The Next Time You See Me

by Holly Goddard Jones

  Their mother didn’t have stories so much as she did favorite excuses, even accusations. “You girls don’t know how much I protected you from,” she liked to tell them. “You don’t know how many times I took the punches so you wouldn’t have to.” By the end of it she was the victim, and Ronnie and Susanna were the ones apologizing. That’s how these powwows always went: storytelling, accusations, apologies, tears. By the end they would convince themselves that they’d really and truly cleared the air and gotten closure; they weren’t angry anymore; they just loved each other so much. And yet, when the next holiday came, they were ready for another round.

  But maybe they really had gotten it out of their systems last time, because here they were, bellies full, talking about Christmas shopping and decorating, and Susanna was saying that it was going to be the first year that Abby could really appreciate the idea of Santa. This got them into some old memories, but only the good and funny ones: The year Ronnie had gotten a bike and Susanna had gotten roller skates, and they were each so sure that the other’s present was the superior one that they screamed for a solid hour. The one time Dad dressed as Santa, because a guy he worked with loaned him a costume. The year Dad drove them way out in the country, parked them on the side of the road, and led them through a stranger’s woods with an ax and some rope, and how they didn’t realize until they were adults that they’d trespassed and stolen a tree. “I don’t know about that. Are you sure that’s what happened?” their mother said, and Ronnie and Susanna said “Yes, Mother” in sync, in the same droll tone of voice, and they all laughed. They were feeling the wine in that really good way that was warm and tickly and innocent, which was when Ronnie would usually open another bottle or dip into the whiskey, because she was always so afraid of losing the good feeling that she ended up killing it by having too much. But here, now, this was enough. She was comfortable on her sister’s ugly sofa, with her foot propped up on the coffee table; Abby kept crawling under her leg and driving the Matchbox cars along her shin.

  Susanna went to the kitchen and returned with a camera. “Smile, Mom,” she said, and their mother grinned in that tortured way she had, so that the bones in her face stood out more and her eyes narrowed to lines. “Okay, now you, Ronnie.”

  Ronnie held a hand in front of her face. “Put that thing away. We were having a good time, for God’s sake.”

  “You can do this one thing for me,” Susanna said. “I made green bean casserole for you. No one else even eats it.”

  Ronnie huffed and set her shoulders. “All right, all right,” she said. “Get it over with.”

  “Smile,” Susanna said firmly.

  Ronnie crooked her lip a bit and then blinked away the flash. She hated taking pictures, hated how vulnerable it made her feel to put herself on display like that, not knowing if her expression was pretty or if she was dropping her chin in that way that made it seem as if she didn’t have one. She beckoned Susanna briskly with her right hand. “Here, give me that,” she said. “Let me get one of you and Mom and Abby together. Three generations of Eastman women.”

  “OK,” Susanna said. “Abby, come here to me. Let’s take a picture with Grandma.”

  “You can all get on the couch,” Ronnie said.

  Susanna and their mother sat on the couch together, close, and put Abby awkwardly between them, so that one of her legs was on each of their laps. Abby still had a grip on a Matchbox car, and Susanna tried to pry it out of her hand, but she grunted as if she might cry. Ronnie boxed them in the camera’s viewfinder, putting its red crosshairs on her niece’s face. She felt something, seeing the three of them like that. She wasn’t sure what, but it was like a flutter in her chest, something that would take flight and stick in her throat.

  “Wait a minute,” Susanna said before Ronnie could snap the picture. “Ronnie, we can’t do this picture without you in it. Let’s get Dale in here to take it. Dale!” she yelled. “Dale, come in here a sec and take our photo!”

  There was a split second when Ronnie would have posed for the photo, when she wanted very much to be part of it, and then Dale yelled back, “Does it have to be right this minute? I’m going to miss this play,” and she just shook the want away and said, “Never mind that and smile. I’ll be in the photo next year.” Then she snapped it.

  Something changed then. Abby’s cartoon ended, and Susanna spent five minutes flipping channels, trying to find something else that would satisfy her. Ronnie’s wine buzz dissipated. Their mother started making noises about leaving, and Susanna said, “If I don’t get those dishes in the washer soon I’ll have to scrub them.”

  Ronnie went to the porch for a cigarette. It was a gray, drizzly day, temperatures in the forties, and she hadn’t thought to slip into her coat before stepping out. She sat on the front stoop and smoked her first cigarette almost immediately down to the filter. She flicked it off her thumb into the yard, thrilling a little at the sight of it littering her sister’s neat lawn, and wondered where this anger had come from. She had looked through the camera lens and there it was. She couldn’t explain it. But anger was always sneaking up on Ronnie, appearing at the bottom of a glass or around a bend in the road or in a song on the radio.

  The door behind her opened just as she was lighting her second cigarette. “Here,” Susanna said, and Ronnie looked at what she was offering: her jean jacket. She slid into it and grunted a thank-you.

  “Want one?” She offered the pack.

  “Guess not,” Susanna said. “Though it might be fun just to piss him off.”

  “He’ll smell mine on you,” Ronnie said. “That’s enough to do it.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  They watched as a car pulled in at the house across the street, where a half dozen other vehicles were already parked in the drive and lining the road in front of the house. That was what Thanksgiving was supposed to look like, Ronnie thought as a graying couple emerged and pulled foil-covered pans out of the backseat; she could make out the steam rising off of the dishes from here. It was supposed to be big and rowdy and chaotic, not five sullen people gathered around a table with room to spare.

  “How’s work going?” Susanna said.

  “Like it always goes. I do the same thing every day. There ain’t exactly highs and lows.” Sensing Susanna’s discomfort, she tried to soften her voice a little. “It’s fine. I can do it in my sleep now. How about you?”

  Susanna laughed a little. “The same, in a way. I teach the same lesson five times a day, and then the next year I start the whole thing over again.”

  “It’s not the same,” Ronnie said flatly, and they were silent for a moment.

  “I guess it isn’t.”

  Ronnie pulled on the filter and blew smoke through her nostrils. “What are the kids reading?”

  “They just started a unit on tragedy, so we’ll do Oedipus Rex and Death of a Salesman, and then we’ll do The Diary of Anne Frank right before Christmas.”

  “That sounds awfully fucking cheery. Merry Christmas.”

  “Eighth graders love this stuff. They really do. It appeals to their already heightened sense of drama.”

  “OK, what else?”

  “Well,” Susanna said, “we just finished that John Knowles novel I told you about, A Separate Peace.”

  Ronnie thought. “Remind me what that’s about?”

  “It’s set at a boarding school during World War II. There are these two friends, Finny and Gene. Gene is the serious, studious one, and Finny’s just this really vibrant character, full of life. He has this magnetism that everyone responds to.”

  “He sounds like fun. What happens to him?”

  “He dies.”

  Ronnie laughed sharply. “Now see, this is why I don’t read novels. They always kill off the people you’d actually want to spend time with and stick you with the bores.”

  Susanna shook her head and huffed with exasperation. “I think you’d like the book if you read it. I honestly do.”

  “Wel
l, maybe. Eventually. Even though you told me how it ends.”

  “That’s the only way I’ve ever been able to get you to read something, is telling you how it ends.”

  “You know, that’s true,” Ronnie said. “I guess I don’t like not knowing. I don’t like the stress of it.” She popped to a stand and wiped the grit of the porch off her bottom. “All right, I guess I’ll take off. I think I’ve hit my family bonding quota for the month.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Susanna said. “I thought you were going to help me with dishes.”

  Ronnie groaned. “Do I have to? I’ll do them at Christmas, promise. Or better yet, get Dale to do them. He needs something to distract him from being a prick.”

  “You realize that the two of you are just alike, don’t you? It’s occurring to me for the first time.”

  Ronnie bent down and kissed the crown of Susanna’s head. She was already cheering up—she’d just needed to get into motion, to decide to change the scenery. “That’s pretty sick, Sis.”

  “Can you at least give Mom a ride home?”

  But it was no good. The restlessness, when it took hold of her, was sudden and decisive, and she felt like she might jolt apart into halves if she kept herself rooted in this spot even a moment longer. “There’s no time, hon. I’ve got to get to Fort Campbell by six o’clock. I told Sonny we’d hang out.”

  “You never mentioned this before.”

  “I’m mentioning it now.”

  “Are you even going to tell Abby good-bye?”

  “Give her a kiss for me,” Ronnie said. “OK? Tell her I’ll have a surprise for her the next time she sees me.”

  “All right, Ronnie.” Her voice was tired. “Just be careful.”

  “I’m always careful,” Ronnie said.

  In her Camaro, on the road, with the window down and freezing air blowing in and her left hand making little waves as she raced along, she could be herself, finally. She would rather be leaving than coming, driving than arriving; she lived better in the in-between than she ever had sitting still. Which was why she didn’t belong in any photograph. She had looked through the camera’s lens and seen not her family but her own absence, and it had seemed to her for a moment that she was a ghost, that she didn’t really exist and wouldn’t be missed.

  When she cleared town and made it to 79 she popped the clutch, shifted into fifth, and laid down on the gas. Stubbled cornfields rolled out on either side of her, and she passed a farmhouse that was already decked out in Christmas lights, cheerful against the beige-colored gloom. She didn’t know if Sonny would be home or if he would be glad to see her, but the day was so full of possibility right now that it almost didn’t matter. The drive was enough.

  Acknowledgments

  Warmest thanks to this book’s readers, who offered me insights and support across the various drafts: Erin McGraw, Danielle Lavaque-Manty, Jolie Lewis, Risa Applegarth, Matthew Loyd, and Francis Kelly.

  Thanks also to Mary Lou Stevens and Polly Duggan of Triad Bloodhounds, and their dogs, Otis and Ellie, who helped me understand canine search-and-rescue operations. What I got right was their doing; what I got wrong was mine. The same goes for my father-in-law, Larry Jones, who is my go-to expert on all matters pertaining to law enforcement.

  I am honored and lucky to still be working with Gail Hochman and Sally Kim, who are, respectively, the wisest, kindest, and most endlessly patient agent and editor I could hope for.

  To the communities of colleagues, students, and fellow writers I’ve made at home in Greensboro and summers in Sewanee, thanks for the friendship, inspiration, and stiff drinks.

  Finally, as ever, to Brandon: I love you so much. I could not do this without you.

  Touchstone Reading Group Guide

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  The Next Time You See Me

  By Holly Goddard Jones

  In The Next Time You See Me, the disappearance of one woman, the hard-drinking and unpredictable Ronnie Eastman, reveals the ambitions, prejudices, and anxieties of a small southern town and its residents. There’s Ronnie’s sister Susanna, a dutiful but dissatisfied schoolteacher, mother, and wife; Tony, a failed baseball star-turned-detective; Emily, a socially awkward thirteen-year-old with a dark secret; and Wyatt, a factory worker tormented by a past he can’t change and by a love he doesn’t think he deserves. Connected in ways they cannot begin to imagine, their stories converge in a violent climax that reveals not just the mystery of what happened to Ronnie but all of their secret selves.

  For Discussion

  1. Emily’s initial shock at discovering Ronnie’s body develops, over time, into an intense fascination and a sense of connection to the corpse. What do you think drives Emily back to visit the body? What motivates her to keep it hidden?

  2. How does Ronnie’s disappearance force Susanna to question her own life decisions? Do you think she was aware of her own unhappiness before Ronnie went missing?

  3. Christopher experiences a range of emotions about Emily, from disdain to empathy to attraction. What do you think draws Christopher to Emily? In what ways are they similar?

  4. Discuss Susanna and Dale’s relationship. What do you make of Dale’s treatment of his wife? Do they both share the blame for their unhealthy relationship?

  5. Susanna’s mother tells her, “If you’re going to leave what you’ve got, you better know what you’re getting.” Compare and contrast how the characters in the novel are defined by their comfort zones: Emily, Susanna, Christopher, Tony, Wyatt. In what ways do these characters find satisfaction and/or disappointment by taking risks?

  6. Ronnie is a polarizing character, one that Holly Goddard Jones depicts primarily through the lens of other characters. What is your take on Ronnie?

  7. Jones writes of Mr. Wieland, Emily’s science teacher, “He didn’t like to think that had he been Emily’s peer rather than her teacher, he’d have been one of the students pelting her with his lunch. But he wondered.” In what ways do the characters in The Next Time You See Me discover their capacity for cruelty, particularly Christopher and Wyatt? What is the point that Jones is making about the dark side of human nature?

  8. Wyatt is a sympathetic character in many ways, despite his mistakes. How did your opinion of Wyatt evolve as you learned more about him?

  9. What do you think provokes Wyatt to attack Sam? Do you think he blames Sam for his own actions?

  10. When Emily’s mother expresses her remorse about advising Emily to “try to be normal,” Susanna responds, “I don’t that’s such bad advice.” Do you think that Susanna is being sincere? What do you make of Emily’s behavior throughout the story?

  11. Tony and Susanna’s brief affair ends abruptly once Ronnie’s body is found. Was her disappearance the only reason they were drawn to each other?

  Enhance Your Book Club

  1. Several characters in The Next Time You See Me relate to A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Read this novel for your next meeting and compare and contrast Susanna, Ronnie, Emily, and Christopher to Gene and Finny.

  2. Discuss which character each member of your book club related to most. Then have each member select their ideal cast for the movie version of The Next Time You See Me.

  3. Read Holly Goddard Jones’s short story collection, Girl Trouble, which also takes place in a small Southern town. How are the stories in this collection similar to The Next Time You See Me? How are they different?

  4. Learn more about the author at www.hollygoddardjones.com, http://www.facebook.com/HollyGoddardJones, and https://twitter.com/#!/goddardjones.

  A Conversation with Holly Goddard Jones

  You come from Kentucky yourself. How much of this story is autobiographical?

  When I was a little girl, a phone line repairman found a murdered woman’s body in an abandoned shack on a property near my neighborhood. It’s a cliché to say this, but that was a different time, and I spent much of my summer days unsupervised, and the subdivision I lived in was lined on a couple of sides by undeveloped w
ooded areas where I wasn’t supposed to go but often did. I thought it was thrilling to explore those woods, and I was fascinated by the idea that death had happened so close by—that it might have been me to find the body, under other circumstances. So that was the germ of the idea with Emily Houchens, her discovery, how entangled that discovery gets with her games of make-believe. But Emily’s story obviously isn’t mine, though we share some commonalities, such as having a father who works at a factory. And Emily isn’t me, thank goodness. I wanted there to be a disconnect in her, something missing. For all her sensitivity, she’s a character who has a hard time understanding the experiences of others, which is what I think her mother was actually talking about when she encouraged Emily to be “normal.”

  The Next Time You See Me depicts the intricacies and the dark elements of a small community. Why did you choose to write about small town life?

  Well, the short and easy answer is that I understand small towns—I’ve lived the majority of my life in them. But a small town is also an excellent backdrop for tragedy, because a death like Ronnie’s reverberates in a way that it wouldn’t in a city. You can see how her story touches all kinds of people, how it ignites the best and the worst qualities in each of them. I like setting fiction in small towns, too, because it gives me the opportunity to write about so many different ways of life. In a town of 10,000, the rich kids and the poor kids, the black kids and the white, are all going to go to the same school. Their parents are going to shop at the same grocery store.

  What is your writing process? How was writing a novel different from writing your short story collection, Girl Trouble?