Hope and Other Punch Lines Read online

  I spend a lot of the ninety minutes thinking about the space between us. A foot and a half, maybe more. I feel a tingling nervousness, and still I make no effort to move closer.

  Neither does he.

  I replay what happened. Him telling me I look beautiful. How our entire afternoon felt like a date, the air heavy with something unnamed. I have no idea what is happening on the screen, although I have surmised that the entire thing is about two guys named Harold and Kumar who are trying hard to get to a White Castle and for some reason Neil Patrick Harris, playing a douchey version of Neil Patrick Harris, keeps getting in their way. I have never been to White Castle, so I’m having a little trouble relating. Also, isn’t NPH like a dad now? How old is this movie?

  On top of all that is one more question I can’t get out of my head: Why isn’t Noah leaning over and kissing me? I spent the drive over imagining how it would feel. His mouth on my mouth, or my mouth on his, how I hoped nature would take over and I’d know which way to cock my head, as Cat promised long ago. How it could be one of those moments that stick, like that eye contact at the Burgerler. Because first kisses are supposed to be like that: indelible.

  My actual expectations are low. By definition, a first is a first. I aim for slight awkwardness and figuring out the mechanics and hopefully some nervous laughter. Still, sometimes there can be magic in the imperfect.

  I consider turning to Noah, moving in close. Instead, I freeze.

  Maybe I’ve misinterpreted everything.

  Maybe he has no interest in kissing me. Maybe his comment was a friendly “beautiful,” a throwaway, not a cosmic change in our friendship.

  Or maybe it was a manipulation, a way to keep me going on our project.

  Or maybe it turns out Noah doesn’t make me that brave after all.

  “So you and Abbi sat there and watched all of Harold and Kumar? Are you shitting me right now?” Jack asks, and I immediately regret having told him anything. We are at my house, and Jack sits perched on the kitchen counter while I raid the cabinets for something to eat. My mom usually hides the good stuff behind Phil’s shredded wheat. My back is to him, but I can hear Jack cracking up. “You got all the way to the end, when they finally get their White Castle, and you just sat there watching John Cho and Kal Penn chow down? That is so sad, man.”

  “Leave me alone,” I say. I grab some sour cream and onion potato chips. I think about Abbi on my couch. Her brown eyes. Her legs crossed, her toenails painted with glitter. How badly I wanted to touch her thigh. Kiss her. Tuck one of her curls behind her ear, which is a move I’ve always wanted to try and probably never will. Because I’m a coward. And an idiot.

  “You should invite her over tomorrow to watch A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas and then Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantánamo Bay. Everyone loves bad stoner comedies from a decade ago. They’re super romantic.”

  “It’s not funny,” I say, my frustration turning straight to anger. I want to punch the wall. I want to rewind time and grow a pair. I want to become someone else entirely.

  “You have no game, my friend,” Jack says, and this time he laughs so hard he falls off the counter. I don’t help him up.

  Mom: What’s wrong?

  Me: Nothing. Jack’s here

  Mom: What happened?

  Me: Nothing!

  Mom: Something happened. I have that mom ESP thing. I can tell

  Me: Relax

  Mom: I am your mother and it was just you and me for more than a decade in that hovel so I know you better than you know yourself. Also don’t tell me to relax. That only makes me worry more. I’m going to call you now

  Me: I’m fine. Crappy day. Please don’t call

  Mom: When did your mother calling you become the worst thing in the world?

  Me: Don’t feel like talking about it

  Mom: While I already have you in a bad mood, I might as well tell you that Phil wants to take you golfing on Friday

  Me: Nope

  Mom: Come on. He wants to do some male bonding stuff

  Me: I have camp

  Mom: After camp

  Me: Plans after camp

  Mom: With Jack? That doesn’t count

  Me: With Abbi

  Mom: Baby Hope Abbi?

  Me: Her name is just Abbi

  Mom: I didn’t know you were hanging out with her

  Me: So?

  Mom: It’s interesting. That’s all. She’s like the face of 9/11

  Me: No one is the face of 9/11. It was a terrorist attack, not a Cover Girl commercial

  Mom: Don’t be glib

  Me: She’s my friend

  Mom: You don’t have to be friends with everyone

  Me: The other day you were saying I needed to branch out

  Mom: Please…be careful with her

  Me: Be careful of what? Tell me. What are you so afraid of?

  Mom: Nothing. I am not afraid of anything

  Me: Mom!

  Mom: Never mind. Got to go. Ziti’s in the freezer

  We were ten years old the day they identified one of Cat’s dad’s ribs. She and I were on her bedroom floor playing our umpteenth brutal game of Slapjack in a row. That was pre–friend merger with Kylie and Ramona, so it was just the two of us back then. It was early December, and we had lucked out with a snow day. The cancellation had turned out to be an overreaction. We’d only gotten a dusting, so instead of spending the afternoon building snowmen, like we had originally planned, Cat and I were inside in cozy matching pajamas, playing cards and goofing around at her house. We were good at entertaining ourselves and thrilled not to be at school learning about how a bill becomes a law.

  When the doorbell rang, we assumed it was the UPS guy, Larry, who we liked despite the fact that he had a creepy mustache and a van and looked very much the type to offer little kids candy. Larry often delivered big boxes full of grown-up stuff to Cat’s house—boring things like toilet paper or napkins—but Mel always allowed us to cut open the boxes and dance on the bubble wrap. That day, though, when we ran downstairs and threw open the front door, the two guys facing us were mustache-less and dressed in blue.

  Afterward, while Cat’s mom sat shell-shocked on the couch, rocking back and forth, the way she used to when Parker was a baby on her lap, the police officers let themselves out the front door, and the older one, the only one who talked, told Cat and me to “be extra nice to our mama tonight.” He sounded Southern, though clearly the police should have known to send New Yorkers or at least officers from New Jersey to deliver the news.

  When Mel told us to go upstairs, before the cops had said a single word, Cat and I ran into the kitchen and listened at the door with giddy anticipation. Neither of us realized it could possibly be something serious until it was, until the words were spoken, and by then it was too late to sneak away or to unhear them. I remember standing behind Cat, my chin barely reaching her shoulder, and wanting desperately to put my hands over her ears. To absorb this news myself so she wouldn’t have to.

  The police officer said that it gave some families solace to have these found parts returned to them—those were the exact words he used, found parts. Like Cat’s dad’s rib was an object—a thing—like a good find at a garage sale.

  “People appreciate having something to bury even all these years later, because it gives them something akin to closure,” he said. Apparently, the protocol was that going forward, should more bones be recovered, Mel wouldn’t receive the courtesy of an in-person visit—there wasn’t the manpower for that—but instead would receive a telephone call. Some families got calls every couple of months. A rib, then a fibula, maybe part of a toe.

  After they left, Cat ran up to her room in tears, and I didn’t know if I should follow her or stay downstairs. Parker, who was so little at the time, curled up at Mel’s f
eet like a dog. He was scared and confused; he had thought police officers in his house would have been cause for celebration. Something fun. Like dress-up come to life.

  “Did Cat’s dad die all over again?” Parker asked, because he of course already knew that his father was not Cat’s father, that Cat’s father had died at a time he couldn’t fathom, because none of us can properly picture the time before or after our own existence. What I didn’t understand until that moment is that Parker was right: it turns out people can die twice.

  Mel looked at him and started to weep. I scooped Parker up onto my hip and went into the kitchen to get him cookies and milk and called my mom from Cat’s landline and told her what had happened. I remember realizing that this was my very first taste of adulthood. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.

  My mom came straight over. She tucked Mel into bed and put on Dinosaur for us kids, which of course we were way too old for by then, but we watched anyway, until Stewart came home from work earlier than usual and took over.

  A week later, and nine years after Cat’s dad died, the Gibson-Henderson family held another funeral. This time there was a casket, though I knew there was only a rib inside.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about how lonely that single bone must be in the ground by itself forever.

  “Okay, it’s the morning of September eleventh, which was ironically the most gorgeous day of the year—picture a blue sky, like blue, blue, blue. Not a cloud in sight. I walk to Century 21, which is this discount department store downtown. I need a tie for a job interview, not a big deal. Everything is normal. I have my camera; I always do. Then I hear that sound—loud, indescribable, metal to metal—the first plane has hit, and my instincts kick in. I whip out my lens and start running toward the crash.” Vic Dempsey’s speech has a practiced quality, revs up as he gets going, like we should ready ourselves for the punchline. The photographer who took the Baby Hope picture has clearly dined out on this story for a long time, which is both understandable and gross.

  Jack and I are standing in his small studio in Maplewood, New Jersey, and Vic is talking while looking at a series of shots laid out on a lit table. In the photos, a tall, thin woman in a business suit carries a baby in a fancy leather handbag. Her hair is wild around her head, like she’s standing in front of a wind machine. I don’t understand the picture at all—she looks simultaneously frazzled and serene, and the baby looks like it might fall out. I assume it’s trying to sell me something but I couldn’t say what.

  “There was an explosion, so you went closer, instead of getting the hell out of there. That’s insane,” I say. I’ve thought a lot about what I would have done had I been there. And no matter where I put myself—on the thirtieth floor of the South Tower, on the second floor of the North Tower, or even blocks away—all I can imagine is running. That’s how it looks in my mind: like something in a rearview mirror. Something happening behind my back.

  “Epic,” Jack says.

  “That’s how I’m wired,” Vic says, all super cool and casual. He’s probably in his late fifties, has a shaved bald head and pouchy eyes. He wears a denim shirt cuffed at the elbows and tucked into stylish, faded blue jeans. He’s handsome, Jack whispered when we first walked in, but I don’t see it. Jack tends to confuse swagger with good looks. “My instinct is to document, and I will put myself wherever I need to be to do it. I couldn’t not take pictures. The world needed to see what I was seeing.”

  “Do you happen to know anything about any of the other people in the photograph? Like the guy in the blue Michigan hat, for example?” I ask, and Jack sneeze-mumbles, “Not your dad,” low enough that Vic can’t hear.

  Jack has always thought this whole thing was a bad idea. Or a stupid one. He might be right, but it’s too late now.

  “Nah. My job is to take the pictures. That’s all. I thought it was what our country needed at the time. Hope. Of course, I didn’t know that was her name! I mean, it was all so fortuitous in its own bizarre way,” Vic says. With his nah, the disappointment settles across my ribs like a blanket.

  “Hope is actually her middle name,” Jack says.

  “Still. People liked that. A shorthand sentimentality. Simplifies things,” Vic says. “Also the picture totally followed something photographers live by: the rule of thirds.”

  “What’s that?” Jack asks.

  “It comes from painting during the Renaissance originally. The idea is that the background of the picture tells a story, and you want your viewer’s eyes to roam over the entire canvas. So the focal point should never be the middle. The image should be broken down into thirds, both horizontally and vertically, and the most important parts line up along the resulting axes. Here, look. Baby Hope proves the rule of thirds,” Vic says, and points to a framed version he has hanging on his wall.

  He traces lines to turn the picture into a grid and demonstrates how Abbi isn’t in the center but along the right axis. If you had asked me before this minute, I would have sworn she was smack-dab in the middle.

  “There’s a rule of thirds in comedy also,” I say.

  “Sometimes it’s called a comic triple,” Jack says.

  “Like an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman all walk into a bar, and then the joke is always on the last person. It wouldn’t be funny if you just had two. Doesn’t work,” I say, realizing we are derailing the conversation and also not caring.

  “We’ve tried,” Jack says.

  “Right,” Vic says, and looks at us like we are the stupidest people he’s ever met. “In art, though, it’s a storytelling tool. Look at that woman, for example.”

  He points to Sheila, who I used to think of as Business Suit Lady and who now has a name and a lovely house I can see in my mind and a dead husband whom I can’t picture but like to imagine was as awesome and funny as she claims.

  “Sheila,” I say, and Vic shrugs, like he doesn’t care. Like her name is the least important thing about her.

  “See how your eye starts at Baby Hope and then loops around? You look at Sheila and wonder: What is she thinking? Who is she? What happened to her shoes?”

  I look at the photograph again, and for the first time, I don’t look straight at the guy in the Michigan hat. I let go of my own questions and consider the work in its entirety. Each person a story woven into a larger whole, not unlike our interviews, come to think of it. This is the inverse of the missing posters. A different kind of collage.

  I look at Connie, who I will never get the privilege of meeting in person. I wish I could ask her what it was like to scoop up a baby that was not hers. Were there others she had to leave behind?

  “It’s beautiful,” Jack says. “It’s not just a photograph. It’s art. And it’s certainly not neutral.”

  I look at it again, this time through Jack’s eyes. A single, ugly moment transformed into something breathtaking. Amazing how it morphs to the viewer. He’s right: it’s not neutral.

  What does Abbi see when she looks at it? Does she only see the baby with the balloon, like I only saw the Michigan hat? Or does it feel wholly separate from her? Again, the picture, not the thing.

  “Three thousand people died that day. Three thousand. This picture is meant to provoke and to force you to remember. I’m forever surprised by how quickly the world moves on and goes about its business,” Vic says.

  Fifteen years. I think about what Raj said, how it feels like a lifetime and also last week.

  “It’s a myth, this concept of a before and an after. Every time I see a perfect blue sky, want to know what I really think?” Vic asks. “I think there are only afters and after thats.”

  “Stop fidgeting,” Noah says to me while I pose in front of the pink wall. This is, of course, the first stop of the Instagram tour of Oakdale. It’s practically famous, or as famous as a wall can be in a small town in New Jersey.

  “Sorry,” I say. I
f we were touring for social media purposes, we’d next head to the Blue Cow Cafe, where they draw clover designs in their lattes and sell chunky fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies that look way better than they taste. But we are not. We are here at the pink wall because Noah wants to take my picture. Not for Instagram or Snapchat or anyone else. He wants it for when my name pops up on his phone.

  Cute, right? So freakin’ cute.

  “I can’t see your face,” Noah says. We’ve stopped on the way to meet Jamal Eggers, who I think of as Last Guy on the Right, or sometimes, Glamour Shot. Because considering the context, running for his life, he looks amazing in the Baby Hope photo. His sleeves are rolled up, his shirt is partially opened to reveal a muscly brown chest, and he’s midstride. If we were to give him a thought bubble, it would say I got this.

  If I hadn’t brought all the shorthand emotion and sentimentality that comes along with a one-year-old trying to hold on to her red balloon in the middle of a terrorist attack, Jamal might have been the famous one instead.

  Actually, it turns out he’s famous anyway, and for way better reasons. He’s a well-known Broadway actor.

  “We need to be at that guy’s by four. We’re going to be late,” I say. I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours thinking about the fact that Noah and I have not yet kissed. Wondering how I managed to screw that one up, when everyone knows that going to watch a movie at a boy’s house is total code for hooking up.

  I’ve spent an equal amount of time trying to convince myself that I’ve dodged a bullet. I don’t need relationship drama. What I do need are friends. Real friends.

  “Okay,” Noah says. He doesn’t move, though. He stands there with his phone in his hand.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing.”

  “Do I have something in my teeth?” I feel small, suddenly, and starkly illuminated against the vast pink background. Usually there are a few other people taking pictures, so there is company among this silliness. The wall feels strangely empty.