So Far Away (9780316202466)

by Moore, Meg Mitchell

  “We used to have some cocoa packages,” the man said. “You like cocoa?”

  She did like cocoa, but she shook her head, and anyway she liked the real kind, made with milk and actual whipped cream, not the powdered kind with the fake little marshmallows. Hannah’s mother used to make them the real kind, after they went sledding down the hill behind Hannah’s house.

  “I could probably find the packets,” he said. “Might have a box of them in the back.”

  Natalie looked around the small room and thought, In the back of what?

  She felt a sudden and unreasonable rage at the man, who was clearly trying to be helpful, who did not seem to be a pervert or a freak, although of course you never knew. He wore a wedding ring; he was somebody’s husband. Probably somebody’s dad too. Natalie looked at him, the thinning hair, the paunch that showed beneath his blue shirt. “No,” she said. “I don’t like cocoa. But thank you.”

  The man nodded and shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said.

  She braced herself, glancing at her phone again.

  Another text: WE KNOW UR SECRET

  She felt sick to her stomach. She hit delete, delete, delete, the whole series of them, off into the ether. Her hands were shaking so much that it was tricky to push the buttons.

  What secret?

  This time her mother answered on the third ring.

  “Mom,” she said, and she could feel the man looking at her. Again she turned away. “Mommy,” she whispered. “Can you come pick me up? At the bus station?” She didn’t know where that came from: she didn’t remember the last time she had used the word Mommy.

  She listened and then she said, “It doesn’t matter. Come in your pajamas. You don’t have to get out of the car.”

  She said, “I know it’s raining. I was going to walk—no, the bus station, not the train station. Up on One-thirteen. Yeah, that one. No, there’s a little building. I’m sitting inside.”

  She knew the man had been listening, and after that she couldn’t meet his eyes, so she waited outside.

  It was hard for her to stand up straight. Her knees felt weak.

  She waited under the awning, which kept the rain from landing on her head, but the rain was coming in at such an angle, and the wind was so strong, that there was nothing she could do to protect herself: by the time her mother pulled up she was soaking wet.

  Nearly a week later, on Thursday, when early November had given way to the soggy middle of the month, raining again, Kathleen’s phone was ringing when she opened the door after work. She raced for it, Lucy following her, ears up. She had the thought that it might be that girl from last week, Natalie Gallagher. (“How do you live without caller ID?” Neil had asked her once. “I would never answer the phone if I didn’t know beyond a shadow of a doubt who was on the other end.”)

  “When are you going to get a cell phone?” said Carol when she answered.

  “I have a cell phone.”

  “When are you going to turn it on?”

  “It’s on.” (It wasn’t.)

  “Sure,” said Carol. “Anyway, I’m just calling to remind you that I’m picking you up at eleven on Saturday.” Kathleen hadn’t known Carol when they were younger, but she imagined that her friend had always been the way she was now: coiffed, adorned, painted, alarmingly energetic. They had met five years ago in a knitting class. Kathleen was going through what she called her “extracurricular” phase; besides the knitting she’d taken Beginner’s Italian at the Center for Adult Education, and also a wine-tasting class. None of these had stuck (she kept getting the Italian mixed up with her dormant high school Spanish; she got the knitting yarn hopelessly tangled; in the wine-tasting class, every wine had tasted the same to her and she had never, for the life of her, seen the “legs” you were supposed to see on the sides of the glass after you sloshed it about).

  But Carol had stuck. Underneath the makeup and the Chanel suits was a sardonic air that Kathleen appreciated. Also Carol knew how to keep her mouth shut. Kathleen had told her once about Susannah, then told her she never wanted to talk about it again. Carol nodded crisply, took Kathleen’s hand briefly and then dropped it, and that was that.

  Carol took Kathleen places she’d never been and most likely wouldn’t ever have gone without her: to dinner at Radius, for drinks at the Oak Bar, to a charity auction at the Ritz-Carlton. She took her into Neiman Marcus at Copley Place, where Kathleen had no intention of shopping, and Kathleen watched while Carol tried on (and purchased!) a blouse that cost $198.

  Carol had a husband and three grown children, a passel of grandchildren, a couple of cats. Carol’s house was a Tudor in Newton with a yard of such grandeur and magnitude that you could truly call it “grounds.” (“Saddled,” Carol said, “with all of this,” and it was with some envy that she talked about Kathleen’s “solitary existence.” Kathleen didn’t know “how lucky she was, sometimes,” to be able to come and go as she pleased.)

  Recently Carol had given gobs of money to some sort of organization that empowered young girls, and so she was invited to bring a guest to a luncheon at a swank downtown hotel.

  Kathleen thought about Melissa Henderson bending over the car seat.

  “Wear something semi-nice,” said Carol. “Not flashy, but nice.” This was clearly a joke: Kathleen didn’t own anything flashy.

  “Got it,” she said. “Eleven.”

  “You know what? Let’s make it ten thirty. I think there’s a walk for something or other on the Common. You know how it is: those things suck up all the parking.”

  Thing number six that made Natalie sick: the way things could change so quickly, and nobody gave you any warning. One day Hannah Morgan was your best friend, and the next day she was not. One day your father was there, and the next day he was not. One day your mother was functioning like a normal mother, making you breakfast in the morning, showering, washing and drying her hair, putting on a little makeup maybe, and the next day she was in bed, shades pulled down, the day one long night.

  Almost a week had gone by since Natalie’s trip to the Archives, and in the interim she’d made no progress with her independent-study project. None whatsoever. She’d gone to school, she’d come home, she’d joined her mother for “dinner” (she had to put the little air quotes around the word each time she thought or said it because she wasn’t sure the desiccated fish sticks, the gummy pasta, actually qualified), she’d done her homework, gone to bed, gotten up. Lather, rinse, repeat.

  There had been no new texts; she’d allowed herself to believe the ones she’d gotten on the bus the week before hadn’t really happened. (What secret, what about her mother? Didn’t matter, maybe she’d imagined the whole thing, she’d deleted them, there was no record.)

  Then. Friday, after English, Natalie at her locker, fumbling on the floor for a dropped piece of paper, stood up and almost knocked into Taylor Grant, so close was Taylor standing to her. She seemed to be standing over her, although Natalie was by far the taller of the two. And behind her, like a lieutenant, like a bodyguard, Hannah Morgan, looking carefully into the middle distance.

  “Hey,” said Taylor softly. “You never answered our texts, Natalie!” She was so close that Natalie could feel Taylor’s breath on her neck, could smell the minty scent of her gum, and also some perfume, really pretty, she had to admit.

  Natalie said, “What?”

  A little louder, as though talking to her deaf aunt Betty, Taylor said, “Our texts. You never answered.”

  Around them swarms of students moved by; Natalie could see them out of the corner of her eye, but they melded into one, a symphony of color and sound.

  Later she thought of that moment as where it all began, all of it, the whole terrible mess, crystallized into an instant, the instant she met Taylor’s eyes (she had to look down to do this) and said, in a voice hard and even, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No?” Taylor looked at Hannah. “She doesn’t know.” Hannah gave an infinitesimal shru
g, barely a movement. “About your mother, Natalie. We know how old your mother was when she married your father.”

  “What?” Natalie’s mouth was dry; she felt her throat constrict. “What?”

  Taylor continued: “We think it’s creepy, you know.” She leaned closer to Natalie—it was amazing that was possible, she was so close already—“And illegal too, you know. She was practically a child.”

  Natalie gathered enough of her voice to say, in a hoarse, unnatural whisper, “My mother is thirty-three.”

  “Yeah?” said Taylor. “Are you sure about that?”

  The drumming in Natalie’s ears was now so loud that she couldn’t believe nobody else could hear it. She looked at Hannah, and what she saw there made her misery complete. Hannah wasn’t going to do anything to help Natalie. Hannah was scared of Taylor. She was terrified. Hannah looked like she’d looked when both girls were nine years old, about to step onto the Yankee Cannonball at Canobie Lake.

  But then Hannah did something with her face, something that transformed the fear into a smooth mask of unconcern. God, it was terrifying, the way she could do that, like magic, but not regular magic: black magic, the worst kind. There was a swirl of mint and perfume, there was glossy hair tossed over shoulders, and Natalie stood for a moment longer, even though she knew she’d be late for her next class. She was shaking. She finally understood the expression “her knees knocked together” because that’s what hers were doing, knocking together like one was a hammer and the other a nail.

  Christian Chapman came down the hallway, alone, late too, not looking very worried about it. He stopped in front of her. “Hey. Natalie. You okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and tried to smile. “Sure, yeah, fine.”

  Once, on one of the nature shows she used to watch with her father, she had seen a lion with its prey (a warthog, maybe?), bandying it about before finally killing it. It looked like sport, she remembered that. She turned to her locker; she gathered her things for the next class. But she couldn’t shake the image of the warthog lying limply on its side, eyes closed, waiting for the fatal bite.

  Number seven on the list of things that made her sick: Taylor Grant.

  Carol knocked more loudly than she needed to on Kathleen’s door—more loudly than she needed to because Kathleen was dressed and standing in the kitchen eating toast smeared with a gorgeous orange marmalade.

  “Have some,” said Kathleen, pointing.

  “No,” said Carol. “Thank you. I’ve got my makeup on.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Kathleen. She held up a finger. “Just hang on a minute. I’ve got to brush my teeth.”

  “The food will be crap,” Carol said once they were in her cream BMW, fresh vacuum marks visible on the carpet. “So you’ll be happy you had the toast. But the cause is good.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Kathleen. “I’m not in it for the food. I’m in it for the company.”

  “I’m just happy to be out of the house,” said Carol. “I’ve got my son and daughter-in-law visiting from New York, the two kids—my God, the mess they make! I mean, I love them to death, but. Stuff everywhere, everywhere! I don’t think they keep their own house that way, in fact I know they don’t, but in my house I guess anything goes.”

  “Which kids are these?” asked Kathleen politely. She could never keep it straight.

  “The twins,” said Carol.

  “Ah,” said Kathleen, no more enlightened than she had been.

  Carol turned onto 93. The trees were suddenly bare and stark against the sky, the leaves that were there just a week ago had been wiped clean away.

  “How’s your week been?” asked Carol. “Anything new in the world of dead people?”

  “Oh, stop,” said Kathleen. “You’re just jealous that I’m gainfully employed. But one thing did happen, the end of last week.” And then she was telling Carol all about Natalie’s visit. “It’s the strangest thing, I can’t stop thinking about her.”

  She paused, and fiddled with the handle of the glove compartment door. “She reminded me of Susannah, you know. There was something about her that was so similar, I can’t put my finger on it. I keep wondering if she’ll come back.”

  She told Carol about the cell phone too, and the crying. “I don’t know what it meant,” she said, “the text. But it didn’t seem right. It seemed ominous.”

  “Oh, God,” said Carol. “I was just reading something about that. Cyberbullying. Awful stuff, just awful. You hear about it everywhere. Makes me glad my kids grew up when they did. Not that there weren’t plenty of dangers then—” She glanced at Kathleen. “Sorry.”

  Kathleen waved a hand at her. “I know. Nothing for you to be sorry about.”

  “But it’s different nowadays,” said Carol. Then she said, “Isn’t it strange, that we’re old enough to say nowadays, and it seems perfectly natural? When did that happen? I feel like I’m still nineteen most of the time, until I look in the mirror.”

  “Yeah,” said Kathleen. She didn’t remember what it felt like to be nineteen; some days she felt ninety.

  They were quiet then. Carol exited the highway and began to wind her way through Chinatown. She drove expertly. She opened her window a couple of inches, but not enough to threaten her hairstyle. “Fall air after a good hard rain,” she said. “Is there anything better?”

  After Gregory died, Kathleen had, for a time, given up on noticing the natural world. Why should she? The natural world seemed to her to be an extension of God, and God, by taking Gregory away from her, had failed her, and had failed Susannah, too, leaving them adrift, unanchored, looking at each other like a couple of baby birds abandoned in a nest. Small chirping mouths, empty stomachs, tiny little scrabbling talons.

  Except only one of them was a baby, of course, and Kathleen was the adult meant to look after the baby. But how could she look after a baby when she had a giant hole in her heart, when she woke up at night shivering, unable to get warm no matter how many blankets she used or how high she turned the thermostat?

  After, the doctor said that there was no way anyone could have known about Gregory’s heart condition. Not only undiagnosed but undiagnosable, he said, looking at Kathleen, though not so much at her as through her, as though on the other side of her lay the answer to some important question that somebody else in the room had asked him. One of those freak things, he said soberly. This doctor couldn’t have been much older than Gregory. His wedding ring was shiny and a little too big: he was probably a newlywed. He said, “I’m sorry I can’t give you any more information than that.” He made a move toward Kathleen, and it seemed for an odd instant like he might embrace her. Then he backed away. His actions were uncertain, like those of a teenage boy, but his words had authority and clarity. Finally he held out his hand and shook Kathleen’s. Later that seemed strange to her, as though they had engaged in some sort of business transaction.

  Kathleen’s mother came from Pennsylvania to help out with Susannah, who was two. Not a baby, really, after all, though the image of the chirping baby bird in the nest remained with Kathleen. Susannah was old enough to say, “Where Daddy go?” but young enough not to pursue it if nobody offered a reasonable explanation. Which, of course, nobody could, because there was nothing reasonable about it.

  Kathleen was supposed to rest when her mother arrived, but she found she couldn’t. The only way to make it bearable to was to keep moving. So she walked around Marblehead, where they lived. She took long walks to the town beach and sat on a rock looking out at the angry gray water. It was late fall, the leaves had gone from the trees, and the waves seemed to be yelling at one another.

  Sometimes she walked to the library and looked in medical books to find photographs of human hearts. Healthy hearts, diseased hearts: all of these she studied. Nowadays, of course, you would just go on the Internet if you wanted to learn anything about the heart. But back then Kathleen sat at a scratched brown table, her toddler napping at home, the librarians busy around her, and opene
d one book after another, trying to understand.

  The funny thing was that after looking at so many photographs you’d think she would have the image of a human heart fixed firmly in her mind. But whenever she called up the picture of Gregory’s heart what she saw was a heart that a child would cut out of red construction paper: crooked, imperfect, a little bit torn around the edges.

  There were people in the town who watched her walking. They said it was time for her to move on from Gregory’s death and to focus on her daughter. She knew this because her mother, who overheard some of these things on the playground or in the grocery store with Susannah, had no compunction about repeating them. In fact she seemed almost gleeful about it, energized by it, describing the women, their hand gestures, their harsh words.

  Kathleen didn’t believe in ghosts, not exactly. But sometimes in the night she was woken by a sound in her dark, quiet room. It was the sound of Gregory laughing, and her laughing with him. More likely a memory than a ghost, but real enough that she sat up in bed and turned the bedside light on, looking for the source of the noise. How she and Gregory used to laugh back then! Before Susannah was born, and then after, when they were a happy triumvirate. Laughing, laughing, all the time—until their sides hurt, until they gasped for breath.

  This was all by way of saying that Kathleen had once been happy and had once been young and sometimes it was only when she looked in the mirror that she realized that she was neither of those things anymore.

  Eventually her mother returned to Pennsylvania, to her own life, to Kathleen’s father, whom she had left to his own devices, opening “goddamn cans of soup” for dinner—he was hopeless at taking care of himself. It was understood that Kathleen’s mother had offered Kathleen all of the help she could reasonably offer, that it was now to be Kathleen and Susannah against the world.

  Listlessly, Kathleen began looking for work. She didn’t find any. But she wasn’t looking that hard; there was nowhere nearby she could picture herself working. Not a shop or a restaurant, not the little grocery store in town. The library didn’t need anyone. Then where? She didn’t want to commute to Boston—she’d have to find someone to look after Susannah for all of those extra hours she’d spend driving.