Anywhere but Here (6 page)

In front of Burger Barn, where I picked up Dad the other night, I stop.

Not because I'm thinking about Dad and Sheri—I am resolutely
not
thinking about Dad and Sheri—but because the image of Greg's windshield has given me an idea for my film. The way the cracks spread out from the point of impact, the whole thing looked about to shatter. And yet, somehow, the shards were still attached to one another. That image, with some atmospheric
lighting; flashed among images of spiderwebs, maybe, or nets; and spliced with interviews of people who live in Webster, each wrapped in a personal, complicated web . . .

I'm still sorting through ideas as I unlock the basement door to find Dad sitting downstairs waiting for me. He's in the armchair by Mom's bookshelves, the reading lamp casting a circle of light like an island around the chair. I stop well offshore.

“Little late, isn't it, Cole?” he grumbles.

My first thought is that Greg's dad has called him about the accident. But he doesn't look concerned or mad. He's just sitting there.

“Are you waiting up for me?”

I resist the urge to wipe any of Hannah's remaining lipstick off my neck.

Before Mom died, we functioned on “trust” principles. I was supposed to call if I ended up doing something different from what I had told her I would be doing. For example, if I had said I was going to dinner with Greg but we ended up playing Monopoly with Lauren's family (her family actually plays Monopoly), I was supposed to call. It was a good system. I called just enough that we could both pretend she always knew where I was.

Dad, on the other hand, has always operated on the don't-ask-don't-tell system, and we've been pretty religious about
adhering to it. For example, when I was hauling Dad to bed last night and noticed that his fly was undone, I stayed quiet. Did I want to race to the bathroom and puke? Yes. Did I want to grab Dad by the neck and ask why he was whoring around with Mom's memory? Maybe. The point is, I didn't.

Now Dad's sitting in my space and asking questions.

“Have a good time tonight?”

“Not bad,” I say.

Silence. I wonder if he even knows that I broke up with Lauren. Should I tell him? I hesitate. I can't figure out how to start. And I don't really want to discuss relationships.

“What are you doing down here?” I say finally.

“Can't a man sit in his own house?”

I'm not convinced. Probably because he's sitting in Mom's chair with an unopened book in his lap—
Pride and Prejudice
, of all things—and he's never read a Victorian novel in his life. I'm pretty sure he's never sat in that chair in his life.

“Why aren't you upstairs watching TV?”

“Came down to check on you.”

“I'm good.”

I peer at him closely. It looks as if his eyes are red. Maybe he's been drinking. Or taking Viagra. It occurs to me that Dad and I are not exactly close. Mom used to span the gap between us.

“How about you?” I ask. “Did you go out?”

“Not tonight.”

“So.”

“Yeah.”

There's another silence. It's probably short in reality, but it seems to stretch like the Golden Gate Bridge, strung with lights and potential suicide jumpers.

This is what should happen at this point: Dad should grunt, heave himself out of the chair, and head upstairs.

I might say something like: “Dad? Is there something you wanted to talk about?”

He'd say, “Nah.”

“Okay,” I'd reply. I wouldn't believe him, but I'd be relieved. In a way, it's good that we're not too close. In another year, we'll be splitting up. Moving on with separate lives.

“It's late, Cole. Go to bed,” he'd finish.

“Same to you.”

That's not what happens.

“You're not keeping Sheri company tonight?” The question pops out of my mouth. I want to bite off my tongue as soon as I hear the words. I thought I'd just decided we
wouldn't
discuss relationships. What do I care about Sheri? And if Dad's not thinking about her right now, why am I reminding him?

“She's working.”

“Now?” I need to stop asking about her. But it's the middle
of the night, and who works in the middle of the night? Sheri didn't have that “nurse on night shift” look to me. And she definitely wasn't the doctor on call.

“She works late,” Dad says.

And then I know. I understand what should have been obvious the first time I met Sheri. She's a—

No. I'm not going to ask. I don't want to hear the answer. This conversation should be over, right here.

“What exactly does Sheri do?” There I go again. The words come flying out of my mouth without my permission. My mind doesn't seem connected to my tongue tonight. Maybe I have one of those brain injuries that knocks out your ability to edit your thoughts. Or Tourette's syndrome. That's probably it. I have sudden-onset Tourette's.

“She's a dancer,” Dad says as he pushes himself out of the reading chair the way he was supposed to five minutes ago. He heads upstairs without meeting my stare.

“That's great.” Just great. She's a stripper.

Once he's gone, I realize I didn't even tell him about the deer. I turn off the lamp, flop into Mom's chair, and see again the spurt of blood from the animal's skull. How many spurts before something's really and truly dead? Does the brain know it's dead before the heart or vice versa?

Maybe neither realizes. Maybe there's just darkness. And maybe it's better to go like that. At least it only took a few minutes for the deer.

•  •  •

My mom died of pancreatic cancer. There were only a few months between the diagnosis and her death, months filled with doctors and hospital rooms and words like “malignancy,” “adenocarcinoma,” and “Trousseau sign,” whatever that is.

When someone who's close to you dies, you learn there are a lot of things people don't talk about. I mean, there's that whole Hollywood scene where you sit by the side of the hospital bed breathing in urine and antiseptic and you share memories, as if they'll hold you safely in the past. “Hey, Mom, remember the time you taught me how to run the Slinky down the stairs? That was cool.”

That really happens, just like in the movies.

There are other things that don't get said aloud. We never said “you're dying” or “terminal cancer” or “when you're dead.” Soon the doctors were saying “palliative,” and I knew that
meant
“dying,” but I still never said it, and neither did Mom. Maybe Mom and Dad said it when they were together and I wasn't there. I doubt it. Why say what you already know?

Afterward, when she was gone, there was a whole bunch of new ways for everyone to avoid talking about what actually
happened. At school, teachers said, “I'm sorry for your loss.” The gym teacher put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Heard you've had a rough time of it.” No one ever, ever said, “Sorry your mom's dead.” Which was okay, I suppose. It just left this big circle of silence inside me, like the blackened ring of stones around an old bonfire pit.

On the day of the funeral, there was a wake at our house.

I'm not sure how that day got planned, to tell you the truth. Dad and I were shuttled from our front door to the funeral parlor, then the cemetery, then back into our driveway. When we reentered our house, chairs had been pushed along the edges of all the walls and the kitchen table was loaded with sandwiches, grocery-store fruit-and-cheese platters, plastic jugs of pop, and stacks of plates and napkins and cups.

Greg and Dallas were in the living room, stuffing their faces with chicken salad rolls. Lauren was there too, flanked by her parents. They stood firm and straight on either side of her like fence posts.

“We're so sorry for your loss,” Lauren's mom said.

“Our prayers are with you and your family,” her dad said.

Lauren flung herself at me, her arms wrapping around my neck and her whole body pressing against mine. It helped. For a minute, it was like being bandaged.

Then Lauren's mom tapped her shoulder, eyes flashing
“inappropriate display of affection,” and Lauren pulled herself away. Her dad passed her a tissue and she dabbed beneath her lashes.

So formal.

If Lauren and I were together for twenty more years, would we sit at family gatherings like TV news anchors with lacquered faces and insincere smiles? I wanted to ask her parents. And I wanted to ask why they were already drawing Lauren toward the door. Did they think cancer was contagious? Or death?

Then someone else put a hand on my shoulder and had more meaningless words to share, and I never did get to ask my questions. Which was better, I suppose. Inappropriate display of aggression.

“You should eat something, sweetheart,” one of Mom's friends told me, and put a plate of sandwiches in my hands. I was happy to eat. Starving, actually. But it didn't seem right to stand in the middle of those people—did they all actually know my mother?—and scarf sandwiches. I took myself across the landing and sat in the semidark at the top of the basement stairs, listening to the murmur of hushed conversations.

I had polished off one tuna fish and two egg salad halves and I was just starting on the ham and cheese when I heard my name. You know how voices can surround you, all running into one another like the colors in an oily puddle, and then someone
says your name and it's like a car tire driving through the puddle? That's what happened.

“Cole must be devastated.”

“I can't get over how fast it happened.” That was Aunt Claire, my dad's sister from Saskatoon. There was a crack in her voice that made my throat want to close. I had to stop chewing until I'd taken a few deep breaths.

“Such a tragedy.” That was Mom's best friend, Lily Daniels. She and her husband own an orchard on the east side of town. When I was small, I used to climb all the trees, one after another, while Mom and Mrs. Daniels had coffee.

“At least he's practically grown up,” my aunt said, sounding like she was trying to pull herself together.

“Poor Douglas, though. He'll be on his own,” Mrs. Daniels said.

Cue background music. Something tragic and orchestral.

Why would she say something like that? We were grown men. We could manage. We'd already been managing the whole time Mom was in the hospital.

“Damn it,” I muttered. Damn the funeral, the wake, Lauren's family, and the entire stuck-eating-on-the-stairs situation.

Aunt Claire and Mrs. Daniels must have heard me because they both scurried away. I couldn't look at them for the rest of the wake. I could barely look at anyone.

•   •   •

Lauren picks up groceries on Monday afternoons. She says her mom finds the store overwhelming—too many people, too many fluorescent lights. So Lauren goes instead. Every Monday.

I know this. So if I happen to be driving past the grocery store at three o'clock on Monday, is that a coincidence or is my subconscious screwing with me?

She's walking along the side of the road with Lex, both of them lugging canvas bags. I pull over and roll down the window.

“Can I give you a ride?”

Lauren's cheeks are flushed and strands of her hair have escaped her ponytail.

“We're fine,” Lex says, barely glancing up from the sidewalk.

“You sure? It's baking out there.”

Lauren hesitates.

Lex is a few steps ahead when she realizes her friend has stopped. She sighs. “Fine. Go,” she says. “You can take my bags. I'll meet you at your house.”

“You can squeeze in,” I tell Lex.

“Not likely,” she says. She's looking at me like I'm a crack dealer or a recently released prison inmate.

“She's feeling a little protective,” Lauren says once we've pulled away.

“Between Lex and your mom, it's a miracle we were ever allowed to date in the first place.”

She smiles, but only a little. I've broken her golden rule. No one's allowed to speak badly of her family—not even as a joke. She's quiet, straightening her hair, catching the little strands from her neck and retwisting them into her ponytail.

I search for a neutral topic.

“You working this summer?”

“Part time at the library,” she says.

“Cool. Maybe you can get them to order some new docs.”

“Maybe.” She half turns toward me. “Did you actually need to talk to me about something?”

She's not my Lauren anymore. I used to get to see a side of Lauren that no one else knew. A more relaxed Lauren. Someone who could be silly or unexpectedly funny. Now she's smoothed herself into the person that she lets everyone see.

“I just . . . wanted to say hello.”

She nods, processing this. “Hello, then,” she says.

I wonder how many Laurens there are, really. Are there two—one for public viewing and one for close friends? Or do Lauren's parents and Lex and her other friends each get a different version? Maybe my Lauren was only for me, and now she's gone. That thought stabs me inside, as if I've killed something.

“I'll grab your bags,” I say as we pull up at her house.

“Don't bother. I've got them.”

Halfway up the walk, she adjusts her grip. Then her shoulders square, and her head tilts up, and her ponytail swings as if it's never had a down day.

I drive away, taking deep breaths.

It felt weird driving with Lauren. But if only our words counted, then maybe it wasn't so bad. On film, you can't show interior monologue. On film, that ride would have seemed normal. Ordinary.

I push away the heavy feeling that's creeping up on me. It's time to move on. I can do this. I can go forward from here.

•  •  •

I'm waiting at the door of the auto shop when Greg gets off work. I like hanging out here. The smell of grease and the sounds of revving engines are the mechanical equivalent of comfort food.