Here So Far Away

by Hadley Dyer

  I was so unlike the person she thought I was. I could still feel where Francis’s hand had gripped my hair.

  Dad was standing at the stove. He had on his prosthetic for a change, but somehow, watching him eat Bird’s custard directly from the pot, I doubted he’d been really going at the rehab. Matty had become obsessed with catching him doing his exercises, and rarely did. I slipped a wooden spoon out of the jar on the counter. “Bit early for planting seeds, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Just daydreaming. When I was a girl, Grandad and I used to read seed catalogs like bedtime stories.”

  I coated the spoon with the thick, bright yellow custard. “You’re always saying you want to start the garden over. What would you do instead?”

  “Ornamental grass,” she said without hesitating. “Real tall, big beautiful plumes, all sorts.”

  “Paying for grass is ridiculous,” Dad said. “If you want tall plants, get that joe-pye weed. My mother always said that nothing fills a plot up like joe-pye weed.”

  Mum gave Dad a ferocious glare. He may have taken over the house, but the garden was still hers, and had no place in it for his opinion. “It might be ridiculous, but I have a credit at the nursery to use up,” she said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Back in the fall I helped a customer and she ended up relandscaping her whole yard. Andrew was so happy, he gave me store credit. Said there’s a job waiting for me if I want one.”

  “I hope this Andrew understood when you told him you have your hands full at home.”

  “Well, no, I didn’t.”

  “Why, because you’ve already made up your mind that I’m not going back to my old position?”

  “Haven’t you?”

  Dad took the pot from the stove and clanged it into the sink.

  I was cowering in the corner, but Mum didn’t flinch. How long had she been working up to telling him about this?

  “I have not,” Dad said.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Mum said. “But we have a mortgage to pay. Two kids near ready for university—”

  “Why don’t you bring in some sewing?”

  “No money in that.”

  “So talk to Beryl about selling Tupperware. I don’t see why you have to be running out to the nursery every five minutes when you can have the ladies over here.”

  “Well, Paul, because that won’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Get me out of this house. It isn’t big enough. It just isn’t goddamn big enough!”

  My mother had grown up in a cabin with three brothers, her parents, and for a while there, a set of grandparents. Now she lived in house with more bedrooms than people. She didn’t mean she needed more space. She meant our house was too small to be sharing with him.

  Dad grabbed his walker and did his best to storm out. He paused in the doorway. “George, did you say you’re going to the farm tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why not Thursday?”

  “I don’t always go on Thursdays.”

  “When will you be back?”

  What was he playing at? Were we going to pretend that he suddenly had a clue, any clue at all, when my earlobe had just been in Francis’s mouth and my hamper probably held traces of his DNA?

  “Ten thirty. Maybe eleven.”

  “I’m holding you to eleven. Marlene, when you’ve calmed down, I could use a tea.”

  He lurched onward. Only my father would attempt a grand exit to stage left as though anyone would be sorry to see him go.

  Mum stared down at the catalog, lips pressed together tightly. “I’ll do it,” I said. “You want a cup too?”

  Into the silence the radio announcer boomed: “And finally, a special request for Chad Harkness of Greeeenville! If you’re still on your way to the grocery store, please pick up an extra bag of milk for your aunt Delores!”

  Before I met Francis I used to think that love was A plus B equals C. That if you were good friends with someone and you thought they were attractive enough to have sex with, that was love. But C is not A plus B—C is C, and I didn’t know how exactly you got to C, but I did know it had something to do with conversation, at least for me, and wanting to take care of that person, needing to know they’re okay, plus an almost irresistible desire to snack on their neck.

  As I drove out to meet Francis, for a record two times in one day, I thought about the impossibility that my parents had ever had that. It seemed like they’d gotten married for what you might call practical reasons. Dad needed someone to pick up after him, inject his medication, and force-feed his children Solomon Gundy twice a year to build their characters via briny pickled herring. For Mum, being married to a police officer, that was making it. The dangers a cop faced in the valley weren’t much worse than what her family had faced at the meatpacking plant, in the forests, at sea. Now she was worried about money and running away from home because Dad had stepped on a pebble.

  Maybe we were lucky, Francis and me, not to have a dream about what our lives were supposed to be like or to be sure about what we wanted. If you don’t have expectations, you can’t let anyone down.

  “Say car,” Francis said, after we’d given the lighthouse floors a good scrubbing, as I’d come to think of it.

  “No.”

  “Say it. Say car.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, fine. . . . Say car.”

  “Car!”

  He rolled over laughing. “I found George’s accent. She left it in the . . .”

  “Ugch. Car?”

  He cracked up again.

  “Who’s the adult here?” I pushed him onto his side so I could draw on his back. “Hey, did you get along with your parents?”

  “Uh-oh. Gonna get heavy.”

  “You never talk about them. I guess I already know you weren’t a big fan of your dad’s.”

  “He did introduce me to some good books, I’ll give him that. And I, in turn, gave him the greatest disappointment of his life.”

  “What was that?”

  “Me.” Francis rubbed his face vigorously. “Sorry, too heavy.”

  “What about your mum?”

  “Am I being interviewed or interrogated?”

  “Just curious.”

  “She’s hard.”

  “Hard to describe?”

  He rapped on the wood floor. “Hard. But the family’s pilfering of natural resources got me into private schools, so—”

  “Ooh, uniforms.”

  “This is why I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “Do you keep in touch with the people you went to school with?”

  “I’ve moved around too much, and I’m bad about letter writing. There are a few people I’ll visit when I can. Not so easy now. Can we change the subject?” He rolled me onto my back and pinned my shoulders to the floor. “Let’s see if George can say something romantic.”

  “She cannot.”

  “Come on, deep inside I bet you’re the most syrupy, sentimental—”

  “Get off me, you commie bastard.”

  I’d learned this in Modern World Problems: You can make any sentence more interesting by inserting the phrase “commie bastard.” For example, President Clinton plays the saxophone, the commie bastard. The drugstore is going to start opening on Sundays, the commie bastards.

  Francis tried it out. “Easter Bunny is coming, the commie bastard. Not bad, Frances.”

  “Thank you, Francis. The key is to be as random as possible.”

  “They’re giving me a medal, the commie bastards—”

  “I mean, you weren’t that good.”

  “No, the force. They’re giving me a medal for bravery. So that’s something.” He rolled back onto the floor beside me.

  “Why don’t you sound very happy about it?”

  “I am. It bothers me that you can’t come to the ceremony.”

  Was there a day on the horizon when Francis and I could be together, really together? I had never slept with him—
actually slept with him. What would that be like? Did he snore? Would he want to cuddle all night? I always slept with one leg on top of the blanket to stay cool; what would I do with a man in my bed? Just lying with him was like snuggling an electric space heater. Then again, what would it be like to not always be watching the clock, not wanting to say, It’s time, but also not wanting him always to be the one to say it?

  I hadn’t let myself think a lot about where we were headed. I’d been riding on this blind faith that, somehow, everything would work itself out once I’d graduated. Odds were against that. If Dad didn’t go back to his old job in the summertime, there was a good chance Francis would get a permanent position in the valley while I went off to school. And if my dad did go back to his old job, they might reshuffle within the ranks at the detachment again, and Francis could be transferred. They could send him anywhere in the country.

  “George, you’re crying.”

  “I don’t know why . . . It’s not like I caught my arm in a car door.”

  “What are you talking about, car door?”

  “I love you.” Now I was bawling.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I love you too.”

  “No, I’m sorry. You’re not supposed to say it first if you’re not sure someone is going to say it back.”

  “I did say it back.”

  “Only because I’m crying.”

  “George, this is how much I love you. I love you even though you have never embraced the art and the soul of Serbian disco.”

  I wiped my eyes. “This is how much I love you. I don’t mind that you’re wearing a T-shirt and no bottoms like a giant baby.”

  We had been in a hurry to get our clothes off.

  “This is how much I love you. I’m here with you. Which is crazy. George, what we’re doing is crazy.”

  “I know.” I was really scared.

  “That’s how much I love you.”

  My skin was raw where it had been rubbed against his day-old whiskers, exfoliated smooth and almost hot to the touch. I was going to have to powder the bejesus out of my face to cover it up. I kissed him anyway.

  It was after midnight when I got home. I braced myself as I turned into the driveway, half expecting the Sergeant to be waiting on the stoop, but all of the lights in the house were off, even the one over the front door.

  No one stirred when I came in or when I tripped coming out of the bathroom and hit the bookshelf in the hallway. In the morning, I woke up with my bedside lamp on and still in my clothes from the night before. When I went downstairs, Dad was alone in the kitchen and the only thing he said was, “Get me my cigarettes.”

  Twenty-Four

  Mum was smoothing down her hair in the mirror of the front hallway, her purse over her shoulder. “Where are you going so early?” I asked. It was only quarter to eight on a Tuesday morning.

  “To work.”

  I was slow to get it. “At the nursery? Dad let you take the job?”

  The look she gave me withered my nonexistent balls. I guess let was the wrong word.

  “Now. George. I’ll be doing shift work, which means my schedule will be all over the place. I’ll be home by two today; tomorrow, I’ll be out all afternoon.”

  “What will you do at a nursery this time of year?”

  “Oh, wreaths, houseplants, seed inventory, bookkeeping . . .”

  “Is there anything to eat?” Dad called from the kitchen.

  “I’m on my way out the door! Georgie, make your father some breakfast.”

  “I gotta go too. Bill’s all banged up from hockey, so I’m driving him to school, and I promised we’d stop for a donut at the Grunt.”

  Mum hesitated before she yelled, “Matty!” He appeared at the top of the stairs. “Make breakfast for your father, please. Cereal, toast, and orange juice. Don’t let him have jam. Coffee’s already made. And if you have time, make him a sandwich for lunch too.”

  “I don’t know where everything is.”

  I pointed toward the kitchen. “Fridge. Chicken, mayo, lettuce.”

  “No lettuce!” Dad called. “What about my insulin?”

  Mum looked at her watch, then up at Matthew. “You have time before the bus.”

  “Oh no!” he said. “I’m not sticking a needle into anyone!”

  “Your father will help you.”

  “Why can’t he do it himself?”

  “You know why,” I said, following Mum to the door. “Because he stabs himself like a psychopath.”

  “This is what they call exposured, dear,” Mum said. “It’s good for you. If you feel weak, you know the drill.”

  “Head between the legs,” Matthew said miserably.

  Ernest Burns was one of those people whose hand shot up the moment a teacher asked a question. Some teachers pretended not to see him, or they’d make a lame joke about Ernest being the only person who’s taking an interest. Thing is, it’s not like Ernest always had the right answer—or an answer. Sometimes it wasn’t about the subject at all. Like in history he’d go: “I know this is a little off topic, but what’s the average life span of the Arctic snow monkey?”

  That morning in biology, Mr. Huskins kept rotating between the chalkboard and the opposite side of the classroom from where Ernest sat. Finally, Ernest called out, “Mr. Huskins! Please, Mr. Huskins!”

  Huskins slowly pivoted around and said, very wearily, “Yes, Ernest? Do you have a question?”

  “No, sir. It’s just, Mr. Huskins, my desk is going to fall apart.”

  Then it did. Out popped the last screw holding it together, and Ernest and his desk collapsed onto the floor.

  No one moved.

  “You probably want me to ask the janitor for a new desk,” Ernest said.

  Mr. Huskins just nodded and turned back to the board.

  “That’s your answer about nurture versus nature right there,” Bill said as we crossed the hall to the lab. He was back in his old plaid shirts again. Maybe Lisa was too busy with the play to patrol his wardrobe.

  “You’re saying it’s in Ernest’s biology to have his desk fall apart?”

  “I’m saying it’s not like he doesn’t know what the difference is between cool and not cool—”

  “Does he?”

  “He must be able to see that cool people don’t wear pants that are three inches above the ankles or ask a lot of dumb questions—”

  “Or spend so much time on the floor. Shelley-with-an-E should create a new yearbook category: most likely to fall into an open manhole.”

  We snickered. Open manhole.

  “That’s his deal,” Bill said. “Can’t fight nature. Tracy hooked up with someone.”

  He slid it in there so slickly that I almost didn’t catch what he’d said.

  “Oh, buddy.” I tried to hug him, but he was already turning away to check the equipment at our station, so we ended up in an awkward T-shape position.

  “What is happening?” Bill said.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re squeezing my bruises.”

  “I’m sorry.” I flicked donut crumbs off his collar and let him go. “Who’d she hook up with?”

  “My cousin Kenny.”

  “Geez.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Isn’t that breaking some kind of code, for both of them?”

  “Yup.”

  I couldn’t read him at all, so I just said: “I guess sometimes good people do bad things.”

  “Uh, no. Bad people do bad things.” He flipped open his binder so violently it flew off the counter and hit the floor with a loud bang.

  “Oops,” I said to all the eyeballs now looking at us, jarred and otherwise.

  “Doing bad things is what makes people bad,” Bill said as I set the binder in front of him. “That’s the only thing that makes them bad. Here’s a biological fact: No one who was born bad just hasn’t gotten around to doing bad things.”

  Maybe, but bad was in the eyes of the beholder. All hell would break lo
ose if anyone found out about Francis and me, and there would be nothing we could say to make anyone understand, but there was also nothing anyone could say that could convince me that what we were doing was wrong.

  “Just out of curiosity,” I asked, “how many bad things do you have to do to officially become a bad person?”

  “Are you saying that Tracy doing Kenny is a gray area? Whatever. We’re broken up.”

  For now, I thought, but there was always a chance they’d get back together. In the end, it wouldn’t work out, that I was sure of, because whatever force it was that kept dragging those two toward each other, it wasn’t real love. Real love is deeper. Stickier. Bigger. Francis and I were big-time in love, and we were navigating our whole crazy situation with sharp, practiced strokes, while Bill and Tracy and everyone else at school splashed around in circles like they had no idea they were paddling giant pumpkins. A whole lot of drama that wasn’t getting them anywhere.

  Huskins tossed a dissection tray on the counter in front of us.

  Fetal pig.

  “You’ll have to make the first cut,” I said to Bill. “That looks too much like someone I know.”

  “You need to get better at projecting your anger,” he said, taking the knife I held out to him.

  Francis was leaning on his cop car in the school parking lot. The final bell had rung, and the students streaming out of the building were giving him a wide berth. He gestured me over.

  I slipped past Nat and Doug, who were sitting on the front steps, talking heatedly. Bill had said that he was meeting Nat in the library to study, but it seemed like he’d be waiting a long time. She was poking Doug’s shoulder with her twiggy finger.

  “I had to give a talk about drug-free schools to the tenth graders, so I brought your pay,” Francis said. The envelope he passed me was empty. “Could we meet somewhere to talk?”

  Something was wrong. Very wrong. One of Francis’s legs was crossed over the other, all casual, except his foot was vibrating almost violently. He was having trouble meeting my eyes. All my animal instincts told me to run.

  “Sorry, I have a biology quiz to study for,” I said, shifting my weight heavily onto my heels, as though that would tether me to the ground.