The Distance Between Us (3 page)

We stare at each other for a minute in silence until he begins to squirm. “So,” he finally blurts. “Do you still play?”

“I fractured my left wrist a number of years ago in an unfortunate tumble on the ice, and it’s never really healed properly, not even after surgery. Since then I’ve been unable to play piano for more than a few minutes at a time, because of a rather debilitating case of carpal tunnel syndrome.”

His eyes dart to my wrist and I flex it for him. “Yes, it’s still fine for most things. Just not for the kind of beating that Liszt or
Beethoven or Rachmaninoff requires. The last time I tried to play a full concert, by intermission I felt as if someone were digging a corkscrew into my thumb and forearm. It was excruciating, so I had to give up performing in favor of teaching.”

I ponder my hands. “There’s repertoire available for one-armed pianists, of course, but with a few notable exceptions, it has extremely limited appeal for both soloist and audience. Besides, once you’ve had two good hands at your disposal … well, let’s just say it’s not much fun playing with only one. It’s like trying to run with a single leg.”

“I see.” His voice is quiet and his face is somber. “Did you make any recordings before your accident?”

“Oh, yes, indeed. Many.” I stifle a belch. “Wal-Mart has most of them available on cassette in their bargain bins. They’re three dollars and ninety-nine cents each. You better hurry, though, if you want one, because they’re selling like hotcakes.”

I gaze at the fire and pull at a strand of my hair. “I’m lying, actually. The only place you can find my recordings these days is on eBay, usually after one of my few remaining fans passes away and his heirs auction off his belongings.” I sniff. “Then they all run out to the Mall of America, and use the money to buy extremely useful things like Playstations and iPods for their lazy, drooling children. God.”

When I look back at him he’s grinning again.

I lean forward. “So what brings you to Bolton? I believe you said on the phone that you’re transferring to Pritchard this semester?”

He nods and his grin falls away. “Yeah. That’s why I need to find a place to live pretty soon. There are no openings in the dorms, and I can only afford to stay at the bed-and-breakfast until classes start next week.”

He spins the glass faster in his hands and bars of firelight blur past my eyes.

“Stop that, please. You’re going to give me an epileptic seizure.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just stop fidgeting.” I sink back in my chair and tuck my feet under me. “How old are you?”

“Twenty.” He sips at his wine and coughs. “Almost twenty-one. My birthday is in March.”

“Oh, dear. I’m giving alcohol to a minor.” I raise my glass to him. “Oh, well. Drink up. We’ll pretend it’s grape juice. I trust this isn’t your first time?”

He shakes his head and smiles. “Not even close.”

We fall silent again for a moment. A log breaks apart in the fireplace and a small shower of sparks sails up the chimney.

I clear my throat. “So if you’re taking my daughter’s classes, are you an English major? She only teaches the upper level courses.”

“Yeah. Technically I’m a junior, but I’m not sure all my credits are going to transfer.”

“Transfer from where?”

He shifts in his chair and looks out the window. “Wow. It’s getting really dark outside.” He squints at the garden. “Who’s that big statue of?”

I stare at the back of his head, wondering why he didn’t respond to my question. I suppose I should pursue the matter further, but I can’t make myself care enough to try.

“No one knows for sure,” I answer. “But it’s awful, isn’t it?” I take a pistachio from the dish by my elbow and pick the shell apart with my fingernails as I look out the window, too. The statue is barely visible, but I can still make out the stone Bible nestled in the crook of its left arm. “We call him Saint Booger.”

He laughs. “Why?”

“No particular reason. Arthur’s mother bought it—though only God knows why—without having any idea who it was supposed to be. Some visiting professor once told her he thought it was a Russian saint, but he didn’t know the fellow’s name, either.” I hide a yawn. “So shortly after that, Arthur started calling him Booger, the Patron Saint of Phlegm, and it stuck.”

I pop the pistachio in my mouth and chase it down with wine. “It made his mother furious. She’d hoped that having a religious icon in her yard would impress the neighbors, but it was so ugly all people could do was laugh. She was heartbroken.”

Alex tilts his head to see better. “He doesn’t look so bad from here.”

“You should see him up close, in the daytime. He’s cross-eyed, and he’s missing three fingers on his right hand, and one of his legs
is substantially bigger than the other. He also has patches of black mold in his nostrils that resemble armpit hair. It’s repulsive.”

The grandfather clock in the study behind me chimes once to mark the half-hour: it must be five-thirty. I rest my head on the back of my chair and close my eyes for a moment. “I’d love to get rid of him, but the garbage men refuse to take him. They say he’s too heavy and they’d have to hire extra help to get him on their truck.”

I open my eyes again and the room takes a few seconds to stop spinning. I reach out a hand and pull the chain on the table lamp to give us more light inside, and the statue disappears, replaced by a mirror image of the living room in the window.

He finally turns away from the outside. “I kind of like him. He looks like he’s guarding the house.”

I guffaw. “Of course. How appropriate. Saint Booger is my guardian angel. That explains a great deal.”

He smiles at me. I offer him the bowl of pistachios and he takes a handful, settling back in his chair to eat them. He puts his wine on the table and starts making a neat pile of shells in his lap, one by one. He focuses on each nut with the intensity of a hungry squirrel, and for a moment he seems to forget I’m in the room with him.

I sip at my wine and watch him, amused by the concentration on his narrow face. There’s something very appealing about his expression; it’s been a long while since I’ve seen someone take such conspicuous pleasure in the creature comforts of food and fire. We’re both quiet as he eats, but this time the silence doesn’t seem to bother him.

After he finishes the pistachios, he collects the shells from his lap and stands up to toss them in the fire. They crack and sizzle as they hit the hot coals. He looks down at me. “Well, I guess I should be going.” His voice sounds reluctant.

I stir in my chair. “Or not.” The wine is probably interfering with my judgment, but there’s something about this boy, something vulnerable and sincere, that makes me not want to let him go. “You can still have the apartment tonight if you want it.”

He blinks behind his glasses. “Mrs. Donovan, I really can’t.”

“Don’t call me that, please. It makes me angry, and I’m running out of furniture I can destroy.”

He pauses. “Okay. Hester. Anyway, I love your place, and you seem nice and everything, but like I said, I really need to have …”

“… a door,” I interrupt. “Yes, I know. You mentioned that several times. It’s becoming tiresome, don’t you think?”

I get slowly to my feet and stand a foot away from him. He’s a good eight or nine inches taller than I am, but I lock eyes with him and he seems to shrink down to my size. “Don’t be an idiot, Alex.” I’ve learned to trust my instincts about things like this, and when I speak my voice is certain. “You’re moving in.”

I don’t blink or look away until he nods.

Sometimes you can’t reason with people. Sometimes you just have to bully them into doing the right thing.

T
he boy is coming down the stairs as I’m gathering my things by the door. On his shoulder he’s carrying a worn and dirty brown backpack, with a yellow and black patch on the flap that says,
“How would you like it if an animal ate YOU?”
His red hair is uncombed and wet, and he looks half-asleep.

He’s been here a week or so, but we’ve barely spoken since the night he moved in. When he’s not in classes at Pritchard, he keeps to himself up in the attic, and even though he’s polite when he passes me on his way through the house, he’s shown no interest in striking up another conversation.

I nod at him. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” he grunts. He’s dressed in his usual attire: jeans and the blue flannel shirt he uses as a coat. He drops his backpack on the floor and squats to put his shoes on by the old metal milk pail that serves as my umbrella holder. Once again he’s not wearing socks.

I finish buttoning my overcoat and peer down at him. “I’m on my way to the Conservatory, and it’s right next door to Pritchard. Would you like a ride?”

He fumbles with the laces on his shoes and waits a moment before looking up at me. “Sure, I guess.”

I can tell he doesn’t know what to think of me. He always watches me warily, as if he thinks I’m getting ready to pop his skull
open and scoop out his brain with my fingers if he should dare to drop his guard.

I frown. “You’re afraid to get stuck in the car with an old woman driving, aren’t you? You probably think I’ll weave all over the road and stop to coo at every toddler and starving kitten I see.”

He reclaims his backpack and stands again. “I just like walking, that’s all.”

I study his thin face. “It’s quite a hike to Pritchard from here. It must take you nearly an hour. But if you’d rather walk, by all means do so.”

He shakes his head. “Nah. I’m running a little late this morning, so I guess a ride would be good.”

“I’m a good driver, you know. I haven’t had a ticket in nearly twenty years.” I search through my red leather purse for my keys. “And the only reason I got that one was because I was listening to the radio at the time. Sergei Pegorav was butchering one of my favorite Schumann pieces—the
Phantasie
in C, do you know it?—and it was such an appalling performance that I got distracted and accidentally ran through a stop light. So as you can see it wasn’t really my fault.”

I sigh as my fingers find the little mace sprayer that’s attached to my key chain. “The policeman who pulled me over disagreed, of course, even when I turned up the radio and pointed out all the horrific ways the piano was being violated by that overrated Russian fop. I told him that instead of wasting my time he should go ticket Pegorav for playing like that, but he was entirely unreasonable and insisted on fining me thirty-five dollars. Can you imagine?”

From his expression I can tell he’s trying to decide if I’m serious or not. I am, more or less, but I’ve been told my face is hard to read.

He follows me out to the carriage house as I pick my way over the two or three inches of fresh snow that fell on the driveway last night. I speak over my shoulder, remembering something.

“Do you mind physical labor, Alex? If you’ll agree to keep the porch and the walkways clear this winter, I’ll deduct twenty dollars from your rent each time you have to shovel.”

His face brightens. “Really? That’s pretty pimp.”

I scowl at him. “Is that English you’re speaking? Do we have a deal or not?”

He grins at me. “Yeah. Deal.”

I continue talking as he helps me open the enormous wooden sliding door on the carriage house. “You don’t have to shovel the driveway, by the way. I’ve hired Bernie Lomax to come by with his truck to do that.”

My car is a white Toyota Corolla and we get in. It’s another bitterly cold morning, but the engine turns over on my first try. I let the car idle for a minute to warm up, and Alex and I sit in silence. He fiddles with the ties on his backpack and stares out the passenger window at the inside of the carriage house. There’s not much for him to see except assorted tools hanging here and there, and all my cut firewood stacked high against the rear wall. I flip on the radio and a Brahms violin sonata drifts from the speakers.

“Buckle your seat belt. The roads are always icy this time of year.”

He obeys me and I put the car in reverse and step on the acclerator. I give it a little too much gas and we lurch backward faster than I intended, scooting all the way through the open door and into the bright sunshine before I can locate the brake again.

The sudden stop jostles him in his seat a bit and he throws a hand up on the dash. “Jesus!” He turns to gawk at me. “Are you drunk?”

“I beg your pardon?” I glare at him. “I most certainly am not.”

He wilts under my gaze. “Sorry,” he mutters. “You just startled me a little.”

He’s so tall his hair brushes against the roof of the car, but in spite of his size, he still looks like a little boy.

I moderate my tone. “I’ll attempt to make the rest of the ride smoother for you. You can relax.”

We roll down the driveway and out into the street without further mishap, and I put the car in drive. The front wheels take a moment to find traction and the rear of the car slides to the left somewhat before we begin to move forward. From the corner of my eye I see Alex bite his lip and wince.

I ignore that. “So how are your classes going?”

He shrugs. “They’re okay.” He hesitates. “Your daughter is kind of … interesting.”

The mention of Caitlin is painful, as always, but I can’t help but laugh at his careful choice of words. “I tried to warn you about her, remember?”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way. Not really. She’s just hard to figure out is all.” He’s studying me. “She looks like you, though.”

I peer at my reflection in the rearview mirror. “Do you think so? Not many people say that.”

“Yeah. She’s got your eyes, and your cheekbones are the same, too. And you’ve both got kind of a square jaw.” He pauses. “But she’s a lot bigger than you are.”

I keep my eyes on the road. “She gets her size from Arthur. All our children have towered over me ever since they reached puberty.” I blink back tears. “And you’re right about her eyes. They come from the Parker side of the family. My father had the same dark green eyes, and so did his father.”

We hit another patch of ice by a four-way stop sign and skate a few feet into the intersection before I can regain control of the car. Another vehicle swerves around me, honking, and I exchange black looks with the other driver.