by Kate Hewitt
“Making pancakes,” Ruby announced. “And I’m cracking the egg.”
Wordlessly I handed her another one, hoping this one made it into the bowl.
“Can I help?” Ella asked, and again I was expansive in my agreement, because what else did I have to give them right now?
“Of course you can. Draw up a stool.”
She did, and for a few moments, as Ruby whisked the batter, I felt a fragile sense of peace, as translucent as a bubble. I could hold onto it if I didn’t let myself think too hard about anything, if I just concentrated on this moment—the sunlight streaming through the window, gilding my girls’ hair in gold, the simplicity of adding sugar and flour, eggs and milk. If I could just not think…
“It’s starting to bubble!” Ruby exclaimed as I spooned the batter into the pan.
“Can I flip it?” Ella asked.
“Sure, just be careful.”
I held her hand as she started to flip it, but we were both startled by a screech from the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
I jerked around, and Ella’s hand hit the hot pan. She let out a cry as I stared at Alexa, whose face was blotchy, her hair a nest of tangles, her eyes wild.
“Daddy, I’m burned!”
“Sorry, sorry, Ella.” I hurried her to the sink, running her hand under cold water, as Alexa glared at us.
“You’re making pancakes? You’re actually making pancakes? Mom is dead and you’re acting like this is a fun Saturday morning!” Her voice split in a shattered wail.
“Alexa, it’s just breakfast.” I tried to speak calmly, even though I felt on the brink of something—tears or rage, I didn’t know which. My hand shook as I kept Ella’s steady under the stream of water.
“Daddy, don’t, it’s cold.”
“The pancake’s burning!” Ruby cried, and she reached towards the pan.
“Don’t touch it!” My voice came out in a roar, and all three girls froze, eyes wide and wild as they stared at me as if they didn’t know me. I didn’t know myself. “You’ll burn yourself, Ruby.” I tried to speak more calmly, but I didn’t think I managed it. I took a deep breath, feeling it shudder through me.
All three girls were still watching me warily—Alexa in a fury, Ella looking woebegone and scared, Ruby abject.
“Look, let’s just all take it easy, okay?” I felt as if I could howl. “We’re making breakfast, Alexa, that’s all. It’s not meant to be…” I trailed off, because I didn’t know what it was or wasn’t meant to be. I was just trying to cope, moment by moment, and clearly I wasn’t doing a good job of it. Maybe I never had.
“Well, I don’t want any,” Alexa snapped, and then she stomped back into her room, slamming the door behind her so hard it felt as if the whole apartment rattled.
“It’s ruined,” Ruby said sadly as I lifted the smoking pan off the burner.
“It’s okay, Ruby.” I started to scrape the burned pancake off the pan. This, at least, was easy. “We can make another one.”
* * *
A couple of hours later, it felt as if I’d scaled a mountain instead of simply making sure all three girls were fed, showered, and dressed. It was a school day, but no one wanted to go to school, and with Ruby and Ella parked in front of the TV, I decided to tackle Alexa.
She was in her room, sitting hunched on her bed, her thumbs flying over her phone. I knocked once on the door and poked my head in.
“Alexa?”
“Do you know what they’re saying about Mom?” It came out like an accusation.
I tensed, because I hadn’t expected that. I realized I’d been stupidly naïve in thinking I could shut the world out for a little while; of course Alexa still had her phone. I hadn’t thought to take it off her, because Laura had always been the one to collect it at nine and make sure it was on the charger in the kitchen.
What had she read? Why hadn’t I at least thought about that? All evening when I’d believed we were safe, protected from all the news flying around, Alexa had been handling it on her own.
I came in the room, closing the door quietly behind me. “What are they saying?”
Alexa’s lips trembled as she glared at me, as if this were somehow my fault. Perhaps it was. “They’re saying she might have known the man who shot her.”
“What?” I stared at her in blank incomprehension, pooling dread. “No, she couldn’t have…”
“They’re saying she volunteered at some refugee center downtown.” Alexa shrugged angrily. “She never even said anything about that. They think the man probably came from there. It’s trending on Twitter.”
Refugee center?
I shook my head slowly, reaching one hand out to the door to steady myself. “No. Mom didn’t…” I trailed off, because why had Laura been on that train? And who had come forward, who knew her and knew that she volunteered at a place I hadn’t known about, never heard of? Where had all this information come from?
I suddenly realized, with a sickening rush, how enormous my ignorance was. I’d been so consumed by grief, and having to tell the girls, I hadn’t even begun to deal with the rest of it, all the implications, repercussions, everything. Laura was dead. That was all that had mattered. But of course it wasn’t; it couldn’t be.
“Look.” Alexa flung out one hand, to show me her phone’s screen. I moved closer so I could see it properly.
Woman shot on subway might have known her assailant. She was walking from a refugee center where she volunteered when she was attacked.
I took the phone from Alexa, scrolling faster through the headlines and then swiping for the full text.
Witnesses have come forward to share their accounts of the murder of Laura West on a New York subway train. After an unknown man drew a gun, West was shot in the head, seeming to be a specific target. “She was weirdly calm throughout it all,” one witness, Maria Fratelli, 24, said, holding back tears. “Serene. She feels like an inspiration to me now.”
The man who shot West was able to leave the subway train without being apprehended and is still being sought by the police who believe he might have come to know West through her volunteer work at a local refugee center. So far, police do not believe this is a terrorist act but rather a single man acting of his own accord.
I thrust the phone back at Alexa. An inspiration? I felt sick. “This is all sensationalism, just to sell papers,” I told her numbly.
“It’s all online for free.”
“You know what I mean.” My head was buzzing with the overload of new information. What refugee center?
“Do you think Mom was calm?” Alexa asked, her eyes glittering with tears, her chin jutted out at a defiant angle. “Do you think she knew him? Do you think she knew what was going to happen?”
“I have no idea, Alexa, but…” I shrugged. I didn’t know anything, and I hated that.
“Do you think she wasn’t scared of dying, like that woman said?” She fired the question at me. “Do you think she’s gone to heaven?”
Heaven? “Alexa…” I began, and she glared at me.
“I know you don’t believe in God and all that stuff, but Mom did.”
I sighed, scrubbing my eyes. I’d always been upfront about my atheism, how I felt believing in God was like believing in the tooth fairy. Alexa knew that. Even Ruby knew that, although she insisted on believing in Santa Claus, despite my dislike of perpetuating such fantasies. My mother’s hippy-dippy belief in everything from angels to auras had soured me on the supernatural.
Laura might have been a bit more agnostic than me, but not that much, surely. We’d never been churchgoers. We hadn’t even had the girls baptised, much to Laura’s parents’ dismay. So why was Alexa acting like I was at fault here, while Laura was suddenly some saint?
Because she was dead. Because she needed to believe in something good, amidst all this.
I took a deep, steadying breath. Now was not the time to talk about this. Maybe Alexa needed the comfort of faith, of the concept of heav
en, to get through this moment. I could understand that. I almost wanted it myself. Besides, I had so many other things to process. I hadn’t even known Laura had volunteered at a refugee center. Why hadn’t she told me? What sort of secret life had she been living?
“I’m going to talk to the police this afternoon,” I told Alexa. “I’ll know more then, about what happened, and, more importantly, what they’re doing to find this man, because that’s the important thing now, Alexa. In the meantime, please try to stay off your phone. It doesn’t help, trust me.” I leaned forward, trying to keep my voice gentle. “Whatever Mom did or didn’t believe… how it all happened… even who did it… those are just details. They don’t matter, not to us, because she’s still gone. None of it will bring her back.” I felt as if I’d just put a chisel to my daughter’s heart and tapped once, twice. Now I started to see the fractures, hairline cracks all the way down.
Alexa’s lips trembled and there was a wild glitter in her eyes. “Maybe you just don’t want those things to matter.”
“Alexa.” I reached out, putting my hands on her shoulders, but she shrugged them off with an angry twitch. Still I met her eyes, tried to imbue her with a sense of certainty and strength I was far from feeling. “We’ll get through this, I promise.”
She let out of a huff of breath, angling her head away from me. I had no idea what the right thing to say was—if there even was a right thing. It had been a long time since I’d connected with Alexa, since I felt as if I could reach her. I tried to remember the days when I’d been her hero, when she’d scrambled onto my shoulders or snuggled next to me on the sofa. They seemed very far away.
“I’m sorry,” I finally whispered, because I was. “For everything. I can’t even begin to imagine life without Mom.”
A tear trickled down her cheek and she dashed it away with one hand, but it was quickly followed by another.
“But we will get through this,” I said, my voice as firm as I could make it. “We will. Somehow. Together.” The words sounded ridiculously hollow. I felt as if I were reading lines from the script of a Hallmark movie. Cue the violins, the tremulous smile, the commercial break. I’d pull Alexa into a hug as the light faded to black…
But, no. That wasn’t going to happen, not to us. Alexa pulled her knees up to her chest as she reached for her phone, her reddish brown hair—the same color as mine—hanging down in front of her face in an impenetrable curtain. “Whatever, Dad.” She almost sounded bored, except for the catch in her voice.
I waited there another moment, searching for something to say or do that would bridge this brokenness, but then I realized that nothing would. Maybe, for a little while at least, we simply had to be broken. There was no instant fix to this. There might be no fix at all.
* * *
By the time Laura’s parents were due to arrive after lunchtime, I felt as if the day had gone on forever, and all I wanted was for it to be over—this one, and the next, and the next after that. Time marching on, because maybe time would help us.
With Alexa in her room and Ella and Ruby still watching TV, I’d gone on my laptop to find out more, each detail seeming impossible to grasp, and yet sickening in its detail: Laura had volunteered at the Global Rescue Refugee Center near the Bowery station; a man had entered the subway car after her and drawn a gun. He’d pointed it at Laura and, according to some witnesses, she’d smiled. I’d never understand that. Then he’d shot her, in the head. She’d died instantly. The man had waved the gun around some more, and then the train had pulled into the station. He’d got off, disappearing into the crowds before anyone could say or do anything.
All those cowards in the subway car with her were eager enough to come forward now and tell their part of the story for the press. Where had they been when my wife had been shot? Why hadn’t they done anything, sounded an alarm, created a distraction, thrown something at him?
My phone buzzed with another voicemail. I’d had three reporters calling me this morning, asking for an interview. How they’d got my number, I had no idea. They were tenacious, that was for sure. But I didn’t want to involve the media. I didn’t want my life—my family—to become a circus, a freak show, for public consumption.
I just wanted this to end, but it felt as if it never would. In the distance, I heard the buzzer sound. My in-laws had arrived.
Six
Maria
The police were not at Global Rescue when I returned there the following week. The story had already died down in the media, after an initial flurry of reports and talk shows. In the week since, there had been a school shooting in Texas, and a political scandal. People’s outrage had moved on, as it always did, although there was the occasional editorial, a few seconds’ snapshot on the news.
I tried to forget about it, but I still felt sad about it all. I still kept thinking about Laura, and about her family. Those three girls. The widowed husband.
What did it have to do with me? Something, it seemed, and not just because I’d been questioned, but because I kept remembering so many little things. She liked sugar in her coffee, but treated it as if it were some sort of guilty secret. I’d made her coffee once, before her class, and she’d ducked her head, giving me an apologetic smile.
I know I shouldn’t…
Why not? It is just sugar. Something sweet.
No one where I live has sugar in anything.
Briefly I’d thought of the starvation months of the siege: sharing a small tin of meatballs between four people; digging up mouldy potatoes in other people’s abandoned gardens; queuing for the better part of a day for a humanitarian aid package shared between neighbors, and—better than Christmas—a single bar of chocolate doled out in tiny, precious bites. I’d smiled at Laura and put two teaspoonfuls in, and she’d laughed, seeming delighted by my action.
I missed her, I realized. I hadn’t even known her very well, but I missed her. Although perhaps I missed the idea of her more than the reality; perhaps I was embroidering her into the fabric of my life with a thread that had never really been there.
It was easy to do that, when you were alone. Without even realizing it, you made people more significant than they actually were. The postman who smiles and stops for a chat, the neighbor who occasionally asks how you are. When they are the only people you could call on in a crisis, you have to make it seem like more than it is.
Of course I had Neriha and Selma. Good friends, and yet they were still at a distance. They had husbands, children. I was on the periphery of their lives, not just by my choice, but by theirs. And for twenty-six years—since I was fourteen years old—that had been my choice—to be alone, to be lonely, because it was simply what I had to do, to get through each day. I didn’t know how else to be anymore, with anyone, and I didn’t think I ever would remember.
Perhaps that was why I fixated on Laura—because she was dead. She was safe. I could magic up a relationship where there hadn’t been much of one. And I kept remembering details—snippets she’d said in our few moments of conversation.
Phones. It’s all about the phones. Don’t ever let them have phones, Maria.
I’d smiled and said nothing, because I could never imagine a situation where I would have to withhold a mobile phone, or anything, from my child. Every aspect of that circumstance was beyond the realm of possibility.
And Ella, so quiet, so good, yet still a worry to Laura. She sees so much and says so little. I worry about her. I wonder what she’s thinking, but she never likes to tell me.
Yes, I knew how the quiet ones kept secrets.
* * *
Ten days after Laura’s death, Cathy made an announcement to all the volunteers. Laura’s funeral would be in two days, and she would be attending. Anyone who would like to come along could go with her.
I decided I would. It was my day off anyway, and I wanted to see Laura’s girls. Maybe I could make sure they were okay, in some small way, although I had no idea how I would go about that, or why I felt I needed to.
“I thought it didn’t involve us,” Selma remarked when we met in front of the center, everyone dressed in dark colors. It was just after Thanksgiving, another cold, bright day.
“It doesn’t, but I knew her,” I said simply. “I’d call her a friend. I want to pay my respects.”
There were four of us going—Cathy, Selma, me, and a man Laura had taught, from Ethiopia, who knew very little English. Cathy drove us in her minivan, and I watched the blur of buildings and cars stream by as we headed uptown, to a part of the city I’d never been to. I’d lived in New York for nearly two decades, but I’d always kept to my routes and routines—Astoria, the Bowery, occasionally a brief foray to the green market in Union Square. No further, because it felt safer to stick to the places I knew.
Now I watched out the window as the buildings fell away and the city opened up like a flower, surprising me with the huge green expanse of Central Park, the trees spreading their bare branches above it. I’d seen the park in films and on the TV, but the reality still enthralled me.
It reminded me of Veliki Park back in Sarajevo, with its endless, rolling green interspersed with statues and fountains, the mountains bisecting the horizon in a jagged line in every direction, breathtaking in their stark beauty.
We continued uptown, the park in the distance, elegant stone buildings lining Madison Avenue on either side. Everything felt bigger up here—the buildings, the sidewalks, the space.
“I’ll let you all off here,” Cathy said when we reached the church, “and then go find a parking garage.”
All four of us looked at her a bit askance; none of us wanted to go in on our own.
“You’ll be fine,” Cathy said brightly, and wordlessly we filed out of the van, to stand in front of a large, impressive-looking church, its twin square towers pointing to the hard blue sky.
People milled about on the steps in front, dressed in sophisticated black; some of the women wore hats. It felt, strangely, like a wedding; no one was crying or wailing or showing their grief. I caught the eye of an older woman who was somber and tight-lipped; she looked away quickly.