Here So Far Away

by Hadley Dyer

  “That’s okay, I’m not hungry.”

  “I made pie,” she said.

  In Mum-speak, that meant attendance was nonnegotiable.

  When Francis joined the rest of us in the dining room, he was wearing my father’s old painting coveralls. “How do I look?” he asked sheepishly.

  “Like you’re going to fumigate the house,” Matty said.

  “Our son, Matthew,” said Mum. “And this is George.”

  “Have we met before?” He sounded genuinely uncertain.

  “Nope, nice to meet you,” I said.

  He nodded at my economics textbook, which was sitting beside my plate. “Do you go to Noel?”

  Matthew snorted.

  “Next year, maybe,” Mum said. “George is a senior.”

  Did he pale? He paled. Now he was trying to compose himself by straightening his fork and knife, rolling up his sleeves.

  “Is that a tattoo?” Matthew asked.

  Francis pushed his sleeve up farther to reveal a swirly pattern on his upper arm shaped like a tree.

  “Dad tattooed Mum’s name on his arm after their third date,” Matthew said. “When did you get yours?”

  “When I was living in Ireland, working in a music shop.” From there he backpacked around, he explained, working for a bookbinder in Italy, a record label in Austin, a water charity in Kenya—about ten years going from one thing to the next.

  My mother and brother were impressed. My father was not.

  “So, that was a decade well spent,” he said. “And what brought you to the force?”

  “I was ready to settle down somewhere. No, that’s not true. Sorry, that’s bullshit.”

  My parents exchanged glances.

  “What’s true is that I spent a long time trying to avoid the family business. I thought I needed a job that was just mine and, I don’t know, cool-sounding. It’s fun to wander for a while, but I started feeling like what I truly want is to feel part of a community. That’s what I was missing all those years on the road. So I suppose I chose police work, Paul, because I need that anchor. The weight of that responsibility.”

  “Geez,” Matthew stage-whispered to me. “First-degree blow job.”

  “Matthew!” my mother shrieked.

  Now that’s what not having a filter sounds like.

  “Sorry,” Francis said. “I’ve still got that rookie attitude.”

  I could tell Dad was not yet impressed. “Where’s this farm you been living at?” he asked.

  “The closest town is Veinot.”

  “You want to anchor yourself to a rural community, it’s good to live in town. Let people see you.”

  “I’d planned to, but then I met Rupert.” Francis leaned toward my mother. “I’m letting a room at Ironwood Farm. Do you know it? It’s on the north mountain.”

  “Didn’t it used to have a U-Pick?”

  “Down to a blueberry patch and one pig now. I was hoping to give Rupert a little more time in his home, but he’s not as independent as he thinks. Doesn’t see too well, and the house has been let go. I don’t like the idea of him being alone while I’m working long shifts, but he won’t hear of bringing anyone in. Says he doesn’t need a babysitter.”

  “You know, George works out that way. At a lighthouse. It’s right in the middle of a—”

  “Of a field! Down the ridge from the farm. In fact, right by the farm.” He turned to me. “That’s where we met!”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “At the lighthouse. The pig got loose and George helped me find him. I knew I recognized you.”

  “Oh yeah. The pig.”

  “I’d think you’d remember that, Georgie,” Mum said.

  “Until this morning I had a beard and a full head of hair after being on leave for a couple of months. My own mother wouldn’t have recognized me.”

  His sudden pep was unsettling. “I’ll get the plates,” I said, pushing back my chair.

  “I’ll help,” he said. “No, you sit, Marlene. I used to wait tables. See?” He piled the plates up his arms.

  “Georgie, heat up the pie,” Mum called after me.

  “Do you find this funny?” I hissed, when the door swung shut behind us.

  “Oh, am I not supposed to? This isn’t some joke? How old are you?”

  “. . . Seventeen.”

  A knife clattered to the floor. I started grabbing things from him, filling the dishwasher.

  “You told me you were twenty,” he said.

  “It’s not like I’m twelve.”

  “You were five years ago! You know where I was five years ago? Five years ago I was working on a riverboat.”

  “Because . . . you were a character in a Mark Twain novel?”

  Mum peeked in the door. “Why don’t you let me help?”

  “Got it, Mum. Seriously.”

  “Okeydoke.” She paused, at a loss for what to do with herself, before backing out again.

  “George, I’m twenty-nine. You’re seventeen. What the hell were you doing at a bar?”

  Now I was the one dropping utensils. Twenty-nine—that was practically thirty. Three decades. Two hundred and ten dog years.

  “I dunno. Just blowing off steam,” I said. The nausea from the morning was rising again. “Can we forget it? Please.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “Is it too much to expect you to feel sorry about the position I find myself in?”

  “No, I am.” And then, because it seemed necessary to state it: “Sorry. I guess this is mutually assured destruction.”

  We were studying M.A.D. in Modern World Problems. Supposedly, the reason the Soviet Union and America needed to point nuclear weapons at each other was so neither would fire them.

  He took his hands away from his eyes and looked at me. “Mutually assured destruction means that both parties have something equally at stake.”

  “Don’t we?”

  “I hooked up with a minor. No. No. I hooked up with a minor pretending not to be a minor. A minor who gained entry to a bar and then offered, upon questioning, further assurances of not being a minor . . . We have to tell your parents.”

  “Great idea. Pass me that knife?”

  “People saw us together—”

  “Nowhere near here!”

  “If your father is going to hear about it, it should be from us. From me. When it’s just an honest mistake. Not a mistake that we tried to cover up.”

  “I’ve been living with the Sergeant for seventeen years—”

  He grimaced at the number.

  “Seventeen and a half years, and yet I am not a loser. Do you know why? Because I don’t get caught.”

  “And if you did, the worst that would happen is what? You’d get grounded? Maybe lose your TV privileges? Whereas I will have made an incredible error in judgment before I even started this job, jeopardizing my chances of getting a permanent position if—”

  He checked himself, but not in time.

  “If my dad can’t go back to work on a prosthetic foot.”

  I picked up the pie from the counter. Mum had slit a cursive W in the top layer of dough, as she always did for special company. It was her version of our family crest, which my dad called—and I only just got this— our “family crust.”

  “You know what?” I said. “Do what you want.”

  It took a minute for him to rejoin us in the dining room. The jovial waiter routine over, he quietly pulled out his chair and sat down with what appeared like resignation.

  Mum touched his arm. “You know, I was thinking, George is out your way often. She could give you a hand with the house.”

  “That’s kind, but I couldn’t ask her to do that.”

  “She wouldn’t mind, would you, Georgie? You could go over next week and introduce yourself to— What was his name? Rupert?”

  “I mean, I have a lot of schoolwork.”

  Matthew snorted again.

  Francis forced a smile. “Okay, well, I’ll mention it to Rupert. I’m not sure how he’ll
feel about having such a young lady around the house.” Such a young lady. “But thank you, Marlene.”

  Mum filled the rest of the visit talking about the neighbor’s gout. For once, no one tried to change the subject, and by the time we’d finished the room-temperature pie, I could tell, or hoped I could tell, that Francis had decided not to say anything.

  “Why the leave?” Dad asked as he and Mum saw him out. I was listening from the top of the stairs. “You said you were off for a couple of months.”

  “Paul!” Mum said. “That may be private.”

  “I don’t mind,” Francis said. “My father was sick and then he passed away.”

  “We’re sorry for your loss,” Mum said.

  “Thank you. And I’m sorry, Paul, for what you’re going through now.”

  “Temporary setback.”

  After Mum closed the door behind Francis, I heard Dad say, “That guy ain’t police. He won’t last five years.”

  Ten

  Mr. Humphreys was staring at me from across the cafeteria. He was a tall man with a barrel torso and beefy forearms. He could bust up a fight between the biggest guys at school and carry them to the office by their scruffs, their legs bicycling the air. But usually he didn’t need to use more than a look.

  I smiled a sober and healthful smile as I joined Lisa, Nat, and Bill at our usual table.

  “Bill? Sweetie?” Lisa was saying. “Enough with the plaid.”

  “Jeremy’s wearing a plaid shirt today. And Doug.”

  “Grunge and new-wave Cat Stevensy. You’re doing late-wave Bryan Adamsy.”

  “What’s grunge?” I said.

  Nat sighed. “How are you cool?”

  Our table was the long one at the center of the room. From that vantage point I could keep half an eye on Matty and his friend Tim, tucked into the corner as far away from the Elevens as possible, while also watching Keith in the other corner acting out an elaborate pantomime to Lisa of: Your best friend and my best friend can’t sit at a table together, so I’m going to sit over here with Joshua and Christina, but meet you on the steps after school, and do you have my calculator? Subtle. Meanwhile, Joshua was acting super interested in setting his digital watch.

  “I could go,” I said.

  “Why?” Lisa said. “I’ll see him later.”

  “Could you go?” Nat said to Bill. “Find Tracy? Girl talk. Thanks.”

  “But—”

  She turned to Lisa. “Keep facing this way. I need George to check something for me.”

  Bill picked up his tray. “Since I’m invisible, I’m going to go look down some shirts.”

  “That was harsh,” I said as he left. “He’s actually pretty good at girl talk.”

  Nat reached over and squeezed my arm. “I need you to check out Doug. In the milk line. Does he seem okay?”

  “You mean sober? How can you tell? Bill said he smoked a sack of pot before gym class last week and was the last man standing in dodgeball.”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Always.”

  “I know you can. You might be a liar, but you’re also a fucking fortress. I meant Lisa.”

  Pink blotches appeared on Lisa’s cheeks. “Of course.”

  “We hooked up,” Nat said. “Doug and me. Went back to his house after the shack party. His parents were away.”

  “Oh my god!” Lisa and I exclaimed at once. We swiveled around and gave Doug a good, hard gander as he crossed the room to the table next to ours. He had a loping walk, longish hair that curled under his earlobes, somehow avoiding Prince Valiant territory, and an ever-present multicolored woven hat that clashed with everything else he put on. His parents were Come From Aways, city hippies who’d bought a vegetable farm to get back to the land, and he was the wiry you get when you eat a lot of salads and carob and weed.

  “He’s cute,” Lisa said. “I don’t even mind the hat.”

  “There’s something very . . . amiable about him,” I said. Also pained. He winced when he sat down, gave us a weak smile as he struggled to open his milk carton.

  Nat shoved a huge wad of sandwich into her mouth, like nothing in the world were more interesting than her tuna on white. “I bruised him. All over. He’s covered in bruises.” She sounded as though she were talking through a pillow.

  “Didn’t know you were such a wildcat,” I said.

  “We were only fooling around, but I’m so bony that I, like, jabbed him nearly to death.”

  “Do you like him?” Lisa said.

  Nat swallowed. “I don’t not like him. It’s more like, you’ve got Keith. And George has—everyone else, apparently. I wanted to be with someone, even for one night.”

  “Oh, Nat. That’s a Very Special Degrassi episode,” I said.

  “It’s true. And what bugs me is, I think I like sex, and you don’t.”

  I wasn’t sure what that had to do with it, but couldn’t argue with her. I liked sex in theory. I liked it well enough, you know, on my own. But my track record with guys. There was the buff jock who looked like an Adonis but whose firm, freakishly smooth muscles were about as cozy to curl up with as a pencil eraser. The scraggy guy who had a tattoo of the cross that took up the whole of his back and prayed under his breath the whole time. And Leon. Who said he had “enchanted fingers” then prodded me like he was trying to find an elevator button in the dark. Meanwhile, poor Nat. Lisa and I always thought she had an unrequited crush on Sid that kept her from finding someone else, but it was the one thing she was never honest about.

  “You and me, we’re not going to find the right boys here.” I pushed my untouched bagged lunch aside so I could climb on my giant soapbox. “Who cares? You get good grades and will probably get into whatever university you want. Isn’t that what’s important?”

  “Are you high?” Nat said. “I want a boyfriend.”

  “Guess I must be,” I said. “Because I thought what mattered was getting out of the valley and starting our real lives. But that must be the drugs talking. Yup, that must be because I’m so, so high.”

  Lisa was frantically gesturing, and I turned to see Mr. Humphreys standing behind me. “Kidding, sir.”

  He took out a penlight that he apparently kept in his pocket for such occasions and shone it directly into my eyes. He snapped it off. “How many fingers?” he said, holding up his hand.

  I was trying to blink away the spots from the light.

  “How many?!”

  “Uh, three?”

  That seemed to satisfy him. He went over to Doug, sniffed the milk carton on his tray, and dragged him out of the cafeteria by the ear.

  Lisa and I went outside to sit in the sun for the last few minutes before the buzzer. The school was basically built on an anthill, sand breaking up the grass and giving the back fields the look of a nubby afghan. I rubbed my finger against a warm, grainy patch. It felt like a dying ember of summer.

  “Is your play proposal ready?” I asked.

  “Almost. Promise you’ll read it before I hand it in? God, I bet there will be a lot of submissions.”

  “Miss Aker’ll love it, and if she doesn’t . . .”

  “You’ll kill her?”

  “Sure, murder. Maybe a stern word.”

  Lisa unzipped my knapsack and started digging around in it. “I have to tell you something. Before you hear it from someone else.”

  “Whaddya need?”

  “Cigarettes.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “You do when you’re stressed and you think no one’s watching.”

  “Must be why I have the tiny, shriveled, black heart. Outside pocket.”

  She lit a cig—slowly, like she was buying time—and blew a tendril of smoke out of the side of her mouth. “George, I kind of told Keith something about the kissing thing with Joshua. Something like, that it didn’t go so well.”

  I still hadn’t eaten, and now my stomach clenched like a fist. Pulling her arm toward me, I took a drag from the cigarette and another. “I did
n’t want that to get around,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “He’s friends with the Tongue.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think he— Oh, shit. He told him, didn’t he?” She nodded. “Is that why Joshua wet his pants at the food court?”

  “I’m so sorry. Are you mad? Dumb question. Of course you’re mad.”

  “Probably not as mad as Joshua,” I said slowly. “He’s the one who got his feelings hurt.”

  “I was trying to help, honestly. Keith was so mad at you for leading Joshua on—”

  “I didn’t lead him on.”

  “You didn’t say anything that made him think he had a chance?”

  “Like when I said he was bile-colored?”

  She sniffed. My story wasn’t passing the smell test, but the prosecution was light on tangible evidence.

  “What if I accidentally made him think I was into him?” I said. “Can’t a person change her mind?”

  “Sure, but what turned you off . . . I thought if he knew it was a bitty thing, totally fixable. So I mentioned it to Keith. And then I guess I kept talking.”

  “About the kiss?”

  “About Leon, and those other guys. To explain! I didn’t know he’d tell Joshua. Or that Joshua would get back together with Christina at the shack party. Or that she would . . .”

  “That she would what?”

  “Tell everyone else.”

  I put my head between my knees and said—appropriately—to my crotch, “Oh my god, a few days ago I was ungettable, and now I’m the school slut.”

  The buzzer went off. Neither of us moved.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lisa said again.

  “Please stop saying sorry.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I dunno. That you’ll stop telling Keith my secrets?”

  “You don’t expect me to lie when he asks something directly, do you? He asked me straight out, Who is this Leon person? and I’m like, Leon who? and he’s like, The guy George said she’s hung up on.”

  “Why can’t you say that you don’t want to talk about it?” I sat up again. “Oh, Lise, you’re not becoming one of those girls who would choose a guy over your friend.”

  “When have I done that?”

  “Well, you’re talking about Noel all of a sudden.”