How Far We Go and How Fast

by Nora Decter

  See, the thing is, I do go to school. Just not my school. At least, no more than I have to.

  Class ends, and I wait for my row of seats to clear. The guy next to me is taking his sweet time packing up, so I fuss with my iPod since I can’t slip around him.

  The lecture was good. Oddly enough, the topic was winter as theme in literature. I hadn’t read the books they were talking about, so I had to infer a lot—like overhearing a phone call on the bus and filling in the gaps—but I didn’t mind. It pushes you, being in over your head. Swimming was like that. I’d get moved to a higher group, and the workouts would be so tough it was like every practice was an exercise in trying not to drown. As soon as I’d realize I wasn’t clinging to the side of the pool after each set of sprints anymore, I’d get moved up and be drowning all over again. It happened time after time, like clockwork, so I almost didn’t realize how fast I was getting. Playing guitar is like that too. Every so often I’ll notice I can do something with ease that I always fumbled before.

  I put my headphones on and start my music as buddy beside me gets his act together and moves into the aisle. I’m shuffling toward the door when I realize a girl is talking to me. She has pale purple hair, and her hand is on my arm. “Tucker?”

  I try to go blank-faced as students flow around us down the aisle. I want to flow with them, out onto the street and away from this, but she’s in the way and beaming at me. I take my headphones off.

  “I thought I saw you last week! By the escalators. You had headphones on and didn’t hear me. I’m Ivy, from swimming? I didn’t know you were in this fucking class!”

  I remember her as a real live wire, running across the pool deck before a race, whipping butts with a towel and sending the lifeguards reaching for their whistles. She was a bit older than me and swam for one of the big teams in the south end, but we went up against each other all the time. Once she came to a meet hungover and puked in the pool during warm-up. They had to postpone the races while they drained all the water or added more chemicals or whatever they do.

  I mumble something to the tune of hey, how’s it going, and she laughs. Looks at me close, with all these questions, and I know I’ve got to get away. I start toward the door, but she stays with me. I can’t lose her, just like in the pool. What she says isn’t what I expect her to. “I wasn’t surprised when you quit, you know.”

  The hall is crammed with classes letting out, and we’re stuck in a pack moving toward the street. Nowhere to run. “You weren’t?”

  “No way, man. I could tell you were never really into it.”

  “I wasn’t?” This is news to me. I spent years churning chlorinated water, trying to go fast. I wanted to be faster than her, faster than everyone else, faster than myself.

  “Nah. I mean, you were pretty good, but I could tell you didn’t live for it.”

  “I guess not.” How do you live for something anyway? What does that feel like?

  “So what do you do now?”

  “Umm.” I stall, half figuring out how to answer her question, half plotting how I’m going to lose her.

  “Like, what do you do now instead of swimming? I bet you draw or act or volunteer somewhere, something more interesting than swimming back and forth staring at the bottom of a pool seven days a week, right?”

  “I guess I’m learning to play the guitar.”

  “I knew it!” We’re outside now, but she doesn’t seem to notice the cold, taking her time shoving her arms into the sleeves of her jacket, not letting it interrupt her talk. “It’s like, when you quit, suddenly there’s all this time and space to do that kinda stuff. It’s like your idea of who you are totally shifts, because what are we if we’re not what we do, right? I’ve gotten really into my art. I can’t believe I spent so long pretending to be a jock. My dad pretty much cried when I quit. He was hoping for scholarships. Hey, I should show you some of my stuff sometime. Which way are you going?”

  We’re about to cross the street to where I’d catch my bus, but I stop and point back at school. “I forgot something.”

  “Oh,” she says. “I guess I’ll see you in class then.”

  No she won’t.

  Matt got his driver’s license the moment he turned sixteen. At the time, Maggie had a boyfriend with a car and no life who took her anywhere she needed to go. That left us with her Chrysler LeBaron. Rust spread like a nasty rash across its pale yellow paint. It was a car that could not be killed, no matter what you did. Maggie forgot to renew the insurance, but we called it the Illegal Mobile and drove it anyway.

  We found all kinds of reasons to get in the car. For a while our favorite thing was to drive out to the airport, pay the three bucks to park, and sit at the arrival gates, watching people come down the escalators. It made me feel sophisticated, being at the airport, having never gone anywhere. And it was kind of uplifting to see people look so happy to be in Winnipeg. You don’t see it that much. We’d eat fast food and watch the arrivals hug their loved ones, pluck their bags off the carousel and head home. Matt would let me have sips of his coffee, and I’d go motor-mouthed, telling him everything there was of my world, which was school, swimming and nothing else. He, in turn, would tell me stories about great musicians, about Neil Young, Joe Strummer and Howlin’ Wolf. Sometimes I’d be in bed already, and he’d show up at my bedroom door and say, Wanna go to the airport? And off we’d go.

  After ditching Ivy, I duck into the Greyhound station next door to the university. There are no smiling faces to greet you here, just a piss-smelling room full of desperate folks sleeping one off or staring at the walls or otherwise wasting away.

  It’s too early to go home, so I decide to stay a while.

  Mullet lady is working the ticket counter. She’s my favorite. She doesn’t seem to have the ability to smile. I like to be nice to her and watch it freak her out. I’m not in that particular mood today though. Too shaken up by my run-in with Ivy.

  I started skipping school to hang out at the university last year. I liked the way it was full of people who didn’t know me, who didn’t notice me either. One day I was walking down the hall and followed the flow of traffic into a classroom. It was a big room, full of people, and I still felt invisible, so I sat down, stayed. I listened to the lecture. In the fall it became a habit, going downtown and finding a classroom to sit in. Sometimes I listened, and sometimes it wasn’t about listening. It was more the feeling I was after. That I was someone else. Now my cover’s blown.

  Another habit of mine is watching the 9:50 westbound bus leave the terminal. The one Matt took. I like to entertain the thought of getting on it too.

  Matt left while I was sleeping. No goodbye, just a note for me in the basement. It didn’t say anything worth repeating. Just that there was a Greyhound sale. Just that he was going to go west and have an adventure. Just that he’d be back in a few weeks. I’d never known him to lie before.

  To cheer myself up, I go talk to mullet lady at the ticket desk. “How much for a ticket to Victoria?”

  “Round trip or one way?” she counters, like she always does. And like I always do, I balk because it’s such a big question, but then I say one way, because it’s easiest, and it’s what he would have said. She punches something into her computer. “Two hundred and forty-seven dollars after taxes. You wanna hear the round-trip total too?”

  “No thanks.” I pull on my hat and walk out into the street.

  See, I have this theory that leaving is a muscle. I’m trying to work mine out.

  THREE

  The front window flashes with strange light as I walk up the path. I regard it warily.

  Inside, the living room has been transformed into a jazz lounge. Or is it a dive bar? Maybe it’s the saddest rave in the world. Hard to say.

  A haze of cigarette smoke obscures the room, but not nearly enough. The furniture has been pushed aside, and the lights are low and pulsing—Maggie has hooked up the strobe light Matt and I bought at a garage sale years ago. Roxie is on the cou
ch, painstakingly applying rhinestones to her fingernails. Char’s by the window, a bottle of wine at her feet. She’s munching on a bowl of peanuts in the shell, feeding some to Baby one at a time. And Maggie’s center stage, her back to me, hair teased into a lopsided beehive, holding on to a high note for dear life.

  I blink. Is this what a bad acid trip is like?

  Maggie raises her arms for the finale, brandishing her karaoke mic like it’s the Olympic torch. She’s too lost in song to notice me. Char and Roxie clap obediently. I drop my bag, take off my boots and head for the kitchen with Howl at my heels.

  Cory’s at the counter, pouring himself a drink. “Hey, Jo,” he says. “Want a shot?”

  “No thanks,” I say. Cory is yet another member of the Tucker clan to be proud of. I once saw him actually attempt to eat glass. Not even on a dare. Another time he wore a pair of shoes so small that every last one of his toenails fell off. Then he didn’t go to the doctor, and his nail beds were oozing bright-green pus. Like spearmint toothpaste, he said.

  I stare into the fridge for a while, then check the freezer and find a frozen dinner some forward-thinking genius (me) purchased and hid beneath plastic bags of bread ends, ice-cube trays and bottles of vodka. It’s not that we’re poor, per se. Maggie likes to claim we’re part of the creative class, though what the fuck she means by that I do not know. What I do know is we have enough to smoke and drink and eat, in that order.

  I’m punching buttons on the microwave when a throat clears behind me.

  I ignore it, but it comes again.

  I take my time turning around.

  Among Maggie’s many talents is the ability to give a profoundly unnerving stinkeye. This is a look that makes government officials bend, men blubber like babies and salespeople put in calls to their managers. I wish I could say that I inherited it, but all I seem to have gained from my Tucker genetic material is the inability to integrate into normal society.

  “Oh, hey,” I say.

  “Oh, hey,” she says back in scary singsong, her hand moving to her hip as she assumes bitch stance. Cory downs his shot and shifts uncomfortably. “Make any long-distance phone calls lately?” she says. It’s not a question. She tosses an envelope at me. It falls to the floor, and I bend to retrieve it. It’s the bill for my phone, which I am supposed to pay and which I have not paid in over five months. Meaning I’ve fallen a bit behind. Like, four hundred dollars behind.

  “Oh shit.”

  “Oh shit indeed,” says Maggie.

  “Sorry?”

  “Hand it over.”

  Cory slips out of the room with his bottle. I gaze longingly after him as I reach into my pocket and give her my phone. It’s not like anyone ever calls me anyway.

  “Good,” she says, pleased with my obedience. “Now get a job.” She turns on one kitten heel, the pink-feathered pair she’s been favoring lately.

  “I have a job,” I say, but she’s already gone. “Sort of.”

  “Well,” she yells from the hallway, “get another one.”

  You have to be quick with Maggie. She’ll take off on a whim and leave you behind. Once when I was nine she left me at the Dairy Queen in Dryden for three hours. The girl behind the counter told me if I washed her dishes at the end of the night she’d let me sleep in her backyard.

  “Let’s go,” Maggie says to the living room crowd. Cory and Roxie follow her out the front door, while Char scrambles to get her and Baby’s jackets on.

  “Don’t worry,” she says, shoving Baby’s furry limbs through the sleeves of his ridiculous dog parka. “She’ll cool down.”

  “What happened to your date?”

  “Oh,” Char calls over her shoulder, “he canceled.” And then they’re gone.

  I sit down, and Howl puts her head on my knee, looking for all the world like she knows every stupid thing I do, including, but not limited to, hiding the phone bill for the last five months in the sleeve of a Patti Smith record. Usually I’m careful to intercept the mail before Maggie gets to it. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep making me messy, or maybe I was more shaken up by Ivy recognizing me than I thought. Either way, I have to pay attention, or bad things will happen.

  The microwave beeps, but I ignore it and hook the leash onto Howl’s collar. Not hungry anymore. The way Howl is looking at me makes me queasy with guilt. Maybe this is what it’s like having a mom who doesn’t disappear for three days to go hot-tubbing with a guy she met at bingo. I’m not used to disappointing anyone except myself.

  I knew it was a stupid thing to do, I tell Howl. It’s not like I expected the bill to go away. I just kind of thought I might.

  Did you go to school today? she asks as I put my boots on.

  Sort of.

  So no then?

  Don’t.

  It just defies logic, is all. That a girl who claims to want out of here so badly, but won’t leave until she’s done high school, would fail to do the things she needs to do in order to graduate. It’s almost like she doesn’t actually want to leave.

  Ha! Keep dreaming.

  Well, how do you explain it then?

  Explain what?

  Your behavior.

  I groan. Maybe your dog brain can’t compute it, but lots of things aren’t logical, Howl. Not just me and my truancy.

  She goes to wait for me at the front door. I’ve done it now. Whatever. She pushed my buttons too. I’m well aware my actions don’t support my escape plans. I should either shut up and finish high school or shut up and leave already. But I’m too scared to just get up and go without any savings or so much as a high school diploma. And I’m no good at making myself do things I don’t want to do, such as attending high school. I wake up in Winnipeg every day. That’s bad enough.

  Back to the river we go. Howl romps and sniffs and hunts while I lie down and let the snow hold me. The sky is clouded over, and I pick out shapes in the naked treetops. I see a woman bent double, and I see a hooded figure walking tightrope, and I see skeleton hands reaching for the moon.

  Theoretically the Earth will do one more lap around the sun, and then it’ll be time. My time. Time to go. That’s why I’m working out my leaving muscle.

  I watch the snow drifting to the ground, taking its sweet time. It covers me slowly, until I’m camouflaged completely.

  Sometimes I think I might die of exposure.

  FOUR

  I walk home and into the kind of quiet that makes the house double over in silence. It rings through my ears, the rooms and everything. I wander through the first floor, picking up debris. Bottle caps and rhinestones, lipstick, high heels that didn’t make the cut, and all kinds of empties. An unsmoked cigarette rests on the edge of the ashtray in the kitchen. I light it and take a drag. Ever since Matt left, Maggie fills the house with people. She did it before he left too, but there’s a big difference between bringing the bar home because you don’t want the party to end and because you don’t want to walk into the house and hear nothing. It’s true that if we didn’t manufacture so much noise, there would be none.

  I retrieve the once-frozen dinner from the microwave, eat it mechanically, then go upstairs to bed. Maggie doesn’t like me sleeping in the basement—says it creeps her out. Considering our argument, I figure I’m due for a show of good behavior.

  But I can tell right away sleep isn’t going to come. When I was still swimming, I fell asleep every night no problem. I slept right through the sound of Matt’s guitar coming up through the vent, through Maggie bringing home friends from the bar after last call. Now sleep escapes me. Now I wake up every time the windowpane beside my bed rattles in the wind. I wake up every time footsteps disturb the fallen snow outside. Every time the dog sighs downstairs in the dark.

  I roll over and pound the lumps out of my pillow. Howl’s tags clink, and her face appears, cold, wet nose on mine. I get up and go downstairs, then down again to the basement.

  The air smells of wet cement and teenage boy, even though only Howl and I hang around here thes
e days. It’s cold, so I turn the space heater on and sit down on the bed. Howl settles onto the floor beside me.

  Our basement is haunted by the ghosts of rock ’n’ roll, among other things. Matt covered the walls with posters of his gods—Kurt Cobain and Leadbelly hang out above a stack of amps, while Johnny Cash and Jimi Hendrix and Joe Strummer are lined up on the wall next to me. In the dim lamplight their faces come alive. “Hey, guys. How’s life?” I say.

  But they don’t answer. The quiet gets louder. I grab a guitar and drown it out.

  Maggie comes home before last call. She’s not alone, but almost. There’s a man too. I track her movements through the floor. She goes to the kitchen first, opens the fridge, closes it again and continues on upstairs, giggling. I can tell by the way she stops in the bathroom to take her makeup off that she’s drunk but not wasted. She’ll get up in the morning.

  I switch off the amp, and the warm buzz of it drains out of the air. I lie down on Matt’s old single bed in the corner and try to stop my ears from searching.

  Once, Jim’s demolition company had this job tearing the safe out of the basement of a bank downtown. The work could only be done after all the other offices in the building were empty. Night after night, Jim went down and used this giant jackhammer to chip away at the thing, trying to break it into pieces so they could remove it from the building. It took weeks. The job went way over budget. No one expected the safe would be so hard to destroy.

  When I can’t sleep at night because of the drunks or Maggie crying or any of the other sounds I can’t help but be attuned to, I think about Jim working away downtown underground, trying to destroy something that was meant to last forever. I really admire that kind of blind commitment to a goal. Maybe that’s why I used to love swimming back and forth, staring at the bottom of a pool, for so many hours every day. It’s the same thing with Maggie believing she’s going to be a famous singer when she grows up, even though she’s an alcoholic tanning-salon manager with middle-aged spread and next to no singing ability whatsoever. Yet her faith in herself never seems to falter.