by Gae Polisner
buildings.
A frenzy of red
(Blood,
ash,
and
bone)
drifting down.
SQUALOR
I tear down the stairs and out the front door. The toxic smell hits me as soon as I get outside, fainter in some spots, stronger around corners, as I leave the protection of the buildings. Unbearable when it catches the breeze.
Like tires burning, or hair.
Trying not to gag, I hold my sleeve to my nose till I get accustomed to the smell, and head north on Columbia Heights toward the bridge.
The streets are quiet, morose. Only the occasional straggler now and again, though maybe more than I was expecting. As we pass one another, our eyes catch and we exchange these sad, pathetic smiles, as if we’ve all lost the same friend.
By Cranberry, I’m sweating. I make the right and slow down. I take off my sweatshirt and tie it around my waist, taking shallow breaths as I glance into building entrances along the way.
Hoping I’ll spot her sooner.
Hoping I’m wrong.
I leave the snow globe on the ground,
a farewell,
and start up the stairs
to the bridge.
I try to keep my mind off anything but reaching her in time, but find myself thinking about the Salinger story, “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor.”
A young man gets an invitation to a wedding. He says he wants to go, but he can’t. He says he remembers the bride. Flashback: He’s a soldier in England, headed off to World War II.
The man stops in a pub and strikes up a conversation with a girl and her little brother. The girl’s name is Esmé, and she seems about sixteen. The brother, Charles, is five or so, and quirky and entertaining. Though the girl is way younger than the soldier, she’s sophisticated and sure of herself, and it seems as if he likes her or something.
When they part ways, Esmé gives the soldier an old watch her father gave her, and asks if he’ll write her letters from the battlefront. She says she hopes they’ll be “squalid and moving.”
Fast forward to after the war, and the soldier is all messed up. He’s in a hospital of sorts, talking to a friend, and we find out that, even though he only met the girl, Esmé, that one brief time, he can’t forget her. He can’t get her out of his head.
The first step,
then another.
Each brings a bit more calm.
I am empty,
belong nowhere.
I am ready to let go.
Halfway up,
the sun breaks through a cloud,
spills down, warm
and
certain.
I turn left on Hicks, the knot in my gut tightening. Now that I’m close, I can’t think of anything except the girl.
The sun drifts in and out of the clouds, beats down every few minutes, so that even with my sweatshirt off, I’m sweating.
I make the right onto Middagh Street, and pick up the pace.
(You touch my cheek.
“Promise you won’t be sad, Papillon.”)
At Cadman Plaza West, I panic and break into a run.
Odette’s wings flutter
as she readies to take the stage.
(“En pointe, Papillon!
Arms raised, held back,
chest forward, like this.
Fingers light,
thumb curved,
softly touching the third finger,
Kirov style.”)
Done correctly, this gives the appearance
her body is
lifting
into
flight.
I run as fast as I can.
In a last dramatic gasp, she steps up,
into the spotlight,
wings
spread
wide.
It’s the only true denouement to the story.
IV
FEATHERS
I reach the underpass, race up the stairs two at a time, praying I’ll find her there, that she’ll be okay and come home with me.
Someone nearby yells something, but my heart pounding in my ears is the only clear sound I can hear.
At the top, I stop, breathless, and stare.
Fuck!
There is no way the girl is up here.
Two soldiers stand in full uniform, both holding Uzis in their hands. Beyond them: a freaking army tank.
They’ve blocked off the entire bridge.
Of course they have. The city is on lockdown.
A second thought: What if they shoot? What if I’m breaking some law?
I hold up my hands in surrender, my eyes scanning beyond them just in case she somehow slipped through. “My father’s Joint Terrorist Task Force,” I sputter. It’s stupid, but I can’t think of what else to say. Clearly, I don’t belong here. But there was another guy down there, at the edge of the overpass, and several people milling in Cadman Plaza. From our living room window, I’ve seen them out on the Promenade since yesterday.
One of the soldiers moves toward me.
“Sorry, I didn’t know … I wasn’t…” I stammer, but then it hits me: They’re not here to hurt me. They’re here to protect me. Us. “I’m trying to find a girl … I’m going back home now.”
I take a step down, backward, to prove it, craning my neck to see beyond the tank if I can. But I’m pretty sure she couldn’t have gotten past them.
This is a good thing. But, then, where is she now?
I turn and continue down, wracking my brain.
Where else would she go? Jesus, she could be anywhere.
I’ll try the park and the Promenade, or maybe she went back to the apartment.
Would she know how to get back there if she wanted to?
I circle back, across Cadman Plaza, toward Middagh, my eyes searching everywhere. In my pocket, my cell phone buzzes. I jump, startled, and yank it out.
“Hello?”
It’s Mom.
“Kyle, honey, is everything all right? Where are you? I tried you at home.”
“Oh, yeah, hey.” My voice shakes, and I’m afraid I might cry. I need to stop. I need to slow down. “I went out for a few minutes, close to home,” I say, trying to keep my voice casual. “I needed to get some fresh air…” Idiotic. There’s no fresh air out here. I shouldn’t have told her I was outside. That I left. She’s going to freak out. “I’m just taking a quick walk to the Promenade.”
I feel bad. I never lie to my parents, ever. For good reason. My father is a detective. He taught me early on that lies are almost always illogical and transparent, basically the fastest way to get a person in trouble.
“Kyle, I want you to go home now. There are bomb threats everywhere. It’s on the news. The whole city is still in danger … Do you understand what I’m saying? I don’t care what morons are outside today. Dad says the whole military…” She starts to cry, which only makes me feel worse. “I want you to go home right now.”
My chest squeezes. “Okay, sorry, I will. I am.”
I just need to find the girl.
“Promise me, Kyle. And call me as soon as you get there.”
On the far side of the bridge, a man grabs my arm,
stops me.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?”
I nod my head, yank myself free
“Getting some air,” I say.
He eyes the wings, the snow globe clutched in my hand.
“Are you sure?”
But I just need to think and get out of here.
At Hicks Street, I change my mind and double back to the bridge.
I know she’s there! Where else would she go?
When I reach the underpass again, I stop and look around, panting.
No one.
I’m about to turn back, but a guy calls out: “Hey, kid! Are you looking for a girl? Short hair. Big white wings?”
I nod and he points to the other side of the underpass, to the far-side entrance
to the bridge.
I stop and sit on the embankment,
eyes closed,
head to knees,
back pressed against the cool stone wall of the bridge.
(“Be strong, Papillon,
be brave…”)
When I hear his footsteps,
I don’t have to look
to know it’s Kyle.
It’s so stupid, but when I see her sitting there like that, in those wings, I start to cry.
Embarrassed, I swipe at my eyes with my sleeve.
I’m so fucking mad.
I’m so fucking relieved.
I’m so crazy happy to see her.
He kneels down, puts his hand on my shoulder,
tries to get me to look at him.
But I don’t want to see his face,
fold into myself instead,
feeling lost and broken and
awful.
“Hey, talk to me. Are you okay?”
His voice breaks.
“Please come back with me.”
“I’ve caused enough trouble,” she says, shaking her head.
“It’s no trouble. I want to help you. I want you to come back with me. I don’t want … I don’t want to be alone in this.”
Finally, she stands. Keeps her eyes lowered, but follows.
Under the wings, I notice, she has on my T-shirt. In her hand, one of my sister’s snow globes.
“Can I see it?” I ask, tapping on the plastic dome.
She hands it over.
It’s Kerri’s Big Apple one.
The skyline of New York City.
I follow him like I did before.
Trusting that he’ll know what he knows.
More than me,
less than me,
I don’t care.
All there is to do is go with him.
He’s the only thing that feels remotely like home.
SIMPLE TRUTHS
We walk along Hicks Street and, without thinking, I veer us onto Orange Street and we head toward the Promenade. I’ll walk us home along there. That way, I haven’t completely lied to my mom. That way, if she says something to Dad, I’ve actually been there.
But when we reach the top of the stairs, I’m immediately sorry I’ve brought her here.
The railing of the Promenade is plastered with missing person posters, blurred Xeroxed faces or stapled photographs that stare out at me. Mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts. Even a few children. Desperate pleas scrawled underneath:
HAVE YOU SEEN ME? PLEASE CALL.
Tabbed rectangles with phone numbers you can tear off flap in the breeze.
But that’s not all. Between sections of posters, threaded through the bars, as well as scattered below, are bouquets of flowers wrapped in cellophane or paper. The ground is littered with flowers, teddy bears, and candles. There must be hundreds of candles, their flames burning invisibly in the daylight.
I scan the Xeroxed faces for one that looks like the girl, but don’t see any.
I grab her arm and pull us fast along the Promenade toward the Remsen Street exit, trying not to cry again, not to think of all the people who are missing. Not to think of the people they belong to. Like Bangor’s uncle and Jenny Lynch’s dad.
Was the girl’s mom in those buildings yesterday? Her dad?
What if both were inside?
Toward the end, the flyers give way to a single long banner, a white sheet stretched across a whole section of railing, its bold black letters written in paint or thick marker:
We Are Still Standing
I stop and stare at the words, stark against the smoke that streams up from Lower Manhattan. That whole section of city is blanketed in the haze of it all, the putrid smell of burnt things carried here on the wind.
The buildings are gone, thousands of people are gone, but somehow we’re still here. Standing. Dad and Mom and Kerri and me. Uncle Matt, and this girl. Those others around us on the Promenade.
We are here, witnessing, while so many others aren’t.
It’s as if we’ve weathered a war.
I keep my eyes down,
glued to the candles that
flicker in and
out.
(A row of votives …
“… returns us to dust…”).
At the bottom of the Remsen Street stairs, she stops and turns to face me.
“I’m sorry. I appreciate everything you’ve done, Kyle. Really. But I don’t want to go back with you.”
“Why not?” I ask, fighting tears again.
“You’re so nice … It’s hard to explain. Hard to help you understand. I just know … there are things there—here—” She squinches her eyes shut, presses the bridge of her nose.
“Are you hurt? Do you have a headache?”
“No. It’s not that. See, the images, they slip in and out. It was different yesterday. Better. Because they were blurrier. Farther away. But today, this morning, they’re pressing in on me.” I listen, but don’t know what to say. “And I don’t want to go to a hospital, Kyle. No matter what, okay?” She shudders. “I won’t go to a hospital. Ever.”
“Why?”
She shakes her head more forcefully. “Please…”
“Okay,” I say. “You won’t. I promise. But please come home with me. Where else will you go? I promise we won’t go anywhere but home.”
Her eyes dart to mine. She shakes her head again. “You said a hospital or the precinct. Your father will make me go.”
“No, he won’t,” I lie. “I’ll talk to him. But if I promise, you have to promise, too. You have to promise not to disappear again. You have to promise to stay until we figure out what to do.”
She nods, her eyes filled with tears. I take her arm to start walking. When she resists, I say, “Please. I can’t leave my uncle alone.”
At that, she relents, but for the rest of the walk she’s silent and withdrawn. I know I should say something, but I haven’t got a clue what might help.
“Hey, how about this?” I finally say, a lame idea coming to me when we’re barely a block from home. “Tell me something simple about you. Something easy you know or might want to remember. Like, I don’t know, what’s your favorite food? Or, what kind of music do you listen to? Something like that.”
She doesn’t answer for a minute, so I feel dumb, worried it may be a bad idea. But as we turn onto my street, she leans against my arm and says, “Cherries, how about? Not the canned kind. Fresh ones, with the stem on. The orangey, tart ones, even better. Rainier cherries, I think they’re called.”
I smile, relieved. “Cherries. Tell me another thing.”
“Mario Kart, how about?” she says, brightening. “I think I like to play Mario Kart with my friends.”
“I have Mario Kart,” I say. “We can play when we get back. Keep going.”
“Sometimes I think of dance steps, I told you that, but by name. And they don’t bother me. They make me happy when I think of them.”
“Dance steps,” I say. “What are they called?”
She looks at me funny, then stops and says, “Okay. Like this.” She moves through a few little steps strung together and names them: “Pas de couru, tendu effacé front, beat and return. Passé to effacé back. Pas de bourée.” And even though I can tell she’s doing them half assed, it’s still sort of breathtaking to watch her. I wish I could explain exactly why.
When she stops, I say, “Tell me them again, in order. You named a bunch of them ending with pot of something.” She wrinkles her nose at me. “Didn’t you say ‘pot of something’ near the end?”
She laughs. “No. Not pot of anything. Pas de bourrée. It’s this one.” She repeats a step, her foot pointing out in front of her, then quickly crossing behind the other like she’s barely touching the ground.
“Pas de bourrée,” I repeat. “Say the others.”
“Pas de couru, tendu effacé front, beat and return.” She gives me a look, almost embarrassed.
&nb
sp; “See? It’s good! Tell me what else.” I start walking again. “Not dance steps, I mean. Other things that you like, that make you happy.”
“Watermelon Blow Pops,” she says, definitively. “And, for music, um, Alanis Morissette. All the songs on Jagged Little Pill.”
“Alanis Morissette?”
“Yes, why?”
“No, she’s good. I prefer U2, is all, but I’m not judging.”
She smiles and walks closer to me, and I don’t try to talk or ask her anything more. This little bit is more than enough for right now.
We walk in past the doorman.
“Hey there, Manny,” Kyle says.
When the elevator doors close,
he presses eleven, and turns to me.
“Cherries. You like cherries.
Fresh on the stem.”
“What about it?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just that. You like them. It’s something I know about you.” She smiles, which feels encouraging, so I go on. “Not only the red kind, but the orangey ones that are more tart and sound like reindeer. Rainier, that’s it. Rainier cherries,” I confirm.
“Oh-kay…”
“And Mario Kart. Which we can play later, like I said, since it’s not like there are a ton of other things to do.”
She watches me now, a new look settling on her face, one I haven’t seen from her before. Less sad. A little like she thinks I’m crazy. But something else, too, like maybe she’s a little intrigued.
“And dance steps. Pa karu, chocolate fondue,” I say, sounding them out. “Face front, and a pot of berets, and, yeah, I know those are all totally wrong. In English, I could do it perfectly. It’s no fair holding me to French words.”
She smiles bigger. “I’ll give you those. They’re close enough,” she says.
The elevator doors open on eleven, and we walk out.
“Why do you remember all that?” she asks, taking my arm and looking up at me when we reach my door.
“Because you told me. And I wanted to.” She looks away, but I tip her face back up to mine, then drop my hand quickly, shoving it back in my pocket. But she keeps looking at me. Now is my chance to tell her the thing I’ve been thinking since I found her today near the bridge, thinking about her all the way home. Even if the thought of saying it is humiliating. I need to, now, fast, before we go in. “And watermelon Blow Pops, and Alanis Morissette, all the songs on Jagged Little Pill. And maybe those are minor, unimportant things,” I say, trying not to lose my nerve, “but they’re about you, so they’re important to me, so I want to hold on to them. Because it matters to me that you’re here, and that you came back with me.” I let out my breath and wait, worrying, pretty sure I just babbled like a fool.