Here Now

The Local History project was a partner situation, and Oren was not surprised when he got Imogene Fraser. She was Mr. Serwer’s trusted ambassador, and he, the new student, was treated like a lost diplomat who barely spoke the language. They pulled topics out of a tupperware.

Imogene let him do it, and he picked the Ashokan Reservoir. The due date was October 5^th, but she told him she liked to get things done early.

“Me too, sometimes,” said Oren.

“We can go to my house,” she said.

Oren had moved six times in his sixteen years, and for this reason, most people reminded him of other people. Once, when he was a freshman living in Raleigh, North Carolina, there was a hulking but goofy lacrosse goalie who everyone called T-Bone; the next year, when he moved to Altoona, Pennsylvania, there was another lacrosse goalie who was just as smiley and broad, and though his name was Quentin, Oren had kept accidentally saying, “T-Bone!” when he passed him in the halls.

But Imogene Fraser didn’t remind him of anyone. Even the way she walked was different: slowly and with her eyes up, like her body was bringing her head somewhere important. Her skin was paper-white, almost blue, but he had never seen her blush. There were times when he thought she was completely removed from the school’s ecosystem, and then he would see her talking to a small and slithering freshman boy, or a senior girl wearing an orange Kingston Tigers football jersey like a tunic, and he would wonder if she was not its keystone species. She did not snicker or cackle, she did not slam lockers, she did not put her head on her desk. She did not, as far as Oren could tell, have a cell phone.

After school, Oren found her reading on a bench below a homemade poster that said GO TIGERS GO. The letters were red instead of orange, and the paint had dripped, so they looked like a warning written in blood.

“What are you reading?” he asked.

She slipped the book into her tote bag and sprang to her feet. “It’s about hair.”

“Like, the different styles?”

She pushed through the double doors. “Hair is the analytical lens.”

The way she walked was contagious. Striding alongside her, he felt as if he was seeing more of the world than usual.

“You know,” she said, “people with red hair have a higher pain tolerance.”

“I don’t feel like I have a higher pain tolerance.”

“You wouldn’t be able to tell, I don’t think. Also, it takes more anesthesia to put you down.”

“I’ve never had anesthesia.”

“Not even local?”

“What?”

“Like for a tooth or something?”

“Nope.”

“Well, when you do, tell them, ‘Wait, I have red hair, so give me double.’”

Oren touched his jaw. “I need double?”

“In some cases. We’re here.”

She lived in an old stone house that looked like it had been found, not built. Inside, it was quiet and still. Oren lowered his backpack to the dark wooden table in the kitchen and watched Imogene stack dry dishes in the cupboards and swipe crumbs from the counters into her palm. He had spent his whole life entering new houses with new friends and standing idly by as they slid around in their socks. It usually gave him a sheepish feeling, as if he was seeing something he shouldn’t, but with Imogene, he found himself at ease.

“I have a laptop,” he said.

“That’s useful.”

A small, gray terrier waddled lazily through the doorway, then stopped and huffed as if annoyed that there were other people in
the room.

“Hello, Sissy,” Imogene said, bringing the dog up to her face like a slice of watermelon. “Are you happy we’re home? Yes you are. Yes you are.” The dog made no squirms of protest but eyed the ground
with longing.

Imogene told Oren to stay in the kitchen while she took Sissy out to pee. To pass the time, he opened and closed the fridge, the freezer, the silverware drawers, the tea drawer, the oven, the cupboard under the sink, and something that looked like a big metal cookie jar but was full of coffee grounds, banana peels, potato skins, and broccoli stems. Everything opened easily. There was a matte smoothness to all the handles and knobs. Nothing was broken, but nothing was perfectly straight or shiny. Even in the tangled mess of the compost, Oren saw evidence of a happy family who had been living in one place for a
long time.

Imogene came back without the dog. “Let’s get cracking,” she said.

“I like your house,” he said.

She sat down across from him and nodded. “It’s the best.”

The big shock about the Ashokan Reservoir was that before it was a reservoir, it was a bunch of towns. They had old-sounding, thing-based names like Brodhead’s Bridge and Brown’s Station. Most of them were right on a creek that flowed into the Hudson. There were houses, churches, mills, mines, farms, orchards, and, in one case, a ginseng operation. Then, all at once, the land belonged to New York State, and everyone who lived in the valley was given a check and told to burn down their house, cut down their trees, dig up their dead people, and go find a new place to live. The size of the checks varied widely, and the most money seemed to go to the people who made the biggest stink. Oren didn’t know what American ginseng went for a hundred years ago, but he had a feeling they got screwed. Then the dam was built, the valley was flooded, and the water was routed by aqueduct to New York City, where suddenly everyone could take two baths a day and flush as many toilets as they wanted.

“It’s like Atlantis,” said Oren.

“Where did you live before you moved here?” asked Imogene.

“Wisconsin, Texas, Texas again, North Carolina, and then Pennsylvania.”

“I’ve been to Florida,” she said.

A frantic scraping noise came from the hallway. Soon enough, Sissy speed-waddled back into the kitchen with gray drool swinging from her bottom lip. She moved purposefully toward Oren’s crotch, which she sniffed once, then made a meandering three-point turn and plopped down at his feet. The tag of her collar clanked against the floor.

“She looks a little like a catfish, this dog,” said Oren.

Imogene hit him in the middle of his chest with the back of her hand. “They’re her whiskers.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Whiskers are unlike any other type of hair. They’re sensory. They’re like fingertips.”

“You’re really getting a lot from this hair book.”

Imogene reached up and ran her hand back and forth above Oren’s head. “Imagine if you could feel this.”

“I can feel it.”

“Like really feel it. I’m pinching your curls right now and you didn’t even know it.”

“True,” he said.

She held out a lock of her hair for him and he rubbed it between his fingers. It was dark and silky and reminded him of the little tassels at the corners of the throw pillows his mother had kept through every move. He brought the strand of hair to the side of his mouth and took a bite. Imogene snorted and hit him in the chest again. At that, Sissy stood and scrambled out of the room.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Imogene called after her, and Oren could not help but laugh, because it was as obvious as anything that she wasn’t really going anywhere.

Instead of walking home, Oren wandered the streets. He came to a main road and followed the sidewalk until it ended abruptly at the parking lot of a strip mall. There was a salon called Salon, a Chinese restaurant called Chinese Restaurant, and a pet store called Fur Dog’s Sake. Oren hurried into the pet store, feeling all of a sudden that he was riding the winds of fate.

“I’m looking for a dog toy,” he said.

“A dog toy, huh?” The old man came out from behind the counter, did a slow three-sixty, looking high and low. “Don’t have any of those.”

Oren decided that he liked Kingston. “Shucks.”

The old man pulled a smooth orange ball from a rack on the wall. “These are the hot new thing.”

“The hot new thing is balls?”

The old man flicked a little switch on the top of the ball and placed it on the floor, where it began to lurch and jerk around like something possessed.

“Chargeable battery,” he said.

When Oren got home, the driveway was empty. For his mother, Dr. Eve Hart, autumn was deer-collaring season. She was considered the country’s leading deer epidemiologist, though most of the people who knew this were deer epidemiologists themselves. She hadn’t always been so well-respected; when Oren was little, she was thought to be a rogue researcher obsessed with an isolated prion disease found in white-tailed deer in Wisconsin. Now Chronic Wasting Disease had spread to eleven states and Eve directed a national study funded by a joint wildlife and disease-control commission. Most days she didn’t get home until after dark.

Oren sat on the front steps and watched the self-rolling ball pitch itself around the lawn. He tried to learn the pattern of its movement, but after several minutes, he was still unable to predict which way it would go. The sky was a blanched purple color, and the mountains in the distance were black and indistinct.

Once, when he was eight years old and lived in Madison, Wisconsin, his mother told him that there were many reasons why he didn’t have a father, but chief among them was that she was an independent person. “And now, so are you,” she’d said. Later that year, Eve introduced him to Garrett, his biological father, at a park near their apartment. Eve and Garrett had met at graduate school. Garrett had red hair, which seemed to prove that his mother was telling the truth, and overall he was nice, but Oren could tell immediately that the man was not going to be his dad.

Before long, he saw his mother’s truck rolling down the street. He retrieved the ball, which gave a little chase, then stood in the middle of the driveway.

Eve honked and rolled down the window. “You’re in my spot,” she said.

“Too bad,” he said.

“I don’t get this joke.”

“Maybe it’s a cry for help.”

“Okay,” she said. “What is it you need help with?”

“I want my own car,” he said.

The next day, a sophomore named Linus came up to Oren in the hot food line. Oren knew he was a sophomore because he was in his pre-calculus class, which Oren was forced to retake because the guidance counselor said the schools in Pennsylvania had different standards. Linus had straight black hair and wore the kind of glasses that were just lenses, no rims. He watched Oren move up to the metal heat rack and slide out a slice of pizza.

“You know the pizza here tastes like sponges,” said Linus.

Oren nodded. “I have found that to be true in schools across the land.”

“Imogene told me to be friends with you. She’s my cousin.”

“I had no idea,” said Oren.

“Why would you? You’ve only been here like a month.”

It was Friday, and afternoon classes were canceled for an assembly on alcohol awareness. Oren was surprised to hear that this was an annual event for which some students in Kingston got a little drunk. Before it started, Linus brought him into the single-use bathroom by the gym.

Inside there were about ten people being very quiet and having a lot of fun.

“Want some?” Linus handed him a green squeeze-bottle with an orange cap.

It tasted like charcoal. “What is this?”

“Mezcal.”

The professional speaker who would be giving the alcohol talk was named Mark Fitch, but everyone called him Narc Bitch. Apparently, he gave the exact same presentation each year, and it always ended with raucous applause.

“To Narc,” yelled a senior named Drew Manning who was standing on a toilet. A girl with pink hair shushed him and slapped him on the thigh. So far, what Oren knew about Drew Manning was that he always wore a Tennessee Vols, Ole Miss, Colts, Giants, or Broncos jersey that said MANNING on the back. That day it was Colts.

Oren raised his bottle. “To Narc,” he whispered, and everyone cheered silently, clearly proud to see their small traditions catch on so well.

He was giddy and light-headed by the time he and Linus sat down in the back row next to Imogene, who had saved them seats.

“Happy Narc Bitch Day,” he said, bowing.

“Oh God,” she said. “The new boy is having fun.”

Narc Bitch was a fit, brown-haired man who wore nylon hiking pants that swished when he walked across the stage. Oren found him to be refreshingly forthright about underage drinking. He did not encourage abstinence but rather an educated understanding of how and why alcohol killed so many young people. This seemed fair to Oren, and a warm gratitude coursed through him, for here was an earnest man on an admirable mission.

The most interesting part of the presentation was when Narc showed them a study in which sample participants drank the same quantities of alcohol in familiar and unfamiliar environments. There was a significant increase in reported drunkenness in the unfamiliar environments.

“For those of you going to college soon, watch out. Your number of drinks should go way down, unless you want to embarrass yourself on the first night.”

“So you get drunk easier here,” whispered Linus.

“I don’t know,” said Imogene. “He seems pretty familiarized to me.”

After school, the three of them walked back to Imogene’s house. Within a few minutes, Linus fell asleep on the couch in the living room. Oren followed Imogene up to her room and was overtaken by Sissy on the stairs.

“Hello, dog,” he said, taking off his backpack. “I have something for you.”

Oren and Imogene sat next to each other on the edge of the bed and watched Sissy chase the self-rolling ball around the rug. Though Oren knew it was a trick of the mind, he could not help but see a wide smile on her black-and-pink dog lips. After a while, Imogene stood up and asked Oren if he’d ever had a girlfriend before.

“I have not,” he said.

She nodded once. “Neither have I. And I’ve never made out with anyone, either.”

Then, putting her hands on his shoulders for balance, she straddled him, resting her knees on either side of his hips.

“I think I summoned you last summer,” she said.

Oren took a cord of her hair in his hand and rubbed it between his fingers. “You summoned me?”

“I was like, ‘Okay, I’m ready now, you can bring me a boy.’”

In North Carolina, Oren had been part of a group that got together every Saturday night in Kelly Castle’s basement to play Dare or Dare, which was where he had his first, second, third, and fourth kiss. Kissing Imogene was different. He was surprised to find himself completely calm and therefore able to enjoy the feeling of her lips on his. She touched his cheeks and the back of his head. Then, when their mouths got dry, she put her chin on his shoulder, and they just hugged each other. Those were the best moments of all. In front of him, Sissy was still chasing the orange ball around the rug, now with a sort of exasperation, as if it had become a terrible chore.

“Whatever you were drinking tastes like a campfire,” she said.

He put his face in the crook of her neck. “I was summoned.”

“Do you believe me?”

“It’s a nice way to look at it,” he said.

For their first official date, they went to the town’s biannual Reenactment of the 1777 Burning of Kingston, which was not a reenactment at all but a small carnival on the baseball field. Imogene did not like spinny rides—“I’m a thrower-upper,” she said—but she convinced Oren to go on The Shark without her. The Shark not only went around in circles but made bobbing and slithering motions. For the whole ride, Oren assumed a gallant, upright posture and stared solemnly out into the distance. Each time around, he could hear her laughing.

“How do you not get sick?” she asked him later.

He patted his stomach. “Watched a lot of movies in the car.”

Later, they joined the crowd in front of the temporary stage where the middle school’s Drama Club put on a play. The opening scene featured a small family frantically packing leather-bound books into suitcases as the threat of the British Army loomed. They made it out in time, but then the father realized he forgot all of Kingston’s important historical documents, and he went back and saved them from the fire, which was represented by red bedsheets and a strobe light.

“Will we ever get to go back home, father?” one of the children asked.

The father wore a gray barrister’s wig and, though he was playing a bookkeeper, a sword in his belt. “Maybe one day,” he said.

“What if everything is destroyed?”

“Then we will rebuild,” he said, sweeping an arm toward downtown. Oren knew it was a corny gesture, but it gave him goosebumps nonetheless.

They kissed again in the visitor’s dugout, but Imogene had to go home for family dinner at seven. Sunday, she told him, was the only day both her parents had off; her father worked for the Ulster County Public Works Department and her mother taught at the Waldorf School across the river in Hudson.

“Is Waldorf the one where they sing everything?”

“It’s the one where the same teacher follows the class as they age,” she said. “My mom has had this group for four years.”

That some children had such continuity in their lives, as well as the fact that Imogene was getting up to leave, sent an itch of irritation to his face. He stood up from the metal bench and shook the chain-link fence with two clawed hands.

“Swing, batter batter,” he called after her, but later, walking home alone among the peaceful, mismatched houses, he wished he’d said a real goodbye.

Oren and his mother did not celebrate Thanksgiving, but the next day, when Oren woke up, Eve handed him a car key and told him to look out his window. There was a black Subaru Outback in the driveway.

“No way,” said Oren.

“This is very late birthday and very early Christmas,” she said. “If you ever do anything dangerous, I will fill the tank with soda.”

They went for a drive. Eve directed Oren to a private reserve owned by one of the organizations funding her research. They parked in a gravel pull-off and followed a trail down into a ravine. It was the season of dead leaves. Walking through them made so much noise that there was no use trying to hold a conversation.

Eventually, as Oren knew they would, they passed a family of deer. The big doe had one of Eve’s expandable GPS collars around her neck. The yearlings did not stop browsing but the doe stood still and watched him with her black marble eyes. Oren did not believe in God or magic or anything else like that, but something about the way deer looked at him made him think they had been sent by an all-knowing entity to watch over and set challenges for him as he moved around the country.

“They look healthy,” he said.

“They have it,” she said.

A mile down the trail, they stopped at a short but spirited waterfall. Eve stood and stretched and drank coffee from the lid of her thermos. Oren perched on a rock and watched the water crash down for long enough that it started to look as if it was jumping upstream.

“They’re seeing cases in Michigan,” his mother said. “Just want to let you know.

As the days shortened, time seemed to speed up; Oren kept writing the wrong month, and then the wrong year, at the top of his assignments. On weekdays, he went over to Imogene’s house or she came to his. On the weekends they picked up Linus and drove around in the Subaru, and if it was sunny enough they took a pizza down to the slushy beaches along the Rondout. Then Linus would try to convince them to go to a party at Drew Manning’s house, or to the clearing in the woods behind the old shirt factory where the seniors made bonfires and brought in kegs with wheelbarrows.

“You’re such homebodies,” Linus whined.

Most nights, Oren and Imogene snuggled in the back seat of the Subaru with the heat on. It was a used car, and at first it had smelled like cleats, but for Christmas Imogene had gotten him a pack of scented fresheners that hung from the rearview mirror. Some of the scents made sense, like Pine and Eucalyptus, but others were more abstract, like Grandma’s House or Northern Lights. He had gotten her a hardcover book called Toe to Toe: The Truth About Feet that he found at a book-and-beer store in Hudson. She read it in two days.

“Shoes have done terrible damage to our species,” she said after.

They never did much more than kiss. Mostly, they talked. One night, watching snowflakes melt on the windshield, he told her about the time he found his mother in the basement of the house in Texas clutching a bottle of whiskey and staring at a pair of mounted antlers on the wall. They’d rented the place from a professor of environmental policy on sabbatical, though to the professor, environmental policy meant hunting reserves, and sabbatical meant a year killing megafauna in South Africa. It was the only time Oren had ever seen his mother drink.

“She looked at me and said, ‘Your grandfather died today.’”

“I didn’t think of you as someone with a grandfather,” said Imogene.

“Neither did I,” he said.

In March, he was invited to the Frasers’ Sunday dinner. Her parents’ names were Tom and Laura, which he felt like he could have guessed if given the chance. Around them, Imogene became a younger, sillier version of herself. She called her mom “Mommy” and her dad “Big Tedder.” Waiting for the pasta to boil in the kitchen, Imogene kept patting their arms and smiling proudly.

“This is my Big Tedder,” she said.

Oren appreciated that Imogene’s parents did not ask him about his mother, or Chronic Wasting Disease, or all the different places he used to live. Instead, they reminded each other of upcoming appointments and tasks that needed doing. Tom had to check the garden boxes to see if the soil was unfrozen, and now that the weather was nicer, the outdoor furniture could be brought out from the garage.

After the meal, Oren stood shoulder to shoulder with Laura and put washed dishes on the drying rack. She passed him the plates and glasses quickly and let go without waiting for any sort of mutual confirmation. He did not drop a single one. Just when they finished, Sissy jingled in with the orange ball in her mouth.

Imogene grimaced. “I forgot to tell you. She broke it. She chewed something important. It doesn’t hold battery anymore.”

“She beat it,” Tom said, and everyone turned. He was nodding with approval. “She won.”

One night in April, Oren and Imogene fell asleep on the couch in Oren’s living room. Mr. Serwer had said that he would give extra credit to anyone who watched all of Ken Burns’s The Civil War over spring break, and that’s what they had been doing. Oren had started drifting off almost immediately, rousing only when Imogene raised her head and said, “I know that song.” It was a slow, inspiring fiddle melody that made Oren think the episode was over, even though it had just begun.

“I swear I know it,” she said.

Hours later, he woke again to the sound of Eve crashing down the stairs. Her thick, green laptop made loud, monotonous beeps. When she saw them on the couch she halted in the doorway.

Oren sat up. “Fawn drop?”

“Five minutes west,” she said.

Imogene, realizing all at once where she was and who was in the room, jumped to her feet. Her eyes were too puffy to open all the way. “I fell asleep,” she said.

Oren watched his mother grab her field jacket from the front closet. Even with the coordinates, finding a bedded newborn fawn in the middle of the night was a difficult task for one person. If Eve took too long, the doe might return and move the fawn elsewhere, and all the months of tracking her would have been a waste.

A cartoonish, purple city panned idly across the TV screen. He felt around for the remote. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.”

His mother opened the front door. “If you’re coming, you have to come now.”

“Is something happening?” asked Imogene.

“Get your shoes,” he said.

Eve drove quickly, towing darkness. Imogene sat up front. From the back seat, Oren told her about the vaginal implant transmitters that went off when the mothers gave birth. This way, Eve could take samples and start tracking the fawn before it was exposed to the disease.

“So we can save it?” asked Imogene.

“Not to save,” said Eve. “Just to study and follow.”

Suddenly, they turned on to a gravel road. The woods on either side were thick with vines and brambles and fallen trees, and in the dark of night it looked as if the truck was passing through a tunnel without an end. Then the road veered left and the trees broke and they were riding up a wide, cleared lane beneath the power lines.

“I never knew this was here,” said Imogene.

They parked on the crest of a hill. It was a cool, dry night. Eve passed out the flashlights and stationed them a few feet apart. They made their way down together at the same slow pace, scanning the grass with their beams. Oren was not used to seeing Imogene hunch. As they headed up the opposite ridge, he found it hard to catch his breath. At the top, they shifted over, turned around to face the truck, and started back down. They were searching a square, but it was really more of a small valley, or even a hole, between the two hills. The sky brightened and the beams of their flashlights grew fainter by the second.

He wondered if he had ever wanted anything more than he wanted to find the fawn. He knew this desire had something to do with Imogene, with a feeling that had been growing in him since they met. He wanted the search to be over. He wanted to be able to stand side by side in the silver grass, to touch her hand, to listen closely to the solitary birdsong now cutting through the air. He thought of the tune from The Civil War, the one Imogene had recognized, and how it had sounded like the end of a long journey, the beginning of something better—he wanted that.

But it wasn’t a birdsong. It was too squeaky, too panicked. It was a bleat, and as his heart drummed in his chest he knew, for the first time in his life, that he was right where he was supposed to be.

“Twins,” his mother said, kneeling.

“Oh my gosh, Oren, look,” said Imogene.

“I know,” he said.

“They look like baby ducks,” she said.

“I know,” he said.

“I love them,” she said. “I love them. I love this.”

Later, while his mother sat in the truck and logged data, it went exactly as he’d pictured it. They stood together in the grass, and he touched her hand, and the sun shivered as it rose over the hill.

Five and a half months later, while Mrs. Gutierrez was going over the calculus homework, a voice came over the intercom and summoned Oren to the main office to be dismissed early.

“I’ll send him down,” said Mrs. Gutierrez.

“I have the dentist,” said Oren.

In the empty hallway, he could hear the heavy echo of his boots. It was only October, but it was already winter in Michigan. It had snowed all night, and it was a thick, hefty sort of snow that fell less like a blanket and more like a stack of books.

He stopped by the office to check out, then took the stairs down to the gym exit and tramped toward the parking lot. His was the only car without Michigan plates. He was down to his last scented freshener, New Car Smell.

In his final weeks in Kingston, he had only seen Imogene a few times. Once he told her he was moving, it was as if something had fallen from a great height and landed grotesquely between them. It became hard to even look at her. In the end, there was nothing but the heavy burning in his stomach and the wish that the movers would come sooner. The day before he left, he drove them down to the Rondout, and they watched people back their boats into the water.

“You never even said that this isn’t what you want,” she said.

“This isn’t what I want,” he said.

When he dropped her off they had both been crying a little. She pressed a finger to his cheek, but almost in an angry way, and they did not kiss. Then she took off her seatbelt and got out and walked toward her house with her head up. Before she had even made it to the front steps, he heard the dog begin to bark.

The dentist, Dr. Keller, was a tall, spidery woman who had no problem bending over Oren’s face from a seated position. She moved around his mouth with the picker as if it wasn’t sharp, but it was very sharp. Behind her was a much older woman, her assistant, who passed her the instruments and kept up conversation. In between stabbings, he was able to give her basic information, such as the fact that he was new in town.

“You know what we northerners call people like you?” the assistant asked. “Fudgies. Because you love to buy our fudge.”

“Well, he’s not a tourist, is he,” Dr. Keller said. “He moved here. He lives here now.”

“Just trying to teach him the language,” the assistant said. “You know what we call a U-turn?”

“Wah,” he said.

“A Michigan left.”

Oren had four cavities: top right, top left, bottom right, and bottom left. The assistant rubbed numbing gel around his gums and gave him four injections with a long, thick needle that made his stomach clench. After, when he brought his hand up to his chin, he felt nothing but its alien roughness on the tips of his fingers.

“Does this hurt?” Dr. Keller asked when she began to drill.

He said no, but later, when she moved to the other side, it did, first in short bursts and then in one singeing, gnawing ache. But he didn’t say anything because it was too late, and part of him felt that he deserved it, and anyways it would be over soon.