Far from Here

by Nicole Baart

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?” Kat laughed. “If only you were so lucky. I’m not moving in, I’m squatting. Just for a little while. Just while Natalie is here.”

  “How long is she staying?”

  “Beats me.” Kat shut the closet door with a flourish and spun to face Dani. She was grinning.

  “You love it!” Dani said. “You’re thrilled that Natalie is back. Here I thought it would drive you nuts. You two are regularly at each other’s throats.”

  “I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder. She’s still a pain in the ass, but I kind of missed her.”

  Dani dropped her jaw in exaggerated shock. “Did you just admit that you miss Natalie?”

  “Everyone needs a reality check now and then. Life can’t be all sunshine and roses. Our big sister is a good reminder of that.”

  “Whatever.” Dani slid her feet into a pair of sandals and let herself out the front door. Just before the screen slammed she called, “You just like to fight.”

  Kat’s laughter trailed her all the way to the garage.

  Sunday nights became an impromptu gathering time. It started with Char making an uncharacteristic declaration that they should take advantage of Natalie’s extended visit—it would be gone in the blink of an eye. They needed to spend some time together. Family time. At first Dani balked at it, but it was like trying to hold back the pull of the tide. The Vis girls were nothing if not strong-headed, and even Dani’s stubbornness didn’t stand a chance against the eclipse of Char, Natalie, and Kat all aligned with the same fierce vision.

  In the end, Dani had to admit that there was something undeniably sweet about having everyone in the same room. Of course, the effect was laced with bitterness, too, for the one person who meant more to her than anyone in the world was conspicuously absent. But somehow the contours of Etsell’s memory were sharpened by the women in the room. Each woman carried different tokens of Ell, distinct talismans that they brought with them even if they didn’t realize they were pocketing memories like pieces of gold.

  Dani could feel her husband in the empty space, in the silences between words and the glances they exchanged when they thought she wasn’t looking. They were holding her up, Dani knew that. Just as she had once imagined them flanking Ell—the women in his life shoring him up against a past he’d rather forget and a future he couldn’t quite bring into focus—they stood shoulder to shoulder and supported the quiet weight of her grief.

  Not that they ever really spoke about it. Instead Natalie bored them with talk of her upcoming research project, and Kat spread local gossip like a thick layer of jam on toast. Char said ridiculous things, made inane observations that she obviously thought were poignant but that were actually ill-timed and, more often than not, meaningless. They grated against Dani, particles of sand that scraped her skin and left her feeling flushed and irritated, but it was obvious that Char was doing everything she could to be a help—to be a mother. It was simply a role she had never gotten good at playing. Dani tried not to hold it against her.

  They played canasta around the kitchen table, Dani paired with Kat and Natalie endured Char because that was the only way that they could team up and maintain a fragile peace. Sometimes Dani set out bowls of chips and Chex Mix, and sometimes they ordered a pizza—half supreme and half cheese—and laughed at Kat as she picked off the green olives and ate them with her fingers.

  The night Hazel joined them was also the night that Benjamin poked his head in the back door. It seemed odd that they would both stumble into the kitchen within a half hour of each other, serendipitous somehow, because the game had been interrupted when Hazel showed up and it could not go on until the numbers were even again.

  Hazel had stopped by with a pair of mismatched chairs, two high-backed relics that she thought would go nicely with the trestle table.

  “You could paint them different colors. I think I’ve seen that in a magazine before,” Hazel offered. “It would be eclectic.”

  “Thanks.” Dani smiled. One of the chairs was a stern-looking ladder chair with a flat seat and right angles that were downright puritan in their severity. The other chair arched gracefully, a Queen Anne replica with armrests and moth-eaten fabric on the seat that would have to be replaced. The fabric was rose, the wood a faded ruby, a feminine confection that seemed almost indecent next to the more masculine ladder-backed. Neither was an antique, and Dani imagined painting them in an incongruous palette—a winsome yellow for the ladder-back and a bottomless navy blue for the Queen Anne.

  “Would you like a slice of pizza?” Kat offered before Hazel could hop back in her truck and disappear. Kat had always had a soft spot for Etsell’s thorny stand-in mom, and as she invited Hazel to stay, Dani wondered if her sister’s affection had anything to do with the similarities between Natalie and Hazel.

  “I’ve already eaten,” Hazel assured them, but she didn’t turn to go.

  “Come in anyway,” Dani said because she felt like she had to. She had no idea how to navigate an evening surrounded by such a mismatch of women, but asking Hazel to come inside was the right thing to do. It layered one more act of benevolence on the uneven surface of their slowly solidifying friendship.

  When they made their way back inside, five decks of shuffled cards were spread across the table as evidence of their interrupted game. Hazel saw them, and immediately tried to slip back out the door, telling Dani that she had some paperwork at the airport she really needed to get working on. Dani was about to let her off the hook, to encourage her to head for home when Kat cut in.

  “Paperwork? On a Sunday night?” Kat raised one eyebrow quizzically. “Every party needs a pooper, Hazel. That’s why we invited you. You have to stay.”

  Hazel glowered at Kat, but her eyes were glinting and she couldn’t quite repress the smile that played at her lips.

  “Besides, now that he’s here, we have three pairs. We can all play.”

  “He?” Dani asked.

  Kat pointed one perfectly manicured fingernail at the back door where Benjamin was haloed in the glow of the dim outdoor light. His eyes were round and startled as if he had been caught in the act of doing something illegal. But his shocked expression seemed out of place against the backdrop of his dark, heavy suit. As they watched, he tugged at the collar of his dress shirt. He looked unbearably hot and even more uncomfortable.

  “Benjamin!” Dani said. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked like he wanted nothing more than to sneak away and pretend that he had never approached her door. But instead of fleeing, Benjamin straightened the hem of his suit coat and said, “I was wondering about landscaping ties. For the strawberry patch you wanted to plant? Lowe’s has a sale starting tomorrow and I’m going to pick up a few things. . . .”

  “Oh,” Dani seemed startled. “Yeah, that would be great. How much do we need again?”

  “Forty linear feet, if I remember correctly. That’ll make an eight-by-five bed. But you wanted it raised, right? So we’ll need at least eighty feet.”

  “Sounds good,” Dani said, shifting her weight and trying not to look as awkward as she felt. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  Benjamin turned to go, but before he could vanish in the long shadows surrounding the patio, Natalie clipped across the kitchen floor and threw open the screen. “Why don’t you join us?” she called after him. “We’re playing canasta and we have an uneven number. We need one more person.”

  Dani thought he would decline, but Natalie cut a pretty convincing, if not intimidating, profile silhouetted in the warm light of the kitchen. Her mouth was a severe line in her already stern face. Dani couldn’t tell if she was asking him or commanding him.

  Benjamin appeared taken aback, but he smiled sheepishly as he stepped into the room and surveyed the women around him. “I’m a bit outnumbered, aren’t I?”

  “That’s not the only way you stand out,” Kat winked, indicating his tailored suit, the starched white shirt and
ice-blue tie.

  Dani was startled to realize that her neighbor looked handsome all dressed up. Handsome and out of place. “I suppose you just came from church.”

  “About twenty people attend the evening service. I’m actually here to recruit,” Benjamin said, offering a rare, self-conscious grin.

  Char grunted. “Been there, done that. Made my peace with God a long time ago.”

  Dani and her sister’s exchanged a dubious, three-way look.

  “Really.” Natalie sounded unconvinced.

  “We’re not terribly religious,” Dani cut in before a full-fledged debate could ensue. She could feel Natalie angling for it, and Hazel gathering tired, old axioms around her like lines of defense. “I mean, we believe in God and all, but—”

  Natalie cleared her throat.

  “Where’s your collar?” Dani interrupted, pointing at Benjamin’s shirt. She busied herself with gathering up the scattered playing cards and hoped that everyone would take the hint.

  In spite of the crackle of emotion in the room, Benjamin seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. “I don’t wear it all the time,” he said. “The older people in my congregation like it, but the younger set finds it antiquated. I like to mix things up, keep everyone guessing.”

  Dani bent over the cards, hiding a smile. If Char thought her neighbor was weird before, she could only imagine the conclusions her mother was drawing now.

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” Natalie finally said, offering Benjamin her hand. “I’m Natalie, Dani’s older sister. You must be . . . ?”

  “Benjamin Miller.” He closed her hand in his own. “Dani’s neighbor.” He turned a reserved eye to Hazel and then Char. “You both look familiar. Hazel, if I’m not mistaken, and Charlene? Dani’s mother?”

  Char nodded, her eyes sliding from his in an uncharacteristic display of timidity.

  “And everyone knows me,” Kat quipped, shattering the strange spell in the room. “Enough with the intros. Dani, you and Benjamin are going to have to pair up, and Natalie and I will take on the two young ladies.”

  After a few clumsy starts, it was surprisingly easy to get lost in the game. It was as if everyone wanted to smooth the jagged corners, erase the first few moments when it seemed as if a collection of such dissimilar people was unquestionably doomed. Against all odds, Dani found herself actually enjoying the company of the people gathered around her table. And if she held herself very still and let the sound of their voices wash over her, she could pretend that nothing existed beyond the warm circle of their laughter. It was oddly comforting.

  Hazel seemed a bit baffled by it all, and Natalie worked hard to keep everything flowing smoothly, but Char and Kat were their unvarnished selves. As for Benjamin, he came alive amid the chaos of the kitchen. At some point he shrugged off his suit coat and loosened his tie, and when they paused between games, he slid the noose off his neck entirely and undid the top two buttons of his shirt. He was rolling up his sleeves when Char made a comment that stilled the room.

  “You are without a doubt the strangest pastor I’ve ever met.”

  Benjamin gave her a calculated look, tipped his head as he considered her words, and then said, “Thank you. I take that as a compliment.”

  “I meant it as one.” Char slapped the tabletop and laughed as if it was the funniest thing she had ever heard.

  When the doorbell rang, Dani almost missed it. The off-white grate of the 1940s mechanical chime was situated just inside the door, and could barely be heard above the din in the kitchen. But somehow it filtered through to Dani, and though it took her a moment to realize what she was hearing, she stumbled into the living room before whoever was standing at the door could ring it a third time.

  Dani glanced at her wristwatch and was surprised to note that someone was at her door after ten on a Sunday night. It seemed curious that her house should be so full on a random August evening—that someone else would be anxious to join the unusual camaraderie of the hodgepodge of people in her kitchen. But she was brimming with a sort of delicate benevolence, a feeling she couldn’t quite pin down but that made her wonder if maybe her world wasn’t as war-torn as she imagined it to be. There was a hint of a smile on her face as she turned the handle, a muted optimism that was ready to welcome whoever stood on her porch.

  Except for the one person who stood there.

  Danica

  I tried to tell Etsell early on in our relationship that I hated surprises. That they felt more like an ambush than an expression of affection, an onslaught intended to shock by attacking an unsuspecting victim when she least expected it. When she was least prepared for it. Even as a little girl I couldn’t stand the thought of being caught unawares. What if I was so stunned that I said or did something even I wasn’t ready for? What if the girl I kept secreted inside scaled the annihilated wall of my defenses and slipped out for all to see?

  Ell laughed. “Everyone loves surprises.”

  “Not me.”

  “Oh, come on. You just haven’t had the right sort of surprise.”

  But even though he tried to regale me with little things, moments that were meant to delight and astonish, I never warmed to even the smallest tokens of his sudden affection. He brought me flowers at school, but they made me feel conspicuous, and a bit helpless. I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t have a vase or anywhere to store the bouquet of wildflowers except in the dark recesses of my stuffy locker. By the end of the day they had littered the metal floor with petals like whispered apologies, faded beauty that shriveled slowly in accusation. I felt like a failure.

  And once, in the very beginning, Ell tried to blindfold me and lure me into his plane. I caught on to his plan long before he was able to lift me into the cockpit, but just the thought of his admittedly well-intentioned subterfuge left my stomach so knotted I felt mildly nauseous.

  I tried to explain my aversion to surprises in a dozen different ways, but it wasn’t until my twenty-first birthday that my husband came to fully grasp the desperation with which I avoided the unexpected.

  The worst of it was, I didn’t suspect a thing. I had begged Ell to forgo a big party, and as far as I knew, he had graciously acquiesced. We were supposed to go out for supper with a couple of friends, then come back to our place to play games and have a few drinks. Quiet. Laid-back. Exactly the way I thought the perfect birthday should be.

  When we got to the restaurant, we were running a little late. I was flushed from the cold of a particularly frigid February night, and I was laughing at something that Etsell had said in the moment before we swung through the doors. There was a quick inhalation as we stepped into the room, a moment when the whole world seemed to hold its breath in anticipation. But I was only aware of it after the fact, when there was nothing for me to do but regret that I hadn’t guessed he would try to do something spectacular. As it was, I just had time to feel a flicker of unease tumble across my skin before the air erupted around me with the sound of a hundred voices screaming, “Surprise!”

  In actuality, it was more like fifty voices, but to me it could have been a thousand.

  My jaw should have dropped in astonishment. I should have squealed and kissed my husband and giggled over the fact that he had kept such a marvelous secret, but I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, to my eternal embarrassment, I screamed. And then, when everyone stood gaping at my peculiar reaction, I burst into tears.

  “I’m so sorry,” Etsell told me in the coatroom. He cupped my face, smoothed my cheeks with his fingers, tried to erase the shock of what he had done. His eyes were so anguished, it hurt me to look at him.

  “I told you, I don’t like surprises,” I choked out.

  “I know. I get that now, and I’m so sorry. I would have never done it if I thought for a second that you would react this way. I just wanted your birthday to be special.”

  It was far too late for me to pretend that everything was fine, and as my husband studied my face, I felt the weight of what I h
ad done to him splinter across my shoulders. The understanding that I had devastated him broke my heart. I dropped my head to his chest and moaned, “I don’t deserve you.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “I’m bossy and boring,” I confessed. “I’m a control freak. You try to do something nice for me and I ruin it—”

  “You’re being ridiculous.” Ell hugged me so tight that I couldn’t breathe for a moment. “You’re none of those things. You’re stable. You’re strong.”

  I shook my head against him, but he continued. “Dani, you’re fascinating and smart and funny. You keep me grounded.”

  “And that’s a good thing?” I huffed. “Keeping a pilot grounded is a good thing?”

  Ell pushed me away from him and held me at arm’s length. I didn’t want to meet his gaze but he pressed my forehead back with his lips, forced me to look at him. “You are my center,” he said. “When I want to run away from everything, to slip off the face of the known world, you call me back.”

  “Maybe I should follow you,” I said. “Maybe the best thing for us would be to leave all of this behind. Go somewhere else. Start over.”

  Ell was already shaking his head. “Everyone thinks that life begins far from here, in some place where everything is different and new and you can reinvent yourself. But I don’t want to be someone I’m not. You know me, and you stay. It doesn’t matter where we are or what we do, Dani. You are my home.”

  I was twenty-one years old. Too young to realize what he was saying to me. Too naive to know that gravity fades. That it dissipates with distance, sometimes becoming a link so weak and tenuous it’s a wonder we continue to orbit each other at all. Etsell and I treated love like a state of being, a law of physics that would exist simply because it always had. I didn’t learn until much later that love is actually a choice. The sort of choice that we have to make every minute of every day, even when we don’t feel like it. Even when all we want is to be anywhere but where we find ourselves.

  Because when home is a person, it will always be a moving target.