Being Elsewhere
Parts 1 and 2
[Note: These are the beginning parts of a short story that I will be releasing over the next few days in chunks. This is the first piece of this length I’ve ever done (~7500 words) so it has plenty of flaws big and small, but I’m proud of it and excited to put it out! A million thanks to the great Brennan Childers for the editing help as well as the insightful comments and discussions. Thanks for reading!!]
Being Elsewhere
Meribeth moved to Phoenix yesterday. I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe she was sick of the cold skies and overcast, starless nights, or the corona of light coming off the not-so-distant city, barely visible between the tall, dark pines. Or maybe she was tired of pebble beaches and CD players and barking seals flopping lazily toward her, hawk couples standing on high stones or drinking coffee at a campsite in the valley while listening to morning birdsong. Maybe it was crying at the raging sea or kissing the cat who always found us in town after a long day, or the way my lips found her sweaty forehead once we had biked all the way back home that night or watching the lighthouse illuminate the infinite as we drank stolen beer in high school or maybe it all was my own wretched fault, like my bones say. I miss her badly and want to die, I miss her like the devil misses god. I sit, drowned up to my chin in a frozen lake at the very foundations of hell, waiting for an answer that will never come, but one I beg for nonetheless.
“Meribeth moved to Phoenix yesterday.”
“Yeah, I heard. I guess there really isn’t much to do in Crescent.”
“No, I guess not.”
John’s drink splashed and frothed in his plastic mug, which clacked dully against the flat round wooden table as he leaned into his booth seat. The bar was quiet despite it being late, and I could hear the old polished wooden chair I sat in groan as I shifted my weight onto its front legs, and again as I returned to its back. We were against the west wall of the building, and I could hear the salon women chirping at each other while closing up shop in the stripmall unit next door. The stage in the back corner opposite us was empty, but still had the show lights from the other night shining onto it, colored in hazy reds and blues, as if to draw further attention to the absence.
I hated that he already knew, but I didn’t feel like asking when she had told him. It was probably months ago anyway, and I was done hearing about it from other people.
“I just wish she would have told me sooner. I mean, I didn’t hear from her for days! Nearly a week of total silence, then suddenly she shows up with a suitcase in her hands? What am I supposed to do with that? I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do now?!”
I was huffing my own madness, and could tell I was working myself up. My body gesticulated wildly as I spoke, my arms widening with palms upraised to emphasize my confusion — barely dodging the two empty beer cans that I had finished in the ten minutes between John’s arrival and my own.
“Okay slow down, slow down. I mean, what did she say? Did she tell you why she was going?”
He asked so innocently that it momentarily slipped my mind that he probably already knew why she left too, and was only asking to know what story he should stick to. I defended against the intrusion.
“All she said was ‘Hey Milo, I’m leaving today. I’m moving to Phoenix,’ then shut my apartment door, got in her dad’s smoky old van, and drove off.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
That was not all, but there are things John does not get to know, especially if he was going to act all clueless. I met Meribeth in high school, right when I moved, but John was born here like her. As such there were things only John was privy to, and he guarded those secrets greedily. It was a product of his jealousy; Meribeth trusted John, but she was in love with me. Or at least I had thought she was. Still, I remember the quiet agony in his face every time she’d tell him of our latest adventure without him, and the way she brightened when she turned back to me. Now she was gone and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see those big grey-blue eyes ever again, like ice and as sharp as the owls we’d watch in her parents’ backyard. So yes John, that was all. What Meribeth said to me that day was mine and mine alone.
* * *
She came the night before. It was late, almost midnight, but I woke up to low-beams I recognized glowing warmly through the threadbare blinds of my first-floor studio apartment. By the time I was up and more or less dressed, she had parked in the small building’s gravel driveway and gave my door a single, barely perceptible knock. I smiled, rosy-cheeked and giddy like a kid on Christmas. The knocks were our little game; we had been knocking on each other’s doors in strange rhythms since we were pimple faced. She had been unreachable for nearly a week now, but my first thought was where we were going. In my sleepy haze I had forgotten my worry, and by the time I reached the door and flipped on the porch light I had only half-remembered it. I was just happy to see her, and had the vague desire to sit by the marina and listen to the boats list while we caught up. I knocked back with two soft raps and waited a beat before unlocking the latch and opening the door. She was smiling in the pale brightness of the cheap LED bulb and took off her driving glasses, putting them in her sweatshirt pocket along with her hands. She chuckled softly as she started to speak.
“Hi Milo.”
My smile grew wider, and I might as well have had a glimmer in my eye.
“Hey Meri.”
We hugged tight, and she pressed the side of her head deep into my chest. We stayed like that for a few moments before I broke it off by kissing her temple.
“Come on in, I’ll put some coffee on.”
She said, “Thanks love,” and kissed me back.
The espresso machine whirred, and she sat down on my little couch by the door before I had turned the indoor light on. She turned her body to look out the window behind her and gave off the faint impression that she was sad. She crossed her legs and leaned her arm off the backside of the loveseat, staring out into the dim street while I stared at her, light from the stove lamp lazily flowing into the living room. I brought the coffee over, and I sat down next to her.
“How was your hike? As difficult as you wanted?”
She took the coffee in her hands, and answered in between sips. “Oh my god, definitely. It wasn’t steep or anything, just long. And I was carrying so much on my back that I could hardly stand up straight. Part of me wishes I had just left the pack, and slept on the open grass every night.” She laughed a little, almost nervously.
“Well I’m glad you made it back and didn’t decide to leave your bear spray in the middle of the woods.”
“You know, it’s actually an old hiker’s trick to leave certain things on purpose, like in a trail cache.”
“Oh yeah I think I heard of the guy who started that, there was an article about how he got mauled to death.”
“Haven’t read it.”
“So it doesn’t exist.”
“Exactly!”
She took a longer sip, then leaned forward and set the coffee down. Her arm shook a little bit, and the small espresso cup made a sound like keys falling onto porcelain as it found its footing on the small dish it was paired with. She leaned back hard, and put her head on my shoulder. I set my coffee down, and reached with the arm she wasn’t leaning on to stroke her hair. She was breathing a little funny.
“You alright Meri? You seem a little shaken up or something.”
She jostled a bit, then gathered up her air and let it go in one long huff.
“I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about some things. I think this town’s starting to get to me a little bit.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ve just… lived here a long time I guess. And there isn’t really a lot around that I haven’t done. This hike was the last one even close to being nearby, and the town itself doesn’t have much.”
My hand began to tremble. “So, what, are you thinking about moving?”
Before she even answered I was running the options in my head, trying to figure out commute times to Eureka, Portland, or at worst to San Francisco and Oakland. All were long, but not impossible.
“A little bit. But it’s more than what I’m saying, I’m not sure how to articulate it.”
She sat up, breaking from my shoulder, and turned toward me. “It’s like there’s this weight on me in this place. It’s weird. I didn’t feel this way when I was a kid.”
We were in each other’s eyes now, the living room still bathed in artificial twilight from the kitchen lamp. I could see it reflecting off the top of her eyes, and on her teeth as she spoke.
“I just don’t know what to do. I’ve thought about moving to Eureka or something, but all that town is is Crescent City with an In-and-Out.”
I laughed at the surprise joke, and the tension bled out a hair. She was right, damn right, so I crossed Eureka off my list and repressed my building panic, focusing it into speech. “How about like, Portland or something? What is it that you’re not feeling?”
She dropped my eyes and faced forward. “I don’t know. I know I’m kinda bored, but I have a good life here. Cheap rent, decent pay at the park offices, it’s beautiful out here. And I have you, and my family.”
Would be even cheaper if we lived together, I wanted to say. Our leases would be up soon, and I had been planning to ask her to move in with me, or me with her, or to find some new apartment together. We’d been with each other nearly six years now after all. We could even get a cat.
“But, ugh I don’t know! I just feel weird about it these days. I look out into the bay and I hear the pelicans cawing, like they’re laughing at me. Do you remember when we went to Gold Beach Sophomore year and climbed that massive boulder near where the river lets out?”
“Yeah! Of course I do. We drew little faces into it and got sunburn from sitting up there so long.”
“I drove out there this morning, that’s why I got here so late. I climbed that same rock, and looked out into the pacific for so long I felt like stepping forward would drop me into the very center of it. I felt like there was something out there, waiting for me to stumble...”
The memories of that day, beyond the surface level, started to flood back. We had been together a year by then, and were finally required to tell our parents because we needed a ride to go to this beach we had talked about earlier that summer. We were beyond obsessed with one another, and we held hands quietly in the backseat of her dad’s van the whole drive down. Our palms were clammy by the time we arrived, but we didn’t care. Her dad parked and left us to walk the soft grey beach by ourselves, fingers still interlocked. The two hawks perched above gave us the idea, so we scrambled up the inland side of the big stone jutting out of the coast, her foot landing on my face at one point — I was a happy foothold. We sat up there, and after nearly half an hour of mutual trepidation and vague small talk about the waves, we had our first kiss.
“...I felt like the water, even as high on the stone as I was, could lunge up at any moment and crush me against the shore, then drag my body to the bottom of the sea in a heap. I don’t know.” She paused. “I’m sorry, I’ve gotten a little existential on you. Does any of that make sense?”
Awkwardness fuzzed at my head, and I felt unequipped to answer her properly.
“No it’s okay, don’t apologize. I’m sorry you’re not feeling super great right now. I’m happy to listen, of course it makes sense.”
She leaned back into the couch and found my shoulder again, sighing.
“I appreciate that, Milo.”
There was a but at the end of her statement floating in the air, but I didn’t push it. I wasn’t sure what I would say in the first place. Then she asked me,
“Do you ever feel that way?”