We all exchanged looks. The closer Delia got to her due date, the angrier she became when anyone attributed anything—loss of memory, mood swings, her conviction that every room was always too hot, even when everyone else’s teeth were chattering—to her condition.
“Honey,” Pete said gently, tentatively reaching to put his hand on her arm, “our sitter is costing us ten bucks an hour. Can we please go to dinner? Please?”
Delia closed her eyes, still trying to remember, then shook her head. “Fine,” she said, and with that one word, everyone began to scatter, Pete opening the door to their car, Kristy digging out her own keys, Wes starting toward the van, “but then I’ll remember in five minutes, and it will be too late.”
She was still muttering as she eased herself into the passenger seat of Pete’s car, then pulled the seat belt across her belly, struggling to make it reach. As I got into the van with Wes, I watched them pull out of the driveway, then start down the road. I wondered, as they reached the stop sign there, if she’d already remembered. Probably.
“When is that baby due?” Kristy called out as she and Monica pulled up beside us. About fifteen minutes earlier, when the van was packed and we’d been paid, she’d disappeared for a few minutes into the garage, emerging in an entirely different outfit: a short denim skirt, a blouse with ribboned sleeves, and high-heeled platform sandals, her hair held up in a high ponytail. Not only was she versatile, I’d marveled as she did a little spin, showing it off, but quick. Clark Kent becoming Superman had nothing on her, and he didn’t even have to worry about hair.
“July tenth,” Wes told her, cranking the van’s engine.
“Which leaves us,” she said, squinting as she attempted to do the math for a second before giving up, “entirely too long before she gets normal again.”
“Three weeks,” I said.
“Exactly.” She sighed, checking her reflection in the mirror. “Anyway, so listen. This party is in Lakeview. Take a right on Hillcrest, left on Willow, house at the end of the cul-de-sac. We’ll see you guys there. Hey, and Macy?”
“Yeah?”
She leaned farther out the window, as if we were sharing a confidence, even though there was a fair amount of space, not to mention Wes, between us. “I have it on good authority,” she said, her voice low, “that there will be extraordinary boys there. You know what I mean?”
Wes, beside me, was fiddling with his visor. “Um, no,” I said.
“Don’t worry.” She put her car in gear, then pointed at me. “By the end of the night, you will. See you there!” And then, in a cloud of dust, the radio blasting, she was gone, hardly slowing for the stop sign at the end of the road.
“Well,” Wes said, as we pulled out of the driveway with slightly less velocity, “to the party, then. Right?”
“Sure.”
I tried, for the first five minutes or so of the drive, to come up with a witty conversation starter. Topics, from the inane to slightly promising, flitted through my brain as we moved along the quiet, mostly deserted country roads. Finally, when I couldn’t stand the silence anymore, I opened my mouth, not even knowing what I was going to say.
“So,” I began, but that was as far as I got. And, as it turned out, as far as we got.
The engine, which had been humming along merrily up until that point, suddenly began to cough. Then lurch. Then moan. And then: nothing. We were stopped dead in the middle of the road.
For a second, neither of us said anything. A bird flew by overhead, its shadow moving across the windshield.
“So,” Wes said, as if picking up where I’d left off, “that’s what Delia forgot.”
I looked at him. “What?”
He lifted his finger, pointing at the gas gauge, which was flat on the E. Empty. “Gas,” he said.
“Gas,” I repeated, and in my mind, I could hear Delia’s voice, echoing this, finally remembering with a palm slapped to her forehead. Gas.
Wes already had his door open and was getting out, letting it fall shut behind him. I did the same, then walked around the van to the deserted road, looking both ways.
I’d heard people talk about being in the middle of nowhere, but it had always been an exaggeration. Now, though, as I took in the flat pastureland on either side of us, it seemed completely appropriate. No cars were in sight. I couldn’t even see any houses anywhere nearby. The only light was from the moon, full and yellow, halfway up the sky.
“How far,” I said, “would you say it is to the nearest gas station?”
Wes squinted back the way we’d come, then turned and looked ahead, as if gathering facts for a scientific guess. “No idea,” he said finally. “Guess we’ll find out, though.”
We pushed the van over to the side of the road, then rolled up the windows and locked it. Everything sounded loud in the quiet: our footsteps, the door shutting, the owl that hooted overhead, making me jump. I stood in the middle of the road while Wes did a last check of the van, then walked over, his hands in his pockets, to join me.
“Okay,” he said, “now we decide. Left or right?”
I looked one way, then the other. “Left,” I said, and we started walking.
“Green beans,” Wes said.
“Spaghetti,” I replied.
He thought for a second, and in the quiet, all I could hear was our footsteps. “Ice cream,” he said.
“Manicotti.”
“What’s with all the I words?” he said, tipping his head back and staring up at the sky. “God.”