by Julia Glass
SHE WALKED INTO THE BOOKSTORE like a child returning home after a long, long trip. Yet the minute she looked around, she knew that relief was a feeling no one shared. Fenno looked calm enough, but next to him, crying in loud, disturbing sobs, was the man who ran the restaurant—Walter, the one with the bulldog. She looked around but did not see The Bruce. Two other men stood together by the garden door. They were listening to a radio, which stood on the glass case containing binoculars and telescopes for people who liked to spy on birds. Felicity sat on her perch by the window. She bobbed up and down, side to side, like a boxer; she watched the sobbing man as if he might be her opponent across the ring.
There was no one else in the store; who would be shopping for books on a day like this?
Fenno nodded at Saga and waved her in. “Oh lass, I’m glad to see you safe and sound.”
Walter glanced at her, then quickly away. “Oh God, oh God, I am so ashamed,” he said. He was facing a bookcase, clutching an upper shelf with both hands, as if he might otherwise slip to the floor. Fenno continued to stand beside him.
“You’re not the least bit sure, you mustn’t panic,” Fenno said gently.
“There are scores upon scores of airplanes which we know have landed safely—or never left the ground to begin with.” “I know it, I know it, I just know it,” cried Walter. “He told me Newark, he was planning to leave from Newark.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” said Fenno. “Stranded somewhere, unable to phone, but he’ll show up. The Bruce will show up, too. He may be overly coddled by his Bronx grannies, but he’ll be fine as well.”
Walter cried more loudly. “Oh God, for once in my wretched life it’s not the dog I care about!”
Saga saw Fenno touch Walter’s back, lightly, nervously, then pull his hand away. “I wish I could make you sit down and take a drink,” he said. “I can fetch something good and strong from my flat.”
“I would pass out,” said Walter, shaking his head. “Oblivion is a blessing I do not deserve.” His large strong back moved in spasms beneath his shirt.
The two men by the radio moved toward Walter. “He’s right,” said the one with black curly hair (she’d seen him at the restaurant, at the lovely party). “Sit down, Walter.” He reached up and grasped one of Walter’s wrists, pulling him away from the bookcase.
The second man who’d been listening to the radio was round and bald, dressed all in white—a cook’s uniform. He put an arm around Walter’s back and helped the curly-haired man coax Walter toward the armchair beside Fenno’s desk.
Saga realized she was staring. She went over to Felicity, who calmed down once Walter was seated. She squawked at Saga, who held out her arm. Felicity jumped on and sidestepped up to her shoulder. Saga leaned her cheek into the bird’s warm, fragrant scarlet feathers. The realm of you, thought Saga. She glanced at Fenno—would she always be a little in love with him?—and saw him, beside Walter’s chair, looking unusually helpless. Embarrassed, she looked away.
As she stood by the garden door, letting Felicity prod and tease at her hair, Saga began to listen to the radio. A plane had flown into the Pentagon. In New York, hundreds of firefighters might be dead. The president, on his private plane, was being hustled from hither to yon, from yon to hither, and there were people calling him a coward. Then there were people who claimed this was no time for talk like that. Someone with a thick accent was talking about Saudi Arabia. Someone else was talking about an attack on a ship, a bomb. An attack on an embassy in Africa. Was this the start of a world war?
“Is there a war?” she blurted out.
Walter had stopped crying, but he kept his face behind his hands. Fenno was suddenly nowhere in sight.
“Likely as not,” said the curly-haired man.
“Oh sweet heaven no,” said Walter. “Oh no.”
“I think you jump to conclusions,” said the man in white to the curly-haired man. “But how terrible this is, we cannot yet know.” He was foreign; I sink, he said. Ziss iss.
Now the mayor spoke. He told everyone to stay home, to keep listening, to be alert. The air force was guarding the city. Home was the safest place to be.
Startled, Saga turned toward the radio. Felicity nipped her ear.
Was Uncle Marsden at home now? Had he taken Aunt Liz’s radio out of the closet? Was he listening? How would he know to listen?
Fenno came in the front door carrying three bottles. “Emily, do you know where I keep those cups downstairs, the ones we use at the readings?”
As Saga passed Fenno, Felicity leaped to his shoulder.
When she came back up from the basement, the bottles were standing on the counter by the register. Scotch, club soda, fizzy lemonade. Fenno introduced her to Ben and Hugo. Behind them, she could just hear Walter whispering, “I’ve lost him. I’ve lost him.” Saga wanted to ask Fenno why Walter was so upset, who it was he thought he’d lost, but she didn’t want Walter to overhear her and grow even more hysterical.
She asked Fenno if she could use the phone to call her uncle.
Once again, she was greeted by the machine. “Uncle Marsden,” she said, “I’m still in the city, but I’m not at Stan’s. I’m at the bookstore. I’m okay. I guess you might be out somewhere, at someone’s house with a TV? I’ll call you later. But I’m fine, I just thought you’d want to know.” She did not hang up. Was there something else she should say? Should she give him the phone number there, at the shop? But the machine, allowing no silence, clicked off.
She tried Sonya’s cell phone. She got a busy signal.
Ben handed a glass to Walter, who looked up at Saga. “I’m so sorry,” he said. He turned to Hugo. “I’m so mortified. I’m so…I can’t believe I let him go like that. I lost it over—what? Vulgar love notes?”
Hugo began, “Walter, what are the chances—”
“Stop talking to me about statistics and probability!” shouted Walter. “I haven’t heard a word from him! He would have called! He may have driven me crazy, but he doesn’t hate me! And I certainly do not hate him!”
“Called where?” said Hugo. “Not here, he would not.”
Walter pulled a phone from his pocket and shook it. “Here!” Again, he began sobbing. Saga noticed Fenno watching Walter from across the room. Fenno had tears in his eyes.
“We already know most lines they are not working,” Hugo said in his awkward English. “Most regular phones I have tried to call, here in the city they are busy.”
Saga wondered if she should leave, to let this poor man grieve among his friends, but where would she go? The radio had announced that no trains were running; she might be stuck in the city for days. She thought of the animals at Stan’s. She should never have left them alone.
“Walter,” said Ben. His voice was calm yet sharp. He held something out in his hand, a very small box.
“Drugs?” Walter shouted. “Ben, who do you think you are talking to here?”
“It’s just Valium. You’re not yourself,” said Ben.
Walter took a tiny pill from the box and held it in his palm, just staring at it.
Ben poured a glass of soda. “Take it, will you?” Walter did as he was told.
Fenno went out to the garden. Saga saw him search the sky; the small area visible through the treetops was blue as a baby blanket, smooth as a china plate. Saga joined him. He said in a low voice, “Walter’s nephew left to catch an early flight to San Francisco. They had a row. He thinks it has to be one of the planes that was hijacked. One was bound for San Francisco, but I can’t believe…” Fenno sighed. “He’s…well, just imagine. There’s not a bloody thing I can say.”
“I’m glad he’s with you,” said Saga. “You’re someone good to be with when things get crazy.”
Without smiling, he looked grateful. “You, too, Emily.” Before going back inside, he touched her lightly on one cheek.
Over the next hour, Walter sat listlessly as Ben, Hugo, and Fenno talked with one another about the attack, what it might mean in
the city (would everyone flee, now and then for good?), how the hothead president was sure to want instant revenge. Walter nodded off in the armchair. Using Fenno’s phone, Saga tried again and again to reach Sonya. Between these attempts, she stood by the front window, watching people pass.
Finally, Hugo and Ben told Fenno they had to go, to check on the restaurant and close down the kitchen, but they would be back to look after Walter. They waved politely, forlornly, to Saga.
At last Sonya answered her phone, shouting, “I am stuck in the mother of all traffic jams!” But the traffic jam (Saga secretly rejoiced) was in Brooklyn. Sonya agreed to head for Stan’s; she might stay there if she couldn’t make it back to Manhattan. Stan had called her, too.
“Is he mad at me for leaving?” Saga asked her.
“He didn’t know you weren’t there. Phone’s been busy all day. You can call out, but you can’t call in. Like jail. Stan just wanted to know you were okay. So you are, right?”
“Yes,” said Saga, though something else began to nag at her, a sense that she had forgotten something crucial, something beyond the animals, beyond the problem of how she’d get home.
“Good. Gotta go,” said Sonya.
Fenno went out on the sidewalk to speak with friends who had waved at him through the window. They embraced him before they went on their way. He came back into the shop looking worried and sad.
So this was tragedy true and large. Saga had known tragedy personal and small, but this…“Where is Oneeka?” she asked.
“She’s at home, a long ways uptown. She couldn’t make it in,” said Fenno, “and I’m glad. She would’ve been stranded here, away from Topaz.”
He excused himself and went to the basement, returning with a blanket. He knelt beside Walter’s chair and tucked the blanket around his legs and chest. Carefully, he removed the cell phone from Walter’s loosening grasp. Fenno then went to the front door and locked it. “Emily, I’m going to go upstairs and try to call the airline from there; I don’t think it’ll do much good, but I’ll try. Would you mind hanging about in case he wakes? Answer the shop phone if it rings—and this one as well?” He handed Walter’s phone to Saga.
Walter slept on, sometimes breathing in shallow gasps. Saga placed his phone on Fenno’s desk. She opened a book displayed on a table nearby. It was filled with pictures of beautiful gardens.
Uncle Marsden. Saga realized that two hours had passed since she’d left her second message on their answering machine. She closed the book. She went to the counter, to the store phone, and punched in the number again. So loudly that Saga had to hold the receiver away from her ear, Pansy said, “Hello?” Her voice was urgent, as if she’d been terribly startled, yet Saga’s first feeling was relief: Uncle Marsden had company.
“I’m glad you’re there,” said Saga, speaking softly, to keep from waking Walter. “It’s so awful, isn’t it? Did you get my message? I’m okay. I might spend the night at the bookstore here.”
Pansy uttered a short, ugly cry. “Saga, we are waiting to hear from Michael! Have you given a single, solitary thought to Michael?”
Saga held the receiver farther from her ear; Pansy’s voice was so shrill.
Michael? Saga gasped. This was it, the thing she’d forgotten. Michael’s office was in one of those towers.
“Of course not!” said Pansy before Saga could speak. “Of course not!”
“Pansy?” Saga said. “Can I please talk to Uncle Marsden?”
“We need the phone free right now, Saga. We’re just praying like hell that Michael is all right, that he made it out of there.”
“Can I give you the number where I am?” said Saga.
“No! We don’t need your number! You are fine!”
Saga heard Uncle Marsden’s voice in the background but couldn’t tell what he was saying.
“Saga, you have to call later. I have to go,” Pansy said. “Dad isn’t talking to anyone now. He is very upset.” She hung up, just like that.
Saga held the phone for a moment. Was Saga simply “anyone”?
In the garden, the sun had just passed beneath the roofline. Birds went about their business in the big tree above her. Saga felt the instinctive jab of fear, but really, she could no longer pretend that trees were a menace.
Michael used to talk about his amazing view of the harbor. Why on earth hadn’t she thought of him, realized the danger he was in? Because she’d never doubted that Michael would always be fine, that Michael’s life simply had to follow its sunlit path, with never a detour, never a pitfall.
How unfair of her to think that only she could fall prey to catastrophe. How meanly selfish. How almost convenient her forgetting began to seem, how lazy. Had her flawed memory become an excuse for remaining outside the pain of other people? Had she become irresponsibly forgetful?
When she went back inside, Fenno was sitting at his desk, talking quietly with Walter. Walter’s chef had returned, no longer wearing his uniform.
“I have to call my brother,” Walter said. He sounded close to calm now. He looked up at Saga. One of his cheeks was ruddy and scored where it had been pressed against the chair. “Are you all right?” he asked her. “Do you need a place to stay?”
“I’m fine. I am,” she said. “How are you?”
Walter simply shook his head, but his eyes were dry. Fenno went to him and leaned over, lifting the larger man to his feet from the chair.
“Come then. You’ll be a mite unsteady on your feet.”
When Walter stood, he threw his arms around Fenno, holding him tight. Saga thought at first that he had lost his balance, but then she realized they were hugging each other out of commiseration and comfort, their eyes closed. “I never knew you were such a friend,” she heard Walter say.
“Here I am,” said Fenno.
Walter made a muffled sound, a groan. “Not that I deserve your friendship, or anyone else’s, right now.”
Fenno, his head resting on Walter’s shoulder, smiled. His eyes were still closed, so Saga could take in that smile and just what it meant. What right had she to be jealous?
When the two men released each other, the chef held out an arm to Walter. “Come back with me. I have made us a little meal, steak and beans. You can call from your desk. We will take you home later. Come.” He turned to Saga. “Do you want to come with us? We must not forget to eat. Eating, we will keep our wits about us.”
She thanked him but said that she had to go.
“I’ll be right here,” said Fenno. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be here or upstairs in the flat. I should ring my family.” Saga felt disappointed, as if it were Fenno’s job to worry about her. Of course it wasn’t; that was nobody’s job but hers.
Fenno kept a hand on Walter’s back as Hugo led his boss to the door. Saga followed them out. On the sidewalk, she saw Walter straighten up from his old-man stance. “Come over,” he said to Fenno. “Please?”
Saga slipped away quickly, before they could notice her departure. Walking west, she had to shade her eyes to see. The sun faced precisely down the center of the street. Her shadow, when she looked backward, was long and elegant; what she could see of the world was undisturbed, lit up golden as a flower. A few people passed, and though the trees and fences and buildings hadn’t changed, the people had, Saga right along with them. Exactly how, that part remained to be seen.
Saga looked all around for the moon; had it risen yet? The night before, getting up after midnight to check on the animals, she had seen it through Stan’s bedroom window: low, newly risen. A half moon, a wedge of honeydew, white as the papery snow that would fly from the towers.
Oh Michael. She thought of their lunch together, which had begun so bitterly for her yet ended on a far less certain note. Was the cousin she’d thought the most self-involved in fact the most concerned about the family as a whole—a family she had not made the effort to properly join?
When she crossed Hudson Street, she saw the smoke, high and thick as ever, to the south. How imp
ossibly long the day had been; how deeply her legs ached. But she would rather walk, anywhere—where did not matter—than be in any particular place. She could not bear the company of those men in the store, all so much kinder than she was: kind to their families, kind to one another, kind to people they hardly knew. At kindness—kindness to other human beings—had she faltered? Was she turning into just another version of Stan?
She found a pay phone without a line of people waiting to use it. She fished in her knapsack for the change purse filled with quarters. Before Saga could even ask whether there had been news, Pansy flew into a rage. It was panic, Saga knew, and probably guilt, but this made little difference. “Stop calling every minute like this!” yelled Pansy. “Stop acting like Dad’s your father, like Michael’s your brother, like our house is your house! Stop making Dad pretend he needs you and get a life of your own for a change!”
“I have my own life, Pansy. There and here, I do,” said Saga. Did she? She was shaking, and she longed to hang up, but that’s what Pansy surely wanted. “Can I please just talk to Uncle Marsden for one minute? One minute, Pansy?”
Pansy ignored the request. “You don’t have a life. You’re just jealous of other people’s lives. You think Denise doesn’t see the way you look at her with those babies? It gives her the creeps. Everybody knows how you—”
Saga heard Frida shout, “Jesus, Pansy!” Frida took over the phone. “Saga, I’m sorry.” She covered the mouthpiece and said something to Pansy, then, to Saga, “Everybody’s insane here.”
Saga asked, yet again, if she could talk to Uncle Marsden.
“No one can,” said Frida. “He’s shut himself up with his mosses and says he won’t come out till we hear something, one way or the other. I’m trying to make him eat a little dinner.” She paused. “Meals! How trite, I suppose.”
Saga asked if there was anything she could do, there in the city. Frida seemed to think for a long while. “If you’re near a hospital,” she said slowly, “you could see if he’s there. But not really. I can’t think of anything, really. I wish I could. I wish I could think of anything constructive right now.” After a pause, Frida asked if Saga had a place to stay. Saga told her that she did.