Far from Here

by Nicole Baart

  The summer before Melanie died, she bought an annual pass to Lake Cetan, a little freshwater pond that cut a shallow horseshoe around the tallest hill in the county. It wasn’t much of a lake, but the bottom was rocky instead of layered with silt, and it was too small for any type of watercraft, so the water was unusually clear. Even when you were standing waist-deep you could count the stones at your feet. Rimmed by shade trees, and supplied with a small team of rather incompetent lifeguards, it was the best lazy-summer-day destination within a thirty-mile radius.

  I didn’t go to Cetan when I was a little girl, or at least, it didn’t stand out as anything special if I did. But to Etsell, the weeks he spent there with his mother swelled into the fondest memory of his youth. They rose and expanded as one, and gave off the homey-sweet scent of baking bread and wind-tossed sheets and childhood itself.

  Though they presumably passed endless languid days dipping their toes in the cool water, the afternoon that shimmered with significance for Ell was the day Melanie finally convinced him to jump off the high dive.

  There was a platform in the middle of the lake that had been erected too many years ago for anyone to recall with any accuracy who had been behind its construction. It was a monstrosity, a tangle of metal and concrete that arched out of the water like an artifact from some savage civilization best confined to rumor and imagination. Two diving boards slanted off perpendicularly from a tilting stage, a centerpiece from which everyone on the beach could watch exactly who was in line for the low board, and who had the guts to brave the ladder to the high dive. The fifteen rungs to the towering high board were a rite of passage, a ritual of sorts that separated the proverbial men from the boys and served as the object of many a dare.

  Miss Melanie was an expert in the water, a fifty-something mom who could still slice from one edge of the pond to the other with a stroke so powerful and technically impressive, she seemed better suited to teach lessons than the pimply lifeguards who lined the beach. But Etsell flopped in the waves, inelegant and leaden, working to master the dog paddle after three years of instruction.

  “Just once,” his mother urged him when the shadow of another school year loomed long over their tranquil summer. “Imagine what the boys at school will say.”

  Etsell’s eyes went soft as he told the story, and it was obvious that in his mind at least Melanie’s prompting was tender, affectionate; born of a deep-seated belief in her son and his abilities instead of a desire to push him to succeed. She encouraged him gently, and then even showed him how to do it, parting the water with her hands and scissoring out to the platform herself.

  Melanie’s hair was turning gray, but in the sun and at that distance it shone silver in the moment before she stepped to the end of the board. One knee lifted nearly to her chest, the aluminum plank bowed, and in one graceful movement she had sprung from the very end, arms tucked tight against her ears and toes pointed. When she split the water with her fingertips and was swallowed whole by the pool of azure, there was hardly a splash.

  Five minutes before the final whistle was scheduled to blow, Etsell swam out to the diving platform with his mother. The sun was already starting to duck behind the trees, and the breeze on the water was cool enough to hint of the autumn to come. Ell had chosen his time carefully, waiting until the beach had started to empty and the only people who remained were mothers gathering up very small children and a handful of construction workers who had popped in for a quick dip at the end of the day.

  The platform was empty, and when Ell climbed to the concrete staging ground, he was surprised to realize that Melanie had not followed him.

  “I’ll wait here,” she called from the water. Her legs were pumping slow circles beneath her, and her face was kissed by the last rays of sun and a sprinkling of tiny age spots that Etsell mistook for freckles. “I want to watch you.”

  Etsell laughed as he told me that his legs had never shaken quite so hard as they did on that endless climb. He said he counted the rungs, sure that the board could not rise higher than ten. When his fingers found the tenth rung, and he realized that there were more to go, he almost backed down. But she was there below him, treading water at the point where his trajectory would drop him like a cannonball.

  “Come on!” She laughed, the sound rippling over the water.

  The rest of the climb was more an act of love than a matter of pride, something he forced himself to do because he couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing her. When he was at the apex, and when he had to take the unsteady walk to the very end of the board, he thought he would collapse from sheer terror.

  “I can’t do it!” he said, looking down at her from an unfathomable height. “I’ll fall!”

  “That’s the point.” Melanie grinned.

  “But I don’t want to fall.”

  “I’m here.” She raised her arms out of the water, droplets trickling from her forearms like tiny, glittering jewels. “I’ll catch you.”

  Etsell knew she couldn’t catch him. That it would kill her if she tried. But he closed his eyes anyway, wrestled the drumbeat of his heart to a somewhat steady rhythm, and jumped.

  It was a free fall, a spinning descent, a moment ripped from time when he was lighter than air and at the mercy of an unforgiving gravity all at once. It was over in an instant. The only thing he knew from the second his feet slapped the water was a sense of drowning, of being sucked under by something so immense and unfathomable, he knew that there was no possible way up.

  But then he felt her fingers brush his, the beat of butterfly wings against his palms. Melanie’s hands grasped his wrists, and then slipped under his arms and dragged him higher and higher through the blue-green tunnel of the lake until she could catch him about the waist. Etsell broke the surface of the water with a shout, a choking gasp that could have been a sob or a laugh. Maybe both.

  But Melanie was laughing, hugging his little-boy body to her, holding them both up with each strong kick of her legs. “You did it!” she whispered against the slick skin of his neck. “I’m so proud of you! You did it!”

  “I want to do it again,” he said.

  The truth was, he was desperate to do it again. To fly for less than a second as he slipped through the warm summer air. And, best of all, to feel her fingers when he fell, drawing him from the depths, helping him rise.

  14

  Still

  The rain marched through Blackhawk like a soldier: quick and determined, with the final sweep of a black cape that wiped the sky clean in one swift movement. Behind the bank of dark clouds the horizon shimmered and danced, sunlight making prisms of every drop of water and slanting the world in a kaleidoscope, a fairy tale glimpsed through a lens of cut glass.

  Dani didn’t notice the rainbow puddles on her drive home or the light breeze that lifted the leaves above her and shivered a million tiny crystals over her car. She only felt the sharp corners of the paper she had crumpled in her hand, and the yawning cavern of the hole at her center where everything she believed in had been stripped away.

  Her house was empty when she stepped through the front door; she could feel Kat’s absence in the still, stuffy rooms. A part of Dani ached to pop one of Char’s sleeping pills and crawl into bed, where she could tuck herself deep beneath the covers and pretend for a few hours at least that she hadn’t fallen off the edge of her life. But she was too practical for that. Her hands weren’t used to inactivity, and she found herself moving through the house categorically, opening windows to catch the breath of unseasonably cool wind, rearranging pillows on the couch, straightening the pairs of shoes that Kat had kicked off by the door.

  Dani realized with a start that it was Monday, and remembered that her day was booked full at the salon. She glanced at the clock on the sofa table and saw that it was seven thirty. Only an hour had passed since she set out to find Samantha.

  Just the contours of that woman’s name made Dani’s palms go hot, but she couldn’t go there. Not now. She pushed the thought
from her mind with a desperate heave and headed for the shower. A sleepless night, a soul on fire . . . But what recompense was there for all she had endured? Etsell was gone, and the only thing he left behind was a paper begging for absolution.

  And a baby that wasn’t hers.

  Anything—even smiling through ten matching conversations about the unexpected morning storm—was better than being alone with herself.

  Dani’s first appointment was at eight o’clock, and by the time she opened the front door of her salon and hit play on the soundtrack of the day, she had fixed a smile on her face like an accessory. It had been difficult to find one that fit, a gentleness in her lips that didn’t look like a grimace, but she had managed. And in the moment before her first appointment hurried through the door, Dani peeked at herself in the mirror and decided that no one would ever know what was happening behind her eyes. Maybe she could exist like that forever—hard and cool as marble, carved, playing a part. Maybe no one would ever know.

  The facade worked fine until her last appointment of the day. Dani knew that Natalie was scheduled in the final slot, and she spent the entire afternoon preparing herself for her sister’s questions, the inevitable confrontation. Natalie was far too down-to-earth to indulge what she would undoubtedly consider Dani’s selfish antics of the night before. There would be a calm interrogation, and a litany espousing the many ways that Dani could, and should improve her social habits. Never mind that they were family—that they should be allowed to fall to pieces in front of each other. Never mind that Dani had just lost her husband.

  But it wasn’t Natalie who showed up at the end of the day. It was Char.

  “What are you doing here?” Dani asked, too surprised to be polite.

  Char glanced around the shop as if she hadn’t seen it in ages. And the truth was, she hadn’t. “I forgot how nice it was in here,” she said. “A little prissy, but nice. You need something black. Isn’t that a design rule? Every room needs a touch of black?”

  Dani repressed an urge to roll her eyes. Design advice from the woman who wore jeans better suited to an eighteen-year-old and bought her drapes mass-produced from Walmart? She might have been amused if she wasn’t so raw. “Where’s Natalie?” Dani asked, trying a different tack. “I promised to cut her hair before she went back to New York.”

  “She changed her mind,” Char said. “Had some last-minute things she wanted to do in Blackhawk before she left.”

  It was a terrible attempt at a lie and they both knew it. Char tilted her chin a little and smoothed her tank top—a pink confection proclaiming that she was a Victoria’s Secret Bombshell—over her hips. The weepy woman who had cried at Dani’s table was long gone, and in her place was the mother that Dani knew so well. Char was her confident, remarkable self, a woman so content in her own skin, it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. And for some reason, she had personally come to deliver the news that Natalie wouldn’t be showing up for her haircut.

  Dani felt a prick of disquiet, but she bent an arm to rub the twinge in her shoulder and stifled a weary yawn. “That’s fine,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind getting off a bit early today.”

  “You’re not getting off early.” Char laughed. “I’m taking her place. I’m your next appointment.”

  For a moment, Dani didn’t know what to say. She had been nagging her mother for this chance for years, but now that Char stood in La Rue in all her gaudy glory, Dani wondered why she had ever wanted the opportunity to remake her mother in the first place. But before she could worry too much, Char laid down the ground rules.

  “Don’t get too excited,” she warned. “I want to be blond. Just like this.” She fished a box from her purse and held it up for Dani to see. Gaping from the carton was a photo of a pouty-lipped woman with hair the color of champagne, and a big red X through the price tag assured Dani the highlight kit had been a clearance buy.

  A thread of disapproval puckered Dani’s mouth. “It won’t look very natural on you—”

  “I don’t care,” Char interrupted. “Either you do it like I want or I’ll do it myself.”

  It took Dani a few seconds to decide. “Fine.”

  “Good. And I don’t want you to cut it. I’m growing it out.”

  “How about a trim? Just to clean up the ends?”

  Char pulled a couple of pins from the messy French knot that held her thin hair against her head. Taking a few strands between her thumb and forefinger, she studied the processed locks. “Okay. A bit off the end. But just a smidge.” She showed Dani a half inch with her fingers and Dani mimicked the measurement, nodding her head solemnly.

  At first Char let Dani work in peace, closing her eyes when her daughter shampooed her hair and even allowing Dani to spin the chair around so that she couldn’t see what was happening until everything was done. But Dani’s strange disappearance the night before was a cloud between them, a thick and suffocating presence that slowly pressed them further and further apart. The opposite ends of a magnet.

  Dani was exhausted, and unwilling to breathe even a word about what had happened, but she could feel her mother tensing beneath her capable ministrations. Even before Char cleared her throat, Dani knew what was coming—questions littered the air like silent ghosts.

  “About last night . . .”

  “I don’t want to talk about last night,” Dani said.

  “Neither do I,” Char complained. “Do you think I want to rehash all this? Do you think I like dissecting our feelings or trying to figure out if I need to replace your cutlery with plastic sporks?”

  Dani snorted in spite of herself. “What is it with you people? You can’t possibly think I’m suicidal.”

  “We don’t. But we’ve never seen you like this before, Danica. For all we know, your warning signs are listening to Michael Bolton and forgetting to put on makeup. Both of which you’re doing, by the way.”

  “I don’t listen to Michael Bolton.”

  “Then what’s this?” Char swept her arms to encompass the room, her hands pale and bony as they peeked from beneath the edge of the cape.

  “It’s John Coltrane. It’s jazz. And I am wearing makeup. It’s subtle.” She almost added, cruelly, But you wouldn’t understand that.

  “Well, whatever. You know what I mean. You’re acting strange, and we don’t know what to do about it.”

  “You don’t have to do anything about it.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who will have to find you if you decide to . . . you know.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s messy.” Char shivered. “I’ve heard.”

  Dani gave her mother’s hair an unnecessarily hard tug and folded the foil she was working with into a too-tight rectangle. Against Char’s wishes, she was weaving twilights into the platinum blond, darker tones of amber and honey that would mitigate some of the shock of her soon-to-be-yellow hair. But against the backdrop of their conversation, Dani was gripped with a desire to give her mother exactly what she wanted, to turn her into a Marilyn Monroe wannabe, a silly caricature.

  “It’s complicated,” Dani finally said, reaching for her tail comb.

  “Honey, life is complicated. Period.”

  Dani huffed, and was horrified to feel grief rise in her chest like warm steam. Her eyes watered. “You have no idea,” she whispered around the thickness in her throat.

  “Is that what you think?” Char put one heeled foot on the floor and spun the chair so she could face Dani. Her eyes sparked and her brow cut an uncharacteristically severe line across her forehead, deepening the wrinkles that she tried so hard to hide. “You think I don’t understand complicated? Sweetheart, I wrote the book.”

  “You chose your life,” Dani spat back. “I didn’t ask for this!”

  Char thrust herself out of the chair so that mother and daughter were standing toe-to-toe. For a moment Dani wondered if the older woman was going to slap her, but Char kept her fists balled and her posture rigid. “We all make choic
es, Dani, and I’m not going to excuse mine. But we play the hand that we’re dealt. Do you think I wanted this? That I wanted to be a single mom, just scraping by, the butt end of my grown daughters’ jokes?”

  “Char—”

  “No,” she interrupted, holding her hand palm up as if to ward off Dani’s words. “You listen to me. Life really sucks sometimes. It sucks that Ell is gone. More than that—it’s awful and unfair and wrong. It makes me want to break things and scream like bloody hell.”

  Dani didn’t realize she was crying until she put her palms to her cheeks and felt the wetness there. “Please don’t,” she said. “I can’t do this right now. I can’t listen to a pep talk.”

  “This isn’t a pep talk.” Char reached for her daughter, caught her wrist for just a moment. Released. “I just want you to know that we get it. All of us. We don’t know what it’s like to lose a husband, but we know what it’s like to hurt. Natalie came home, and Kat is standing on her head trying to be a good sister to you. And I’m here. I know that doesn’t mean much, that I haven’t exactly earned your confidence over the years, but we love you. You know that, don’t you? I love you. That’s got to mean something. It’s got to ease something.”

  Kat had said those very words, but they sounded different coming from Char. Maybe it was because she wasn’t one for overt displays of affection—hugs and kisses, little touches that communicated more than an eloquent speech. And she didn’t often tell her girls that she loved them. They knew it, and she said it just enough to keep them believing it, but it wasn’t a sentiment that was tossed around in their family without weight.

  Dani knew that she should say it back. That she should go to her mother and wrap her arms around the woman, cape and foils and all. But when she opened her mouth, she wasn’t prepared for what came out. “I’m a widow.” It was the first time she had admitted it, the first time she had spoken the word.