The Geography of You and Me(47)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

Over the past months, their neighbor—an elderly man who used to bring them fresh-cut flowers from his garden every spring—had been forwarding batches of mail each time they settled somewhere long enough to let him know. But when they found out the house had sold, Dad called and said he could stop. They’d be there soon to collect the rest themselves.

And now here they were.

Dad walked over to the pile, trailing his fingers across the top, and Owen could see that he was glad for the distraction, for something to focus on before the walls of the house could close in around them.

“Big moment,” he said quietly, and Owen felt a brief urge to laugh. Standing in their old house, just after a visit to his mother’s grave, he thought this seemed like the smallest moment possible.

“I guess,” he managed, and Dad nudged the pile.

“Should we go fishing?”

“Only if you think we’ll catch something.”

“I have a pretty good feeling,” he said, tossing a catalog aside as he started to go through the stack. The first envelope he pulled out was large and rectangular, and it had the UC Berkeley emblem in the corner. When Dad held it up in the square of light from the window, Owen could see the dust motes floating around it. “Looks promising,” Dad said, sliding it across the table. “Let’s see what else we’ve got.”

Before long, there were six envelopes stacked neatly between them, all of them roughly the same size and thickness. They stared at them for a few moments, and Owen blinked a few times.

“Well,” he said finally.

Dad grinned. “Well.”

For other kids his age, Owen knew this was a big deal. The arrival of a thick envelope, the unveiling of the acceptance letter, the jumping up and down, the anticipation about what the next year would bring. But though he tried to summon some kind of joy, that lightness you were supposed to feel at moments like these, his stubborn heart refused to budge.

Solemnly, he slid a finger under the flap of each envelope, and one by one he wrestled the papers out to find the same answer each time: yes, yes, yes. First Berkeley, then UCLA, then Portland and San Diego and Santa Barbara. With each one, he passed the letter over to his father, but it wasn’t until he got to the University of Washington that he realized Dad was crying, his blond head bent over the pile.

Owen paused, stiffening, waiting for him to say it: She should have been here or She would have loved this or She would have been so proud. But instead, Dad looked up with a blurry smile.

“Six for six,” he said, shaking his head. “Where the hell did you come from, anyway?”

Owen grinned, looking around the kitchen. “From right here, actually.”

“Well, as much as I miss this place,” Dad said, “I’m glad we won’t be so far apart next year.” He gestured at the pile. “Same time zone, no matter what.”

There was a hitch in Owen’s chest. “No matter what,” he said.

“And it’ll be nice to head into graduation knowing you’ve got some options.”

Owen lowered his gaze. “Dad.”

“No, I mean it,” he said, leaning forward on the table. “You know how many kids will be standing up there onstage in a total panic? And you’ve got all these choices.” He glanced at the letters and shook his head. “All six. Six.”

“I know,” Owen said. “I’m just not sure.…”

“She would have been so proud,” he said finally, inevitably, standing up and placing a large palm on Owen’s shoulder. Then he leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “And so am I.”

There was nothing for Owen to do but nod. “Thanks.”

As Dad walked out of the kitchen to begin taking stock of the rest of the house, Owen sat and listened to his footsteps on the echoing floorboards. Out the window, a cloud drifted by, snuffing out the sun, and the room went abruptly dim. On the wall, the familiar clock ticked its familiar rhythm, and when Owen took a deep breath, he almost expected the faint scent of cigarette smoke.

But of course, there was nothing.

He reached for the stack of acceptance letters, shuffling them into a neat pile. Then he set them aside and grabbed the rest of the mail. As he sorted through old Christmas and birthday cards, bills and coupons and glossy magazines, he couldn’t help wondering whether his friends—if you could even still call them that—had gotten their letters, too. Both of them lived in this neighborhood, and it was strange to think that at this very moment, they were only blocks away, with no idea that Owen was nearby.

Last year, they’d hardly talked about college, and Owen knew he was the only one with dreams of getting out of Pennsylvania. But even if they ended up staying closer to home, Casey and Josh would still likely be splitting up, too, each going their separate ways, and it struck Owen now as inevitable, this distance between them. It would have happened anyway. He just happened to leave a year early. Even if nothing had changed at all, everything would still be about to; even if he’d stayed, they’d still be getting ready to say good-bye. They’d each go off to college, losing themselves in their new lives, seeing each other only at Thanksgiving or Christmas or during the summer. And then it would all go back to normal the way it always did with lifelong friends. As if no time had passed at all.

The point wasn’t the distance. It was the homecoming.

He turned over a catalog in his hands, staring at the photograph on the front: a mother and father and their young son. The perfect family. When he looked up again, he realized he wasn’t ready to venture any farther into the house just yet. He didn’t want to think about college or graduation, his mother or his father, Seattle or Pennsylvania or anywhere in between.

Instead, he reached for his phone. He would call his friends, and they would go for pizza at their favorite place, and he’d tell them about all of it: New York and Chicago, the endless roads through Iowa and Nebraska, the snow in Lake Tahoe, the diner where he’d worked, the months in San Francisco and their new house in Seattle.

He dialed Casey’s number first, and as the phone began to ring in his hand, he sifted absently through the mail, raking over the pile. He was nearly to the bottom when he spotted it: a postcard of Paris. Without thinking, he snapped the phone shut, hanging up before anyone could answer, and then he sat there staring at it in the fading light of the kitchen: the cathedral at the very center of the city.

Even before he flipped it over to find the note, he was thinking the very same thing: that he wished more than anything that she was here, too. And just like that, his heart—that dead thing inside of him—came to life again.