Life, After

by Sarah Darer Littman

  “It must have been a difficult transition for all of you,” Mrs. Nathanson said.

  Just then Sarita came bounding down the hallway to see what was going on.

  “¡Hola! Who are you? I’m Sarita. Are you Jessica, the one whose clothes Dani got from Jewish Family Services? She was really embarrassed when you saw her wear them, but I think your taste in clothes is fabuloso. I wish you were my size so I could wear your clothes, because…I…”

  “Sari! ¡Cállate la boca!” I hissed. I swear my family must have been conspiring to see how badly they could embarrass me. I was just waiting for Papá to start shouting about how awful I was to make my humiliation complete, but he’d already retreated to the sofa and the television.

  Jessica was cracking up, though, and Mrs. Nathanson was smiling. Sarita never failed to charm.

  “Well, now that you’ve met my family, maybe we should go,” I said, anxious to leave before Sarita let any more secrets out through her chattering lips or my mother convinced them that I was a complete loser.

  Jess winked at me, like she knew exactly why I was so desperate to get out of there. She didn’t realize I was worried that Mamá would invite them in for tea and biscuits, and then they’d see the cramped living room with the worn carpet and the ugly sofa and chairs.

  “Well, I wish I had a little sister like you, Sarita,” Jess said.

  “That’s what you think,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Instead, I’m stuck with a huge, hulking brother. I can’t share clothes with him or anything.”

  “I’m glad I don’t have a brother,” Sarita said. “My friend Kelly has a brother and he likes frogs and spiders and icky things and sometimes he smells bad. I’m glad I have Dani. She smells good and she reads me stories.”

  Maybe Sari wasn’t so bad after all.

  “Well, luckily my brother, Jon, doesn’t smell too bad,” Jessica told Sari. “Mom has him well trained when it comes to showering and using deodorant.”

  “Speaking of Jon, we should get going,” Mrs. Nathanson said. I wanted to kiss her.

  And finally, before Mamá could offer refreshments or Sarita embarrassed me further, we headed downstairs to the car.

  The drive to Jess and Jon’s house took us through a part of Twin Lakes I’d never seen before—a beautiful, wooded, leafy area of town, where the houses were surrounded by vast tracts of perfect green lawns set behind stone walls topped with white picket fences. And the size of the houses…I’d seen las casas grandes in Argentina, but these were just enormous.

  I wondered if Jess would tell me about her father since I was going to be staying over at her house, or if she just assumed that I knew. It felt awkward knowing what had happened, but being unsure if I could or should talk about it.

  When Mrs. Nathanson pulled into the driveway, I realized Jess’s house was just as grand as the others in the neighborhood. It was a large, white house with black shutters and an impressive stone entryway. Jess’s mom pulled the car into a three-car garage, although there were only two cars parked in it.

  I heard a dog barking from inside the house when I opened the car door.

  “That’s Max,” Jess said. “Don’t worry about him. He’s all bark and no bite.”

  The door to the house opened and a large golden retriever bounded out to greet us, wagging his tail and jumping up, first on Jess and then on me.

  “Down, Maxie! Behave yourself!” Jess commanded.

  Max jumped up again.

  “As you can see, he’s a highly trained animal who obeys our every command,” said Mrs. Nathanson.

  “Yes, but we love him anyway, don’t we, Maxie boy?” crooned Jess.

  “Hi, Dani!”

  Jon was standing in the doorway, looking much more relaxed than he ever did at school. It was something about his posture. At school, his shoulders were always hunched over in a defensive way, whereas at his home he was standing up straight and just seemed…different. Happier. And he wasn’t clutching his notebook to his chest like he normally did, either.

  “Hi, Jon! It’s nice to see you out of Language Arts class and lunch.”

  “You should come and see the movie theater. Jess, let’s show Dani the theater. Maybe we can watch Star Wars or something.”

  “More like ‘or something,’” Jess said. “There is no way I’m sitting through Bore Wars again. No way, no how.”

  We walked into a kitchen that looked more like a cathedral than somewhere to make and eat food.

  “Wait a minute,” I managed to gasp out. “Are you telling me that you have your very own movie theater in this house?”

  “Don’t freak out, Dani. It’s not a full-size movie theater,” Jess said matter-of-factly. “It’s just a simple home theater.”

  I don’t think she realized that to me there was nothing simple about having any kind of movie theater at home. Home movie luxury at la Casa Bensimon was having a VCR—and if we were really lucky, maybe sharing a bag of microwave popcorn.

  It wasn’t like that at Cinema Nathanson. There was a separate room in the basement, complete with eight huge leather chairs that reclined with footrests and had holes in the arms for your drinks and little tray tables for snacks. It was the most luxurious movie theater I’d ever been in.

  Jon got me a Diet Coke from a small refrigerator in the corner and Jess made a bowl of popcorn while the two of them argued over what we should watch. They finally agreed on Back to the Future, because I hadn’t seen it and Jon and Jess both agreed it was a classic.

  “This is one of Dad’s favorites,” Jon said as the movie started.

  I glanced over at Jess, and her face had that tight, closed look again. As I was watching the movie there was a part of me imagining Jon and Jess sitting there with their father, Before. Before he got up for work one day and didn’t come home again, just like Tía Sara. Before his life was ended by terrorists, just like my aunt.

  I couldn’t imagine how awful it must feel to be Jess. Because even though it felt as if the papá I knew and loved had gone and left a morose, bitter hulk in his place, at least I still hoped that somewhere, underneath his unshaven and depressed exterior, lay my real papá. My papá from Before. But for Jess there was nothing, nothing but memories.

  As soon as the film was over, Mrs. Nathanson told us to come for dinner. She poured herself a glass of chardonnay and asked me questions about life in Argentina. She seemed to know quite a bit about the Crisis—apparently the local United Jewish Federation, of which she appeared to be an active member, made a big fund-raising appeal for their impoverished Jewish brethren. Even from five thousand miles away, we Bensimons were the poor neighbors. I resolved never to tell Papá. He’d probably never let me sleep over again.

  We helped clean up the dishes afterward, then Jess said, “Come on, Dani. Let’s take your stuff up to my room.”

  I grabbed my small overnight bag and followed Jess up the wide, polished wood stairs. Her room was amazing. Her bed alone was the size of my entire bedroom, and it was piled high with brightly colored pillows. She had her own flat-screen TV on the wall, and a couple of beanbag chairs in case you didn’t want to lounge on the bed to watch it.

  Everything was perfectly matched, like it was all chosen by a chichi decorator, from the curtains to the carpet to the throw cushions. Well, everything except for a patchwork quilt at the foot of the bed, which stood out in the otherwise picture-perfect room. It wasn’t even a nice patchwork quilt—the patches weren’t even made from squares of fabrics that went together.

  “So, Dani, let’s find you something to wear to the dance,” Jess said, leading me over to her closet. She threw open the doors and I couldn’t help letting out a gasp, because it could have been a small bedroom in itself and it was filled almost to overflowing. She had so many clothes I couldn’t believe she ever had to wear anything twice. Even when my father owned a clothing business I didn’t have that many clothes. I couldn’t believe she even missed that shirt I was wearing on the first day of scho
ol.

  Jess must have read the expression on my face.

  “You know, the reason I freaked out about the shirt you were wearing the first day of school is because it was the last present my dad brought home from a business trip before he…well, before 9/11,” she said. “He went to some conference in Monaco and brought it back for me. He used to have to travel a lot for his work and he brought back a present from every trip he went on, no matter how short it was, even if it was just overnight. Mom always called them his ‘Guilt Gifts.’”

  “Jess, until the other day I didn’t know…about your dad. That he…you know…well, that he…that it was on 9/11 that he…”

  “Seriously? I thought the whole world knew. It sure felt like that at the time. Like I was in a fishbowl and everyone was looking at me—‘There’s that girl whose dad was killed in the World Trade Center.’”

  She hugged her arms around herself as if to protect herself from the memory of all those glances.

  “But I wasn’t here then. I was still in Argentina on 9/11.”

  “That’s true. I guess I feel like even though it’s over two years later, everyone still thinks it’s the defining part of me—like for the rest of my life I’m always going to be Jess the 9/11 Girl.”

  “I never thought of you like that. But maybe that’s because I didn’t know.”

  “It’s weird. Right after it happened, it was all everyone ever wanted to talk about, like, How do you FEEL, Jess? I swear, they were like vampires, sucking on my grief, wanting to be a part of it. I mean, I’m sure they felt sad, and all. But they still had their dads coming home from work every night.”

  She hugged herself even tighter. “And they didn’t have to watch their dad dying over and over and over again on TV.”

  Plane. Fireball. Flames. Collapse. Smoke. Dust. I’d watched it over and over, too, from far away in Buenos Aires. To me they were images, awful images where I knew that people were dying—but it wasn’t my father going up in smoke.

  “Now everyone just pretends like it never happened—at least to my face. They’re too caught up in who Jennifer Aniston is dating or who’s going to ask them to the Winter Wonderland Dance. The people who talk about 9/11 the most are politicians, and that just makes me mad.”

  Jess walked over to the bookshelf, picked up a snow globe, and handed it to me. “Dad brought this back from a trip to Switzerland.”

  I shook it, creating an instant blizzard for all the little people in the Alpine village inside.

  “The first thing I’d say to him when he’d get home from a business trip was ‘What did you bring me?’”

  I looked down at the snow settling on the rooftops inside Jessica’s snow globe, and thought that maybe she felt some guilt about these gifts, too.

  “I’d give all of these things away, every single thing, if he would just walk through that door one more time so I could tell him how much I love him,” Jess said. There was a catch in her voice, and when I looked up she was wiping away tears.

  If Jess were Gaby, I would have given her a hug, but she wasn’t. She was Jessica Nathanson, and I wasn’t that kind of friend to her. I wasn’t even sure she considered me a real friend at all, or if I was just some sort of charity case that she’d taken on out of gratitude because I stuck up for her brother. In the end, I gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder.

  “I’m sure he knew you loved him. That you still love him.”

  For some reason, this made her cry even harder. Nice work, Dani. You are possibly the world’s worst excuse for a grief counselor.

  “It’s just…you don’t know…nobody knows…not even Mom…”

  She was crying so hard, I couldn’t stop myself. I put my arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug.

  “What is it, Jess?”

  Jess grabbed my arm and looked at me through mascara-ringed eyes. “You have to promise not to tell anyone, ever. You have to swear on something totally sacred that you will never tell.”

  What could be so awful that she hadn’t told anyone, that she needed me to swear on something sacred? The desperation in her eyes frightened me.

  “Come on, Dani—swear!”

  “Okay…I swear…I swear on…the memory of my tía Sara.”

  She released the death grip on my forearm and reached for the box of tissues on the dresser.

  “The thing is, Dani, that morning…the morning of September 11, I could have gotten up and had breakfast with my father. He came into my room and said he was toasting me a bagel before he left for work, but I didn’t want the carbs and I figured I’d rather have five more minutes of sleep. I thought I’d see him later. I figured I’d have dinner with him that night. Or breakfast the next day. Or the day after. I had no idea that he wouldn’t come home…that he would be…”

  I hugged her tighter, because I didn’t know what to say. How could my words possibly ease her pain?

  “I would have done the same thing, Jess. How could you know the Towers would…I mean, no one expected…no one could have ever imagined…”

  I was really, really bad at this. I wondered if there was anyone who was good at it.

  “I’m just saying that I’m sure that everyone would have done the same thing you did. We all would have assumed we’d see our dad later and rolled over for an extra few minutes of sleep.”

  “Not everyone,” she sobbed into my shoulder.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jon got up. Jon had breakfast with him. Jon got to say good-bye.”

  And then I understood. As much as she loved Jon and was totally protective of him, he was still her brother. It didn’t matter if her parents were alive or killed in an awful terrorist attack—the sibling rivalry for their affection continued.

  “Jess, come on, you’ve got to try to stop punishing yourself like this. You’ll make yourself ill.”

  I gave her another hug, and handed her more tissues.

  She wiped her eyes, then blew her nose loudly.

  “Yeah, and if I don’t pull myself together, you’ll have to go to the dance in some awful rag and we can’t have that, can we?”

  “Don’t worry about the dress. It doesn’t matter. I’m sure I can find something to wear.”

  “Who are you kidding? It so totally does matter. You think Brian Harrison wants to take out Cinderella before the makeover by her Fairy Godmother?”

  I felt myself blushing when she said Brian’s name, which was strange because a few days before I thought I was still in love with Beto. Why was I having such a hard time picturing his face now?

  After what seemed like fifty dresses later, we finally settled on a simple strapless dress of pale blue silk (“matches your eyes” according to Jess) and a white cashmere shrug. The cashmere was soft and strokeable, like a kitten’s fur. I lay on Jessica’s bed cuddling it, surrounded by discarded choices.

  “I can’t believe a piece of clothing can be this soft.” I sighed. “I guess we should put all these other dresses back.”

  “Yeah, if you don’t want to have to sleep on the floor tonight,” Jess said.

  When the dresses were finally back in the closet, Jess caught me fingering her strange, mismatched quilt.

  “A 9/11 group made that for me,” she said. “They asked my mom for my dad’s clothes so they could make it out of stuff we recognized. That’s why it’s not color coordinated like a lot of patchwork quilts.”

  She flopped down on the bed next to me.

  “See this blue square? Touch it—feel how soft it is. That was his favorite T-shirt. He wore it practically every Sunday morning when he went to get bagels and the New York Times. And see this Hawaiian pattern? He got that shirt when we stayed at the Polynesian Resort at Disney World. He got up onstage and danced at the luau, because he said he might as well get his money’s worth out of the shirt and make a complete fool out of himself.”

  I looked over at the photograph of Jessica’s father on her nightstand. He had Jon’s curly brown hair and Jess’s deep brown eyes,
but with laugh lines around them and his mouth, which was open in a wide smile, like someone just told him the funniest joke. His arms were around Jon and Jessica, and everyone looked so…happy. I wondered if it was as hard for Jess to look at that picture as it was for me to look at photos of Tía Sara after she died.

  “He’s wearing that shirt in the photograph, isn’t he?”

  “Uh-huh. Mom took it on the way back to the hotel room after the luau. Even Jon is smiling and he hardly ever smiles for pictures. That was one of the best vacations ever.”

  She pointed to a terry cloth diamond. “See this? That was his bathrobe. I used to love when he’d just shaved and he’d kiss me because his cheek was so smooth and he smelled like aftershave.”

  Jess jumped up and opened the top drawer of her dresser. She rummaged through her underwear and then pulled out a lumpy pair of socks and brought them to the bed. Out fell a bottle of aftershave—Cool Water by Davidoff.

  “Here, smell this,” she said, unscrewing the cap and holding the bottle under my nose.

  I inhaled the scent, which was crisp and clean, and I imagined it on the cheek of the man in the picture. Jess dabbed some on the terry part of the quilt, and sniffed.

  “I took this from my parents’ bathroom before my mom could throw it out or give it away,” she admitted. She replaced the lid tightly and hid the bottle back in the pair of socks. “The first time I opened the bottle I almost keeled over, because it was like…”

  “The hairbrush,” I said, nodding.

  “What?”

  I took a deep breath and tried to explain.

  “My tía, um, that’s my ‘aunt’ in Spanish, her name was Sara and she worked as a secretary at AMIA, the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. She was eight months pregnant. The day I turned seven, a terrorist drove a truck loaded with explosives into the building where she worked and…well, as you can imagine, it was destroyed and…my aunt…she was killed.”

  “Omigod, Dani, I’m so sorry,” Jess said, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I had no idea.”

  “Well, about six months after Tía Sara died, we were over at her apartment helping Tío Jacobo pack up her things. Mamá wanted to keep me occupied, so she gave me a box and told me to put all Tía Sara’s makeup and nail polish—and my tía Sara loved all that girly stuff so she had a lot of it—into a box.” I felt a lump starting in my throat as I told Jess the story, even though it happened such a long time ago. “I was emptying out the bathroom drawer when I found Tía Sara’s hairbrush and comb. She had beautiful, long, dark, curly hair, and there were strands of it in the hairbrush. And seeing her hair, still tangled in the bristles of the brush, when she was dead and buried in the ground…My mother came in and found me crying and then she started crying and then Tío Jacobo came in and he started crying and all of us ended up sitting on the bathroom floor sobbing because of Tía Sara’s hairbrush.”