The Opposite of Hallelujah

by Anna Jarzab

  “What if she’s still sick?” I asked him. The sub cleared her throat and threw us a nasty look, but I ignored her.

  “You can’t expect miracles,” Pawel said. “There are going to be things she needs to work through long term. You’ve been saying that yourself for months.”

  “I know,” I said. “I wish she had talked to Father Bob before she left.”

  “Maybe she will one day,” Pawel said. “The cool thing about not knowing who’s going to walk off that plane is that there’s a pretty good possibility it’s going to be a healthier, happier Hannah than the one who got on it, Father Bob or no Father Bob.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”

  “No, you’re right,” he said, smiling. “These are all things you’ve said before. Just try not to forget them when you’re wigging out in the car later.”

  “I’m not going to wig out,” I protested.

  “Definitely, you definitely are,” he said, lifting a piece of hair out of my eyes with the eraser end of his pencil. “And when you do, just text me, and I’ll remind you. Deal?” He stuck out his hand.

  “Deal,” I said, taking it and giving it a nice, firm shake.

  I ended up ducking out of my last class early. I just couldn’t sit there any longer, being lectured at about Pearl Harbor ad nauseam. I found World War II to be an exhausting topic, even on days when I wasn’t nervous about something. I wasn’t paying attention on my way through the main corridor, and I ran smack into this girl I vaguely knew from some swim team parties Reb had invited me to. Her name was Paris, or Perrier, or something.

  “Sorry,” I said. I looked to my right and saw that we were standing directly beneath Waste, the hideous painting Pawel and I had discussed when we’d first started getting to know each other. The memory of it made me smile.

  “It’s no problem,” Paris or Perrier chirped. She bent down and I realized I’d made her drop whatever she’d been holding. The floor was covered with custom-printed postcards advertising some big end-of-the-year art show. I bent down to help her pick them up.

  “You coming to the exhibition?” she asked.

  “Oh, I, um—” I turned one of the cards over and saw what was on the front—Escher’s Waterfall. Or, well, it was sort of Escher’s Waterfall. It was the same image, but instead of a drawing, it was a photo of the lithograph built entirely of Lego.

  Which, as you might imagine, is physically impossible.

  “What’s this?” I asked Perrie. (Seeing Waterfall had sent a jolt through my brain that had released her name from it like a marble in one of Pawel’s Rube Goldberg machines.)

  “Isn’t it cool?” She grinned. “It’s from this series called Almost Impossible. This guy brought all of these Escher drawings into 3-D using Legos and took pictures of them. Do you know M. C. Escher?”

  “A little, yeah,” I said. I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I kept looking at the picture and it would seem perfectly normal, and then my mind would scream, But it’s impossible! It can’t exist in real life! “Is this Photo-shopped?”

  Perrie nodded. “I guess it would have to be, wouldn’t it? I think that’s why it’s the pictures that are being displayed, not the sculptures. Some of them require very precise perspectives to work, or I guess Photoshop in this case.”

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  “Still,” Perrie said. “It’s pretty cool.”

  “Totally,” I said.

  “So … are you going to come to the show?” Perrie asked. She looked a little desperate, in the eyes. “I’m sort of the PR person, even though I don’t have any pieces in the show. I hate to see the artists do all this work and then have nobody turn up to look at it, you know?”

  “When is it?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow night at seven,” she told me, relaxing a little. She must’ve thought she had me on the hook.

  “I think I’ll be there,” I said. I waved the postcard at her. “Can I keep this?”

  “Yes! Take as many as you want,” she said, shoving a small stack in my general direction. “I have tons.”

  “I’ll take one more, then,” I told her, smiling. “Good luck spreading the word.”

  “Thanks.”

  When Perrie was gone, I pulled out my cell phone, dialed the St. Robert’s rectory, and asked for Father Bob.

  “Hi, Caro,” he said. “What’s going on? Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “Mom and Dad are picking me up to go get Hannah in a few minutes, so I cut out early,” I told him. I knew he probably didn’t approve of skiving off class, but he didn’t lecture me.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said. “Father Bob, do you believe in signs?”

  “Be more specific.”

  “Like, signs. From You-Know-Who.”

  “You mean signs from God?” Father Bob sighed. He didn’t like it when I talked about God like he was Lord Voldemort, which I guess is understandable.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure, why not?” Father Bob said. “I think that the universe”—he knew I was more receptive when he said “the universe” instead of the G word, but we had a tacit agreement that the terms were interchangeable, at least as far as our powwows went—“has many ways of speaking to us, and we need to be open to all of them. That said, don’t go looking for signs as a way of avoiding having to make your own choices. That’s just a cop-out.”

  “Noted,” I said, slipping the postcards into my bag. Maybe, if she was up to it, Hannah would want to go with me to see Almost Impossible. She more than anyone else I knew would get a real thrill out of seeing such strange worlds brought into the real world—even if it was just in Lego, and even if there was some shady photo manipulation involved. I also had a feeling that Escher would approve. Several of his drawings were of art coming to life.

  There’s this Escher called Reptiles that I have always loved. In it is another drawing, a tessellation of alligators, and at the edge of the paper one of these creatures crawls out, becomes three-dimensional, and climbs over several random objects before settling down again into the flat mosaic. I hadn’t known it then, but before Hannah, before Pawel, before Father Bob and Rube Goldberg machines and single-bubble sonoluminescence, my life had been like that tessellation—technically proficient, but flat and lifeless. I didn’t think about my place in the world, I wasn’t brave or creative, and I’m not sure, looking back, if I really believed in anything. I still wasn’t sure what, exactly, I believed, but ever since Hannah’s first night in the hospital, when I’d prayed for her and me and us all, I’d been feeling this stirring in my heart that told me that I wasn’t alone, even when I was by myself. That something—someone—was there, if only to listen. And in return, I was trying my best to listen, too.

  I saw Dad’s car swing around the little roundabout where I was waiting. “Gotta go, Father Bob,” I said.

  “You take care,” he said. “See you Sunday?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” I told him.

  I wasn’t the only one with some anxiety about seeing Hannah for the first time in three months. Mom kept fiddling with the radio dial, apparently unhappy with all the possible choices of music. Finally, in a fit of annoyance, Dad just shut it off entirely, which I was grateful for. Although, the music was helping fill the otherwise complete silence.

  When we got to O’Hare, we parked and walked to the terminal. Hannah’s plane had just landed, and we were supposed to meet her by the baggage carousel. It was weird to think that when we’d dropped Hannah off, we’d all been bundled up in winter coats, but now we weren’t wearing any at all. In fact, it’d been an atypically warm day, so I was wearing a thin T-shirt over a camisole and that was it. It was one of those moments when you thought something completely cliché—strange, the way time passes—and yet it seemed like the most significant, foreign, original thought in the entire world.

  A whole flood of people emerged from the terminal and descended on ba
ggage claim. I scanned them hopefully for Hannah’s face, wondering again if I would recognize her, and when the crowd finally cleared and I saw her, my heart swung up into my throat. She looked so good. Like a healthy, whole person. I couldn’t believe it, so I turned to the closest person—Dad—and read his expression: utter relief, and happiness. It was enough to send a calming rush of endorphins into my bloodstream, and I felt my shoulders relax.

  Hannah raced toward us, and my parents folded her into their arms.

  “Hiya, Goose,” Dad said, beaming. We all knew intellectually that we couldn’t take too much comfort in the way she looked, or the ear-to-ear grin she was wearing; what she had gone through, what she was still going through, was complex and difficult, and this wasn’t a miracle that we were seeing before us. But it still felt like one. Hannah was radiant, and we were overjoyed to see her standing there.

  I shooed Mom and Dad out of the way and replaced their arms with my own.

  “It’s so good to see you,” I said softly.

  “Same to you,” she said, pulling away. She put her hand on my cheek. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” I said, and I meant it, more than I’d ever meant anything. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I had my sister back, even though I’d tried my hardest, when I was young and stupid, to drive her away. That was the miracle, I decided. That I’d found a way to overcome my most childish, selfish impulses and make room for her in the cluttered chambers of my heart. So much space, it turned out, that it felt empty when she was gone. I had a sister. We were sisters. For the first time, it felt like more than a possibility—it felt like a sure thing.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to:

  My parents, Jim and Barbara Jarzab, for loving me no matter what, and for being the best traveling companions a girl could have.

  James and Alicia, for growing up with me (not that you had a choice), and for making me laugh. Ditto to the rest of my family, who are kind and gracious and wonderful to the last.

  Joanna MacKenzie and Danielle Egan-Miller, for caring so deeply about this book, and Françoise Bui, for her keen editorial guidance and enthusiasm for Caro’s story.

  Eesha Pandit, for listening, and for always being on my side.

  Mary Dubbs, for the dinosaurs, and for taking me seriously.

  THE Cambria Rowland, THE Kim Stokely, and THE Jenny Symmons, for more than a decade of friendship and listening to me babble on about people who aren’t real.

  The authors and subjects of the following books: How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by Janna Levin; Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter; Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns by Cheryl L. Reed; The God Theory: Universes, Zero-Point Fields, and What’s Behind It All by Bernard Haisch, PhD; and Extraordinary Ordinary Lives: Vocation Stories of Minnesota Visitation Sisters by Elsa Thompson Hofmeister. Thanks especially go to Karen Armstrong, whose marvelous memoirs of the convent and afterward (Through the Narrow Gate and The Spiral Staircase) helped to inspire and shape this novel.

  Everyone at Random House who works on and supports my books.

  My friends at Penguin Young Readers Group, especially Emilie Bandy (work twin and keeper of my sanity), and the authors whose books I’ve had the pleasure of working on, for supporting me on the other side of all that we do together.

  All the religious who have ever taught me anything.

  Alex Bracken, without whom I probably would not have gotten through the past few years. It’s very rare to meet someone who is willing to read every bad partial manuscript and half-baked idea and is still capable of telling me not to give up and meaning it.

  And, finally, to the late Helena Bieniewski, whose devout faith, impeccable advice, and enduring love have served as some of the great inspirations of my life. How I wish she could have read this book.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ANNA JARZAB is the author of All Unquiet Things. She lives in New York City and works in children’s book publishing. Visit her online at annajarzab.com.