Dear Edward

by Ann Napolitano

  Lacey lowers the egg to the table and taps it twice. Edward watches tiny cracks spread across the shell.

  “This kind of talk reminds me of the hospital,” she says. “Everything sounded absurd then too.”

  “It’s a lot of money,” John says.

  Edward leans away from the table, as if the money has been physically piled in front of him. He remembers the hospital too—his bright sock elevated, a deep voice filling the air, and wondering why the president of the United States thought it was a good idea to have a conversation with a boy who’d recently fallen out of the sky.

  “What I recommend,” John says, “is that you put it out of your mind. You just turned thirteen.” They had marked the occasion a few weeks earlier, by eating cake. It had been a quiet celebration; no one sang the birthday song, because Edward had implored them with his eyes not to do so. If the birthday had to happen, it needed to be quick, and muted.

  “You won’t be twenty-one for eight years, and the money isn’t even real yet. There’s another period of red tape that needs to be gone through. We just wanted you to know, in case someone mentioned it at the NTSB hearing.” John spreads low-fat butter across a piece of toast. “Not that I expect anyone to do so, but we didn’t want you to be caught unawares.”

  “I don’t want it,” Edward says.

  “I hear you,” Lacey says. “Do you need any help packing for D.C.?”

  * * *

  —

  Shay keeps him company while he packs, though he half-regrets her presence. She wants to discuss the upcoming hearing, and he does not. He decided he wanted to go, months earlier, but he doesn’t want to think about it. Go, not think, some Neanderthal voice in his head repeats, whenever he starts to absorb her words.

  “It’s going to be like the courtroom scene in the movie,” she says. “Where the identity of the murderer is revealed.”

  “Not exactly.” Edward has all of his brother’s T-shirts laid out on the couch. He chooses two and stuffs them in the bag.

  “They’re going to explain why the plane crashed, right? They have the black box, so they know everything that happened.”

  I was on the plane, he thinks. And this is the first moment that he allows himself to place himself there, in the seat, beside his brother. It’s only a flash of a thought, a fraction of a second, but it lays out the frame of the plane around him: the sky, the wing, the other passengers.

  “God, I wish I could come,” she says. “You know that all those relatives will be there. Gary might be there too. Your scar is going to go crazy.” She clasps her hands. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you see some sign of your powers. You’ll be near the pieces of the plane and finding out the truth. It’s like you’re visiting the mothership.”

  Dr. Mike, in their session that week, had said, “You look checked out, Edward. You do know that you don’t have to go to Washington, right?”

  Edward had answered with language he knew Dr. Mike would understand: “I want to go.” Even though want was not the right word. All Edward knew for sure was that he’d said he would go, and so he would go.

  “Pay close attention,” Shay says. “Take notes, if you can. I need to know everything so I can help you.”

  Edward nods.

  “No one there can hurt you,” Shay says. “No one can hurt you ever again. You already lost everything, right?”

  This startles something deep inside Edward. He tries the words in his mouth. “No one can ever hurt me?”

  “That’s right,” Shay says.

  She claps him on the back right before he and John leave, like a colonel sending a soldier into battle. Lacey follows them out to the car, and when John goes inside for a minute, she gives Edward a tight hug.

  “Wish me luck. I have a job interview today.” Lacey smiles, but the rest of her face is anxious. “I have to do something with my days at some point, right? We all have to.”

  “Good luck,” he says.

  “I need to feel brave, so I’m wearing your mom’s blouse. I want to get stronger, Edward. For me and for you.”

  Edward hadn’t noticed, but now he sees that Lacey’s wearing a shirt with tiny roses on it, which his mom had worn to work at least once a week. The familiarity of the garment makes it difficult for him to swallow for a moment, and he experiences a flash of anger—that’s not yours, that’s my mom’s! But the anger dissolves almost immediately. He’s wearing his brother’s clothes, so how can he say it’s wrong for Lacey to wear her sister’s? Also, the idea that wearing the shirt gives Lacey some of his mom’s bravery is interesting. It makes Edward wonder what wearing Jordan’s clothes gives him. He hadn’t thought of it that way; the red sneakers, the parka, the pajamas, were simply a way of keeping his brother close by. Right now he’s wearing Jordan’s blue-striped sweater, and Lacey is wearing his mom’s blouse. When Lacey pulls him in for a final hug, he thinks, Who are we? He steps away from the hug and the tangle of Jane, Jordan, Jane, Jordan and almost throws himself into the car.

  The ride is four hours long and consists of gray highway after gray highway.

  John glances at his watch when they pass Princeton and says, “Your aunt is in her interview right now. We should think good thoughts.”

  Edward shifts beneath his seatbelt, looking for a more comfortable position. “You want her to have a job?”

  “I want her to be happy. And you’re doing better, right? So, she doesn’t have a reason to be home all the time.”

  Edward thinks, I’m doing better? The question feels unanswerable, and he has a memory of his father marking up one of his writing assignments and saying: You have to qualify your terms. What does better mean? Better than what?

  The trees are stripped of leaves; the sky is colorless. There are a series of warnings that they’re about to leave New Jersey and then a sign that they’re in Delaware. John gives Edward the choice of which Broadway soundtrack to listen to. Edward stares at the list of options, trying to figure out which one might be the least cheesy and awful. “Rent?”

  “Excellent decision,” John says, and they listen to impoverished young artists belt out their feelings for the rest of the drive.

  They share a hotel room that night, where Edward lies in the dark and listens to his uncle snore. His body had ached during the car ride, as if gravity weighed more than it usually did. He’d hoped the sensation would stop when the car stopped, and for a while it did, but in the darkness it’s returned. Edward wriggles beneath the papery sheets. The sensation reminds him of when he left the hospital and his body hurt in a new way, because it turned out the hospital had been an exoskeleton and without it he was vulnerable. He presses his hands against his forehead, trying to match the pressure with pressure. He’s in a hotel bed, in a strange darkness, listening to a twitchy heater mixed with his uncle’s wheezes. Edward feels unmoored, like he might be anywhere in space, anywhere in time, and anywhere is terrifying. When he manages to fall asleep, his body ejects him back into consciousness, into panic: Where am I?

  In the morning, over oatmeal, John says, “I think we should have a signal, in case you want to leave in the middle of the hearing. We can leave, whenever you want.”

  “A signal?” He thinks of Dr. Mike and his baseball cap.

  “Maybe you could say, It’s hot in here. If you say that, we’ll leave.”

  “What if it just is hot in there?”

  John looks at him. “Then don’t comment on it.”

  “Oh, okay. Good idea.”

  The hearing is in the National Transportation Safety Board’s conference center in downtown D.C. They park several blocks away, due to closed streets. “Must be construction,” John says as they walk. When they turn onto the block, the foot traffic is thicker, and they have to navigate through a group of people.

  “What do you think?” John sounds like he’s asking himself.

&
nbsp; The hairs on Edward’s arms rise. But before he has a chance to figure out why, a man—smelling of sharp aftershave—turns to him and says in a polite voice, “May I touch your arm for a second? My wife was on the plane.”

  Edward’s first thought is that the man is lying. This is a man on a sidewalk, making things up. But someone else, as if released by the man’s words, is talking to him. “Hi, Edward? I’m sorry to bother you, but I wondered if you saw my sister?” A woman is holding out her phone, with a photo of a curly-haired, smiling brunette.

  “Oh,” Edward says, and his voice lilts, as if trying to make the syllable sound like an answer.

  “Her name is Rolina?” the woman says.

  Another phone is thrust in front of him, though from a different direction, with the image of a middle-aged Asian man. A blue-eyed, scruffy-looking guy offers a printed photograph of an old woman with white curls and an annoyed smile. “Does my mom look familiar?” he says.

  Edward directs his eyes where they’re pointing. Screens, faces. He thinks, I should respond, but he can’t. He feels like he’s forgotten how to speak English.

  He hears—the terms layered over one another—girl, mother, cousin, buddy, boyfriend.

  Someone says, “I want to make a documentary about sole survivors. Can I interview you?”

  John grabs Edward’s arm and pulls him to the right, off the sidewalk and into a dry cleaner. John turns the lock on the door. “I have a Kickstarter!” the guy calls through the glass.

  “Hey!” the man behind the counter says, but he goes quiet when he sees the cameras and faces at the window. “Is one of you famous?” he says. “You must be famous. You in movies?”

  Edward turns away from the window.

  “Can I have your autograph for my wall?”

  “I don’t think so,” Edward says.

  John calls the NTSB contact, and a security officer meets them at the dry cleaner, takes them out the back door, and uses his body to shield Edward from the crowd. Hands make their way past the officer and touch his arm, his shoulder. There are more phone screens, more photos of men and women. He’s pelted with names.

  Someone says, “What did it feel like to walk away from the plane?”

  A lady with a strong Southern accent recites the Hail Mary, which is the only prayer Edward knows by heart. A homeless woman, who was a fixture at their local New York playground, used to shout the prayer all day long from her favorite bench. Sometimes Jordan would sneak up on Eddie while he was balancing an equation, or reading, and chant into his ear: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Edward can remember the last time this happened, his brother singing, and how he had taken off his sneaker and thrown it at Jordan’s retreating back, both of them laughing.

  A voice from behind Edward yells: “No one would give a shit about this kid if he was black. You people realize that? They think he’s the second coming only because he’s white!”

  The security officer pulls open the door. John is in front, so he walks through first. Just before Edward enters, the officer leans close and says, “High five, buddy. It was badass, surviving that crash. Bad-ass.”

  Edward meets the man’s hand with his own—because he can’t see any alternative—and ducks inside the building. The beige metal door shuts behind him. He follows his uncle and a different security guard down two empty hallways. The officer points to a row of folding chairs on the side of the hall, tells them to wait, and disappears. John and Edward sit. There are no more footsteps, so Edward listens to himself and his uncle breathe. John seems to be inhaling and exhaling with deliberate slowness, as if to calm them both down. Shay was wrong, Edward thinks. He could be hurt. This hurt.

  “We’re safe here,” John says. “We’re in the basement. The hearing is on the third floor. We’re right around the corner from the elevator we need.” He delivers this practical information with such relief that Edward realizes information is his uncle’s favorite thing. Data, statistics, and systems keep the world straight for John.

  His uncle continues: “The hearing, assuming it’s on time, starts in ten minutes. We’re not late. I was told it usually runs about an hour. Ninety minutes tops.”

  Edward says, “I’m not going to the hearing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to. I thought I did, but I actually don’t.”

  “Edward?” John says.

  The boy wants to give his uncle an explanation, but he’s not sure what to say, because if he says that something inside his body has changed, such a statement would alarm John. But it’s true. It started yesterday in the car: a stripping of the flat sheet inside him. Walking through that crowd removed the last remaining threads. Hail Mary, full of grace. Edward realizes that he’d never been able to picture himself inside the hearing room. Had he known all along that he wasn’t going to attend? If so, then why did he come here?

  He feels newly aware, newly awake. He locates himself, like a blinking dot on a map, in this building, on this floor, on this metal chair with his hands on his knees. He’s 100 percent in Washington, District of Columbia, a state that’s not a real state. He’s sitting beside his uncle. Edward understands—the knowledge arising with a surprising casualness—the real reason he doesn’t sleep in his aunt and uncle’s house. He can’t bear to live with a mother figure, who’s not his mom, and a father figure, who’s not his dad. He had the real thing, and he lost it. Also, it’s too difficult to try to pretend to be John and Lacey’s kid, when their real kids never made it, and he’s not even a kid; he’s something else altogether.

  Edward leans over and puts his forehead in his hands. He thinks, in the direction of his uncle: I’m sorry.

  John clears his throat. “What they announce at the hearing today is public record. It will be published on the Internet and everywhere. I wanted to hear it first and take notes in case you had any questions about it. But now, if you want to leave, that’s fine.”

  “You should go to the hearing,” Edward says. “I might have questions. Shay asked me to take notes, so you could do that. I can wait here. The guard is stationed at the door. I’ll be fine.”

  John gazes at him with wide eyes. “Look,” he says, “your aunt thought I was wrong to bring you here, even though you said you wanted to come. I should have listened to her. I’m too stubborn.”

  Edward doesn’t like how upset his uncle looks, how upset he seems at himself. He says, “The hearing is about to start. You should definitely go.”

  “Would you feel better if I went to the hearing than if I didn’t?”

  “Yes.”

  When John leaves, Edward remains unmoving on the hard chair. He feels the plane seatbelt around his waist. His hands are cold, like they were when he pressed his palm against the wet plane window. He remembers pressing the window, then pulling his hand away. Edward feels the warmth of his brother’s body next to his. It doesn’t feel like a memory. He feels the tightness of the airplane seatbelt around his waist as he sits on the folding chair.

  Edward can feel the heartbeats of the mothers, fathers, siblings, spouses, cousins, friends, and children upstairs. His body syncs up with their sadness. He’s glad he stayed in the basement. The others are beating the plane windows with their fists, and Edward is down here because he doesn’t belong with them. He belongs with the dead, the ones who didn’t show up, the ones who know everything, and nothing.

  After an hour, he hears real footsteps and looks up to see his uncle striding toward him. “The hearing just ended.” John glances over his shoulder. “We should leave right away. We’re going to meet the guard by the side door. Hundreds of people showed up, too many to fit in the room.”

  Edward nods, because this makes sense to him. He’d been listening to hundreds of heartbeats.

  “Most of them came because they wanted to see you, which I think is outrageous.” John wa
ves his hand, as if to sweep those people away. “Someone from the hearing has a car and driver out back. She’s going to take us to our car, so we can avoid the crowd.” He leads the way toward the doors. “I took a lot of notes,” he says, over his shoulder. “The commissioner spoke, and I took photos of the slides they presented. I’ll show them to you when we get to our car.”

  Edward’s head is shaking before his uncle has finished speaking. “That’s okay. I don’t need to see them. I don’t want to hear about why the plane crashed.”

  His uncle flashes him a look. But Edward feels pleased, because after not knowing anything for sure, he knows this answer is correct. He doesn’t want to learn any more details about the worst day of his life.

  It occurs to him that maybe he came to Washington to figure out what he did want. Did he want to be part of the public drama surrounding the crash? Did he want to be swarmed on sidewalks? Did he want to be told that he’s special and chosen? Did he want the kind of answers the hearing offered? He gives something approaching a smile as he follows his uncle out the door. The answer is no, on every count, and the answer is a relief. He feels like he’s deliberately walking away from something—the plane, or the burning field where it broke apart.

  They cross a sidewalk and step through the open door of a very long car. From the inside, Edward decides it’s some kind of mini-limousine. There’s a suited man in the driver’s seat. Seated across from Edward is a thin elderly woman with a white bun and a velvet dress. Her hands are folded in front of her, her chin lifted. Although it never would have occurred to Edward that a person could sit with dignity—this woman does.

  “Greetings, Edward,” the woman says. “My name is Louisa Cox.”

  “Hello,” Edward says.