Any Other Place

by Michael Croley

  He left the room. Minutes later Seo-Yun came in with Sook-Cha. Her cheek was bruised, and I saw that her face was scratched. The child appeared unharmed. Seo-Yun sat down next to me, and I put my finger in Sook-Cha’s little fist. She squeezed it.

  Seo-Yun was distant. She couldn’t look at me.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  She didn’t answer, and not wanting to fight, I sent her away. I told her we would leave when I could walk.

  She got up without saying anything else, and I knew she had turned away from me.

  Hours passed. I woke in the dark and my whole body throbbed in pain. Sook-Cha gave a cry, and then it was quiet again. I fell back and pulled the blanket under my chin. I was cold and every little movement hurt.

  I thought of all the homes where men now slept again. Why had those soldiers left us? Why had they only beaten me? The fire was nearly out, only a faint crackle every few minutes. I only remembered the world disappearing, nothing after. Seo-Yun was so angry that I felt I could not ask her to come back to the room, to build up the fire and let me see the baby. I closed my eyes and then opened them very quickly.

  I rose with a start, ignoring the sharp slices of heat that tore at my ribs and back, the dizziness of my aching head. “Yobo,” I shouted. “Yobo!”

  The child cried out, and I heard footsteps coming toward me.

  “What is it?” Seo-Yun said. She was out of breath.

  “What did you do?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What did you do? What did they make you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You lie,” I said. “Why am I still alive? Tell me, I must know.”

  “You already do,” she said.

  I braced myself against the wall and fought not to retch. Seo-Yun guided me down to the floor, back to my pallet and covers, and then she went to the fire and stoked it. I closed my eyes. I could not bear to look at her and think about what I had caused.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Our daughter is safe. That’s all that matters.”

  “You saved us,” I said, the words between a whisper and cry.

  She put her hand to my forehead. The familiarity of her touch was gone, though. I leaned toward her. “Rest, Yobo,” she said.

  I tried not to think about the crashing of their boots into my head, the world gone dark, the cries of pain I did not hear while I was unconscious. “Will you ever forgive me?” I said, my eyes on the fire.

  “There is nothing to forgive.”

  I believed she meant it, but she was wrong. There was much about what had occurred that was unforgivable. There was no way to forget what she had had to do, what we might have avoided.

  TWO DAYS LATER, we were back in our own house. The baby was happy, making smiles and soft giggles when we nuzzled into her neck. It was morning, and I was preparing to leave for the boat, though Mr. Gong had told me to rest. The air was cold outside, and I hobbled to the fire.

  Seo-Yun had pushed our blankets to the corner of the room, close to the wall. She almost seemed to be cowering as I grabbed my fishing knife. She nursed Sook-Cha, and I thought of how she was giving the girl life from her body, how she had been the one to shield us.

  “I must go,” I said.

  “Stay,” she said. “You’re too hurt.”

  “I’ll manage,” I said, but I wasn’t sure if I could. I thought I might just be in the way both on the boat and at home. She walked with me to the door and held the baby on her hip.

  “Do you think they’ll come back?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  I pointed to Sook-Cha. “Is she okay?”

  “I think so.”

  “And you?” I asked.

  The bruise on her cheek had begun to lighten. She could only nod, turning the question back to me. “You?”

  I told her what felt true for both of us. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I never will be.”

  I stepped away from the door, readying to leave, though I did not want to. “Yobo,” Seo-Yun said, stopping me. “Can we walk with you?”

  The three of us went to the beach in the dawn light. Small step by small step, and each one was like a knife in my side, another kick in my head. Mr. Gong waved to us from the pier and came toward us, taking Sook-Cha into his arms, lifting the girl up in the air where she spread her arms like a bird as if to fly away. She smiled as the sea breeze blew and waves crashed into the rocks.

  “I’m sorry.” I said it because I didn’t think it was possible to say it enough, because I didn’t want her to slip away from me.

  “No more apologies,” she said. She took my hand. Her knuckles were red.

  Mr. Gong flew the girl back into Seo-Yun’s outstretched arms, and my wife pushed the child up into the sky once more.

  Out in the ocean, pulling in the first net, my eyes on the shore, I saw the pair of them—my wife and child. I saw them there all day. Mr. Gong and I did not talk about the events, what those soldiers had done to my wife, what she had given herself over to in order to spare our lives, and why they had agreed to spare us. At day’s end, he gave me two sea bass, and that night I walked home with my family. I stoked the fire and carried Sook-Cha outside while Seo-Yun cooked.

  All that had happened could have occurred anyway, which is why I had wanted to stay and try to prevent it. But now we both believed it could have been avoided if I had not been there. I saw that in Seo-Yun’s eyes, and I knew I would always see it.

  I watched smoke from the chimney trail up toward the mountain. I thought of the men who had walked up there and then back, safe, eager to see their families and hold them close again. They had avoided everything we hadn’t.

  I held our child close to me, pressed her soft cheek into my rough beard, careful to avoid the bruises and cuts. “We love you so much,” I whispered. “Your mother’s love is larger than the sea.”

  Seo-Yun appeared in the doorway. She said it was nearly time to eat. Above her the smoke thinned to wisps, the moon rose, and past the mountains, over the treetops, a dappling of stars began to burn in the fast-approaching night.

  TWO STRANGERS

  THE LAST THING I wanted—or expected or needed—was to be standing in the doorway of Carly Ray’s room, watching her clutch a picture of Burl up to her face. She’s so tiny, but at the same time there is something very adult about her appearance. Maybe it’s the light spreading over her shoulders from the nightstand lamp, her slick-straight, brown hair lying limply behind her. Something about her seems too mature for ten years old.

  “Carly Ray,” I say, hesitant, fearful. “It’s time to go to bed. You’ve got school tomorrow.” I expect her to turn with cold eyes and resentment toward me, but she doesn’t. She puts the picture away, under her mattress, and rolls to her back.

  We both know she’s used to Burl being here, maybe telling her a story or just sitting on the edge of the bed until she falls asleep. I’m not sure of what. She’s only ever known me as her father’s friend, who comes in every so often, bringing her a present from some far-off city she’s never visited. She doesn’t see me in any sort of fatherly way.

  I’m not even like an uncle. “Goodnight, J.D.,” she says.

  I turn off the lamp and she closes her eyes, feigning sleep, and my mouth becomes dry. I close my own eyes with the hope that when I open them I will be in my own apartment, a thousand miles away, the sounds of the city rising up from the street and through windows, crashing against my bookshelves and furniture, echoing down the hallways. But when I open them, I am in her room, a strip of light slashing across a Gillian Welch show poster that was Burl’s doing for sure.

  I pull the covers up to her chin, something I’ve seen people do on television, and whisper a goodnight to her.

  MOM WAITS FOR me in the living room, flipping through a Time magazine. She puts it beside her on the sofa when I walk in.

  “How is she?” she asks.

  “Good, I think. I can’t
tell.”

  “What do you mean you can’t tell?”

  “I mean, I don’t know. I’ve never been around her enough to know. I’m not sure about all this.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to be, aren’t you?”

  “I guess,” I say. I think about the phone calls I have to make this week. The one to St. Vincent’s to tell them I’m not coming back. The one to Julie to tell her what I’ve avoided the last few days. “It doesn’t seem real,” I say, but not really to Mom.

  She rises from her seat, ready to comfort me.

  “I never thought I’d be back,” I tell her. “When I was in college I thought I might still come back, but after that, once I was in my residency, I knew I never would. I didn’t plan on this.”

  “Plans change sometimes, honey. Burl was your oldest friend and he asked you to do this for him. You can’t take her from here,” she says.

  “Why not? Why can’t I raise her someplace else?”

  “Because this is her home,” she says.

  “People move all the time, Mom. Think about the life she could have in the city. I could take her to see plays and museums. She could go to better schools.”

  “You grew up here and turned out just fine,” she says.

  “For every person like me how many are there that stuck around when they could have left?”

  “That’s not the point, son.”

  “Well, what is the point? My whole life is going to change.”

  “And hers hasn’t?”

  LATER, AFTER MOM has left and I’m on the porch, phone in hand, the frenzy of the last two weeks hits me. The phone call about Burl’s death, my frantic flight home, that first night with Carly Ray. When I went to see Chris Molloy about Burl’s papers, I found out he left me everything. Not just custody of Carly Ray, but his house, his pickup truck, half of his insurance policy, and a letter telling me what he wanted for Carly Ray if it ever came to this point and I had to take care of her.

  The paperwork was tough to sift through. Molloy coached us both in Little League, and he got choked up as went over the documents with me, lifting his glasses off his face so I could see the impressions they’d made on the bridge of his nose as he wiped away a few tears. “Just doesn’t seem right,” he kept saying to me every few seconds. “You two were good boys. Still are,” he’d say and then go back to the will and explain what it all meant.

  He said normally the term godparent is just a title, but in this case Kentucky law says with Tracy having run off and not keeping contact for ten years and Burl naming me custodian, unless something crazy happens, I’m in the clear. She’s my responsibility as long as the court declares me capable. “There’s no reason they won’t,” he said, and with that I left his office with a folder full of documents.

  I thumb the numbers on the phone, trying to summon up the courage to call Julie, but I can’t. I keep thinking of Burl. I want to remember the things he and I did as kids in this town. The nights we drove to Swafford’s, the bootlegger out past Woodbine, and sipped on lukewarm beers, setting our empty cans on the railroad tracks and waiting for the trains to run them over. I try to think of all the high school football games we attended on my visits home from college and med school, how we spotted the kids wearing our old numbers, but all I can see is the picture I have of him in my mind falling from that roof. One minute he’s hammering away at shingles, the frame of the house drawing yellow lines against the forest behind him. He’s bare-chested, skin turned brown as a biscuit, sweating under the July sun. Then it happens. He stands to stretch, loses his balance on the pitch, and he’s tumbling. Nails splay from the canvas 84 Lumber pouch he has tied around his waist. They sprinkle, like jacks, the spot of earth where he will land. I hear the snap of his neck as it bends past ninety degrees and the thud of his heavy, muscled body hitting the ground. He folds on himself like a sheet kicked off the foot of a bed. Nails prick his skin and his hammer lies beside him, the shiny silver glinting in the sun.

  I see my friend, the only one I had remaining here, lying in the grass, the life escaping his eyes, and I shudder at the sight, at all the distance that came between us when I left Kentucky and went to New York. And now that I’m back in our hometown, here to raise his daughter, I think how I’ve always thought our lives were moving in opposite directions and that home was our only connection to each other. But home doesn’t even sound like the word to describe Fordyce anymore, it’s been so long since I’ve lived here. I don’t know what I can claim of it.

  I look at the big oak and maple trees lining the street. Their branches hang over the pavement, shading the ground from the moonlight in jigsaw-patterned shapes. The quiet here compared to the city unsettles me, and this lets me know how far I’ve gone. My life’s only beginning, I think. I finished my internship a year and a half ago, and St. Vincent’s is a nice hospital, close to where I live. After my shift today I would have gotten Tone, the x-ray tech on the third floor, and we would have walked ten blocks down to the Carmine Street Rec to play hoops, and then after we’d have gone to Two Boots Pizza across from the hospital. Then there’s Julie.

  We’ve been dating four months. Long enough that I want her around, but not long enough that I’m sure it’s okay to ask her to come to Kentucky and live with me. And even if I did, there really isn’t much for her in the way of work. She’s in public relations, and the closest thing we have to that around here is the local newspaper, maybe something in a state congressman’s office.

  These are selfish thoughts; there’s no way getting around that. But when I think about what has come to pass, this promise I’ve made that I never thought in a million years would be called in, I can’t help but be resentful. I’ve had to give up everything for a girl I don’t really know and a friend I became separated from.

  I’m ready to dial Julie’s number when I hear Carly Ray open the front door. She has on baby blue pajamas with daisy chains around the ankles and chest.

  “J.D.,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say, turning on my hip and setting the phone down. “Can’t you sleep?”

  “Not tonight,” she says. “It’s not an especially good night for sleep.”

  I smile at her child’s way of speaking like an adult.

  “What would Dad do if he were here?” I ask, too quick to realize this may be the wrong thing to say.

  “Nothing. He’d probably just sit here with me and talk till I got bored.”

  I ask her if she wants me to read a story, but she says no. She says she just wants to sit outside for a bit.

  “That’s what we’ll do then. It’ll be hard to get up in the morning for school, though. You’ll be tired. Fifth grade can wear a girl out.”

  IN THE MORNING we’re running late, and I hustle Carly Ray out to the truck, handing her some money for lunch.

  “Dad always made my lunch,” she says.

  “Today you’ll have to buy your lunch,” I tell her. “I forgot.” I want to tell her that after she fell asleep on the porch and I carried her up to bed, I came back outside and called Julie, and she kept me on the phone until nearly three. I want to tell Carly Ray that Julie is probably the first woman I’ve ever even felt close to loving, to saying, “I love you,” to and not having it feel hollow and out of some form of obligation.

  Carly Ray doesn’t know any of this. She is looking at me, hateful and upset. “I hate the school lunch,” she says.

  “I’m sorry, Carly Ray, I really am. I won’t forget again.”

  She gets in the truck and holds her backpack in her lap. I flip the collar down on my sport coat and slide in, smelling sawdust in the floorboards. I’ve not driven a car, much less a stick, in four years. I pop the clutch three times before we ever make it out of the driveway and onto the road.

  Carly Ray is sullen. She pouts, refusing to look at me or to even look straight ahead in the truck. She only looks out her own window.

  “I really am sorry,” I say to her, hoping to make peace.

  She says
nothing and stares ahead. In two weeks it seems I can’t do anything right. When I tried to clean up the house, getting rid of some of Burl’s old magazines she asked me why I was throwing them out. And when I started to pack his shirts and put them in boxes, she came into the room, looked at me, and then turned around without saying a word.

  I have no idea how to handle her. I’m lost in how to get her to open up, in even knowing what she needs from me at this time in her life. The muffler has a hole in it, and the truck rumbles when I downshift and give it gas. It sounds like a sputtering lawn mower on turns.

  On Adams, I pass the house where I grew up and see the new homeowners have taken down the basketball goal where Burl and I used to have our games. I see him and me, our younger selves dribbling and blocking each other’s shots, Burl streaking past me as I stand lead-footed, my neck craning, to watch him lay the ball in.

  Carly Ray is looking out her window, gripping and then regripping her bag, like she’s kneading dough. I think to tell her this, to give the images I have of her father, but I keep quiet until we get to her school and I ask her if she’d like for me to come in with her.

  “What for?” she says.

  “I don’t know. Do parents go in with their kids at the beginning of fifth grade?”

  “You’re not my parent.”

  She doesn’t say this with malice. She says it like it’s a statement about the weather, the way a person says, “Looks like rain today.”

  I grip the steering wheel harder. “I know that,” I say. I want to remain calm. I want to say the right words. “I just meant do you need me to go with you?”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “I can do it by myself.”

  “I’ll wait here until you get inside then.” She gets down from the truck, and I hand her the backpack.

  “Bye, J.D.”

  “I’ll see you at two-thirty.” I wave to her, but she has already shut the door and is walking up the small set of steps. She is greeted by a young woman standing at the door in khaki pants and a bright red blouse. The woman waves to me and ushers Carly Ray inside, and I pull away, almost popping the clutch again.