Hope and Other Punch Lines Page 13

  “Abbi! Come give me a hug! It’s been too long!” Mel’s arms are outstretched, her voice completely at odds with her face, which is streaked with mascara. She’s been crying. Haven’t we all, I think unkindly, a split second before I realize that it’s not fair for me to be angry at Mel just because I’m angry at Cat.

  Still. Hasn’t she noticed I haven’t been over for a while? Does she miss me too?

  I give Mel a quick hug. I look at my mother over Mel’s shoulder, and she widens her eyes at me.

  “Hey, sweetie. Can I ask you a question? And please, be honest. I promise Cat won’t get into any trouble. And you won’t either.” Mel wears a sad smile, pinched at the corners, like it hurts to hold it in place. “You don’t have to cover for her. I just need to know the truth. Was Cat really with you the other night?”

  “Which night?” I ask this like we still hang out all the time, like there’s any shot that we were in the basement eating popcorn. Like I even know what she’s talking about. It would be much better if my mother were the one to blow the whistle on this whole thing.

  “Well, last Thursday, and then this past weekend,” she says.

  “I was with Cat on Saturday night.” This is, of course, the truth. Or part of it, anyway.

  “You were? Here?” Mel takes a sip of coffee, waits me out. She’s known me since I was a baby. She’ll wield her silence like a weapon until I talk.

  As much as my mom complains that Mel’s über-stay-at-home-mommy-ness makes her feel bad about herself, Mel’s skills have been helpful over the years. She used to sew Cat and me matching Halloween costumes and help me with science fair projects. In elementary school, she’d film all the class plays, even the ones Cat wasn’t in, add in cool graphics, and then email them to the parents who couldn’t make it because of work.

  She claims that the community rallied behind her after Cat’s dad died and that she’s happy to pay it all forward now that she has the time and resources. I can’t lie straight to her face, which is almost as familiar as my own mother’s.

  “No,” I say.

  “Then where?”

  “This guy Moss’s house?” I say it like a question. I don’t use the word party. That word scares pretty much all parents except mine. You say “party” to Stewart, for example, and he freaks out, starts asking for names and telephone numbers and addresses. When he used to ask where we were going, Cat would say “A bunch of us are hanging out,” which we thought was an ingenious euphemism. Cat is forbidden to date until she is eighteen, an age that has always felt hilariously old. Of course, that hasn’t stopped her. Not that she sneaks out to go on actual “dates,” which connotes movie tickets and hand-holding and reservations. She sneaks out to be looked at and lusted over and then, if she feels like it, to hook up. Messy kisses and more, in cars or in boys’ basements or in the backs of movie theaters, all of which we used to talk about afterward in graphic detail. Technically I’m not breaking a single rule, she’d say to me. What I did was definitely not dating. Come to think of it, I probably learned the art of the lie by omission by spending the last decade with Cat.

  “Was there drinking?” Mel asks. I picture Cat unsteady on her feet, how she smiled at me like for a moment she might have forgotten the past year. My mom nods at me encouragingly, as if to say, It’s okay. Just tell the truth.

  “I mean, there were some people drinking. I didn’t see Cat drink, if that’s what you’re asking,” I say, attempting to get by on the technicality because I did not actually witness Cat bring bottle or cup to her lips. For a second there, I even considered playing dumb, saying something like Well, even teenagers need to stay hydrated, ha ha, but that would make me too much of a jerk. I like Mel. In eighth grade, she once used our emergency key to get the math homework I had forgotten and hand-delivered it in time for seventh period. Maybe I like her even more than I like Cat.

  “I…,” Mel says, trailing off. She looks into her coffee cup. “I’m worried about her. She hasn’t been herself lately.” I think about Cat’s face on Saturday night, when I said I’m not sure I actually know you anymore. She flinched. Despite that single flicker of fear and the drunken sheen, she looked exactly like the old Cat. Confident, undeterred, like the world bends to her and not the other way around.

  “You know Cat and I aren’t as close these days. You should try Ramona or Kylie. They’ll know if something is going on with her,” I say, because it occurs to me that I might be doing the opposite of protecting Cat by not saying she was drunk. Maybe her mom knowing more would be a good thing.

  Mel doesn’t answer, though, because my grandmother wanders into the kitchen. The left side of her long paisley nightgown is tucked into her underpants. She’s barefoot and agitated. A woman in a uniform follows closely behind—her new aide, who seems unfazed by the fact that my grandmother is flashing thigh.

  My grandma looks first at my mother, then at Mel, and then finally at me. There’s an emphatic gathering of her shoulders, an enraged arch to her eyebrows, as if she is about to let loose with an inexplicable tirade, but then a sudden blankness descends on her face. She turns around and walks away as quickly as her body will allow. The aide follows.

  “Not our best day,” my mom says.

  If I weren’t so horrified, if I hadn’t just experienced my grandmother looking right through me and seeing whom, I don’t know, I’d laugh. Because not our best day is, if not a white lie, a complete perversion of the right words, She’s having a bad day, and so perfectly encapsulates everything you need to know about my mother.

  And probably now me too.

  * * *

  —

  Mel leaves and I go upstairs to my room. As I walk by my grandmother’s closed door, I tell myself that she’s likely sleeping, that it’s not a good time for a visit. I tell myself that I don’t like to see people on my bad days either.

  My phone beeps with a text from Noah, and I flush with an embarrassing amount of joy.

  Noah: Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl go to the bathroom?

  Me: Why?

  Noah: Because their p is silent!

  Me: Groan

  Noah: I’m sorry about this afternoon

  Me: What’s there to be sorry about?

  Noah: Just everything…including that pterodactyl joke

  Me: What are you doing right now? Besides texting me

  Noah: Watching stand-up clips. You?

  Me: Lying on my bed reading the poems taped to my ceiling

  Noah: That’s cool. I know nothing about poetry

  Me: I know nothing about comedy

  Noah: Want to get a burger after camp on Thursday? My treat. It will be an I’m sorry I’m an ass burger

  Me: I don’t really like ass burgers

  Noah: Well done

  Noah: Pun intended

  Me: See you Thursday for burgers, ass on the side

  Me: Ugh, I totally take that back. For the record, I wasn’t trying for innuendo

  Me: I meant since I didn’t want “ass burgers,” I just wanted burgers

  Me: Never mind

  Me: I’m going to stop texting now

  Noah: Ha! You text exactly the way you talk

  Me: I am a champion babbler, apparently, in all forms

  Noah: I wouldn’t put it that way. I think you have a lot to say. I want to hear it

  Me: You sure are stealthy with that charm, Noah Stern

  Noah: See you tomorrow, Abbi Goldstein

  To: Vic Dempsey (VictorDempseyPhotos@smail.com)

  From: Noah Stern (NoahStern01@smail.com)

  Subject: Baby Hope photograph 2001

  Dear Mr. Dempsey,

  Thank you so much for your prompt response to my request for an interview. Unfortunately, it turns out “Baby Hope” is unable to attend as originally promised. I very much hope
you will not cancel on that account. I guarantee that our conversation will be as quick and painless as possible. Thanks in advance for your time.

  Sincerely,

  Noah Stern

  EIC of the Oakdale High Free Press

  To: Noah Stern (NoahStern01@smail.com)

  From: Vic Dempsey (VictorDempseyPhotos@smail.com)

  Subject: Re: Baby Hope photograph 2001

  No problem on the Baby Hope front. To be honest, I’m relieved. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve inadvertently ruined her life.

  Vic

  My grandma is sleeping. My mom and I eat dinner at the kitchen island, chicken lo mein and beef and broccoli straight out of the cartons, and as usual, we trade halfway through. One of the perks of my being the only child of divorced parents: we get to keep things less formal because we are only a party of two.

  “What was that about?” I ask.

  My mom is nursing a glass of red wine, and her faraway eyes are back.

  “What?” she asks. After work, my mom always changes into her exercise clothes. Today, she’s in runner’s tights and a tank top and her hair is pulled into her usual perky ponytail.

  No doubt she ran before dinner, as she does most evenings. A five-mile loop through the outskirts of Oakdale. She prefers the residential side streets to the more popular runner’s trail along the water, the one where you can see all of downtown Manhattan. We’ve come far enough from 9/11 that these views have again become a selling point for our town.

  “What did Mel say to you?” I ask.

  “Apparently Cat has been acting out. I told her it was typical adolescence. Probably also some delayed grief working its way to the surface.” My mother takes a bite, and a noodle clings to her lip. I can hear the low whistle of my grandmother snoring from behind the closed door of her room. A soothing sound, her good or bad day rendered irrelevant by sleep.

  “Am I going through a typical adolescence?” I ask, motioning for her to wipe her mouth.

  “Sweetie, there’s never been anything typical about you.” My mom says it like it’s a compliment. And maybe it is for the Zachs or the Cats of the world. Purple hair, don’t care. One of the hardest parts of being Baby Hope is that I’ve never been able to blend, even when I want to, especially when I want to. “Mel’s particularly worried about the drinking.”

  “I didn’t want to say anything, but Cat was wasted the other night.”

  “Nice job not using the word party, by the way. Don’t think I didn’t notice.” When my mom reaches over and tucks a piece of my hair behind my ear, I lean into her hand. She might drive me bananas with her relentless cheerfulness, with her reflexive optimism, but I can’t imagine living in a household where I couldn’t say the word party out loud. “Should she be worried about Cat? Is there more to this than I think?”

  “I honestly have no idea. Maybe?”

  I take a breath. Seeing Mel has made me rethink everything. I should tell my mom the truth. If I have newfound courage, this is what it should be used for. She has the right to know about what’s going on with me. We’re running out of time.

  I can tell her without using the words 9/11 syndrome. I can speak in euphemisms, like she does.

  Not a good cough.

  I can tell her in a way that doesn’t burden either one of us, that allows me to still have this summer. I can tell her slowly, an easing toward action, the most casual of baton tosses. I can suggest she take me to a summer appointment with Dr. Cohn, the pulmonologist I’ve been going to for years for my asthma, instead of waiting till the usual September check-in. She can handle that. So can I. No need for either of us to go straight to the endgame. I can make us both believe that everything will be okay.

  I feel a stab of pain in my chest.

  “Mom?”

  That’s when the cough starts again, low and tight, and I reflexively stuff it down. Make a face like I swallowed my water down the wrong pipe.

  When I catch my breath, I’ll confess to her. I will. No more lies.

  My mother’s cell phone rings. Her face brightens when she looks at the screen. Her haziness dissipates like fog under sun.

  “It’s Dad!” she says, and springs to her feet. She looks down at her clothes, then glances out the window, as if she thinks he can see her from out there.

  I’m still coughing. I grab a napkin, cup my hand around it to shield it from my mother’s view. She looks happy. No need for me to ruin her good mood.

  I’ll tell her later. This can wait one more day, surely.

  “You okay?” she asks me. I nod, give her a thumbs-up, and point to the water glass. She takes one more quick look at me, then accepts the call.

  “Hey.” She answers low and flirty, but I don’t hear the rest because she leaves the room.

  Just in time for her to miss the first bloom of blood.

  It’s getting worse.

  Raj Singh answers on the first ring, ready and eager to chat. I am in my bedroom with the door closed. I don’t want my mom to overhear this conversation. She’d want to shut the whole thing down.

  “Your email took me by surprise. It’s been years since anyone has asked me about that picture,” he says.

  In the photo, Raj is wearing a suit and has a messenger bag slung across his chest and a maroon turban on his head that has stayed straight despite the mayhem behind him. Raj’s arms are outstretched and reaching, hands clawlike, as if they are desperate to grab something solid.

  He looks young. Early twenties at most.

  “I’m sorry Abbi—Baby Hope—isn’t here with me, but she said to say hi.”

  “Tell her hi back,” Raj says good-naturedly.

  “I realize this can’t be easy to talk about,” I say to ease our way into my pad full of questions. I’m less nervous today. Raj is a disembodied voice, not a real person with a house and a possibly broken life. There’s nothing to look away from.

  “Nah, it’s been fifteen years. I can talk about it.” He speaks with a heavy New York accent. Tawk instead of talk. I try to imagine what he looks like now. I assume he has wrinkles. That he has traded in his messenger bag for a briefcase and an aluminum commuter mug. “It’s weird. It feels like a whole lifetime ago, and also like last week.”

  “Tell me about that day.”

  “My girlfriend broke up with me that morning. Out of nowhere. She was suddenly like, This is not what I want. I was heartbroken. You know what I was thinking about while I was running? If I make it out of here alive, I’m going to ask her to marry me. I’ll buy the biggest rock I can afford. I’ll get down on one knee in Central Park. So interesting where your mind takes you when you think you are going to die. I made big plans.”

  “Did you propose?”

  “What can I say? I was young and stupid. I bought the ring. Got her to Central Park. And on the trees were all those flyers. You were too young, so you don’t know. But all over the city, everywhere you looked, there were these flyers of the missing. Families who couldn’t find their loved ones—”

  “My mom made one for my dad,” I say. I don’t mention that she used a photo of him holding me as a baby when I was in the ICU, that I imagine she thought my nasal tube would garner extra sympathy, if not a second look at his face. That there’s still a pile in a box in our basement and that I keep a copy folded in my desk drawer. My mother talks so rarely about my father, you’d think I was the product of an immaculate conception or a sperm bank. I like the tangible reminder that I once had a dad.

  “Did he make it out?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. Most of them didn’t, which is what made those posters extra eerie. After a while, I think people were posting them not with hope, but almost to tell the world what they’d lost. As a testament or something,” Raj says.

  I picture all of New York City papered in missing posters, like a freaky
death collage. I wonder about that impulse to want to make other people stop and pay attention to your pain, and then wonder if that’s what my whole nailing-a-9/11-joke thing is about. If we are all like my campers, eager to pull up our pants legs to compare our scars.

  “So you proposed! That’s impressive,” I say, because I don’t want to think about those posters anymore. About how, like Sheila said, the picture isn’t the same thing as the thing but there was nothing else left for people to show.

  “She said no.”

  “Crap. I was so hoping this story was going to have a happy ending.”

  “Don’t worry. It does. She was like, ‘I know this horrible thing happened, but I’m not going to ruin the rest of my life just to make you feel better.’ Turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me, because a couple of years later I met my wife, and she’s amazing. We have identical-twin girls, and they’re beautiful, man. I’m so blessed. Everything happens for a reason.”

  “You really believe that? Everything happens for a reason?” I ask, because I can think of no good reason for those towers to fall, or for a kid to shoot up a middle school. Any conception of God I have doesn’t allow for that sort of unimaginable horror.

  “I have no idea. Maybe. Sometimes. Who knows? Maybe I got out of there to make those two perfect girls. Maybe they’ll be the ones to fix the world.”

  “Tell me what it’s like to be a symbol. Do you ever get recognized?” I ask.

  “You mean because I’m in the Baby Hope photo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Never. I’m a guy in the background. No one ever notices me. I know this isn’t what you meant about being a symbol, but you know what? That day completely changed how I move through the world. I’m now a symbol, not a person, because people are freakin’ idiots,” Raj says, and laughs one of those sharp, bitter laughs that isn’t a laugh at all but its opposite. That always makes me sad—the idea of laughter, what I sometimes think of as the only good thing in the world, or at least the best thing, co-opted into a nervous tic.