Just One Year

by Gayle Forman

Page 24

 

  “Come now,” she said.

  At the hospital, Yael had stood in the corner while three doctors—the traditional kind, with stethoscopes and guarded expressions—surrounded me in a grim little circle and explained to me that Bram had contracted a rare strain of strep that had sent his body into septic shock. His kidneys had already failed and now his liver was going, too. They were doing everything they could, putting him on dialysis and pumping him full of the most powerful antibiotics, but so far, nothing had been effective. I should brace myself for the worst.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  Neither did they, really. All they could say was, “It’s one of those one-in-a-million cases. ” Such comforting odds, except when you were the one.

  It was like finding out the world was made of gossamer and could be so easily ripped apart. To be so solely at the mercy of fate. Even with all Bram’s talk of accidents, it seemed inconceivable.

  I looked to Yael, mighty Yael, to intervene, to swoop in, to take care of Bram like she always had. But she just shrank into that corner, not saying a word.

  “Do something, goddammit!” I screamed at her. “You have to do something. ”

  But she didn’t. Couldn’t. And two days later, Bram was gone.

  “Willem. ”

  I turn around and there’s Yael. I always think she’s so frightening, but she’s actually tiny, barely reaching my shoulder.

  “You’re crying,” she says.

  I reach out and touch my face and I find it wet with tears. I’m mortified to be doing this. In front of her. I turn away. I want to run. Out of this clinic. Out of India. Forget the shoot. Forget the flight delay. Buy a new ticket. It doesn’t have to be back to Amsterdam. Anywhere that’s not here.

  I feel her hands on me, turning me back around. “Willem?” she asks. “Tell me why you’re lost. ”

  It’s shocking to hear her words, my words. That she remembered.

  But how can I answer her? How can I answer when I’ve been nothing but lost these last three years? So much more than I ever anticipated. I keep thinking of another one of the stories Bram used to tell, a horror story really, about when Yael was a girl. She was ten and Saba had taken her camping in the desert. Just the two of them. As the sun started to set, Saba said he’d be right back, and then left her alone with one of those disaster preparation checklists that he was always having her make. Yael, terrified, but capable because of those very disaster preparation checklists, made a fire, made dinner, made camp, fended. When Saba showed up the next day, she screamed at him, How could you leave me alone? And Saba had said, I wasn’t leaving you alone. I was watching the whole time. I was preparing you.

  Why didn’t she prepare me? Why didn’t she teach me about the universal law of equilibrium before I had to find it out for myself? Maybe then I wouldn’t miss everything so much.

  “I miss . . . ” I start to say, but I can’t get the words out.

  “You miss Bram,” she says.

  And yes, of course I do. I miss my father. I miss my grandfather. I miss my home. And I miss my mother. But the thing is, for almost three years, I managed not to miss any of them. And then I spent that one day with that one girl. One day. One day of watching the rise and fall of her sleep under the rolling clouds in that park and feeling so peaceful that I fell asleep myself. One day of being under her protection—I can still feel the grasp of her hand as we flew through the streets after she threw the book at the skinheads, her grip so strong that it felt like we were one person, not two. One day of being the beneficiary of her strange generosity—the barge ride, the watch, that honesty, her willingness to show fear, her willingness to show courage. It was like she gave me her whole self, and somehow as a result, I gave her more of myself than I even realized there was to give. But then she was gone. And only after I’d been filled up by her, by that day, did I understand how empty I really was.

  Yael watches me a moment longer. “Who else do you miss?” she asks, like she already knows the answer.

  “I don’t know,” I say, and for a minute she looks frustrated, like I’m keeping it from her, but that’s not it, and I don’t want to keep things from her anymore. So I clarify. “I don’t know her name. ”

  Yael looks up, surprised, and not. “Whose name?”

  “Lulu. ”

  “Isn’t that her name?”

  So I tell my mother. About finding this girl, this strange and nameless girl, whom I showed nothing but who saw everything. I tell her how since losing her, I have felt bereft. And the relief at telling my mother this is almost as profound as the relief of finding Lulu was.

  When I finish telling Yael the story about that day in Paris, I look at her. And I’m shocked all over again because she’s doing something I’ve only seen her do in the kitchen while cutting onions.

  My mother is crying.

  “Why are you crying?” I ask her, now crying again myself.

  “Because it sounds just like how I met Bram,” she says, laughing on a sob.

  Of course it does. I’ve thought about that every single day since I met Lulu. Wondered if that’s not why I’m stuck on her. Because the story is so much like Yael and Bram’s.

  “Except for one thing,” I say.

  “What’s that?” she asks, swiping at her eyes.

  The most important detail. And you’d think I would’ve known better, having heard Bram’s story so many times.

  “You give the girl your address. ”

  Thirty

  APRIL

  Mumbai

  As Mukesh expected, the shoot goes over schedule by double, so for six days I have the pleasure of becoming Lars Von Gelder. And it is. A pleasure. A surprising one. On set, in costume, with Amisha and the other actors across from me, Lars Von Gelder’s cheesy Hindi lines cease to feel cheesy. They don’t even feel like another language. They roll off my tongue and I feel like I am him, the calculating operator who says one thing and wants another.

  In between takes, I hang out in Amisha’s trailer, playing games of hearts with her and Billy. “We’re all impressed with your abilities,” Amisha tells me. “Even Faruk, though he’ll never say so. ”

  He doesn’t. Not exactly. But at the end of each day, he pats me on the back and says, “Not bad, Mr. Not Really. ” And I feel proud.

  But then it’s the last day and I know it’s over, because instead of saying “not bad,” Faruk says “good work,” and thanks me.

  And that’s it. Next week, Amisha and the principles are packing for Abu Dhabi where they will shoot the final scenes of the film. And me? Yesterday I got a text from Tasha. She and Nash and Jules are in Goa. I’m invited to go with them. But I won’t.

  I have a couple more weeks here. And I’m spending them with my mother.

  My first night back at the Bombay Royale, I get in late. Chaudhary is snoring behind the desk, so I take the stairs up to the fifth floor rather than wake him. Yael has left the door propped open, but she’s also asleep when I get in. I’m both relieved and disappointed. We haven’t really spoken since that day at the clinic. I don’t quite know what to expect between us. Have things changed? Do we speak a common language now?

  The next morning she shakes me awake.

  “Hey,” I say, blinking my eyes.

  “Hey,” she says back, almost shyly. “I wanted to know, before I leave for work, if you wanted to join me tonight for a Seder. It’s the first night of Passover. ”

  I almost think she’s joking. When I was growing up, we only celebrated the secular holidays. New Year’s. Queen’s Day. We never once had a Seder. I didn’t even know what they were until Saba started visiting and told me about all the holidays he celebrated, that Yael used to celebrate when she was a child.

  “Since when do you go to Seders?” I ask. My question is hesitant, because the mere asking of it touches on the tender spot of her childhood.


  “Two years now,” she answers. “There’s an American family that started a school near the clinic, and they wanted to have one last year and I was the only Jew they knew, so they begged me to come, because they said they’d feel funny having one without a Jew. ”

  “They’re not Jewish then?”

  “No. They’re Christians. Missionaries, even. ”

  “You’re kidding?”

  She shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “I have discovered that no one likes a Jewish holiday quite like a Christian fundamentalist. ” She laughs, and I can’t remember the last time I heard her do that. “There might be a Catholic nun there, too. ”

  “A nun? This is starting to sound like one of Uncle Daniel’s jokes. A nun and a missionary walk into a Seder. ”

  “You need three. A nun, a missionary, and an imam walk into a Seder,” Yael says.

  Imam. I think of the Muslim girls in Paris, and I’m reminded, again, of Lulu. “She was Jewish, too,” I say. “My American girl. ”

  Yael’s eyebrows go up. “Really?”

  I nod.

  Yael raises her hands into the air. “Well, maybe she’s having her own Seder tonight. ”

  The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but as soon as she says it, I get a strange feeling that it’s true. And for a second, even with those two oceans and everything else between us, Lulu doesn’t feel quite so far away.

  Thirty-one

  The Donnellys, the family hosting tonight’s Seder, live in a large sprawling white stucco house with a makeshift soccer pitch out front. When we arrive, several blond people spill out the front door, including three boys who Yael has told me she can’t tell apart. I can see why. Aside from their height, they are identical, all tousled hair and gangly limbs and knobby Adam’s apples. “One’s Declan, one’s Matthew, and the little one, I think, is Lucas,” Yael says, not so helpfully.

  The tallest one bounces a soccer ball in his hand. “Time for a quick game?” he asks.

  “Don’t get too muddy, Dec,” the blonde woman says. She smiles. “Hi, Willem. I’m Kelsey. This is Sister Karenna,” she says, gesturing to a weathered old smiling woman in a full Catholic habit.

  “Welcome, welcome,” the nun says.

  “And I’m Paul,” a mustached man in a Hawaiian shirt says, bundling me into a hug. “And you look just like your mama. ”

  Yael and I stare at each other. No one ever says that.

  “It’s in the eyes,” Paul says. He turns to Yael. “You hear about the cholera outbreak in the Dharavi slum?”

  They immediately start talking about that, so I go play some soccer with the brothers. They tell me how they’ve been discussing Passover and the Exodus all week long as part of their studies. They are homeschooled. “We even made matzo over a campfire,” the smallest one, Lucas, tells me.

  “Well, you know more than me,” I say.

  They laugh, like I’m joking.

  After a while, Kelsey calls us inside. The house reminds me of a flea market, a little of this, a little of that. A dining table on one side, a chalkboard on the other. Chore charts on the wall, alongside pictures of Jesus, Gandhi, and Ganesha. The entire house is fragrant with roasting meat.

  “It smells wonderful,” Yael says.

  Kelsey smiles. “I made roast leg of lamb stuffed with apples and walnuts. ” She turns to me. “We tried to get a brisket, but it’s impossible here. ”

  “Holy cow and all,” Paul says.

  “This is an Israeli recipe,” Kelsey continues. “At least that’s what the website said. ”

  Yael is quiet for a minute. “It’s what my mother would’ve made. ”

  Yael’s mother, Naomi, who escaped the horrors Saba had lived through only to be struck by a delivery truck on the way back from walking Yael to school. Universal law of equilibrium. Escape one horror, get hit by another.