Things I'm Seeing Without You Read online

  Now, of course, the lake was wholly thawed, but it was the idea of the frozen surface that pulled at me. Come winter, my computer would have an icy burial mound, all my communications with Jonah encased inside.

  As I walked towards the lake, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that if things had been different, I might be with him right now instead of doing this. All spring, we had been building towards a second meeting. We texted about it every day, trading job listings at all hours, convinced we could work at the same place after school was through.

  Anywhere would do. The more ridiculous the better. It would make a good story for our grandchildren, Jonah said. And a bizarre new beginning to our relationship. So we started a list and said yes to everything. A clowning camp in Alaska? Sure. An arts initiative at a women’s prison in Oklahoma? Why not? A summer at sea on the Bosporus Strait? Sign me up!

  Anytime we saw summer work for teenagers, no matter how strange, we sent it to the other. It became a code between us. A declaration of our desire to unite as walking, talking actual people. To be together the way everyone else was.

  I’d write:

  On a scale of one to ten, how do you feel about inseminating salmon eggs?

  And he’d write back:

  Nine! Who’s going to inseminate them if not us?

  Then, an hour later he’d write:

  Cooks needed at nudist colony in Spokane. Nightly wiener roast?

  After a while, however, I noticed that I was the only one sending jobs.

  You down for organic beet farming? We could be the Beet Generation! Hahahahahahahaha (punches self in face).

  Or simply:

  Rodeo clowns?

  And nothing would come back.

  Not even that emoji he was so fond of, the one with the smiley face sticking its tongue out. The one I’d always assumed meant ‘You are cute and funny and clever and did I mention cute?’ but now I think probably meant ‘I am not actually engaging with you, Tess Fowler. This stupid grinning face is a BS substitute for real communication.’

  I passed the top of the hill and felt the ground beneath me begin to slant. The far bank of the lake came into view. It wasn’t quite dawn yet, but the clouds were just beginning to glow a buttery yellow. And, seemingly against my will, I began to narrate to Jonah about what was happening.

  In my head, I saw the little blinking cursor on my email’s chat function. Then I saw my usual string of text starting to fill it in one word at a time, like it had so often.

  Me: Things I’m seeing without you:

  This was a game we played on occasion, looking out the windows of our respective rooms, half a country away, and just describing what we saw. If we were doing it simultaneously, it was possible, Jonah said, to be in two worlds at once.

  He was cheesy like that.

  Me: Steam coming off the pavement. Motion detector lights popping on and off like little lightning flashes.

  Me: Rabbits. Baby rabbits? How can you tell a baby rabbit from a small adult rabbit? Are small rabbits confused for babies in the rabbit world? Is it humiliating?

  A couple of times we tried the game with video chat, pointing our laptop cameras out the window, actually seeing what the other saw, but it wasn’t the same. It was always better with words. Translating the world for each other.

  Me: Automatic sprinkler systems. Fountains. A few covered pools in backyards.

  At the bottom of the hill, I crossed the road to the lip of the path around the shore.

  Me: The lake. Looked so big to me when I was a kid. Now it’s just a little guy. An oversize swimming pool with fish. So clear today. A lone rower is out. Is she trying for a moment’s peace before her crappy day begins? Is she training for something? Who are you, lady rower? Why are you working so hard? You have badass arms.

  In the days after he was gone, I could tell immediately that something had shifted. At some point, I didn’t know when, life had only started to feel real when I wrote to him about it. I was a better, funnier version of myself when I told him things. Life was manageable that way. My brain was manageable. Now, the days I was living felt robbed of something, and I needed to find a way to get it back or things were going to get really, really bad.

  Me: The steps of the wooden dock. The green algae on the water. The rower looking at me through reflective sunglasses. The cool morning breeze that kicks up. And then the full light of the sun finding its way over the horizon.

  Now the sky is blue-ing and the water is blue-ing. The computer in my hands. So smooth and metallic. Me cocking back my arms. The rower looking confused, a hand to her head like a scout’s as she battles the sunlight.

  A ripple moves over the surface of the lake. My computer whipping through the air like a square Frisbee, and landing, where it splashes, dies, and sinks into the murky depths with only the smallest of air bubbles. The way my shoes look running down the dock towards the water. The moment where I leap above the water and see it underneath me like a shiny marble floor.

  A shout from the rower. The cold water, cloudy with eyes open. Total dark with eyes closed. My arms pushing through the lake water in slow motion. The weeds against my shins. Then the blinding white sun when I kick my legs and break to the surface, screaming so loud that my lungs feel like they might combust.

  This is it.

  What I’m seeing without you.

  The only time I met him in person, he had a patchy teenage beard.

  It hid his top lip and made his expressions hard to read. It also made him look extra boyish – a kid playing grown-up – when I saw him on the porch of the farmhouse last fall. We were both at a party thrown by college kids from the nearby university. They lived right by my school in a rundown house, complete with a chicken coop and a rusty grain bin.

  ‘Trust farmers’, some of the girls called them. They were rich kids playing good country folk, all the way down to the chewing tobacco and seed caps. It wasn’t so different from what we were doing at Quaker school, but at least we knew we were ridiculous. These guys took it super seriously. They wore overalls and bandannas. They spoke in reverent tones of keeping bees.

  And yet:

  I snuck out and went to their party. I did this because I was lonely and I wanted to drink beer without paying for it. One of my classmates, a kid named Satchel, told me about the party in art class. ‘There’s going to be apple bobbing!’ he said with such a rapturous look of joy on his face, anyone might have thought he was talking about skydiving into Stonehenge. And I wondered: could anyone over the age of eight actually be that excited about dunking their head in a tub of cold water?

  I received my answer upon arriving. One of the first things I saw was a gaggle of bearded boys submerging their faces into an old basin. There seemed to be some kind of drinking element worked in, too – shots of whiskey pre- or post-bob – but I couldn’t quite understand, so I walked past them and spent the next hour filling and refilling my plastic red cup from the barn keg.

  ‘Do you know what kind of beer this is?’ a girl in line asked me at one point. ‘Free,’ I told her.

  I saw Jonah right around the time I left the land of Buzzed for the uncertain waters of Drunk-as-Hell. It’s hard to imagine our meeting in any other way. Since arriving at Quaker school in the fall, I had been experiencing some immobilizing social anxiety for the first time. High school in New York (where I’d spent the year before living with my mom) hadn’t been a breeze, but I’d had a few friends.

  Gradually, I’d learnt to dole out my ‘real’ personality in small, safe doses to avoid scaring people away. Since I’d been here, however, I had felt myself pulling back, saying things in my head instead of out loud. Smiling less. I got tension headaches after class sometimes. It was odd, and inexplicable, and the only cure seemed to be the newly discovered one of alcohol.

  I was standing on the porch of the farmhouse, feeling some inexact measure of shame and longing, when I saw a farmer boy lurking near the tub used for apple bobbing. He peered inside at th
e bitten red apples, an odd half-smile on his lips, and I felt a quick welling of anger.

  ‘Can you please explain it to me?!’ I shouted.

  The guy turned around, surprised, but too far away to see clearly.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ he said.

  He had a low voice, and there was a surprising warmth to it. It nearly halted my momentum. But my tongue had been loosened, and its lashing was not to be denied!

  ‘What is with the farm fetish?’ I said. ‘I really want to know.’

  I stepped closer to him. He didn’t speak. Instead, he adjusted his glasses.

  ‘I mean: I get the desire for authenticity. We all want to feel connected to something real, the loamy dirt or whatever. But pretending you’re in The Grapes of Wrath when you’re actually a Media Studies major from Boston is not the answer, my friend. You’re not Amish! You’re not raising a barn tomorrow! Just give it up, OK?’

  I could have said more. I very much wanted to say more. After speaking no more than a word or two the entire evening, it felt amazing just to talk again. Unfortunately, right after I spoke my last word, I realized that I was incredibly nauseous. The feeling hit me like a sucker punch, and before I could excuse myself, I was already launching into a wobbling sprint to the edge of the porch.

  Then I was vomiting in the bushes.

  Continuously. Heaving and hiccupping away, like a deranged beatboxer while strangers watched in horror. In no time, I had emptied everything from my body. My entire being, I’m pretty sure, was now in the shrubbery. My legs teetered beneath me, but instead of tipping off the porch, a hand appeared on my side, holding me in place.

  ‘Come on,’ said the hand. ‘This way.’

  I followed the trust farmer attached to the hand. It seemed, suddenly, like the right thing to do. I followed him to the kitchen where I took little sips from a tumbler of cool water. Glorious little tumbler sips. I swished the water in my mouth and spit it in the sink like a boxer, tears streaking down my burning cheeks (when exactly had I started to cry?). My farmer led me to a couch and had me lie down with a foot on the floor to keep the room from spinning. Just one foot. Then he spoke in his low voice:

  ‘I’m Jonah, by the way. I don’t live here.’

  I was not technically drunk any more. Nor was I technically sober. I was in a place between the two that didn’t leave much padding between thought and speech.

  ‘But, you have a beard!’ I said.

  He smiled.

  ‘I do have one of those. I just thought I’d try it. It seemed collegey.’

  I could see him more clearly in the light of the living room, and I could tell within seconds that he would look ten times better without facial hair. It looked like there was a strong chin under there.

  ‘Do you go to the university?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I’m from Syracuse. But I go to school in Boston,’ he said. ‘I came here to visit a friend from high school. But I don’t think we’re friends any more. It’s too bad. We used to be close. It’s hard to find that, you know? Do you want more water?’

  But I was not listening. Not really. I was watching his face. His eyes were a little squinty beneath a pair of oversize glasses. But they were a lovely grey with blue around the pupils. His nose wasn’t as prominent as I usually liked, but it wasn’t un-prominent. And his tangle of blond hair was just messy enough. Was he handsome? Probably he was. It always took me too long to decide.

  ‘Ha,’ I said finally.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re a Media Studies major from Boston.’

  ‘I don’t know what Media Studies is.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I do things with computers,’ he said.

  ‘Nerdy things?’

  ‘Yeah. Probably. Most things I do are nerdy.’

  I nodded.

  ‘It’s far away,’ I heard myself saying.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Boston. It’s far.’

  ‘I guess that’s true.’

  My head was nodding. Drooping actually. I was drifting off. Now that I was empty, my body was ready to be done with this night.

  ‘Dammit,’ I said. ‘I’d like to keep talking to you, Jonah. There is something about your voice that is really goddamned peaceful, but I guess I’m going to sleep now. You know how it is.’

  He was quiet a moment then motioned towards my couch.

  ‘Actually, that’s where I’m supposed to sleep,’ he said.

  And again, I spoke without thinking.

  ‘We can share it if you want,’ I said. ‘But I’m not getting up. That’s my best offer.’

  I closed my eyes and beneath my lids there were pictures, bursts of light zooming here and there. It took Jonah maybe a minute or so to decide, but eventually he came over and sat down beside me. He smelt like laundry detergent and a long-ago spritz of cologne. He lay down. I leant my head on his chest and he held absolutely still. I felt warm all over my body.

  In the movie version of this scene, we make out feverishly. Then we wake in each other’s arms like Italian teenagers from that old Zeffirelli movie we watched in English. But this wasn’t Shakespeare. We were not in Verona. We were in Iowa at a fake farmhouse full of passed-out undergraduates and imitation Quakers.

  So, instead, I woke up the next afternoon with a catastrophic hangover, a fresh dose of hell to pay at school, and an email address written on a gas station receipt that read:

  ‘Boston is very far away. The internet is not.’

  The rower’s name was Grace.

  Remember her?

  She was staring at me from across my dad’s kitchen table.

  She was tanned and fortyish and flushed from the sun, and there was a white spot of zinc on her nose that looked like yogurt. She had freckles and she wore a formfitting rowing suit that showed some serious cleavage.

  And me? I wore a ratty orange towel draped over a T-shirt that said: Shave the Whales, which I thought was hilarious when I bought it at Hot Topic in the ninth grade. It was soaked in stagnant lake water.

  We had been in exactly these positions for the last half hour, ever since Grace had hoisted me from the freezing lake, rowed me to the shore, and driven me back home to wait for my father. In this time, which felt very long, but was probably very short, we had exchanged exactly six sentences. Actually, ‘exchange’ probably isn’t the right word. She had spoken five of these sentences, which were, in order:

  1) Oh my God!

  2) What were you doing jumping like that?

  3) Seriously, are you OK?

  4) I’m Grace.

  5) Where do you live?

  I had spoken one sentence, which was:

  1) Up the hill with my dad.

  And since then we had reached a bit of an impasse.

  Outside in the driveway I could see Grace’s jeep with her small boat mounted on top. A scull. The word had come to me out of nowhere while I was gliding to the shore, sunlight burning through my eyelids. I am in a scull, I thought. I am being rowed in a scull. It was sleek and red, and it was currently pointing towards the house like an accusing finger.

  I knew it was my job to say things now, to give Grace some sense of the reasoning for my crazed leap lake-ward, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t even sure I could form words. The only thing I knew was that I wanted desperately for this woman to leave, and at the same time, I wanted her to stay exactly where she was.

  I had no idea when my father would be back. Most of his jobs, when he had them, were just a day or two long. But who knew, maybe a gerbil had had a stroke and he was urgently needed somewhere in Maine. In which case, Grace and I would be sitting here looking at each other for the next few hundred hours.

  Who would be the first to crack, I wondered. I imagined she must have a job, a family. Anyone who looked so tanned and put-together must have these things. She probably had a doting husband who did something with people’s endocrine systems while she pursued her love for . . . antique lighting fixtures? She
would have to give in eventually. She had a life to return to.

  Which made one of us.

  Our staring contest, however, was never given a chance to run its course. This is because just when I was getting the upper hand, I heard the screen door rattle in its frame. Then I heard my father’s unmistakable too-loud voice echo through the hallway.

  ‘Tessie!’ he shouted. ‘Is that you?’

  He shuffled into the living room, slamming the door closed behind him.

  ‘Tessie,’ he boomed. ‘Are you home? Whose car is that outside? It’s parked in my spot!’

  I could almost see through his eyes as he passed his drab furniture. Did he even notice it any more? The cracked coffee table. The stained couch. The wallpaper in the hall, starting to peel. Finally, he appeared in the doorway to the kitchen where he stopped and remained still for what must have been at least ten seconds. He looked from me to Grace the Rower, both of us silent.

  ‘OK,’ he said eventually. ‘Anyone want to let me know what’s going on?’

  I glanced up at his face, which had always been young and handsome compared to the faces of other dads. He’d had me when he was just nineteen. Today, however, he looked a little tired. His wide brown eyes were red-rimmed. And his long hair, which was just starting to go grey, glittered with sand. He wore a black suit and in his right hand, he held his favourite tote bag, which read: Death: it’s a living.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked Grace. Then he turned back to me and said: ‘Tessie, what’s happening?’

  I wasn’t yet able to speak. And neither was Grace.

  I should add here that middle-aged women always seem to have the hots for my dad. They think he’s hunky in a bohemian sort of way. Before he became such a divorced sad sack, waitresses flirted with him shamelessly when we went out to dinner. Sometimes right in front of my mom, who found the whole thing confounding. ‘They don’t have to watch you floss,’ she said once. Anyway, sitting there in the kitchen, I felt like I could already see Grace sizing him up.