The Memory of Things

by Gae Polisner

  I wander down the hall to Kerri’s door.

  Maybe I can’t kiss the girl right now, but I still want her to come be with me for as long as we have left.

  * * *

  Dad puts on Bowfinger, an Eddie Murphy movie he loves. He says he’s too keyed up to sleep and needs to unwind, watch something mindless for a while. I’ve seen it before, and I don’t think it’s nearly as hilarious as he does.

  The girl sits with us and watches, next to Uncle Matt, her hand resting on the side of his chair.

  I keep looking over at her, wanting to know what she’s thinking, if she’s thinking about us kissing the way I keep doing, about being together again the way we were.

  But she seems oblivious, as if she’s content to be watching the movie. As if she’s okay with the fact that we’re a time bomb ticking, and that in a day or less my mom will be home, and she will likely be gone.

  Dad said that tomorrow I have to call Social Services, that we’ve waited long enough. I wonder if he’ll give me until the end of the day.

  After a while, I can’t take it anymore and excuse myself. Dad gives me a look, but what am I going to say? That I’m in love with some amnesiac bird girl so I can’t bear the thought of her going home?

  Even I know that’s selfish and ridiculous.

  I close my door, pick up my guitar, and strum a few scales. I used to practice scales for a half an hour every night, so it all comes back pretty quickly.

  I play some more, running through my old set list, wondering if there’s any chance I might brush up and audition for this year’s jazz band. I have an electric guitar in my closet. Then again, who knows what this school year will look like? Who knows when we’re going back to school?

  Still, I tell myself, when we do, I might actually try out. I’ll have to drag the electric guiter out and mess with it, see how fast it comes back to me.

  I take off my jeans and pull on sweats, my eyes going to my bed, to my rumpled comforter. I lie down and get lost in thinking about kissing her.

  There’s a knock on the door. Probably Dad. I jump up, move my guitar to my closet, grab the Salinger book from my desk, and open it to the middle somewhere.

  “Come in,” I say. “It’s not locked.”

  Except it’s not my dad, it’s the girl.

  “Mind if I hang out? Your dad and Uncle Matt went to bed. Your dad said he has to go back to work in a few hours.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say.

  What I don’t say: I’ve never wanted anything so bad.

  I breathe in the smell of his room, of him.

  He’s the one thing that is solid and certain.

  I want to fall into him, on his bed, and let him kiss me again,

  but time disappears when I do,

  and we don’t have much time left.

  He thinks I don’t know, but I do.

  Instead, I walk around his room,

  touching his things,

  studying them.

  Gathering pieces of him to

  remember.

  She stands at my bulletin board and stares at the photographs there. Walks to my shelves and runs her finger along the spines of the books.

  She picks things up and studies them as if she’s memorizing information, the feel and weight of them, before putting them back down. I don’t mind her touching everything. I like it. It’s as if she’s leaving her fingerprints everywhere.

  But I’d rather she come over here. Let me be with her in the little time we have left.

  “Kyle, who’s this?”

  She lifts a photo in a frame from my windowsill and holds it out to me. It’s from a ninth-grade mixer, me with my arm around Kristen. I’m trying to look all fourteen-year-old big shot and cozy.

  “That’s my friend Kristen. We dated for, like, a week in the beginning of high school. But now we’re just friends.”

  “Cute,” she says, raising her eyebrows.

  “Yeah, she still is,” I say. “But I swear, we’re just friends.” As soon as I say it, I feel dumb. She didn’t ask me to explain. Besides, I’ve yet to call Kristen since Tuesday. Or Bangor or Jenny Lynch, for that matter. Jesus, I need to call Jenny. Maybe I’m not such a great friend after all.

  “And this?”

  She holds up another framed photo, and I laugh. “That’s Marcus, who I was telling you about,” I say. “He’s my best friend.”

  The photo is from a few Halloweens ago and still one of my favorites, because Marcus and I are dressed so inappropriately. He’s a Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate bar, and I’m next to him in white, half cut out of the photo, as a Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme bar. The costumes were his idea. He thought they were a riot. He even brought Hershey’s Kisses to hand out to all the girls.

  “We thought we were pretty hilarious,” I say.

  She nods. “I’d like to meet him one day.”

  “Maybe you can,” I say.

  Then there’s a long silence between us, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing. Because what are the chances that she’ll even still be here tomorrow, let alone that she’ll meet my friends or that we’ll hang out together or do other normal things down the road?

  Then again, why not? It’s not like LaGuardia High School is in Nebraska. She must live somewhere in New York City. Or, who knows, maybe she lives here in Brooklyn.

  She walks over and sits on my bed. I take her hand and squeeze her fingers tightly, then rub my thumb over hers, trying to memorize exactly how it feels.

  “I wish you could stay,” I say. “I wish things could stay the same.”

  But I don’t really wish that, do I? I want the city to heal, and my mom and sister to come home. I’d miss seeing Marcus. And, I sure want my uncle to get better.

  “Don’t you want your sister to come home?” she asks.

  I laugh for some reason. “Not really. I mean, I’m worried about her and my mom, and I love them, of course, but they’ll be home. It’s not like they’re missing or—”

  I stop, horrified. But she doesn’t react, simply asks, “But when she’s home, you’re close with her?”

  “With my sister?”

  “Yes. Your sister and your mom.”

  “I guess so. Close enough. My sister is cute, but she’s annoying. And my mom, I mean…” I don’t know what I mean. “I’m a guy,” I say, finally. “I mean, she is nice. She’s a great mom. And usually way nicer than my dad. And she’s great at taking care of everyone. Which is why Uncle Matt is living here. She insisted. My dad wanted to move him to a rehab facility, says we’re going to have to if he doesn’t get better soon…” I don’t finish the thought. Even starting to say it aloud has caused a lump in my throat.

  “You love him a lot, don’t you,” she asks, “your Uncle Matt?”

  “I do, yeah.”

  “I can see why.”

  I squeeze her hand harder. And then I don’t want to talk anymore.

  I shift her down, gently, onto my bed. I lift her shirt, only a few inches, and this time I press my lips to her warm, flat stomach, doing what I’ve wanted to do since this afternoon.

  “Kyle, not too—”

  “Yeah, I won’t. I swear. Just this one perfect spot, that’s all.”

  I slide my lips back and forth there for a second, then shift myself up so I’m lying on top of her again. I brush my fingers through her short-chopped hair. I stare into her eyes, then press my lips to hers, and kiss her for as long as I can.

  Early Friday, 9.14.01

  GROUND ZERO

  I wake up looking for the girl, remembering she snuck back to Kerri’s room sometime after three A.M.

  I slink out of my room and hear Dad moving about in the kitchen.

  It’s barely light out, not even six A.M. I trudge down the hall to the bathroom, feeling groggy and weighed down.

  On the way to the kitchen, I slow at my sister’s door, fighting the impulse to go in. To crawl under the blankets with the girl, wrap my arms around her, and go back to sl
eep.

  Time is running out. That would only make things harder.

  Plus, I should go talk to Dad.

  I stop at the entrance to the kitchen, and watch my dad at the table. He’s dressed in a suit and tie. It’s not often I see him in dress clothes these days. He turns when he hears me.

  “You don’t need to be up, Kyle. Go back to bed.” I nod at his outfit. “President, remember?”

  “Oh, right, yeah.”

  On the table, a special edition of the New York Post is open in front of him.

  TERROR SUSPECTS ARRESTED.

  4 MEN WITH FAKE IDS HELD AT JFK.

  “So, they caught them, then?”

  “Looks that way,” Dad says. “At least some of them.”

  I pour myself a cup of coffee, and sit down.

  “Well that’s good news, right?”

  He nods. “So, tell me, kid, everything okay with you here? You need anything? Before I head back out again?”

  The question takes me by surprise. “Yeah, sure, why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m a little concerned.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, for starters, it’s been a hell of a rough week, Kyle. We haven’t really talked about things.”

  I bring my gaze to meet his, overwhelmed by how hard it is to make eye contact with him.

  “Yeah, it has.” I want to say more, but I don’t know how to put everything into words that make sense. I don’t often talk with my dad. “I feel like everything’s different,” I finally add.

  “I hear you on that,” he says.

  I start to stand, but he puts his hand on my arm. “Give me another minute Kyle, please.” I sit again. “So, I’m worried you might have it a little bad for this girl.”

  Lord help me. I can feel my face grow warm, don’t even want to know the shade of red. I should have been more careful, known better than to think I was putting anything past my dad. I slip my arm away, get up, and move to the sink. He lets me go. He could have kept me there easily if he’d wanted.

  I’m not sure how to answer, and the truth is, I feel dumb, juvenile, irresponsible, pining away for some girl in the middle of a disaster. He and Uncle Paul are probably laughing about what a lame, pussy loser I am.

  “I just don’t want you to get too attached, Kyle, that’s all. You’ve got a big heart, and we don’t know anything about her. And I’ve told you, you can’t keep her here. I’m going to need to bring her in to Social Services.”

  “I’m not keeping her here,” I blurt. “And I’m not attached … Jesus, I’m not some lame…” But I don’t finish, because both of us know that I am.

  “I’m not saying that, Kyle. You’re a smart, good, awesome kid. But things haven’t been exactly normal around here. Which means we need to talk about them. And, suffice it to say, it hasn’t gone unnoticed, by me or Matty, that she happens to be a beautiful girl. It would be easy to make it out to be more than it is, to want to hold on to something positive in the middle of all this. Even if you weren’t sure what—or who—that something is…”

  “Give me a break! Jeez!” I slam my mug down. “Sorry, Dad, but please—”

  “Fine. Take it easy. I’ve said what I had to.” He gets up, walks over, and cuffs my head and kisses me on the forehead. I want to recoil, lash out at him, tell him to fuck off, but deep down, I know he’s hurting, too, and, in his own way, he’s trying to help.

  “I’m not trying to make you feel bad, Kyle,” he says. “I care about you. I’m just looking out for my kid.”

  * * *

  I fling myself into the shower.

  The water runs over me, hot and cleansing. One of the good things about having Mom and Kerri gone is I can stay in the shower as long as I want to.

  As I rub shampoo through my hair, my mind returns to Dad, and the photos in the paper of all those rescue workers standing amid piles of burning rubble, concrete, and steel.

  Traipsing over dead bodies, buried in it all.

  Ground Zero, they’re calling it.

  Ground Zero.

  I shouldn’t have yelled at him. He was worried about me. He was trying to help.

  I rinse and lather again, trying to clear my brain of the gruesome images that keep pushing their way back in: twisted bodies, burnt faces, missing limbs.

  Is Bangor’s uncle in there?

  Either of the girl’s parents?

  Jenny Lynch’s dad?

  I’m reminded suddenly of the grayscale photos of Nazi concentration camps I came across in a social studies textbook once. Not faded enough to keep me from making out the skeletal bodies heaped in a pile like landfill. Or maybe it was a film we saw in history class, the kind that made one of my classmates woozy—so woozy he’d passed out in the back of the room.

  In my head, Ground Zero is like that, heaped with bodies, my father wading through, trying to do his job without breaking.

  I adjust the faucet hotter, turning my face to the stream to rinse the soap from my eyes and, of all things, a flash comes to me, of Jenny Lynch’s dad.

  I met him once! I hadn’t remembered until now.

  He picked a bunch of us up after a dance freshman year, drove us to a diner in Midtown. He sat in his own booth and drank coffee while the rest of us ate breakfast at midnight. He wouldn’t let a single one of us pay. He picked up the whole entire bill.

  At the memory, I start to cry.

  I cry hard, for a stupidly long time.

  * * *

  When I get out, I call Marcus. It’s not even 8 A.M. I’ll probably wake him. It’s my job, at this point, to wake him.

  He picks up after four rings. “Jesus, mon, are you focking kidding?”

  “Hey, you sure do sleep well through a disaster.”

  “I learned young,” he says.

  I smile, but I know there’s painful truth in his joke. Something I understand much better now.

  “Anyway, checking in from cheery Brooklyn. Did you ever talk to Jenny? I think I need you to call her first. You’re my buffer, man. I realize now I need a buffer. I have no freaking clue what to say to her.”

  I brush my teeth with the green toothbrush,

  fold his plaid pajama pants and PopMart Tour T-shirt,

  leaving them

  neatly on

  his sister’s bed.

  Pull on my khaki cargo pants,

  my gray shirt,

  my sweatshirt,

  my black boots.

  When I knock on Kyle’s door

  and open it,

  he’s dressed, too.

  “Can we go for a walk?” I ask him.

  * * *

  The girl wants to go back down to the Promenade.

  “The place with the candles and the banners,” she says.

  I ask her to give me a few minutes, and I close my door and call Bangor.

  I feel sick when he answers. “Hey, man, it’s Kyle. I should have called sooner. I didn’t know what to say. I’m so, so sorry about your uncle.”

  “It sucks, man.”

  “Understatement.” I work not to get choked up. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  We talk for a few minutes longer then hang up. That was awful, and that was the easy one.

  I breathe.

  When I’m able, I finally dial Jenny.

  While Kyle makes calls,

  I sit on the floor of the bathroom and dig through the basket in the corner.

  For the magazine with the boys on the cover.

  Before, it made me angry.

  Now, it makes me sad.

  “I wish I could take it back,” I whisper.

  Karina isn’t here yet, so the girl suggests we leave her a note and bring Uncle Matt to the Promenade with us.

  “If he wants to get out for a while, we can manage him, right? We should bring him if he wants to come.”

  I get him dressed and into his chair, and we maneuver him out of the building, pushing him along the same streets we walked two days ago.
But today, in the bleak, gray drizzle, everything looks different, more depressing, so I wonder if we shouldn’t have left him at home. Or maybe I’m just being dramatic about everything, knowing that things are coming to an end.

  The girl and I don’t talk, a safe wedge of distance growing between us.

  “Kyle?” she asks, grabbing my arm. “Would you mind if we stop? If I borrow some money? Not a lot. A few dollars. There’s something I’d like to get.”

  I don’t know I’m thinking of doing it

  until I ask.

  But now that I have, I’m sure.

  I feel it in my bones.

  It’s time.

  I guide us away from the Promenade, and take Hicks over to Atlantic.

  On the corner, there’s an old-fashioned drugstore where my mom shops.

  At the door to Heights Apothecary, he stops.

  “We’ll wait out here. They’ll have whatever you

  need.”

  He hands me a ten, without me asking.

  “Is that enough?”

  “Yes, more than enough,” I say.

  “Thank you, Kyle.”

  I should say more, because I feel more.

  But how will I ever find the right words?

  The girl comes out holding a small paper bag.

  I don’t ask questions, just wait till she’s ready and push Uncle Matt with her, toward the Promenade.

  As we reach the stairs on Remsen, the rain lets up and the sky starts to clear.

  We move Uncle Matt up the ramp and to the railing, the view of Manhattan before him.

  Across the river, the plume of gray smoke still billows up from the buildings. Well, from the footprints where the buildings used to be. It seems no less intense than a few days ago.

  The ground in front of us remains covered with flowers, with stuffed animals now damp from the drizzle. With wreaths and leis and candles. Of course, most have burned out, so an occasional passerby kneels down to light one, with a lighter he picks up from the ground.

  In fact, I notice now that there are lighters everywhere, strewn near the railing for this purpose. A few days ago, those would have been stolen. Taken the minute they were put down. But now they remain. Protected by some unspoken understanding.