Another Place You've Never Been

by Rebecca Kauffman

  He wasn’t sure how many of the pieces in question actually contained real gold, but that’s what he aimed to find out, and hoped he’d get a nice chunk of change that he could offer to Tracy. In the past, when he’d sent her jewelry, she’d always been so concerned with whether or not it was real gold, and he’d never bothered to check. Now, he figured, he had the time; he’d go ahead and find out for her. He’d made an appointment with one of those cash-for-gold jewelers who was willing to give a quick look at every single piece. For the ones that were worth something, Marty would remove them from the lure and exchange them for money on the spot, so it was all sorted out for Tracy.

  His flight was at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. He had rented out a room in the Budget Inn in Tonawanda for a whole week, with the option of a monthly rate if he decided to stick around. He’d cleared the dates with Tracy, but hadn’t told her of his intention to stay for more than a few days. He’d wait and feel things out on that.

  Just this morning, at the EZ Mart, Randall Bear had said, “You kiddin’? You’re really gonna tear apart all them lures you worked so hard on, just to have a little cash to give her? And you’re going all the way to Arcadia, that long drive by yourself? Then a flight down to Buffalo in two weeks? A one-way ticket?!” Randall shook his head. “You’re the one’s sick. She oughtta come up here to see you.”

  Marty said, “If my kid doesn’t want to come up here to see me, then that’s my fault, not hers, bud.”

  He knew Randall was just trying to look out for him. And he knew it probably wasn’t wise to be driving himself around like this, but now that he was off the treatments, he felt as good as new, even though they had told him that everything inside was going positively haywire. He had felt better these past ten days than he had in a very long time. Loads of energy, thinking positively. He wasn’t sure if it was the absence of chemo in his system or what, but he felt downright good. Strong, sturdy, clear-headed. Funny that way, cancer. How little you could actually know about the body you’d lived in for your whole damn life, how wrong you could be about your own insides.

  Marty pulled a donut from the bag and bit into it. Granulated sugar flew into his nostrils. The cake was hot and doughy in the center. The last radio station he’d been listening to had gone to static, so he just turned it off altogether. It really was a beautiful morning. Soon, he would pass the white beaches of Sleeping Bear Dunes. He blinked slowly, pleasantly, like a sleepy cat, happy in the sunshine.

  Out to Marty’s left, a gunmetal-gray Lake Michigan tumbled over and over and over itself, and Marty thought back to that day on the beach several weeks earlier, the day on which he had encountered that strange woman on the beach.

  Marty was out with his metal detector on that day.

  It was a cold and gusty one, with fat, low clouds the color of wet cement.

  A fit of nausea interrupted Marty’s search, and he made his way up to a part of the dune that was protected from wind. He removed his bag to use it as a pillow and closed his eyes to settle his roiling stomach.

  Marty woke to the sudden, chilly awareness of a large presence in front of him. He flinched instinctively, knees buckling up toward his chest. He stared up at the figure, colorful shapes dancing in front of his eyes while they focused.

  It was a woman’s face on a broad, manly frame, staring down at him. She didn’t move or speak. Marty scrambled backward and to his feet. The sand was shifty beneath him, and for a moment he dipped around on legs that felt weak and helpless and too skinny beneath him. He used his detector as a cane to steady himself.

  The woman was several inches taller than Marty and her shoulders were twice as wide. She wore a man’s hat, a neoprene vest, a flannel shirt. Her face was dark and beautiful and rough, like she’d been carved with a tool that was very sharp, but a bit too large. Marty guessed she was from the Chippewa reservation ten miles north of Manistee. It’s where Marty got his gas and cigarettes and locked his car when he went in to pay. He’d only use the shitter in there for an absolute emergency. It was a one-stall unit around the outside of the station, and to get in you had to ask the cashier for a key strung through a hole in a piece of driftwood.

  The woman’s baseball cap was pale yellow with white netting, and beneath it her hair was long and straight and black, reaching all the way to her elbows with some streaks of gray. Her cheekbones were smooth and high, the color of a clay planter.

  “You’re not dead,” the woman said. She barely moved her lips when she spoke, not even enough for him to see her teeth.

  “No, I ain’t,” Marty said. He was gripping his detector like a weapon.

  “Just checking,” the woman said. It could have been a joke, Marty thought, but she didn’t deliver it that way.

  The woman turned to walk away, down toward the water. She wore brown boots that went halfway up her calves, where her jeans were tucked into them. She moved like she was very strong, but tired.

  “What the—” Marty said. “Who are you?” he called after her.

  She said something over her shoulder and continued to walk away.

  “Say again?” Marty shouted into a faceful of wind.

  The woman turned around only long enough to say, “Cook,” then she continued on her way, toward the water.

  Marty set his detector on the ground in order to follow her. She moved with such large strides that he had to jog to catch up.

  “Hey!” Marty called, moving faster now than he had in months, skipping down the dune and kicking up clouds of sand. “Hey! Listen to me!”

  When she didn’t turn and in fact her pace seemed to quicken, Marty felt something powerfully helpless and panicky shoot through him. Catching up to her suddenly mattered a great deal to him, and he didn’t know if he’d be able. He ran faster, nearly losing his balance as the sand swallowed his feet.

  He ran faster and waved his arms.

  “Hey!” he screamed after her. “Why don’t you slow down here?”

  What would make her stop?

  “Hey!” he screamed, “I’m dying, for Christ’s sakes, how am I supposed to keep up? Hey! I said I’m dying!”

  Cook finally stopped. She looked out into the water for a time, then turned to face Marty when he reached her. Marty gasped for air. His whole middle screamed in defiance of every move, every breath. He grasped his stomach, wheezed, and sat down on the sand.

  Cook lowered herself to sit next to him.

  “I said, I’m dying,” Marty repeated.

  Cook looked at him as though this information was not entirely sad, nor surprising.

  “I’m dying,” Marty said again, still gasping. “I’m waiting for a call from my doc, and I’ll find out in a week or two how long I’ve got, but I know it’s not going to be long. I know I’m dying. Do you hear me?” He felt desperate, finished, wrecked. “Do you hear me, lady?” He coughed and pounded the sand with his knuckles. “I’m dying,” he said, “And ... and it’s not what I wanted.”

  “How’s that?” Cook asked.

  “I just thought . . .” Marty’s voice had cracked into many pitches and he felt his sand-covered hands go to his cheeks in a gesture of despair. “I just always thought that you’d get to end up with the people you wanna end up with. You know, the people who meant something. The ones you belong with.”

  Marty’s chest heaved. Something crushing, very deep inside. Deeper than the cancer. “You know, like your mom. Your pop. Friends from way back, the ones who already kicked the bucket, and the ones who are still around. And even, especially, the people you fall out with. Ex-wives. Kids. My kid.” Marty’s voice broke again, lurching out in high and odd tones. “I thought you got to still belong with these people.”

  Marty looked out toward the water. Angry little whitecaps made their way up the shore and broke into frothy fingers.

  Tears dropped from Marty’s chin.

  “You know,” he continued, “I never believed in Heaven or any of that mumbo jumbo, but I still thought... Well, I guess I didn’t think it woul
d end up just me alone in a room with a tube stickin’ out my butt. I just thought there’d be a place where we’d all sit down together, all these people who matter, that we’d all enjoy a stiff drink and a good laugh.” Marty wiped his eyes. “That we could always belong together.”

  He looked at Cook. She wore a calm, easy expression, almost like she was holding in a smile.

  “Where am I gonna go, anyway?” Marty said, not certain why he was demanding this information from Cook, but it was the questions he’d longed to ask someone, anyone, for some time. And he was split open now, anyway, unafraid of the answers she might offer. “Whattya reckon it’s like?”

  “What, death?”

  Marty nodded.

  “Could be . . .” Cook paused. “Could be that it’s just another place.” She made a soft gesture out toward the water. “Just another place you’ve never been.”

  Marty considered this. “Do you know something? I’ve never been south of the Southtowns, never in my whole life,” he said. “Ain’t that something?” He lifted a handful of sand and allowed the grains to slide through his fingers like silk ribbons.

  Cook rose to her feet and dusted off her large hands. Then she turned and headed north, along the shore.

  Marty thought of following her, but he was exhausted, and could see that her strides were now impossibly large. A sudden gust of wind rushed across the beach and seized Marty’s lungs with its chill. He watched as her form dissolved into the landscape and he felt a sweet, balmy nothingness, like he was on the brink of something too big and too strange to fear.

  Now, these words returned to Marty as he soared up Route 6 in his little white Dodge Omni, past the ice cream place with the air dancer vanilla cone rising and falling and flailing out toward him. Another place I’ve never been .. . there were so, so many of those!

  He passed three identical blue for-rent cabins with signs out front identifying them as Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. He passed a Mobil station with yellow plastic bags over the pumps and two-by-fours over the front door and windows. He reached for another donut. He had twenty miles to go before he reached Arcadia.

  Marty passed the Quinn Family Diner with a handful of pickup trucks in the lot. The woods to his right became thicker, and the area more remote—he went a few miles without passing any buildings at all. The leaves were at their most brilliant, every shade of gold you could imagine, and spinning loosely from their branches in the sunlight. It had rained the night before, and a thick, wet leaf flopped onto Marty’s windshield like a hand and didn’t move.

  Oddly enough, the bright sun in his eyes made him sleepier. He reached into his center console for his sunglasses, but they weren’t there.

  Marty reached the top of a nice, round, Michigan hill, and before him the road sailed downward into a wild grove of eastern white pines before veering to the right. Out his window to the left, Marty could still see the lake sparkling with saw-toothed whitecaps. He yawned. Maybe he’d go fishing off the channel tonight, if he got back at a reasonable hour. It would all depend how much time this cash-for-gold business took. He wanted to get to bed early this evening so he’d be in good shape for his flight tomorrow morning. He was already packed.

  He wiped sugar from his lips. He felt so sleepy. He tried to think which bait would be best for those Lake Erie perch he’d been reading about. Years ago, he’d had pretty good success with a bugeye jig, but he wasn’t sure if this was the right season for that. A furry worm might be better.

  Marty blinked slowly. The sun was so warm on his face. He blinked again, slower still. Life felt unbelievably uncomplicated. And then, for one long, lovely moment just before he nodded his chin softly to his chest in sleep, Marty completely forgot everything. Forgot that his foot depressed a pedal and his fingers clutched a wheel, forgot where he was going, forgot that a sky was a sky, and that he was a man. Forgot everything except for the things in his heart, the things that were there all along, the things that required nothing of him and couldn’t be forgotten because they were as real and as much a part of him as his bones, his blood.

  CITRINE

  Tracy’s invite arrived a full month ahead of Thanksgiving. Underneath the details, her cousin Shelly had signed for Mac and the kids and sketched a cornucopia in orange glitter pen. Tracy stuck the Thanksgiving invite to her refrigerator with a Papa John’s magnet. Several days later, Shelly called to follow up.

  “What’s your excuse this year?” she said.

  “I might have to work.”

  “Hah! Got you. The restaurant’s closed on Thanksgiving. I knew you would say that so I called and checked.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Shelly. Well look, I didn’t want to say so, but I might be spending it with my boyfriend’s family.”

  “Who’s your boyfriend? Why don’t you bring him to ours? We haven’t had you at a family thing in ages and my kids barely know you from Adam.”

  Tracy stared at the invite and picked at the glitter with her fingernail. “I’ll let you know by next weekend.”

  Tracy was waiting to see if Greenie would invite her to his family Thanksgiving. She’d never met the Greens, even though they lived in her neighborhood, and Greenie had been spending a night or two a week at Tracy’s place for many months now.

  Later that week, Tracy went to Jo-Ann Fabric on her way in to the restaurant. She picked up a baggie of hypoallergenic earring hooks, a hot glue gun, and a twelve-pack of the translucent, cigarette-sized glue sticks. She’d come up with the idea for this project while sorting through her father’s ramshackle little home up in Michigan several weeks earlier.

  It was the first time she’d set foot in the place since she was ten years old, but when her father died, all of the administrative stuff fell on her. There was nobody else, the funeral director informed her. You’re it. So she’d driven nine hours each way to empty the place. She’d hauled almost everything off to the local Goodwill, except for his metal detector, which she disassembled in order to pack it neatly back into the original box, and several shoe boxes full of her father’s signature fishing lures. Later in life, he’d gotten into custom-designing his own lures, weaving some junky little metal trinket into the feathery bit. Tracy remembered that he had once taught her how certain fish are attracted to a bit of sparkle in addition to the bait itself, but she could no longer remember which. He had decorated each lure with a little gold charm or ring, a coin, a few chain links, a broken-off necklace clasp. He had all sorts of knickknacks to choose from after years of metal detecting. When Tracy was sifting through these materials, she took care to hang onto all these nice feathery ones that hadn’t faded or been gnawed on, because she thought they’d make nice earrings.

  Tracy told the cashier at Jo-Ann Fabric her plan for the supplies. She had brought one of the fishing lures in, and the cashier complimented Tracy’s father’s handiwork. She recommended that Tracy get some extra thread, to wind around the base of each earring so the glue wouldn’t show.

  Tracy said, “I think I’ll manage.”

  When she got into work, she told Greenie about the supplies in her car. He was on a stepladder behind the bar with a clipboard clamped in his armpit. He glanced down over his shoulder and said, “You sure there’s nothin’ valuable in that stuff? You could probably get a little cash for some of the gold or stones, if any of it’s real.”

  “Doubt it,” she said. She was so sure of this that she hadn’t even bothered to check. The last few times her father had sent gifts, she’d inquired about the number of karats, and he didn’t even know if the damn things were real gold. She couldn’t imagine that there was anything worthwhile in the mess of lures.

  Greenie said, “Are you gonna give them out to your family at the holidays?”

  “We don’t really do presents with extended family. I was thinking of selling them—you know I’ve been talking jewelry business for a while. Speaking of family, what’s going on with Thanksgiving?”

  “My folks are hosting this year,” Greenie said, “My si
ster’s gonna be home from school. What about you?”

  Tracy fingered the collar of her silk shirt. It was big on her; the shoulder seams fell nearly to her elbows, but when she paired it with her black skirt and leopard print belt it was very flattering and she always got compliments.

  “I was going to see if you wanted to come to my cousin Shelly’s,” she said. “She lives in Rochester. They’re all right. We could do both families if you wanted, mine in the afternoon, then back to your folks’ place for the evening ... Or we could just do one or the other, or ...”

  Greenie got down from the stepladder and sipped his powerade. His upper lip was stained cherry red. He looked like a doll. “You really think we should start doing family stuff together?”

  Tracy scowled into her lap. They had to keep their relationship quiet around the workplace on account of being coworkers, but she wasn’t clear on why things had to be so hush-hush with friends and family outside of the restaurant too.

  She got up to straighten the stack of high chairs and booster seats by her host stand.

  “Not trying to be a jerk,” Greenie said when she returned, “but I’m telling you, the age thing is really gonna throw my folks. I’m just trying to ease them into it.”

  “Fine by me,” Tracy said. She lined up fifteen little white dishes across the bar and opened a fresh box of the individually packaged creamers that didn’t require refrigeration. She put a handful of creamers in each dish. “But you say it like it’s such a thing. We’re not that far apart and it’s not like we look weird together.”

  Greenie finished his PowerAde and tossed the empty bottle underhand into the garbage can. He punched some numbers into the calculator at his register. “I’ll think it over, Trace. Do you have to know now? I’ll think it over and let you know soon.”

  The restaurant was decorated for autumn, with burnt-orange tapestries hung across the far wall, burgundy candles and an ear of Indian corn on each table. A dried sunflower lay across each windowsill, next to the little potted jade plants. At the beginning of every shift, Tracy fixed Greenie’s arrangement at the bar, since he didn’t have an eye for detail, like she did.