A World Away

by Nancy Grossman

  Rachel put her hand on my shoulder. “We’ll talk more later,” she said. “The important thing is that neither of you were hurt.” I nodded, feeling awful. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get some food into you.”

  In the kitchen, I watched Rachel slice a bagel and set it in the toaster oven, and tried to piece everything together in my mind. Josh had crashed his father’s car because I had made him drive me home when he was tired and probably still a little drunk. He was distracted because I was sick, so he wasn’t paying attention to his driving. And I was sick because I had been drinking. Everything that had gone wrong last night pointed back to me. It was all my fault.

  Rachel set a plate on the table with a toasted bagel spread lightly with butter. She also brought me a glass of orange juice and a mug of steaming coffee. Nothing looked appealing to me except for the juice, which I drank with mighty gulps. Rachel sat on the chair beside me. “I know you probably don’t feel like eating, but it’s important to get something into your stomach.”

  I took a small bite of the bagel and chewed it slowly. I turned to Rachel. “When you were taking the pictures of us before the dance, I was so happy. I can’t believe that a night that started out so nice could end this way.”

  “I know,” Rachel said. There was kindness in her tone, and I was grateful for it. “There are some lessons that we have to learn the hard way.”

  I spent most of the day in my room, dozing into restless naps, listlessly turning the pages of a book, drinking big glasses of water. I wrote a long letter to Kate describing what happened at the dance. It felt a little better to pour the words onto the page.

  Josh called late in the afternoon, and I grabbed the phone, anxious to hear his voice. “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

  “A little.” I took a breath. “I shouldn’t have made you take me home last night.”

  Josh didn’t answer right away, and I could picture him shaking his head, his face unsmiling. “There were a lot of ‘shouldn’t haves’ last night.”

  I closed my eyes, waiting for him to say something that would make me feel better. When he didn’t, I asked, “Can you come to dinner at Aunt Beth’s tonight?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not going to be allowed out for a while.” Then he added, “Tomorrow we’ll find out about all the damages, so I’ll see you when I come over to talk to Rachel.”

  I hung up feeling worse. The reaches of my blame felt endless. When it was time to go to Aunt Beth’s house for my regular Sunday dinner, Rachel said she would drive me. Beth greeted me at the door with an excited expression on her face, which changed to a question when she saw that Rachel was with me.

  “Hi, Beth,” Rachel said, after my aunt ushered us inside. “I’d like to talk with you for a few minutes before your dinner, if that’s okay.”

  Beth turned to me. “Your uncle is in the den watching baseball. I’m sure he’d love some company.”

  Uncle John got up from the couch and greeted me with his usual hug. I sat in an armchair and tried to pick up the threads of the baseball game. I felt Uncle John looking at me. “Is everything okay, kiddo?”

  I shook my head. “Not really. I wasn’t very Amish last night.”

  Uncle John gave a tiny laugh before saying, “That’s all right. Some of my best friends aren’t Amish.” He turned off the television and said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Something about his calm voice made me want to tell him what happened after the dance. He winced when I got to the part about Josh crashing the car. “It could have been a lot worse,” he said. “I think you and Josh were lucky.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I don’t feel very lucky right now.”

  “Well,” he said, “you haven’t had too much experience. I guess you weren’t prepared for how those nights can turn out.”

  Just then, I heard the front door close, and I knew that Rachel had gone. I followed John into the kitchen. Beth was standing at the stove, and she turned around when we came in. “It sounds like you had a rough night,” she said, wiping her hands on a dish towel and walking toward me.

  I nodded, blinking back tears. We all sat down at the table, and I waited to hear what Beth would say. When she spoke, her voice was breathy, like she was talking and sighing at the same time. “I don’t know what we should do about your parents. I’m in a tough situation now.”

  I looked down. “I don’t want them to know about this.”

  “You know,” said Beth quietly, “I really fought to get your mom to let you stay here. And to let you go out with Josh. I’m beginning to wonder if I might have been wrong.”

  I shook my head, tears slipping down my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Aunt Beth. I wish I could start over and do it better.”

  Her hand stroked my back. “I know.” She was quiet for a while. I sensed that she and John were glancing at each other over my head, having a conversation without words, like my parents do. Finally Beth spoke. “It may not be the right thing, but I’ll feel better if we don’t worry your parents about what happened.” I looked up at her. She was watching me closely. “And I have a feeling that you won’t ever find yourself in that situation again.”

  “Never,” I said.

  “Okay, then. They don’t have to know.”

  I wiped my tears with the back of my hand. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  A few minutes later we were eating dinner, the food filling me in a comforting way. Beth turned to me and said, “So tell us about the dance.”

  I looked at her, confused. “You’ve already heard about it.”

  Beth shook her head. “No, I’ve only heard about what happened after the dance. I’m thinking there are also some good parts of this story. Can we hear them?”

  I shrugged. “Do you want to?”

  “Of course we want to,” said Uncle John. “We want you to be able look back on the whole night—not just how it ended.”

  I smiled and let the memories of the dance fill my head. I took a breath and started to tell my aunt and uncle about the night. They leaned in eagerly, and I told them all the good parts.

  The doorbell rang after dinner Monday night, and Rachel looked at me. “That’s Josh.”

  I got up, feeling the same nervous shyness as when he picked me up for our first date, but this time with none of the excitement. I opened the door and he met my eyes with a cautious half-smile.

  “Are you feeling better?” he asked. I nodded and stepped toward him. He reached his arms around me, but the hug felt loose and awkward.

  We went into the living room, where Rachel was waiting. I sat on the couch beside Josh. “I screwed up,” he said. “I’m really sorry.” “I know you are,” Rachel said. “But I have to be honest and tell you that this feels a little personal because I trusted you.”

  “Yeah,” Josh said, looking at Rachel and then at me. “I lost a lot of trust over the weekend.”

  “How bad is the car?” she asked.

  “It’s in the shop now.” He looked down. “The money I earned over the summer will take care of fixing it.”

  My heart sank at his words. He’d been working so hard to get enough money together to buy his own car, and now he’d be starting all over.

  “I also have a check for the garage door,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

  I turned to Josh. “Rachel and I already talked about that. I’m going to pay for it out of my wages.” I glanced at Rachel, and she gave me the smallest of nods. Josh looked at me as though he was about to object, but I shook my head before he could talk. “It’s only fair,” I said. “I made you take me home. If we’d stayed at the party like you wanted, none of this would have happened.”

  Josh looked like he was trying to smile. “Thanks, Liza.” Then he turned to Rachel. “You’ve always been like a second mom to me,” he said. “Now both of my moms are pissed at me.”

  Rachel took a long breath. “There’s something my father told me once after I’d gotten into some trouble. He said, ‘We all make mi
stakes. But it’s what you do after the mistake that shows the kind of person you are.’”

  Josh looked at her and nodded, a mix of sadness and relief on his face. Standing up he said, “I’ve got to head out now. I’m going to the mall to see if the Apple store will give me more hours.” Rachel stood and put her arms around him. He returned her hug.

  “We’ve all had a night we wish we could get back,” she said.

  I walked Josh to the front door, slipping my hand tentatively into his. He gave it a light squeeze before he let go. He turned to me and said, “We’re going to be all right.” After he left, I realized that he had said it as a question.

  The next day, Rachel arranged to have the garage door fixed, and we agreed that she would deduct money from each of my paychecks until the cost of the repair was covered. Josh called to tell me that he was able to get more hours at the Apple store, but some of them would be over the weekends. “It doesn’t really matter, though,” he added, “because I’m grounded for the next two weeks except for work and school.” Hanging up the phone, I could already feel the loneliness of the two weeks that lay ahead.

  Later that afternoon, I went into the Bean Scene. The children were at a reading in the library, and I had a half hour before I had to pick them up. When I walked in, I saw Valerie at a corner table with Jill and Carly. They had books and papers spread around them, but it didn’t seem like they were studying. Valerie looked up and saw me. I thought I noticed the girls exchanging glances before she waved me over to the table.

  “So,” said Carly, “we were hangover sisters Saturday night.”

  “I’m afraid we were,” I said. “Are you feeling better?”

  “Yeah,” said Carly. “Sunday was a little rocky. How about you?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, looking down. I felt a pang every time I thought about Saturday night.

  “I guess it was your first time drinking,” said Valerie.

  “And my last.”

  “That’s what we all say,” said Jill, with a giggle. “But we don’t seem to learn from our mistakes.”

  They all laughed, and I tried to join in. When the laughter died down, Valerie turned to me. “So, anyway, do you mind if I ask you something?” I waited. “Like, what were you thinking?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why did you make Josh drive you home? The whole reason we planned the sleepover was so no one would be on the road. And now we’re all in trouble.”

  “You are?” I asked, shame filling me.

  “Yeah,” Valerie continued. “After what happened with you and Josh, all the parents know we were drinking. I’m back on curfew. Oscar’s grounded. Alex can’t drive for a month.”

  Heat pumped to my face. “I’m sorry, but I was sick.”

  “You were hungover,” said Valerie. “We all were. And nobody else went home.”

  I felt like I was sliding into a hole.

  “Chill out, Val,” said Carly. “This isn’t Eliza’s fault. She didn’t know we’d be drinking.” I looked gratefully at Carly. “And she didn’t even know that everyone was going to be at the sleepover. Remember, we told her it was just going to be the girls.”

  I straightened in my chair, recalling my confusion when I learned that the boys would also be sleeping over. I looked at Valerie, who was staring angrily at Carly.

  “Nice going, Carly,” said Jill. “That was supposed to be a secret.” Carly shrugged.

  I turned to Valerie. “So everyone knew but me?”

  “Yeah,” said Valerie. “If you want to know, your boyfriend was the reason no one told you about the sleepover. Josh told me to say it would just be the girls.”

  “And why was that?” I asked, my heart pounding.

  Valerie shrugged. “Why do you think? He was afraid that if you knew about it, you wouldn’t stay overnight. You know, because of the Amish thing.”

  They were all looking at me, waiting for my response, but too many feelings were clattering through me. And Valerie was looking a little too pleased that she had been able to tell me this information about Josh.

  I reached to select the right words. “Well,” I said slowly, “Josh was right about something.” I waited a moment, watching Valerie’s face. “He told me never to trust you with a secret. I guess he should have taken his own advice.”

  Valerie’s eyebrows lowered. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. Carly burst into laughter. “Oh, burn!” she said when her laughter died down. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but Carly was smiling at me in a satisfied way, and I felt that I had won a tiny victory. I looked at my watch. “I have to go pick up the kids,” I said. Then I turned to Valerie. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help clean up in the morning. It must have been a big mess.”

  “Yes, it was,” she said. “And it still is.”

  The next day I got a letter from Kate. I’m so sorry about the troubles you had after the dance, she wrote. If you were home I’d be giving you a bag of starter batter and we would bake friendship bread to help you feel better. I smiled, remembering the Sunday afternoons I had spent mixing ingredients with my sister and later sharing the batter with our girlfriends.

  Everyone who shared in the batch of batter baked their friendship bread at the same time. So while I bent over my stove, I would know that three of my friends were all doing the same in their own kitchens. Here, friends didn’t need anything like that to feel connected. All they had to do was sign on to the computer or pick up a cell phone. I looked down at Kate’s letter and read on, imagining the cinnamon smells of the bread we would be baking together if I were at home right now.

  During the next week, my daily talks with Josh were more somber. I listened to his stories of working extra hours and staying up later to finish his homework. But now my feelings of responsibility were mixed with anger that Josh had lied to me about the sleepover party. I hadn’t yet told him I knew about the lie, because it was a discussion I didn’t want to have on the phone.

  As I expected, the weekends were lonely. I agreed to babysit both weekend nights while Josh was grounded, and in exchange, Rachel reduced my debt. After the children were in bed on one of those nights, boredom felt like it had climbed inside my body. I watched television for a while, but the shows seemed to have the same tired stories. A boy found himself with two dates for a dance. A woman lost a ring she had borrowed from a friend. A baby was born in an elevator. I turned off the TV and went to my room, looking for something else to fill my time.

  I noticed the quilting bag that I had tossed into the closet on the day I arrived. Suddenly, the thought of the close, exacting work of quilting appealed to me. I turned the bag over on my bed, watching the colored fabrics fall into a hushed pile. At home, I had cut the shapes for the Pinwheel Block pattern, and I reached for the plastic bag where I had gathered the triangles and rectangles that would come together into the quilt square. I had chosen two shades of blue, the colors of morning and midnight skies, to provide a soft effect in the center. I liked when colors that are near each other on the color wheel sat beside each other on a quilt. To contrast with the blues, I had chosen burgundy and pink fabrics to bring definition and harmony to the square.

  I laid out the pieces as they would be in the quilt square, the dark and light blue triangles alternating in the center, the burgundy around them, and the pink at the corners. I’d always enjoyed this part of quilting, arranging the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle until they reflected the pattern I had chosen, and provided the color balance I was looking for. Satisfied with the way the square looked laid out on my bed, I lifted up two blue triangles from the center of the square and stitched them together so that the alternating colors shimmered.

  I continued stitching the shapes together until the quilt block was finished, a twelve-inch square with colors radiating out from blue to burgundy to pink. There was order and balance in the quilt block, with the shapes fitting together and the colors bringing just the right amount of complement and contrast.


  I reached for the pattern book, flipping the pages to find the next design I wanted to stitch. The Grecian Square was interesting, and I had always been partial to the Checkerboard Basket. I searched through the cut swatches, organizing them by color and shape. I’d have to cut more shapes tomorrow, I realized. Maybe Janie would like to help me. I’d started helping my mother with her quilting projects when I was Janie’s age.

  When Josh called, I settled the phone between my shoulder and ear to keep my hands free. “What’re you doing?” Josh asked.

  “I’m quilting,” I said.

  I could hear the grin in his voice when he said, “No way!”

  “Next time we’re together I’ll show it to you,” I said, rummaging through the fabric to see how many primary colors I had.

  “How about next Saturday? My two weeks will be up by then.”

  “Good news!” I said, reaching for some pink squares. They would look nice in the Tulip Nine patch. I’d need some light green for the leaves. Josh was saying something, but I didn’t hear him. I was sure I had packed some green fabric. I rummaged to the bottom of the bag until I found it.

  “Hello?” Josh said.

  “I’m here,” I said, setting aside the pink and green fabric to work on later. “So, next weekend, right?” I tried not to sound distracted, but Tulip Nine is a complicated square.

  “Yeah,” said Josh. “And, Eliza?” I waited. His voice sounded hopeful. “I owe you a nice weekend.” I set aside the material so I could listen fully. “I guess we’ll have some things to talk about when we’re together.”

  “I guess we will.”

  I hung up the phone and started searching for some fabric that would make a good background. The evening hummed along, and I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be bored.

  I spent the week quilting, and felt invigorated by the work I’d completed. I had forgotten the satisfaction of finishing a square, of sitting back and looking at the pleasing array of colors and the straight tiny stitches, of placing the squares side by side and imagining what the quilt would look like when it was finished.