How Far We Go and How Fast

by Nora Decter

  I got nothing from the hippies, so I started calling pawnshops. Maybe someone had stolen it from his room after he died and then sold it. There was a pawnshop a block away from the hostel, but the man there, Steve, who I imagined as a west coast Earl, denied seeing it. He denied and denied it, until I offered him a hundred bucks, at which point he located a receipt that said he’d bought the guitar for three hundred dollars from Matt Tucker. The handwriting was Matt’s—I made Steve send me a photocopy. And then what? I asked. And then I’m not sure, said Steve, so I sent him more money, all I had left, what I’d been saving to pay off the phone bill before Maggie could find out, and he remembered. He remembered selling it to a guy by the name of Tim Berland. He sent me that receipt too. I insisted.

  I’m not very good at the Internet, but Tim Berland wasn’t hard to find. A quick search turned up one man by that name who’d recently retired from teaching in the anthropology department at the university. I emailed and I called and I wrote, but I got no answer. I impersonated a former student and found out from a secretary that he was traveling through the southern states before settling in Alabama for the winter. She gave me an address, and I wrote one last letter. And then Maggie found the phone bill, and I stopped. I found new ways to pass the time.

  I don’t know why Matt pawned the blues guitar. Three hundred bucks wouldn’t get him far. It was enough to rent a room at the hostel for a month. It was also enough for a ticket home. I don’t know what he wanted badly enough to let go of it, when it was the thing he worked so hard for. When it was the thing he loved.

  On Monday Maggie goes to my school, and somehow—I do not want to know how—she gets them to agree to welcome me back after a week’s suspension. There will be consequences, but in the meantime, I have the week off. Sure, she drops a stack of homework that’s higher than Howl on my bed, but it’s a small price to pay. For the first couple of days I claim to still be recovering from the terrible hangover I gave myself the night of the bridge, but beyond that I just enjoy the act of convalescence. I stay in bed and read and write and play guitar. I take nap after nap, and I eat everything Louie puts in front of me. I let Maggie field my calls, and I put up with Char getting drunk and forcibly cuddling me while Baby tries to chew a hole in my mattress. They all talk around what’s wrong with me, but it’s okay. I know we’ll talk again, and I know they just want to be close to me because it makes them less afraid.

  Midweek, Ivy invites herself over. Or maybe Maggie told her to come. I wouldn’t put it past either of them. I hear them shouting at each other in the hall. Not that they’re mad—they both just have loud speaking voices. I go to the stairs and listen for a minute, hear them talking at the same time, about swimming and school and Louie and how Ivy got her hair that color.

  “Hey,” I say from the stairs.

  “Hey!”

  “You’re up!” Maggie shouts. She turns toward the kitchen, where I presume Louie is hiding. “Louie! Make something for Jo and her friend to eat, would ya?”

  “Mom, don’t order him around like that. We’re fine.”

  “Actually,” says Ivy, “I could eat.”

  Maggie’s eyes are shining as she goes into the kitchen to oversee Louie’s latest efforts at fattening us up. I don’t know if it’s that I slipped and called her mom or if it’s because an actual physical friend has come over to see me or if she’s just high from the thrill of bossing Louie around. Hard to say. In any case, I invite Ivy down to the basement, because it’s more grown-up down there than my real room is. I’ve been avoiding her phone calls because, try as I might, I can’t think of any way to explain why I ran away on the bridge without sounding totally insane.

  But Ivy is distracted by the basement, exclaiming over the décor. She approves of the instruments. “I’ve got no idea what this does, but it looks impressive,” she says of my loop pedal. And she then begins to apologize and won’t stop.

  I listen for a while and then tell her it’s okay, but she won’t stop saying sorry for the bridge, sorry for forgetting I’m not old enough to be in university, sorry, sorry, sorry.

  “I thought you’d finished high school early or something since you’re super smart and everything. I mean, when I saw you in class, I just assumed. But I shouldn’t have assumed. Even though you clearly don’t like answering questions. I should have pressed or figured it out on my own or something. And I should have protected you from Graham! I’ll kill him! Do I need to kill him? Because I will kill him, totally.”

  “It’s okay, Ivy! I forgive you, completely and entirely.”

  “Are you totally sure you don’t want to punch me in the face? Come on—it’d make both of us feel better.”

  “I’m not going to punch you in the face.”

  She starts to say something, but the words get caught somewhere between her throat and her mouth. She takes a breath and starts over. Serious looks strange on her. “My older sister went to school with Matt, you know. She told me when she heard. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was, but there was just that one swim meet where, well, you know… and then you quit and I didn’t know how to find you. Besides, we only sort of knew each other, and I didn’t want to force myself on you. My mom is always telling me that I have no respect for boundaries. But that’s no excuse. I should have reached out.”

  I wasn’t expecting this, and it makes my eyes fill again. Groves told me the other day when I couldn’t stop crying that I might be weepy for a few months because I had beat it back for so long. She says I have to let it pass through my system. She says it’s okay if it takes a while.

  Ivy reaches out and squeezes my hand, and I give her a watery smile and take another minute to compose myself. The thing is, nobody knew what to say to me. So they said nothing. And so did I.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Don’t kill Graham. He’s not a bad guy.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. It’s just…I dunno. I’m not ready for that sort of thing. I just thought I might be for a while. He’s okay though.”

  “Well,” she says, suspicious, “if you insist.”

  “He’s been calling. I suppose I’ll have to deal with him eventually.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s he have to say for himself?”

  “I dunno. I haven’t picked up yet. But he told our answering machine that he was sorry, that he should have remembered I was afraid of heights.”

  “You’re not going to keep seeing him, are you?”

  “I have no idea,” I say, and I don’t. Like Groves says, I just feel like I need to be very, very gentle with myself right now, and my instinct is that means no boys.

  Ivy leaves not long after that, promising to return. I put on my layers and take Howl to the river, sit down on the bank to think about stuff. Like how Ivy said I quit swimming before she could find a way to reach out to me. Like how I have to stay here because I haven’t done everything I need to do yet. Like how maybe that’s what made Matt stay out west the way he did. Not because he didn’t want to come home, but because he hadn’t done everything he needed to do yet.

  Sometimes when I was swimming I’d imagine all the water vanished, that very quickly it was all gone, and then there was just air, and I was falling through it. That’s what it was like when he died. Like the bottom dropped out of my heart, and I fell through it.

  I only competed in one meet after it happened. I’d already paid the entry fees and everything, so it seemed like I may as well. I remember standing on the block as the official called us to our marks. I crouched down, grabbed the edge of the starting block and balanced on the brink. Ivy was there next to me, in my peripheral vision. When the shot rang out bodies arched out over the water on either side of me, but I didn’t move. I’d forgotten how.

  The starting official came over and put a hand on my back, helped me get down and walked me back to my team. He could tell something was wrong, I guess. And something really was. I’d lost it. The ability to make the decision to let my feet leave the ground. I couldn’t go ther
e anymore, couldn’t take the moment that comes before you fall. It didn’t matter that the water was only three feet below. I couldn’t even be that brave.

  Coach was pretty nice about it. Gave me a Gatorade and told me we’d get them next time. But I could tell he was a bit disappointed that I hadn’t been able to turn the sudden, world-halting loss of my brother into junior provincial swimming victory. The Monday after the meet I walked out onto the pool deck barefoot in my street clothes and told him I was quitting. He took it like a champ, got just a little teary and told me I could have been great, that I had an Olympic reach. He meant my arms, which are freakishly long, and my hands, which are freakishly big, perfect for grabbing on to the water and putting it behind me. That made me think about how Matt had always told me I had great guitar hands. He’d taught me a few basic chords, but I’d never been serious about it. After I quit, though, when I didn’t have swimming and I didn’t have Matt and I couldn’t even use my voice to sing the songs we’d played together, I started practicing, teaching myself. Turns out there’s more to playing guitar than just having the hands for it, but I’m trying. And, like Groves keeps telling me, it’s okay if it takes a while.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  After my hangover convalescence ends, things go more or less back to normal. Except that normal is different now. I get mad at her sometimes. Maggie. So mad it paralyzes me, my blood pressure shoots up and I can’t breathe or see or think about anything except that I’m so mad. Why did she get it together after he was gone? Why did she wait that long? Couldn’t she have held down a job, found a decent boyfriend, remembered to take her pills, before he left? Why did she let him do everything for her, for me, for us?

  But then the anger fades, and I can see the real-world Maggie, the one outside my head. She’s trying. She’s doing better than she ever has. And that would make Matt happy. So I have to let it be real.

  Groves says I’m an overthinker. I had no idea that it was possible to overthink, but she says it is and that I do it, and I have to admit, I sort of trust her these days. It’s just that I want to understand. It’s important to me. And so much of it I have come to understand, more or less. I get the need to run away from here. I feel it too—it’s just more complicated for me. I’ll never be able to do what he did, cut and run. How could I do that to them after everything? But I do get it. It’s so fucking flat here, so far away from everything, that it starts to feel like there really isn’t anything else. I guess what I’m beginning to understand is that you can kill yourself asking unanswerable questions. I know what I know. I’m through beating my head in with regret. He loved me and he left and when he did that didn’t stop. I loved him and he died and when he did I didn’t stop.

  Sometimes I get afraid the way I used to. Afraid of the quiet and what I might hear in it. Afraid of losing things I have and not getting things I want. When that happens, I take Howl to the river and sit with the fear. I stay still with it.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The moment I let go of the last note of the song, Graham leans into the computer and starts moving things around. I pull my headphones off and he gives me a thumbs-up, staring at the screen.

  “That one was good,” he says.

  “You think?” It comes out whiny, but I don’t care. This is hard.

  “Yeah, definitely.” He sounds more sure of himself than I’ve ever sounded in my whole life. He hits keys and moves the cursor around the screen too fast for me to follow. My vocals are the purple squiggly line, I think, and my guitars are the green one. We’ve already got those. That was pretty easy. It’s the vocal take I’m worried about. That has to be exactly right.

  “Can I hear it?”

  “Of course.” He plays it from the beginning, and we sit still and listen to my song.

  It took weeks for me to make the call, for me to ask him if he’d still be interested in recording me. I knew I needed to explain myself first, but I didn’t know how to tell him what I felt, because I didn’t know what that was. I do like him, but I can’t—not now. It wouldn’t be fair or wise or any of the ways I’m trying to be.

  So in the end I just told him I’m sixteen, and that worked pretty well.

  There was silence on the other end of the phone for a good couple of minutes after I got the words out.

  “You’re in high school,” he breathed.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I—you’re in twelfth grade? That’s crazy.”

  “Well, eleventh. And they almost held me back, so…”

  “I’m such a creep.”

  “You’re not a creep.”

  “Yes, I’m a creepy, creepy creep.”

  “You’re only twenty-three,” I told him. “In boy years, you’re actually younger than I am.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Did I…damage you?”

  In my head I laughed and told him not to flatter himself. Out loud I said, “No. Not at all.”

  When I told Maggie how he reacted, she said he was a good one, that I should hold on to him until I’m legal, but I’m learning to take her advice with a grain of salt, or four hundred. But I do try to take it. She knows a thing or two.

  The song ends, and he starts fiddling with levels again. “Slow down,” I say. “Tell me what you’re doing.”

  “Sorry, I’m just excited. I’ve got all these ideas for your sound.”

  “Come on, it’s our sound at this point.”

  He looks stricken. “Shit. I overstepped. I’m sorry. I can back off if you want—”

  “No, I like collaborating with you. It’s fun. I just want to know what you’re doing there.”

  He smiles. “I like collaborating with you too. So, what I want to do is really soak the guitars.”

  “When you say soak?”

  “I mean saturate them.”

  “And when you say saturate?”

  “I mean like, drown them, or like—”

  “I’m kidding. Saturate makes sense. Go on.”

  “And then I want to bring your vocals forward, make them gigantic. How do you feel about doing some backing tracks?”

  “I feel okay about it. But no gross harmonies.”

  “Right, only non-gross harmonies. And see, here this sounds a bit honkier than I’d like, but I can take the honk out.” He hits play and I listen hard for the difference.

  “It’s more…”

  “Roomy?”

  “Roomy. Yeah. I like space.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “We’re spacey,” I say, and he concurs.

  He scrolls through a menu of effects.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Tweaking the mix a little. Putting some effects on your voice.”

  “Don’t do too much yet. I’m not sure I like that take.”

  “Seriously? You can do it over if you’d like, but I think that one was great.”

  “But I sounded so…I dunno. Imperfect.”

  “Great—that’s what we’re going for.”

  “Maybe that’s what you’re going for, but I’d like to sound polished.”

  “No you don’t. You just need to get used to hearing yourself. We’ll take a bit of a break and then listen again.”

  “Okay,” I say, getting up to stretch. We’ve been trapped in the space all day. My eyes are bleary from squinting at the computer, and my throat is hoarse from singing. I feel kind of fantastic. “Hey! I thought of a band name.”

  “What’s that?”

  I pause a moment for suspense. “Proofs.”

  Even though I obsessively pondered band names for weeks, coming up with untold numbers of shit ones before I thought of this one, after I say it I’m instantly paranoid that it’s stupid and he’ll hate it. I pick up my guitar and start noodling around nervously.

  “I like it,” he says.

  “Good. I like it too.”

  “That sounded cool,” he says when I stop playing. He sits down behind his drums and watches my fingers. “Keep going.”

  I�
�ve been thinking lately. Not overthinking, I’m pretty sure, but thinking an appropriate amount about how I used to spend my days trying to kill time. And all the days in the week, and all the weeks in the month, and all the months in the year, they were always on my mind. But the thing is, here’s the thing—sometimes we fall into holes. It happens to the best of us. The wonderful thing about time is that it’s always passing.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank Tim Wynne-Jones and Shelley Tanaka for feedback on early drafts. Sarah Harvey for her keen eye. Julie Sheehan, Susan Scarf Merrell, Lou Ann Walker and the rest of the faculty at Stony Brook Southampton. My MFA classmates for their support of my work and for general help surviving the Hamptons (Emily, Alison and John especially). Both sides of my big book-loving family, my grandma Noreen, my parents Becky and Ian, and my siblings Binesi and Sam. Thanks to Ann, Leah and Maryam Decter for harboring me at various times. All of my writing teachers, really, but especially my mom and grandpa. My friends Anna, Carly, Julie and Jen, for not forgetting me when I go away to think about things. Teresa for the letters and Nic for all of it, and everything.