Hope and Other Punch Lines

by Julie Buxbaum

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was born and raised in New York. After that day, for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel safe walking around in my own city because of my turban. People still don’t know the difference between Sikhs and Muslims. Not that it’s right to attack anybody, don’t get me wrong. One night I got chased by these big dudes with baseball bats. If I had a penny for every time I got called a terrorist or told to go back to my own country since nine-eleven, let’s just say I wouldn’t have to save for my kids’ college educations.” He pauses, and I hear some noise in the background. A woman, presumably Raj’s wife, telling his daughters to put away their phones and do their homework. “That day feels like a before-and-after for me in terms of opening my eyes to that shit. I mean, I got it on the playground as a kid, sure. But that morning changed everything.”

  “That’s horrible. I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Like I tell my girls, better to walk around with your eyes wide open than closed, right?”

  “Do you keep in touch with any of the other survivors in that photo?” I keep my voice casual, like it’s any other question. Like I’m just moving our conversation along. Like I have nothing riding on it.

  “Course not.” Bust.

  “This is going to sound random, but did you happen to know the guy running behind you in the picture? The one in the University of Michigan hat?” I hold my breath and wait. I cross my fingers because I know no one can see me.

  “Blue Hat Guy!”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, I didn’t talk to him. I didn’t talk to anyone. Didn’t even notice him until later, when I saw the picture on the front page of the New York Times. I went to U of M, though, so when I saw it I was like Go Blue! I was really glad he made it out.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I say.

  Noah and I sit across from each other at the Burgerler, the only burger joint left in Oakdale now that our town has turned fancy and seems to prefer food trends served in bowls, like acai or poke. On Sunday nights when I was a little kid, my dad and I used to make a ritual of this place. We’d share onion rings from a red plastic basket and conquer the maze on the paper placemats with crayons. Last time we were here, maybe a year or two ago, he warned me that should anything happen to him, all his important documents are kept in the safe in his closet. I have no idea what spurred my dad’s sudden concern about his own mortality, but it dawns on me now that I won’t have much to leave.

  Noah clears his throat and I shake away my morbid thoughts. Time for all that later. I’m determined to focus on the right now, on Noah with his hedgehog hair and glasses and mischievous grin, his spoon already in his hand, like he’s ready to do battle.

  “Tell me three things I don’t know about you,” he says after we have a mock mini-fight over a particularly gooey bit of chocolate syrup that I bet comes from a metal can. We’ve ordered an ice cream sundae, the kind with three enormous scoops and whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on top. Chocolate. Vanilla. Strawberry wedged in between. Childhood in a glass bowl, down to the rainbow sprinkles.

  Is this a date? It feels kind of like a date—we’re sharing one dish, it’s just Noah and me here, and there seems to be a thick wall of flirtiness between us—but then again, I’ve never been on an actual date, so I’m no expert. All my boy experience has been vicarious. Stories told by Cat, occasionally Ramona and Kylie too.

  I win our chocolate battle. Only because he lets me.

  “Three things?” I ask.

  “I read about it in a book. Seems like a good way to get to know someone. Having to choose three things. You start, Abbi.”

  “Okay. One, sometimes when I can’t sleep, I get up, make my bed, change my pajamas, and start all over again. I like to give myself the illusion of a do-over.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Not really, but it burns up some time.”

  “That’s not nothing,” Noah says.

  “Two, despite my whole sweet-tooth-and-red-food fetish, for me, it’s all about the french fries. Three, I have this weird obsession with Mary Oliver. She’s this poet, and she can spin words into magic. She has this great line that asks what you’re going to do with ‘your one wild and precious life.’ How cool would it be to know how to use words to make the world—life—feel, I don’t know, more manageable, I guess?” I ask.

  “That’s exactly why I’m obsessed with comedy. That’s what it does for me,” he says, and I feel my heart beat a little faster. I like that he has a nerd-boy hobby. I like that it means something real to him.

  “Okay, your turn,” I say. “Three things.”

  He shrugs.

  “No fair! I told you stuff,” I say.

  “Nah, it’s not that. We don’t need a gimmick, that’s all. You’re really easy to talk to,” Noah says.

  “Thanks.” My cheeks warm, and the back of my neck tickles from the compliment.

  “Okay, here’s something you might not know: I almost died when I was a baby too. I mean, all of our near-death experiences can’t be as dramatic as a terrorist attack.” He stops, smiles at me. “But I was born with a heart defect. My parents didn’t think I was going to make it.”

  Noah rattles this off like it’s no big deal.

  “Are you okay now?”

  “I have a checkup at the cardiologist once a year, and if I get a pat-down at airport security I have to tell them about my pacemaker, but that’s about it. I got lucky. Just like you.” He clicks the metal of his spoon against mine again, a version of cheers.

  I study his face for a moment, the parts I haven’t spent much time exploring. I wonder what he would say if he knew about my lungs. Am I still lucky? I’ve always thought so. Even now.

  Would telling him give me the courage to tell my parents? He could be my practice run. Because that’s one of the things I like most about Noah, how I feel stronger around him.

  “I look at it that way too. That we got lucky. Instead of the other way around—that we were unlucky in the first place,” I say.

  “Exactly,” he says, and looks me right in the eye. I force myself to look back, fearless. Okay, not fearless, but I refuse to let the fear win. It feels like a moment, this eye contact, with these goofy smiles on our faces, because I’m pretty sure when we’re talking about luck, we’re talking about being here with each other.

  This is the sort of bravery I need more of in my life. This courage to look right back at him.

  Under the table, I feel our shoes line up. His, mine, his, mine. Our ankles touch, spring apart, touch again. Then he holds his feet against mine, so I force myself to stay still, to keep the contact going.

  My lungs tickle in the best way possible. Tiny zings of excitement shoot through my body.

  I think this might actually be a date.

  I should have taken her to that cool new sushi place on Main. It has candles on the table, even in the afternoon. No crayons and paper placemats. Made it straight-up obvious that we aren’t just hanging out. I place my shoe next to hers and hold it there, but I can’t tell if she notices.

  When Abbi excuses herself to go to the bathroom, my ankle feels lonely.

  * * *

  —

  I text Jack because I don’t know how to sit here and wait for her to come back.

  Me: She’s in the bathroom

  Jack: How’s it going?

  Me: Legit good

  Jack: So what’s the problem?

  Me: Should I say something? About you know, my feelings or whatever

  Jack: That’s adorable

  Me: You’re not helping

  Jack: I’ve told you all along to tell her how you feel

  Me: No. You said I shouldn’t have befriended her in the first place

  Jack: I’ve evolved. She’s cool

  Me: How do I say it?

&
nbsp; Jack: Speak from the heart

  Me: My heart doesn’t talk. It beats rhythmically because of an implanted electronic device

  Jack: That is so literal

  Me: Should I tell her she looks pretty today?

  Jack: Use beautiful. No one likes pretty

  Me: Okay. She’s coming back. Anything else?

  Jack: You got this, dude

  Me: Was that sarcastic?

  Jack: Honestly? Still deciding

  * * *

  —

  Here’s the thing. I do not got this. When Abbi walks back to the table, she looks even better than before. Her lips are shiny, her hair is spilling over her shoulders, and she’s smiling, like this one-on-one thing across a table is no big deal. I try to mirror her casualness by looking at my phone’s screen, as if I’m not creepily tracking her with eyes. As if my stomach isn’t sitting on the floor.

  In the bathroom, I gave myself a pep talk: You are awesome. You do not need tangerine hair or to know about random bands like Oville to be interesting. You are enough. Also, you are amazing at pep talks!

  I reapplied my tinted lip balm, which is as close to lipstick as I get without feeling self-conscious. I once tried on Cat’s signature red and lasted only three minutes before wiping it off. I know because she timed me.

  When I return to the table, I try to saunter over—move with a confidence I do not feel. Noah’s forehead is crinkled and he’s leaning over his phone and I realize it doesn’t matter how I walk because he’s not paying attention.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  “It’s just Jack.”

  “You look deeply concerned,” I say, smiling. Do I sound flirty? I want to sound flirty.

  “Nah. It’s nothing,” Noah says, and puts away his phone. “Hey, you look prett—nice—I mean…beautiful.” He looks down at his hands. My heart folds in on itself, and my body warms in a slow wave from my toes to my face. He called me beautiful. Beautiful. Which is so much better than pretty. I’d be embarrassed that I’m blushing, except so is he. We are so bad at this. I prefer it that way. I can’t imagine sitting here with someone who knows exactly what to say and how to say it and doesn’t freak out even a little bit. Because, like me, Noah is totally freaking out. I can tell.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  Then I don’t say anything, because I don’t know what to say other than Thanks again, which is totally not the right thing. Normally I’d jump to fill the silence, but my mind has gone strangely blank.

  “I made things weird, didn’t I?” Noah asks as he points at me with his spoon. A drop of strawberry ice cream slides onto the table.

  “I wouldn’t say weird, necessarily.”

  “Then what would you say?” Noah has morphed into Noah again. Flushed, yes, but his reliable smile is back, playing at the corner of his lips. We are totally flirting. I can’t be reading this wrong.

  “You might have made things different.”

  “Different bad? Different good?”

  “Different good, I think?” I take a bite of ice cream, and suddenly hear Cat in my head: Lick the spoon suggestively. Guys love that. I decide to ignore her. To be me instead. “But definitely different.”

  “They say change is good.”

  “Change is good. Well, except climate change.”

  “Right. Climate change is bad. Very bad. And apparently so is menopause, which my mom calls ‘the change’ too,” he says.

  I burst out laughing.

  “Shall we talk more about my mother’s menopause? I figure I already made things awkward, why not keep going?” Noah asks. “She gets hot flashes. Mood swings.”

  “Please stop.”

  “Stopping.”

  “You’re weirder than I thought.”

  “Hey, that’s my line.”

  “It’s a good line,” I say. I’m not so bad at this, I tell myself. Cat used to argue that the reason I never had anyone to hook up with was that I didn’t know how to flirt. That I’d get nervous and tongue-tied, that I needed to learn how to at least appear confident. I used to insist that the problem was the stupid photo—no one wants to kiss someone they could picture as a baby. Still, deep down I believed Cat. Baby Hope was just a good excuse.

  Right now, though, my reflexive self-consciousness has seeped away. I might be nervous, and a tiny bit tongue-tied, and still miles away from confident, but that doesn’t seem to matter. It’s me here, flirting with Noah and cracking up.

  “Okay, subject change. How about a lightning round?” he asks.

  “Okay. Go for it.”

  “Coke or Pepsi?” he asks.

  “Dr Pepper.”

  “World Series or Super Bowl?”

  “Not into sports.”

  “Right? Boring. Coffee or tea?”

  “Coffee.”

  “Dogs or cats?”

  “Dogs. A hundred percent. Cats are creepy.” He leans across the table and high-fives me.

  “Words or emojis?”

  “Words. I find emojis too vague. I need an emoji dictionary.”

  “I know what to get you for your birthday.” My heart squeezes a little, thinking about my birthday, how loaded that day is, how if Noah were to remember the connection, he’d realize it was the same day his dad died. That’s the fastest way I can think of to kill whatever might be going on between us. Noah doesn’t seem to notice, so I do something I’m not used to. I let it go.

  “Harold and Kumar or Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj?”

  “I don’t know what that question even means.”

  “We have some serious work to do on your comedy education,” he says.

  “We do,” I admit.

  “Well, then.” He stands up and holds out his hand. “Shall we get started on that?” A dash of shyness creeps into his voice. That’s when I realize he’s asking me to watch a movie at his house. Today. As in right now. For a moment, my precious words fail me. I want to say something clever: That depends. Will there be coffee? Do you have a cat?

  All I manage to say out loud: “Sure.”

  * * *

  —

  Noah’s house is what my mother would snidely call a McMansion, which is to say it’s new and huge and refuses to blend in this neighborhood of mostly single-story ranch-style homes. For reasons unbeknownst to me, whenever we drive by a new one, my mom, who rarely expresses extreme emotion other than joy, goes off on unhinged rants about how much she despises them. Once I made the mistake of asking, “What did a McMansion ever do to you?” and I got a long lecture about how the influx of big money to Oakdale is killing our community spirit. These new houses are the reason the family-owned hardware store has been taken over by a fancy cheese shop. Somehow it all relates back to 9/11 and to us again falling prey to the greedy maw of capitalism. To how we are watching the world repeat the mistakes of history in real time, though I don’t quite understand what exactly I’m supposed to be watching and not repeating.

  “I’d take a wrench from old Mr. Seever over a thirty-dollar wheel of Manchego from a faceless corporation, wouldn’t you?” she said, and I was too tired to point out that we had both of those items at home. In our kitchen. At that very moment. (The cheese had been stolen from my dad’s, but my mom was the one who took it.) Not to mention in the last few years, my mom’s practice has been booming because of the new Oakdale. Money apparently breeds dysfunction, which is great for her business.

  Oddly enough, Noah and I are almost neighbors. His house, which I’ve unknowingly driven by a gazillion times since it’s only three blocks from mine, has double-height ceilings and sleek furniture and dark hardwood floors. The only family pictures were obviously taken by the professional photographer at his mom’s second wedding. Noah must have been ten or eleven; he’s wearing a suit and has a mou
th full of metal. Do his parents hate him? It seems inhumane to keep his awkward stage on display.

  “Wow, look at this place,” I say, a vague statement, because its enormity requires a comment, if not a compliment. Unlike both of my parents’ houses, there’s no kid art framed on the walls, no evidence beyond the wedding photos that anyone under the age of forty lives here. I don’t dislike it for the reasons my mother would—I’m not particularly protective of the Oakdale community spirit, and I don’t have particularly strong feelings about capitalism or like the use of the word maw in any context. I feel a surprisingly lonely vibe here. The house doesn’t seem like the sort of place that could grow a Noah.

  “I hate it,” he says flatly. “We used to live on the other side of town in this tiny cottage, but when my mom married Phil, we moved into this monster. You could have fit the old place into this room. But I don’t know, it felt like home,” he says, and then plops down on the couch. “It was the only place I ever lived until this.” I follow and stand next to him. I need to decide how much space to put in between us, and my self-consciousness returns. Do I sit close to him since we’ve acknowledged things might be “different,” or do I safely sit on the opposite side? I panic and plop down somewhere in between.

  “Where’s my cheese platter?” I demand. Noah laughs, stretches his legs out, and grabs the remote control.

  “Are you ready to watch genius in action?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I am.”

  Then we proceed to watch a movie.

  A whole movie.

  From the beginning to the end of the credits.

  I sort of chuckle at what I think are the right places, and I occasionally smile at Noah and pretend I’m enjoying what he apparently believes is a groundbreaking film about getting high and looking for hamburgers.