Any Other Place

by Michael Croley

  “He made me think by doing that. And if I tried to mention what had happened or tell him I was sorry, he wouldn’t let me. Just say, ‘I already forgot it.’ Even then as a kid that’s what he did. That’s funny, ain’t it? A person acting that way?”

  Carly Ray is sleeping, though, and she leans into me. I put my arm around her and expect her to knock it away, but she nudges closer. Her breathing is soft and blows lightly against my skin. I pick her up and she rouses a little but falls back asleep, and I carry her into her room. The poster is taped up and hanging in its place on the wall. I think about the way my own father used to carry me to bed and how warm it felt next to him and how strong his arms were wrapped around me.

  I pull back her covers and lay her down and then pull them back up. She rolls to her side and then onto her back. The streetlamp outside goes off and the room is suddenly dark. I lean down and whisper, “I’m sorry, Burl,” in her ear.

  She opens her eyes to me but doesn’t say anything, and we stay like that for more than a moment. Two strangers staring at each other.

  SINCE THE ACCIDENT

  THEY NEVER CALL it what it was. They never discuss what happened. Emma thinks she can get past it, that it’s just a phase, and when she does, her life with Richard, their marriage, will return to normal. But in quiet moments—as in the shower this morning—she can’t remember what normal was like, how everything felt months ago, before the misshapen hoods and the hissing steam and rising smoke. She sometimes feels like a child who has let go of a balloon in the wind and run through a field after it, only to watch it fly farther and farther away.

  “What are you doing here?” Emma is at her desk. The last class before winter break has just let out, and she hears her seniors in the halls, loud and boisterous, feeling the rush of freedom.

  “I wanted to take my wife to lunch,” Richard says.

  “You don’t work until tonight,” she says, pointing at his police uniform. She still likes the sight of him in it, the shield shining against his chest and the patent leather holster shining in the fluorescent light.

  “We had to go over to the rec center today to meet the kids the Optimist Club is sponsoring for the Christmas Angel project.” He thumbs the bulletin board where she has put up a display of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand theory. “They like it when you look official. Looks better in the paper,” he says and turns to face her.

  She comes out from behind the desk to give him a kiss and sees the sky is threatening snow. Across the street the telephone poles are decorated with garland-covered candy canes and snowmen with lights around their edges. “Let me grab my papers,” she says and turns back to the desk to stuff them in her shoulder bag. He reaches for it when she is finished, but she stops him. “I can get it,” she says and shoos him off.

  They walk out into the hallway where they fell in love as teenagers. Back then all Emma felt inside the walls of the school was that she was stifled. Everything seemed small and plain, too normal and too easy. Inside her group of friends there were no odd characters, no crazy free spirits. They went to the football games wearing their boyfriends’ jerseys and class rings wrapped with thread around the band to make them fit their small fingers. They did not pick on anyone, and they were not picked on. When she pulls into the parking lot some mornings, she thinks back to her days as a girl and how she never could have imagined that as an adult she would find her way back into this place. But teaching suits her, and she enjoys the back and forth with her students, the mothering she can offer them on their small problems that seem so large and defining. The only thing that seems to be missing in her life—that everyone has been asking about for years—is a child of her own. When are you two going to have children? Always the plural. She and Richard smile politely at these inquiries, wanting to believe they are well-meaning but knowing this is the way it is in their hometown. A family is a sign of success, and they are failures.

  They stop by the main office so she can turn in her grades and tell everyone Merry Christmas.

  “He’s taking you to lunch,” Margaret, the secretary, says when they walk in.

  “He is,” Emma says.

  “Such a good husband,” Margaret says back. “I couldn’t tell you the last time Larry took me to lunch.” Emma and Richard look at each other then back to Margaret. “He’s the sorriest old thing ever was a husband,” she continues. “But I love him. What else are we going to do but love our men? They need our love.”

  “That’s right,” Emma says.

  “They’re helpless without us,” Margaret says. “You two have a good Christmas.”

  “You too,” Richard replies. Then he gives Emma a knowing squeeze and says, “I hope Larry gets everything he wants.”

  Outside the school they laugh at his remark. “She didn’t know what you meant,” Emma says.

  “Oh, she knows. All she can do is love that man.”

  They laugh again and the wind picks up. Flurries are starting to fall. Emma grabs hold of Richard’s arm as he walks them toward his cruiser and opens the door for her. She hates the smell of his police car. A mix between stale, rotting wood, body odor, and coffee that Richard has spilt too many times in the floorboards.

  “Maybe I should take my car,” she says.

  “Why?”

  She can feel what’s left of the warm air inside escaping past her into winter. “It smells bad,” she says.

  “I put a new air freshener in there this morning. Take a whiff.”

  “I have errands to run,” she lies. He looks at her confused and maybe hurt. She goes on, “That way we won’t have to come back here after we’re done.”

  “OK,” he says, but she knows he is upset by this small thing.

  “I just don’t see the need for two trips,” she says and then kisses his cheek to try and soften everything.

  They go to the Chinese restaurant in the shopping center. The parking lots outside Belk-Simpson and J.C. Penny are full, and the restaurant is busy too. Six years ago this restaurant opened up and Emma never believed she’d see hillbillies lined up to eat Chinese food, but here they all are at the buffet like it’s a Sunday dinner at the church. Some of her students are in a corner. They wave to her, and she waves back as Richard gets them a table.

  “How’re you feeling?” Richard asks when they are sitting across from each other.

  “About what?”

  “In general,” he says. He is tiptoeing again, something he has done more and more of late.

  “I’m glad the semester is over. We need to go Christmas shopping. I still haven’t gotten your mother anything.” She picks at her food, waiting for what’s next, knowing he will ask about her health.

  “I was thinking we could go to Lexington next week,” he says and puts his fork down.

  She looks up at him and decides to play dumb. “The malls will be so crowded,” she says. “I’m sure I can get everything I need here at Belk’s and Penny’s and online.”

  “Not to shop,” he says. “I mean, we can, if you want, but I was thinking maybe we should see a specialist.”

  “You heard what the physical therapist said. As long as I follow—”

  “I’m not talking about your neck,” he says. He lowers his voice. “I meant, a fertility doctor.”

  The teenagers in the corner hoot and holler with laughter, and for a brief moment Emma believes they’ve heard their conversation and are laughing at her and she flushes. “Can we talk about this later?”

  “Only if you promise to actually talk about it.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You don’t want to talk about it. Ever. We’ve been trying for months and nothing’s happened. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.”

  The implication that it is him who is at fault makes her distance from him these months seem all the worse. She turns to her plate of food again, pushing the rice to one side, and feels her neck seize up in the simple movement of looking down. She makes a face and reaches a hand back to rub the s
pot.

  “Are you all right?” He reaches across the table and puts his hand on top of hers.

  “It’s nothing,” she says, feeling the sting lessen. “I just need to ice it.”

  “Maybe we should find a specialist for that too,” he says.

  “It’ll go away.”

  “It hasn’t yet.”

  They stare at each other. “I don’t need to see a doctor about anything,” she says at last. “My neck will be fine and we’ll have a baby when it’s time. I don’t want to go to some clinic and have them run a bunch of tests on us only to find out we’re normal.”

  “But what if we’re not?”

  “We’re fine,” she says. She gets up from the table and goes to the restroom, taking her purse. At the sink she wets a paper towel and presses it to her forehead and then the back of her neck, taking in the coolness on her skin. She turns her head left and right and wants to feel her neck pop, but it hurts to turn it too much. Then she opens up her purse and pulls out the birth control pills. She keeps telling herself she will stop taking them, that she should have stayed off of them, but when the accident occurred, she lost her hold on the world and feels she still hasn’t gotten it back. She cups a mouthful of water into her palm and takes the pill.

  “Are you ready?” she asks back at the table.

  “We just sat down. You haven’t eaten,” he says.

  “I guess I’m not hungry.”

  She sits across from him and places her napkin on top of the uneaten food. Through the window snow is starting to fall in big, full flakes. She is unsure of what to say and knows she is losing him. They sit in silence, listening to the scrapes of forks and the loud foreign talk that sounds like screaming to them from the kitchen. Emma wants to push through this wall they’ve formed. Their love for each other is not what has been called into question, but as she watches him move the food around on his plate, not even lifting the fork to his mouth, she isn’t so sure she is right anymore.

  In the mornings, when she wakes, she feels the strain. Something akin to a pulse and a tightening of the tendons and muscles where the shoulder meets the neck. This is her only physical reminder of what took place. The others don’t seem as subtle, though. And now when Richard leaves for his shift, after the ten o’clock news, she has a fear about being alone. Once she’s in bed, the house shifts and settles, bringing creaks and groans that no longer seem familiar and warming, and she imagines all the terrible things that could befall him. Scenes from television dramas and stories she’s read in the paper pop into her head, and she sees Richard’s chest caved in by a bullet, his cruiser run off the road by a Ford pickup truck and careening down a mountain. Him pulling a car over on the Falls Highway, standing beside the driver’s door awash in swirling blue lights and then his head struck by a crowbar from behind, and he is left on the oil-covered road. Yet these seem implausible because she has lived in Fordyce her whole life and knows it is a small town, has always seemed a safe place. But bad things can find you anywhere. She also knows this. And, when Richard returns at dawn and lays his holster over the back of her chair at the sewing table and undresses and comes to bed smelling of the cold wind, she is filled with relief but not comfort.

  He pushes back from the table, throwing his napkin down.

  “You’re done?”

  “Might as well leave. Neither of us is eating,” he says.

  “I don’t want you to go in tonight,” she says and is surprised to hear herself say it.

  He looks at her and frowns. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she says. “I just don’t want you to go in tonight. It’s a feeling I have—that I’ve been having.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She feels childish, foolish. “Nothing,” she says. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Don’t do that. Please.”

  “What?”

  “Shut down on me. I want to talk about this.”

  “I don’t know what to say or what it is—” but she can’t finish the thought and bring herself to tell him what’s on her mind, what she’s kept from him since that day. It doesn’t even make sense to her, these fears, this feeling that has come on her.

  Frustrated, Richard gets up from the table, pausing for a moment, then goes to the counter to pay.

  Outside the snow has already covered the windshields of the cars. “I’ll see you in the morning,” Richard says and leans down to kiss her goodbye, but she backs away.

  “You’re not coming home before your shift? You’ve got almost six hours before you have to go in.”

  “I have errands to run too.”

  “You’re mad. You’re pouting.”

  “I’m not.”

  She waits for something else from him, but there is nothing. Snow lands in his hair and melts into drops. Now, it is him who is kissing her to soften their talk before he gets in his car. He drives away and enters the bustle of holiday shoppers, weaving through and past their cars. She has always liked the pace of Christmas, the cold weather and early nightfall and lights on houses and lawns, but this year she is empty. She watches his cruiser mix into the snaked line of taillights on the hill that leads out of the shopping center, inching toward the top until he is at the red light by McDonald’s. Then he turns left and disappears below the horizon while snow blankets her shoulders.

  RICHARD’S INCREASING DISTANCE is her own doing. He loves her more than she feels she deserves at times. To her he still looks like the boy at the top of the steps freshmen year, cutting up with his friends and his laughter echoing all the way down the hall to her locker. That he is a police officer now seems like a strange twist of fate when she considers how unserious he once was. He is still playful, but that has lessened over the years with what he has seen.

  So many of their friends—not to mention their parents—think it strange they have waited so long to start a family, but unlike the girls she grew up with, and who still live in Fordyce, Emma was in no rush to be a mother. She has resisted Richard’s longing for a child because she wanted to travel and have a full life before having a family. She still has never been on a plane, but she and Richard have driven everywhere, even to the Grand Canyon where they had a Japanese tourist snap a picture of the two of them that sits on the mantle next to a picture another Japanese tourist took of them with their original photographer. It was Richard’s idea, and in the picture the three of them are laughing, their eyes closed in delight at the lens before them.

  She has seen so many places but only ever been a part of this town. She thinks of all the miles they’ve logged in the car across the highways that tether the country together like cables and doesn’t know how a simple run to the Food Fair to get a watermelon for the church picnic is where everything changed. She doesn’t know how many times she’s driven at night during summer vacations, in the flat prairies or the Blue Ridge Mountains, and wondered what it would feel like to lose control and tumble through time and space.

  When the woman crossed into her lane there was no way Emma could have avoided her. Her teeth rattled together and the airbag exploded in her face and burned her skin. Nothing was how she imagined it. She only heard the loud thunder of the cars ramming into each other, not the sounds of metal twisting or glass crunching. Her car spun sideways and that was like a freefall, but when it came to a rest, all she had was a ringing in her ears and a headache.

  In the aftermath, among the shattered glass, Emma saw the woman. Her head hung at a sickening, unnatural angle and appeared to be held in its place by the thread of a single tendon. Her glasses swung back and forth, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, from a small gold chain around her neck and her eyes were open but they saw nothing. Dust from the airbags filled Emma’s car, and she closed her eyes tightly then and said a prayer. But later, when she sat in the back of the ambulance with Richard, giving her statement and watching the cars being loaded on the flatbeds, she could not remember what she had prayed to God for.

&n
bsp; At the hospital they sat on the examination table together in one of the small rooms in the ER, and Richard said to her, “Don’t think about it too much.” She knew he was trying to comfort her. He’d seen a lot of car wrecks, heard the wails of those who did and didn’t make it, and because of that, like any emergency worker, he’d become numb to the most fatal tragedies. But Richard didn’t make jokes. He was never flip about what happened or what he saw. He just seemed to push it some place inside him that even Emma didn’t have access to. She sometimes thought she could fill up the halls of the high school with all that he kept from her.

  The doctor who looked in on her was a young woman, young as they are, and she had been curt. She didn’t even put Emma’s x-rays up to the light box when she examined them and then said they weren’t “remarkable.” She told her to monitor her pain, gave her some samples of naproxen, and was on her way when Richard stopped her.

  “Yes,” she said from the hallway, a hand on the doorframe.

  “It’s just she’s—we’re—trying to get pregnant.”

  The doctor gave a slight smile. “Everything should be fine.”

  Then she moved off and they were alone in the room again, and Richard said to Emma, “She must have places to be.”

  “Must,” Emma said, getting down from the table. “Let’s go home.”

  That night they both lay in bed together, Richard having called in even though Emma told him not to. His lips puttered while he slept, and she looked out the window, wanting to see the stars, but they were drowned out by the yellow glow of the streetlights. She had not been shaken by the woman’s death, at least not the way she thought she might. She felt sad and she thought of the woman’s family and what they must be going through, but she didn’t feel guilt and this surprised her. She was told the woman had a heart attack and lost control of her car, that at impact she was killed instantly, but Emma still doesn’t know what that means. Everything takes time even if it seems like it doesn’t.

  She had just gone off the pill two weeks before this. They were going to start their family, and she had been excited about it, planning the baby’s room, its colors and toys. But the night fears started shortly after the accident, and in the shower one morning the pain in her neck was strong, so sharp and biting that she fell to her knees in the water and gritted her teeth and took deep breaths. Then it went away. She got dressed for school, kissed Richard goodbye, and drove to the Dairy Mart at the corner and called in sick. She made an appointment with their family physician and had every intention of telling him about her neck, but when he came in the room and asked how she was, she told him she’d quit taking her birth control and wanted to go back on it. “I’m not ready to be a mother,” she said.