If I was, then I was terrible at it. I couldn’t attract one of the Woodsmen—I couldn’t even find one.
The plan to hook a football player had been a dumb idea, but it had given me hope for a little while.
Because didn’t that sound great? A life in which you could go to Woodsmen games and live in a nice house that didn’t have two mortgages and a bad foundation, a place also inhabited by someone who liked you?
A life in which you didn’t have to work at a restaurant that had always been like a yoke around an ox’s neck, heavy and inescapable? Yes, that sounded good to me.
How had I ever thought that I would pull it off, though? I hadn’t been able to attract a normal guy, let alone a famous and rich one who had his pick of women anywhere. I was just a dumb girl in an even dumber hat, who was failing at my plan exactly as Walter’s Café was failing.
I put down my picture-free phone and forced my thoughts onto the task at hand. “I see the problem. This one is in the wrong column,” I told my mom. Moving the numbers to the correct column just made the total at the bottom even worse.
“What if we…” She looked up at the ceiling, above which the roof needed repairs. “What if…” She trailed off. There was no answer up there to the issue that the restaurant was in the hole (again), despite the fact that this had been a great month for us.
“If Max got a job, something real and not just from his imagination, then that would help,” I said. Morgan had been working here but my brother was still absent more often than not.
“I can talk to him,” she suggested and I had mostly trained myself out of the urge to roll my eyes.
That behavior had been excusable when I was thirteen and had drawn skull tattoos on my thighs that I was sure looked genuine and edgy, but it wasn’t ok for a woman who was about to turn twenty-four, had no real job, had no place of her own to live, no savings, no boyfriend, no degree…
“What’s wrong, Molly?” my mother sighed.
“Nothing. Why don’t I finish the bookkeeping and you can help Dad with the prep?”
She was glad to escape the relentlessly decreasing bottom line, but I didn’t immediately return to working our finances.
Instead, I sat looking at my phone again and thinking.
It had been fun to know where Shane was, not only because I liked seeing different places.
I also liked thinking about him. I was doing that now instead of working on the books, which felt like a black hole of depression in another monotonous day.
The only difference was that I’d finally confronted the Junior Woodsmen running back with my photographic evidence of his ketchup crimes.
First, he had seemed defiant and denied it, but it only took a second of me staring hard at him before he’d capitulated.
“It was me,” he had mumbled. “I won’t do it again. Sorry.” His friend had laughed and I’d asked what I could get them, because we needed their money.
After the dinner service and clean-up, I didn’t go directly home.
The last time I had texted with Shane was when I’d told him that I had found his keys about twenty-five yards down the street from his house—he had been a quarterback and even when he was throwing things by mistake, he must have retained the ability to get a lot of distance with his arm.
I had hidden them on top of his front tire and had written that I would be happy to pick him up at the airport when he returned, but he had responded that I didn’t need to. And that had been it.
Until I texted him again now. “Hi. How are you? Are you home?”
He answered pretty quickly. “I am. Are you outside in my driveway with more muffins?”
“No, I haven’t baked since those naked ones. Do you want to get something to eat?”
Now it took a minute before he wrote, “I already had dinner.”
Oh, damn. Ok.
“But I could go for a snack,” he continued and I smiled at the phone.
“I could meet you someplace,” I suggested, but he said that I should come over and see what he’d done to his new home. I drove fast.
“Hi,” I repeated when he opened the door.
“Hello,” he answered. He didn’t seem angry, not in the way he’d said that short word, anyway. “Come on in.”
I did and saw what he had done to his new home: he hadn’t messed it up. It was still fairly empty, because he didn’t have much furniture besides that giant bed and the dresser, but there was no disorder, no dirt, and no destruction.
“I like this so much better than your former house,” I said approvingly. I peeked into the bathroom and nodded. “There are no biohazards at all.”
“That’s my favorite part about it. I like the idea that I can walk around barefoot and not worry about rusty nails or slugs, and that I can safely enter the shared spaces without ducking.”
“What do you mean? Why would you duck?”
“My former roommates had an amateur flight club going on,” he explained. “You didn’t want to get in the middle of it.”
“I don’t really know why you lived there for so long,” I said. “Also, have you thought about getting, like, a couch? It would be more comfortable for you, rather than having to stand in your living room.”
“It does seem a little silly to have to sit on the floor,” he agreed. “You already know why I didn’t want to move, though, and it’s the same reason that I’m hesitating about furniture purchases. Money.”
I didn’t want to think about that topic anymore today and I sure didn’t want to talk about it, either.
“I could go thrift with you,” I suggested.
“You have a truck and you’re strong, so we could get a lot of stuff.
Maybe you wouldn’t want a used couch, though.
We’ve gotten a few infestations of various vermin at Walter’s and if I were you, I’d do my best to avoid that. ”
“I sure don’t want an infestation.”
“Do you want a snack? It would be on me.” That could have sent the wrong message. “Not because I think you can’t afford it—”
“Sure,” he said, and we went outside to my car. I drove a little aimlessly since it was late and I wasn’t sure what he would want to eat. There weren’t a lot of places that sold leafy greens, just in general, and they were all closed now.
“What’s happening with Max’s business? The near-death thing,” he elaborated.
“Oh, he moved on from that already,” I answered. “His latest idea is honey. Like a multi-level marketing thing to sell it.”
“Is honey something that people are purchasing a lot? I can’t remember the last time I bought a jar. It lasts forever,” he pointed out. “They’ve found it in Egyptian tombs and it’s still edible.”
“I’m sure he hasn’t thought that through.” But now, I was thinking about Egypt. “Wouldn’t it be cool to see the pyramids?”
“It would be. I’m pretty sure they already took out the honey, though. How is your brother doing with sales?”
“Oh, Max doesn’t ever get to the point of actually selling a product.
He never moves very far beyond the big idea and then a phony business plan.
I wish he would get a real job.” I sighed, just like my mom had done about me earlier today.
It wasn’t very fun to be the person who made others sigh and I wonder if my brother felt that way, too.
“I was thinking about you,” Shane mentioned.
“You were?” I felt myself start to smile. “What about me?”
“I was wondering what you’d do if Walter’s went under, like your sister was saying. Will you let the house go, too? Will you get an apartment and have your family live with you?”
I had lost the smile. “I don’t know what I would do.
That sounds weird, because the smart thing would be to drop them all like hot potatoes.
But I think it’s hard to understand how enmeshed we are.
The restaurant has been at the center of our lives for, well, for forever,” I told him.
“My dad grew up working there, my mom married into it thirty years ago, I was born between lunch and dinner services. It’s almost impossible to imagine going on without it.
I was working on the books today, though, and…
” I let the thought die off. “Tell me what happened on your last recruiting trip,” I requested.
Since there was nowhere to go for a healthy, non-saturated fat snack, I ended up driving aimlessly for a while so we could talk.
I headed out into the country and went past rows of cherry trees that were still looking lifeless but soon would awaken with light green buds as the soil and air warmed around them.
As we went, I heard about his trips to Iowa and Illinois.
He’d also been all around the state of Michigan, to Detroit, Lansing, Jackson, Flint, and so many other cities.
“There’s a lot of talent everywhere,” he said and then yawned.
“Do you want to go home?”
“No, I like talking to you. I don’t mind being out at night as long as I’m not driving.”