Hope and Other Punch Lines Page 12

  “He has lots of theories,” Abbi says.

  “I still can’t believe you’re the real Baby Hope. It’s kind of surreal to meet you finally. I have that photo framed in the house,” Sheila says, and takes a cookie and begins to slowly break it into smaller pieces on a plate. I have my first question all primed and ready to go—What was the funniest thing to happen to you on 9/11?—but now that it’s on the tip of my tongue, now that I’m watching her desecrate what looks to be a delicious treat, it feels too invasive.

  “Really? I’ve never understood why anyone would want that photo, especially someone who was actually there,” Abbi says. She’s sitting cross-legged on the chair and looks comfortable here. Like she and Sheila have known each other for years, which I guess, in a way, they have. “Wouldn’t you rather forget?”

  “I wish that were possible, but I lost my husband in the attacks. Best I can hope for is to shift my perspective. You know those tattoos that people get that say something like Be grateful? It’s kind of like that,” Sheila says.

  “For the record, if I got a tattoo it wouldn’t say Be grateful. Just so you know,” I tell Abbi, but she and Sheila ignore me. As they should.

  “I find the photograph empowering. The world literally exploded and I survived,” Sheila says, and then points at me. “He has a theory that we need to laugh through the worst things in life. I have a theory that experiencing the hard stuff is how we grow to be a better version of ourselves. That’s how we keep it from being a waste.”

  Sheila reaches out to pat Abbi’s hand. I wish I could do that. Touch Abbi casually. Like there’s nothing scary about it.

  “Where’s the picture?” Abbi asks.

  “In the master bathroom.” Sheila’s sly grin again reminds me of my mom. It’s a Do not underestimate me smile. It’s an I’m more interesting than I look smile. “The bathroom is where everyone is most themselves, right? So that’s where it goes. Where the purest essence of me can see it.”

  “I’ve never thought of it that way. That the picture could be empowering,” Abbi says.

  “Tell us about that day,” I say.

  “What do you want to know? Mitch, my husband, worked on the ninety-fourth floor of the North Tower. Everyone died. Everyone. I never got back a single body part. We had a funeral for a casket full of photographs, which in retrospect makes absolutely no sense. A picture is not the same thing as the thing. We didn’t get so much as a finger. I worked on the seventh floor of the South Tower, so I ran. That’s what you can see in the original photo, me second from the right, though in my bathroom version, I’m cropped out, which might make it less weird that I have it? I don’t know. I have my limits, I guess. In the original, though, it’s me running barefoot because I kicked off my heels. Now I don’t go anywhere except in sneakers. For work, I got these black ones that I pretend look like dress shoes,” Sheila says. I can’t help it. I look at her feet. She’s wearing fuzzy slippers, which makes me feel better until I notice that they have a solid rubber sole.

  “Did you keep in touch with anyone from the picture?” I ask.

  “Of course not,” she says.

  “He’s convinced we have, like, this secret communication channel,” Abbi says.

  “I’m surprised some morning show hasn’t staged a reunion or something,” I say.

  “Lucky for me, the media has only ever been interested in Baby Hope,” Sheila says. “The rest of us got to fly under the radar.”

  “How about at the time? Did you talk to any of them then?” I ask, unwilling to let it go so easily.

  “Nope. I ran my ass off. Screamed the whole way. I’ve never been so scared in my entire life.”

  “How about this guy in the back? The one with the University of Michigan cap?” I ask, but she cuts me off.

  “You know what you made me realize? With your theory? I’m stronger, but I laugh a lot less now,” Sheila says. “Mitch used to crack me up all the time. He was hilarious. Every time my friends set me up with someone new—all these old, bald, divorced men—I think, You’re not as funny as Mitch. Which is unkind, I know. But I was so lucky to have him.”

  Her eyes brim with tears, and yet she’s smiling. I think, This is the first time in my life I’ve seen someone simultaneously experience gratitude and pain. Whenever I’ve asked my mom about my dad, she’s always looked hurt and angry. Like my curiosity is a criticism. “He was better than everyone else, and that’s one of the reasons I try to be better too. But not laughing so much is the hardest part. Not because I’m not okay now. I am. It’s been fifteen years. Things get easier. You learn how to carry your grief. Still, everything was more fun with Mitch around.” Sheila shakes her head back and forth once, then twice, as if to dislodge a memory, but then she looks up at us, helpless.

  We watch as the balance shifts to pure grief. I think, Maybe it’s better that I don’t have memories of the person I’ve lost. Maybe it’s been unfair of me to ask my mom to give me some of hers.

  “We used to hold hands all the time. People used to tease us that we were like newlyweds. Oh, God, I miss that. You know how much I wish I could have buried even one small part of him? I would have taken a finger,” Sheila says, and rests her forehead on the table and wraps her hands around her stomach, giving herself over to the pain. “Seriously. I can’t tell you what that’s like. When you find yourself bartering with God over body parts.”

  “All right, okay, so yes, I teared up,” Noah says once we are safely back in the car. “You should know I’m a sap. I also cry at toilet-paper commercials and those videos of soldiers coming home and surprising their families.”

  “If you hadn’t felt anything watching that woman cry over her dead husband I’m pretty sure that would mean you were a sociopath.” I make no move to put the key in the ignition. My arms are too heavy, my throat too tight. My chest sends little sizzles of pain straight through to my lungs. I’m reminded of all the reasons I didn’t want to play Baby Hope with Noah.

  “Why are we doing this?” I turn to face him. His eyes are now dry. I suspect he wiped them on his sleeve, as I did mine. I wonder what he looks like without the protection of his glasses. If his big, kind eyes seem even bigger. “I mean really? Why?”

  “Which this? Me eating this whole bag of Oreos? I may not even share.”

  “Come on. This, as in ripping open old wounds. This, as in blackmailing me to do it with you.” I’m full of big questions today.

  My picture hangs above Sheila’s toilet. She chooses to remember every single damn morning when she looks in the mirror. To take the worst thing that ever happened to her and transform it into something powerful and productive. To become a better person.

  I’m not sure I am strong enough to do that.

  I look at Noah, but he looks away.

  “I won’t tell anyone you’re Baby Hope,” he says, so low I almost can’t hear him. Sheila gets up each day and laces up her black sneakers and takes a train into the city like a warrior heading into battle. And yet she’s leveled by the memory of holding her dead husband’s hands. I bet she, like me, dreams of empty boxes underground, of thick dust, of how the entire world can unravel in the span of a single minute.

  All it takes is a tiny, inexplicable tear in the fabric of the moral universe.

  I wonder if she ever looks at that Baby Hope photo and instead of remembering to be grateful, she gets angry about being left behind.

  I wonder what Noah sees when he looks at that picture.

  I wonder what tattoo he would really want to get.

  I wonder why the hell we are doing this.

  “I wouldn’t have sold you out. If you don’t want to do the rest of the interviews, I understand. I won’t tell anyone at camp either way. I was never going to,” he says. “I want you to know that.”

  My stomach hollows at Noah’s words. He won’t tell. Still, there’s no relief
, only a blast of regret. It turns out I don’t want to stop doing this. I like riding in Go! (the name for my Prius that I’m secretly trying out in my head) to previously unexplored parts of New Jersey with Noah. I like having him as my copilot. I like that he deposits only three gummy bears in my hand at a time, the exact right number that I can handle in a single bite. I like feeling part of something important in a way that’s intentional, not accidental. I like thinking that maybe there’s still a chance for me. That, like Sheila, I can find a way to digest what has seemed indigestible.

  If my mother were sitting in her therapist’s chair, she might argue that this project is healthy, an unearthing. If my mom were sitting in our kitchen, though, she’d smile a fake smile and say “Eh, let bygones be bygones.”

  “Just tell me why,” I say, softening, because I know that Noah lost so much that day almost sixteen years ago. His reasons must go well beyond this article he’s planning. I’m tempted to touch his face, where there were tears moments ago. I feel an urge to trace a line with my fingertips, cheek to jaw.

  I don’t actually do it. Though I guess that would be one kind of blaze of glory.

  “I think I deserve that much,” I say.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Please,” I say. “I want to understand.”

  “Okay, so, not sure if I already mentioned it, but my dad died on nine-eleven.”

  Noah doesn’t look at me as he talks. He stares out the windshield, at the closed garage door, at the old basketball hoop that presumably belonged to the family who lived in this house before Sheila moved in. I nod. Of course he didn’t mention it. Of course I already knew.

  “I guess I thought this would be a good way to learn more about it. What happened. What that day was like. I need to learn about the survivors. It’s not only me who’s interested. That’s why Baby Hope is so famous. Still. Even now. That’s why I think that photo is so important.”

  Noah squeezes the bridge of his nose. The gesture is cute and sad and makes me want to tap his sneaker. I like how he refers to Baby Hope as something altogether separate from me. A symbol, not a person.

  He didn’t say That’s why you are so famous.

  He takes off his glasses, cleans them again with his shirt, slowly—what I’m learning is a nervous habit. I get to see his face. Same Noah, only bigger, brighter, more vulnerable. He pops them back on. Noah restored.

  “The fact that everyone’s still standing. It gives me faith,” he says, like he’s made some secret decision.

  “But we’re not,” I say.

  “We’re not what?” he asks.

  “All still standing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Connie? The woman who is carrying me in the picture? Who saved me? She’s dead.” For some reason, saying Connie’s name gives me the jolt I need to put the key in the ignition and start the car. Driving is a great excuse to not have to look at Noah anymore. It’s becoming too much. He was born days before 9/11. Would it have been better if Noah had been five or ten years old when his father died? Or would it have been crueler for him to have been given an exact measure of what he’s lost?

  “I didn’t know,” Noah says. “I Googled her.”

  “She changed her name when she got married.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “I met her a few times, but I didn’t really know her know her. I was really upset when she died, though.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me at the start?”

  I keep staring out the windshield. If I glance over, I don’t know what I’ll see on his face now. Pity? Resentment? Grief?

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” I say, a nonanswer, I realize, but somehow it feels way more important than explaining myself. Not that I could even if I wanted to. I’m not sure why I didn’t tell Noah about Connie. I guess it felt like none of his business.

  “It was a long time ago. I never really knew my father, so.”

  “That’s really it? You want to learn about the survivors? And write, like, an inspirational piece? That’s not so complicated.” I remember all the questions Cat, who also lost her dad, used to obsess over. She later learned you weren’t supposed to ask, not really. She once told me she wondered: Did her dad die instantaneously? Did he burn alive? Did he feel pain? Did he jump? Did he know he was going to die? Was he scared?

  She asked the last one again and again: Was he scared?

  I wonder if being sixteen has finally answered that one for her. Of course he was scared. We all are in the end. I’m pretty sure we all are in the middle too.

  “I think I’m going to call my car Go! G-O, with an exclamation point. What do you think?” I ask, taking the dodge as soon as I see it present itself, like Noah does. We pick the easy joke over the harder answer. We are not so different, he and I.

  “Brave, building the punctuation right into the name. It’s a verb and a command all wrapped into one. I like it,” he declares, leaning back in his seat. I can feel him regaining his equilibrium, leaving whatever he was feeling behind. “Can we please keep working on the piece? I can do some interviews on my own, or on the phone, but I’ve already set up Jamal. We need to keep Go! fit.”

  “Okay. One more interview,” I say. He takes out the gummy bears and drops three into my open palm. I notice how his fingers barely brush mine.

  “I’m ninety-six percent sure this Brendan thing is not just in my head. He apologized for not showing up at the party and bagged for me today on his break so we could keep talking,” Jack says. “That must mean something, right?”

  We’re foraging in Jack’s kitchen. Since Abbi isn’t here, we’re back to mainlining Cheetos straight from the bag.

  “Don’t listen to me. I know nothing,” I say.

  “Come on. You always have an annoying take. Or at least a theory. That’s your shtick.”

  “Not today, man.”

  “Who are you and what have you done with Noah?”

  “I’ve been humbled recently by raw human emotion.” As soon as I say it, I realize I sound like Jack, all big words and euphemisms.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I speak fluent Noah.”

  “Abbi saw me cry,” I say, and pretend to root around in the bag. I’m embarrassed. Not as embarrassed as I was earlier, when I was actually crying in front of Abbi, but still. My cheeks warm. I feel the sudden need to bro out, like punch his arm or something. We should get back into the basement and play some Xbox.

  “Whaaaat?” Jack says, and laughs. He grabs the Cheetos from my hands.

  “The widow we interviewed talked about her dead husband. It hit close to home.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “You know the guy Abbi is obsessed with? The lifeguard? He would have been stone-cold.”

  “First of all, you’ve totally made up that Abbi has a thing for that guy. Secondly, why do you suddenly want to be like some stone-cold dude who can pull off overalls? Just be you.” While he talks, Jack counts off his points with his fingers, which is his nerdiest habit, and usually I have no choice but to destroy him for it. Today, I let it go. “Did you tell her your whole dad theory finally? She deserves to know.”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Yup.”

  “Did you get all mucus-y when you cried? Like did you snot all over her? Because, I’m not going to lie, there’s no bouncing back from that.”

  “It was more like a low-key manly cry.”

  “You showed her that you have feelings. Good. As a rule, I think you should work on emoting more. All this bottling crap up is going to give you cancer or at the very least an irritable bowel. I need peanut butter.” Jack grabs the Skippy from the cabinet and a spoon from the drawer and starts to shovel peanut butter into his mouth. “I think it’s time to show her you’
re into her.”

  “Who said I’m into her?”

  “We’ve been best friends for almost a decade. Do we really have to do this?” he asks.

  “Fine. So what should I do?” I ask. “For real.” I’ve been reduced to asking Jack for relationship advice. Jack, who’s notorious for always falling flat on his ass.

  “Woo her.”

  “Woo her? What, with my dorky banter and my inability to leave no bad pun unsaid? That’s your plan?”

  “Sure, that could work,” he says.

  “Was that sarcasm?” I ask.

  “What do you think?” he asks.

  When I get home from my afternoon with Noah, I’m surprised to find Mel, Cat’s mom, sitting in the breakfast nook drinking coffee with my mother. Fancy-looking chocolate truffles and an open bag of Stumptown make clear that my mom must have looted my dad’s house.

  “Hi!” I say, like I’m only thrilled to see Mel, not like she brings with her an avalanche of discomfort and mixed feelings. It’s weird even by Oakdale standards that she’s my second 9/11 widow of the day. Three if you count Noah by proxy for his mother. I don’t remember the last time I was in the same room as Cat’s mom, mostly because I didn’t realize there would ever be a last time at her house. I miss the Gibson-Hendersons. I miss Cat’s little brother, Parker, who was born obsessed with his big sister and always begged us to let him play too. We did, but Cat came up with wicked ways to torture him—made him walk the plank when we were pirates, forced him to paint our toenails and massage our feet when we played boss. I even miss Stewart, Mel’s husband, who walks around with noise-canceling headphones and has probably said a collective total of fifty words to me in all the years I’ve known him.

  I want some of Mel’s famous challah french toast. I want to scratch their dog, Rusty, right behind his left ear. I want to help Parker with his word search homework. I want to rewind Cat to who she was before so I can go back to being such a natural part of their household that I can eat their cereal straight out of the box and if I’m still there at six o’clock, an extra dinner plate is automatically set at the table.