The Opposite of Hallelujah

by Anna Jarzab

  “And you think seeing him might help her get better?” Pawel asked. I could tell by the way he was looking at me that he wasn’t just curious. There was genuine interest and concern in his voice.

  “I hope it will,” I said.

  “Me too.” He smiled at me and put his hand on my shoulder.

  We shuffled down the hallway, slowly creeping up on room 301.

  “Do you want us to go in with you?” Reb offered. Erin and Pawel nodded in support.

  I shook my head. “I think this is something I’m supposed to do alone. Besides, it’s weird enough to have one teenager busting in on him during his office hours—four might be overkill.”

  “Good point,” Erin said. “We’ll wait over there.” She pointed to a long wooden bench that ran along the opposite wall, and headed for it.

  “Good luck,” Reb said, pulling me in for a hug. “I still have no idea what we’re doing here, but I’m rooting for you, Care Bear.”

  “Me too,” Pawel said. Then he added, “Care Bear.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re not allowed to call me that.”

  “Why not? Reb did,” he protested.

  “I’m special,” she told him, flashing him a smug grin.

  “You got that right,” I said. “Now get out of here. I’m nervous enough as it is.”

  Pawel reached over and squeezed my arm. “It’s going to be fine.”

  I took a deep breath. “I know.”

  Pawel smiled at me and walked over to the bench, where Reb and Erin were already sprawled out. I turned to the office door, gathered up all the courage I had at my disposal, and knocked.

  “Come in.”

  I pushed on the door, which was slightly open, and walked into a closet-sized office. Bookshelves took up whatever wall space there was, and another whole stack of shelves was crammed into a corner near the window. There was nothing on the walls but a map of what looked like Italy in a crappy frame, faded and browned with age, and two diplomas, although I couldn’t read them. An ancient-looking space heater rattled away on the floor, giving off a faint burnt smell.

  “That’s got to be a fire hazard,” I said, the words coming out of my mouth before I could stop them.

  “How can I help you?” The young man sitting at the desk looked up at me in slight distress. In the silent moments that followed, I could almost see him flipping hurriedly through his mental Rolodex, trying to match a face with a name and a class and coming away empty-handed. “I’m sorry, remind me what your name is.”

  “I’m not one of your students,” I told him, and he relaxed for a second, clearly glad that his memory wasn’t disintegrating, until he realized that there was very little reason for a teenage girl who wasn’t in one of his classes to be visiting him during office hours. “My name is Caro Mitchell.”

  “Hello, Ms. Mitchell.” His speech was stilted, and I could tell that the whole distinguished-professor thing was an act, from his cultivated stubble to his mussed just-rolled-out-of-bed hair to his horn-rimmed glasses to his worn tweed jacket with leather arm patches. He looked like a little boy pretending to be a professor. It made me like him a lot. “What can I do for you?”

  “I came—” I started to feel weak in my legs, and a wave of nervousness washed over me suddenly. I gestured to the chair across from his desk. “I’m sorry, can I sit?”

  “Oh, please,” he said. “Go ahead. Are you okay? You look kind of pale.”

  “I’m fine,” I said dismissively. The significance of the moment wasn’t lost on me, and I was starting to lose my nerve. “I came to ask you for a favor.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”

  “Right. Okay. So I know there’s no way you’d remember me, because the last time you saw me I was still a baby—if you ever met me at all, which maybe you didn’t—but I think you probably remember my sister. Hannah Mitchell.”

  His face dropped. “You’re Hannah’s sister?” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Of course, you’d be all grown up now. You look like her. What are you, about sixteen?”

  I nodded.

  “I haven’t seen Hannah since I was a kid. Is she all right?” he asked. He seemed to be carefully weighing his words, not saying too much, not being specific.

  “Not really,” I told him. His eyes widened and I knew what he was thinking. “I mean, she’s alive, I don’t mean to scare you. It’s just that she’s … well, she’s sick. Physically and, um, spiritually. I was hoping you could help her.”

  “Me?” Byrne put his hand over his heart. “How can I help her? What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s very depressed,” I explained, speaking as quickly as possible so I could get all the words out before the tears came. “She’s not eating. She’s in the hospital now because she collapsed. She’s had a really hard time readjusting. You heard that she was a nun, right?”

  “No, I didn’t hear that. Hannah was a nun?” He repeated it in a dull way, as if the information wasn’t quite sinking in. It must have been years since he’d even thought about Hannah, and now here I was, shoving it all at him at once. It was starting to feel like an ambush. “I guess that’s not a huge surprise.”

  “No?”

  “I remember her being very religious,” he said flatly. “I’m a little confused. What does this have to do with me?”

  “She’s been through a lot. I’m not trying to diagnose her or anything, believe me, but I think—there’s just a part of me that really believes that so much of what she’s going through now, what she’s been going through for over ten years, has to do with Sabra’s death.” I held his gaze with my own, willing him not to look away. I knew if he looked away, I would never convince him to come. There was a faraway expression on his face, like he’d plunged deep into a memory and he was in danger of being carried off by the current. His eyes were filled with profound sorrow, and I ached for him, and Hannah, too. And Sabra, for never having gotten to grow up. The unfairness of it all seemed to take up all the space in the room. It was getting hard to breathe.

  I gave him some time to process everything. Just as I opened my mouth to speak again, he said, “Is Hannah in therapy?”

  “Yes. Or she will be, soon. But I really think it would help if you visited her,” I said. There. I had done it. I’d asked him to do the hard thing, the thing I didn’t know that I could ever do if I was in the same position.

  “Why would that help?” he demanded. “It would probably just make it worse.”

  “Well, burying it hasn’t done her very much good,” I snapped, instantly regretting it. How could you lose your patience with someone in so much pain? And yet it was easy. I’d done it to Hannah over and over again. I’d pretended I hadn’t seen how much she was struggling, but of course I had. I could see it now in Byrne—not the same darkness, but the loss. That was painfully real. I couldn’t turn away from it anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this is hard. Believe me, I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t think it would really help Hannah.”

  Byrne took a deep breath but said nothing. He wasn’t even looking at me anymore; he was staring off to the left somewhere, so intently that I turned, expecting someone to be standing there.

  “Professor Griffin?” I asked, hoping to shake him from whatever mind trap he’d fallen into.

  His gaze drifted slowly back to me. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay. I just—will you please come see Hannah? I think it could help her come to terms with a few things. She’s so alone in this. She’s been keeping it inside for so long, I think being able to hear you say that it wasn’t her fault might start the healing process.” My heart was bloated. It felt as though it had swelled up so large it was pressing against my rib cage. I wanted so badly for him to agree to come to the hospital. Say yes, say yes, say yes, I repeated in my head, hoping against hope to make it happen through sheer force of will.

  “Unless, of
course, you do blame her,” I said in a voice so quiet it was almost a whisper.

  He shook his head. “Of course not. But the fact that Sabra might be alive today if Hannah had immediately gone for help is hard to forget. I couldn’t be around Hannah, knowing that.”

  “So you won’t do it?” I steeled myself against the tears. I was not going to cry in this stranger’s office. I was sick of being a weepy mess. There had to be a stronger me inside who was capable of withstanding all the sadness.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. I could tell he meant it. And to my surprise I wasn’t angry with him. Hannah, who I wouldn’t even claim as my own sister a few short months earlier, was sick in the hospital and I was hardly keeping it together. I didn’t even want to imagine what it would be like to lose her entirely, before I’d really gotten to know her. Sabra was gone forever. Even after all these years, the pain had to be nearly insurmountable when faced head-on.

  But I couldn’t let it go that easily. I’d come to convince him, and I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t try as hard as I could to make that happen. “How can you say no?” I pressed. “She’s in so much pain. You can’t just let her go on shouldering all the blame for something that happened when she was twelve years old, something that wasn’t even her fault!”

  Byrne took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I’ve upset you,” he said. His voice shook slightly, and I felt a flush of shame. If seeing Hannah was going to be torture for Byrne, was it really fair for me to keep pressuring him? It was hard to do what was right for everyone.

  I tugged at my ponytail. “You haven’t upset me. I just really wanted to help her.”

  “I’m so sorry Hannah’s sick,” he said.

  “Please stop saying you’re sorry,” I said. “It just makes me feel like a jerk.”

  “You’re not a jerk,” Byrne insisted. “I get it, I really do. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for … If someone I loved was sick, I’d go to any lengths to help them. But I don’t think Hannah and I seeing each other is the Hail Mary pass you’re hoping for, Caro. I can’t do it. Maybe that makes me a coward.”

  I shrugged.

  “But it doesn’t change the fact that I just can’t,” he said.

  “Thanks for taking the time to see me,” I told him, standing up. “I appreciate it. I’m sorry about … all this. Bringing it up.”

  “No,” he insisted. “You shouldn’t be. If it was the other way around, I’d knock on every door just on the off chance that someone could help. I wish I could do something.”

  “You can,” I said. “But I understand why you won’t.” I slipped out the door, too afraid to look at the expression on his face.

  For a moment, I was drained of all feeling except that of powerlessness, but the space hope had left behind started filling up quickly with resentment and anger. As much as I understood Byrne’s decision, I raged against it. His sister was dead—what more could he do for her? My sister was alive, but in need of something from him. Why couldn’t he give that to her? What was the harm in saying, “It’s not your fault”? How hard could that possibly be to do?

  On top of everything, there was a bitter feeling of failure. I was lost in the enormity of what I’d failed to do.

  Desperate to leave, I glanced down the corridor to the bench where my friends were supposed to be sitting, but it was empty except for a piece of paper torn from a notebook. I walked over to it and read the note.

  Gone for coffee. Text when you’re done.

  I folded the note three times and stuck it into my pocket.

  Erin, Reb, and Pawel were at the Starbucks across the street in the student center. I lingered outside the door for a moment, letting the brisk winter wind chill my hot face and watching my friends talk and laugh. After our breakup, I’d thought my relationship with Pawel was over, but looking at him now through the frosty window, I knew that wasn’t the case. He’d ditched school to provide moral support for a mission he didn’t even really understand. He was my friend, and he cared about me. And the girls were like sisters to me. How did a person get so lucky? I was momentarily rooted to the spot by the magnitude of it.

  Reb caught sight of me outside and waved me in. I smiled at her, opening the door and bringing the cold in with me.

  “How’d it go?” Pawel asked, as sincere as I’d ever seen him. I wanted to put my arms around him and hug him so tightly he couldn’t breathe. I wanted to bury my face in his neck and have him stroke my hair. Instead, I tried to look like everything was okay. I felt like I owed them that for being so invested in something they didn’t understand.

  “Okay,” I said, and that was that. I could have broken down and cried about how hopeless everything was, how my one chance to help my sister had dissipated like smoke at the very tip of a bonfire, but as much as I still believed that, I refused to accept the truth of it. I might not be able to fix Hannah’s heart, or turn back time so that she could go for help and save Sabra, but I could still be her sister. I could still be her friend. My ears still worked and my heart was open.

  I had felt closed before, hunkered down with my familiar friendships and rigid schedule, but I felt it now, the widening of a space I hadn’t even known was there. I’d been split open like a log. It was uncomfortable and scary, but painless. The best part was that now that I knew the space was there, I realized how very much there was to fill it with, and how much room there was left over for new and beautiful things still to come.

  I asked Reb to drop me off at the hospital on the way home. All three of them offered to come in with me, but I politely declined.

  I found Hannah awake in her room, reading a book my mother had brought her from the hospital gift shop.

  “Is it any good?” I asked, setting my bag down by her bed and dropping into the chair.

  “Oh, not at all,” she sighed. Her eyes were tired but her smile was genuine. I felt a small hope flicker to life. “How was school?”

  “Good. Boring. You know, the same. How’re you feeling?”

  “Better,” she said, emphasizing the word, as if saying it with enough confidence could make it true. But I could see a bit of a change. She looked better. Already she was less pale and sallow, the dark circles under her eyes lighter, the bones jutting out beneath her skin a little less pronounced. “They’ve been feeding me through a tube,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “It’s humiliating. I feel like an invalid,” she complained. The hope gobbled the words like oxygen. She was whining instead of languishing in a deep, inexpressible sadness. That had to be a positive development.

  “Well, if you’ll just agree to eat something, they’ll take you off the tubes,” I said, although I didn’t know if that was true. It sounded right. But maybe I was pressing too hard on a tender spot. I glanced up at her face, but her expression hadn’t changed. She didn’t respond, and I fished around in my brain for something else to say, something apart from her illness and her darkness.

  “I’ve tried. I can’t keep much down. They’re going to send me to a rehab clinic when I’m strong enough,” Hannah said, doing her best to avoid looking at me. “They don’t think I can go home without treatment.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t tell from the tone of her voice how she felt about it, but knowing her, I figured she probably wasn’t thrilled. Hannah wanted nothing more than to shove her issues into a dark corner. Just telling me about the clinic had to have been hard for her; she must’ve thought I’d find out anyway.

  “I don’t want to go,” she said, tears springing to her eyes. “The doctor was telling me about it. He said it was ‘secure,’ but what that means is that they lock you in and don’t let you talk to anybody except the staff.” She glanced down at her hands, which were folded neatly in her lap. “Reminds me of another place I don’t want to be.”

  Knowing that there was nothing I could say to make it better, I fished around in my brain for another subject, something to distract her. “I’m building something for Pawel,” I to
ld her finally.

  For the first time since she’d entered the hospital, she visibly perked up. “What are you building?” she asked.

  “A Rube Goldberg machine,” I said. “Out of K’nex.”

  “What?”

  “K’nex. Do you know what an Erector set is?”

  “Yes.” She said it like, Duh, of course. But she knew better than anybody that recognizing such a pop culture reference was not a given for her.

  “Like that, but plastic,” I said. “Anyway, a Rube Goldberg machine is a complicated motion apparatus that performs a simple task in a convoluted way. Pawel wanted to do one for the science fair, but I made him do single-bubble sonoluminescence, so to thank him I’m making it to serve as a part of our display at the exposition.”

  “What does a Rube Goldberg machine have to do with single-bubble whatever?” Hannah asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing, I guess. I just want it to be there. And I want to make it for him.”

  “What does your machine do?”

  I shrugged. “No idea yet. I have to go to the toy store after school tomorrow and buy all the pieces. You should see his room, Hannah—it’s filled with these things. They’re completely amazing, so complex and fascinating. I totally get why he’s obsessed with them.”

  “Intricate causality,” Hannah murmured. “Like little worlds unto themselves.”

  “Yeah, sort of.” I put my feet up on the edge of her bed and leaned back in the chair.

  “That’s really nice of you, Caro,” she said.

  “You say that like you’re shocked,” I teased. “Like I never do anything nice.”

  “You know I don’t mean it like that,” Hannah scolded gently.

  “Can I ask you a serious question?” I looked toward the window. Someone—a nurse; my mother, maybe—had drawn the curtains back and the shades up. I could see a pair of birds tussling on the sill. Not everything left in search of warmth at the onset of a barren winter. For some reason that was a comforting thought.