The Memory of Things

by Gae Polisner

“We found him, sweetheart, and he’s alive. He’s been in Roosevelt Hospital since Tuesday morning.”

  “He is?” The look on Hannah’s face overwhelms me. Fear on top of panic on top of the most joyous kind of relief known to man. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “He is. He suffered smoke inhalation and a concussion. A beam fell on him in the stairwell, near the very bottom of the stairs.”

  Dad chooses his words carefully, so I’m wondering if there’s going to be some sort of bombshell. But then he smiles and says, “I spoke to him. He sounds strong and well. He woke up this morning, and discharged himself this afternoon. He has been trying to find you, to reach you, ever since. He’s been calling the precincts like a madman.”

  Dad gives me a look here, but we both know it may not have made much of a difference. Either way, I close my eyes and breathe. I try to relax. Maybe for the first time since Tuesday.

  “Wait, so he’s alive and okay, Mr. Donohue?”

  “Yes, he is,” Dad says, smiling. “Any minute, he’ll be on his way here to get you.”

  LATE FRIDAY NIGHT, 9.14.01

  So, like that, it’s over. At least the part with me and the girl with the wings.

  Hannah.

  She’s gathering up her things to go home.

  Dad nearly cries telling her the rest of the information. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I saw him so happy to deliver some news.

  Hannah walks over to hug him and, as she does, for the first time since all of this happened, I remember the other news I have for him. The news about Uncle Matt. How he lifted his arm, moved his hand, all on his own. I forgot all about it in the chaos. I’ll tell Dad soon. He’ll be super excited to know.

  “He said to warn you,” Dad tells Hannah, “that he may look a little worse for the wear. He was seriously banged up, and his head is shaven, for the stitches, and he’s got a few other souvenirs like that. But he’s okay. That’s the important thing. And he says he can’t wait to see you.” He cuffs her head. “He was beside himself to know that you’re okay. I offered to drive you up tomorrow morning, but he said he wanted to get you now, tonight. I know some guys up there—” He turns to me now. “They live in Westchester. So I’ve called the captain, and he’s getting someone from the five-two to bring him down tonight. They should be here before midnight.”

  Before midnight.

  “Wait, Westchester?” I say, trying not to let the disappointment in my tone take away from anything. But, at the moment that sounds a million miles away.

  “Yes. We had just moved there from the city, before my mother was diagnosed,” Hannah says. “She was admired … I’m sure that’s why my school let me stay…”

  Her voice trails off, lost in some memory. I try to stay present and happy for her, to stop my mind from making the impossible calculations. I’d have to take the train. There are no subways to Westchester. Still, I’m happy for her. Seriously. Like, ridiculously happy. It’s just too fast. We don’t even have until tomorrow.

  But I’m being selfish. She needs to see her dad. Of course she does. As soon as possible.

  She needs to go home.

  “Are you sure, Mr. Donohue?” she asks.

  “Yes, believe me. It’s been an awful few days. These guys will be happy to help, to be a part of a story with a happier ending.”

  LOFTY ASPIRATIONS

  Dad closes the door and leaves us alone, but what do I do now, with the stupid little time we have left? Congratulate her? Kiss her? Make her prick her finger and rub her blood together with mine?

  If I thought it might do anything, I would.

  I sit on my bed, and she sits next to me.

  We can pretend it’s not over, and for a short time, we will. We won’t admit what both of us know. We’ll make all sorts of plans, and, for a while, maybe, we’ll do our best to keep them. Plans to do what, I don’t know. Go to a movie. Grab some pizza. All of it seems insignificant compared to what we’ve been through.

  There’s always the infamous penpals via e-mail. The dreaded We will always be friends.

  But at sixteen, without a car or my license yet, Westchester is far enough from Brooklyn it might as well be Nebraska.

  And even if we both go to school in the city, we’re on opposite ends, and I’m guessing her dance schedule is intense—plus, nearly two hours is a heck of a long commute from here to there. Doable, yeah. But probably not for long.

  Besides, I have this aching sense that what Hannah and I have is one of those things that happens in a vacuum, that can’t be sustained under normal conditions. Under the pressures of school, and life, and parents, and siblings, and distance. It’s something quiet and possessive, that will fall apart once it’s diluted.

  For example, at Jenny Lynch’s father’s funeral at the end of the following week, I’ll decide to tell Marcus about her, or at least try, and he won’t even really believe me.

  Instead, he’ll crack some lame joke about my imaginary friend, which Bangor will laugh at, too, even though he’s at his second funeral in three days. I won’t mind that he laughs, or that they both joke about her being some made-up figment of my very bored, very cooped-up imagination. An angel with wings, arisen from smoke and ash, visible to no one except me.

  “Nice story, dude,” Marcus will say. “You should be a writer.”

  “Let me guess, Donohue,” Bangor will chime in. “She came to you late at night, alone in your bed, slipped under the covers, and gave you a hand job. Until you figured out the hand was attached to you.”

  And I’ll laugh, too, not because it’s all that funny, but because I’m just so happy to be joking around. Because on a Tuesday morning less than two weeks ago, something happened so horrible it brought us to our knees. So horrible, it felt like we might never laugh again. And, for that reason alone, I won’t try much harder to convince them.

  But now, I’m still here, facing the prospect of Hannah leaving.

  “I forgot to tell you,” I say, staring as she folds my stuff and puts it on my bed. “Uncle Matt moved his arm earlier. He reached out and took a piece of cookie from my hand. So maybe he is getting better. Who knows? Maybe he’ll even be walking soon.”

  She turns to me, genuine joy on her face. “That’s awesome, Kyle. I bet you’re right. I bet he absolutely will.”

  It’s nearly eleven. My eyes keep going to the clock.

  It’s hard to trust that everything is okay.

  Even with the police escort, the cars are getting stopped, so it’s taking forever to get on and off highways and over the bridge to get to me.

  The truth is, as long as he’s okay,

  I’m not in any rush for him to get here.

  I carry my small pile of things, including the wings, into the living room, leave them on a chair, and sit on the couch next to Kyle. Out on the East River, the occasional flash from a police boat reflects off the water.

  I squint through the haze in the dark, but it’s too hard to see anything through the smoke, to find the gap in the skyline where two majestic buildings used to be.

  “I keep thinking about that first night,” I say to Hannah, “when you said you didn’t remember about the buildings. Do you remember that now?”

  It’s a half-assed question. Part of me wants to know how much she knew, and when, but mostly, I guess, it doesn’t matter.

  “Yes,” she answers softly. One word that doesn’t give too much away.

  “Well, I’m glad you were here. And I’m glad we got to hang out and everything. I wish you didn’t have to go home.”

  “Me, too, Kyle,” she says. “Though I will be glad to see my father.”

  “Of course you will,” I say. “I’m glad for that, too.”

  * * *

  I get up for a second, needing to collect my thoughts. I go off to find Dad. I want to tell him about Uncle Matt and see if Mom has made any progress getting home.

  I find him in Uncle Matt’s room, getting him ready for bed.

  He looks bey
ond tired, as if the past few days have aged him a freaking decade.

  “I should help more here,” I say, walking around to give him a hand with the sleeve of Uncle Matt’s pajama shirt. “I mean, on normal days from now on. Pick up the slack like I’ve done this week. I know how hard it is, and maybe I’ve been afraid to try, to help. But I’m good at it now, right, Uncle Matt? And he’s doing much better, so it makes it easier to help him.”

  I walk to the other side of the wheelchair. “I’ll take this side. It will be quicker with both of us moving him.”

  Dad looks up at me now, his eyes softer. “Thanks. That’d be really great, Kyle.”

  I stand at the window, let my eyes take in Lower Manhattan,

  still muted by the endless haze of smoke.

  Somewhere well north of here is the expanse of Westchester, and home.

  She’s not there, my mother,

  and I miss her.

  It’s a hard, choking kind of missing that doesn’t go away.

  I’m going to miss Kyle, too,

  a more gentle kind of missing.

  But in that direction, north, the lights shine crisp and clear.

  On my way back to the living room, I stop briefly in my room and grab my PopMart Tour T-shirt she left folded on the bed.

  I flip on the television and turn it to Comedy Central.

  Cow and Chicken is on.

  “Look what I found,” I say, smiling, when Kyle walks back into the room.

  “Fitting,” I say, sitting on the couch next to her. “It’s the episode where Cow wants to be a ballerina.” I think about taking her hand, but I don’t. I’m not sure I can handle it right now. Or at least handle the part where I have to let it go again. “She wants to be a ballerina, but she’s clumsy. So she keeps tripping and breaking things.”

  “Well, she is a cow,” Hannah says. “So those are some lofty aspirations.”

  I smile, and she turns and looks at me, a look I can’t explain except to say that it burns through me, leaving a permanent afterimage. It’s a look I will never forget. A look I don’t want to forget.

  I take a deep breath, then reach over and place my PopMart Tour T-shirt in her lap.

  “I want you to have this,” I say.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  She hugs the shirt to her chest and closes her eyes. On the screen, Cow is comically dancing away.

  I say, “Poor Cow’s mom, she’s trying to protect her from Red Guy. You can see why, too. She’s going to end up embarrassed.”

  As if to agree, Cow’s mom says to her dad, “She’s not ready, can’t you see?”

  Then Cow’s dad looks at her and says, “Sometimes never being ready is the best kind of ready to be.”

  Hannah says, “Did you hear that, Kyle?”

  I nod, and she laughs and squeezes my hand, then, better still, she moves closer and rests her head on my shoulder.

  “That’s the truth, isn’t it?” she says.

  VIII

  WHAT SUSTAINS US

  My father isn’t allowed to drive, isn’t even supposed to be discharged, so the officer drives, steering the car over the bridge and onto the highway.

  In front of us, another squad car with its red lights flashing, silently leads the way.

  My breath hitches as Brooklyn disappears in the rearview mirror.

  When he first got to Kyle’s, my father told Kyle and Mr. Donohue as much as he could manage about that morning. How the building had trembled when the first plane hit, followed by a series of smaller explosions. How things had popped and broken, shook and rumbled above him. How, by the time he got to the stairwell, there was a logjam of people inching their way down in the dark. How everyone was terrified but calm.

  His voice caught. “Everyone was helping everyone,” he said.

  And, how, near the bottom, there was another explosion that rocked everything, and the stairwell around him crumbled, and it all went black.

  “That was the last thing I remember,” he said.

  He explained how rescue workers must have carried him out, as well as the woman who was with him.

  He turned to me then, tears in his eyes, and told me how the first thing he did when he woke up in the ICU was ask for me, how panicked he was to call everywhere and not be able to find me.

  But he said, too, that he knew I was smart, and had faith I was safe, that someone kind had taken me in.

  And that he knew I’d been upset, and had prayed over and over again that I’d simply gone to stay with a friend.

  It broke my heart when he said that, admitted he was terrified when it seemed as if I wasn’t even looking for him.

  In the car, at first, he asks me a lot of questions, ones I can’t answer, or ones I’m not ready to try. Not here, now, with the police officer in the car. After a while, he seems to get it, and we sit in silence. It’s enough to be going home together.

  Once in a while, I catch him glancing at my reflection in the window. A few times, he turns around and smiles.

  Are you okay? his eyes ask. I know that’s what he wants to know.

  And I guess I am. What are my choices? What else am I going to be other than okay?

  I turn and stare out the window, my reflection bouncing back at me in the dark. Lit staccato by the passing streetlights.

  Each time I reappear, I see you, Mom.

  My face is yours. My eyes are yours.

  The hair that will grow back is yours.

  It catches me off guard.

  And, it sustains me.

  “You have my talent, too,” I can still hear you say.

  With every breath, new memories flood in. From the past few days. From last year. From what feels like another lifetime.

  Like one from a particular morning in spring, when I’m so, so little, and you slip into bed next to me, cuddle me close, and tell me how happy I make you.

  Then you pull the sheets up over our heads like a tent, and you say, “Watch this,” and you shake them hard so they billow up high like a parachute, then come floating magically down.

  And, another, from a sunny afternoon in your dusty studio, the very first time you teach me the pas de deux from Swan Lake. You wrap your arms around me from behind, hold my arms out, and move them, and we walk through the choreography together.

  “You’re my shadow,” you say. “My perfect little butterfly.

  My peu papillon.”

  The memories drift back, clear

  and welcome,

  as if on bird wings,

  to

  alight

  in my heart.

  After she’s gone, I follow Dad back to his study. It’s midnight here, and nine P.M. in California. He tells me that Mom and Kerri will be on the red-eye flight home.

  I say, “I wanted to tell you this before, but I didn’t have the chance,” and I tell him about Uncle Matt. I tell him about the decks of cards he’s recited from memory, about the loci tricks he can still do, and, most importantly, about how, this evening, he moved his arm without my help.

  Dad stares down for a second, the look on his face hard to read. As if he’s calculating, doing some math problem in his head.

  “Are you sure, Kyle?” he finally asks.

  “I am,” I say.

  He nods, and I wait for him to say something more, to be excited, and thrilled, and joyful, but all he does is nod again, before returning to whatever has his attention.

  And I’m about to be furious, to scream and yell and tell him off, tell him how he needs to be more supportive of Uncle Matt. But then it hits me. Maybe because of something I can see in his expression, or something I feel in his effort to stay silent that I never noticed before: His silence isn’t callous. It’s protective. Not just of me, but of himself.

  He doesn’t want to get my hopes up, or his own.

  “I’m not naive,” I say, making my voice softer, but keeping my delivery confident and strong. “I get that he may never walk again, and I’ll deal w
ith that. We all will. But maybe the doctors are right and the swelling is still going down. Maybe there’s a lot more progress he can make. Maybe he will walk again. And maybe he won’t. But it’s possible. And that’s worth something. And he’s seeming a lot more like his old self.”

  Dad nods again and picks up the phone. His eyes are damp in the corners. “I should call Paulie. Fill him in. And find out the best way to deal with the airport.”

  “Okay,” I say, and I walk toward the door. But then, I stop again.

  “And, Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “I mean it. I’m going to help around here a lot more. I want to. But, we need to keep Uncle Matt here.”

  I walk with my father into our dark, empty house.

  It’s so quiet. I feel her here, sense her here, in everything we own. I’m sure he does, too.

  I kiss him good night.

  “I love you, Hannah,” he says.

  “I love you, too, Dad. And I’m sorry. I need to say that. I’m so very glad you’re okay.”

  In my room, I put my few things down, then sit, holding my palm to my bedside lamp. I stare at the lines where they crisscross, at the island where Madame Yvette pressed her finger, where the lifeline veers and breaks.

  The place of great tragedy, where Kyle and I will always connect.

  I open my other palm, where I wrote his e-mail address. It’s smudged from sweat, but I can still make out all the letters.

  Smiling, I pick up his blue T-shirt, the one that says PopMart, with the planet that’s not a planet, and slip it on, and crawl into my own bed.

  I don’t sleep much, hear Dad get up early and shower, leaving for the airport before dawn. He should be back with Mom and Kerri soon.

  I keep thinking about the timing of everything. It’s like Hannah and Kerri and my mom will be those proverbial ships that pass in the night. Some sort of cryptic Zen koan.

  Besides me, Uncle Matt is the only one who truly knew her.

  Not that Dad hasn’t caught Mom up, told her everything, but he doesn’t really know her either. Not like we do. Not like I do.