Away From Everywhere Page 26

“Where are you staying, Emily? I drove past that B&B you pointed to the other night, and the sign said the place is closed until June.”

  “Does it really matter where I’m staying, Sherlock?”The way she said it made her declaration seem true. It was sharp enough that it stated: Back off. Are you stalking me? Drop it.

  “Fair enough. I thought you’d gone back to Corner Brook is all.”

  “Gone back? I can’t go back now. I’m sick of everyone tiptoeing around me. I’m sick of getting away with being late for work, or not coming in at all. I get the same goddamn looks from everyone. They smile at me, a smile of condolence, but they can’t even look at me, so they stare down at their feet as they pass by me. No words are shared, ever, and I feel deaf and mute. It’s just as well I was. I’m sick of being poor old Emily. I was invisible before Andrew died. I liked being faceless in a crowd, but now I’m that poor woman with the dead kid , or at least I used to be, now I’m that women with the dead kid who is drinking too much. The poor soul. Their careful words, nervous glances, and obligate condolences make me feel like a ghost. Besides, there are too many happy mothers running around that town, and I cannot help but look at them with all the jealousy of a flightless bird. I see a mother scold a child too harshly, or get impatient at their never-ending curiosity, and shake my head at their not realizing what they have, how lucky they are, what they are taking for granted.”

  Realizing she’d trailed off, she reiterated her point,“There’s nothing left for me back in Corner Brook. I’m not going back to that. Why would I?”

  “Well, okay, I was just–”

  “Nobody knew me before Andrew died. Now I have celebrity status. It’s odd how a tragedy makes the invisible more apparent, don’t you think? You could argue that compassion unites us, or you could argue that tragedy turns us on. Look at the headlines on all those magazines next time you’re in a lineup at a grocery store. They’re all about who is getting divorced, who is in rehab, or slitting their weak wrists, you know? It’s never good news.”

  She shook the snow out of her hair, then dried her hair in the sleeve of her black cardigan. Owen lit the fireplace and put Eric Bachmann’s To The Races in the CD player. She explored the living room, took in the family photos he was living amongst.

  “You know, you kind of look like your father, or, at least in ten more years you will. Same eyes, like you trust nothing!” She laughed a little, like, I’m kidding but I’m serious.

  “It’s sad the way you lost him, Owen, but at least you can still love him. I don’t even have that, if it makes you feel any better.”

  Owen said nothing: she was more or less talking to herself, perhaps nervously rambling, since they didn’t really know each other well enough for her to show up like this, unannounced at that. She walked over to the bookshelf and ran her fingers along the spines of each book, each a porthole into a different world. Her finger lingered on some titles longer than others as she read them.

  She sat and joined him on the couch as he opened a bottle of wine.“What’s it like,Owen, living amongst all these photos and your father’s affairs? I ask because I know I found it unbearable living in my apartment after Andrew died. I could’ve boarded up his room, but there were reminders of him all over the place, like the pencil marks on the porch door where we measured his height every birthday, or like the stain on the living room carpet where he laid a red popsicle he didn’t want while he watched Scooby-Doo , or like the pictures of him I couldn’t take down, because they made me feel less alone. I could’ve gutted out his room, or moved, for that matter, but I knew I would always still picture that room in my head, you know? Me laying him in his crib and flicking on the baby monitor, or us baking cookies together and him dusted white with all the flour. He loved helping me with things, it made him feel more grown up. I wonder why that is? Why do kids reach three or four and have a sudden desire to be grown-ups? It’s ironic that parents and children want to swap lives, don’t you think?”

  Owen nodded.

  “So, I can imagine it’s both nice but heart-wrenching to live amongst all this stuff, Owen? The photos of your mother, Alex’s time capsule, all of your dad’s belongings–”

  The power flickered, almost violently, and each time, the room went blue as the lights dimmed, then orange as they flared back on. The way the lights flickered made it clear that the power was just about to go out, not that it might, as if the power lines were clairvoyant or the weather was kind enough to warn people things were about to go black.

  And then they did. The fire flickered on, but the room felt colder and less inviting under that darkness. The sudden silence was jarring, unwelcomed. The music had created a warm atmosphere; their words sank into it and their emotions revolved around it. Both Owen and Emily looked at the silent, powerless stereo. There was only a faint crackle from the fire now, each other’s faces barely visible, and oranged by the fire.

  “We could go out in my truck and chat, maybe take a few CDs out with us and flick the dome light on. I’ve got some Mark Kozelek. I think you’ll like him, and The Great Lake Swimmers.”

  She smiled, no words of confirmation, and bundled herself up in her scarf. She jammed on her boots, mittens, and jacket.

  Clapping her mitted hands. “C’mon then.”

  If he hadn’t remembered where the truck was parked, he might not have found it. It was like pushing his way through endless white curtains, and if Emily hadn’t been walking right in his footsteps, she might’ve lost him. The wind burned. Stung. Snow pelted at his eyes so he kept them mostly shut.

  He waited for her to reach out a hand, onto his shoulder maybe, so that he could guide her. He would’ve liked that.

  He started the truck, to heat it up a little, and when the stereo cut in, it filled the truck with the melancholy, unmistakable sound of Nick Drake. When Owen went to eject the CD, he felt the slap of Emily’s hand off his.

  “Don’t! I love this man, and I haven’t heard him in so long now. It’s a shame he killed himself before he was even thirty. Can you imagine how big he could’ve gotten?”

  Pulling a glove back on. “I didn’t know he killed himself.”

  “Pills. Like all the great artists. It’s always either a bottle of antidepressants that wouldn’t work for them or a bottle of narcotics they were hooked on. But, I guess it’s not always pills though. Hemingway and Cobain went the shotgun route. There’s no way to go wrong there.”

  “Yeah, really hey? Personally, I could never quite wrap my head around Elliot Smith’s suicide. He took a knife and drove it through his own heart. He couldn’t have even questioned it, you know? Or Sylvia Plath, she stuck her head in an oven! Or that poet,John Berryman, who was reportedly so calm during his suicide that he waved to a passerby as he was falling through the air after jumping off a bridge!”

  “I’m jealous of people with the courage to kill themselves. Me, I’ll just live a long miserable life writing sullen, repetitive journal entries about Andrew. Besides, if I did get the courage to kill myself, people would only thrive off of it, and reduce me to someone too weak, definitely weaker than them, to carry on. As if they knew me, what made me this way. I’d be reduced to someone too weak, and nothing more. So I won’t give them the pleasure.”

  Owen was jolted by the casual way she talked of suicide.

  “But I am afraid that if I linger on feeling this way, I will forget about that beautiful life I used to have, you know?”

  The conversation lightened as the storm raged on. They sat there so long the seats had moulded around their tiring bodies and started to feel like beds. They’d reclined them all the way back, and as Emily drew fish and flowers in the condensation on her window,Owen fell in love with her hands: the soft lines in each knuckle, the hue of pink, the fingers so adorably tiny.

  The gaps between their conversations got longer, and the silence was soothing. The sound of the wind was hypnotizing, like waves on a beach. The snow eventually stopped, and just before he fell asleep, Owen looked
straight out of his windshield and saw Clyde’s house, the chimney still going at 4 a.m. Maybe the old man had fallen asleep, drunk, or maybe he was still awake and drinking, lonely, wishing Owen was there and listening to him relive his life through another slew of memorable stories.

  When he awoke, Emily was gone. And she must have been gone a while, because there weren’t any footprints in the snow. Cold, tired, and hung over, he fell asleep again, throwing his feet up onto the passenger seat where Emily had been just a few hours ago, convincing him of things he needed convincing of. There was an empty bottle of wine in each cup holder, no glasses, and the dashboard was covered in CDs, empty bags of bite-sized pitas, and a tub of hummus.

  At ten in the morning, Clyde knocked his large, leathery hand on the driver side window. Owen jumped out of his seat, and the sudden burst of sunlight on his retinas was agonizing. He raised a forearm like a shield against the sun.

  “Jesus, Clyde!What the hell?”

  “What the hell, Clyde? Sure, you’re the one sleeping in a goddamn truck. So you tell me, what the hell, kid?”

  Owen rolled down the window so they could talk more reasonably, instead of shouting at each other through the glass. “I dunno, it got cold inside and I came out here to turn on the heat, and I wanted to hear some music. It was oppressively silent in the house, and boring, so we came out here.”

  “We? Who’s we, boss? I’ve been watching ya since dawn, don’t be so foolish.”

  “Me and Emily.”

  “Who …is Emily?”

  “The girl from the bar the other night. After Patsy drove you home, we kind of met outside. We’ve been talking a little ever since.”

  Clyde raised an eyebrow and laughed.“Talking, hey?That’s whatcha calls it now, is it? Talking? ” He walked around the truck and hopped into the passenger seat. “So where is Juliet now, son?”

  “Good question.”He didn’t know, but he did know that she wasn’t going to come back if Clyde was around. He felt bad for wishing the sweet old man away.

  His tongue was a pile of sand, and his stomach was rolling with hunger. Where he wished Emily was, was up to the takeout buying them some greasy breakfast.

  “She must be staying down at the golf lodge. If there was an Emily running around this town out of the tourist season, trust me, we’d all know about her. Was she that redhead you were eyeballing all night?”

  “Me? You were the one stumbling over her all night. It was embarrassing, man! And no, Emily is a brunette, short messy hair, cute enough to marry.”He laughed as he recalled Clyde, the sixty-seven-year-old man, flirting with that young redhead all night like some college kid. As miserable as he felt that morning. He could force a smile in Clyde’s presence.

  “Well, whatever.”Clyde slapped his knee. “Get up and get inside, b’ye. You’re making a spectacle of yourself sleeping in your truck like this, never mind that the day’s half over.”

  Something about the comment tasted sour to Owen. He resented it. He caught himself about to lash out at Clyde. Like I give a fuck what this town thinks of me, old man, and it’s only 10 a.m. yet, but he caught himself, calmed down, a little surprised by the vicious rush that coursed through him. By now, Clyde had gotten out of the truck and was opening Owen’s door and extending his hand to him. His limp evoked this courtesy from people, including strangers, even though it was a limp symbolic of guilt and callousness. He was sick of walking on that leg. Both the pain, and what that pain represented, had grown too unbearable, too unforgiving.

  He grabbed the two empties and the corkscrew. The rest he would clean up later. He scratched the stubble on his chin with the handle of the corkscrew, and as he looked down at the corkscrew, he remembered giving that very corkscrew to his father for a birthday present over two decades ago, when he was so young that he never actually bought it himself, his mother bought it for him to give to his father. He stared at the corkscrew now, as the memory of that birthday replayed itself, thinking of how his father never knew him as an adult, as an alcoholic. He never really knew him at all. He left when Owen was just a child who could’ve become anything.

  The loud squeal of a gull snapped him back into consciousness. He stared out at the bright blue ocean, at the gulls that hovered above it. He watched a bird, an indistinct bird he’d never seen before, dive deep into the water and disappear. He nodded his head.

  He approached his front door, noticed it was already open, and saw Emily’s black peacoat coiled around her boots like a snake. He saw her red scarf hanging off the porch doorknob. He laid the empties down and yelled out to her. Something felt wrong, urgent, the house felt filled with silent screams. Adrenaline, for no reason, was tugging at his muscles, contracting them. His heart was kicking off his ribcage.

  “Emily?”He checked every room.

  He found her body on his bathroom floor, contorted and folded over itself like a dropped doll. Her forehead pressed into the base of the toilet looked raunchy and wrong. He grabbed her body and rolled her over. She felt lighter now. Her body unfolded as Owen laid her on her back – her limp arms slapping off the floor as they fell against it – and she looked like she was sleeping. More peaceful than vulgar now. She looked ethereal, and beautiful – her face up close like that, their bodies touching. He felt hollow, and cold. He was shaking now as he stared at her. Of all the things he could feel, he felt riddled with fear.

  As he looked down on her body there, it wasn’t sad. She looked pristine. Pristine, not beautiful. Restored, not dead. Pure. He saw not defeat or surrender, but courage and release. Not depression, but liberation. He saw her smiling, almost coaxing him to be as brave. She was dead, with a smile on her face, as if she died thinking of Andrew and nothing more. She looked exhausted, but liberated now. Released from any guilt, or any sense of failure. Free, she looked as if death had freed her from everything.

  He took a deep breath, checked for a pulse, and felt nothing but cold on her neck. He needed to call the police, or an ambulance. He needed to dial 9-1-1, but he couldn’t drag himself away from her body. Couldn’t let go of her. Of her soft skin and flacid little hands.

  He stumbled into the kitchen, his mouth too dry to speak into the phone, and grabbed a near-empty glass of water that was resting on the countertop. Emily must have left it there when she came back in the night before, before she did that to herself. He swallowed the water in one desperate gulp: and it burned like all the fire in hell. He felt an acidic searing in his mouth, a scouring in his throat. He felt claws tearing at his esophagus, and ripping up his stomach. His lungs burned now too, and wouldn’t fill with air, so he grabbed at his shirt and beat on his chest. The inside of his mouth was covered in a chalky substance, and he lifted the glass into the light by the window. He saw a white powder, and on the counter he saw a slew of empty bottles of household cleaners, over-the-counter medications, and an empty can of Drano. He dialed 9-1-1 and tried, screaming whispers, to give his address.

  He didn’t want to live and he didn’t want to die, he just wanted the pain to stop. By the time the ambulance came, Owen had toppled over and was face-down on the living room floor. The fall into the coffee table broke his nose and chipped two teeth. He wasn’t entirely unconscious as he lay on the floor, and behind his closed eyelids was not darkness, but light. A cloudy whiteness. His head felt enormous, and his body was sinking into the floor beneath him.

  In that whiteness, he saw him, Alex, and their father at the firepit out back. His father was hooking marshmallows onto sticks for them. They were laughing. Alex would always char his marshmallows, get his mother to tear away the blackness, and then eat the gooey middle. Owen took the time to roast his slowly, over the coals, not the fire itself. The image was slowly fading. Their father was impersonating their mother, and all three of them laughed, excessively. Then there was nothing but whiteness. Whiteness and the sound of laughter.

  And then the sound of sirens getting closer and louder. And then no sirens. He heard them burst through his front door, their urg
ent footsteps and shouting, and the sound of the stretcher’s wheels along the hardwood floor was a deafening rattle. They found him retching on the living room floor. Revolting dry heaves.

  “Sir, have you ingested something? Are you choking?” A man twice his size knelt down and plunged two fingers into Owen’s mouth and wrestled against his tongue to check his airway. It hurt and he gagged. It felt like a stick in his mouth. The man looked at the other paramedic and shook his head.

  “Can you speak? Nod if you can hear me.”

  Owen threw his head up and down, but he could only mumble incoherently, it hurt too much to talk. He was pointing frantically to the next room and the smaller paramedic stormed off to the kitchen.

  “Jesus Christ, Frank … get out here and look at this! Drano …and …there’s a whole caustic cocktail out here!”

  I AM MY FATHER'S SON

  OWEN WOKE UP IN A bed and felt like he was back in rehab. It was a small green room with cement walls, and his bed was the only one there. One of the four walls was all windows, with two thick, dust-covered red curtains blocking out the sun. He woke up as Clyde was parting them to let the sun in. One strip of sunlight dove through the room and threw itself across Owen’s bed, illuminating his left knee and his left knee only. He turned his head and saw Lillian clutching his hand.

  As he turned around and their eyes met, Clyde shook his head, his mouth an upside-down half moon, like he had horrible news for Owen that he didn’t want to share. Lillian saw her nephew awake, kissed his forehead, and hurried off to find a doctor, her chair still sliding across the floor. A sense of safety followed her out of the room.

  Clyde, benevolently, as if he was looking at his own son. “Are you feeling all right now, Owen? Can I get you something?” He came closer and sat in the chair Lillian had abandoned.

  It hurt to talk. It didn’t seem worth the effort to form a whole sentence. “Thirsty, water?”The pain surprised him more than waking up in a hospital.