The Geography of You and Me

When he looked up, he was surprised to find that Dad was right beside him. Owen, lost in his own head, hadn’t even heard him come in, and his first instinct was to cup a hand around the postcard. But it was too late.

“Who’s Nessie?” Dad asked, looking genuinely puzzled, and Owen swallowed back a laugh.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, slipping the postcard into his pocket. “You don’t know her.”

They walked over to the checkout together, where a girl with a pierced nose and a streak of pink in her hair was beaming at them for no particular reason.

“And how are you today?” she asked while punching a few things into a computer. “You must be traveling.”

“We are,” Dad said, smiling back.

“Where are you off to?”

Owen handed her a few crumpled bills. “Out west somewhere.”

“Awesome,” she said, bobbing her head. “I’m from California. Can’t get more west than that.”

“Not in this country, anyway,” Dad agreed. “Where in California?”

“Lake Tahoe,” she said. “So it barely counts. It’s just over the Nevada border. But it’s a great place. Mountains. Trees. The lake, obviously.” She held up Owen’s postcard before sliding it into a plastic bag. “This lake here might be a lot bigger, but the color doesn’t even compare. Tahoe is so blue it looks fake.”

Dad gave Owen a sideways glance. “It sounds pretty nice.”

“It is,” she said. “You should check it out.”

“Hey, do you have any postcard stamps?” Owen asked, realizing he’d used his last one in Indiana.

“I think so,” she said, opening the register and lifting the little tray of bills. She dug around with a frown, and then the too-bright smile returned to her face. “Got ’em,” she said, holding up a little packet. “How many do you need?”

“Just one,” Owen mumbled, but Dad clapped him on the back.

“Oh, let’s not kid ourselves, son,” he said cheerfully. “I think you’re going to need more than one.”

Owen felt his cheeks burn. “I’ll take ten,” he said, unable to look up.

“Great,” said the clerk. “U.S. or international?”

“U.S.,” he said, but as soon as he did, a little flash of recognition went through him. Soon, he realized, he would need international stamps. Soon, she’d be an ocean away.

When they finished paying, they started for the car in silence. Owen was grateful for this, his mind still busy with the idea that he’d soon need a special stamp just to send Lucy a postcard. It was a small thing, he knew. In fact, there were few things smaller. But something about it felt big all the same.

If you were to draw a map of the two of them, of where they started out and where they would both end up, the lines would be shooting away from each other like magnets spun around on their poles. And it occurred to Owen that there was something deeply flawed about this, that there should be circles or angles or turns, anything that might make it possible for the two lines to meet again. Instead, they were both headed in the exact opposite directions. The map was as good as a door swinging shut. And the geography of the thing—the geography of them—was completely and hopelessly wrong.





10


During breakfast on her fourth morning in Edinburgh, just before the start of the fourth day at her new school, a postcard came spinning across the table in Lucy’s direction. She lowered her spoon, watching as it bumped up against her glass of orange juice and came to a stop, the light glinting off the photo: a cornflower-blue lake surrounded by a ring of mountains, like teeth around a yawning mouth.

“That got stuck in a catalog from yesterday’s mail,” Dad said, sitting down across the table. Mom looked up from her newspaper—the Herald Scotland, which was only a placeholder until she managed to sort out her subscription to the New York Times—and her eyes landed on the postcard.

“It seems your daughter has fallen for a traveling salesman,” she said to Dad, who was too busy with his copy of The Guardian to respond.

“He’s just a friend,” Lucy said a bit too quickly, sliding the postcard toward the edge of the table and then lifting the corner to take a quick peek, like a poker player guarding his cards.

“Well, I think it’s romantic,” Mom said. “Nobody writes each other anymore. It’s all just e-mails and faxes.”

Dad glanced up. “Nobody faxes anymore, either.”

“Another lost art,” Mom said with an exaggerated sigh, and he winked at her.

“I’ll fax you anytime.”