The Spaces Between Us

by Stacia Tolman

  For some reason, that remark about her not knowing anything makes me really, really angry. “It was already there for her!” I shout. “She was a dancer! It wasn’t just a dream! She was doing it! God damn it! In Los Angeles! More than me, more than you, more than anybody, she was not just dreaming about it, she was living it!” Mr. C. holds out his hands to protect himself, but it’s too late. “Melody Grimshaw from the trash up on the hill and all the brothers in jail, and she’s not doing it anymore. That’s the tragedy! And nobody gets it!”

  He bows his head. This was supposed to be our big conversation about capitalism and the class system, in which I defend my year’s work and tie it all together, since I failed to do it on paper. But Mr. C. is tearing up. His face has turned red. I know I should apologize for taking it out on him. It’s not his fault. Mr. C. takes off his glasses and wipes his face with a pocket handkerchief. He blows his nose and clears his throat.

  “I picked up your yearbook for you,” he says. “It was the last one there, and we had to close up.”

  He hands it to me. It’s gold with the letters CHS in lavender in the upper right-hand corner. I flip through to the seniors to see if I can find Grimshaw’s senior picture. They were taken in November. She wore her cheerleaders’ uniform.

  She’s not in there. I look up at Mr. C. He was the yearbook advisor.

  “The news came too late to commemorate her in any way,” Mr. C. says. “Or we would have. It was already at the printer’s.”

  I turn the pages and find Angel’s picture, and then Rack’s. “How come Claudette Mizerak is in here, and Melody’s not?” I ask him. “They left school around the same time. The same day, actually.”

  “Well, Claudette, you know, made arrangements, and she’ll get her diploma along with the rest of you.”

  “Did Claudette pass Western Civ?”

  “No,” Mr. C. says quietly.

  “I see.”

  I stare at him. Does he really not get it? No. There’s too much to get. You can’t get any of it, unless you get all of it, and if you get all of it, you just want to blow the whole thing up. So unless you’re prepared to blow the whole thing up, you’re just sorry.

  “Yeah. I’m sorry, too.”

  Mr. C. taps the cover. “I took the liberty of signing yours.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, you’ll find it.” He holds out his hand for me to shake, and I take it. I don’t want the yearbook, of course—the document that officially makes my best friend nonexistent forever, but he looks so miserable and guilty that I can’t bring myself to leave it there. It’s not his fault. He walks me to the door.

  “Whatever your next step is,” he stammers. “Whatever you decide you want it to be, just let me know, and I’ll do whatever I can to help you achieve it.” His voice is choked. “Not that you need it.”

  “Thanks, Mr. C.”

  I turn around and wave good-bye to him, walking backward.

  “I’ll be here,” he calls after me.

  * * *

  And then that’s it for me and high school. On my way out, I open the envelope with my grades in it. Six As, in a vertical row, like a monogram, like an inheritance. I should have known. Now they don’t seem like the result of a year’s hard work. They seem like the inevitable product of the monogrammed silver. Now that I know about the P’s on the silver, it seems that there’s nothing in my life that they don’t explain. Or Grimshaw’s.

  I put the yearbook and my grades in a trash can at the end of the hall.

  Next to the trash, there is a window that overlooks the town of Colchis. Before I go down the stairs and out into my rosy future, I stop and put my forehead against the glass. The trees create a solid quilt of green that covers everything in the town—streets, houses, cars, the park, the people … Under it, everything is hidden, at least from here. I could be angry at this town, I could make a case that it killed her. I could hate. I could hate Colchis, hate Colchis High School, hate Mr. C., the church, Scot, Nanci Lee, the cheerleaders, Mike Lyle, my mother, even myself … but there’s no point. What erased her is so much bigger than all this, bigger than all of us. Behind me the high school is filled with the silence of summer, which also erases everything. Hating is stupid. What do I have to be angry about? I’m one of the winners, if I want to be, and like Junior Davis says about Vince Lombardi: winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. It’s all up to me.

  But I’m still angry, and I still want to do something.

  I pick my grades out of the trash, tear them into confetti, and let them fall from my hands down the stairwell. With my foot, I start pushing the trash can toward the stairs. I inch it closer and closer to the edge. When it gets to the tipping point, it hangs there for a minute and then seems to make up its own mind. I watch it bounce down the stairs; the echo reverberates through the empty halls of Colchis High. It comes to the first landing, rolls, and the top comes off and bounces down the second flight of stairs. I close my eyes and listen to the soft sound of crumpled paper spilling down the steps. Mr. C. hurries out of his room, sees it’s me standing there, looks worried.

  “Serena?”

  We look down at the paper on the stairs. He puts his hand on my shoulder, and I let him steer me down the stairs.

  “I just did that.”

  “We’ll go clean it up,” Mr. C. says. “We’ll do it together.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, a janitor is standing, looking up at the mess. He’s the big one, the one with the limp. His hair is white, cut in military style. In his breast pocket is a pack of Salem menthols.

  “Just a little accident, Mike,” says Mr. C. “We got it.”

  “No,” the janitor says. He climbs the stairs heavily. “It’s my job, not yours.” Halfway up the stairs, he’s out of breath and stops to get it back. By that time, I’ve picked up the trash bag and have put the yearbook back into it. He takes it from me. I don’t want to let it go, but he pulls it out of my hand. It’s Mike’s father, the one who hurt his back falling off a ladder. I look into his pale blue eyes, almost colorless, into the hatred I thought would never shock me again.

  “Do me a favor,” he says. “Just get out of here.”

  * * *

  When I get back home, Allegra and Tyler are studying one of Scot’s accounting textbooks.

  “I’m not going to graduation,” I tell Allegra. “So we can pretty much leave for Maine any time. Tomorrow, if you want.”

  “Serena.” Allegra says my name in a calm, soothing tone of voice, like she’s become the undertaker of my life.

  “What now?”

  “We’re not going to Maine,” she says. “Or at least I’m not.” I look from her to Tyler and then back at her.

  “Scot bought another field from Mizerak,” he explains. “So he’s broke again. He can’t afford Nanci Lee anymore, and we’re going to manage Pentz Homes for a while, get some experience running a business, and maybe go into business for ourselves someday.”

  I look at Allegra. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Serena,” Allegra says, “I’m at a point in my life where I can’t organize my existence around running off and having fun all summer.”

  “A point in your life? Jesus, Allegra, you’re not even nineteen!”

  “So?” she says.

  Mom comes in. She looks happy. “Guess what, Serena?”

  “What?” Allegra and Tyler say in unison.

  “Great news! About your friend!”

  I hold up my hand. “I don’t want to hear—”

  “Claudette Mizerak got married yesterday! To Junior Davis!”

  “—it,” I conclude.

  “Praise God!” Mom warbles. “Her baby’s due any time, and it’ll have a father. That makes such a difference.”

  “Allegra?” I ask. “I think we need to go to Niagara Falls again.”

  Allegra looks sideways at my mother. “Mom?” she says. “I think this is your moment.”

  “Oh!” my mother exclaims. “
Serena! We’re—Scot and I—giving you a car! Straight As!” She hugs me. “We always knew you could do it!”

  It turns out that Scot needs a new pickup truck, for the turn his business is taking, and rather than trade in his car, the BMW is now my reward for a year of hard work and accomplishment.

  “So now you’re free!” Allegra says. “You can hit the proverbial road!”

  “See the world!” Tyler choruses, not looking up as he leafs through the pages of the accounting book.

  “But come back by noon on Saturday, though, okay?” my mother says.

  * * *

  I leave the next day and stare at Niagara Falls for a long time—all day, in fact—but it doesn’t do any good. So I just drive. I drive until the gas tank is empty, and then I fill it up again and keep driving. I have a sleeping bag and Scot’s credit card, so the only reason to go home after a couple days of driving and listening to the radio is that I only brought two pairs of underwear.

  When I get back to Colchis, I don’t tell anyone I’m home.

  I go to the cemetery. It looks like some kids have discovered it. One of the slates is tipped over, and there are beer cans and cigarette butts scattered around. I stand up on the Helmers, the way Grimshaw used to do when she was practicing her dance moves. From here, you can see the entire Minnechaug Valley. It looks like a quilt rippling over a bed, with its patches of pasture and woods and corn in different colors of green and gold. Colchis is tucked under the next ridge, so when the leaves are out, all you can see of it from here are the smokestacks of the Arms and one church steeple. On the other side of the Valley, the highway cuts into the hillside. Trucks crawl by, and the sun glints off the girders of the overpass where it soars over Linerville, right before the exit that leads down into our hometown.

  I get a bag out of the car and start cleaning up around the gravestones. I find a condom wrapper. Next to it in the grass I find a jagged piece of granite. They’ve broken a chip off a corner of the Helmers’ stone. It’s thin and sharp, and about as long as my hand. I sit up on the Helmers with the piece of rock in my lap, fingering the edge of it.

  There will be no experience that will set the world back the way it was. The way I feel now, an alloy of anger and guilt fused together, is probably permanent, so I just have to get used to it. I’ve been acting like Grimshaw’s murder is a movie I’m watching on TV. I’ve been waiting to cast myself in the right setting with the right script, and so have my catharsis, sob my too-long-held-in sobs, shine my tearful smile of healing, learn my spiritual lesson, which I then channel for the benefit of humanity. Then I understand that everything happens for a higher purpose, even a murder, which in the end serves its own purpose, as long as somebody expendable dies. I’ve been waiting for the TV movie to end. I’ve been waiting for her to come back.

  I press the edge of the granite into the flesh of my arm, and then I keep slowly adding pressure, harder and harder. I find a threshold where I can’t stand the pain, and it brings a cool sense of relief. Exactly one tear slides down my cheek. No more follow. When it gets dark, I get Aaron’s sleeping bag out of the trunk of the BMW and spread it out on the grass so I can sleep where I belong, among the Helmers, the Getmans, the Purdys, and Mr. Sprague.

  sixteen

  WHEN I GET BACK TO Versailles on Saturday, there’s a sign over the gate that says CONGRATULATIONS SERENA in capital letters. A big party is going on in the back, the noise bubbling up over the house. I lean my forehead on the steering wheel. I can tell without even getting out of the car that there is going to be nobody here that I want to see or talk to. But I don’t have anywhere else to go. So I dig out the mascara that has been in the bottom of my backpack since my cheerleader days. Looking in the rearview mirror, I paint on a little makeup and a little smile. As I get out of the car, Allegra comes out to greet me. She’s in bartender garb, complete with a garter on her arm.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” she says. We gaze at each other, new adults, across the wide expanse of asphalt.

  “I guess I’m the dead body at the funeral,” I say finally.

  “Yeah,” she says. As I get closer to her, she says, “Um, Serena?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have a surprise for you that you might, like, really, really hate me for.”

  “What is it? A summer job with Pentz Homes?”

  “No.”

  “A gift certificate to Crossways Tavern?”

  She laughs a little. “I’m just going to tell you.” She takes a deep breath, holds it, and exhales and shakes her head. “I can’t. Come on.” She takes me by the elbow and leads me around the house. At the last minute, she stops and turns around.

  “Serena,” she starts. “I just want you to know that if you do hate me, it’s okay. I understand. I still, like, love you.” She puts her arms around me while I stand there stiffly. She turns away from me, and I follow her into the backyard. The party is what I would expect—Scot’s clients, the school board, people from the church, all with swarms of children, who have fanned out all over the semibuilt homes of the development. The volleyball net is up. Scot is burning steaks on the grill.

  I turn to Allegra. “What is it?”

  “Over there by the punch,” she says.

  “All I see over by the punch are people.”

  “Keep looking.”

  I notice a guy who stands a little apart, ill at ease, like he doesn’t know anybody, surveying the crowd between the top of a plastic glass of beer and the brim of a dirty green ball cap. He has a big pewter belt buckle, the kind nobody I know wears, and one thumb hooked in his watch pocket. In my memory, riding high in that Kenworth, he looks like a movie star. He doesn’t look like a movie star at Versailles. He looks like a trucker. It’s Bo.

  “Jesus Christ.” I look at my sister. “What did you do?”

  “I called his number.” Her face is white. “The one in your notebook. But I didn’t think he was gonna come.”

  “Jesus Christ.” I grab Allegra’s arm. All the blood rushes to my head. “What did you do?” I whisper.

  “Omigod,” she babbles. “I am so, so sorry. I should never have—”

  Bo sees me.

  “Jesus Christ,” I say a final time.

  He walks over. I cross my arms and watch his feet approach. They stop about three inches in front of mine. I can’t look at him.

  “Your sister called and told me everything that went down,” he says. “So I came.”

  I forgot about his voice. All the times I thought about him, I tried to remember his face, or his hands, or how he walked, but not his voice. That place that I thought was impenetrable, that nothing would ever reach again, his voice slices right into the middle of it. I watch as big wet splotches start to fall on the dusty toes of his boots. I wrap my arms tighter around myself. I still can’t look at him.

  Then it all surges up in a ball into my throat. I clap both hands over my mouth, but it comes out anyway, in waves so strong they feel like they’ll break my ribs. I sound like I’m throwing up, but I can’t stop it. He puts his hands on my shoulders, and I lean against the faded blue of his T-shirt. His presence makes it all real again. He makes her real again.

  I’m not sure if I cry for ten minutes or ten hours. When I stop, the world looks newly washed and so beautiful that it’s unbearable to look at. Past the edge of the development, Mizerak’s corn is about a foot high. For a second, the world comes back to me the way it felt when Grimshaw was alive. Suddenly, I can almost see her walking toward me through her favorite crop, a girl who wanted what she wasn’t supposed to have, which was her own life. I don’t know how long I’ve been crying, but apparently it was enough to clear out the backyard. I look around the remains of my party. It sounds like the guests have gone to the other side of the house.

  I look into Bo’s face. “Where’s your truck?”

  “I lost my truck.”

  “No truck?”

  He shakes his head. “I couldn’t make payments and repairs,�
�� he explains. “One or the other I could swing, but that truck was old. I ain’t a crack-shot mechanic to keep it runnin’ on a dime.”

  Those trucks are high-shouldered buffalo roaming the paths of the prairie in single file. At night herds of them sleep together in parking lots, keeping the West alive. Bo doesn’t have one anymore, though. He walks like a cowboy, but he isn’t one. Ain’t one. The truth is puny, next to the romantic version, but it has more possibilities.

  “If I could have driven twenty-four hours a day, I could have done it,” he says. “But—they don’t let you do that.”

  His hat is now folded up and stuck into the back pocket of his jeans. I take it out. It’s the same one he was wearing in the parking lot in Boomtown, Nevada.

  “If it ain’t a cat it’s a dog,” I read.

  Bo nods gravely. “Words to live by.” For some reason, that makes me laugh, and that feels familiar, too, like it is something I used to do, and I didn’t know my face would still remember how to do it, and then I start crying again.

  Eventually, I take his hand. “Thanks for coming.” It comes out in a whisper.

  “It’s okay.”

  When I look into his eyes, I see the same expression there as Grimshaw had the first time she looked at me in the cafeteria in sixth grade, wondering if I had what it takes to get across that great space in between us.

  “Do you want to go see her grave? I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “We could do that.”

  “I have a car now.”

  “That’s good,” he says. “’Cause I don’t.”

  Grimshaw doesn’t seem like much for two people to have in common. If he had a truck, I could leave Versailles and ride around the country with him. I could visit factories where they make gaskets and potato chips, and stand on the bridges that staple a continent together and look down and watch history flow by under my feet. I could be a tourist. Nothing at stake. Just looking, just passing through. But he doesn’t have a truck. That’s what this road is about. Crying, giving your money away, that’s the easy part. As for the rest … maybe only people with no other choice have the courage to get across, and we should leave it to them.