together, but she was just talking, just trying to grasp at something so that she wouldn’t feel lost. She’d mentioned a dog-walking business and a paint-your-own pottery store in the same sentence, and Weezy knew that she was just going a little bonkers over the change.
The feeling of loss was understandable. It was like Max and his hockey. He’d played since he was four years old. He took to skates right away, a natural, which surprised Will and Weezy, since neither of the girls liked it at all. The few times the girls had gone skating when they were little, Weezy and Will had to drag them around on the ice, their little mittened hands gripping their parents’ tightly.
But Max stood up on his own right away. It was really something to see. For a while there, Weezy was convinced that he was going to be an Olympian or a professional athlete. It was amazing, to watch this little boy glide on the ice, forward and backward, like it was nothing. And then, when the Pee Wee coach handed him a stick, he just smiled. It was like he’d always been holding it.
They threw him into the sport wholeheartedly. Will loved hockey, and Max’s being the star of the team was just a bonus. What Will and Weezy learned about the sport very quickly was that they were required to be just as involved. There were club teams and tournaments. There were day camps and sleepaway camps. Soon, their weekends were filled with driving Max to different locations (often different states) to play hockey.
Weezy loved watching Max play. Her sweet, even-tempered baby turned into something else on the ice. He was fluid and graceful and also could be ruthless and sneaky, coming up beside someone, checking them with his shoulder, and then skating on, like nothing had happened.
Hockey took up almost all of their time, and they often grumbled to each other about it, but it was too late to back out. It was exhausting and it seemed that they were always trying to schedule around a hockey game of some sort. Holidays were cut short, and long weekends were spent in Canada and Michigan.
And then, just like that, it was over. Max went to college and decided that he didn’t want to try out for the team. He didn’t think he’d start, he told them, and it seemed like a lot of time and work to sit on the bench. He decided to play on the club team, which was really just a bunch of boys getting together at eleven o’clock at night to play around on the ice and drink.
After that, Weezy felt like part of her life was missing. Did she really miss the hours in the car? The nights spent in questionable hotels in random Canadian towns? No, she told herself, she couldn’t miss that. But there was a loss when it was gone. And so Weezy understood it when Maureen talked about missing work. Even if the whole point of a job was to be done with it someday, to be able to relax, it could become a part of you, it could become how you saw yourself. And when it was gone, it left a hole.
MAUREEN LET HERSELF IN THE back door, apologizing before she was even inside. “I know, I know,” she said. “I’m sorry, I got stuck talking to someone at work.”
“That’s okay,” Weezy said. And it was. They didn’t have all that much to go over, actually. She’d spread the cookbooks out on the table, and had the lists of what they’d made for the past five Thanksgivings.
“So, Cathy and Ruth are all set with Bets?” Weezy asked.
“Yep. They’re leaving Ohio on Tuesday, and they’ll stay over with Bets that night, and they all fly out bright and early on Wednesday.”
“God bless them.”
“No kidding. But you know, I’m paying for their tickets, so it’s not like they’re getting nothing out of the deal.”
“Still.”
The two of them talked about the pies that they wanted to make. Pumpkin, of course. Pecan was Max’s favorite. Bets always wanted something with chocolate in it, and then there was an apple-cranberry crisp that looked good.
“Four desserts?” Weezy said. “That seems like a lot, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Maureen agreed. “I guess we’ll lose the crisp?”
Weezy nodded. The crisp was actually her favorite, but there was nothing else that could be cut from the list without a lot of whining and complaining from the group. And none of them