Hello, I Must Be Going

by Dyan Sheldon

  “It was nothing, Dad. Just stuff.”

  Today, at the lake, he thought he saw Sorrel again. She was sitting on a multi-coloured beach towel decorated with chameleons. Sorrel was known for being a meticulous and coordinated dresser like her mother, but today she was wearing a fraying, floppy straw hat, plaid boy’s swim trunks and a white halter top. He couldn’t see the title of the book she was reading, but he did see that her nails were silver. She looked unbelievably fantastic. And so relaxed, as if she didn’t have a care in the world – which was not a look she’d monopolized in her lifetime. He was overwhelmed with the desire to touch her, to speak to her. When he’s seen her before he’s wanted to run away from her; this time he wanted to run to her. He jumped down from his station and nearly landed on a woman who wanted to know the lake policy on inflatables. When he finally got away from her, Sorrel had picked up her things and was almost at the pavilion. Orlando ran. He could sense people turning to watch him, thinking there was some emergency – somebody drowning on the deck – but he didn’t care. He galloped across the beach and sped past the café. Orlando is an accomplished runner, but somehow she always stayed several yards ahead of him. As his feet hit the tarmac of the car park he shouted, “Sorrel! Sorrel! Wait up!” Which was when he realized there was no one there.

  His father, however, has not disappeared, but is still glowering at him. “Stuff? What stuff?”

  “Just stuff,” he says now. “There’s going to be a lot to do this year.”

  “You bet your sorry ass there is. This is a big year for you.” Bernard’s cutlery clanks after every sentence. “You better be on the ball, mister. This isn’t the time for you to get moody and have stuff on your mind. You have to be sharp and focused.” There’s a pool of bloody juice where his meat used to be. He pushes away his plate. “You haven’t been skipping your extra practice, have you?”

  Suzanne lifts the salad bowl and wants to know if anyone wants more.

  “I’ve never missed a session,” says Orlando.

  “I hope not. And you better not be sloppy about your training. You can’t drop the ball now.” Not unless it’s straight through the hoop. “You just better be keeping up. You know I can always check.”

  Oh, he knows that. Officer Gwinnet is acquainted or on a first-name basis with everybody from the mayor to the town clerk, from the superintendent of schools to the janitor – and everyone in between. And the few people he doesn’t know know him. He’s on the same bowling team as the basketball coach, the football coach and the guidance counsellor. Orlando might as well be living with the head of the FBI; there’s nothing he does in this town, or even in the county, that his father can’t (and usually won’t) find out about. When he was younger, if Orlando gave some grown-up lip, accidentally broke something, took a shortcut through someone else’s property – anything, no matter how big or how small – his father would know about it before Orlando got home. It’s always been like that, but since Raylan was killed it’s been much worse. Officer Gwinnet watches Orlando like a hawk watching a rabbit. Even last year when Orlando broke the diet his father set for him and got a burger, the manager of the McDonald’s called Officer Gwinnet to tell him while Orlando was still in the restaurant. And when the other guys will sneak a beer or smoke a spliff while they’re watching a movie, Orlando sticks with plain old water and air in case it turns out that walls can talk and also use the phone. When Orlando and his mother do go against Officer Gwinnet, they cover their tracks carefully and make very sure there are no witnesses. Which is something they’ve become very good at over the years. A small but solid example of the law promoting crime.

  “No worries, Dad. I’m keeping up with everything.”

  “You better be. We can’t afford for you to slack off now. You have your provisional, but you’re not in yet.”

  “I’m not slacking off, Dad. I just have a lot to think about.”

  Officer Gwinnet taps his fingers on the table, waiting for dessert. “There’s only one thing should be on your mind, and that’s UCLA.” The college of Bernard Gwinnet’s choice. But being picked for the team on condition that he continues to perform is not the same as being on the team. “This next year is the rehearsal. If you mess up now, it’s over.”

  Orlando’s mother gets up and starts clearing the dishes. Orlando would help her if his father weren’t here, but Officer Gwinnet is here – and he believes that each member of the family has a job. His job is to maintain law and order in the county and support and manage his family; his wife’s is to take care of that family and the house in which they live. Orlando’s “job” (it has been pointed out more than once) is to become a professional basketball player, not do the dishes. Neither Suzanne’s nor Orlando’s job description includes “giving Bernard a hard time”.

  In the momentary silence, Suzanne says, “Guess who I ran into today.” She says this brightly, changing the subject.

  “Don’t keep us in suspense, Suzanne.” Her husband sounds so bored you’d think she’d been doing all the talking for the last forty minutes. “Tell us.”

  “Meryl Groober.” She sets the dishes on the counter. “Poor thing. She still doesn’t look like herself. I don’t think she’s slept much since the tragedy.”

  Orlando’s heart groans. Of course. Who else could it possibly be? If they lived in a city of millions and not a town of thousands Meryl Groober is still the one person his mother would run into. Even before his father responds, Orlando knows that, as diversionary tactics go, this one is like waving a slab of raw meat at a charging lion, hoping to make it go away. Dead children are a sensitive issue for his father.

  “Nothing poor about her,” snaps Officer Gwinnet. “And it’s not a tragedy, it’s a self-inflicted wound. She brought it on herself.”

  Orlando wills his mother not to answer, to change the subject again to something less charged – like national health insurance or abortion (two topics about which her husband feels especially strongly). But, of course, if she could read minds she probably would never have married his father.

  “Oh, Bernard, I don’t think that’s true. I know what you think, but I still believe it was an accident.”

  “You can believe what you want,” says her husband, “but I told you, that’s not what we on the force believe.”

  Orlando is now giving them his complete attention. He has no idea what they’re talking about, though he has the uneasy feeling he could make a good guess. “What? What wasn’t an accident?”

  “Don’t pay him any mind,” his mother says to Orlando. To her husband she says, “What does it matter, Bernard? Whatever did happen that night, it was still a terrible thing. It’s still a tragedy.” She puts a slice of pie in front of him, and a bowl of fruit salad in front of Orlando. “Losing their daughter like that is tearing those poor people apart.”

  “I know what it’s like to lose a child, Suzanne. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t live through that hell.” As if he lives through that hell alone; as if his wife and son feel nothing and never have. “But there’s a big difference between an accident and a suicide. Raylan was unlucky.” He picks up his fork, holding it in front of him like a gun. “Sorrel Groober didn’t just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Which would be passed out drunk without a seat belt in the passenger seat of a car driven by a girl who’d been drinking nearly as much as you. No one has ever said out loud that it was Officer Gwinnet who dropped the ball that time, not realizing that Raylan liked to drink and break curfew and drive fast with his girlfriend. And no one has ever corrected his opinion that it was all the girlfriend’s fault. “A suicide, it’s the parents who are to blame. One way or another, they drove her to it.”

  Orlando has a sudden image of Sorrel sitting in the back seat of the Groobers’ hatchback, being driven to the open arms of Death.

  “If it was a suicide,” murmurs his mother. “You don’t know for sure.”

  Orlando shakes off the image of Sorrel speeding towards Death an
d turns to his father. “Are you saying you think Sorrel killed herself? Why are you saying that?”

  “Because it’s probably true.” Officer Gwinnet stabs at his pie. “Rain or no rain, there was no way she didn’t see what was coming. She just waited till the last second and jumped out in front of the car. Lucky she didn’t kill the driver.”

  “He’s full of it.” Standing behind his father, wearing an ivory tutu, ivory leotard and ivory pointe shoes, and not being driven anywhere, is Sorrel. She’s in first position. “Trust me. I was there. I know what happened.”

  Orlando manages not to let his jaw drop, but his spoon clatters to the floor.

  “For God’s sake, boy! Can’t you even hold a simple utensil any more?”

  “Sorry.” If he could glue his eyes to the tabletop, he would.

  “No harm done,” says his mother. “I’ll bring you another one.”

  “Bad parenting always shows,” his father goes on. “People like them. Weak. Over-indulgent. Him the college professor and her all la-di-da. Making that girl think she was something special and could do what she wanted just because she had a pretty face.”

  Sorrel moves seamlessly to second then to third position. “That’s not true, either. But even if it was, it’s better than thinking you know everything because you wear a badge.”

  Oblivious, his father goes on. “Think they’re better than everybody else, the Groobers. And that girl, she looked like one of them dolls.”

  “Crapola.” Sorrel does a grand plié. “I looked much better than any doll.”

  “Probably spoiled the girl till she was as rotten as apples left on the ground all winter,” says Officer Gwinnet, unaware that he’s been contradicted. “But they’d never see that, would they? Too up their own butts. Good parents know their kids. They know what’s going on with them.”

  Suzanne returns to the table with her own slice of pie and a spoon for Orlando.

  Orlando is mentally singing something very loudly – one of the old rock anthems that he likes to play while he’s running – trying to drown out his father’s words (or at least obscure them a bit). But he has to look up to take the spoon from his mother, and sees that now Sorrel is doing fouetté turns.

  “What the hell are you gawping at?” Pie filling falls from Officer Gwinnet’s fork as he shakes it in Orlando’s direction. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Orlando can’t even manage a choked “Of course not”. He feels as if his blood has turned to granite. Behind his father, Sorrel moves into a brisé en arrière.

  “I think Meryl would be grateful if she could see Sorrel’s ghost,” his mother says as she sits down. Suzanne may not be very aggressive, but she is remarkably intrepid. “At least that would give her a little comfort.”

  Or maybe not, thinks Orlando as Sorrel executes a grand jeté from one end of the kitchen to the other.

  “She should’ve raised her right in the first place,” judges Officer Gwinnet. “That’s what she should’ve done. Raise them right and you don’t have any problems.”

  Unless they ignore your strictures about not abusing alcohol, staying out late, dating girls you don’t approve of and breaking the speed limit, and then die in a car crash.

  Suzanne cuts a dainty triangle from her pastry. “But if you saw how upset she is, Bernard—”

  “She’d’ve ended up a lot more upset if that girl had lived.” Officer Gwinnet shovels a large forkful of pie into his mouth. “Believe me. She was trouble, that one. You could tell just by looking at her. I always knew it.”

  Orlando’s eyes are focused on the tablecloth. It’s patterned with sailboats, starfish, seagulls, sandcastles and pails and shovels – his mother likes to keep things seasonal. He’s particularly intrigued by the sailboats, if only because he wishes one would pull up outside and whisk him away. He is aware of Sorrel doing brisés volés in the space between the table on one side of the room and the sink on the other – but he is refusing to look her way. And then, despite his best efforts, he hears his father say (so clearly he might be shouting in his ear): “She was trouble, that one. You could tell just by looking at her.”

  Sorrel stops dancing. “What the hell does he mean by that?” Orlando’s still looking at the tablecloth, but he knows that she’s talking to him. “What does he mean? Trouble how? Tell what?”

  Does she expect him to answer her? Even if Orlando knew, he wouldn’t be able to answer. He’s so shocked about what’s happening that he’s temporarily lost his own power of speech. Has his father forgotten that Orlando went out with Sorrel, that they never stopped being friends?

  “Bernard,” Suzanne almost whispers. “Orlando—” She remembers Orlando and Sorrel dated even if her husband doesn’t. “The poor girl’s dead.”

  “If you ask me, the boy’s better off without her,” says her husband. “She was a distraction he doesn’t need.”

  “Bernard. Please.”

  “Don’t ‘Bernard’ me. Being dead doesn’t make her an angel.”

  “And bossing everyone around doesn’t mean you’re always right,” says Sorrel.

  Which finally makes Orlando look up. Sorrel is standing a foot or two from Officer Gwinnet, watching him the way you might watch a buzzard pick at the carcass of a puppy. Officer Gwinnet is a man who commands respect from one and all (and demands it). Sorrel was always polite to him and polite about him, never saying what she really thought. Which Orlando now realizes wasn’t very much. But that, of course, was when she was alive. She makes a hand gesture that Orlando is pretty sure she never made in her life, and sticks out her tongue.

  Oblivious to this, Orlando’s mother suddenly jumps up. “You know what,” she says, “I think I’ll have a cup of tea.”

  When Orlando looks back to Sorrel, she’s disappeared.

  And who could blame her?

  It’s the first day of the new school year.

  Celeste stares at the mirror, telling herself that she looks good; that she’s okay. “Everything’s going to be fine,” she tells her reflection. “You’re a senior. There’s nothing to be nervous about.”

  Which should be true. She is a senior; she’s done this before. Indeed, if we’re counting, this is the thirteenth first day of school for Celeste. By now it should be as easy as turning on her phone. And, normally, it would be. Before she met Sorrel, Celeste always found the first day of the school year stressful. New classmates, new teachers; not certain what to expect. Celeste was unsure of herself and considered odd by others. Once she and Sorrel were friends, however, that changed. Sorrel had enough confidence for both of them.

  “You’re winding yourself up about nothing,” she tells her image in the mirror. “It’s going to be just like always.”

  No it won’t. If all Celeste had to worry about is new classmates and new teachers, she’d be fine. Today, however, she has the absence of Sorrel to worry about. Everywhere she looks there will be things to remind her. Every corner she turns she’ll expect to see Sorrel coming towards her with her model-on-a-runway walk, or expect to hear Sorrel hurrying behind her shouting, “Oi! Wait up!” The school is a minefield of memories: the spot where everything fell out of Sorrel’s purse; the place where they always waited for each other; the corner in the library where they were sitting when they got the giggles and were told to leave. Sorrel’s locker; Sorrel’s favourite table in the cafeteria; Sorrel’s favourite spot when they sat outside; the people she liked; the boys she dated; the girls who didn’t like her; the teacher who gave her detention.

  And, in the midst of it all, Celeste. Celeste alone. Alone and vulnerable. The students and teachers who used to make her feel nervous and insecure will make her feel nervous and insecure again. Without Sorrel, she’ll go back to being the odd one out; the one who doesn’t fit in.

  When she gets to school, she’s surprised to find Orlando and Ruben waiting for her.

  “We figured today’s going to be pretty weird,” says Ruben, “so we should kind of band together.” />
  “We didn’t want you to think we don’t know it could be a little rough for you,” says Orlando.

  And Celeste doesn’t want them to see how grateful she is. “I didn’t know you cared,” she jokes.

  “Of course we do,” says Ruben.

  Orlando winks. “We just don’t always show it.”

  But once the first bell rings the boys go off in different directions, and Celeste really is on her own. Be normal, she tells herself. It’s just another day. And, to her surprise and relief, everyone else is normal, too. Teachers smile and ask her how she is. Ready for your last year? Kids she’s friendly with are glad to see her. Hi. How was your Summer? What classes do you have? Who’s your homeroom teacher? You in the orchestra this year? Almost everyone avoids the topic of dead best friends the way you would avoid a deep hole in the middle of the pavement. The only ones who mention Sorrel are those she hasn’t seen since before the accident because they were already away. Heard what happened. Really sorry. It really sucks. Celeste goes to her classes and no one whispers when she walks in. She strolls down the hall by herself, trying to appear relaxed, nodding to people she knows, and no one looks the other way. The routine of school takes over, and the morning goes quickly enough. There are periods of as long as five or even ten minutes when Celeste forgets that Sorrel is gone.

  At lunch, Celeste sits with girls she knows from the orchestra – the cellist, a viola player and two violinists. In the small world of the Beaconspoint High School orchestra, the Christmas concert will be the major event of the year, which at least gives them all something to talk about that isn’t the most recent funeral they attended.

  Orlando and Ruben are meeting Celeste after last period to walk home together. Celeste stops in the girls’ toilets on her way out, and takes a stall at the end. She’s been concentrating so hard on getting through the day and being as normal as sunshine that her mind starts to meander as soon as she sits down. She’s thinking about the sign she saw on the bulletin board outside the office – guitarist/mandolin player wanted for new band – and wondering if she should try for it and what her mother would say if she did and was actually asked to join when her phone bings: Orlando wanting to know where she is. Celeste texts back that she’s on her way, and gets ready to leave. She is aware, vaguely, that a group of girls has come in, talking together noisily, but then, just as she moves her hand to unbolt the door, Celeste hears Sorrel’s name.