Far-Flung

by Peter Cameron

  “Excuse me,” Mrs. King says.

  “No,” I say. “It’s O.K. I just really don’t know.”

  “Of course,” she says. “To return to the matter at hand. This school has no specific policy regarding the wearing of sunglasses. However, we do forbid the wearing of clothes and accessories that are either dangerous or that divert attention from the purpose of education. I think the sunglasses could fall into either of those categories.”

  “Yes,” I say. “I suppose they could.”

  “So we’re thinking of forbidding Ellery to wear them in the building.”

  “But I thought the problem wasn’t the sunglasses,” I say.

  “But it’s the … the manifestation of the problem,” Mrs. King says. “It’s all we have to go on.”

  “I’d just like to see Ellery out of those shades,” the nurse says. “Then we can take it from there.”

  “Would you agree to that?” Mrs. King asks.

  “What would happen if he refused to take them off?” I ask.

  “He wouldn’t be allowed to attend classes. We’d put him in ICE.”

  “In what?”

  “ICE. Isolated Continuing Education. Instead of suspending or expelling our students, we try to keep them in the building, but don’t allow them to attend classes or mix with other students.”

  “It sounds like prison,” I say.

  “It’s a very successful program,” Mrs. King says. “It might sound drastic, but it does get us results. Of course it’s supplemented with psychological counseling. It’s just what some kids need.”

  “Maybe I should talk to Ellery again,” I say.

  “By all means, do,” says Mrs. King.

  “Hey, listen,” the nurse says. “We don’t want to do anything without your knowledge and cooperation. And it’s much better if the problem is approached by you rather than us.”

  “But there is a problem,” says Mrs. King. “And it does have to be approached.”

  I nod.

  “One more question,” the nurse says. “I’m just curious. Why did you name him Ellery?”

  When I get home from the high school there’s a strange car parked in front of the house. I pull into the driveway, and as I walk up the front steps, a woman gets out of the car and crosses the lawn.

  “Do you live here?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I came about the garage sale? Vinnie Olloppia—she bought your Osterizer—told me.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Well, come in.”

  “Where’s the stuff?”

  “It’s inside,” I say. “I’m selling the contents of the house.”

  “Everything?” she asks.

  I unlock the front door. “Yes,” I say. “We’re moving overseas.”

  “Where to?”

  “The Philippines,” I say. “My husband is there now. I’m just trying to get the house sold.”

  “You shouldn’t tell people that,” the woman says. “I mean, that you’re living alone.”

  “My son is here,” I say. And, because Carly is lying in the front hall, I add, “And my dog.”

  “Does he bite?” the woman asks.

  “No,” I say.

  Carly sighs. We step over him and go into the living room.

  “Wow. This is all for sale? Everything?”

  “Yes,” I say. “My husband’s bought a furnished house.”

  “You could put this in storage,” the woman suggests. “I can’t imagine selling all my things. Aren’t you sad?”

  “No,” I say. “You can look around. Excuse me a minute.”

  I go into my bedroom and lie down on the bed. Carly noses open the door and walks over and looks at me. He doesn’t like it when you close doors. “Hi, Carly,” I say. I stroke his nose, and his ears. Carly has glaucoma and is almost blind. The vet told me that moving him into another new, unfamiliar house would be “torture” for him. Not that we would take him all the way to Manila. We’ll have to put him to sleep soon. I’ll have to put him to sleep soon.

  I can hear the lady walking around the living room. She could be stealing everything, for all I know. That would be nice. That would be the easiest way to get rid of it.

  I get up, wash my face, and go back to the living room. The woman isn’t there. I go into the kitchen. She’s holding open a cupboard door, looking inside. She closes it when she sees me. Real quick.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “No,” I say. “It’s fine. Look.”

  “I’m trying to find some things for my daughter. She just got married, and moved into a beautiful condo—in the River warren?—but she won’t buy anything for it. She got some things as wedding presents, of course. A bed and a TV and a kitchen table. But she won’t get anything else. She doesn’t take any interest in fixing the place up. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I’m thinking that if I get a few things, start her off, you know, she’ll make an effort. Her husband’s just as bad. They lie on the bed, watch TV, and eat frozen food. Oh, she has a microwave, too.”

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  “No, thanks,” she says. “Are you selling these pots and pans?”

  “Everything,” I say.

  “How much do you want for these? Are they genuine Revere Ware?”

  “Yes,” I say. They were my wedding presents. “Twenty dollars?”

  “That sounds reasonable.” She takes the pots out of the cupboard and arranges them on the kitchen table, stacking them inside of one another. “Listen,” she says. “Do you think I could come back with my daughter? Maybe seeing all this stuff, might, you know, excite her.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “But I’ll take these pots now. Are you sure just twenty? For the whole set?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  The woman opens her bag and rummages in it. It’s shaped like a little wooden picnic basket. She hands me a twenty. “Here you go,” she says. “Maybe I’ll come back this evening? With Debbie? Would that be O.K.?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  I walk her to the front door. Carly’s back in the front hall. We both step over him. He sighs.

  I stand inside the door and watch the woman drive away. Then I take the twenty and put it, along with all the other money I’ve made, in the empty dog biscuit box I keep on top of the refrigerator.

  I haven’t been sleeping much nights, so I take a nap. Carly joins me. We are awakened by Ellery, home from school, playing his stereo: the soundtrack from Carousel. Ellery has strange taste in music.

  I knock on his door, and when he doesn’t answer I open it. He’s lying on his bed, on his back, his sunglasses on. He wears different ones. I forgot to mention that to the guidance counselor. Surely it’s not as obsessive if he changes them? The worst are the mirrored ones. The wraparound ones he has on now are thin and curved, so you can’t see his eyes, even if you sit beside him and make an effort.

  “Hello, Ellery,” I say. I turn the music down: “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over.”

  “Hi,” Ellery says.

  Carly, ignored, noses his chest. “Hello, Carly,” Ellery says.

  “How was school?” I ask.

  “Wonderful,” says Ellery. “I learned a lot of new things today.”

  “I was there,” I say.

  “I know,” says Ellery. “Fiona Fitzhugh told me. She said you had your skirt on backward.”

  “I didn’t have my skirt on backward. It buttons up the back.”

  “Are you sure?” asks Ellery.

  Suddenly, I’m not sure. Have I been wearing it wrong all this time? “You can wear it either way,” I rationalize.

  “What were you doing in school?” Ellery asks. “Signing up for the bake sale?”

  “Is there going to be a bake sale?” I stupidly ask, before I realize he is being sarcastic.

  Ellery moans.

  “I was seeing Mrs. King. And the nurse. The male nurse.”

>   “I didn’t know I was diseased,” says Ellery.

  “About your sunglasses,” I say.

  “Ah,” says Ellery.

  “If you don’t stop wearing them, they’ll put you on ICE,” I say, proud of myself for remembering this vernacular. Maybe it makes up for my bake sale faux pas.

  “People say it’s actually cooler in ICE. You can put your head down on the desk and sleep if you want.”

  “Then it would suit you,” I say. Ellery smiles, but not being able to see his eyes, it’s hard to interpret this smile. I guess it’s a mean little smile, though.

  “And you’re doing irreparable damage to your retinas,” I say.

  “They can transplant retinas, now, can’t they?” Ellery asks.

  I think this is a smug remark, especially with poor Carly sitting here with her egg-white eyes. “If you were Carly, you wouldn’t say things like that,” I say.

  Ellery turns away from me, onto his side, so he’s facing the wall. He doesn’t say anything. From this angle he reminds me of Patrick. Patrick always slept on his side, his bony hip tenting the sheet, forming a little alpine mountainscape. Ellery usually sleeps on his back, the blankets rising smoothly over him, like water.

  The record finishes. The needle rises, and clicks itself off. The only sound is Carly’s labored breathing. “I’m still here,” I say.

  Ellery doesn’t answer.

  “Do you want me to turn the record over?”

  He still doesn’t answer. And then I notice his back moving: shaking, ever so slightly, the way it shakes when he’s crying, but trying to hold himself still.

  I should call Carly and go for a walk, but instead I go into my bedroom and look through Patrick’s things. If I had known he was going to die like that, I would have saved everything: his splayed toothbrushes, his outgrown sneakers, every hair that was ever cut from his head. All I have are report cards, pictures, and some Mother’s Day cards he made me in Sunday school. When he died, my sister, in a well-intentioned but misguided effort to comfort me, said maybe it was good that Ellery and he were twins, so much alike—that having Ellery was a little like still having Patrick. You have to be their mother to know how absurd that is. There was nothing alike about them. Their elbows were different. Their walks. They had their own auras. For instance, the afternoon I found the bathroom door locked, that awful quiet, I knew it would be Patrick I found inside, once the door was knocked down. I was right. Or: If one of them touched me lightly, with one finger, on my back, I could tell, without turning, without looking, whose finger it was.

  I start to make (canned) chili for dinner before I remember I sold all my pots. I keep missing things this way. The other night I went to vacuum and the vacuum was gone. I spoon the opened can of chili into Carly’s bowl and call her. She lumbers into the kitchen, smells the food, then sits down, confused, looking at, but not really seeing, me.

  “You don’t like it?” I say. “It’s chili.”

  Carly just stares. She looks sad. But then dogs always look sad, don’t they? That’s not true. Carly used to look happy. Sometimes she still grins.

  Ellery comes into the kitchen. The hair on one side of his head is bouffanted from sleep. “Is Daddy coming home for dinner?” he asks, although he knows his father is on the other side of our planet.

  “He should be home any minute,” I say.

  “Oh, good,” says Ellery. “It will be nice to see him. Are you cooking us a great dinner?”

  “You bet,” I say, grabbing his shoulders and kissing his neck, before he stops playing whatever game it is we’re playing.

  Ellery drives us down to Pronto! Pizza!. I’m a little worried about letting him drive with his sunglasses at night, but he appears to see fine, although he’s neurotic about signaling: He even puts his blinker on when he turns into the parking space.

  Ellery says he doesn’t care what kind of pizza we get, and to punish him for his apathy, I order pizza with green peppers, which I know he dislikes. He good-naturedly picks the peppers off his slices, making me feel terrible. I had expected he would complain. Children are always magnanimous when you’d rather they weren’t.

  “Daddy should call tonight,” I say.

  “Oh,” says Ellery.

  If I hadn’t ordered the green peppers I would remove them from my slices, too. They taste rubbery and inorganic.

  “Will you stay up and talk to him?”

  “Maybe,” says Ellery. “I’m kind of tired.”

  “You slept all afternoon.”

  Ellery shrugs. We eat for a while in silence. Ellery, the fastest eater I’ve ever known, finishes first and watches me. Or at least I think he’s watching (the sunglasses).

  “Do you want one of my slices?” I ask. “I can’t eat all of this.”

  “I’ve made up my mind,” Ellery says, ignoring my offer.

  “About what?”

  “The Philippines,” Ellery says.

  “What do you mean?” I’m not following him.

  “I’m not going.”

  I put my slice of pizza down, and seeing it, half-eaten on the paper plate, nauseates me. I wipe my greasy hands on a napkin, and cover the remaining pizza with it. “What are you talking about?”

  Ellery doesn’t say anything. How I wish he would take those sunglasses off.

  “What are you talking about?” I repeat, and for the first time, I realize I’ve been waiting for this: I know.

  “I’m not going to move to the Philippines. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “But I thought you wanted to. We’ve discussed all this. You’re the one who thought it would be so great …”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” says Ellery. “I still think you should go. I still think it makes sense for you and Daddy.”

  “And it doesn’t make sense for you?”

  “No. I have one more year of high school. I’ll finish it here, and then get a job. Or go to college, or something.”

  “And where will you live?”

  “Well, at the rate you’re selling the house, I can live there. And if you finally sell it, I can live with someone, or something. Or get an apartment.”

  “And I’m supposed to move to the Philippines and just leave you here?”

  “I’m almost eighteen,” Ellery says. He begins to stack our refuse on the tray.

  “Wait,” I say. I take my paper cup of soda and drink from it. Ellery takes the tray and dumps it in the garbage can. He studies the jukebox. I don’t know what to do. I feel as if I might start crying, but something about flexing my cheek muscles to sip through the straw comforts me, helps hold my face together. I drain the soda and keep on sucking, inhaling nothing but cold, sweet air.

  We drive for a while in silence. Punky-looking kids stand under the streetlights drinking beer.

  “Can I drop you off and take the car?” Ellery asks.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Fiona Fitzhugh’s. We have a physiology lab practical tomorrow and Fiona has the cat.”

  “What cat?”

  “The cat we’re dissecting.”

  “You’re dissecting a cat? That’s disgusting. Why can’t you dissect frogs?”

  “One does,” Ellery says patiently, “in biology, in ninth grade. In physiology, one dissects cats. Fiona and I are going to quiz each other.”

  “It sounds romantic,” I say.

  “It’s not a date,” Ellery says.

  “You’re allowed to take the cats home?”

  “Not really. But Mr. Gey says that as long as he doesn’t see you take it and as long as it’s back in the refrigerator by 8:30 he doesn’t mind. Fiona has this huge pocketbook. It was easy. Want to hear something?”

  “Is it about dissecting cats?”

  “No,” says Ellery. “People.”

  “Sure,” I say, brightly.

  “Mr. Gey was telling us, in the lab where he studies—he’s getting his Ph.D. or something—they’re dissecting cadavers, and they keep them in this big walk-in
freezer and inside the freezer, on the door is a sign that says “YOU ARE NOT LOCKED IN!” Who do you think it’s for?

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think it’s for the cadavers, you know, if they come back to life, or something, or the people dissecting them, like if they freak out in there?”

  “I have no idea,” I say. “Who?”

  Ellery chuckles. A strange, forgotten sound. “No one knows. Mr. Gey had us vote. With our heads down and everything.”

  “Does Mr. Gey have a problem?” I ask.

  “Mr. Gey is cool,” Ellery says.

  “Oh,” I say. “Well, who did you vote for?”

  For a second Ellery doesn’t answer. Then he turns to look at me, the streetlights reflecting across his sunglasses. “I voted twice,” he says. “I think the sign was there for everyone involved.”

  Ellery drops me off, and I walk across tufted, crab-grassy lawn, the only imperfect one on our block. There’s a note stuck in the front door. It says: “Brought my daughter to see your furniture. Sorry to miss you. We’ll come back tomorrow eve. (Wed) If you won’t be here will you kindly call?” It’s signed Doris Something and underneath that is a phone number. On the other side is a P.S.: “You should leave lights on to discourage burglars.”

  I’m counting the money in the dog biscuit box when the phone rings. I’ve counted three hundred dollars, and there’s still more. Ellery came home about an hour ago, smelling faintly of formaldehyde, took a shower, and went to bed.

  It’s tomorrow morning in the Philippines. When I talk to Leonard in these circumstances—he a day ahead of me—I feel as if I’ve lost him somehow, as if he’s lived longer than I; that in the hours he’s gained he’s learned something I don’t know. It’s the time, not the distance, that separates us. In the Philippines, Leonard goes home for lunch. He has a chauffeur and a housekeeper. I’m going to love it when I get there. That’s what he tells me, when we talk, once a week.

  The operator asks for me, and I say I’m me, and then Leonard gets on, and says hello. Sometimes he sounds far away, and sometimes he sounds like he’s calling from next door. Tonight he sounds far away. He says he misses me; that he loves me.