All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

Wavy hadn’t written to me since May, either, and now that she was twenty-one, I’d started to wonder if we would ever see her again. Hearing that she intended to visit was a relief, until I considered that she might be planning a showdown with my mother. The question was whether I wanted to witness it.

Mom threw the same Labor Day party every year: a Sunday lunch of daiquiris and burgers on the back patio with a few of her book club friends. Wavy didn’t show for lunch, and by four o’clock, everyone else had gone home. Mom and I were in the living room, when Wavy walked in the front door, carrying a couple of manila envelopes. She looked weary.

“You’re too late for lunch, but I’m glad you came!” Mom said.

I didn’t know what to say. Sorry I was an unwitting accomplice to my mother’s betrayal?

“Did you come down by yourself or did you bring Renee?” I was hoping for somebody else to be a buffer between Wavy and Mom.

“Meeting her boyfriend’s parents,” Wavy said.

“Oh, so she’s getting serious with a new boyfriend?” Mom said.

We managed small talk for twenty or thirty minutes, but just as I started to relax, the doorbell rang. Wavy glanced at her watch and, for a few seconds, weariness transformed into grief. Then she stood up and went to answer the door.

“What in the world?” Mom said it like she expected a pleasant surprise. When she and I got to the door, Wavy was signing something on a clipboard held by a skinny guy in a baseball cap. Behind him, a flatbed truck stood parked at the curb.

“Did you have car trouble?” I said.

“Or did you finally decide to sell that old motorcycle?” Mom’s look of triumph was wasted on Wavy, who was already backtracking through the house to open the garage door. The motorcycle stood in the corner with a bed sheet thrown over it to keep off the dust, in between visits from the mechanic.

As Wavy pulled the sheet away, the envelopes slipped out from under her arm. I bent to pick them up and found one addressed to my mother and one addressed to Kellen. His contained something small and square. A ring box. I held them out to her, but she had her hands over her eyes.

“You son of a bitch!” my mother screamed from the front yard. “You just broke the conditions of your parole! I’ll see you back in jail!”

Wavy grabbed the envelopes out of my hand and we both ran out of the garage.

Kellen stood out in the street next to an old dented pickup truck. He looked terrified, and who could blame him, with my mother shouting like that? I ran toward Mom, and I expected Wavy to go to Kellen, but she came after me.

We caught up with Mom on the front porch, as she was opening the storm door, probably going inside to call the police. Wavy reached past her and slammed the door closed.

“You lied to the parole board and you lied to me,” Wavy said through clenched teeth. She looked both angry and like she might cry.

“I was only trying—”

Before Mom could explain herself, Wavy flattened one of the manila envelopes against Mom’s chest with her open palm. “This is from the judge, to change Kellen’s parole.”

Kellen squinted up at the porch, at the three of us watching him. It dawned on me that he didn’t know why he was there. He was risking going back to jail on nothing more than Wavy’s word. He didn’t know it was the happiest day of his life.

I understood then why the reunion was happening there instead of someplace else. Not to throw it in my mother’s face, but because Mom’s house was the place where Wavy had drawn a line. The day she stood in our driveway and screamed, “Mine!” she wasn’t talking about the motorcycle.

As Mom opened the manila envelope, Wavy started down the sidewalk. Kellen crossed the street and stepped up on our curb. I expected a joyful, over-the-top romantic movie reunion, but they walked toward each slowly. They met about halfway, and she handed him the other envelope. He felt the bottom of it, where the ring box was, and shook his head. It was easy to make out the word no, but I don’t know what else he said. When Wavy spoke, I could guess what she was telling him. His answer made Wavy throw her head back and laugh.

Kellen opened the envelope and stuck his hand in. He pulled out the ring box, just as Wavy jumped up and threw her arms around his neck. The force of it staggered him back half a step, but when they kissed each other, it was a romantic movie. The sequel to that good-bye in Kellen’s shop.

I think they would have gone on kissing for a long time, but Mom stepped off the porch and shouted, “Get off my property, you bastard, or I’ll have you arrested for trespassing!”

Blushing and frowning, Kellen lowered Wavy to her feet. She took his hand and led him toward the driveway.

“If he steps foot on my property, I’ll call the police!” Mom knew Wavy couldn’t move the motorcycle by herself, and the tow truck driver seemed to take the trespassing remarks to heart. He stood by the cab of his truck watching us warily.

“I’ll help you,” I said.

Together, Wavy and I pushed the bike down the driveway. A few times I thought we were going to drop it, but we made it to the curb. Ignoring my mother’s glared threat, Kellen took it from us and rolled it into the street with a stunned look on his face.

“I wonder if it’ll even start,” he said, as he swung his leg over the bike.

I just knew it would start the first time and it did. When he twisted the throttle, the whole street echoed with the engine. Kellen grinned at Wavy, and then he seemed to remember something. He stood up and pulled the ring box out of his pocket. The ring wouldn’t go up over her middle knuckle until he ducked his head and licked her finger. He laughed as he slid the ring up.