“My aunt Maureen was really excited about me moving here. Ever since her husband died, she’s been starved for family. Now she figures my parents will come to visit me and we’ll have all these cozy family gatherings in Dunford.”
“And will your parents come?”
“Oh sure. But more likely, I’ll visit them in St. Catharine’s. I’ll take Aunt Maureen with me, though, so she’ll still get her reunions. And you, you’ve lived in Dunford your whole life?”
“Born and bred,” I said stupidly.
“Tell me about your job. It sounds interesting. I don’t know the first thing about what has to happen for my tap water to come out clean enough to drink.”
“Not many people do. It’s not that interesting, though. I kind of fell into it after high school. I was supposed to go to college, or maybe even university, but then I started working and I guess I just got comfortable. Plus, my mom’s here, and she’s had a bad heart since I was a kid so being close lets me keep an eye on her.”
Amir’s foot knocked against my leg as he leaned toward me. My pulse quickened even though the contact was probably accidental. I didn’t want to talk about me; I wanted to know more about him.
“You said something about working in theatre. Are you an actor?” I kept my foot firmly rooted to the floor, but I wanted to stretch my leg out, closer to him, so that his foot might bump against it again.
“No, no. I did set building. Just for small theatre groups. All behind-the-scenes stuff. But I like building things. I probably should have gone into something more hands-on, like you did, but I figured I’d better put my business degree to good use or I’d have wasted four years of my life. You know what I mean?”
I did know, but I didn’t want to think about what it meant to have wasted years of my life. Years I could never get back.
“ZOE, THIS IS YOLANDA.”
I reached out to shake Yolanda’s hand, after surreptitiously wiping my palm on my jeans. My hands were wet from filling water balloons in the basement kitchen of the Baptist Church. A bucket of filled balloons sat by my feet. “Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Yolanda is Gary’s wife,” Amir explained.
Gary was one of Amir’s friends from baseball, and also a cop. I’d felt a twinge of unease when I first found that out, but it was nice that he and Amir seemed to get along so well. Gary was also new to town, so they had that in common.
“Thanks for coming today,” I said to Yolanda. “When my mom roped Amir into helping at this picnic, I didn’t know he was going to turn around and recruit his friends as well.”
Mom’s church was hosting a strawberry social and while I generally didn’t participate in the Baptist Church’s events, Amir thought it sounded like fun and eagerly volunteered both of us to help. He then convinced Gary to join us, and I guess Yolanda, as well.
I picked up the bucket of balloons to carry outside, while Amir gave Gary and Yolanda instructions on where to find the hotdog buns. Mom was standing behind a long table on the church lawn ladling strawberries onto dozens of plates of shortbread. She gave me a happy little wave.
I didn’t know it then, but Yolanda and Gary would become regular fixtures in our life. It wasn’t long after that picnic that the two of them started joining our bowling nights. Officer Anderson, as Amir liked to call Gary, turned out to be a surprisingly talented bowler. He showed all of us up week after week.
“Is there such a thing as a bowling shark?” I asked. “How do you keep throwing strikes?”
“I’m just naturally athletic,” Gary replied. “Gifted at so many things.”
Yolanda snorted. “He used to play in a league.”
I made a bowling shirt for Gary with his name embroidered on the left pocket over a logo of a shark. He wore it every time the four of us went bowling and when I pictured Gary in uniform, that was the shirt I imagined him wearing, instead of the one that was part of his police outfit.
“YOLANDA AND I ARE GOING to a yoga class together,” I said to Amir, kissing him lightly on the cheek one day.
“I’m glad you two get along. It’ll be good for you to have a girlfriend to talk to.”
“Why do I need a girlfriend to talk to when I have you?”
“So you can talk about girl stuff.”
I didn’t want to talk about girl stuff. I never had. To her credit, Yolanda wasn’t a fan of sharing deep secrets or bonding over gossip, either. There was an immediate comfortable understanding between us that reminded me of my friendship with Walter before he left for university. Before we became two different people.
It was nice to have Yolanda as a friend. Someone close to my age who didn’t work at the plant and who wasn’t male. Thanks to Amir, instead of sitting alone at the bar in Dunford Lanes, watching other people live, I became part of a laughing group in rented shoes, who could tease an off-duty police officer after he bowled his fourth strike in a row.
I didn’t do much bowling after Amir left town. I tried a few times to get together with some of the friends we’d made, mostly at their insistence, but eventually the invitations dwindled and I gradually reverted to my isolated and solitary ways. Without Amir, there was no one to draw me from my shell.
Even Yolanda and I drifted apart. I’m sure I was difficult to hang out with after everything fell apart. We still exchange pleasantries when we run into each other in town, but it’s not like we call each other up to do yoga. Gary, I think, hates me.
