The Nearness of You

by Amanda Eyre Ward

  I never spoke to Jenni again. She dropped me cleanly and without malice. She’d been picked, and I had not.

  —

  At Pringley, I watched the groups of kids laughing together like a scientist: how could you be so comfortable? How did you know the right way to respond to perplexing comments? For example, one day I decided I needed to leave my room and try to socialize. I walked into the common room of my dorm and a cute boy named Wesley said, “Oh, look who’s here! It’s Eloise! We’re so glad you’re here, Eloise.” The way he said “so glad” made it sound as if he were making fun of the words. As if he wasn’t glad at all. I put my hands on my hips. It had taken me about an hour to put together my outfit of low-rise jeans and a halter top.

  Later, Muffy told me I had to “give it right back” to people like Wesley. What did this mean? How would this work? None of it made sense to me, and when the group of boys around Wesley laughed (at me? It sure seemed like it), I felt the usual sinking sadness. I turned and went back to my room, as if I didn’t care. But I did care.

  I guess I thought that if I found my real mother, and she was like me, maybe she’d help me sort it all out. She might know how to respond to people like Wesley. If I asked my dad, I knew he’d say, “Ignore it.” (I tried. It still hurt.) If I asked my mom, she’d say guys like Wesley were losers who’d never amount to anything after college. But that knowledge didn’t help in the short term. It didn’t make any difference at all. I wanted Wesley (and boys like Wesley) to like me. I wanted to belong. I wanted to be like Wesley myself, but I didn’t know how.

  —

  The Museum of Natural History was an easy place to disappear. I told Ms. Phillips I had to use the bathroom, actually did use the bathroom, and then I walked underneath the insanely awesome giant whale and took an elevator to the basement. There was a staircase leading to gleaming metal doors—the entrance to the New York City subway system. I pushed the doors open, awkwardly mashed a few bills under a glass partition, grabbed a MetroCard, and I was on my way. It took me a few slides of the card through the jobbie on top of the turnstile, but eventually I found myself on the platform. I could go anywhere. I shivered in anticipation.

  I’d already planned my route to my grandmother’s mental hospital, which was located way downtown. I’d memorized the directions, because anyone who’s ever run away knows you need to turn off your phone and its Big Brother tracking system. As far as Big Brother knew, I was still in the ladies’ room at the museum, perched on top of a toilet.

  I had never been on a subway, but I tried to look nonchalant as the train approached. It was ridiculously loud, but nobody flinched. Also, nobody looked at each other. It was weird, like we were all robots who didn’t bat an eyelid when we heard deafening noises or happened to be standing like inches from another person’s face. I thought: New York is not for me.

  I was also feeling nauseous from the cough syrup party I’d had with myself the night before. After maybe six or seven sips, I’d found myself in my dorm bathroom wearing an oversize Pringley T-shirt with no pants, looking at myself in the mirror and saying, “What are you searching for? Is it inside yourself?” out loud. That was the last thing I remembered before my phone started making the obnoxious alarm sounds that heralded another Massachusetts morning.

  —

  I stood on the platform. My train braked to a stop. The doors wheezed open and a tsunami of humanity poured out. I scrambled onto the train, grabbing one of the metal bars that hung from the ceiling. I had only the hundred dollars cash my mother had sent the week before for “fun money” (along with a dopey card of a dog with a tear rolling down its cheek, captioned “I Doggone Miss You.” If she missed me so much, why did she send me away?). Still, I thought I might take taxis from now on. The whole subway experience was bringing me down.

  I had to change trains at Times Square, which I almost went up and saw in real life—New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and all—but then realized I’d have to pay to get back on the train, so I just followed endless passageways past people singing and playing drums and apparently sleeping. Again, I had that “human in a robot world” feeling, as everyone’s gaze just slid over me. Nobody even paused to check out the posters for Broadway shows and nose jobs. I saw a man kneeling next to his son in a stroller, feeding the boy frozen yogurt right there in a subway tunnel.

  Something about that man kneeling made me think of Suzette, which made me sad. She loved me so, so much that it was burdensome to think about. She was the one who’d quizzed me on my multiplication tables for months. She was the one who stuck love notes in my lunch bag. She came to me when she found the pills in my backpack. “Why, honey?” she asked me. “Why?” I’d almost told her the truth: Joni had told me there would be a party at her house after school, and that if I brought beer or drugs, I could come. I’d skipped last period, walked home, and rifled through our liquor and medicine cabinets until I hit the jackpot, finding an old bottle of the most hard-core drug around in my parents’ bathroom. (We’d all seen a video at school the week before called The Road to Heroin, after which all the football boys started talking about “scoring Oxy.”) But when I’d shown up at Joni’s, hoping like a complete loser to be invited into the popular girls’ party, only Joni’s mom had been there.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” she’d said. “Joni and her friends are roller-skating.”

  I ran home, avoided the kitchen (where Suzette was unloading groceries), dropped my bag in my room, and ran a scalding hot bath, immersing myself in the water and sobbing with my hand over my mouth for like an hour. I was never making it into the popular girls’ group. I knew they were laughing at me, wherever they really were, even Jenni.

  When I got out of the tub, Suzette was in my room. She looked so shocked, holding my backpack in one hand, the pills in the other. “Why, honey?” she said. “Why?”

  I almost told her everything. But she was the only one left I could hurt. I shrugged and rolled my eyes. I saw her flinch as if I had punched her. Good.

  —

  Suzette had always watched me like whatever I was doing was incredible. She treated me as if I was fragile, like someone was going to grab me at any moment. Once, I wandered off in the Whole Foods and she absolutely freaked out. She had three security guards combing the store and the Houston Police Department on the way by the time she found me staring at the sugar cereals (not allowed by Suzette, of course, Wheaties all the way).

  “You’re safe!” she’d said, basically shouting. She’d grabbed me so tight I couldn’t breathe and kept on going “You’re safe! Thank God, she’s right here. She’s right here!” Even the cops had looked embarrassed for her, like, OK, lady, it’s not like she’s primo kidnapping material.

  Suzette was strict about being happy the way other people are strict about bedtimes. If I mentioned feeling awkward or lonely, her face would morph into this cheerful rictus and she’d be like, “But really, everything’s fine, right? Right?” If everything wasn’t fine, it was as if I became inaudible.

  Suzette made it home for dinner every single night. (This was part of her happiness regimen: hover around your daughter while in public—check; cozy family dinner—check; outsource dealing with your daughter’s troubling emotions—check!)

  I tried to tell her a few times about the hole, and she was there, looking right at me, but when I finished talking, usually in tears, she would say, “Now what should we plant in the window boxes?” or “I thought it was going to rain today but look, it’s gorgeous out!” I got the message—keep it inside; brighten up, buttercup; ferme la bouche.

  She was scared I’d turn out crazy, like her mom. She found me a therapist to talk to, grilling Dr. Sue about whether or not I showed signs of mental illness. But I wasn’t crazy. I was sad. I just wanted her to listen.

  On weekends, our family time was spent at the Rothko Chapel. It was like our church, but instead of believing in God, we believed in watching the way the light fell inside the chapel at various times of day. My dad’s
parents and sister, my namesake, Eloise, were killed in a car wreck when he was eleven. At their funeral, he told me, he realized there was no God. The priest went on and on about God calling my dad’s family home, and he just thought this was bullshit.

  “If there’s no God,” I asked him, “aren’t you lonely?”

  “Of course I’m lonely,” said my dad.

  He’s like this—realistic. He doesn’t butter the biscuit or whatever the expression is. “But now I have you and your mom,” he said that day. “So, I don’t know, maybe someone didn’t forget about me after all.”

  What the hell? I mean, seriously! The whole conversation left me kind of dizzy. And then there’s Suzette, who thinks—honestly—that she sort of is God. I mean, she fixes people’s hearts. That’s pretty insane. I just wish she knew how to fix mine.

  I tried to ask Suzette about my real mom. She was a wonderful woman, said Suzette—she gave you to us. Neither Suzette nor my dad had any idea what happened to her after she handed me over. Besides, my dad hissed, hoping not to be overheard, your real mother is Suzette. She loves you more than anything.

  —

  Fast-forward to the summer of 2016, a girl underneath New York City, whizzing through a tunnel that will lead her to…who knows? And for that matter, who cares? The only sure thing was that it felt good to be moving.

  7

  Hyland

  The day before Eloise went missing, Hyland finished Happy Guy at the Wedding Smoking a Cigar, a vaguely Rothkoesque canvas for his summer show. (Hyland kept a Rothko quote taped up in his studio: “If you are only moved by color relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom.”)

  The title of the painting came from their friend Meg’s proclamation that men underwent a torturous middle-age transformation from anxious guys who wished they were nineteen again to happy guys who smoked cigars at weddings and seemed pleased with their lives.

  “They’re not happy,” Meg’s husband, Stew, had remarked drily. “They’re defeated.”

  Hyland disagreed with Stew, but he hadn’t said so. The fact was that Hyland had a life more wonderful than he could have hoped for. Embarrassing but true: he was happy.

  Hyland locked his studio and went for a desultory jog around the neighborhood. His knees were creaky but functional. The sun was setting by the time he returned home, their lawn an otherworldly orange in the low light. He went into the kitchen and opened a beer.

  The week before, Suzette had waltzed into Ninfa’s wearing a gold dress with her hair up, smelling fantastic. They’d drunk a few margaritas, wandered around the city after dinner holding hands, made out in the Uber on the way home. After the best sex they’d had in years, Suzette had kissed him gently and explained that she was leaving for Africa in the morning.

  Goddamn Suzette! It was both a blessing and a curse to be bewitched by your wife. Without her, without Eloise, he was giddy for a few days, but then bereft. The house was so quiet.

  In the shower, he used Suzette’s shampoo. It had a musky, expensive scent. He pumped her age-correcting exfoliating cleanser with finely ground olive seeds into his palm, rubbed the gritty substance into his face. “Don’t use my fancy products,” she’d warn Eloise. “The pricey stuff is for middle-aged mothers only.”

  Oh, really, Suzette? Hyland poured a handful of awesome-smelling hair conditioner into his hand. If Suzette was going to jet off to Sudan for an undetermined amount of time, leaving her stash of aromatic potions behind, all bets were off. He was going to use her shampoo, drink their best wine, and even get ahead in “their show.” A chaste rebellion, but Hyland practically cackled, thinking of how mad she would be. Maybe she’d even give him a spanking.

  After his shower, Hyland slipped into his bathrobe, uncorked a great bottle of cabernet, and settled in for a House of Cards marathon on Netflix.

  —

  By the time Hyland waked in the morning, his head thrumming with a dull hangover, the Pringley School had called twice. One thing Hyland didn’t need was news from Massachusetts. His night table held half a plate of pad thai; an unopened pack of cigarettes (he’d changed his mind by the time the Cigs4u guy arrived); an empty wine bottle; and his old, college copy of Infinite Jest. God, he loved that book. Funny, luminous, wise, achingly sad. He still didn’t get about 90 percent of it, but that didn’t keep him from drunkenly savoring his favorite sentences once in a while.

  He opened the pack of cigarettes and lit a Marlboro Light right in his bed. Yup! He smoked, lay back down, felt like Brando in Last Tango in Paris. But without the young Parisian girl. He missed Suzette.

  Hyland began to cough as his phone rang again: the Pringley School. Christ on a cracker! I should go for a run, thought Hyland. As soon as I finish this cigarette, I shall go for a run. He took the last, searing drag, stubbed out the cigarette. And then, because he was a good man who understood (though sometimes resented) his responsibilities, Hyland answered his phone.

  8

  Eloise

  The Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital on Thirtieth Street is an enormous brick building. It’s as grand as some of those on the Pringley campus, but it also looks sinister for sure. Off First Avenue, there’s a black iron gate, both beautiful and creepy. The whole place seemed to me like an elegant guest arriving a hundred years late to the ball, her gown falling into tatters.

  I pushed open the gate to find an unkempt interior courtyard. A sad tree clung to the dirt. A line of painted bricks circled a dead bush. A tangled hose was a snake, writhing and venomous. Some wannabe artist had covered all the ground-floor windows with demented murals: flowers on acid, Keith Haring imitations, the downcast profile of a black woman. And each mural was framed by cheerful painted curtains. It was meta-weirdo, and I didn’t like it a bit.

  I’d always had the assumption that Bellevue was old-school and elegant. Sure, I knew being bipolar was no picnic, but I thought you had to be rich and/or famous to go to Bellevue. Believe it or not, I had never even seen a picture of my crazy grandmother—instead, I’d created an imaginary image of a regal woman, a Virginia Woolf type, brilliant and unfathomable, possessor of a mind too wild for this world. But as I stood in the most dilapidated spot I’d ever been, sorrow filled me, from my throbbing forehead down through my aching stomach.

  My grandmother was just an old lady behind one of these dark windows. (Or worse, behind one of the awful paintings.)

  Nothing ever turned out the way I imagined it would. I was brought up padded with secrets, when all I wanted was the truth. The stories I was spoon-fed, lovingly and with great care, didn’t add up when I started examining them. Mainly the story of my real mother. But also the story of my grandmother. All anyone talked about was happy-go-lucky good times. It was bullshit!

  My parents thought I needed protecting—as if I was in constant peril, on the edge of disaster. I had training wheels on my bike until I took them off myself at age seven. I wasn’t allowed near a swimming pool without a virtual hazmat suit of sunscreen and flotation devices. Nothing in my childhood ever went wrong—from whence the panic that seeped into my days?

  I was treasured, but I wasn’t allowed to fuck up.

  Ha! I thought. Look at me now.

  I strode toward the door of my grandmother’s mental institution, pushing the button to gain entrance. The Tape Recorder of Doom was literally screaming at me that this place was bad, get out, run away, do not enter, but if my early years of therapy had taught me anything, it was how to shut up the Tape Recorder of Doom.

  An aside: what if the Tape Recorder is correct? This one stumped my therapist, too. Or rather, her answer was that sometimes our anxious fears are correct, but we can’t listen to all of them all of the time. Thanks for nothing, Dr. Sue.

  After I pushed the doorbell, nothing happened for a while. A few people (all men, and very dirty) walked by, seeming not to notice me. There was a guy in a wool cap sitting on the front stoop smoking. I watched him, waiting for hi
m to look up. The door of my grandmother’s mental institution opened.

  “Yeah?” said a man in a flannel shirt.

  “I’m here to visit my grandmother?” I said.

  “This is a men’s shelter,” he said. “Nobody’s grandmother’s here.”

  “What?” I said. “I’m looking for Bellevue.”

  “This is Bellevue,” he said, folding his arms in front of his chest. “But it’s a homeless shelter now. They moved all the original tenants a while back.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “This is not a safe place,” he said. “You hear me? All kinds of people around here. All kinds. You better go, girl. Bellevue ain’t got nothing for you.”

  I’d better go, this I understood loud and clear. But where?

  9

  Suzette

  The news crew was waiting in the hallway again when Suzette arrived at the Heart Centre on the morning of Angel’s surgery. Suzette walked past them quickly. “We wish you luck today,” the anchor called.

  It’s not about luck, Suzette almost answered, but instead she turned back, smiled, and called, “Thank you!” without breaking her stride to Alberto’s office.

  Alberto’s ashtray was already half-full. He seemed nervous, held out the phone receiver. “For you,” he said. “Please make it short. Angel is prepped and the team is waiting.”

  “Hello?” said Suzette.

  “It’s me,” said Hyland.

  “Hyland! It costs a fortune to call!”

  “She’s missing,” said Hyland, his voice sounding as if he were inside a cave.

  “What?” said Suzette. She calculated the time difference: in Houston, it was midafternoon. “Who? You mean Eloise?”

  “They went on a field trip to New York City,” said Hyland. “She ran away in the Museum of Natural History. Apparently, she told someone she was going to find her real mother.”