A Thousand Miles from Nowhere Read Online Free PDF Page B

spun in his head; he’d imagined the spiked leaves, the towering trunks. He hadn’t been able to respond, to think clearly, to explain what he meant.
    “You’re going to open a business, Henry?” Amy had said, and he’d known from the way she’d said the word business precisely what she meant—that he was not equipped to run a business, to run anything: a lawn mower, a vacuum, a blender. He’d tried to think of something he could say that he planned to do with the building—open a bookstore, maybe, or perhaps a concert hall or coffee shop.
    “You could have a restaurant there,” he’d told her instead. “I bet you could do it.”
    “If I’d wanted a restaurant, Henry,” Amy had responded, “don’t you think I’d have mentioned it by now?”
    She’d looked at him, fuming, waiting to hear what on fucking God’s green earth he might say next. God’s green earth. That was one of her favorite expressions. He’d said nothing, so Amy had zipped her luggage shut, looked at him again, and sighed. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” she’d said, her voice quiet now. “I understand something’s wrong, but I can’t tell you what it is or how to fix it. I wish I could. Believe me, I wish I could. But you’re going to have to do it on your own. You’re going to have to find someone, Henry. I’ve thought about this a lot. Before this. Before now. While I’m gone, you’re going to have to find someone. You hear me? You understand what I’m saying?”
    “Yes,” he’d said, “I understand.” And she had just left him there.
    No. First she had put her arms around him, told him she loved him, told him that he was the kindest man, the most generous and loving man, she’d ever known. She told him he’d get through this, that she knew he would, but that he needed to figure out how. “You need to,” she’d said, but he hadn’t been sure if that was a plea or a threat. Then she’d left.
    He’d stood there in the bedroom, waited, then sat down on the bed. He’d wanted to call out to her, tell her that he had lied, that he did not understand anything, that he was—his mind was—addled. Disordered.
    Then he’d heard the door close, heard Amy leaving. He understood what he was losing, what he had lost, but he couldn’t help himself.
    Find someone, she had said. He’d known exactly what she meant: Find a doctor, a therapist, a shrink. Talk to him or her. Take whatever pills were prescribed. Get better. Get himself unaddled, unclattered, de-pithed, unbent.
    Instead he had simply moved out of their house and into the store. This, too, he had decided, was necessary, was something he needed to do even though he could hear Amy’s voice in his head, even though he knew what she would say, the very words she would use.
    Crazy.
    Idiot.
    Disaster.
    Unforgivable.
    Too much.
    The end.
    He’d thought about his father’s disappearance—home and then not home, here and then gone. Now and now and now and finally then. These words took on a flavor in his mouth, a certain metallic bitterness. They acquired colors and shades, even shapes. He saw them in the late-afternoon light spilling through the grimy storefront windows and in the dust his feet kicked up off the red-tiled floor.
    So unremarkable had been his father’s departure that he had no memory of the final words that had passed between them, a final glance or touch. Here. Gone. Now. Then.
      
    With Amy still in Central America, unaware of what he’d done, he’d settled in. He slept on a mattress in the nook of the elevated customer-service counter, all of his possessions—his books and records and CDs and fountain pens and photographs, his clothes and his collection of old inlaid wooden boxes, his father’s double bass and beat-up guitars and banjo, a kora from Mali, congas from Cuba, a few of his mother’s strange, garish paintings—all of it spread out across the grocery-store shelves as though he meant to sell them. He didn’t know why