From Away

by Phoef Sutton

  “Jesus, Sam.” Neil laughed a little when he said this. A slightly freaked out, frightened laugh, but a laugh all the same. One that said that whatever fucking strange thing had gone on was at least over now and thank God for that. Amen, Neil.

  I tried to collect myself. (And it really felt like that; as if I was gathering scattered bits of myself from around the room.) “Neil,” I said, and then paused as I wondered at the marvel that each face in the world had its own name attached to it; who came up with that miraculous concept? Some forgotten genius caveman. I promised to light a candle to him the next time I passed a church. I shook my head to try and pick up my train of thought, and the room squiggled like a digital effect in a jeans commercial. Putting my hands to my head, I held the universe steady and continued, “Neil, I need to talk to Mrs. Day.”

  Neil looked unhappy for a moment, but his politeness got the better of his worry, and he stood up and moved to the door.

  “No!” I said. “Don’t go. You can stay.” From the worried look on Neil’s face, I knew I sounded too urgent, but I really didn’t want him to leave. I remembered reading in one of the many child development books I devoured when you were first born that babies believe that when someone leaves their field of vision, that person ceases to exist—in my heart I was back at that stage, and I wasn’t sure that if Neil left the room I’d ever see him again.

  “I mean, you don’t have to go. I just want to ask her a question.” I congratulated myself that my voice sounded so calm and rational now. “Then, I’ll ask you a question. Then, you can ask me a question. And we’ll all answer them.” God, I was thinking clearly, I noticed. I should write a book about this whole question thing. Why hadn’t anyone thought of it before?

  Neil gave Mrs. Day a dubious glance, but went ahead and sat down. Neil was a good friend.

  “Mrs. Day,” I said, “why did I go into other rooms and yet never leave this room?”

  Mrs. Day nodded. “The spirits build homes for themselves. Rooms.”

  “They build them in my mind?”

  “Or in theirs. It doesn’t make much difference. The rooms are the places they reside. For the spirits, their room is the whole world. The universe. They carry it with them wherever they go. Like hermit crabs. It’s their protective shell.”

  “Okay,” I said. I rubbed my eyes. There was only one thing I really wanted to know. “Will I get over this?”

  Mrs. Day smiled. A bright sunlight, birds chirping, Mary Poppins smile. I didn’t even have to hear her words to feel relieved. “Of course,” she said. “You’ve done something very brave, very new. You’ve allowed yourself to go somewhere you’ve never been. To enter a new flow state. It’s not easy to come back. To travel back and forth. I find rituals help. I think that explains all the séance rigmarole you see in the movies. Some people find rituals help their bodies through these transitions. But it doesn’t have to be dark lights, candles, and crystal balls. A nice cup of peppermint tea works for me. You’ll find something that’s right. And it’ll get easier every time. You’ll learn to navigate from room to room.”

  She stopped when I started laughing so hard.

  “Is something funny, Sam?”

  Well, it was funny. It was funny that somebody, especially somebody as smart as she, could miss the point so entirely. “You think I’m ever going to do that again?” I said, between gasps.

  “Sam, it’s never easy the first time. It gets better.”

  This was like doing brain surgery on yourself. It isn’t easy the first time, and then the next time it’s impossible because you’re a drooling, lobotomized idiot. “I’m not going back there, Emily. I felt like I lost my fucking mind. Like I had a stroke. If I ever put myself back together again and remember how to tie my shoes, I’m never going to even think about another spook. I’ll leave well enough the fuck alone.”

  She came over and sat next to me, and only then did I notice that I was sitting on her sofa, in her living room, with George Strait playing on her radio. The real world was still coming back to me in dribs and drabs.

  “I understand how you feel.”

  “Good. Enough said. Now, I’m going to talk to my friend Neil, who thinks I’m a certified maniac, thanks to you.”

  “Not thanks to me.”

  “No, you’re right. That was unfair. You did what I asked you to do. Thank you very much. End of story.”

  “It’s not over, Sam. This is a part of you. You have to learn to control it.”

  “No, I don’t have to learn anything. I was curious, okay? I tried it, I’m not curious anymore. Hi, Neil, what did you want to see me about? You came here to see me, didn’t you?”

  “It’ll keep.”

  “No, Neil. You were looking for me, you came all this way, talk to me.”

  He glanced at Mrs. Day.

  “Don’t worry about her,” I said. “You can talk in front of her. She knows all about me. She knows all about everything. She’s in touch with the Other Side and she loves it; she thinks it’s cool. I do not. It is not for me. And she sees that, don’t you, Mrs. Day? You accept that?”

  She looked at me evenly. “If you don’t learn to control it, it will keep on controlling you.”

  “I am talking to my friend Neil. You had your turn, now it’s Neil’s turn. That’s the way conversation works. So, Neil, what did you want to tell me?”

  “Really, it’s nothing.”

  “Now you’re embarrassed. You see what you’ve done, Mrs. Day? You’ve embarrassed Neil. I’ve never seen Neil embarrassed before.”

  “I’m gonna go and talk to you later,” Neil said.

  “No! Neil, stay. I’m okay. I know I sound like I’m crazy, but I’m not. I had a little breakdown is all. I wish I’d done it the way you guys on the island do it, you know? Something healthy, like drinking too much or beating my wife. I went another way altogether. I started talking to ghosts. You believe in ghosts, Neil?”

  “No.”

  “Damn right. You cling to that, Neil. ’cause you give those fuckers an inch, they’ll take the whole damn mile. But I’m over it; I’m putting it behind me. Now, what did you have to say to me?”

  “Not now, Sam.”

  “Why not?”

  “Not here.”

  “Right. Damn straight. We’ll walk out of here, we’ll go to Boongies Grocery Store and buy ourselves a six-pack of Rolling Rock and a hard pack of Camels and sit on the dock and throw rocks at the gulls and talk about things the way men are supposed to.”

  “You oughta sleep this off, whatever this is, Sam.”

  “You don’t sleep this shit off, Neil. You exorcize it, isn’t that right, Mrs. Day? But what’s your topic, Neil? We’re on your topic now. Is it about me? Is it about Kathleen? Is it about Charlotte?”

  “I’m goin’, Sam.”

  “It’s about Charlotte. I can tell. What about her? She okay?”

  “She’s great, Sam.”

  “You can tell me, Neil. I’m your pal.”

  “Forget it, okay? Another time.”

  “Now’s the time, Neil. I’m all yours. The weirdness is over.”

  “All right. I’m thinking about asking her marry me, Sam.”

  “See?” I turned to Mrs. Day. “That’s the kind of problems people are supposed to be dealing with. My best friend wants to marry my sister. How do I feel about that? What do I do? What advice do I give? That’s reality, Emily.”

  She didn’t answer, so I walked out. Just walked right out without even looking back at her, or at Jellica, who was sitting on top of the pine china cupboard, her wet hair dripping onto the blond wood and staining it black.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Viscous phlegm built up in my throat before I’d finished the first cigarette. I coughed it up and swallowed it down, reveling in the goopy reality of it.

  “Don’t you think marriage is moving a little fast, Neil?” The smell of rotting fish bait wafted over the harbor; they should bottle it and sell it to people in the Midwest. “Should
n’t you, like, ask her out first, or try to sleep with her, or something?”

  Neil skipped a stone across the water; five quick jumps and a long arc. How did he do it? “That’s the thing. I’m really in love with her, you know?”

  “So?”

  “See, I’ve never been good at landing girls I’m in love with. The only girls I can ever nail are ones I don’t really care about.”

  “That’s normal.”

  Neil shook his head. “What’s that about, anyway?”

  “C’mon, you know. When you don’t care, that’s when you can be cool and say all the right things. But when you’re in love, then you start worrying and messing up and acting like an idiot.”

  Neil shifted on his butt, leaning back on a tarry pylon. “But what’s that about? Don’t women want guys who love them?”

  “Theoretically.”

  “I mean, I know when they’re young, they don’t know any better, but by the time they’re our age, haven’t they figured out how men act? So, shouldn’t they be out looking for the guys who act like idiots and run like hell from the ones who say the right thing?”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple. For one thing, some guys who act like idiots are just idiots.”

  “That’s true.”

  I thought back on Anne and Bill Zacharias. “For another thing, I’m not so sure about your whole premise. Do people really want people who are in love with them? I mean, love’s exciting and all, but it’s an awful lot of work. I think people end up just wanting someone who’s comfortable. Someone who’ll make life easier. Someone from the right gene pool. Someone who can help them build a stable life. I think love only fits into that incidentally.”

  “That’s depressing.”

  “I don’t know. Love’s kind of a disaster, isn’t it? A disaster that comes into your life now and then, like those hurricanes that hit Florida every other year. Love comes in and wipes out the trailer park of your life.”

  “You could write a country song out of that,” Neil said.

  “I may. And the person you settle down with is the nice stable insurance adjuster who gives you the check to build your new house.”

  Neil twisted open another bottle. “Thing is, Sam, there’s no point in me trying to act cool with Charlie. I’ll just fuck it up. That only leaves me being honest with her and telling her how I feel.”

  A grim prospect. We sat in silence for a moment—the noisy silence of the bustling harbor: water lapping on the hulls of a hundred boats, the fluty gossip of fishermen calling from boat to boat, the screams of the gulls, the tight-throated whining of the summer teenagers stranded around the ice cream stand, the slamming doors of the cars waiting in the ferry line, the AM radio songs mixing in the sea air and blending into a medley of Spice Girls and Beastie Boys and Dixie Chicks.

  A grim prospect because we both knew your mother and recognized that there was nothing more sure to scare her off than sincerity. A casual and unlooked-for leap into love might be possible for her. But to see it in front of her and deliberately take the plunge? It was like asking her to take a fifty-foot bungee jump with a sixty-foot cord.

  “Look, it’s not that she doesn’t like you, Neil. She does. And I really think it could work out with you two. God knows, that would make me happy. But…she’s been burned so many times, Neil. If you could just take it easy for a while—”

  “Don’t you think I know that? But I can’t. I don’t know how.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m gonna propose to her.”

  “See, I’m thinking right now that would be a disaster.”

  “I know that, too. But I’m gonna do it. I can’t help myself. I mean, even if I don’t say it, she’s gonna see it in my face.”

  That much was true. Neil’s face was an open book.

  “Isn’t it better for me to just come out with it than to have her, I don’t know, guess it and just slink away and reject me without my even taking a shot at it?”

  Better to be rejected to your face than behind your back. Love leaves men such humiliating options, Maggie.

  “Let me talk to her,” I said.

  “Jeez, it’s like we’re back in junior high. ‘Neil likes you, do you like him?’ Jeez.”

  “No, I’m not gonna do that. I’m gonna pave the way. I’m gonna see if her mind’s open to the idea. And if it’s not, I’ll open it, I swear I will.” I looked over at Neil and said something to him I never thought I’d say. “I love you, Neil. She’d be lucky to have you. I’d like for you to be my brother.”

  Well, what could either of us say after that? We just sat in the crowded empty quiet and sipped our beers. I recognized, in some way I couldn’t put my finger on, that if I hadn’t gone off to that weird place and said good-bye to the Krispy Kreme Donut Man and felt those horrible things Jellica made me feel, I’d never have been able to say that to Neil. For a moment, I was glad it all had happened.

  It was a brief moment, and it was over the second I saw Kathleen’s car go by, loaded down with all her belongings, and park in the ferry line.

  She didn’t even look startled when I knocked on her window, just leaned over and opened the door so I could slide in.

  “At least it’s good to see that you’re not avoiding me,” I said.

  “This is the only way off the island, Sam. I don’t really have a choice.”

  “Look, all right, I came off like a nutcase, but—”

  “Sam, no. I know in situations like this people always say ‘it’s not you,’ but it really is not you. You’re probably fine. This is probably something you just need to work through. Or maybe you really can talk to the spirits, whatever. The thing is…and this is me, it’s all me…you’re just too dramatic. I got enough drama in me for a lifetime. If I ever find a guy, he’s going to have to be boring and normal and strong enough to put up with my shit, not add a mountain of his own.”

  “But I’m going to be boring from now on, that’s the plan. I have it all worked out. Let me tell it to you, you’ll fall asleep listening, I guarantee it.”

  She did laugh a little. “You couldn’t be boring, Sam.” She turned toward me now, looking at me with that frank tenderness women reserve for when they’re saying goodbye. “You’ve given me a lot. Last night was beautiful. I never thought I’d feel that way again. Hell, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that way before. And you helped me find the courage to go back home, which again, I never thought I’d have. I only wish I could have given you as much.”

  “You’ve given me a lot.”

  “Then, that’s good. So, this was good. I’m glad it happened. Good-bye, Sam.”

  “Okay, that’s nice, but—”

  “No. That was the good-bye. I said what I wanted to say. Now, the ferry is going to take ten minutes to load, and if we sit here all that time, one of us is bound to say something stupid and spoil the whole thing, so leave now.”

  Of course, she was right. My only hope was to wait for a long-term delay, like the ferry blowing up or something. But, up ahead, the boat was frustratingly intact. I got out onto the cracked pavement of the ferry landing.

  “Okay, here’s the stupid thing that’s going to spoil everything,” I said, leaning back into the open door. “She’s dangerous, Kathleen.”

  “Who is?”

  She knew. “She’s in your life. She’s haunting you. You’ll never be happy, you’ll never be safe, until we find a way to release her.”

  All trace of affection vanished from her face. “Shut up, Sam.”

  “You were right. They did kill her. They drowned her in the bathtub.”

  “They?”

  “Her parents. And the doctor was wrong. She was molested. Her father used to abuse her. I saw it all.”

  She looked at me in pure disgust. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Her father was dead before I even met her. You just make this shit up, don’t you?”

  “Kathleen, I know—”

  “Let’
s try another good-bye—get the fuck out of here. I never want to see you again.”

  She slammed the door shut and locked it.

  The ferry didn’t blow up. It left right on schedule for the first time in years.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Watching the ferry clear Holborne Point, I ate a soft-serve chocolate ice cream fast enough to give my-self a brain-freeze headache. The distraction was welcome.

  “She wasn’t good enough for you,” Neil said, alternating puffs on his Marlboro with licks on his vanilla cone.

  “Yeah, she was.”

  “Nope. She wasn’t. I can’t say you’re right, ’cause you’re wrong.” We clambered back over the rocky shore to his truck.

  “What if I told you it’s not over,” I said. “What if I told you I know she’ll come back?”

  “I’d say, of course, dumped guys always think that. My old high school girlfriend is my mail carrier. Every day she comes to my door, I expect her to open it, walk in, and fuck my brains out.”

  “Did it ever happen?”

  “Once, but it was her substitute.”

  When I got home, Charlotte was at the kitchen table picking crab and you were out on the lawn setting free another kite.

  “Neil didn’t come in?” she asked.

  Neil’s truck was making dust down the driveway. He’d told me he was planning to drive Round-the-Island Road twice and then come back. That gave me about forty minutes, so I could have hemmed and hawed for a while, but instead I got right to the point. You’d never have known it was me.

  “He wanted me to talk to you first.”

  She looked up, apprehensive. “Things got weird, didn’t they?”

  “No, they did not. I mean, it depends. He wants to ask you to marry him, Charlotte.”

  She went back to picking.

  “Well?”

  She looked up again, clearly pissed. “So, what am I supposed to say to that?”

  “Yes or no, usually.”

  “Why is he having you ask me?”

  “He’s not. He wanted me to, you know, lay down the groundwork.”