Life, After

by Sarah Darer Littman

  I felt a tear escape the corner of my eye and I swiped it away with the back of my hand. Jess was looking at me with this strange expression on her face. It made me wish I’d kept my mouth shut. But then she took my hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “You know, Dani, that’s exactly what it was like. Like the hairbrush.”

  She stroked the terry square lovingly, and looked at me with glistening eyes. “I’ve never had anyone understand it like that before. Like I know Mom must feel these things and be hit by moments like that, but we never talk about it. Sometimes I think she’s trying so hard to be strong for me and I’m trying so hard to be strong for her…and who the hell knows what’s going on in Jon’s head? Sometimes I wonder if he really understands that Dad’s gone forever and he’s not coming back.”

  “It must be so hard for Jon,” I said. “For all of you, but especially for Jon, because he seems so…concrete about everything. At least with Tía Sara, we knew for sure what had happened to her after twenty-four hours, when they pulled her body from the rubble. But for you there’s nothing and…”

  I stopped, realizing with horror that I’d just uttered words that should never have been spoken. Knowing how hard it had been for Enrique’s parents, I’d always wondered how the 9/11 families coped without having a body, without having the certain knowledge of how and where their loved ones died that day. Having to imagine all of the horrible possibilities—smoke or flames or being crushed in the collapse or choosing to jump, ending their life in free fall instead of flames.

  “I’m so sorry, Jess. I’m such an idiota. I can’t believe I—”

  “Stop it, Dani. It’s okay. Well, not okay, but…I mean, thinking about all this makes me want to scream and shout and…break things and…cry, but the thing is, all my other friends just tiptoe around the subject and me, like we’re all supposed to pretend it never happened, and I’m supposed to get on with my life. But it did happen. It happened to my dad, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to get on with my life.”

  I might not have been a grief counselor, but I knew one thing was true: “Give yourself time, Jess. It’s only been two years.”

  “Right after it happened, I let myself think that he’d been taken to a hospital somewhere in New Jersey or Brooklyn and he had amnesia from being hit on the head by falling debris,” Jess said. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “Even though deep down I think I knew he was…dead…I kept hanging on to the hope that he’d suddenly come back to his senses and one day the doorbell would ring and there he’d be, standing on the doorstep with a bandage around his head.”

  “It’s only natural to hope when you love someone. Papá and Tío Jacobo were down at Pasteur Street waiting and waiting, telling each other stories about people surviving in the voids in the rubble for days after earthquakes. Poor Tío Jacobo—he’d tried to steel himself to the idea that Tía Sara would survive but they might lose the baby but then…when they pulled her body from the wreckage and he realized he’d lost both of them…ay, it was terrible.”

  Jess looked at me with tears in her eyes. “That’s so sad—to lose your wife and your baby. Your poor uncle.”

  “No more sad than to lose your father.”

  “I gave up hope when Mom got the call from the medical examiner that they’d got a DNA match from a body part. She’d taken down his toothbrush and some strands of hair from his comb.”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “All that was left of my dad was part of a foot. But I guess that’s better than nothing, right?”

  It didn’t seem a whole lot better than nothing. But if a foot was the difference between the feeling that your father had just vaporized into thin air and knowing for sure that he was dead, I guess maybe it was.

  “Right.”

  We both bent over her quilt and inhaled the fresh, citrus scent. For me, it was just a pleasant smell, but I knew for Jessica it was so much more.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “HEY, DATE. Can we talk about the arrangements for the Winter Wonderland Dance?”

  I banged my head on the top of my locker.

  “Ouch!”

  “Watch your head!” Brian said.

  “Um. Thanks for the warning,” I said, rubbing my forehead.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you grievous bodily harm,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure we firm up our plans for our hot date.”

  “Don’t you mean our exploration of the social habits of the American teenager?”

  “Well, yeah, that, too.”

  “Why do I get the impression that you’re focusing less on the cultural aspects of the dance and more on the date part?”

  Brian grinned and made a really pathetic attempt to look innocent.

  “Who, me? Mr. American Culture? Perish the thought!”

  I just looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

  “So,” he said. “I was thinking that I could pick you up at seven.”

  Pick me up. That meant seeing my apartment and meeting my family. Maybe agreeing to go to the dance wasn’t such a good idea.

  “Oh no,” Brian said. “You’ve got your Cloudy Face on. What’s the matter?”

  “What do you mean, my Cloudy Face?”

  He laughed.

  “Your face is like the weather—it’s totally changeable and unpredictable. One minute it’s all sunny and happy—like it was a few seconds ago—and the next, a cloud has passed over, blotting out your usual radiance, like right now. What crossed your mind to make that happen?”

  He chuckled.

  “And now your face is turning the shade of Heinz Ketchup…uh, maybe I should just shut up.”

  “Yes. Maybe you should, Mr. Weatherman.”

  “Let me give you a ride home from school at least,” Brian said.

  I thought of how angry Papá would be if he saw me getting out of the car of a boy he hadn’t met, how it might provoke yet another scene at home.

  But then I looked up at Brian’s brown eyes and cheerful grin. He had a light sheen of sweat over the sprinkling of freckles on his nose and I just wanted to be in his company for a little longer. It couldn’t hurt to get a ride home, could it?

  “I suppose getting a ride with you would be better than taking the bus,” I said, not wanting to let him know that it was infinitely so.

  My pulse hadn’t quickened that way for a boy since Argentina. Since Roberto. But Beto was in Miami, and he was going out with Amber.

  “Well, come this way, madam,” Brian said, “Your limo is parked in the rear lot.”

  He drove a Subaru with an American flag sticker on the back bumper, and I was amazed when he actually came around to the passenger door and opened it for me. I didn’t think American guys did that kind of thing.

  “Home, chauffeur!” I joked, when he slid into the driver’s seat.

  He started the engine and looked at me with a grin. “I’d be happy to drive madam home, but first madam has to tell me where home is, exactly.”

  I blushed, and not just because he looked so handsome with that crooked grin. Because I was embarrassed for him to see how I lived now, compared to how I used to live in Buenos Aires.

  “Maybe I should just take the bus…,” I said, my hand reaching for the door handle.

  “Don’t be silly, they’ve all left already,” he replied, reaching across to stop me.

  His face was only inches from mine, and his other hand cupped my cheek, increasing the temperature even more.

  “What is it, Dani? What’s wrong?”

  “I…it’s just…”

  I didn’t know what to say, how to explain, and his lips were so near. I leaned forward and kissed him. I could hear my father calling me a hussy in my head, but I didn’t care, because Brian kissed me back.

  “Well, that was a pleasant surprise,” he said, when we came up for air. “I take it madam has decided to forswear the bus and stick with her humble chauffeur then?”

  “Well, you said all the buses have already left
.”

  Brian fake pouted, then took my hand and was serious.

  “What’s wrong, Dani? Why were you upset just now before…well, before our rather pleasant interlude, which I hope will be repeated in the near future.”

  I hoped so, too, although I wasn’t brave enough to say so in words. I just smiled. But the smile faded quickly, as I tried to figure out how to explain to Brian why I didn’t want him to see where I lived.

  “Things here are so…different for me…for my family…than they were in Argentina. It’s not like we were superrich, like some people around here, but until the Crisis we were respectable. My father owned a business, we lived in a nice apartment in a good neighborhood, and I went to the Jewish day school. My parents gave money to charity. But now…now we are the charity. I’m wearing the castoff clothes Jess Nathanson’s mother gave away to Jewish Family Services, we live in a tiny apartment that I’m embarrassed for you to drive me home to, and I’m freaked out that you’re going to have to come to pick me up in a few weeks’ time because you’re going to see it. And I hate it. I really, really hate it.”

  Brian’s thumb wiped away the tear that escaped my eye as I was speaking, and he gently pressed my head to his shoulder. I felt myself watering his T-shirt.

  “I can’t even imagine how hard it must be for you, having to move to a strange country—and as much as I love the U.S. of A., I bet it seems pretty strange to you—and then starting a new school where you have to do everything in a different language and on top of that to have such a change in your standard of living, too.”

  His hand gently stroked my back. “No wonder you’re crying,” he said. “I’m not sure I’d be able to get out of bed in the morning, and here you are on track to make honor roll in a foreign language and beating up bullies in the process. Are you sure your name isn’t Wonder Woman?”

  I emitted a desperately unattractive sound that was part giggle, part sob, and part snort.

  “Nice sound effects,” Brian said, grinning.

  I almost let go another one, but instead, I hit him.

  “I might be a lot of things, but Wonder Woman is definitely not one of them.”

  “I don’t know,” Brian said, twirling a lock of my hair with his finger. “I think you’re pretty wonderful.”

  He kissed me again and the feeling was mutual.

  “Hey, as much as I’d rather stay here and do this, I guess I’d better get you home,” he said, looking at his watch. “Better stop the hanky-panky with the chauffeur, eh, madam?”

  “What do you mean by ‘hanky-panky’?”

  He grinned and leaned toward me.

  “This.”

  One lingering kiss later, I reluctantly nodded my agreement.

  “Yes, we’d better stop.”

  “So where is madam’s not-exactly-palatial mansion?” he asked as he backed the car out of the space.

  “You mean madam’s tiny hovel?” I gave him the address.

  Brian leaned over to kiss me when he dropped me off, but I pulled away.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “It’s not that I don’t want to; it’s just…my dad might be home and…”

  “You don’t want me to end up filled with more holes than Swiss cheese.”

  My face must have shown my confusion, because I wasn’t sure what my father had to do with Brian and cheese.

  He laughed. “Your English is so good, sometimes I forget that you might not get some of my more obscure jokes. I meant that I don’t want your father coming after me with a shotgun because he thinks I’m up to no good with his daughter.”

  Shotgun. Bullets. Holes. Swiss cheese. “Oh…now I understand. You’re quite funny, in your strange American way.”

  “That’s me, Señorita Daniela—your strange American chauffeur. See you tomorrow.”

  He squeezed my hand and I could see in his eyes that he wished a kiss came with it. I wished it did, too, but there was no way I was going to risk it.

  “Mañana, Señor Brian.”

  I was filled with a strange excitement, a lightness that I hadn’t felt since Buenos Aires, as I climbed the stairs to our apartment. But with each step, the heaviness crept back over me, smothering me in its shroud of despair. By the time I reached the front door of the apartment, it was as if the magic of Brian’s lips touching mine never happened.

  I sighed as I turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. The apartment was dark, except for the flickering light of the television set. I was so sick of it. I hated being in that tiny place with my depressed father in the darkness. I wanted to stay outside with Brian, in the world of light, where everything seemed possible.

  The television was turned to Telemundo, the sports channel, and it was really loud. I was surprised the neighbors hadn’t called to complain—except they were probably at work, not sitting around feeling sorry for themselves like Papá.

  The contrast between how light and hopeful, how—happy—I’d felt at the bottom of the stairs and how suffocatingly miserable I felt the minute I was in my father’s presence hit me like a heavy mallet. I hadn’t felt that kind of joy in so long, and I was filled with a sudden deep fury that opening the apartment door could end it for me so easily.

  The anger swelled up in me, months of unspoken resentment, and it made me crazy—or brave maybe. But the next thing I knew, before I could think enough to tell myself that it was a bad idea, a terribly bad idea, I marched into the living room and turned off the TV. Then I walked over and yanked the curtains open.

  My father sat on the sofa, unshaven in sweats and a T-shirt, his eyes blinking in the light.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he growled.

  “What Mamá should have done months ago,” I said, pacing back and forth in front of the television. “I’m telling you to stop sitting on the sofa feeling sorry for yourself and pull yourself together. I’m telling you that you are dragging everyone in this family down and that you should take the advice of that lady from Jewish Family Services and go see a counselor before you take us down even further. Because I can’t take it anymore. It’s not fair.”

  “How DARE you speak to me this way! I am your father!”

  “So then act like my father—not like this miserable, self-pitying, angry person you’ve been for the last year!”

  “I cannot believe you have the nerve to say these things to me, Daniela. You have no idea what I have been through. How I have suffered…”

  I thought of Jess, smelling her father’s cologne to try and conjure up his presence. I thought of her crying and trying not to let her mother hear, and her mother crying and trying not to let Jess hear, of them both trying to be brave for each other but meanwhile suffering so much by themselves. Yet they went on. I thought of Tío Jacobo, who lost everything, his wife, his unborn baby, yet he picked himself up and moved to America and built a new life, even bringing us over once the Crisis hit. He went on.

  Yet my father sat in his sweats on the sofa, unshaven, watching television and feeling sorry for himself all day like this dark vortex of negative feeling that threatened to drown us all with him. No. I refused to let it happen. I clung to the lightness, to the desire to live my life with joy, to the memory of Brian’s kiss.

  “You aren’t the only one who has suffered in this world, Papá. My friend Jessica didn’t even say good-bye to her father one morning when he left for work because she wanted a few extra minutes’ sleep, and then he never came home because he worked in the World Trade Center and the morning she was tired was September 11,” I said.

  “Ay…” Papá covered his mouth with his hand. “I didn’t know.”

  “How could you know? You’ve been so wrapped up in yourself, so angry and miserable—you don’t ever listen to me when I talk anymore. But…do you think it’s easy for Jess? Or her mom? Or her brother? Jon and Jess get up every morning and go to school, even though I’m sure there are times when they don’t want to. And Mrs. Nathanson, she does all this work for charity when I bet there
are times she wishes she could just sit at home and cry on the sofa all day.”

  Papá sat there with his head in his hands. Part of me expected him to get up and start shouting at me, but he seemed strangely quiet and shrunken, almost, like a balloon with a slow air leak. I didn’t know what to make of his silence, but I was like a runaway train, speaking with ever-quickening momentum.

  “What about Tío Jacobo—are you saying you suffered more than he did? He lost everything! Tía Sara, the baby…At least you still have Mamá and Sarita and me, not that we seem to matter to you at all.”

  I stopped pacing because Papá made a strange sound and when he lifted his head I saw that he was crying. Tears streamed down his grizzled, unshaven cheeks, and his shoulders shook with sobs.

  My anger, seething and strong just seconds before, fizzled at the sight of my father’s tears. He looked…broken, and I couldn’t help but think that it was my words that were the final blow that knocked him down and shattered him.

  I rushed over and put my arms around him, consumed with guilt.

  “Papá, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to…”

  “No, Dani,” he sobbed. “You are right…everything you say is right…”

  “Papá, no…I…”

  “I’ve been selfish…wallowing in my despair…leaving everything up to your mother…on her shoulders.”