Anywhere but Here

by Tanya Lloyd Kyi

  I don’t know why I’m so freaked out. I suppose it’s no big coincidence—meeting someone in a store and later finding out that you’re connected. Maybe it’s the idea that if I hadn’t knocked up my ex-girlfriend, Hannah’s mom could have become more than a cameo appearance in my life. I could have created a role for her.

  In the kitchen a few minutes ago, she had lipstick on her teeth. I decide to focus on that, the hot pink smear. It makes her seem less perfect. I suppose it makes me want my mom back a little less.

  Incidentally, my mom was not round or turquoise or puffy handed. She was tall—almost as tall as my dad—with skinny arms and legs, as if she were a gangly preteen who hadn’t grown into her limbs. Even her fingers were long. In soft focus, with ambient light, I can remember my dad sitting beside her on the couch, touching her fingers and saying she had piano-playing hands. That was after she got sick. We never had a piano.

  “Cole! I know you’re here somewhere. Your truck’s still here. Stop being a lunatic.”

  Hannah’s voice is so close I have to hold my breath. I can’t see her through the weeds, but I can picture her standing on the road with her hands on her hips, yelling into the darkness.

  You’d think she’d have some consideration for her neighbors. They’re going to run her out of town at this rate.

  It’d be better if they ran me out of town instead. I’d go willingly. I could take my almost-finished film school application. I’d rent an apartment in Vancouver. Maybe if I left, Lauren really would work things out, all on her own. And then my mom, Hannah’s mom, even Hannah—they’d all be behind me. I’d never have to think about dinner, or roast chicken, or grocery stores ever again.

  I have the feeling that if I examine this line of thinking, it will crack like one of these brittle knapweed stalks, but I don’t care. I cling to it. I’m leaving town. No baby, or dinner, or family is going to make a difference right now. Not if it’s a family who eats roast chicken together and not if it’s one with a drunk dad on the living room carpet. It doesn’t matter. Parenthood is a thing of the past.

  • • •

  “I should have raised you differently,” my mom said once.

  She was lying on the living room couch watching TV, wrapped in a lime-green crocheted afghan that was so ugly it was probably making her more sick just to be near it. I was sitting in Dad’s recliner, balancing a plate on my lap. I’d come home from school to have lunch with her. This wasn’t long before she passed away. If I’d concentrated, I probably could have seen the white lights moving in from the edges of the scene, the type of lights that movie directors use for the hereafter. As if dead people live inside clouds.

  “We should have raised you Christian,” she said.

  I almost choked on my fried rice. We’d taken to eating mostly takeout by then, Dad and I. Mom wasn’t eating much anymore, although she was pretending to nibble on a spring roll just to please me.

  “Christian?” I said incredulously. We’d never gone to church. Not even at Christmas and Easter like Greg’s family.

  “Your great-grandma and great-grandpa met in the church choir, you know.”

  I failed to see the relevance.

  “I think it would be easier to explain things to you if we’d given you a strong faith,” she said.

  “Mom, I’m not a kid.” Did she think we should talk about the pearly gates? Angels?

  “I know. But it would be comforting. You could think of me floating around up there, wearing white.”

  She did. She wanted to talk about angels. As if angels could flap their wings and make us all feel better about death.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s how it works, even if you go to church.”

  She waved a hand in the air vaguely, brushing away the details.

  Do you believe in heaven? That’s what I wanted to ask. You’d think, after the doctors tell you there are only a few weeks left, that you would say anything and ask everything. It’s not like that, though. Impending death doesn’t open the Hoover Dam of communication skills. My thoughts didn’t come gushing out like cold, fresh drinking water. They still stuck at the back of my throat like old sludge.

  “You’re not going to die.” That’s what I said instead. Which was stupid. We both knew she was going to die. It just seemed like the sort of thing I was supposed to say.

  After a few minutes, Mom closed her eyes, worn out from the effort of our conversation. I stood up to get my bag and return to school. She called me back just as I was at the door.

  “Cole. Do me a favor and clean these plates off the coffee table before you leave? If I have to stare at them all afternoon, it might kill me earlier than expected.”

  That time, I didn’t say, “You’re not going to die.” But I rinsed those plates and put them in the dishwasher as if they were talismans.

  It’s a sad thing when you’re powerless to do anything except clean the last grain of rice off a plate and wait for everything to wash into brilliant light of Hollywood’s version of the afterlife.

  • • •

  Hannah’s street has turned eerily silent. There’s not even a barking dog. I can hear the faint hum of electricity in the lines overhead and the faraway drone of a truck on the highway. Slowly, I climb out of the crusty snow and brush the dirt off my ass. There are burrs on my shirt.

  “Cole, are we going to talk like normal human beings?”

  I freeze. “You’re still here.”

  “Apparently.”

  When the hell did this girl get so tenacious? Shouldn’t she have been back inside her warm and cozy dining room, tucking into a drumstick? Instead, Hannah’s been patrolling the street like a stealth bot from one of Greg’s video games.

  “I had to . . .” There is absolutely no way to explain leaving her house. Not even to myself. “I had a stomachache.”

  “And you thought hiding in the bushes was the best cure for that? Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

  Now she’s peppering me with questions like some CIA interrogator. I jam my hands in my pockets and turn toward the highway.

  “You’re just going to leave? My parents are totally confused.”

  I can’t believe she expects me to stay under this sort of onslaught.

  “They’re going to be hurt,” she says. “My mom made a roast chicken for you.”

  Of course she did.

  I have to admit, I’ve been so busy wallowing in my own confused embarrassment that I haven’t considered their feelings. I stop for a second, but I can’t look Hannah in the eye.

  “Tell her I’m sorry. Just say I had to go, okay?”

  “Come back inside! Listen, I know about Lauren. I know you must be freaking out right now. Can we talk about it?”

  Damn it. Why didn’t Lauren tell me earlier? I’ve got everyone cast in the wrong roles. In my head, Lauren’s the girl next door or the caring sister and Hannah’s the star. Which is all wrong now. I need to recast.

  “No! Okay? I can’t!” I’m yelling, screaming at Hannah in the middle of the street. We may as well go and argue in the Burger Barn parking lot. It was a mistake to let Hannah into my life in the first place. I was supposed to be separating myself from Webster and now here I am, surrounded.

  She’s talking again, but I turn and walk away, toward the highway, my shoulders hunched in an effort to cover my ears.

  I leave her sputtering. She calls after me a few more times, but she doesn’t follow. I’m halfway to the highway before I realize—again—that I’ve left my truck in her driveway.

  With every ounce of my being, I wish I could jog back to her house, meet her family, and collect my truck as if nothing crazy happened tonight. As if I didn’t flip out. As if Lauren weren’t pregnant. But there’s a distinct lack of rewind buttons in my life right now.

  I’m going to have to walk all the way to Greg’s and send him to get my truck. At the moment, that’s my best plan.

  • • •

  By Monday, Hannah and I have broken
up.

  There’s only one small problem: She doesn’t know. Friday night, I got half a dozen texts from her, with another batch in the early hours of the morning after I snuck up her driveway to collect my truck. (Greg wouldn’t answer his phone, completely failing in the bail-a-brother-out department.) She e-mailed and called all weekend, then again when I didn’t show up at school this morning. The girl has a serious communication dependency.

  Slightly stoned from sleep deprivation and three days of dedicated TV watching, I welcome Dad home from work by heating two cans of soup and making toast. That’s like a two-course dinner, which counts as fancy around here. And to celebrate the occasion, we manage to talk about nothing more stressful than the hockey scores and the weather.

  When we’re finished, Dad retreats to the living room. The phone rings.

  “Don’t answer it!” I yell. He was out for most of the weekend. He hasn’t heard about my new phone policy yet. (#1. Don’t answer it.)

  Dad doesn’t ask questions.

  By the time the dishes are done, the phone has rung three or four more times and I have steadfastly ignored it. I set about rinsing and recycling Dad’s collection of beer bottles. There are seventy-three.

  Afterward, I lean on the door frame and watch as his snores literally shake the recliner.

  There are six more beers in the fridge.

  I consider pouring them down the drain while he’s passed out. Then I have a better idea. I retrieve my backpack from downstairs and load them all inside.

  They clink against my back as I stride down the hill toward Greg’s house. I’ve gone about three steps when Hannah’s Saturn idles up beside me and she rolls down the window. Damn. The girl must have been on surveillance duty. There should be stalking laws against that sort of thing.

  “Hey, handsome,” she says, her breath steaming into the cold air. “Thought you might want a ride.” Her eyes are red, a contradiction to her wavering smile. Even with puffy skin, though, she’s gorgeous.

  A ride is the last thing I want. In fact, if the route to Greg’s house was lined with hot coals and I was barefoot, I would still rather walk. I can’t get into a car with a gorgeous girl who is not the mother of my future child.

  “I need the exercise,” I say.

  The smile disappears. “Look, Cole. You don’t have to talk to me after today if you don’t want to. But you owe me this. Get in the damned car.”

  This is not the voice of Home Base Hannah.

  I climb in the car.

  “Do you have any idea how hard this is for me?” she asks.

  I’m not exactly having the time of my life either.

  “I wasn’t born here like the rest of you. I know that you and Lauren have a lot to work out right now, but I don’t have a thousand friends to turn to once you dump me.”

  The word “dump” is a little harsh.

  “It’s not like I planned this,” I snap.

  “You and I are so good together. It’s just not fair.” Blinking fast, holding her lips tight, Hannah is trying not to cry. I appreciate the effort. There’s nothing worse than being trapped in a moving car with a crying girl.

  “This town sucks,” she says.

  “Agreed.”

  Then Hannah’s breath catches. When a tiny hiccup of a sob escapes, I feel something crumble in my chest. Life has seriously screwed with me this week, and I’m taking it out on her. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I really, really am. But there’s stuff I have to figure out.”

  “You don’t have to do it by yourself.”

  I sigh. It’s not that help wouldn’t be nice. But I’m at the bottom of a ditch here. The stinking, slimy, toxic-waste-coated bottom of a ditch. I’m so far in that I can’t see the tops of the banks anymore. It doesn’t feel fair to pull someone down here with me.

  She puts a hand on my leg. “I could help you. We could figure it out together.”

  As romantic as that prospect sounds, it’s not going to work. She knows it too. I can see it in her face.

  “Can you just drop me off?” I ask.

  Hannah snatches her hand back. She wraps her fingers around the steering wheel, and I watch as her knuckles turn white.

  “So that’s it,” she says.

  “Sorry.”

  I really am, not that Hannah believes me. I’m sorry for hurting her, sorry for running out on her parents. Most of all, I’m sorry for my damned self right now.

  She leaves me on the side of the road by the hospital, close to Greg’s house.

  “Check yourself into the psych ward while you’re here,” she shouts out the window before pulling away with all the power her Saturn can muster.

  For a few minutes, I stand on the corner letting the wind cool my head and waiting for the tight feeling in my throat to pass. Across the street from the hospital, there’s an old Lutheran church with a looming brown cross in front and one of those marquees that declare the scripture for the next week’s service.

  I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS, it says, EVEN UNTO THE END OF THE WORLD.

  “That’s half the problem!” I yell. I should go over there and kick that sign. Do churches put them up specifically to torment people? “Why can’t everyone leave me alone?”

  Now I’m yelling at a sign while standing by myself in the dark.

  To make things worse, when I finish yelling, I discover that I’m not actually alone. Tracy is having a smoke outside the door to the emergency room.

  She waves me over, and since my better judgment has already deserted me, I join her, motioning for a drag of her cigarette. As I cough, she examines me with a pursed lip. A pierced, pursed lip. Seeing a thick silver stud on the lip of a forty-year-old Webster nurse is like seeing a UFO.

  “You wanna talk about it?” she says.

  Yeesh. Is there some sort of estrogen-based conspiracy around here? No, I don’t want to talk about it! And if I did, she probably would check me into the psych ward.

  I bet they have good drugs in the psych ward. It’s tempting, but not quite as tempting as my next idea.

  “Maybe later,” I tell Tracy, passing back her smoke. “I gotta go.”

  I turn toward town and text Greg as I walk. I still have the beer. He can pick me up.

  chapter 23

  the binge

  Greg is pissed. Somewhere between fleeing Hannah’s house, amputating my girlfriend from my life, and acting like a lunatic in front of the church, I forgot about the part where I impregnated Greg’s future wife. He, apparently, has not forgotten.

  “C’mon, bud.” Since he refused to answer the phone or the door (a trend among my friends these days), I’ve taken to standing outside his bedroom window and yelling. “I know you’re in there. I saw you close the curtains.”

  No response.

  “Can we talk about this? Over a drink? Or two?”

  I’m having déjà vu. Only a few months ago, I knocked on Greg’s window to tell him that Lauren and I had broken up. He was more helpful then.

  “I didn’t do any of this on purpose. I could really use some help figuring it out. . . .”

  The curtains whip back and I jump. With a creak, the window slides open and Greg sticks out his head.

  “You want us to figure out something? What kind of something?”

  “I don’t know. Do we have to talk about it here?”

  He tilts his head, considering. “Yes.”

  “What do you think I should do? Ask her to marry me? Get a job in Vancouver and mail child-support checks? I don’t know, man. This doesn’t even seem real yet, and I can’t get past the prison guard to talk to Lauren.”

  “You haven’t talked to her?” He makes it sound like a felony.

  “Not since she told me.”

  “Nice. Why don’t you start with that, Cole? It’s good to have goals.”

  He slams the window shut.

  “She won’t let me in!”

  Inside the house, music starts to blare. The panes vibrate.

  I swear, these people a
re trying to drive me insane. They’re like octopuses when I want to get rid of them. Octopi? Creatures with big frickin’ tentacles that won’t let go. And now, when I could actually use some help, they disappear into the dark depths of their own worlds. Bottom-feeders, all of them.

  • • •

  Unwilling to go home, I head down the hill toward 7-Eleven. That’s where I find Dallas.

  He slaps me on the back as if I’m the prodigal friend. “How’s it going? Where’s the rest of the gang?” For some reason, his accent makes me feel better. I can’t talk to Dallas without expecting cowboys to ride by and oil rigs to gush in the background.

  “Hannah and I broke up. And Greg’s sulking in his bedroom like a chick.”

  Dallas doesn’t ask more questions, which I appreciate.

  “Y’all got time for a drink?”

  He doesn’t ask questions and he wants to have a beer with me on a Monday night. “Dallas,” I say, returning his shoulder slug, “it’s possible you’re my soul mate. I have half a dozen beers in my pack.”

  The drinks slide down surprisingly quickly in the alley behind the store. When they’re gone, we go in search of a new supply.

  • • •

  An evening in the Prospector bar is risky because even if the bartender isn’t some guy who graduated two years ago and knows I’m still not of age, there are always a dozen customers who can identify me.

  Tonight, I really don’t care.

  “We’re grown men,” I tell Dallas as we push open the heavy double doors.

  “Captains of our own ships,” he agrees.

  Fortunately, there’s a middle-aged woman tending bar. She has long, red hair pulled into a thick braid and looks like a Wild West pioneer. No matter. She doesn’t know us, and she doesn’t blink when we order two beers. Then two shots of tequila. Then two more beers. When Dallas slaps down a twenty to pay for the next round, she only raises her eyebrows in a way that suggests she’ll be laughing later, when we’re puking our guts out.