Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  I think about all of the things I've done, Oskar. And all of the things I didn't do. The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.

  I found him in the international terminal. He was sitting at a table with his hands on his knees.

  I watched him all morning.

  He asked people what time it was, and each person pointed at the clock on the wall.

  I have been an expert at watching him. It's been my life's work.

  From my bedroom window. From behind trees. From across the kitchen table.

  I wanted to be with him.

  Or anyone.

  I don't know if I've ever loved your grandfather.

  But I've loved not being alone.

  I got very close to him.

  I wanted to shout myself into his ear.

  I touched his shoulder.

  He lowered his head.

  How could you?

  He wouldn't show me his eyes. I hate silence.

  Say something.

  He took his pen from his shirt pocket and the top napkin from the stack on the table.

  He wrote, You were happy when I was away.

  How could you think that?

  We are lying to ourselves and to each other.

  Lying about what? I don't care if we're lying.

  I am a bad person.

  I don't care. I don't care what you are.

  I can't.

  What's killing you?

  He took another napkin from the stack.

  He wrote, You're killing me.

  And then I was silent.

  He wrote, You remind me.

  I put my hands on the table and told him, You have me.

  He took another napkin and wrote, Anna was pregnant.

  I told him, I know. She told me.

  You know?

  I didn't think you knew. She said it was a secret. I'm glad you know.

  He wrote, I'm sorry I know.

  It's better to lose than never to have had.

  I lost something I never had.

  You had everything.

  When did she tell you?

  We were in bed talking.

  He pointed at, When.

  Near the end.

  What did she say?

  She said, I'm going to have a baby.

  Was she happy?

  She was overjoyed.

  Why didn't you say anything?

  Why didn't you?

  In my dream, people apologized for things that were about to happen, and lit candles by inhaling.

  I have been seeing Oskar, he wrote.

  I know.

  You know?

  Of course I know.

  He flipped back to, Why didn't you say anything?

  Why didn't you?

  The alphabet went z, y, x, w ...

  The clocks went tock-tick, tock-tick...

  He wrote, I was with him last night. That's where I was. I buried the letters.

  What letters?

  The letters I never sent.

  Buried them where?

  In the ground. That's where I was. I buried the key, too.

  What key?

  To your apartment.

  Our apartment.

  He put his hands on the table.

  Lovers pulled up each other's underwear, buttoned each other's shirts, and dressed and dressed and dressed.

  I told him, Say it.

  When I saw Anna for the last time.

  Say it.

  When we.

  Say it!

  He put his hands on his knees.

  I wanted to hit him.

  I wanted to hold him.

  I wanted to shout myself into his ear.

  I asked, So what happens now?

  I don't know.

  Do you want to go home?

  He flipped back to, I can't.

  Then you'll go away?

  He pointed at, I can't.

  Then we are out of options.

  We sat there.

  Things were happening around us, but nothing was happening between us.

  Above us, the screens said which flights were landing and which were taking off.

  Madrid departing.

  Rio arriving.

  Stockholm departing.

  Paris departing.

  Milan arriving.

  Everyone was coming or going.

  People around the world were moving from one place to another.

  No one was staying.

  I said, What if we stay?

  Stay?

  Here. What if we stay here at the airport?

  He wrote, Is that another joke?

  I shook my head no.

  How could we stay here?

  I told him, There are pay phones, so I could call Oskar and let him know I'm OK. And there are paper stores where you could buy daybooks and pens. There are places to eat. And money machines. And bathrooms. Even televisions.

  Not coming or going.

  Not something or nothing.

  Not yes or no.

  My dream went all the way back to the beginning.

  The rain rose into the clouds, and the animals descended the ramp.

  Two by two.

  Two giraffes.

  Two spiders.

  Two goats.

  Two lions.

  Two mice.

  Two monkeys.

  Two snakes.

  Two elephants.

  The rain came after the rainbow.

  As I type this, we are sitting across from each other at a table. It's not big, but it's big enough for the two of us. He has a cup of coffee and I am drinking tea.

  When the pages are in the typewriter, I can't see his face.

  In that way I am choosing you over him.

  I don't need to see him.

  I don't need to know if he is looking up at me.

  It's not even that I trust him not to leave.

  I know this won't last.

  I'd rather be me than him.

  The words are coming so easily.

  The pages are coming easily.

  At the end of my dream, Eve put the apple back on the branch. The tree went back into the ground. It became a sapling, which became a seed.

  God brought together the land and the water, the sky and the water, the water and the water, evening and morning, something and nothing.

  He said, Let there be light.

  And there was darkness.

  Oskar.

  The night before I lost everything was like any other night.

  Anna and I kept each other awake very late. We laughed. Young sisters in a bed under the roof of their childhood home. Wind on the window.

  How could anything less deserve to be destroyed?

  I thought we would be awake all night. Awake for the rest of our lives.

  The spaces between our words grew.

  It became difficult to tell when we were talking and when we were silent.

  The hairs of our arms touched.

  It was late, and we were tired.

  We assumed there would be other nights.

  Anna's breathing started to slow, but I still wanted to talk.

  She rolled onto her side.

  I said, I want to tell you something.

  She said, You can tell me tomorrow.

  I had never told her how much I loved her.

  She was my sister.

  We slept in the same bed.

  There was never a right time to say it.

  It was always unnecessary.

  The books in my father's shed were sighing.

  The sheets were rising and falling around me with Anna's breathing.

  I thought about waking her.

  But it was unnecessary.

  There would be other nights.

  And how can you say I love you to someone you love?

  I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her.

  Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar.
<
br />   It's always necessary.

  I love you,

  Grandma

  BEAUTIFUL AND TRUE

  Mom made spaghetti for dinner that night. Ron ate with us. I asked him if he was still interested in buying me a five-piece drum set with Zildjian cymbals. He said, "Yeah. I think that would be great." "How about a double bass pedal?" "I don't know what that is, but I bet we could arrange it." I asked him why he didn't have his own family. Mom said, "Oskar!" I said, "What?" Ron put down his knife and fork and said, "It's OK." He said, "I did have a family, Oskar. I had a wife and a daughter." "Did you get divorced?" He laughed and said, "No." "Then where are they?" Mom looked at her plate. Ron said, "They were in an accident." "What kind of accident?" "A car accident." "I didn't know that." "Your mom and I met in a group for people that have lost family. That's where we became friends." I didn't look at Mom, and she didn't look at me. Why hadn't she told me she was in a group?

  "How come you didn't die in the accident?" Mom said, "That's enough, Oskar." Ron said, "I wasn't in the car." "Why weren't you in the car?" Mom looked out the window. Ron ran his finger around his plate and said, "I don't know." "What's weird," I said, "is that I've never seen you cry." He said, "I cry all the time."

  My backpack was already packed, and I'd already gotten the other supplies together, like the altimeter and granola bars and the Swiss Army knife I'd dug up in Central Park, so there was nothing else to do. Mom tucked me in at 9:36.

  "Do you want me to read to you?" "No thanks." "Is there anything you want to talk about?" If she wasn't going to say anything, I wasn't going to say anything, so I shook my head no. "I could make up a story?" "No thank you." "Or look for mistakes in the Times?" "Thanks, Mom, but not really." "That was nice of Ron to tell you about his family." "I guess so." "Try to be nice to him. He's been such a good friend, and he needs help, too." "I'm tired."

  I set my alarm for 11:50 P.M., even though I knew I wouldn't sleep.

  While I lay there in bed, waiting for the time to come, I did a lot of inventing.

  I invented a biodegradable car.

  I invented a book that listed every word in every language. It wouldn't be a very useful book, but you could hold it and know that everything you could possibly say was in your hands.

  What about a googolplex telephones?

  What about safety nets everywhere?

  At 11:50 P.M., I got up extremely quietly, took my things from under the bed, and opened the door one millimeter at a time, so it wouldn't make any noise. Bart, the night doorman, was asleep at the desk, which was lucky, because it meant I didn't have to tell any more lies. The renter was waiting for me under the streetlamp. We shook hands, which was weird. At exactly 12:00, Gerald pulled up in the limousine. He opened the door for us, and I told him, "I knew you'd be on time." He patted me on the back and said, "I wouldn't be late." It was my second time in a limousine ever.

  As we drove, I imagined we were standing still and the world was coming toward us. The renter sat all the way on his side, not doing anything, and I saw the Trump Tower, which Dad thought was the ugliest building in America, and the United Nations, which Dad thought was incredibly beautiful. I rolled down the window and stuck my arm out. I curved my hand like an airplane wing. If my hand had been big enough, I could've made the limousine fly. What about enormous gloves?

  Gerald smiled at me in the rearview mirror and asked if we wanted any music. I asked him if he had any kids. He said he had two daughters. "What do they like?" "What do they like?" "Yeah." "Lemme see. Kelly, my baby, likes Barbie and puppies and bead bracelets." "I'll make her a bead bracelet." "I'm sure she'd like that." "What else?" "If it's soft and pink, she likes it." "I like soft and pink things, too." He said, "Well, all right." "And what about your other daughter?" "Janet? She likes sports. Her favorite is basketball, and I'll tell you, she can play. I don't mean for a girl, either. I mean she's good."

  "Are they both special?" He cracked up and said, "Of course their pop is gonna say they're special." "But objectively." "What's that?" "Like, factually. Truthfully." "The truth is I'm their pop."

  I stared out the window some more. We went over the part of the bridge that wasn't in any borough, and I turned around and watched the buildings get smaller. I figured out which button opened the sunroof, and I stood up with the top half of my body sticking out of the car. I took pictures of the stars with Grandpa's camera, and in my head I connected them to make words, whatever words I wanted. Whenever we were about to go under a bridge or into a tunnel, Gerald told me to get back into the car so I wouldn't be decapitated, which I know about but really, really wish I didn't. In my brain I made "shoe" and "inertia" and "invincible."

  It was 12:56 A.M. when Gerald drove up onto the grass and pulled the limousine right next to the cemetery. I put on my backpack, and the renter got the shovel, and we climbed onto the roof of the limousine so we could get over the fence.

  Gerald whispered, "You sure you want to do this?"

  Through the fence I told him, "It probably won't take more than twenty minutes. Maybe thirty." He tossed over the renter's suitcases and said, "I'll be here."

  Because it was so dark, we had to follow the beam of my flashlight.

  I pointed it at a lot of tombstones, looking for Dad's.

  Mark Crawford

  Diana Strait

  Jason Barker, Jr.

  Morris Cooper

  May Goodman

  Helen Stein

  Gregory Robertson Judd

  John Fielder

  Susan Kidd

  I kept thinking about how they were all the names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing that dead people keep.

  It was 1:22 when we found Dad's grave.

  The renter offered me the shovel.

  I said, "You go first."

  He put it in my hand.

  I pushed it into the dirt and stepped all of my weight onto it. I didn't even know how many pounds I was, because I'd been so busy trying to find Dad.

  It was extremely hard work, and I was only strong enough to remove a little bit of dirt at a time. My arms got incredibly tired, but that was OK, because since we only had one shovel, we took turns.

  The twenty minutes passed, and then another twenty minutes.

  We kept digging, but we weren't getting anywhere.

  Another twenty minutes passed.

  Then the batteries in the flashlight ran out, and we couldn't see our hands in front of us. That wasn't part of our plan, and neither were replacement batteries, even though they obviously should have been. How could I have forgotten something so simple and important?

  I called Gerald's cell phone and asked if he could go pick up some D batteries for us. He asked if everything was all right. It was so dark that it was even hard to hear. I said, "Yeah, we're OK, we just need some D batteries." He said the only store he remembered was about fifteen minutes away. I told him, "I'll pay you extra." He said, "It's not about paying me extra."

  Fortunately, because what we were doing was digging up Dad's grave, we didn't need to see our hands in front of us. We only had to feel the shovel moving the dirt.

  So we shoveled in the darkness and silence.

  I thought about everything underground, like worms, and roots, and clay, and buried treasure.

  We shoveled.

  I wondered how many things had died since the first thing was born. A trillion? A googolplex?

  We shoveled.

  I wondered what the renter was thinking about.

  After a while, my phone played "The Flight of the Bumblebee," so I looked at the caller ID. "Gerald." "Got 'em." "Can you bring them to us so we don't have to waste time going back to the limousine?" He didn't say anything for a few seconds. "I guess I could do that." I couldn't describe where we were to him, so I just kept calling his name, and he found my voice.

  It felt much better to be able to see. Gerald said, "Doesn't look like you two have gotten very far." I told him, "We're not good shovelers." He put his
driving gloves in his jacket pocket, kissed the cross that he wore around his neck, and took the shovel from me. Because he was so strong, he could move a lot of dirt quickly.

  It was 2:56 when the shovel touched the coffin. We all heard the sound and looked at each other.

  I told Gerald thanks.

  He winked at me, then started walking back to the car, and then he disappeared in the darkness. "Oh yeah," I heard him say, even though I couldn't find him with my flashlight, "Janet, the older one, she loves cereal. She'd eat it three meals a day if we let her."

  I told him, "I love cereal, too."

  He said, "All right," and his footsteps got quieter and quieter.

  I lowered myself into the hole and used my paintbrush to wipe away the dirt that was left.

  One thing that surprised me was that the coffin was wet. I guess I wasn't expecting that, because how could so much water get underground?

  Another thing that surprised me was that the coffin was cracked in a few places, probably from the weight of all that dirt. If Dad had been in there, ants and worms could have gotten in through the cracks and eaten him, or at least microscopic bacteria could have. I knew it shouldn't matter, because once you're dead, you don't feel anything. So why did it feel like it mattered?

  Another thing that surprised me was how the coffin wasn't locked or even nailed shut. The lid just rested on top of it, so that anyone who wanted to could open it up. That didn't seem right. But on the other hand, who would want to open a coffin?

  I opened the coffin.

  I was surprised again, although again I shouldn't have been. I was surprised that Dad wasn't there. In my brain I knew he wouldn't be, obviously, but I guess my heart believed something else. Or maybe I was surprised by how incredibly empty it was. I felt like I was looking into the dictionary definition of emptiness.

  I'd had the idea to dig up Dad's coffin the night after I met the renter. I was lying in bed and I had the revelation, like a simple solution to an impossible problem. The next morning I threw pebbles at the guest room window, like he wrote for me to in his note, but I'm not very accurate at throwing, so I had Walt do it. When the renter met me at the corner I told him my idea.

  He wrote, "Why would you want to do that?" I told him, "Because it's the truth, and Dad loved the truth." "What truth?" "That he's dead."

  After that, we met every afternoon and discussed the details, like we were planning a war. We talked about how we would get to the cemetery, and different ways of climbing fences, and where we would find a shovel, and all of the other necessary instruments, like a flashlight and wire cutters and juice boxes. We planned and planned, but for some reason we never talked about what we would actually do once we'd opened the coffin.