Just Like Family

by Kate Hilton

  “I’m not hungry,” says Matt. “I’m going for a run.” He pushes his chair from the table and walks out. The screen door slams behind him.

  “That’s not like Matt,” says Mom. “You never fight. He’s usually so calm.”

  “He wants to get married,” I say.

  Mom beams. “Oh, how wonderful!” she says. “Don’t worry, darling, every couple fights about their wedding. Your father and I had terrible arguments about the invitation list, I remember. And the flowers. He was furious that we spent so much money on flowers. We used to laugh about it. When are you getting married? Where? Oh, Avery! I couldn’t be more pleased.” She pauses, catches her breath. “I know I shouldn’t ask, but are you pregnant? Is that why you’re getting married now?”

  “I . . .”

  “Oh, Avery, how inappropriate of me. I’m so sorry. Of course, you’ll tell me when you and Matt are ready. Just so you know that I wouldn’t disapprove.”

  “Mom,” I say. “Mom, stop. Please. I didn’t say yes.”

  “What do you mean, you didn’t say yes?”

  “I didn’t say no, either. I said I needed to think about it.”

  “What’s to think about? You love Matt, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “You don’t believe in marriage?”

  “Once was enough,” I say.

  “Ridiculous,” says my mother. “That marriage doesn’t even count. It wasn’t in a church and it didn’t last a year. And to a man twice your age. He had no business persuading you to marry him.”

  “He wasn’t twice my age,” I say. “And we’re not talking about Hugh.”

  “Aren’t we? Because for the life of me, Avery, I can’t understand why you wouldn’t want to marry Matt if it mattered to him. He’s been by your side for how many years?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Fifteen! That’s longer than most marriages. That’s as close to a guarantee of success as you are likely to get.”

  “It’s not that,” I say.

  “Than what is it? Are you waiting for something better to come along?”

  “No!”

  My mother sits down at the table, and takes my hand in hers. “Is it Peter?” she asks quietly.

  “What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with Peter. Why would you even say that?”

  My mother says nothing.

  “I know all of you think I have a thing for Peter, some ancient unrequited crush. But it’s not like that. The work we do is incredibly important and the entire reason that we are able to do it is because we’ve known each other forever and we make an amazing team. We trust each other completely.”

  My mother says nothing.

  “It’s entirely professional. Why don’t you believe that?” I say.

  “I haven’t said anything,” says my mother.

  “You don’t have to,” I say. “You have that look. I can tell what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m thinking,” says my mother, “that I miss your father, and that if he were here, he would know the right thing to say.”

  The tears start and I can’t make them stop.

  “Let it out, darling,” says my mother. “The house won’t mind. It’s seen a lot of tears.”

  I cry even harder. My mother hands me napkins, which I use to blot my eyes and blow my nose, until eventually the fit passes and I’m left with a pyramid of damp, snotty paper.

  “Better?” says my mother.

  “No,” I say.

  My mother looks at me with unmistakable pity. “There’s nothing broken that can’t be mended,” she says.

  But she’s wrong. This house is full of objects—plates and cups and toys—which have been mended. And we handle these relics with care, cracked and chipped and marred with crooked seams of glue; we know that they are weak in the broken places and will never be whole again.

  {CHAPTER 12}

  September 2001

  In our bedroom, I pretended to sleep. I’d told Hugh that I might be coming down with a cold, a ploy to stay in bed and prevent a leisurely breakfast discussion about our future family. I could hear the murmur of NPR in the kitchen, then an exclamation that made me sit up, wondering if he’d burned himself. I was getting out of bed to investigate when the bedroom door opened.

  “We have to turn on the TV, Avery,” he said. “Something’s happened. A plane flew into the World Trade Center.”

  “A plane?” I said. “What, like a Cessna?” I couldn’t believe it. I imagined some poor novice pilot, working on his licence, out trying to accumulate some flying hours on his day off. It was peculiar to me how often people’s hidden dreams involved getting off the ground—flying, skydiving, mountain climbing.

  “I don’t think so,” Hugh said. He was sitting with one leg folded under him on the bed, fiddling with the remote, and then CNN was up on the screen.

  “My God,” said Hugh.

  “Holy shit,” I said, falling back against the pillows as we both caught our first glimpse of the iconic skyscraper topped with a cloud of black smoke.

  “That’s a huge fire,” I said. “There’s a giant hole in the tower. It couldn’t have been a Cessna.”

  “Shhh,” said Hugh, turning up the volume. CNN was interviewing someone from another office with a view of the World Trade Center, who was saying that he’d seen a jet hit the building.

  “Why didn’t it land in the river if it was having mechanical problems?” I said. “I thought they were supposed to land in the river.”

  “Avery, be quiet,” said Hugh. “I’m trying to listen.”

  “Don’t speak to me like I’m a child,” I said.

  “Then don’t act like one,” said Hugh, while a dot, a bird, a dart, a plane sailed in from the right side of the screen, getting larger with each fraction of a second, and then glided into the second tower, which was shrouded, instantly, in a ball of fire.

  I cried out and Hugh moaned. He pulled me to his side. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, so sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s fine.” I let Hugh hold me while we watched the footage repeat over and over again: the impossibly blue sky, the building, the smoke, the plane, the fire. It wasn’t, though. Nothing was okay. Nothing was fine.

  “All those people,” said Hugh. “My God. I know people who work there.”

  Matt, I thought. Matt’s law firm was in the north tower. Or was it the south tower? Hadn’t he told me he was going in today for a lunch meeting? I took my cellphone into the bathroom, but there wasn’t any cell service. I went into the kitchen to try the landline, but realized that I only had a cell number for Matt.

  Hugh called me back to the bedroom. There were tears running down his face. “People are jumping, Avery,” he said. “They’re jumping from the towers to get away from the fire. They’re killing themselves.”

  The phone rang. I grabbed it. “Hello?” I said.

  “Avery?” It was my mother. “Are you all right?”

  “Mom,” I said. Not Matt. Where is Matt? “I’m at the apartment. I’m fine.”

  She was crying. “Come home, Avery,” she said. “Get the hell out of that godforsaken city and come home. I need you safe.”

  “Oh, Mom,” I said. “I’m safe. Nothing’s going to happen to me. I promise.”

  “I want you home where I can see you and touch you,” said my mother, and in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be home, away from this city and this apartment, and to be wrapped in my mother’s arms.

  “I’ll come as soon as I can,” I said. “I promise.”

  By the time I got off the phone, it was almost ten o’clock. It had already been one of the longest days of my life. “What can we do?” I asked Hugh. “What are they saying we should do? Can we help?”

  “They’re telling people to stay at home,” he said. And that’s when the first tower fell, elegantly, like a planned demolition, folding inward on itself all the way to the ground.

  The hours crawled by. W
e watched the second tower fall, watched the end of the world on live TV. Eventually we crawled out of bed to shower and dress, to make the bed as if it were an ordinary day, and to move out to the living room and turn on the radio.

  Hugh was restless. He wanted to go down into the street, speak to our neighbours, talk about what has happened. He wanted to line up for emergency provisions, bottled water, batteries. We made a list. Hugh was glad to have a purpose. I was relieved when the door closed behind him, and I could give myself over to my terror.

  I tried Matt’s cellphone over and over again, never finding a signal. I checked my email again—no word from Matt there either—and sent a note to Tara and Ethan. I paced. I lay on the floor. I crawled into bed. I crawled back out. I turned on the television, saw the eyewitness interviews from Tribeca residents, imagined Matt trapped under a pile of rubble, or under a pile of crumpled bodies. If only, I thought. If only I had kissed him on Sunday.

  There was a knock on the door. I assumed that Hugh’s hands were full, or that he had forgotten his key. It was the sort of day when people who never forget their keys might forget their keys. But it wasn’t Hugh.

  I don’t remember now if I said anything. I don’t think I did. I launched myself at him, sobbing, latched on and wouldn’t let go. It was only once I had my arms around him that I could process how he looked, which was terrible: he was covered in dust and ash, his eyes were red, and he had an abrasion on his cheek. He was dragging a filthy suitcase behind him. He was the most beautiful sight.

  “It’s okay,” he said, over and over again. “I’m okay.”

  “Thank God,” I said, wiping my face with my sleeve, trying to pull myself together. “I was so worried about you.” I reached for his hand. “Come inside,” I said.

  He stepped into the apartment. “Sit,” I said.

  “I can’t, Avery,” he said. “I’m covered in—” His voice caught. “I’m too dirty. I’ll ruin your sofa.”

  “Sit here, then,” I said, dragging him over to the kitchen table by the hand. I couldn’t seem to let go of him. “Tell me what you need.”

  “A drink,” he said.

  “Water?”

  “Yes, and something stronger, as well.”

  I filled a glass of water and handed it to him, then opened a bottle of wine while he gulped the water down. I poured two glasses of wine and sat down with him.

  “Tell me,” I said. “Tell me everything.”

  He put the glass down on the table and was quiet for a moment, looking at his folded hands.

  “I was at home,” he said. “I’d been for a run in Battery Park. It was such a gorgeous morning. I was going to a lunch at the office with my mentor, to check in on my bar prep, and I wanted to be sharp for it. I was showering when the first plane hit. I felt the building shake.” I reached over and put my hand on his. He continued. “The windows were open in the apartment, and I could smell the smoke when I came out of the bathroom. I could hear people yelling in the street, so I got dressed and went down. Everyone was running toward the towers to see what was happening, and I went with them. Broadway was full of people, all looking up. No one knew what was happening, but everyone was talking about a plane.”

  He paused. “We started to be able to see flames, not just the smoke. And then someone said, ‘What’s that?’ and we all watched the second plane hit. And then people were screaming and crying. There were things falling from the building. Paper mostly. But then someone yelled, ‘They’re jumping!’ And when I looked more closely, I could see that they were right.” There were tears running down Matt’s cheeks. “They were jumping, Avery. I watched them fall.”

  “I know,” I said. “I saw it, too.”

  “I’ve never seen anything so horrible,” he said. “It was like I was frozen up to that moment, and then suddenly all I wanted to do was to get away. I ran back to the apartment, and started packing a suitcase. I threw in all my bar materials and a couple of changes of clothes. I thought I’d bunk with my buddy in Brooklyn for a couple of days. I was heading for the subway when the first tower came down.”

  I refilled his wineglass. He kept talking. “It was the most terrifying sound. I was screaming. Everyone was screaming and running for their lives, running up Broadway. And then I was inside this cloud of dust and ash and I couldn’t see where I was going. My eyes were burning and I was coughing, and people were bumping into me and then disappearing into the cloud. And I found a wall to lean up against and I pulled my T-shirt over my face and tried to breathe through it.”

  I took Matt’s hand and pulled him up from the table and over to the couch. He sat, and I sat next to him, curling my legs under me.

  “The air seemed to get clearer after a while, and I could see around me a bit more. Someone handed me a bottle of water and I drank the whole thing down. And I suddenly knew where I needed to go, so I started walking.”

  “What about when the second tower came down?” I said.

  “I was halfway to you by then,” he said.

  “To me?” I said.

  “To you,” he said. “The world was ending and I wanted to see you. So here I am. But I can leave. I didn’t exactly think it through.”

  “You are not leaving,” I said. “You’re staying here.”

  “What about your husband?” he asked.

  I unfolded my legs and moved away slightly so that I could look straight at him.

  “You’re my friend from home,” I said. “It’s non-negotiable. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  He said, “I don’t know when I can get back to my place. It was like a disaster movie down there. God. All I was thinking about was packing my fucking bar materials, Avery. The people I was going to work with might all be dead right now, but thank God I’ve got my bar materials.”

  “You’re going to stay here for as long as you need to stay,” I told him. “We have a spare room, and everything will sort itself out. One thing at a time, okay?” He nodded. “Why don’t you start with a shower?”

  I got him organized with a towel and was beating the dust out of the sofa when Hugh burst in.

  “Avery,” he said. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. No one has words to describe what is happening. No one has anything to compare it to except the movies. We are living through one of the most important moments in history. Strangers are embracing each other in the street. They’ve closed everything south of Fourteenth Street. We’ll have friends with nowhere to go. We need to open our home. Someone will need a safe place to stay.”

  “Yes,” I said as Matt came out of the bedroom, his hair damp from the shower. “And he’s already here.”

  Matt’s apartment was in the frozen zone, and as the days passed it become clear that he wouldn’t be returning anytime soon. Meanwhile, my mother was melting down, which was unnerving to say the least. She’d been our rock for our entire lives, but now she called, weeping, several times a day. My brother, Ethan, called too. “There are trains running, right?” he said. “Take one. I’ll pay for it. I can’t take much more of this.”

  Matt was careful, almost professional, around me. I began to wonder if he’d changed his mind, if the spark between us, which had caught and flared in a moment of crisis, had been extinguished. We were in transition, Matt and I, and the citizens of New York, and the world more generally, and there was nothing to do but wait for the future to unfold.

  Hugh, alone among us, was vigorous in the days following the attacks. He was fired up with civic duty, delighted to have taken in a stray, and eager to make Matt comfortable. He lent Matt clothes and toiletries, cooked him dinners, bought him an extra copy of the newspaper each day. Hugh’s classes were cancelled, but he’d been pulled into several university committees dealing with the disaster. He’d come home in the evening with dispatches from the outside world, optimistic, defiant, and resolutely American. I would have loved him all the more for it, if I had loved him.

  Matt, after a tense couple of days, had learned that
everyone from his law firm was safe and accounted for. They had been evacuated early, from floors well below the crash. There were temporary offices being arranged, though not for soon-to-be associates without licences to practise law. The atmosphere crackled with things unsaid. The second morning after the disaster, Matt announced that he wanted to get back to work, packed a bag, and went off to find a library that was open. Four hours later, he was home.

  I was on the phone with my mother. “I’ll come soon, Mom,” I said. “It feels disloyal to leave now.”

  “Disloyal to whom?” said my mother. Even in extremis, her grammar was excellent. “Your family deserves your loyalty. Come home. If Hugh won’t come, you can bring that friend with you, the one who can’t go back to his apartment. I’m sure he’d love to get out of there.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Stop thinking,” said my mother.

  I hung up the phone, and Matt was watching me with an uncertain expression. “My mom is still freaking out,” I said.

  “Mine too,” said Matt.

  “I wasn’t expecting you for a few hours,” I said.

  “I went to the library,” he said. “And I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t concentrate.”

  “That’s normal, after what you’ve been through,” I said. “I told you I thought it was too early to try to get back into your study routine.”

  Matt continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “I must have walked to the washroom six times. I packed up my things and went outside and started walking. I walked all the way to Penn Station. I need to get out of here, Avery.”

  “Where do you want to go?” I asked.

  “Home,” he said. “I want to go home.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I totally understand. When are you leaving?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “Early.”

  My throat felt tight. “Oh,” I said. I started to cry. “I’ll miss you,” I said, embarrassed by my tears, brushing them away with my hands.

  “I bought two tickets,” he said. “I want you to come with me.”

  “You want me to come with you?”

  “Yes,” he said.