No Place Like Here

by Christina June

The lines on my mother’s face were deeper than I’d ever seen them. Tears appeared in the corners of her eyes. I couldn’t stand to see her hurting. I swallowed the rotten lemon taste of my anger for her sake. “Okay.”

  We ate a dinner I didn’t even taste while my dad answered no less than five phone calls from various lawyers and advisors. I guess he had time for that since he wasn’t packing anything. He disappeared into his office, his plate only a quarter eaten, while Mom and I just looked at each other again. Her shoulders sagged as she exhaled, her wispy bangs lifting slightly.

  “It’ll be fine, honey. It has to be,” she said, in a moment of optimism. I wasn’t convinced she believed it, but I imagined she’d seen and heard enough in the last year to want to believe it. And then, perhaps to convince herself further, “You’re a good girl, Ashlyn. It’ll be okay.”

  I got up from the table, shoved my plate in the sink with a clatter, and ran up the stairs as fast as I could so she wouldn’t see the tears that had begun to spill, hot and stinging, down my cheeks. I shut the door, locked it, and crawled into bed.

  Are you there? I texted Tatum.

  She responded immediately. What’s up?

  I need you.

  Tatum arrived in ten minutes flat, a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and two spoons in her hand. “Reinforcements have arrived.”

  I relayed the whole terrible conversation, with my head resting on Tatum’s shoulder, as she cupped the container between her hands, softening the ice cream.

  She sighed when I finished, pried the lid off, and handed me the pint with a spoon stuck in. “It’s not forever. None of it.”

  “In my head, I know that. But it feels like everything’s changed, and none of it for the better. We’re broken. All of us.” The words brought fresh tears.

  “You’re not broken, Ash. And your family isn’t broken. Maybe in need of a little duct tape,” she said with a low chuckle, poking me in the ribs, “but not broken.”

  “I’m going to be the worst retreat center employee, you know. I’ve never had a job. I don’t really know how to do anything.”

  Tatum shrugged, and my head bobbed with her shoulder. “You’ll learn. You’re smart.”

  “Book smart, maybe. I don’t think all the random quotes and trivia I know are going to help me.”

  “What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll commune with nature, get a tan, and hang with your cousin. No big deal.”

  I lifted my head. “The cousin who is essentially a stranger?”

  She waved my protest away with a flick of her hand, like it was no big deal that Hannah and I probably couldn’t pick one another out of a line up. “Blood is thicker than water, or so they say. Hey, she’s done this retreat center thing before, right? You can just ask her everything. It’ll be a bonding experience.” Tatum quirked an eyebrow up. “Do you know what your assignment is yet?”

  “I have no idea.” I hoped no one was expecting me to hook middle-aged business women and men onto the ziplines or guide them through trust falls.

  “Well, I’m sure, whatever happens, it’ll be fine. You’re stronger than you think, you know. You got through this last year at a new school all on your own.”

  “True.” While I hadn’t made any life-long besties at Blue Valley, I hadn’t made any enemies either. If I had to go back, it was a small comfort to know that Cassie Pringle and the girls on my hall would be there too. “I just wish I was going to be back here. At school. With you.”

  “Me too, Ash.”

  One of the first quotes I’d ever recorded in my notebook was from T.S. Eliot: “Home is where one starts from.” It made home seem like a source of pride. And I was proud of where I’d come from. Despite the recent wealth, my parents hadn’t had so much when I was born. There was a photo album collecting dust somewhere with pictures of tiny me in secondhand toddler clothes, joyfully running through the exhibits at the free Smithsonian museums. My parents held me tight under the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin, love written on their faces.

  The photographs that were framed, cased in silver and glass, hanging in the formal living room, were the ones where I was posed, wearing an outfit specially bought for the occasion, my smile never reaching my eyes. They had taught me appearing perfect, doll-like, was the real source of pride. According to my dad, anyway.

  Last year, during our poetry unit, we’d studied Warsan Shire, who speculated that home was somewhere we haven’t experienced yet—a place to discover. The idea of something better waiting for me in my future resonated like the clang of cymbals. When I thought about Shire’s and Eliot’s words together, though, I wondered if the place I was running to was the place I’d already been.

  It wasn’t perfect, but it was mine. My parents belonged to me and I belonged to them. I wanted what was mine to be the best, even if I didn’t know how or when we would get there. And even in a twisted way, there was comfort in knowing that my dad was going to scrutinize my every move, and my mom was going to look the other way and try to make us both forget through retail therapy and spa days. It was our normal.

  I wanted to go back because I was clinging to the idea that it would change one day. Every once in a while, I got a glimpse of what it could be, in the laugh lines in my mother’s face or my dad’s footfalls coming down the hallway. Who we used to be. I wanted to go back because what if one day I left for good and it all completely disappeared. That would break my heart. So, I kept clinging and hoping.

  I slipped my cold hand into Tatum’s. We sat that way, in the comfortable silence that exists between best friends, until the ice cream melted, and I could breathe again.

  The next morning, I kissed my mother’s cheek and told her I loved her as she slid into the car, spirited away to her treatment facility. As the car sped from the house, I imagined the conversation we might have had if she hadn’t been so “exhausted.”

  “Do you have everything packed?” Though Mom would’ve already known because she would’ve slipped a note inside my bag or inside my quote journal, telling me she loved me.

  “Packed and organized.”

  “You’ll call me every day?” She would’ve made me promise.

  And I would promise, of course, to call and to write and to not be embarrassed if she showed up at the retreat center just because she missed me.

  Even though we couldn’t have that conversation now, I hoped we could have one that was just as loving and meaningful when Mom got back. I said a silent prayer to anyone who would listen: Please make her feel better . . . and quickly. I went back into the house and carried my own bags downstairs. I stood there, twisting the pearl on the chain at my neck, and waited for the next departure.

  My dad and his lawyer hired a security team to ride along behind them as he surrendered himself to the prison. He thought there might be media trying to “catch a glimpse of a fallen hero.” Hypocrite is a better descriptor, but I didn’t say so out loud.

  I didn’t say goodbye to him. He just squeezed my shoulders with a reminder and a promise he himself probably couldn’t keep. “Be on your best behavior. I’ll see you soon.” I didn’t know if he meant at our first visitation, or when he was released, but it didn’t matter. I just nodded. I watched from the living room as three black SUVs whisked my father away, two local news vans and their cameras looking on from across the street. I shut the curtains with a huff.

  On the blank first page of the grocery list pad hanging from the refrigerator, I scribbled,

  THERE WAS A CERTAIN SATISFACTION

  IN BITTERNESS. I COURTED IT. IT WAS

  STANDING OUTSIDE, AND I INVITED IT IN.

  Nicole Krauss

  But it didn’t matter. No one would see it. I ripped off the page, crumpled it, and threw it in the trash, hoping it wouldn’t spontaneously combust.

  I felt like the cliché-est of clichés, but after my dad’s car had disappeared, I went straight to the bathroom and got out the scissors. Pulling up a YouTube tutorial, I started hacking away at the blonde
hair that had always hung halfway down my back. In books and movies, heroines cut their hair when they need a change or they’re about to start a revolution. I wasn’t trying to change the world at the moment, maybe just my little slice of the world. If I had to go to be a niece, a cousin, and an employee, things I had absolutely no experience being, it might be easier to do it if I actually looked like someone else. I managed to cut a fairly decent straight line at my ears and did my best with the back. I faced the mirror and shrugged. It made me look younger; my already large eyes seemed even bigger. I thought I’d feel lighter, physically and emotionally, with all that weight gone, but I felt the same. Still angry. Still lost. I could see my dad’s face in my mind, brows knitted in disappointment at my impulsivity. You look ridiculous, I heard his voice say.

  “Get a grip,” I said out loud, twisting my pearl necklace between my fingers. “It’s a summer job. And one more year at Blue Valley. And then you’re out of here.” I gripped the sides of the sink and leaned in, nearly nose to nose with myself in the mirror. “You can get personal loans for college, so you don’t need his money. You can go to school in California or Canada or on the moon. As long as it’s far, far away from here. Deal? Deal.”

  The Ashlyn that looked back at me nodded, her newly shortened hair tickling the tops of her ears. She looked scared. A little angry, a little hurt, and more than a little scared. I swallowed. She swallowed too.

  “We’re going to be fine. Just fine.”

  I hated that I was using my father’s favorite phrase, but at that moment, in an empty house, alone, with an uncertain future ahead of me, that was the only thing left to say.

  Chapter 4

  The ride to Pennsylvania took four hours. Or so. I wasn’t really paying that close attention. I couldn’t shake the anger laced with sadness that was rattling around my body that felt otherwise hollowed out. My dad had said, “we’re not abandoning you,” but I could hear his voice, over and over, abandoning, abandoning, abandoning, so many times it sounded like he was laughing at me.

  I’d stuck my head in the sand more times than I could count when Dad would say something horrible or tightened the reins on our lives until it was a chokehold. It was easier that way. But, this time, the wreckage was worse than ever. Impossible to ignore. I felt bad for my mother. She had trusted him to take care of us and generally excused everything else. Until it all went up in a puff of smoke and she found herself lost in the middle of it. We both did.

  When I pictured my father’s calm face as he casually announced the destruction of our family last night, anger shot back through me. He didn’t look sorry. No apology. No acknowledgment of the misery and embarrassment he was heaping on us.

  I sucked in a sharp breath as the driver turned onto the street that I vaguely recognized as the one Uncle Ed and his family lived on. I hadn’t been to their house in eight or nine years. The last time was for some kind of celebration. Maybe Dylan or Hannah’s birthday or an anniversary. The only things I remembered were the crystal tumblers my Aunt Greta served the iced tea and lemonade in and my dad grumbling about there not being any wine. Those glasses looked like they were made for royalty, intricately designed with flowers and swirls. I felt special just putting my lips on them.

  I sighed, and my newly short hair flew up around my face and tickled my nose. I sneezed twice as the car pulled into the driveway of the small house where I’d be making a brief pit stop before trekking into the forest. A rusting pick-up truck sat under a carport with a sagging roof, and the front lawn seemed to consist more of weeds than actual grass—a sea of yellow dandelions and white fluff. Wishes waiting to be cast. I heard my dad’s phantom snort of disgust in my head and tightened my jaw as the car slowed to a stop. The driver, who hadn’t said a single word the entire drive, opened his door and went straight for the trunk to get my suitcase. I remained in the backseat as he placed it on the sidewalk, until he peered in the window at me. What would he do if I didn’t get out? I groaned, opened the door, and swung my feet out. At least my toes were done—my favorite shade of purple to match my fingernails. If my life was going to hell in a handbasket, I’d look cute on the journey.

  Aunt Greta was coming down the walk as I slammed the car door behind me.

  “Ashlyn!” She smiled warmly, showing a row of sparkling white teeth with a small gap in the front. If that’d been me, my dad would’ve insisted on cosmetic dental surgery. I liked it on her, though.

  “Hi, Aunt Greta,” I said. She wrapped her arms around me and I patted her back awkwardly, hugging her for the first time in almost a decade.

  “How was your drive? Let me look at you. Goodness, girl, you are thin. What are they feeding you at that fancy school of yours? Spinach and sparkling water?”

  “My best friend asked the same thing,” I laughed, self-consciously looking down at my legs, bare beneath my white skirt.

  “Well, I’ve got lunch ready for you in the kitchen. Your grandmother’s special baked ziti.” My grandmother had a specialty? Aunt Greta pursed her lips. “I would’ve made your favorite, but I wasn’t sure what that would be. So, Hannah insisted I make her favorite.” She chuckled and put her hand on the small of my back, taking the handle of my suitcase in the other, but not before reaching into the pocket of her shorts and handing the driver a folded wad of bills. He nodded, got back into the car, and peeled out like he couldn’t get away fast enough. “Come on, let’s go in and I’ll show you the guest room.”

  Uncle Ed was at the front door when we got there. I did a double take. He looked just like my dad. A little thinner, a lot grayer, more stubble around his square jaw, but there was no mistaking the relation. We both just sort of stared at each other for a moment, and then his face broke out into a wide grin—wider than I had seen on my father’s face in years and years. My uncle swept me up into a hug, my feet leaving the ground, and I had to hold onto his shoulders to steady myself.

  “We’re so glad you’re here, Ashlyn, I can’t even tell you,” Uncle Ed said into my hair. “I’m so sorry for everything you’re going through.” Tears immediately sprang to my eyes and I quickly turned my cheek to wipe them on the soft fabric of his worn T-shirt. And then, setting me down gently, “But you’re with family now. We’re here to support you.”

  I nodded, afraid to speak and let loose the ocean of tears I was desperately trying to hold back. He stepped into the house and held the door open for me and Aunt Greta. I followed him up the narrow wooden stairs, each stomp of my feet on the steps releasing a bit of the nervous energy inside. He carried my suitcase into a small bedroom on the left side of the hallway. It was fine, but it wasn’t mine. Uncle Ed set it down on the bed and wiped his hands on the seat of his jeans. He looked at me, with what looked like hope, and his face fell when he saw the grimace I knew was on my face.

  “Well, I know it’s not what you’re used to, but it’s comfortable. At least there’s air conditioning, which is more than I can say for the employee cabins up at Sweetwater, but that’s half the fun, right?” He chucked me gently on the arm. Was that meant to be a joke? No air conditioning sounded like a nightmare.

  “Sure,” I said weakly.

  “Do you want a glass of water or a pop or something? Hannah’s downstairs setting the table, should be ready in a few minutes.” Uncle Ed’s eyes were light and hopeful. Like adding his estranged niece to his household was absolutely no big deal. I hoped that was true. The last thing I wanted was to be anyone’s burden.

  “I’ll just freshen up and be right down.” I clasped my hands behind my back. Uncle Ed nodded.

  “You got it.” He smiled again, and his eyes crinkled in the corners. “I know I said it already, but I’m glad you’re here, honey. We’ve missed you.”

  I heard myself say, “Me too,” with a creak. I wasn’t sure I meant it but I wanted to.

  “Bathroom is across the hall. You’ll share with Hannah.” He nodded again and left, closing the door softly behind him.

  I sat on the corner of the bed
, which was covered in a lacy bedspread that probably used to be white but had yellowed with age. The walls were dark blue, almost navy, but the room was still filled with light from the large window, framed with lace curtains. Cheap, my dad’s voice scorned. I stood and inspected the three-drawer dresser at the foot of the bed. On top, conveniently for me, was a brochure for Sweetwater Overlook Retreat Center. Did Hannah put it there? Aunt Greta? I ran a finger down the glossy cover, over green trees and the roof of the big, wooden lodge. Men and women, who looked like they belonged in suits and shiny shoes, smiled bright white teeth at the camera as they linked arms and pointed to the logos on their matching Sweetwater tees. They looked happy. But how anyone could be happy in the woods with bugs and rain and dirt was beyond me. I groaned and silently cursed my father. If he had followed the rules set forth by the IRS like every other law-abiding citizen in the free world, I’d be sitting by the pool reading magazines with Tatum.

  I read further and something caught my eye. “Sweetwater is proudly ‘off the grid’ so be sure to leave your cell phones and laptops at home.”

  No cell phone or internet? How was I supposed to talk to Tatum and stay connected to the real world? My dad talked a good game about his genius plan of ensuring I was “supported,” but that seemed impossible if I couldn’t talk to my best friend.

  “I know you probably think you’ll hate it, but the retreat is magical. People’s lives change there. So just make sure you don’t ruin that for the rest of us, okay?” I whirled around to find my cousin Hannah in the doorway, hand on her hip. She looked exactly the same as the picture Aunt Greta had sent in the most recent holiday card. Tanned skin—she’d benefited from our Mediterranean genes, while I was paler than a ghost—muscular thighs beneath olive green shorts, plain white tank, swimmer’s shoulders, a chocolate brown pixie cut. And a spectacular sneer.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Hannah raised an eyebrow. “Sure.”

  I raised one back. “I’m not sure what you think you know about me, but I’m pretty certain you’re wrong.”