So Far Away (9780316202466)

by Moore, Meg Mitchell

  After Susannah was gone, Kathleen had left her toothbrush there for weeks and weeks, until the bristles dried and shriveled. Then she threw it away.

  She searched the photos for some sign of prescience in Ashley Jackson’s face. In it she was standing with a boy and a girl, different ages, younger than Ashley, presumably siblings because all three shared the same smile. When had this photo been taken? Did Ashley know she was going to end up as a grim statistic, an actual poster child? Kathleen could find nothing in her face, her toothy, open smile, to indicate that she had.

  Now, surely, it was not too early to open the wine.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” she said. It was a red, a Chianti, which was the only sort she remembered from her wine-tasting class, so that’s what she bought all the time now, because it made her feel sophisticated and international.

  Now, what to do about Natalie? If Kathleen didn’t have her number she couldn’t very well let her know that she had the notebook. She’d have to wait for Natalie to contact her again. Had she realized yet that she was missing it?

  Her glass was empty. “Don’t mind if I do,” she said again as she refilled it; she knew she’d already made that joke, but there was only Lucy to hear, and Lucy didn’t care about repetition (look how many times she’d bring the same grimy tennis ball over and drop it at your feet, the world one big Groundhog Day to her).

  She typed “cyberbullying” into the search bar. Google told her that there were more than 2 million results. “Jesus,” she said. She changed it to “cyberbullying experts,” and the number dropped significantly: 255,000. Still!

  She scrolled through the results and after some time located an expert who seemed knowledgeable and approachable, a professor at a small college in the Midwest, who listed his email address alongside the inventory of publications in which he’d been quoted, plus those articles on the topic he’d written himself, which had names like “The Bully Without a Face” and “The Growing Problem of Cyberbullying.” The professor’s name was Jacob Paterson. The photo on his college’s website showed him to be wan and bespectacled, and therefore, for some reason, benign in a way that Kathleen found comforting. If this man could have all the answers on the topic, then how bad could it be?

  She drank more wine and kept reading.

  It turned out that Professor Paterson did not in fact have all the answers. In one interview he actually said, “I don’t have all the answers.” Another interview: “Children can be very cruel. Teenagers too. And that’s always been the case. But the tools they have are more powerful than anything they’ve had in the past—they’re lethal.” In still another interview his answer to the question of what school administrators could do to combat bullying was so rife with equivocation that it was rendered, in Kathleen’s opinion, completely useless. But he said one thing that struck a chord with Kathleen. “It’s a complicated terrain these schools are navigating,” he said. “Nobody quite knows where the lines are.”

  After some internal debate she wrote an email. “Dear Professor Paterson,” she began. “A young friend of mine is being bullied.” But that sounded creepy, almost predatory. She deleted that text and typed, “My daughter is being cyberbullied.” Then she stopped. What was she asking, exactly? She didn’t know.

  She wrote, “I don’t know what to do. Can you help?”

  She sent the email. Neil had set all of the sounds on the computer long ago, and Kathleen had never changed them. The sound of an email going out was a whoosh: you could almost see carrier pigeons taking off from a rooftop, wings flapping.

  By the time she looked up from the computer, dusk had given way almost entirely to darkness.

  “Hey, pup,” she said to Lucy. “Let’s get out of here.”

  It occurred to her as she and Lucy trolled around the neighborhood—a ghastly oversized crèche already in evidence in one yard, a brightly lit snowman in another, plastic, all plastic, the world had gone completely plastic—that although she didn’t have Natalie’s phone number she did know where she lived. Natalie had pointed out the house on the narrow street, among the old crooked homes.

  Not now, of course: the second (third?) glass of wine had gone to her head. But soon. She’d drive up there, she’d bring the notebook, and she’d make things right.

  By the time Natalie got home she was starving and wishing she’d taken Mrs. Morgan up on her offer to pack up some cookies, or that she’d stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts or one of the gas-station convenience stores. She held out a little bit of hope for the natural grocery store on High Street—a gluten-free scone or a ready-made tofu burrito, either of these would be preferable to hunger, but a small sign on the dark green door told her that the store was closed for the long weekend. Without the socks, her boots rubbed against the big toe of her left foot; she could feel the ominous beginnings of a blister. She was angry (at Kathleen Lynch, for the bad advice, at Hannah for ignoring her pleas, at Mrs. Morgan for her cluelessness, at her socks for staying behind when she really needed them), humiliated (about the fainting), and scared (about what Taylor Grant would do with the picture). It was an unpromising trio of emotions.

  She entertained a fantasy that her mother would be up, dressed, baking Christmas cookies. She would say something like “Hello, lovey!” (Not a phrase common for a Kansas-farm-girl-turned-New-Englander, but which Natalie allowed into her fantasy nonetheless.) Then she would usher Natalie to a seat at the table and serve her warm cookies fresh out of the oven. The cookies in this fantasy looked a lot like the ones Natalie had consumed at the Morgans’ house, although standing in for the mint balls were peanut butter crisps.

  After Natalie had eaten, she would repair to her room, where she would pull out Bridget’s notebook and effortlessly read the whole thing (take that, Kathleen Lynch) and then begin the genealogical research that would lead to Ms. Ramirez’s praise, and to Natalie’s independent-study project being held up as the paragon of all independent-study projects.

  She sustained the fantasy all the way home, and even as she unlocked the door and entered her house, but it was revealed to be fiction when she heard the sounds of the television coming from her mother’s room. The kitchen was dark, the stove unused. No peanut butter crisps here.

  Natalie made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (close enough) and carried it up to her room. At least she could spend some time with the notebook, maybe get ahead of the project.

  But when she opened her backpack she didn’t see the notebook anywhere. Not in the main compartment, not in the side pocket with the baggie of Ambien and her cell phone. It was nowhere.

  This was the final straw. She thought the final straw had been the experience at the Morgans’ house, but she was wrong. This, apologies to Ms. Ramirez, was going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  She wondered if the notebook could have fallen out of her backpack somehow. She pictured it flying over the highway overpass, flattened by the evening commute or the holiday shoppers on their way back from the mall. Now she had no notebook, no independent-study project, no friends.

  Her phone rang. She expected Kathleen Lynch again (she wasn’t going to answer), but she saw her father’s name in the caller ID window. She pressed the answer button and didn’t say anything.

  “Natalie?” said her father. “Nat, are you there?”

  She didn’t trust her voice not to catch. Finally she said, “Yeah,” but her father was already talking over her, “Hey, kiddo, we missed you yesterday, but I know it was important for your mom to have you there with her…”

  Natalie bristled at the word we. There was an expectant pause that Natalie did not fill. Her father went on: “So hey, I wanted to talk to you about some holiday plans…”

  Into this pause she said, “Okaaaay,” drawing the word out in a way (obnoxious) that she knew bothered him.

  “Listen, I wanted to figure out a time to celebrate with you, because it turns out I’m going to be away on Christmas, on the actual day.”

  Sh
e inhaled slowly. “Where?”

  “Well. Uh. Julia, you see, has some family near DC, and I told her I would make the trip with her, you know. I figured you’d be with your mom, and then we could have another celebration a different day, an extra-special celebration.”

  “Dad, I’m not five,” she said. “You don’t need to say ‘extra-special.’ You don’t need to try to trick me.”

  “Trick you!” His voice was jovial, insistent. “I’m not tricking. I mean it.”

  She was silent.

  He went on. “And also, we’d like you to spend New Year’s Eve with us. Okay? Natalie, okay? We’ll take you someplace nice, maybe in Boston, out to dinner. We’ll really have a good time.”

  We. She said, “An extra-special good time?” She knew that was snotty of her, but she couldn’t help it, she was unspooling.

  “Natalie. Come on. Don’t be like that.” This he said in his Other Voice, the get-in-the-car-right-now-we’re-going-to-be-late voice that she remembered vaguely from her childhood.

  Insincerely she said, “Sorry.”

  He seemed to accept that. He said, “Okay. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  This was the final straw. Not the Morgans’ house, not the socks, not the notebook, this. So: no notebook, no friends, no Christmas, no father. This was the bottom.

  Her father’s voice changed timbre. “Did you get that Wii hooked up yet? You having fun with that, you and your friends?”

  The box was in the corner of her room; she had forgotten about it.

  She had a different sentence at the ready, something about how she didn’t care about the Wii, would never care about the Wii, he could have it back if he wanted (that would wound him), but what was the point? She said, “Yeah, lots of fun.” With her friends. An image came to her mind of Hannah Morgan and Taylor Grant crashing around in Natalie’s antique living room, whipping around a paddle. It was almost—not quite, but almost—enough to make her laugh.

  He said, “So, New Year’s Eve, okay? We can plan on it?”

  Quietly she said, “Sure.” And then more loudly, the teenager’s answer to everything: “Sure, whatever.”

  Later, at her mother’s behest, Natalie pulled down the attic stairway to fetch the Christmas tree (artificial) and the ornaments. It seemed almost festive, with the dim light in the living room obscuring the wayward tilt the top half of the tree seemed to have—as if it were a real tree, as though some forest creature had gnawed at the trunk halfway down. Many of the ornaments had been homemade by Natalie herself in an earlier, happier era. Here was the oversized gingerbread man with the flamboyant red bow. And here, the tinfoil star, a tattered loop of red yarn stuck through a hole in the top.

  “Aww,” said Natalie’s mother, holding it up. “I remember when you made this, in first grade.”

  But first grade reminded Natalie of Hannah Morgan. She hid the star in the back, against the wall.

  “Phone call,” said Neil. Kathleen was at the photocopier; she motioned that she’d be right there. “Sounds urgent,” he said.

  Kathleen thought, Natalie! She thought, Finally. She said, “Really?”

  “No,” Neil said. “I’m just kidding. It doesn’t sound urgent. I think it’s your crazy friend Carol.” He peered at her. “What are you doing? You look guilty.”

  Kathleen said, “Guilty? Don’t be idiotic, Neil.” She was photocopying Bridget’s notebook, page by page, and trying to be surreptitious about it. It was a long process, she’d been doing it in stages for two weeks, a few pages at a time, but it was worthwhile too: she wanted to have her own record of it before she brought it back to Natalie. She was almost finished. She had expected Natalie to call looking for it, but she hadn’t, and anytime Kathleen had called the number she had, the number Natalie had written on the form the first day, nobody had picked up.

  She said, “Neil, if it’s Carol, will you tell her I’ll call her back? In just a few minutes. And you look exhausted. Still. Again? Aren’t you sleeping?”

  “Not much,” he said, backing away from her. “Hardly at all.”

  She shook her head, looking down at the photocopier. “You’re supposed to stop sleeping after the baby arrives, not before.”

  He said, “I know. Tell that to Adam.”

  When she had finished her photocopying she put the pile of pages in her desk drawer and called Carol back.

  Carol answered on the first ring. “Play hooky with me.”

  “What? I can’t! Carol, I’m at work.”

  “Work, schmurk. That’s why I called it hooky. I’m bored out of my head. I’ve finished shopping for my grandkids. In fact my daughter-in-law has laid down an ultimatum: no more, she said. There are fourteen days to go until Christmas, and I don’t know what to do with myself. If you don’t play hooky I’m just going to start eating chocolate.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Sort of. Meet me after work, then. Let’s poke around Faneuil Hall. I hear the tree is amazing this year.”

  “I can’t. I have to go up to Newburyport.”

  “Newburyport? What for?”

  She didn’t want to tell. This felt like her story. She said, “Nothing important. Drop something off.”

  “Want company? I could do some shopping up there.”

  “Nooo…”

  “Fine,” Carol said. “Have it your way. But be careful driving. There’s supposed to be snow coming later.”

  “Really? Snow?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  The nameless, faceless they. They never had anything good to portend. It was always bad weather, a terrible flu season, a declining economy.

  When she hung up Neil said, “What are you going to Newburyport for?”

  “Do you always listen to other people’s phone conversations?”

  “I can’t help it. Adam says I have the ears of a bat.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And by that he means I have good hearing, not that thing where your ears don’t lie flat. That’s for real, you know. A medical condition.”

  She said, “Okay.” She wasn’t really listening. She was trying to figure out how many more hours Lucy could be alone. Not that many. She decided to bring her along in the car with her.

  “I saw a special on it once, I think it was the Discovery Channel.”

  “Neil,” she said. “When you go home, get some sleep. You’re starting to sound loopy.”

  “Can’t sleep. Too much to do, to get ready for Henri. We have to stain the crib, and there’s a whole bunch of stuff we have to buy—”

  She said, “Neil, he’s not going to care if his crib is stained or not.”

  Neil stared morosely at his computer. “I know. But we care.”

  “Well, don’t care so much,” she said. “It’s all going to be fine.”

  “Promise?” He reminded her of Susannah sometimes, of the hopeful look she used to get in her eyes when she wanted to know if what she was wearing was okay or not. This was a very long time ago, back when Susannah solicited her opinion. Maybe she was the loopy one.

  Against her better judgment she said, “Of course it is. I promise. It’s all going to be fine.” She looked at the clock. Then she said, “Hey, Neil?”

  “Yeah?” He turned.

  “I have to go home and get Lucy first, but I could use the company on the drive up to Newburyport. You want to come?”

  For a good long time, several days, Natalie let herself believe that Hannah and Taylor weren’t going to do anything with the photo Taylor had taken. Maybe, after all, Hannah had been mistaken: maybe there was no photo at all. Maybe Hannah had deleted it. Maybe Taylor had dropped her phone in the toilet when she was slinking out of her skinny jeans. Maybe they had chosen another victim. Maybe Natalie was free and clear.

  In English class Ms. Ramirez asked about their progress on their independent-study projects. Natalie grimaced, thinking of the lost notebook. Nobody volunteered an answer, and Natalie, struggling to make herself small, felt
her face redden. She thought Ms. Ramirez was going to call on her, and she had nothing to say. But happily Ms. Ramirez focused instead on Emily Middleton, who was ghostwriting an autobiography for her dog. Emily Middleton, who had been chubby in elementary school and was now positively fat, though not friendless, wheezed slightly as she talked, and, when she was done, sat back and exhaled softly.

  “Wonderful,” said Ms. Ramirez, apparently without irony. “I look forward to reading that.”

  Watching this strange turn of events unfold, Natalie had to wonder. Why was Emily Middleton not drawing the ire, the scorn, of Hannah Morgan and Taylor Grant? Taylor, who was absentmindedly twirling a piece of her hair around a finger, which, because it had been straightened into a state of preternatural silkiness, fell immediately into place when she let go of it, seemed not even to notice that anyone was talking. Why should Emily Middleton (an autobiography of her dog?) fly under the radar while Natalie could not? It was unfair: terribly, hopelessly unfair.

  Christian Chapman stopped Natalie in the hallway. “Hey,” he said. “Natalie. What are you doing, for the independent-study project?”

  His eyes were dark brown, very dark, you could get lost in those eyes. The hallway was crowded, kids moving around them in all directions, but she and Christian Chapman could have been on an island. He was taller than she was, and she was grateful for that; it was unusual. There was something nice about the way he smelled—it was probably just the laundry detergent on his gray T-shirt, but it was lovely.

  She tried to slow her breathing; her hands, holding her English notebook, were sweating. She said, “Oh, I’m not sure. I was working on this one thing, but—” She didn’t finish the sentence because suddenly there was someone behind her, and then a thrust, and she felt herself pushed into Christian Chapman. Her notebook flew out of her hands and landed several feet away, and she nearly lost her balance and went down in the hallway.