The Opposite of Hallelujah

by Anna Jarzab

  Sincerely,

  Byrne Griffin

  I took a deep breath. I tucked Byrne’s letter to me back into its envelope and turned the one addressed to Hannah over in my hands. I could’ve opened it, and for a while wondered if I should.

  But poking around in Hannah’s personal life had already caused enough problems between her and me. I folded the letter and put it into the back pocket of my jeans, figuring I wouldn’t make a decision about what to do about it until I spoke to my parents.

  Mom called my name from the front hall. “Caro, it’s time to go!” I found her standing by the door with a big gym bag full of things for Hannah hanging off her shoulder.

  “Here, let me carry that,” I offered, slipping the strap over my head.

  “Thanks,” Mom said. “Let’s go, okay? Dad’s probably already there.”

  “Hey, Mom?”

  “What’s up?” she asked. We both settled into the car and put on our seat belts while Mom started the ignition and backed out of the driveway.

  “I did something, but I don’t know if it was the right thing,” I told her.

  Mom kept her eyes on the road, but the expression on her face was really nervous. And she had a right to be nervous; after all, I’d done some pretty stupid things in the past few months. “What did you do?” she asked slowly.

  “I tracked down Byrne Griffin and went to see him,” I said. I waited as she tried to place the name.

  “Sabra’s brother?”

  “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I wanted him to come visit Hannah in the hospital. I thought it would help if he told her that Sabra’s death wasn’t her fault.”

  “Oh, honey,” Mom said with a sigh.

  “I know,” I said. “Anyway, he wouldn’t come.”

  “I’m sure it’s difficult for him,” Mom said. “After all this time.” I couldn’t read her expression, which freaked me out. Whenever I was confused, I turned to my mother. She was always so certain about everything. But not anymore.

  “He wrote Hannah a letter, though,” I told her, taking it out of my pocket and laying it in my lap. “He said he trusts us to figure out whether or not it’s a good idea for her to see it. I didn’t want to make a decision without you.”

  “That was a good call,” Mom said. “Did you open it?”

  “No,” I said. “Do you think we should?”

  “I don’t know, I— We’ll have to talk to your father.”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  Dad was already in Hannah’s room, so Mom went in to fetch him for a family caucus.

  “We’ll be right back,” she assured my sister, closing the door tightly behind her.

  “What’s going on?” Dad asked, looking slightly suspicious, slightly alarmed. He folded his arms across his chest and leveled a curious look at both Mom and me.

  “Caro, why don’t you explain?”

  I told Dad all about how I’d gone to see Byrne, and about the letter that had arrived for Hannah that day. I gave both of them Byrne’s letter to me to read, and when they were finished, I tried to find some certainty in their faces, but there wasn’t any. We were silent for a few minutes.

  Finally, I said, “We’re going to have to figure something out.”

  “I don’t know,” Dad said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “She’s been feeling better since she came here. I don’t want her to have some kind of setback, and since what happened to Sabra seems to be at least partially the cause of her problems, I don’t want to …” He trailed off, unwilling to say what we were all thinking: would this letter from Byrne send her back over the edge, for good this time?

  “I think we should show it to her,” I said decisively. I felt proprietary over the letter; after all, Byrne had sent it to me, not to my parents. And I didn’t think what he had to say would hurt Hannah. I wouldn’t have gone to him in the first place if I had thought seeing him would upset her in the long run. I knew it probably would at first, but if he really didn’t believe it was her fault, and wanted her to know that, what could possibly be the harm of her hearing it?

  I tried to explain this to my parents, but they seemed unmoved.

  “Hannah needs to move forward with her life,” Mom said. “Not delve back into past tragedies.”

  “Yeah, that worked out pretty well for her at the convent,” I said.

  “That was different,” Mom said.

  “How?” I asked. She couldn’t come up with a response to that.

  “Caro has a point,” Dad said. Mom glared at him, but he stayed strong. “Hannah can’t seem to forgive herself, but maybe if someone who was just as close to Sabra tells her she shouldn’t blame herself, she might listen to them.”

  “That’s why I wanted him to come in person,” I said. The letter was, in all honesty, a disappointment and a really lame substitute.

  “I understand why he couldn’t,” Mom said softly.

  “So we’re agreed, then?” I asked. “We show Hannah the letter?”

  “I’m sorry, when did we agree to that?” Mom asked.

  “We can’t keep it from her forever,” I pointed out. “And the longer we wait, the more pissed off she’s going to be when she reads it. It might even really hurt her then. Now is the time, while she’s coming to terms with things and she’s in the hospital. We might not get another chance as good as this.”

  “I agree with Caro,” Dad said. He put his arm around Mom’s shoulders. “You can’t protect them from everything.”

  Mom frowned. “We can’t take it back once we’ve done it. We can’t make her unsee it.”

  “I think it’s time we stop keeping secrets in this family,” Dad said, giving us both a knowing look. “And that we stop babying Hannah. We let her go on too long doing herself harm so as not to upset her, and look where we are now.”

  Mom said nothing; she just sighed and nodded.

  I’d asked permission to be the one to give Hannah the letter, because I wanted to explain to her just how it had come to be written at all.

  “You went to see Byrne?” she asked. The letter was lying in her lap, unopened. She stared at it as if I’d told her it was a piece of the moon, an almost impossible alien artifact laid in the palms of her hands. “Why?”

  “I wanted to help you,” I said. “I asked him to come see you, but—”

  “He didn’t want to.” She brushed lightly at her eyes.

  “No,” I admitted. “But there are still things he wants to say—he wrote them down and sent this to me, to give to you.”

  She pushed it away. “I can’t read it,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m afraid,” she told me.

  “I know,” I said. “I am, too. Mom and Dad and I couldn’t decide whether or not we should give it to you, but I think you need to read it.” I put my hand on her hand and squeezed. “If you want, I can stay with you while you do.”

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “Yes, you can,” I said.

  “What if he hates me?” she asked. “What if he tells me it was all my fault, what happened to Sabra?”

  “Do you really think he’d say that? He wouldn’t have written this letter if he wanted to hurt you,” I said. I’d met him only once, but I felt like I could say for certain that Byrne Griffin cared about my sister, even if he couldn’t bring himself to face her. I picked up the letter and placed it in her limp hands.

  “Why do you want me to read this?” she demanded. “It’s not some magical cure-all, you know, no matter what it says. It’s not going to make me instantly better.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I just think it’s the first step on a long road.”

  She hesitated, staring at the letter once again, probably contemplating her options. Finally, she gave a little sigh and slipped her fingernail underneath the flap of the envelope, prying it open carefully. Then she shook her head and shoved it back at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I can’t read it,” she said. “You do it.”<
br />
  “Aloud to you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “On one condition: if I say stop, you stop.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Ready?”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “Ready.”

  The night before Hannah was supposed to leave for the rehab center, my parents went over to spend the evening with her. I wasn’t allowed to go, because other than the science fair project, I hadn’t exactly been doing any of my schoolwork since Hannah had entered the hospital. Madame in particular was spitting fire, waving her hands melodramatically and going on about how I was going to lose my A in French and my GPA would drop and probably I would also die. She called my parents, and I was effectively grounded (“ ‘Grounded’ is such a harsh word,” Mom said as she passed down the sentence. “I see it as a very strong suggestion.”) until all my work was turned in.

  So I was stuck at home, but I stubbornly refused to do my schoolwork. Instead, I wandered sort of aimlessly around the house, picking things up and turning them over in my hands, examining framed pictures so close my nose touched the glass, switching lights on and off in different rooms to watch the objects go from light to dark to light again. I tried to imagine what it must’ve been like for Hannah to walk through this house like a stranger; she’d lived here once, but long ago. The mere thought of leaving my home indefinitely broke my heart; how Hannah had managed to do it was completely beyond me, but maybe she was less attached than I was. Or maybe she really was running away, as much as she didn’t like to admit it.

  I was about to finally settle down at the kitchen table to write one of the many French essays I’d neglected to turn in over the past several weeks when the doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and I was wearing a set of flannel pajamas with cupcakes on them.

  I got up and went to the door to glance through the peephole. When I saw who it was, I whipped open the door so fast I didn’t even have time to think about how I was, in fact, wearing cupcake flannel pajamas.

  “Pawel,” I breathed. I thought I’d gotten to a place where I could subdue my crush on him, but ever since the science fair, it had flared back up.

  “Oh good, I was afraid you wouldn’t be home,” he said. “Sorry I didn’t call first. I just went out for a drive and then … ended up here, I guess. I know that’s weird.”

  “No, no, it’s not weird at all,” I insisted. “Do you want to come in?” It was freezing outside, and the wind coming through the door was turning my bare feet blue.

  He nodded, shrugging off his coat as he stepped over the threshold. I took it and draped it over the knob at the end of the stair railing, and then we walked together into the family room, where we settled in on the couch.

  “So,” I said, hugging my knees to my chest. “How’s Bubba?”

  Pawel was perched on the very edge of the couch cushion, his hands folded in his lap. He looked tense and nervous, but in a good way, if that was possible. He grinned. “He’s great. Although I’m afraid the others might have a little trouble accepting him.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “Because they know he’s my favorite,” Pawel said.

  “And why’s that?” I said, softer this time.

  “Because you made him for me.” He got this look in his eye like he was about to say something Very Freaking Important, but I was suddenly too afraid to hear it.

  “Pawel—” I said, but he caught me off guard by leaning over and kissing me. It was a long kiss, a long, wonderful kiss that transformed my entire body into a bag of rubber bands, and as soon as it broke, he came right back with another one. But true to form, my head was filled with a circus of confusion and doubt. The barker was screaming, “What the hell is going on here?” in my ear, the elephants were trumpeting warnings to be careful, and the acrobats were tumbling around so fast I couldn’t get a read on their expressions.

  I put my hand on his chest and pushed him back slightly. “Pawel, wait,” I said, touching my fingers to my lips. “What’re you doing?”

  “I think that’s obvious,” he said, cupping the nape of my neck in his palm and pulling me gently toward him.

  “Hold on,” I said. A look of genuine bewilderment crossed his face.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I thought you still … Oh, God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

  “Oh, Pawel, slow down!” I took his hand and squeezed his fingers. “I just need a second to think.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Take your time, then.”

  There was a long pause while I figured out what to say next. This is what I landed on: “I thought you said we were just friends.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, reaching up and rubbing the back of his neck absently. “That was a mistake. I was freaked out by what happened with Hannah, and in front of your parents, and we hadn’t known each other for very long and I just—I thought it would be easier. But I never stopped liking you, and when I showed you the machines, you didn’t laugh, and then you made me one, I couldn’t pretend we were only friends anymore. Because we’re not, Caro, you know?”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “You have a ton on your mind, with Hannah and school and everything,” Pawel said. “I don’t want to make things harder for you. But I want you to know that if you have any feelings for me at all, I’m right here. I’ve never liked someone so much before.”

  “Me neither,” I admitted.

  He sighed. “That’s a relief. I was half afraid that you were going to tell me you were back together with Derek.”

  “You were not,” I said.

  “Well, no, not really,” Pawel said. “But, ugh, running into you guys at his party was my least favorite moment in recent memory. I just wanted to be sure.…”

  I kissed him lightly. “You can be sure. Derek and I are—”

  “Just friends?” Pawel supplied hesitantly.

  “Less than,” I assured him. “Reasonably polite acquaintances.”

  “I can live with that,” he said, kissing me back. We kissed each other for a long time, giving in to the headiness of being able to touch each other without apologizing, or feeling awkward, or trying too hard to be casual. I loved the sensation of his skin under mine, the downy soft hairs on his arm standing up as I ran my fingers over it, causing a ripple of goose bumps. It was the best feeling in the world, the feeling of finally starting to understand what sharing pieces of yourself was all about.

  “I promise,” I said. “I’ll never lie to you again.”

  “I know,” he murmured, covering my mouth with another kiss.

  31

  Hannah left for Colorado the next morning. She called me for one last short chat before I went to school.

  “I’m scared,” she told me, a tremor rippling through her voice.

  “Me too,” I said. “But you’re going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “Karolcia,” he whispered in my ear. “Are you all right?”

  “What?” We were in French class, but Madame was out sick, so we had a sub who smelled like onion dip and spoke no French—therefore, it was silent work time. We were supposed to be writing our next essay, or reading Camus’s L’etranger, or studying for our final, but I was too busy staring into space. After school, my parents were picking me up and we were going to the airport together to meet Hannah. She’d been at the rehab facility for three months, and my thoughts were consumed by what she might look like, what she might be like. I might have found out Hannah’s secret, but I still didn’t know her very well, and after ninety days’ separation, I was starting to fear that I’d hallucinated any feeling of closeness I might’ve shared with her in those last weeks before she left.

  Really, it’d been like she’d gone back to the convent. We only got occasional letters from her, since she was forbidden contact with us for the first month, and then allowed only sporadic correspondence and even rarer phone calls. The point was to separate her from all her “triggers,” which I guess meant us, our house, ou
r life, and any reminders of who she’d been or what she’d been through. I got clearance to send the Escher book I’d given Hannah for Christmas, though, which made me feel a little less helpless.

  Pawel knew all this, of course. He’d even offered to come with me that afternoon, but I’d said no. It was a family thing. Part of me was looking at this as an opportunity to start fresh with my sister again; I’d been detached and disinterested at the train station nine months earlier, but this time I was going to be positive and upbeat and thrilled to see her. This I vowed.

  Since Hannah had gone to the rehab facility, I’d stepped up my visits to Father Bob. I was going to see him at least once a week now, sometimes more. I’d always meet him at his office, but most of the time we walked two blocks to a Starbucks that’d just opened, and every once in a while on a Sunday, we’d have brunch at a diner just up the road after Mass. One time, I even went to Mass, but only because I knew Pawel was going. I sat with his family and we held hands and I thought of Hannah and Sabra and actually found it in me to pray for both of them, in my way—even though “my way” consisted of talking to God like I would talk to Reb on the phone.

  I turned around now to see Pawel twirling a pencil between his fingers. I could tell from his expression that he was mildly concerned.

  “I’m fine,” I told him. He raised his eyebrows. “I am. I’m just thinking about Hannah. I’m worried.”

  “I can tell,” he said. “It’s going to be okay, though. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Those were practically the exact words I’d said before Hannah had left, and for some reason that made me feel calmer. Sometimes, Pawel would say things that made me think that the universe was speaking through him or something, but then I would realize that he was just listening to me, filing away the things that interested me or made me feel better, and then reminding me of them when I seemed uneasy. I couldn’t imagine what the past three months would’ve been like without him. Reb and Erin were great friends to me, but I felt weird about putting all this Hannah stuff on them. But Pawel, he’d been there, had taken me to the hospital the night Hannah collapsed and had comforted me when I was scared, and it’d tied us together. It was such a great connection that I was terrified I was going to blow it, but so far, so good.