Here So Far Away

by Hadley Dyer

  I dreamt. About what, I can’t remember now. Something curious. Violent. Then whoever was sitting behind me kicked the bottom of my seat and I was back in the classroom but somehow also still in the dream. It pulled on me like a bath of molasses, and I couldn’t climb all the way out.

  Slowly, faces appeared, gawking at me with huge grins. You’d think they were witnessing a Christmas miracle: Thank you, Jesus, for bestowing this spectacle upon us, we surely do believe. And it could have been Christmas, for all I knew. I couldn’t have told you my own name.

  “Wake UP,” said Mr. Gifford, I suspect not for the first time.

  “I . . .”

  I retched. More specifically, I belch-retched in front of the entire class, and now scenery was flying by—desks and classroom walls and lockers and posters and mirrors and stalls—and then I was staring into a toilet bowl where bobbed a tidy wad of paper in a bath of very yellow pee. I retched again, brought up bile, and broke into a cold sweat.

  I sat on the floor with my back against the metal stall. Lisa was gazing down at me.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “You were snoring.”

  “What? No.”

  “And not just a little. Big-daddy dinosaur snores.”

  Closing my eyes made me dizzy again, so I focused on the toilet paper dispenser. “I think I fainted.” I pointed to my subnasal disaster zone. “Last night too.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “No. I broke the fall with my face.”

  She didn’t laugh. “When you came to, you were the wrong color,” she said. “Besides the shite makeup. Are you sick?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Do you . . . do you think you might be pregnant?”

  What made her say that, when I’d gotten thinner, not heavier?

  “No chance.”

  Anymore.

  “Sorry if that sounded . . . My cousin Deanna fainted a lot when she was in her first trimester. Remember her? She was in the skating club.”

  “Yeah, I do. That brown cow bitch knocked me down during ‘The Farmer in the Dell.’”

  I said it jokingly, but in the back of my mind I heard the echo of what Lisa said when I hit Christina. You bitch.

  And yet Christina had apologized. If that was because she knew about Francis and me, wouldn’t she have told Lisa, if not the entire school? But Lisa wasn’t looking at me with that same pity, only worry. It was enough to make me hope that Christina had been talking about something else.

  “You were totally going to skate in the Olympics if it weren’t for Deanna,” Lisa said.

  “One hundred percent.”

  She smiled, then caught herself and cleared her throat, the concern in her eyes retreating. “I’d better take you to the office.”

  “That’s alright.”

  “Come on. Oh, and sorry about your sweater.”

  As she pulled me up I saw my sleeve was out of shape where she’d grabbed me and dragged my arse to the bathroom. Knowing Lisa, she may have meant that she was sorry that I’d worn it—except that her own sweater was ratty, and her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail with a regular elastic band, as though she’d just rolled out of bed. She hooked my arm in hers and we walked too fast, considering, saying nothing more. A silent march toward the school secretaries, who took one look at me and closed in. I felt Lisa release my arm. “Lise—wait,” I said. She was already walking away.

  Thirty-Four

  Since my mother couldn’t be reached at work and my dad couldn’t drive even if he were picking up the phone, Matthew had to come home with me in case I got woozy again. What he was supposed to do when I fainted at the wheel was unclear, so basically, it would be a two-for-one special if I wrapped the car around a telephone pole.

  Which suited me fine. “Why are we going this way?” he said as I turned the car onto the old highway.

  “It’s my fault you’re missing band practice,” I said. “Let me make it up to you.”

  Matty was one of those winter ice cream people. I wasn’t, but the vanilla sludge at Dairy Queen felt good sliding down my throat. “It’s tasty, yeah?” he said, licking chocolate sauce off his spoon. “There’s no such thing as good food or bad food. Sometimes food just makes us happy.”

  “Why are you talking like a Schoolhouse Rock! message?” Oh. “Do you think I have an eating disorder?”

  “No, I . . . You don’t eat much lately.”

  “You’re the one who kept saying I needed to lose weight.”

  “Not really, though,” he said. “I was only kidding.” His face twisted with the regret of a thousand butt jokes. “You don’t need to be on a diet.”

  “Aw, buddy, I’m not. Promise. I’ve just been kind of stressed out. You know what would make me feel better?”

  “What?”

  “If someone could tell me what’s going on with Christina.”

  His spoon hovered in front of his mouth. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, she was being weird this morning. Did she and Joshua break up?”

  “Someone said she dumped him for Skateboarder Brad.”

  That was disappointing. Skateboarder Brad was the best of the Brads, a baby-faced bruiser with a confusing haircut. He deserved better. “Poor, dumb Brad,” I said.

  “Yeah. But lucky Joshua, right? Better off without her.”

  “Right, right. Here’s what I can’t work out. What it is that you, Matty, said to Christina to make her feel bad for me.”

  “What I said?” He did a pretty good job of pretending to search his memory. “Can’t think of anything. Maybe now that she and Joshua are done, she’s sorry about being mean to you.”

  I pulled his bowl out of reach. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, son.”

  “Okay, I—I told her that I was on her side after what you did. Sorry, threw you under the bus.”

  “And?”

  “That’s it.” He tried to grab the bowl. “And . . . I might have also said I did that to you.”

  “What, this?”

  “I saw her by the principal’s office this morning, and was all like, ‘I took care of it; she won’t be bothering you again’ or something like that.”

  “Why?”

  “The Elevens would have kicked my ass a long time ago if you weren’t around. Well, next year you won’t be around.”

  I pushed the bowl toward him. “So you decided that it would be better if she thinks you’re a psycho. And she believed you.”

  He drank the puddle of melted ice cream, wiped the chocolate moustache off his cupid’s-bow mouth, and tried not to smile. “Getting better at bullshitting, I guess.”

  I got to the end of the week without any more public retching, but it had been clear almost from the moment I went through the school doors that I couldn’t go back to leading my double life. My stupid body was trying to rat on me. The only reason Mum hadn’t been able to force me to the doctor yet was because he was on holiday. When he got back and couldn’t find something physically wrong, how long before people started connecting the dots? It’d be so much better if you could be sad part-time. Go into a chamber, get zapped with a thousand volts, scream into the void, come out and go for a nice run.

  Lying curled on my bed that Friday afternoon, the panic started rising again. Should I tell Bill, just to get it over with? We hadn’t said a word to each other since our fight, and he’d been out all week with a stomach bug. I didn’t know if we weren’t talking or hadn’t had a chance. If not Bill, who? If not telling, what? What do I do? What do I DO?

  I’d always felt like there was a point I was moving toward, small, vague, and distant, but there. For a long time the plan had been all about leaving with my friends (I mean, I’d chosen Aurora for them, not me), then I’d hung my future on Francis. Now what? Did I even want to feel better? This burning in my chest was all I had left of him. If it went away, it might be like he never was. I had nothing else to hold on to.

  I didn’t, bu
t maybe someone else did.

  When I got to the farm, I half expected the house to be dirty and neglected and moldering back to its former state, and of course it wasn’t. Rupert’s daughter, Sarah, was staying there when she came to visit Rupert from the city, and seemed to be keeping things up for the time being. A small suitcase was parked by the staircase. But the house felt hollow. Rupert’s yellow rocker had been moved out, and his TV and VCR, his stereo and music, his afghans and Wilfred’s birdcage. The fridge and cupboards were nearly empty. The composition of the air itself had changed. It was lighter and stale.

  I’d tried calling Rupert when my suspension ended, and was told he wasn’t seeing anyone but family. A nurse explained that the combination of an infection and “upset” had left him confused. “He was probably putting on a good front before. Sometimes at this age, when dementia is starting to creep in, the body gets sick and the mind goes too. He’ll be more like himself again when the infection clears up, and then you can have a nice visit.”

  I knew someone might have already shipped Francis’s belongings to his mother in Calgary, and had prepared myself for the sight of his empty drawers and closets. It was seeing Shaggy’s old mattress on Rupert’s bedroom floor that nearly set me off again. So I began my search for a keepsake to replace the lake stone in the other upstairs rooms. They couldn’t have gotten every single thing, I reckoned. Something would turn up—a shaving brush, a cassette tape, a shoe, or maybe—oh, please—a photograph. I went through all the closets and cupboards, the desk, the hutch, and medicine cabinet. I got on my knees and looked under the beds and chesterfields, and did a forensic search of the barn. I even checked the garbage pails and the tub and sinks for a sliver of Francis’s herb-mint soap. After three hours, I’d found only two pairs of black socks that were probably-but-not-for-sure Rupert’s.

  Swallowing tears, I went back up to Rupert’s bedroom, the one room I hadn’t thoroughly scoured, stepped over Shaggy’s mattress, and started again. It just wasn’t possible that I was leaving with only an old man’s socks.

  I was elbow-deep in Rupert’s underwear drawer when someone said: “Are you George?”

  A woman in her late forties was standing in the doorway gripping a fire poker. She dropped it to her side. “You are. I recognize you from Dad’s description,” she said.

  Sarah.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” I said. “Funny, I didn’t hear you coming up the stairs.”

  “I got lots of practice sneaking into the house when I was your age.”

  Sarah wasn’t at all what I’d expected. There was a black-and-white photograph of her as a blond-haired girl on Rupert’s fridge, and this woman had the same narrow nose, same deep-set eyes, but I’d always imagined she’d grown up to be a skinny, hard-edged, urban business lady. The reality was pink-cheeked and plump, with intensely chestnut-colored hair. She wore no makeup and was dressed in a brightly patterned sweater and large, dangly earrings.

  I eased my hands out of the drawer, no easy lie at the ready about what I was doing. “I bet I know what you’re looking for,” she said. “Found it when I was turning the house upside down for his magnifying glass. Hang on a sec.”

  She returned with a small package wrapped in brown paper. “I’ve been carrying it around in my purse,” she said, handing it to me. “Been meaning to drop it off.”

  My name was written on the outside with a fountain pen: Ms. Frances George Warren. Francis’s handwriting.

  “You’ll never guess where I found it.” Sarah pointed to the far corner of the room, and I finally saw the too-obvious: the large trunk in the corner that held Rupert’s old bedding, his lottery tickets and silver dollars.

  “I’ll put tea on,” she said. “And I’m going to make you eat some pie. I have a desperate need to put meat on those bones.”

  I sat on the edge of Rupert’s bed and drank in the sight of my name as Francis had set it down. He always used a tidy, well-spaced mix of printing and cursive—a restrained curl on the G, a little extra on the W. The handwriting of someone who thought it mattered how pen met paper.

  What was inside—a book? It felt like a book. Maybe it was the Elizabeth Bishop collection that had been missing from his bedside. That would be like Lisa’s father giving her mother Cooking for Absolute Beginners for her fortieth birthday, but I didn’t care. I had something, and that was all I wanted.

  I peeled back the paper carefully, and there she was, Elizabeth Bishop. Not the collected poems; this one was called Geography III. It was an old hardcover, secondhand from the look of it. When I slipped it out of its clear plastic covering, a bookmark fluttered to the floor. I held the book by its spine to see if I could find the place it had been tucked. Seemed to be a poem called “One Art.”

  the art of losing’s not too hard to master

  though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

  I read the whole poem and then I read it again, trying to make sense of why Francis had marked this particular one, if he’d marked it. It was as though he’d had a premonition that he would hit black ice that night and was telling me that I would get over him one day. The possibility that he had gone into the ravine on purpose briefly glinted, but no. Francis was too interested in the world to leave it sooner than he had to. He might have just tucked the bookmark at random, or it hadn’t been holding that page at all.

  I flipped to the front of the book. No inscription. No, he wouldn’t want anyone else to read the message. But there, on the back of the bookmark lying on the floor, was that same tidy handwriting.

  G— A memento. A promissory note. A ticket. xF

  A teapot leaking steam, a store-bought rhubarb pie, and two forks were waiting on the kitchen table. I sat in my old place across from Sarah, who was in Francis’s chair, my wheels turning. If only Rupert weren’t sick; I had so many questions. Why hadn’t Francis given me the book himself? Why had Rupert tucked it away in his hiding place? Was it meant to be a birthday present? What had Francis said when he’d given it to Rupert? What I most wanted to ask was what the message on the bookmark meant. A memento I sort of understood, but not a promissory note, a ticket.

  “How did you hurt yourself?” Sarah asked, pouring the tea. “Your face, honey.”

  “Oh, just a carpet burn. I tripped.”

  “Listen, I was sorry to hear about Mick—Francis, whatever his name was. Expect you knew him pretty well.”

  “Sort of.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Dad said he wasn’t the best influence on you.”

  I took a sip from my mug, burning my tongue, and hoped it covered any surprise I was reflecting back. “What did he mean by that?”

  “Something he said in passing, never explained. But, hey, I’m grateful to the guy. Dad and I have always been like cats and dogs, for no good reason. I couldn’t have taken care of him like that. I’m grateful to you too.”

  “I miss him. Rupert. I’ll go see him when he’s better.”

  “Do you know how the French say I miss you? It’s tu me manques. Think about that.” She lifted a forkful of pie straight out of the middle.

  “You—you are missed by me.”

  “Literally, you’re missing to me. Isn’t that beautiful?”

  It was exactly right. Losing Francis had been like losing part of myself, the best part—and I know that’s ripe cheese, but goddamn it if it wasn’t true, and if he wouldn’t have been thrilled to hear me admit it. He’d made my hard little heart swell and pulse, and now it was burning itself out like a charcoal briquette. If this was what phantom pain felt like, I thought, no wonder Dad medicated himself into a semicoma.

  “Didn’t mean to upset you,” Sarah said, and I realized my eyes were leaking.

  “Sorry,” I said. “My boyfriend and I broke up and I’m kind of a mess.”

  “Say no more. My husband and I are separating, so I too have been feeling feelings. Who knew you could long for a man who flosses with his credit card?”

  I laughed, and dabbed my
eyes with the napkin she passed to me.

  “Lonesome, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yes.” The Bishop yes.

  “Just remember, you were lonesome when you were with him too.”

  All this time I’d thought of Sarah as Rupert’s nemesis and so mine by association. She was more like an insta-friend, or a psychic. Because she was right again, this lady forking the pie to death, being with Francis had come with a side helping of lonesomeness, though I hadn’t thought about it before. It wasn’t like I could bring him to the school dance, so I didn’t go to the school dance. There was a lot we couldn’t do together.

  “How did you guess?” I asked.

  “Relationships can be lonely places at the best of times.” She pushed the other fork across the table to me. “Do you mind if I ask what was in the package?”

  “A book Francis left for me. We like the same poets.”

  “Awfully considerate of him, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  “I talked to him a few times on the phone, seemed like a decent young man. Suppose he had to have been. He was an RCMP officer, for god’s sake. But at the same time, this was a guy who could . . .”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted her to finish that sentence.

  “Well, who could just pack up his car one night, with everything he owns. No notice to the employer, no notice to the landlord—who considers you a friend, maybe even a son. I don’t know. I guess I shouldn’t be mad if Dad isn’t. Are you going to let me eat this entire pie?”

  Thirty-Five

  Abe accelerated through the twists and turns of the old highway, darting around the few vehicles on the road.

  It had taken me too long to put it together, but the facts were finally presenting themselves.

  Francis hadn’t gone off the road on his way to meet me that night; he was leaving. The valley, Rupert, me. He’d taken all his things, Sarah said, which meant he had no intention of coming back, and she’d also told me that he left hours before we planned to meet at the Dempseys. That old book in my bag, that was supposed to be good-bye, and he wasn’t even going to give it to me himself.