So Far Away (9780316202466)

by Moore, Meg Mitchell

  I don’t think they do that anymore.

  I said that I was fine, but really I wasn’t, because there was something rising in my throat, constricting my breathing, and I had to take three rapid inhalations, and then I had to put my fingertips against the shopwindow to steady myself. It was all there suddenly, carved out of very old memories. What part of the brain is it that held your old memories?

  My son Patrick had told me once; he is a brain surgeon. Imagine that! My son, slicing into people’s brains. It’s not brain surgery, people said of something that was not considered very difficult, in the same way they said, It’s not rocket science. That was an old joke in our family before Declan died. There he’d be, trying to fix the toaster or change the filter in the furnace, and struggling with it for one reason or another, and he’d say, It’s not exactly brain surgery, is it? His Irish accent so much more persistent than mine, for some reason. I think that’s because I read so much, I was reading all the time, and when I read I put a different voice into my head.

  What Declan meant by the joke was how did the two of us come to have a son smart enough to become a brain surgeon. And how did we? I don’t know. It was just one of those things. You would have thought James would have been the one to become the brain surgeon.

  In New York City that day I stared at the shoes and around me I felt the crush of people on the sidewalk, heard the taxicabs honking and the buses coming to whooshing stops along the curb.

  “Just buy them already,” said Helen cheerfully. “I’ll go in with you.” She made a motion toward the door of the shop.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to buy them.”

  “Why not? What’s the harm?” Helen laughed. What was she so happy about? Why was everyone around me always so happy?

  “I don’t want them,” I said, maybe too sharply. “I’m just looking.”

  “Well, ohhhh-kay,” said Helen, drawing out the word, making a face that made her look suddenly juvenile, an adolescent’s expression on an old lady’s features.

  My memory was keeping me from remembering the name of the part of the brain that held the memory! In another circumstance perhaps I would have been able to appreciate the irony.

  Patrick told me once that the sense of smell is tied more powerfully to memory than any of the other senses. So you can catch a whiff of a perfume your mother used to wear, or of a food you ate at a carnival years ago, and immediately you might be transported to that time and place. Everyone experiences that, Patrick said, casually, almost laconically, gesturing toward his nose. But there are scientific reasons behind it.

  What smells had there been that night? The roast, of course. The fire. The cigar smoke on the men, after they came in from looking at the car. Elsie’s powder. Dear little James’s baby scent.

  In New York City that day, I turned away from the shoes, away from the window, and I began to follow Nell and the rest of the group back to where the bus was waiting to take us to Times Square for a matinee: some play I had never heard of, a musical, something cheerful, because it was assumed that the elderly were always in need of cheering up. Which maybe we were.

  Was it the same with sounds? I remember the noise of Arthur’s coupe pulling away from the house when he took Dr. Turner for a ride—there was that, and the honk of the horn, one two three, like he was playing a song for everyone left inside. (“Showboater,” said Anna grimly, and Elsie laughed.)

  And later, at midnight, the church bells ringing, signifying the start of Midnight Mass, which of course I could not attend.

  After the antiques shop I climbed aboard the bus. The driver was solicitous, holding out a hand for each of us, though when he got to Nell, who was bringing up the rear, she laughed, revealing a set of crooked bottom teeth, and said, “I think I can manage. But thank you.”

  The hippocampus, that was it! Patrick showed me a picture once in one of his textbooks from medical school. The hippocampus outlined in bright green, like a pea pod set in the middle of a plate of spaghetti. “This is a lateral view,” he said importantly. “Two of the lobes have been removed so you can see this.”

  “Ah,” I said, marveling at his knowledge, at his ease with this mysterious organ.

  I sat by myself, placing my coat and pocketbook next to me. I settled back against the plush seat, resting my head against the crinkly paper that had been set there, ostensibly for reasons of sanitation. I closed my eyes so that if Helen tried to meet my gaze I would be spared the effort of vocalizing my wish to be left alone.

  Imagine that: a lifetime of memories living inside something that looked no bigger or more important than a pea pod. The hippocampus.

  “This lady can write,” said Neil. “Don’t you think?”

  Natalie nodded. She didn’t want to speak; she wanted Neil to keep reading. She felt that speaking would be like breaking a spell.

  I remember other things.

  I remember the way the paperboys used to deliver the newspaper to apartments on the third floor; the customer would lower a nickel wrapped in white paper down on a string and the paperboy would take the coin and tie the newspaper onto the string to be raised back up.

  I remember when you could take a trolley out to Plum Island. I remember the bootleggers down by the wharf—the speakeasies with their walkways hidden by tall bushes—the music on the gramophones, people dancing the Charleston. I remember there were brothels down there too. It seems impossible to me sometimes, but all of these things happened in my lifetime.

  And so did the rest of what I’m about to tell. It’s as if I wrote the events of that year on a piece of paper and folded the paper into tiny squares and put it in a pocket of my brain. But they are always with me somewhere and now that I have decided to write about them I feel like I have unfolded the paper and am reading it anew.

  I remember things about Ireland too, even though I never made it back there. I remember the way my sister Fiona’s hair smelled when we lay together in the bed in the family cottage. I remember her breath on my cheek. I remember the color of my mother’s everyday shawl. If ever I hear a bit of Gaelic spoken I remember what it was like to hear that all the time, everywhere, and I remember how hard we worked to learn English, and penmanship, and the dances. I remember the parish dances, and how we looked forward to those.

  Other things, I have forgotten, or put in the wrong order.

  I remember a fiddle playing, I remember someone singing “Molly Durkin.”

  But who was singing, and where?

  “I’m a decent honest workingman as you might understand/and I’ll tell to you the reason why I left ol’ Ireland/’Twas Molly Durkin did it/when she married Tim O’Shea…”

  In America, I remember working until my back ached, until my hands ached, until my brain was blurry. I have never in my whole life worked as hard as I worked that year in the Turner house, my first year in America, I have never again been so tired to the core, to the deepest part of my bones.

  And I was also never so happy as at certain times during that year.

  I remember the time Anna pushed me. She was walking by me on the stairs, and the stairs were narrow: it was always difficult for two people to pass at a time. You had to push a little bit to get by. But she pushed more than she needed to, and I slipped and I fell down. I hurt my ankle.

  This was the day before Christmas Eve. Anna knew that I was hurt, but she never acknowledged she had anything to do with it.

  Norah, who was my dearest friend at the time, in service for another family, told me that she could tell that Anna hated me because I was pretty. I was! I can say that now, because I am no longer. I have no photographs of me from that time, I wish I did.

  Anna was cruel to me, and I wanted what she had, and when I found out I could take it I did. That was the second thing that led to what happened. Can you blame me?

  You should blame me. I blame myself. Somebody died because of what I did.

  “Wait, what?” said Natalie. “Did you say somebody died?”

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nbsp; “Holy shit,” said Neil. Then, “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” said Natalie. She felt like she was holding her breath. “Who died?”

  “I don’t know,” said Neil. “But I can’t wait to find out.”

  The third thing was that I got careless with what I had, once I had it. As people do.

  Kathleen came in and said, “Neil, there’s a phone call for you.”

  “Adam?”

  “No. Female. Research question. Follow-up from something or other.”

  “Can you take a message?” He didn’t look up when he said that.

  She said, “Yes, sir. At your service.” She stood there for a moment and said, “Making progress?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Neil, still not looking up. “Serious progress.”

  “You need my help?”

  “No,” said Neil, still looking down. “I think we’ve got it.”

  The next time she came in, Kathleen said, “Neil? Keep an eye on the desk, will you? I’ve got to run out for my pastry flour. Day before Thanksgiving, it’s going to be nuts out there. I don’t want to put it off.”

  Neil looked up then; he said, “Sounds like a nightmare. Better you than me.”

  “I’m making the pie for you, sir. You and your fancy friends.”

  “Right,” said Neil. “In that case, off you go.”

  Natalie wasn’t used to grown-ups talking like this to each other, in this gentle, teasing way. She didn’t know what to do with it so she stayed quiet, with her eyes focused on the notebook, and when Kathleen had departed Neil kept reading.

  I let the roast cook for too long, that Christmas Eve, and that was my first mistake. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I believe that is what happens when all of these memories come out, tumbling over one another. What would Patrick have to say about that?

  Never mind about the roast: I will start after dinner on Christmas Eve, when I began carrying the dishes into the kitchen to prepare them for washing.

  No, I will start before that, when Dr. Turner’s sister, Elsie, and her husband, Arthur, arrived.

  There was no love lost between Elsie and Anna, anyone could see that, but when Elsie came in the front door I could scarcely take my eyes off of her, so transfixed was I by her long silver coat and the short black hair curving out from under her hat.

  “Well!” Elsie said, handing her coat to Charles, who handed it to me to hang in the closet. Elsie kissed Charles on the cheek, then grasped Anna by the hand and kissed her too, then looked around as if for someone else to kiss. Her gaze settled briefly on me and then she looked away, and Charles said, “Oh! You haven’t met our girl from Ireland, our Bridget,” and he pushed me forward. Elsie nodded crisply at me and took off her hat and I could see the fringe that was cut bluntly across her forehead. The older boys Elsie did not kiss, but she rubbed them on their heads in a distracted, almost frantic way, as if they were dogs who had come too close to her on the street and whose intentions she mistrusted.

  “Well!” she said again, smiling. “You’re all looking well. Aren’t they looking well, Arthur?” Arthur was standing behind her. He was ten years her senior; he was tall and dark and unsmiling and he wore a double-breasted suit. Though he wasn’t unfriendly, he also wore a preoccupied expression that made him appear to be thinking about matters more serious than the ones currently before him.

  He was some sort of businessman—this much I had picked up from listening to Charles and Anna talk about him. (“I don’t trust him,” Anna said, and Charles said, “Does it matter if you do? Elsie is madly in love.” To which Anna said, “If you call that love,” and after that they moved out of my range and I heard nothing else.) In fact in the present circumstance Arthur seemed to be an accessory more than anything else, a bystander who had been sent into Elsie’s orbit to observe rather than participate. That was partly because of the way his hat sat, slung low over his eyes, but also because of the way he stood a little bit apart from all of them. When he removed his hat and handed it to me I caught a whiff of something—cologne?—that spoke to me of an exotic and captivating world. Until that point I knew no men who wore cologne.

  They had come up from Boston in Arthur’s new coupe, and perhaps that accounted for the slightly breathless way Elsie had entered the house: all this motion, now halted.

  “Aren’t they, Arthur?” said Elsie. “Looking well?” She was smiling eagerly at all of them, but without her gaze truly settling on any one of them in particular.

  “They are,” Arthur said finally, and Charles said, “I’ve got to have a look at that car, Arthur,” and both men left together through the front door. When they did, Elsie said in an exaggerated voice, “God! Men and their cars.” Anna, who was bending down to smooth Edward’s hair, did not answer.

  Well, they were beautiful, so lovely to look at, both of them, that I couldn’t stop staring. I believe Elsie was the most beautiful creature I had laid eyes on up to that point, and perhaps even to this day. There were the shoes, which I’ve already mentioned. I couldn’t stop staring at the strap, and also at Elsie’s stockings, which were beige, with some sort of embroidery around the ankle.

  Dinner came next. As I’ve said, I let the roast go for too long. I knew immediately when I cut into it, but there was nothing to be done, so I forged ahead, sawing at it awkwardly—I had not yet learned how to cut the meat properly, and I was too proud to ask Anna to show me—and then I lay the pieces on the serving platter and carried the plate into the dining room, my heart ricocheting. But Anna said nothing, she just took the platter from me, hardly looking at it, because she was listening to Elsie.

  Elsie was saying, “Well! Where do you think we’re going next month? Monte Carlo, that’s where.” She pulled on her husband’s sleeve. “To the opera. Isn’t that right, Arthur?”

  Arthur nodded.

  “Oh, Arthur, what’s the name of the opera? I can’t keep it straight in my head.”

  “The Spellbound Child,” said Arthur.

  “That’s it!” said Elsie. “I can never remember the name. Why can I never remember the name?”

  “Because you smoke and drink too much, my darling. It’s going straight to your brain,” said Arthur, and they were all silent for a beat, waiting for Elsie’s reaction. I had heard Anna speak of Elsie’s great temper. She was known for it, and apparently unembarrassed by it. When Elsie ended the silence by tossing back her head and laughing, the very furniture seemed to bend forward in relief.

  On my way back to the kitchen I tried to imagine my mother and father talking to each other the way Elsie and Arthur talked to each other. I could not. I tried to imagine Anna and Charles talking that way. I couldn’t do that either, nor Grainne and her husband, nor anyone else I knew, in Ireland or in America. Elsie and Arthur seemed to have stepped straight out of a movie screen. Anna made a sound that could have been a cough, and then she said, “Bridget! We’ve only got the meat. I guess we’ll have the vegetables now too.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I called, and I paused just over the threshold to the kitchen, long enough to hear Elsie say, “She’s beautiful, your girl. Isn’t she beautiful, Arthur?” I didn’t hear Arthur answer, but I could hear that Anna said something in a fierce whisper, and then I heard Elsie laugh, the same way she’d laughed at Arthur, and I clattered the spoon against the vegetable dish more loudly than I needed to. My face was warm, and when I entered the dining room again I kept my eyes cast down.

  The rest of the meal passed quickly: from the dining room to the kitchen and back, dining room, kitchen, back. And all the while I kept my eyes on the clock hanging over the sink: seven o’clock, then eight o’clock, then half past eight, and still they sat. The boys grew fidgety and finally they were permitted to leave the table, and to open the packages that Elsie and Arthur had set beneath the Christmas tree. For Edward, a spinning top with pictures of clowns and teddy bears painted on the side. And for Harry, a model aeroplane kit. For James, there was a wooden pull toy, but he was growing tired and orn
ery, pushing his head back against Anna’s shoulder and rubbing his eyes with his fists, and he didn’t care about the present.

  “Give him to me,” said Elsie, turning to Anna with arms outstretched. Anna placed James into her arms, but the passing around made James inconsolable. You could see that Elsie knew nothing about how to comfort a child; she was clearly irritated by the way James thrust his fists toward her neck, and the way he put his wet face right into her beautiful dress.

  “Well,” said Elsie to Anna, sliding a napkin between the baby and her dress. “Perhaps you should take him back.”

  “Better off giving him to Bridget,” said Anna. “That’s the one he really wants.”

  When I was clearing the remains of the dessert, Elsie took out her compact and examined her face in the mirror, making her lips into a kissing shape and blowing gently. Then she removed a lipstick from her bag and pressed it to her lips. This was astonishing to me—I had never seen a woman apply makeup in public. At the dinner table!

  There were a lot of dishes. Anna had the fine china out and the silver too, and the serving dishes and all the rest of it. My ankle had swelled up and was throbbing. I could hardly walk on it, but Anna didn’t seem to notice. Or if she noticed she said nothing.

  My heart was at home that night with my family in Ireland. I was thinking of the distance that separated us and the journey that it took to get here, the tediousness of the voyage, the inspections after arriving, the loneliness, something as simple as my usual cup of tea difficult to find because suddenly everywhere there was coffee.

  I was thinking of Fiona and how much she wanted to come over to America to do the same thing I was doing, just as I had followed Grainne. I remember that I had been waiting for a letter from Fiona and that it had finally arrived that day but that I had not yet had time to read it. I remember that I had been having strange dreams about Fiona. We all did that, had dreams about people we’d left behind, the girls and I talked about it all the time when we were together. It was a very common consequence of being so far from home. But my dreams of Fiona had gotten very odd, more gruesome and puzzling: Fiona’s face floating under a murky body of water, her hair spread out behind her like a fan. Fiona riding on horseback into a wood, looking back, shouting something at me that I couldn’t understand.