There Is No Long Distance Now Page 9

  What did the preacher say before he dipped us? Well, there were a few people dipping us. We’re strong.

  Uh, I think he said, Do you really want to listen to the story of Jesus or do you just want to tell your own story?

  That seemed kinda strange to me because none of us were talking, know what I mean? Kinda rude.

  He said he knew how we felt, that in life it’s always hard to know what to do first.

  Well, that’s true.

  But I don’t think he knows how I feel. He doesn’t even know me. I do not know the guy, no. I have never seen him before in my life.

  And, lemme think, he also said, Some days you’re just down in the dumps, no two ways about it. Well, that’s certainly true. Like now. Like having to tell you I just got baptized as if it were a drive-by or something, very strange. This is really stressing me out.

  He said when we’re down in the dumps, Jesus is what we need. Which I do think I have heard more than once at both of your churches, no offense but it wasn’t like a newsbreak or anything.

  And then they threw us in this vat and pressed our faces down, god! I have to admit I kind of shouted it. God! And they thought I was praying. They told me I am a new man. Not only me, all the guys. We’re a whole new team I guess. I don’t know what the other guys thought, they looked shocked too. We were very quiet in the bus coming back. I think we were all thinking about telling our parents what just happened. And if we were new men would you recognize us? Ha ha ha.

  Play Me a Tune

  Whatever your life, you developed certain proficiencies. Even something no one else cared about. Secret.

  Good at walking swiftly down a block in the dark.

  Good at coaxing a dead plant back to life.

  Good at feeding a crying cat, making him stand on his hind legs to touch the rim of the stool just once before you plopped the food into his bowl.

  Good at putting contacts in, slipping them out.

  Good at waxing a car.

  Good at hitting a home run in Little League and remembering that cheering forever (nothing else would quite live up to it).

  What was Miko’s?

  He wondered this sometimes—

  He was a decent observer.

  His room wasn’t the messiest in town.

  He could make a really good pizza if he bought the crust.

  And all those other little things (see above) but nothing was Headline Material. He wasn’t winning the science fair.

  “I’m doing my best,” his dad would say, in a tone that sent chills up Miko’s spine. That meant his dad wasn’t doing well at all. He could interpret his dad. And his mom, too. No prizes were given for this talent. No one sent you a scholarship because you had managed to negotiate the various depressions of two parents without being bumped too far off course yourself.

  As a young boy, with sisters eight and ten years older than he was, everything was easier. He had four parents for the first years of his life. They dressed and redressed him. He wore snazzy stripes and a Greek fisherman’s cap with his blond curls sticking out. They took pictures. He was the court jester, the adorable surprise. His mom got him onto a local TV commercial for Art Night.

  But then his sisters grew up and left, not only the house, but the country, both of them passionate about speaking French and eating fresh hot croissants and baguettes every day from a bakery by their French art college. His sisters loved each other so much, they were looking for twin boyfriends.

  And where did this leave him? A suddenly-only child in lovely, lonely Nebraska with two depressed parents, missing their beautiful girls. The girls had done so much. Cooking, cleaning, cheering everything forward. And now . . .

  “I think I might go see the cranes this weekend, some people are going,” Miko said at breakfast. He put down his fork. There would be objections.

  “What people?” His mom sighed.

  “Oh, some guys from band. We’ll share a motel room so it doesn’t cost too much, or maybe we’ll just drive back after sunset.”

  “Drive in the dark?” his father said, looking up from the newspaper. “It’s probably better if you stay over there. Are you going to the Audubon place? I heard they’re here in full force, really big year. All that corn in the fields.”

  “Yeah, we heard that, too.”

  The massive flocks of gray sandhill cranes settling into the Platte River at sunset were one of the wonders of the Midwestern world. And they only paused in Nebraska for a short time.

  “Stay there. Watch the morning liftoff too, then drive back. Don’t forget your big coat. And whose car are you taking? Not another car with bad tires please. You want to take the Prius? I’ll let you.”

  “Yeah, sure. I would love to take the Prius. Thanks. We won’t spill food in it this time I promise. Mom, everything okay? You seem really quiet.”

  “Oh, the usual, I’m doing my best.”

  His mother suffered painful arthritis. She wouldn’t take painkillers, though. One thing you learned with a depressed person, never ask them why they’re “sad.” Because they’re not sad, they’re just regular, for them. Also, giving advice was never good because they wouldn’t take it. You just gave them something else to resist.

  “Dad, what are you doing today?”

  His father still worked at the Omaha newspaper. Though many people said newspapers were a dying institution, his father had, by now, filled every single position the newspaper had to offer, except women’s advice columnist. And he read the newspaper every morning as if he had never seen it before. Scoured even the ads and obituaries. “Actually I’m going to see Warren Buffett’s troop of thirteen-year-old recorder players rehearse—they’re doing a concert soon. I’m writing a story about them.”

  Now that was cool. Warren Buffett had bought all the sleek little recorders in purple felt sacks with drawstrings and was even known to show up for after-school practices. He had loved playing a recorder as a child himself. And he wanted to share it.

  Miko and his parents actually lived in Warren Buffett’s modest brick neighborhood and were so impressed that the super-billionaire hero of their state and country had never moved away. He could have lived in a much bigger house with high security and glorious meadows and horse barns. He could have lived in a castle on a seacoast. He could have had butlers and secret gardens and anything he wanted. But he chose to buy recorders for kids.

  Miko filed this in his mental cabinet:

  Heartwarming Stories. Stories you could tell a downbeat person in a bad moment.

  You had to collect those things.

  The person who gives away half of what he has.

  The ladies building water tanks and reading rooms in small African towns.

  Mysteries of crane migration—without Google maps or radar screens—had been maintained for centuries—clear passage through the skies, for thousands of miles. No matter what mistakes people made on earth, they showed up. When they cried, your deepest memory echoed. They carried nothing for their journey, but the corn plumping their flesh, under their feathers.

  Now that was traveling light.

  Miko didn’t know how he felt about god or his own future. When asked for college plans, his mind went blank as snow. But he knew how he felt about looking up sometimes, and staying quiet.

  Second Thoughts

  Are the Only Thoughts

  I Have

  Because I didn’t just get here, Rainey thought.

  Only if you recently arrived on earth could you be having first thoughts.

  Replay, rewind. . . .

  Try the sock store in Cairo.

  How many times had she thought about it by now?

  The small unobtrusive store was located in a long shopping hallway off the lobby of the Nile Hilton, near Tahrir Square, where she and her father stayed for seven days of the Christmas holiday. Since it was Egypt, of course, Christmas was also unobtrusive. Which was fine with Rainey. Her parents had pointed out to her long ago that the baby Jesus lying in a man
ger might really dislike those newspaper ads. LAST DAY TO SHOP! 40% DISCOUNT ADDED TO 30% DISCOUNT! And that truly stupid question people always asked around the holidays in the United States, Are you ready for Christmas? which basically meant, Have you shopped? Rainey’s mom would answer, “I will never be ready for Christmas in a world of war.”

  Other stores on the hotel’s shopping hall sold goat soap, expensive facial potions, glittering designer party dresses, Egyptian curios, but the sock store stood out. “I wonder how much business they do,” her father mused. “I guess a lot of people must forget their socks when they travel. Actually, I need to go there. Somehow I packed only one extra pair of socks in my luggage. Don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe they were all in the wash.” On a mysterious holiday business trip for his company, for which he would be paid overtime, he was attending secretive meetings four times a day and Rainey was visiting mummified remains of ancient pharaohs, writing esoteric details in a black notebook.

  In the evenings Rainey and her father would walk out to the riverfront where glittering gambling boats broadcast enticing music. They would stroll up and down like in the old days, watching the sun sink, the Nile turn pinkish golden for a few moments, and the swallows diving toward the water. “I always loved Cairo,” her father sighed. “We could have lived here. Why didn’t we?”

  They would walk to Café Riche where black-and-white portraits of local writers and intellectuals hung on all the walls, including the great novelist Naguib Mahfouz—people who had eaten there. So when you ordered rice, you were part of a long stream of people ordering rice for a hundred years. Second thoughts? Lentil soup, steaming warm brown bowl with a little dab of yogurt on top, like a snowdrift. “Dad, how many bowls of lentil soup do you suppose one person eats in a lifetime?”

  He said what he always said, which had never made sense, “We would have to ask the queen.”

  That morning Rainey had been halfheartedly watching BBC TV when Queen Elizabeth remarked in her annual address to the nation, “Some years are best forgotten.”

  Rainey asked her dad, “Do you think that is true?”

  He said, “No. The queen is sometimes wrong. And some people never eat lentil soup at all.”

  “We should remember all our years?”

  “Yes, because in the full picture, we don’t get many of them. So giving up a whole year would be a big loss.”

  Rainey would never have believed her father would be dead three months later. He was a vital, vigorous man, fluent in three languages, funny and confident. They talked about petty things. She rolled her eyes. She said, “How are your socks doing?”

  “Terrible. We have three more days here. I really have to get down to that store.” But the store was always closed by the time he got back to the hotel for their late dinner.

  So the next day, she visited the sock store while he was gone, to surprise him with a present when he returned. It was Christmas, after all.

  She stepped through the door and three attendants pounced on her. It was as if she were the first person to enter in years. One spoke in Arabic, one in French, and one in English. Her dad would have felt right at home—all three of his languages, spoken simultaneously.

  “Umm—socks,” Rainey said.

  But of course. What else, lemons?

  A pair of sleek olive green socks caught her eye, mostly because a pair of mannequin feet next to the cash register was wearing them.

  She pointed at them and smiled. How would her father feel about green socks? Maybe he would like them for the holiday season. He wasn’t big on flamboyant garb. Yesterday when they’d seen a man in the lobby wearing a red-checkered jacket, her dad had said, “Ouch.”

  Two of the sock people opened a sock box and pulled out a stack of the green socks. They were very smooth. They were also expensive. What were they, cashmere? Rainey nodded. She could afford one other pair plus the fancy green, with the bills she had in her pocket.

  She stared into the eyes of the three people in front of her. How on earth could this empty store afford so many clerks? And why did they seem so earnest—about men’s socks? Couldn’t they branch out and sell . . . women’s socks, too? Fancy hosiery?

  The three clerks seemed so hopeful, she could have cried. They wanted her to buy a hundred pairs of socks. They wanted to serve her well. They folded the socks in reams of fragrant tissue. Her father grimaced only briefly when she presented the green socks at dinner. He tried to feign enthusiasm. Did he ever, ever wear them? They seemed really fresh when she found them later in his drawer at home. Still with their little Arabic cotton tag. He wore the black ones, though. She wanted him to enjoy everything. Like the pyramid builders of ancient times, focused on their beloved kings, she wanted him to live forever.

  Mary Alvarez Is Ninety Today

  My family always finishes my milk. Which is why you will frequently find me jogging to the grocery store at six-thirty a.m. to replenish the refrigerator, as if I am the servant for the house. You are, they say, the one so desperate for lactose-free double-protein milk. So go and get it. But why does everyone else guzzle it? That’s what I want to know.

  I buy two every time at $2.99 each. I can’t really jog home so I walk briskly with one in each hand. I drink one half gallon a day. That’s a lot of milk money. Then they drink half of the second one when my back is turned.

  I am frequently in a bad mood at the grocery store. It is not really where I want to be first thing every day, but I can’t eat breakfast without milk and I can’t live without breakfast.

  So marry a cow, my brother says.

  Marry a grocer, bring back the milkman industry, go to hell why don’t you.

  He pretends he has the same lactose intolerance as our Arab father but this milk, being lactose-free, doesn’t bother him.

  So today when I’m in a really grouchy mood waiting at the checkout, there’s this old guy with a ponytail behind me buying a heart-shaped balloon. It’s 6:48 a.m. and I can’t help myself. “Must be true love!” I say.

  Instantly I feel rude but he looks up from unloading tangerines and frozen lasagna boxes from his cart and says, “Oh, hi,” as if we know each other. Then, “It’s for my mom.” My first thought is, He looks old to have a mom, but I try to hold my eyebrows down.

  He says, “It’s her birthday. She’s ninety today.”

  Then I start doing the math. He could be sixty-eight, sixty-nine.

  “Wow,” I say. “Happy birthday to her.”

  He says, “I guess you’re an early bird? So am I.”

  I say, “Actually, I am someone desperate for milk. My family keeps drinking mine.”

  He grins at me.

  “What is your mother’s name?” I say.

  “Mary Alvarez.”

  He says it so proudly, as if she’s a saint or a mayor.

  “Well, have a beautiful day, Mary Alvarez, we wish you many more,” I say, punching the air, and he smiles very kindly and says, “Thank you so much.”

  So Mary, I think, walking home with my milks, how has it been, celebrating your birth all these years the same day as Día de los Muertos, when people remember the dead? Coming and going. That’s all we do in this world. Buy the milk and drink the milk. Strengthen the bones, then die.

  My mom didn’t make a shrine this year. We made one at school, with Michael Jackson on it, and our old janitor Mr. Diaz, the nicest guy on the face of the earth, and a lot of personal relatives of different people, but for some reason I didn’t want to participate, though I was seriously tempted to bring a picture of my dog. I just didn’t want anyone to laugh. He was such a great dog.

  Have a good day, Mary. Have a beautiful day. I look both ways crossing St. Mary’s and even think of you inside the old street name, swinging my plastic bags of milk. Maybe I could hide the cartons in the refrigerator’s vegetable bin under the lettuce and carrots. It’s strange but I decide to act less grouchy in the mornings from now on as a present to you. A person I will never meet. You have a nice son. Do
es his ponytail ever bug you?

  See How This Thing Goes

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  Jane couldn’t believe she was staring at Tessa in a hospital bed.

  Tessa’s voice, thinned and faint. “Because if you knew, it would make it more real. I don’t want it to be real.”

  “It is not real!”

  Tessa turned her face to the side, into the giant white pillow.

  How could it be real?

  Normally Jane didn’t see Tessa during summers. Tessa went to her grandparents’ in Virginia, where her horse lived, and Jane stayed home to babysit the neighbor kids, and labor long hours at Melt, the ice cream store owned by her weird, weird cousin.

  This year in July, Jane received a message from their friend Sam, working at Disney World in Florida. He was not impersonating Minnie Mouse, as usual. “That’s horrible, about Tessa. Call and tell me what you know.”

  She knew nothing. Had Tessa been thrown by a horse?

  She called Tessa’s mom. Jane had heard about the Christopher Reeve accident when she was little and it scared her. Horses were elegant moving gracefully far off in a field, but Jane had no desire to sit on one. Tessa had been riding horses all her life. The idea of spending an entire equestrian summer galloping and jumping around meadows seemed strange to Jane.