by Una LaMarche
“No, Mom, it’s fine,” I say with a sigh. “I’ll go.”
I hang up and think frantically of some way to alert Devorah. I could run over to our meeting spot and tell her in person, but that’s five long blocks in what’s now, cruelly, the wrong direction. And I would never forgive myself if anything happened to Joy because I took a hormone-fueled detour. I could send a proxy, find some kid who’d go tell her for me for $5. But flagging down a strange kid on the street would look all kinds of wrong, and the people who’d volunteer—like the homeless guys who loiter around liquor stores, holding the door in the hopes that someone’ll reward them with a nip of Bacardi—I wouldn’t trust around Devorah. If they bothered to tell her at all.
Write a message on the flowers, I think suddenly. But what are the chances she’d pass this way—0.01 percent? The girl can’t even eat a Whopper.
Feeling defeated, I leave the roses on a fire hydrant outside Burger King, figuring at least they’ll make someone happy, even if it’s not the right someone. The mix CD, though—I’m keeping that. And somehow, I swear, I’m going to make sure Devorah gets it.
Chapter 11
Devorah
SEPTEMBER 7, 4 PM
Isaiah 43:18 says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” And yet here I am, back exactly where I started. As in literally the same gray plastic bucket seat where I waited for news of Liya’s birth ten days ago. Only now, the duct tape is gone from the big window, and outside it’s gorgeous and sunny, the perfect late summer day. We have school on Sundays, so it’s never been a “weekend,” but it’s hard not to think of it that way sometimes, when everyone else is going to the park, sunning on their stoops, letting their fingers get sticky with ice cream. Or, if you’re my family, hanging out at the hospital. Not that I don’t want to visit Liya—of course I do—but now this place just makes me depressed. Because I could ride the elevator all day long and there would still be no Jaxon.
On Wednesday I waited for an hour. I stood leaning against the wrought-iron fence that separates Washington Avenue from the squat glass greenhouses of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I wore my highest hemline, a skirt that I technically outgrew last year, and a lightweight pink top that I changed into in a Dunkin Donuts bathroom after I left the store, telling my father I had to work on an assignment with Shosh. I plucked my eyebrows in that dingy bathroom mirror, which might as well have been a dented tin can for how little I could see. I put on lip gloss. And then, my stomach performing a series of nauseating flips, I stood there, stock-still, for an hour getting catcalls from the beer-bellied, wife-beater-clad men streaming in and out of J & J Food Market (“THE SANDWICH PROFESSIONAL”—a doubtful piece of proud advertising on its awning) across the street. First it was “Waiting for someone, gorgeous? He’s a lucky man!” Then it turned into “You can come to my house if he don’t show, sweetie. Heh heh heh.” Finally, at six o’clock, my humiliation was compounded by their hollow condolences. “He stood you up, princess!” “You’re too good for him!” I would have left, hidden in the lobby of the apartment building a block north, or taken refuge in the gardens, but I was convinced that the second I left, he would finally appear, out of breath and grinning, explaining it all away, making nothing else matter.
But apparently, something else mattered more. I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around it and make it okay, but I can’t. He seemed so happy to see me, so eager to meet again. When I left the restaurant I was floating. I could barely sleep that night, planning my outfit, what I would say, what he would say. Debating whether he might try to kiss me, and if I would let him.
I couldn’t have made all of that up, could I? Was he just a flirt? Was my crush one-sided? Maybe not having had many crushes (and barely having touched a member of the opposite sex) puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to reading body language, but I thought he really liked me. What could have happened in twenty-four hours to change that?
For the first two days after the failed meeting, I vacillated between sadness and anger, and I’m not sure which felt worse. The intermittent urges to weep in the middle of math were embarrassing, but not as scary as the flashes of shame-laced outrage that made me want to turn my desk upside-down and storm out of class. I couldn’t pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes at a time, and I couldn’t vent to Shosh because I knew she would be mad at me for going to see him in the first place. At the store, I forgot to restock shelves and priced an entire row of napkins at $199.99 a package. On Thursday I gave Mrs. Goodstein the wrong change, three dollars and ten cents in her favor. She noticed and returned the money right away, but I still knew.
Friday was the first time it occurred to me that something could have happened to him. Like, maybe he got sick or injured, and of course he would have no way of reaching me to let me know. It’s so stupid, but on our way home from work for Shabbos, Hanna and I passed a dead bouquet of roses on the sidewalk outside a Burger King, still in their deli wrapper, and I thought for a second that maybe they were from Jaxon, and that he got attacked before he could give them to me. And as unlikely as it was, I became obsessed with the thought of him bloodied and broken, lying in a hospital bed somewhere. I was so upset and out of my head that before my father came home for Shabbos dinner, I snuck into his study on the third floor and opened the web browser on his laptop. (He almost never uses the Internet at home, but he needs it occasionally to place orders and to check the business e-mail, which gets a lot of spam messages from Nigerian diplomats.) I feverishly typed “Jaxon” into the search bar, and then froze. Jaxon what? Jaxon elevator boy? Jaxon Wonder Wings? I finally settled on “Jaxon Brooklyn,” and ended up watching a video of a fat white baby’s first birthday party. Then I realized I didn’t know how to erase the search history, so I just shut down the laptop and hid it underneath a sheaf of papers. I hope it’s true that G-d protects fools.
“Devorah!” my mother says, pinching my arm.
“Ow, what?” I look up to find her, Hanna, Miri, Amos, Zeidy, and Jacob standing over me. Ugh, Jacob. Why can’t he be working on Sunday along with all of the other able-bodied men in the family?
“Did you hear me? We can go in and see Rose and the baby now.” She tugs me to standing and looks at my face with narrow-eyed intensity, like she’s inspecting a melon for bruises. “You haven’t been yourself lately. Are you getting sick?”
“No,” I say, batting her hand away.
“Well, something’s wrong,” she murmurs.
“Maybe she’s turning into a zombie!” Amos says. “Like on that show!” My mother whips her head around.
“What show are you watching? And where?”
“I saw a poster on the subway,” Amos says, holding his hands out and letting his tongue go slack. “Flesh-eating warriors!” Only because he’s not using his tongue it sounds like “shlesh eeing awriors!”
“Ew,” Miri groans.
“Awesome,” Hanna says.
“Let’s go,” Jacob says impatiently. “Devorah, bring your brain or leave it here, it makes no difference to me.”
I look at my mother, expecting her to give him a verbal slap, but instead she just chuckles gamely and takes his arm, and we all file down the hall toward the NICU, where I notice for the first time that the hallways are lined with framed photos of wrinkly, sleeping newborns curled up in watermelons and bean pods, as if they arrived on earth not through the birth canal but rather by special delivery from some idyllic organic grocer.
“Please tell me Rose isn’t going to do one of those photo shoots,” Hanna whispers, and we snicker.
Just as I’m crafting a retort about how I’ve always longed to make a nest out of challah, I stop short, the words caught in my throat like a chicken bone. Because that’s when I see him, standing at the end of the corridor near the waiting area, where we were just sitting. Jaxon. And he’s not bloodied, or broken, or any of the things I feared. Instead, he’s smiling at me
and raising his hand in a tentative wave.
“Girls!” Jacob says. “Hurry up. These visits are on a schedule.”
Jaxon freezes just as I find my legs again. I meet his eyes, but before he has the chance to do anything, I panic. I turn my back. I walk away.
• • •
Liya is sleeping in Rose’s arms as we circle around them in the NICU, all smelling like the pomegranate hand sanitizer we’ve just doused ourselves in. I want nothing more than to be present in this moment and to lose myself in the sight of my sister, glowing and grinning and inexplicably already thin again, cuddling her daughter, a blanketed burrito topped with a tuft of downy, margarine-colored hair. But instead I’m focusing all my energy on not letting anyone know I’m completely freaking out.
What is Jaxon doing here? How did he know I would be here? Is it some incredible coincidence, or was he looking for me? And if he’s looking for me, is that thrilling or creepy? Did Hanna see him in the hallway? Worse—did Jacob? And what do I do now? I can’t let him leave without seeing him . . . but I also can’t let anyone else see me see him. For a minute I worry that my racing thoughts will make my head explode. At least I’m already in a hospital.
“She looks like your grandmother,” Mom whispers. “Don’t you think so, Papa?”
“Well . . . Deborah was a bit taller,” Zeidy jokes.
“Can I touch her?” Miri asks shyly.
“Gently,” Rose says, and guides my youngest sister’s small hand over the baby’s head. “She still has soft spots on her skull.”
“Cool!” Amos says. It’s the first thing about the baby he’s seemed impressed by.
“They’re called ‘fontanelles,’” Jacob explains, bending down to kiss Liya on the head while dutifully avoiding contact with Rose. “Her bones haven’t fully fused yet.” I stare down mutely at the baby, thinking that maybe that’s my problem: that I still have soft spots, places where my faith is weak.
“Devorah,” my mother says, “you’ve gone white. Are you sure you aren’t getting sick?”
“You should leave if you’re sick,” Rose says, furrowing her brow and clutching Liya against her chest. “Any germs are dangerous for the baby.”
“Another reason why I don’t trust hospitals,” Jacob mutters.
I shake my head and attempt a smile. “No, no, I’m just hungry, I think. Low blood sugar.”
“You ate a whole stack of pancakes before we left the house,” Hanna says, and I make a mental note to pinch her later.
“Why don’t you go downstairs and get yourself a banana or something?” Mom says, taking out her wallet and pulling out a five-dollar bill. She hands it to me, along with the perfect excuse to roam the halls alone. But just as I close my fingers around it, Jaxon appears in the long rectangular window behind my mother’s back. Luckily everyone but me and Rose is facing the opposite direction. His eyes widen as he sees us, and I shake my head quickly.
“You don’t want a banana? Fine, get whatever,” my mother says as I watch Jaxon retreat behind the heavy white door to the stairwell a few yards away, beckoning me to join him. I glance down at Rose, who is gazing beatifically at Liya, paying zero attention to me. Good. Maybe I can actually pull this off. It’s terrifying, though, like the time when I was five and I got stuck in the oak tree outside Aunt Varda’s house. Isaac and Niv were supposed to help me down, but they ran off together, and no one inside the house could hear me yelling. I clung to a frail branch ten feet above the ground for what felt like an hour before my father arrived, red-faced and panting from his unexpected sprint, to lift me down. Every second felt like the last second before my inevitable fall.
I slip past my family and out the door, the bill my mother gave me already damp and crumpled in my fist. The closest elevator faces the NICU window at a diagonal angle to the stairwell door. In other words, even if I pretend to wait at the elevator, there’s no way to double back without crossing in full view of everyone. But then I realize that I can take the elevator down one floor and enter the stairs there, climbing to meet Jaxon. So I push the button and make sure to wave conspicuously as I get on. I see Jacob say something that makes my siblings laugh, and I’m sure it’s a joke at my expense. Someday, I promise myself as the doors close, I will tell him exactly what I think of him.
The third-floor layout is exactly the same as the fourth, so once I get off the elevator I walk the dozen feet or so to the stairs with my heart in my throat. The door is marked with a big red EXIT sign, and as I push down on its wide silver bar with all my weight, a thought drifts through my head like an ominous cloud in an otherwise clear blue sky:
In making this choice, will I ever be able to come back?
Chapter 12
Jaxon
SEPTEMBER 7, 4:15 PM
The look on her face, man, when she saw me in the hallway? I almost convinced myself to turn around and go home. I had prepared myself for anger, but I didn’t expect her to freeze me out like that. Then again, I guess I took her by surprise. And her folks were with her—plus that dude Jacob who was here the night of the storm. I know they can’t know about me, or about us . . . if there is such a thing as us.
The thing that made me stay was actually something my mom said when I got home from picking up Joy (who, by the way, was fine and engrossed in a game on her coach’s iPhone when I showed up, greasy and despondent, to rescue her from imagined predators). I was apologizing for taking so long when she interrupted me with a cluck of the tongue and a kiss on the cheek. “I know I can always count on you, Jax,” Mom said. “You’re reliable, and that’s no small thing. You’re going to make your wife very happy someday.” At first I just brushed it off as the kind of affectionate, sort of embarrassing thing a mom says to her kid that’s really more of a pat on the back for her. But the more I thought about it, the more I got worked up. I am reliable. If I say I’m gonna do something, it’s done. If I say I’m gonna be somewhere, I’m there. I don’t make empty promises, and I don’t start things I don’t finish; that’s just who I am. It’s who I’ve always been. And I needed Devorah to know that. After a night of tossing and turning and having really obvious stress dreams involving a tidal wave crashing over Eastern Parkway, I decided that if she wanted to write me off I’d let her, but not until she knew why I stood her up, and why that will never happen again.
My first day at the hospital was Thursday. I only work Monday through Wednesday at Wonder Wings, and technically Thursday afternoons are reserved for basketball at Brower Park with Ryan and some guys from the neighborhood, but since Ryan was still avoiding me I felt fine blowing it off. I didn’t want to arouse suspicion, so I came in through the ER entrance and hopped right on the elevator without talking to the check-in nurse, acting like I was just coming back from a phone call. My plan was to go up to Labor and Delivery and pretend I was supposed to meet my friend (Devorah) who was visiting her niece in the NICU, to try to get the doctors to tell me when she was actually going to be there. But the nurse I started sweet-talking, a big woman with short, bright yellow hair and an expression my mom would call permanent bitchface, was having none of it.
“So you’re not related to the infant in question?”
“Uh . . . no. But—”
“And you don’t have your ‘friend’ Devorah’s last name.”
“I—”
“Or her phone number?”
I tried to change my tack. “Look, we just met,” I said, shooting her my best humble nice-guy smile. “Here, actually. We got stuck in an elevator when the power went out. But we made plans to meet today, and I just want to know if she’s here.”
Big Yellow looked at me without a glint of sympathy in her eyes. “That’s cute,” she said. “You can tell it to the security guard I’m about to call.”
So that went well. I almost didn’t come back on Friday, but I couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that came from knowing Devorah was out t
here hating me, or worse, thinking I had just played with her. So even though I had a tutoring job in Park Slope at four thirty, I raced over to Interfaith after my last class. I didn’t even have a plan, I was just going to do a quick lap and leave, but as luck would have it the minute I stepped off the elevator (our elevator, I couldn’t help thinking as I noticed the dent in the ceiling hatch where my Converse All Star had collided with the metal), I ran into the red-haired doctor who fixed Ryan’s shoulder. I introduced myself, and she seemed to remember me.
“Your friend, Tony, how’s he doing?” she asked.
“Tony?” I frowned, before I remembered Ryan’s ridiculous alias. “Oh yeah, he’s fine. Still stupid, but fine.”
She laughed politely and then looked away, the way you do when you want to end a conversation but not be rude. I knew I had to get down to it.
“I know this is a weird thing to ask,” I said, “but I’m looking for a girl I met here last week. You delivered her sister’s baby?”
“I deliver a lot of babies,” she said with a patient smile.
“This one was early, by like a lot,” I said. “And the girl and her sister, they’re, um, Hasidic?”
“Oh, sure, of course, I remember them,” she said.
“Have they been back here?”
“Well, the child’s mother has been here every day,” she said hesitantly. “But since you’re not a relative I can’t let you see her.”
“That’s okay; it’s really the sister I’m looking for,” I said. “Do you know if she’s coming today?” The doctor smiled again.
“Since it’s Friday I’d guess that’s unlikely,” she said.
“Why does it matter what day it is?”