The Distance

by Jeremy Robinson

My shin cracks into the corner of the railing’s support post, snapping my mind into crystal clear focus for a moment that drags out, stretched like a rubber band. As I’m forced and shoved downward, time slows enough for me to wonder, how did this happen?

I wanted silence. I still do. And now, wrapped in an ancient, granny-squared afghan in my parents’ living room, feet up on the cracked leather hassock, sketchbook resting beside me, I know why I told the father of my child that he didn’t need to stick around. Because there’s nothing better than autonomy. Because my tiny frame, already showing the no-bigger-than-a-raspberry child, will do just fine on its own.

My mother perches on the edge of a kitchen chair at the table, peeling squash. Quick little movements. Shards of peel fall orange around her feet, somehow missing the table, her mind several steps ahead of her present state. “How’s our little calf?” she asks, not looking back to see if Dad is listening. “Can you get me two more butternuts from the cellar? We’ll have to plant more this year, they grew so well. Maybe more potatoes, too.” She peels, lightning fast. “What did we use for fertilizer this year? Straight manure, right? I was thinking we could try crab meal next year.”

I take the seven steps it requires to reach the kitchen from the couch, and sit across from her at the table, afghan around my shoulders. “Mmm…maybe you could feed the entire town, Mom. That squash smells so weird.” I lean over to sniff it. “Dad didn’t hear you, he’s down cellar already.”

“Poe. You’ve got a little bun in the oven, honey. Everything will smell weird.” She glances over her glasses at me....

My father emerges from the cellar and sets the squash down on the table. So he did hear her. Or read her mind, which is more likely. “Make you want to throw up…like being locked in a room, forced to watch reality TV.” He looks...

“Riding a roller coaster in July,” I say, “next to a fat guy who smells of cheese dogs, spilled beer and mustard, and whose tight white T-shirt is soaked through with sweat.” “Perfect!” He ambles off to the living room, all elbows, knees and shoulders, smiling.

My mother, mentally filtering out our visual aid, continues where she left off. “Obviously we’ll need more tomatoes, maybe more cherry. Those sweet ones you like, Poe. Can just pop them in your mouth.” The endless provider of food tips her gray ponytailed head, thinking. I grab a second peeler from the drawer and start

Toward the end of dinner, the inevitable. “You really should consider just moving back here with us, Poesy,” my father half mumbles, using my lifelong nickname, his mouth full of chicken they raised and butchered themselves. “With the little squirt. It doesn’t matter how old you are. Who cares? The shit’s going to hit the fan before you know it. We’re under constant threat. Humanity is vulnerable, although we think we’re not.” He leans back in his chair, hands behind his head, arms creating huge triangle wings, convinced and casual about it.

I went to college at MassArt in Boston, and was happy to leave them a few hours behind me, up north, getting embroiled in their ‘research.’ It affected their political leanings and their relation-ships with friends. Ten years later, their superstitions and concerns for humanity’s well-being are causing them to seriously consider becoming survivalists. They bought the cow this past year. Of course, when I mention all this to friends, they say I’m lucky to have such sane parents. I can see their point. They’re not angry. They hardly ever fight.

My mother fiddles with her burgundy prayer shawl, one her sister knitted for her, adjusting it over her thin frame. Wisps of gray hair are tucked behind her ears, girlish. She leans forward and extends her hand to me. I let her squeeze my fingers. “How many people have the Hochman’s now? Poe? How many?”

Not because I can’t, but because the number numbs me. Over ten thousand cases of the disease worldwide, spread by a virus. Ten thousand, including the dead and dying. Compared to the flu, it still wasn’t the world’s number one killer virus, but it was the most deadly.

I want to get up and leave; I feel irritated, pregnant and tired. I want to go back to my quiet apartment and work on a painting, but one look outside, at the raging blizzard, reminds me why I came here tonight. My crappy apartment building, with its crumbling brick façade and old, drafty horsehair plaster walls insulated by centuries-old layers of wallpaper, will likely lose power. A heatless home in central NH, in February, gets too cold fast. My pipes will probably be frozen when I return.

My parents, of course, have a generator, with enough propane to blow up the state. And there’s always the woodstove. Many chilly childhood nights, before the generator purchase, were spent camping in the living room, woodstove raging, a line of sleeping bags on the braided rug.

I watch my mother while rinsing dishes, the fork clanking loudly as I scrape clinging potatoes into the garbage disposal. I can see her from the kitchen sink, her legs folded beneath her on the chair. We sit the same way, our light, muscular frames always bent into pretzels. She’s knitting socks, beautiful already, terra cotta orange yarn, flecks of green, her hands ever busy. She’s tiny and energetic, like me. Our hands constantly create. This is what I’ll look

A weatherman drones on, like we didn’t already know about the snow. Been snowing all day. It’ll continue heavily through the night. Storm of the year. Potential for three feet. I hear the channel change to some sitcom rerun. Seinfeld. An episode where Jerry finds out yet another new woman in his life is minutely flawed and runs the other way. Screw you, Jerry, I think. Who needs you? I don’t even watch your damn show.

My father brings more plates to the sink. Pie crust crumbs cling to his short white beard. “You’re a mess,” I say, and I brush him off, my wet hand dripping water on his blue plaid flannel shirt. The shirt matches his eyes. He taps my nose once with his fingertip, and I turn back to the soapy water. Snow is beginning to stick to the kitchen window above the sink, a ring of white.

“Calvin! It’s happening. I think it’s happening!” The plate slips from his fingers and drops to the oak floor. It shatters. Shards slide across the kitchen, under the table, under the refrigerator. He ignores them and crunches right over the pieces in his LL Bean moccasins, straight to my mother. She’s standing in front of the television, her knitting needles in one hand, half-finished orange sock in the other.

“In addition to severe snow accumulations ranging from thirty to forty inches, the area is experiencing an audible phenomenon that is slowly increasing in volume…” The reporter flicks in and out of pixilation. And then I hear it. At first I think it’s coming from the report, but no. The electricity flickers and a low grinding noise, like tires stuck on ice—a revving engine—tickles my ears. I head back into the kitchen, to the window, and peer out at the darkened driveway.