There Is No Long Distance Now

by Naomi Shihab Nye

  Interest

  “Guess what we saw,” said Sam when he and their dad got back from Washington, D.C. “Mennonites on the Metro. Drinking Sprite. Did you know Mennonites drink Sprite?”

  Adrienne stared at him. “I didn’t even know they ride the Metro.”

  “Dad did great. His speech was terrific. At the National Building Museum, when he was accepting his award, I noticed he was standing on a dollar bill. After the ceremony, I went behind the podium and picked it up and kept it.” He flashed the crumpled, dirty bill from his pocket. “I figure it must be lucky.”

  Their architect father helped his students design phenomenal low-cost homes using recycled materials for people without much money. Their mom, an elementary school principal, had dozens of happy jackets and printed scarves in her closet. She remembered every kid’s name after the first week of school. If a kid acted up, she said patiently, “Let’s get to the bottom of this and see what might help.”

  “Great parents,” Sam and Adrienne said to each other, and they meant it. They had no problems at home. But Adrienne was slightly jealous of her brother.

  His affection for unusual information fascinated her. For example, he loved peculiar place names—Bug Tussle on an ancient sign, or Derryfubble Road in Ireland—and he wore T-shirts from Berlin advertising cultural events they had not attended. She didn’t even know where he got them. When she asked, he shrugged. On his desk was a pad with two words scrawled on it—Chickahominy Creek.

  Adrienne’s own interests seemed tame compared to Sam’s. Gymnastics. Flute. Traditional American folk songs. No one ever got too excited about them. So she worked to collect details that might intrigue. “We found out about Grandpa’s coat while you were gone.”

  This minor mystery, moth-eaten, with a scrappy collar and an elegant tag, “Montreal Fur Company,” had been hanging in their coat closet since Grandpa died last year, arctic in its formidable silence. Grandpa had been one hundred when he died—he didn’t speak for the last three years of his life. Adrienne announced proudly, “Grandpa taught in Winnipeg.”

  “Winnipeg?”

  Their Gramps, who scraped by in a rough industrial neighborhood of Mobile, Alabama, who worked in a paper bag factory, who never mentioned Canada or left the state since Sam and Adrienne were born, once lived in Winnipeg? Adrienne had felt snow and ice in his silences, but never chaotic classrooms of rosy-cheeked seventh graders, or horses and sleighs.

  “Why wouldn’t he tell us that?” Sam marveled. “That old rascal. How did Mom find out?”

  “She found some old letters,” Adrienne said. “Return address, Winnipeg. He wrote them to Grandma before they married. He described his students in very funny detail. One carried hot sweet potatoes in his pockets. Isn’t it weird Gramps wouldn’t mention this to Mom, since she’s in education, too? Why would he hide it? And why would he go from teaching school to working in a factory? What happened to him?”

  Sam shook his head. So many delicious mysteries. Why that mound in the grass? Whose engraved cuff links in the broken box? Why their neighbor Eustacia wouldn’t go out on the street during daytime like a normal person? Where Muffy the dog was for six years—before turning up a thousand miles from her home? It was in the paper.

  Sam had hidden two hundred dollars last summer, in a hidden locked cabinet in their bathroom. He was the only one who knew where the key was. The money was saved from his summer job at the plant nursery—he wished he had saved a bit more. With all the talk about failing banks, he didn’t want to put it in a bank. He didn’t want a bank card, either. People got mugged using bank machines.

  “Yes,” their mom said. “And people get mugged carrying cash, too.”

  One day when Sam went to get some of his money, it was gone. Entirely. Even the envelope he had saved it in.

  He accused Adrienne, though she never stole things.

  “Why would I take it? What do I buy?” She had thought Toys “R” Us was a museum till she was ten.

  But no one else . . . maybe she’d found the key and was just tricking him.

  Sam finally apologized to her. He told her he checked the cabinet occasionally to see if the envelope might come back. He watched for clues. This made him sound as if he’d read a lot of Nancy Drew. None of the other things in the cabinet had ever gone missing—Grandpa’s stamp collection and the mint coin sets encased in plastic.

  When Sam went to the cabinet to store the envelope with the dollar bill from his father’s ceremony, he had a shock.

  He found a solid gold fifty-cent piece, a hundred years old, overlaid with a gold border, presented as a pendant on a golden chain. It was fancy and heavy and if you wore it on your neck, you would look very ostentatious. Also you would get mugged for sure.

  What? Gold coins don’t just show up. Neither of his parents had ever seen it before. Adrienne was speechless. What in the world?

  “It’s as crazy as your money disappearing,” she said. “So what do you think now?”

  Sam looked it up on eBay—similar items had thousand-dollar price tags.

  “Maybe ghosts have their own style of banking,” Adrienne said. They’d thought there might be a ghost in their bathroom when they were little. The door was always creaking and the water switching on.

  Mom turned it over and over in her hands. “I declare,” she said. Something her father used to say. “First those Canadian letters stuck in my underwear drawer, now this.”

  Sam said, “What?”

  “Grandpa,” Mom said.

  We Like You for Your Flaws

  On a block of upscale, finely landscaped homes in the Alamo Heights neighborhood, one house stood out—sleekly modern, pale green minimalist, no curtains at any windows, and a front door that could have been designed by an astronaut—matte silver, studded with planetary bumps.

  It had been for sale a moment only before the Sold sign was slapped across the realtor’s name.

  Someone had really wanted that house. The architect who built it was moving to New Zealand.

  Jenna and Brianna, who lived across the street in a regular house with a front porch and geranium pots, and liked to lie on their stomachs at night in their twin beds, staring out the window, felt fascinated. Lucky people. No one would buy their house that fast. “If they have a kid, I hope it’s a boy,” muttered Jenna.

  Brianna sighed. “It won’t be. It never is. Whatever you want, it’s always the other thing.”

  Their parents had called them the yin and yang twins for years, one positive, one negative, one blond, one brunette. They were really a year apart, but preferred sleeping in the same room so they could exchange secrets late at night, gossip and predict, criticize and fantasize. Talking was their shared talent. They arranged what would have been their other bedroom like a sitting room for teens—TV, game table, couch. They kept that room neat, and their sleeping room messy. It had worked out for them. They were concerned about splitting up when they went to college.

  Usually CNN stayed turned on all night in the other room, on mute, with the word-band traveling across the bottom of the screen, collecting bad news from around the world so when they woke in the morning, bleary-eyed, wishing for just another hour of sleep, the one who wasn’t in the bathroom yet would stand in the sitting room announcing, “Earthquake! Bombs in Kabul! William and Kate have set the date!”

  They saw their new neighbor the day she moved in. She stood in the front yard, long auburn hair streaming loosely across her shoulders. She was staring at her own new house with a pensive look, and appeared to be fifteen or sixteen. She had a backpack in one hand and an oversize orange purse on her shoulder.

  “She should get a different purse,” muttered Jenna. “Clashes on her hair.”

  “Anyway, who needs a purse if you have a backpack?” said Brianna.

  A woman came out of the house and drove her off in a black SUV with one dent in the backside.

  “Bad day for her,” said Jenna. “Meeting all those people at school. Overwhelmi
ng.”

  “How do you know she didn’t move here from five blocks away?”

  “Did she look comfortable?”

  “No.”

  Because they went to St. Mary’s Hall, a private school on the north edge of town, Jenna and Brianna didn’t know everyone at the public Alamo Heights High School nearby. But there she was again, their new neighbor, at St. Mary’s Hall, standing outside the front office with that purse. She wasn’t wearing her uniform yet, which was why they hadn’t pegged her.

  Jenna walked up to her. “We saw you this morning,” she said. “We live across the street.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

  “What’s your name?”

  The new girl had an inch-long straight scar under her left eye, as if she’d been bitten by a dog in a small town without a good plastic surgeon.

  “It’s Lily,” she said, almost whispering. Brianna noticed it first—her beige shirt was buttoned wrong.

  “Where did you move here from?”

  “San Angelo. My dad’s an art professor. He got a job at the university here. My mom’s a sculptor.”

  Jenna said, “San Angelo?”

  “It’s really nice, but I’m glad to come to a bigger city,” Lily whispered.

  “Nice?” they said in unison. How could a place that remote be nice? Where was it, anyway? Lily was nodding.

  “What did you like about it?” asked Brianna.

  “The people,” Lily whispered. “The sunsets. And the lily pad garden.”

  Jenna and Brianna looked at each other. There was nothing to say to that. And considering her name . . . “We like your house,” Jenna said.

  “My parents loved it. Because my father’s aunt died recently—and he was her only family—we were able to buy it when he got the job here,” Lily said.

  Jenna stared at Brianna. Money? No one they knew ever talked about money.

  “Well, see you around,” Jenna said.

  “Let us know if you have any questions,” added Brianna. But they didn’t mean it. Would they tell her their hard-won secrets, who was generous or flighty, which teacher insisted on homework on time and which one didn’t?

  A week later, after they’d reluctantly dined twice with Lily in the lunch room, invited her over to play Bananagrams in their sitting room, and asked if she wanted to go to the movies on teacher work day (she was going shopping for furniture with her mom)—they wrote her a letter. A combined welcome and apology letter. Jenna wrote the first draft on the computer, then Brianna edited it, then they printed it up on some leftover Valentine paper, with pale pink hearts floating across the top of the page.

  “We did not plan to like you,” the letter said. “Because your house is so beautiful. Sorry it sounds weird, but it’s true. We have a regular house and thought you would be too cool. But after we met you, and discovered you were just like the rest of us, with plenty of flaws—your shirt buttoned wrong on the first day, your voice which is a little too soft, your hair which could use a trim*—we like you after all. If you’re interested in going to the Battle of Flowers parade, just let us know.”

  * * *

  *They did not mention the scar or the strange slurping sound Lily made when she drank milk.

  Killer Chili

  Jack was a really bad name to have if you were fat.

  Though most people had forgotten all about childhood nursery rhymes, they seemed to remember the one about Jack Sprat eating no fat. They snickered it behind Jack’s back—the whispers were stinging.

  Jack bussed tables at Riddles Penultimate Cafe on Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis. Sometimes he chopped and stirred, too. Farmers supplying fresh local fruits and vegetables were mentioned by name on the menu—Featuring Green Beans from Mueller’s Organic Farm! Sometimes Riddle’s served Homemade Ice Cream with Mueller’s Organic Blackberries!!!

  Joe Mueller, Jack’s dad, was thin as a stalk of rhubarb.

  His mom Marge was skinny as two strands of whole-wheat spaghetti.

  Jack was adopted. Marge and Joe had also adopted fourteen ratty cats and four unattractive dogs. All thin. Everyone in the family was thin but Jack.

  “I’ll never have romance,” he mourned to Rachel, who cooked at Riddle’s. “But guess what? I don’t care. I just want a few more friends as nice as you.”

  She assured him, “You’re a beautiful man, Jack.”

  It was the first time he had ever been called a man.

  True, he had radiant blossomy skin without a blemish or acne scar. Rachel marveled, “Have you ever had a pimple?”

  Jack said, “The least of my worries.” He had thick brown hair, perfect teeth.

  And he was giving the grapefruit diet one more try. Eat a whole grapefruit fifteen minutes before every meal.

  He’d tried the apple cider vinegar in water diet a few months ago, also the diet that said, Eat anything you want for any meal, but only one thing. That could be—one bowl of oatmeal, one piece of toast, one egg—but not all three of them together. And nothing in between. It was pretty rough. Someone mentioned the Mexican food diet—eat as much as you want, but you have to eat it cold. So far Jack had been able to lose twelve to twenty pounds quite regularly on any diet he tried, but he always regained it quickly after quitting the diet. He couldn’t understand why, since bussing tables involved constant moving around.

  “You need a trainer,” Rachel said.

  “Sure, with all my extra cash.”

  “Maybe your dad could trade fruits and vegetables with a trainer. Trainers care about eating healthy.”

  “Well, if you see a hungry trainer, send him my way. You are so lucky to be perfectly proportioned.”

  Rachel laughed. “I love you, Jack.”

  One Saturday they rode the train downtown to the Arch before starting their evening shift. Shot to the top in the crazy rocket elevator, which neither of them had done since they were little, then sat by the Mississippi to observe old riverboats passing in the languid flow.

  “Let’s go to New Orleans,” Jack said. “We could stow away. . . .” They were wearing their old man hats imprinted with fish that they’d found at the thrift store.

  Rachel said, “Did you see the new menu? I don’t like it. Too slick. Not our old style. I don’t like having the word Killer on it.”

  “What?”

  “Killer Brownies, Killer Chili, very negative vibe. I also hate the term to die for—who wants to die for a piece of chocolate cake?”

  “I agree. It’s ugly. Did you tell the boss?”

  “That’s what I was getting at. Maybe we could talk to him together. Call it Restorer Chili or Comfort Brownies or something—Killer doesn’t do it right.”

  Jack sighed. So many things. He did not support weapons, dead civilians, or young persons led astray into war. So what about all those “I support the troops” signs? He supported nurses, cooks, farmers, street sweepers, kindergarten teachers. Sure, he wanted all citizens to be in free full operation in Afghanistan and Egypt and Tunisia and Iraq and anywhere else you could think of, but was it the responsibility of the United States to make it so? He didn’t think people in St. Louis even felt truly responsible for people in Columbia, Missouri. So what the heck?

  “We’ll do it together.”

  “I hope we don’t get fired.”

  “We won’t get fired.”

  “Dad, I need a trainer,” he said to his hardworking farmer father the next morning at breakfast. Joe was eating his gigantic spread of eggs, grits, biscuits, homemade peach preserves . . . and Jack was eating a grapefruit.

  “Look at me, Dad. It’s not fair. I eat, like, nothing, and remain huge. You eat everything and you’re a lollipop stick.”

  Joe sniffed. “I work hard all day long. Why don’t you help me a little more? Can you pull all those flats of strawberries out to the second section today. I got the wheelbarrow repaired. . . .”

  “My mysterious biological parents whom I never wish to meet must have been gargantuan.”

  �
�Can’t say. Never saw ’em.”

  “Rachel and I went to the Arch yesterday. It’s true, we’re turning into a country of fatsos. I counted, like, ten overweight in every group of twelve. But that doesn’t make me feel better. I need your help, Dad. I need more tests on my thyroid. Remember how that doctor a few years ago said he’d have to keep his eye on me? Where is he?”

  “Lotta money, son.”

  “I’ll work more at the restaurant. We’re starting to do catering and I already signed to go on some of those jobs—that could help?”

  “College, son. You’re on the brink of spending more money than you ever saw. And so am I.”

  “We could sell Grandmother’s silver?”

  For some reason, his dad wouldn’t hear of this. Tarnished silver trays and silver spoons no one ever used were stashed around their bins and barns like ancient treasure. No one got anything out of them.

  “Economic downturn, son; no one wants silver.”

  “Well there’s a guy over on Delmar in a little shop, We Buy Silver, right this minute.”

  His father sighed. His mother was outside with the cats. Jack pinched himself at the waistline. Bigger.

  Lightning

  Amal walked up to Joe and Rafael in the hallway.

  “It would really be nice,” she said, “if you could stop making bad comments about my country in class. They are completely irrelevant to the topic and also inaccurate.”

  “Why did you leave it if you love it so much?” Joe asked.

  “I left it because I am a minor and my parents moved to the United States. If your parents moved to Japan, would you stay here?”

  “Definitely,” Rafael said. “Ain’t no way I’m movin’ to Japan.”

  Amal closed her eyes.

  Lockers were clanging around them. The hallway smelled of athletic shoes after a steamy run. “She’s gone to sleep,” said Joe.

  Amal spun around without opening her eyes and stepped into English class. They’d been discussing Edgar Allan Poe and no one but Amal seemed to know he had been an authority on mollusks as well as a poet. “The Raven” would probably not have been the poem he wished to be remembered for. Also, she did not believe Poe died of a drug or alcohol overdose, but more likely, of diabetes, which often went undiagnosed in his day.