by Wendy Mills
“It’s not like that. I’m not choosing Dad,” I say. “I’m not choosing either one of you. I just don’t want to leave. Not now, I just … can’t.”
“I see,” she says quietly, gazing down at her hands, which look like mine, except they are clean with neatly cut nails, whereas mine are chewed and raggedy. “I wish you would come with me, Jesse. What’s going on between me and your father—that doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
I nod numbly, but I don’t believe her.
“I thought you were going with your mother” is all Dad says when he comes home later.
“I’m staying here,” I say.
He stops as he reaches into the fridge, just sort of freezes as if time skipped a moment or two, leaving him hanging out in space. Then he nods, and shuts the refrigerator door without getting anything, and sits in his recliner. He turns on the TV and flips past the nightly news to a fishing show.
I wait, but he doesn’t say anything else. I go into my room and do pull-ups on the doorsill until my arms burn. I haven’t been climbing since the last time I was on the waterfall with Adam.
Adam.
I try not to think about the way he looked at me when he saw me today in the Peace Center.
Adam is Muslim.
I squash the expression on his face deep, deep down and do more pull-ups until my arms are wobbly and I stop thinking about Adam.
But other thoughts bang around inside my head. I’d pretty much stopped thinking about everything after I got arrested. I was too busy concentrating on surviving school, avoiding the coldness in my friends’ eyes, and escaping the flurry of whispers behind my back every time I walked down the halls.
Now my parents are separating. As much as I don’t want to think about that either, they are splitting up because of what happened to Travis, my mother’s baby boy, the laughing kid playing in the leaves and building a snowman.
Why was Travis there? Did everyone know and just not want to tell me? But, no, I’d heard Mom on the phone. She didn’t know. Did Dad? Did Hank?
My brother’s death is like this black hole that we rotate around and around, knowing that if we’re not careful we could fall into it ourselves. And I don’t know a damn thing about Travis except what they put in the paper every year, and how can that be anywhere close to the real story of who my brother really was?
All I know about him is that he died on 9/11.
That one thing has eclipsed everything else that he was. In some ways, it made his life bigger than it ever would have been otherwise. He only lived eighteen years, but how many ordinary eighteen-year-olds have their names etched in bronze at a memorial where thousands of people come to mourn every year? Not that I’ve gone to the memorial or museum where the old World Trade Center used to stand. My father has adamantly refused to go, and I wasn’t sure how he would react if he found out I went.
Why was Travis there? How did he die?
How did he die?
Suddenly, it seems to me that the answer to that question will answer why my family is falling apart. We’re not falling to the ground in an instant like the towers did, but it’s like the most important parts of us are coming apart, the foundation just crumbling away beneath us.
I Skype Hank, but he doesn’t pick up. No big surprise there; he’s almost never home. He’s in Somalia, working for a relief organization, and he loves it there. He says it’s uncomplicated and visceral.
After a few minutes, I call again, and this time my three-year-old nephew’s face flickers into view.
“Jesse!” he crows delightedly when he sees me, his face breaking into a wide, happy smile.
“Joshua!” I say. “How are you?”
Deka, Hank’s wife, smiles at me over Joshua’s shoulder. She’s slim and graceful in a long pink dress, her dark hair braided in hundreds of tiny braids.
“Jesse, it is so nice to see you,” she says in her gently accented English. “I hope that you and your parents are doing well.”
“Hi, Deka,” I say. “Yes, we’re fine.” This is easier than the truth.
I have never met my nephew and sister-in-law in person. Hank went to work in Africa six months out of college, and never really came back. He visited for holidays for a while, but after that last big blowout with Dad on Christmas day when I was thirteen, he never came home again. That was the day he told Dad he was thinking about relinquishing his US citizenship because he couldn’t stomach what America was doing in the Middle East. As far as I know, it’s the last time Dad and Hank ever spoke.
“Jesse, your brother will be sorry he missed you,” Deka is saying. “I do not know when he will be returning. He is out delivering tarpaulins and mosquito netting to the camps, but I will tell him you called. May I give him a message?”
I hesitate. I don’t really have a message, I have a plea.
Tell me about Travis and Dad. Tell me why Travis was in the towers that day. Tell me why everything is broken, and while you’re at it, can you please, please tell me how to fix it?
“Uh, yeah,” I say. “Can you tell him I need to know about Travis? Everything’s FUBAR. He’ll understand.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Alia
Travis and I sit frozen, waiting to hear if the voice from the intercom will say anything else, but there’s only silence.
“What the … ?” Travis says, jumping up.
“Careful!” I yell, worried about the elevator.
He ignores me as he lunges for the intercom, punching buttons, saying, “Hello? Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
The intercom remains silent. Another swirl of smoke slides into the top of the elevator, and this time I can really smell it. Something, somewhere, is burning.
“They said help was coming,” I say in a small voice. “Before, they said help was coming.”
“Nobody said that. It was an automated message because I hit the emergency stop button,” Travis says angrily. “A real live person just told us there was an explosion.”
We both look at the intercom, but it stays quiet.
“But they know we’re here, right?”
“They should,” he says, and sits down on the other side of the elevator from me. “My grandfather took me to the OCC once, the operation control center, down in the basement. There are all these monitors where they keep track of stuff in the buildings. Gramps said it was like the brain of the building. They’ll know we’re here. They’ll send someone.”
“Okay,” I say. “Okay.” That makes me feel slightly better.
“An explosion … I still think it was a bomb,” he says, almost to himself. “What else could it be?”
I clench my fingers. “Do you always have this cheery outlook on life, or is it reserved for times when you’re stuck in an elevator with a very scared girl?”
I’m boiling with anger, but I know it’s not really at him, so I clamp my lips around the words that want to blow out of my mouth.
“It was Muslims who planted the bomb the last time, you know,” he says suddenly, and it’s like a chasm opens up between us.
“So?” I say right back at him. “It was white Christians who used to burn crosses on people’s lawns and owned slaves. Does that make all of you bad?”
“I’m just saying, my religion doesn’t tell me to go out and kill people just because they don’t believe what I believe,” he says.
“Neither does mine,” I say tightly. “In fact, mine says, ‘To you your religion, and to me mine.’ Just because people do bad things in the name of religion doesn’t make the religion bad. People do crappy things, people do awesome things. That’s just people.”
His mood has grown dark though, and we sit in silence.
“It’s just all FUBAR,” he says suddenly.
“What?”
“It’s something my dad says.” He smiles slightly. “He got it from my gramps. It means ‘effed up beyond all repair.’”
I’d never heard the term before, but I get it. “Okay, so this is pretty FU
BAR,” I say, trying it on for size. “But they’ll get us out soon.” It’s my father’s optimism coming out of my mouth, and I need that right now.
“No, I don’t mean just this,” Travis says, waving his hand around the elevator, and the alarms that are getting ready to drive me out of my skull, and the smoke sneaking in through the ceiling. “I mean all of it. The world. People. Me. All of it.”
“You should write greeting card messages,” I say, but my voice is shaky. “Like, ‘I know you’re feeling down today, but guess what? Life sucks.’”
“Life pretty much does suck,” he says. “You might as well accept it.”
“Bumper stickers,” I say. “You could do bumper stickers: ‘When things get really bad, shoot yourself.’”
He shrugs, and we sit in uneasy silence. I can’t stand it.
“Does your grandfather work here now? You said he worked here during the … bombing.”
“He worked here for a long time doing maintenance. Actually, Gramps helped build the towers back in the late sixties. He’d just got back from Vietnam and was having a hard time finding work because he got shot in the arm over there and was still recovering. He got a job as an electrician, and he said after a day of work, it was like he had sea legs when he came back to the ground because the towers swayed so much before they put in the dampers. They would all get drunk at Volk’s and talk someone into climbing the towers and doing dumb stuff like paint ‘Eat at Volk’s’ on the side of the building. He said when the crane hoisted up that last piece of steel, the American flag waving on it, it was so high up it got lost in the fog.”
He falls silent, rubbing the back of his neck. I don’t say anything, not wanting to interrupt whatever he’s thinking about.
“He brought my grandmother here once, when they were building it.”
“He did?”
“I don’t remember her—she died when I was a baby. But Gramps told me he wanted her to see the towers while they were still building them. He was like that, kind of impulsive and brave and romantic. He bribed a security guard to let them in and they took a construction elevator up and walked around. He said it was like standing in a giant Tinkertoy, because all you could see was the steel skeleton. He told my grandmother, ‘These are the bare bones of one of the greatest buildings in the world. It’s just being born, but it’ll be here a thousand years, I bet.’ He loved talking about the towers. He had so many stories, and when I was a kid I would just sit and listen.”
“I wish he were here,” I say. “It sounds like he would know what to do.”
“I wish he were here too,” Travis says, still rubbing the back of his neck. “But he died five days ago.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jesse
Adam is alone in the Peace Center when I get there. For some reason, Yalda had assigned Adam and Sabeen to make posters with me. Sabeen isn’t here yet, and, oh God, I don’t want to have to go in and talk to Adam, not after the way he looked at me.
I hesitate at the door. It’s the first time I’ve really been alone with him since we first climbed together, and it feels like my tongue is swelling up in my mouth so I know it’s going to be hard to say anything.
Adam glances up at me and his expression is unreadable. He’s wearing a Rasta-colored beanie over his dark hair, and he appears dangerous, like a big golden cat just waiting to lunge at me. My palms start to sweat.
I swallow hard.
“Hey,” I manage, which I consider an achievement of the highest freaking order.
“You didn’t know I was Muslim, did you?” he says without preamble, no hi, or hey, or lookie what we have here! It’s the racist girl!
He watches me, waiting for me to say something. I had a friend who stuttered his s’s when I was in kindergarten, and I remember the look on his face as he tried to say “sorry.” You could tell he wanted to say it so badly, but no matter how hard he tried, it wouldn’t come out right. Except now, for me, all the words are like that.
“I didn’t believe it at first,” Adam continues. “When I first heard that you were the one the police caught painting the side of the building, I told my mom and dad it must be a mistake.” His gaze is direct as he leans back in his chair and laces his hands behind his head.
I try not to notice the pure blue of his eyes, or the way his dark hair curls silkily on his forehead. I put my head down and study my muddy shoes.
“I thought,” he says into the silence of the sweet-smelling room, “that you were covering for that punk boyfriend of yours. Before all that happened, the guys at school said you were pretty, but real, real quiet. No one could understand why you’d hooked up with that loser. I couldn’t either. I saw the way you were up on that waterfall.”
He is watching me as he speaks. I know, because when I glance up from my shoes, my gaze is caught by his, and I can’t look away. It’s like he’s forcing me to see him.
“You were so graceful and confident when you were climbing. It’s like you belonged up there, but when you’re on the ground, you’re just a pale shadow of that girl on the mountain.”
There’s a clunky rock in my throat. “I wish—”
I wish what? That I never did what I did? That I was a different person, that I really was that girl he saw on the mountain? That I was brave, and graceful and confident, that I could be that girl, all the time, every day of my life? Do we ever get to be the person we want to be?
But all I can say is “I wish.”
He’s sprawled back in the chair, his eyes on me. I swallow, and my gaze skips away because I don’t want to notice how good he looks, and how it feels like I had a glittering ornament in my hand and I smashed it to pieces without even noticing what it was.
“When you grow up Muslim, hell, different in any way, you get real good at reading people. You can tell the good ones, who might not end up liking you—sure, who likes everyone they meet?—but they’re not going to hate you because you’re Muslim, or black, or gay, or, I don’t know, a blue Smurf. And then there are the other kind, the ones who feel better about themselves when they have someone to hate.” He takes a deep breath, and my eyes fly back to his face, watching the muscle in his jaw clench as he stares out the window at the rain falling like a silver veil. “I read you wrong,” he says simply. “I thought you were one of the good ones.”
I am! I want to yell, but I know that isn’t true. Not anymore. “I’m sorry,” is what comes out instead. I’ve said this over and over, to the police as they were booking me, to my mom, to the judge. It is the one thing I can say that reflects a little of the universe-sized sorry inside me, so big that it pushes and shoves at the edges of me.
He studies me for a long moment, and then nods. I’m not sure what it means, whether it’s an I-accept-your-apology kind of nod, or an okay-yeah-I-heard-you acknowledgment.
“I hate being wrong,” he says, and grins crookedly.
“Me too,” I say, and take a long shuddering breath.
He is staring at me, almost curiously, when the door opens behind me and Sabeen comes in with a gust of warm, rain-scented air.
“Is it ever going to stop raining?” she complains, stomping her feet on the mat and folding her umbrella. “Hi,” she says to me, her tone friendly, but her eyes guarded. “I wanted to thank you for what you did that day.”
“Huh?” My mouth drops open, and she laughs.
“You picked up my scarf, when that jerk boyfriend of yours yanked it off. I appreciate that. I don’t appreciate a lot of other things about you, but that was nice. Maybe you are redeemable.”
“Oh.” I didn’t think she had noticed.
“And you—” Sabeen turns to her brother. “You are not redeemable, you stinking piece of dog poop. You were supposed to pick me up. I had to take the bus.”
Her tone is so injured that a giggle escapes me despite myself.
“Unh-uh, no way, no how,” Adam says. “I had the car today. You were supposed to get a ride with Leslyn. We talked about it this morning
.”
“We did not talk about it this morning. If I said anything of the kind, you ought to have recognized that I was still unconscious, and saying anything I could think of to get you out of the very pleasant dream you were interrupting. How many times—”
The two of them continue their easy bickering about the car, about who was going to use it when Adam started his geology internship, and I am content to work and listen in silence.
That afternoon when I get home, I pull out my laptop and start searching the Internet for information about 9/11. I’d always managed to tune it out when it was mentioned in my classes, and when the inevitable specials came on as the anniversaries marched by, I turned the channel.
It’s not that I’m unaware of the basics. I had just closed my ears to the details, following the lead of the rest of my family who so clearly didn’t want to think about it.
But now I can’t stop thinking about it. As I read the horrible stories one by one, I want to scream, to cry, because I can’t imagine going through something like that.
Like my brother did.
As hard as I search, the only thing I find about Travis is a small obituary in the New York Times, and the generic yearly articles in our local paper.
I hear my dad come in, and I slam the laptop cover closed, my hands shaking. I get up, and then turn back to exit out of my search before going into the kitchen.
Dad climbed today, led a tour for the first time in months, and he’s sweaty and red faced as he chugs a Gatorade, his eyes closed. I’ve seen pictures of my dad when he was younger, posing on top of a mountain, beside one, or hanging off one, the mountains as much a part of him as his glacial blue eyes or super-sized nose. He’s bigger now, gray weaving through his disappearing hair and scraggly beard, but sometimes when I watch him climb I can see that younger Dad.
I try to gauge his mood, and whatever alert sensors I have inside me stay quiet, and I relax. He looks better than I’ve seen him in a while. The hush and peace of the mountain clings to him.
