Jessica Z

by Shawn Klomparens

  “Pat,” I say. “You hitchhiked here from your office?”

  “I, ah…I got a ride pretty quick.” I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about it, and he turns away before I can say anything else.

  Patrick sticks his head back into the kitchen. “Just pound the ceiling if you need anything, Maureen.”

  Katie and I snicker again.

  “See you guys in a little while,” Patrick says as he starts for my door. “I have to do some e-mails.”

  “Oh, hey, that reminds me,” I say. “Can you take a look at my computer when you have a chance? Those guys did something to it. It won’t turn on.”

  “That was me,” Patrick says. “I took the power cord.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Just, you know, the news, you didn’t need to see it. Yet.”

  “Is the fact that my TV isn’t working related to this, somehow?”

  “I disconnected the cable box too.”

  “And my phone?”

  “Upstairs. It was ringing nonstop.”

  “Did you take my clocks?”

  “Elaine didn’t want you fixating on time. That was her idea.”

  “You took my watch off me too, didn’t you?”

  Patrick smiles.

  “He’s very thorough,” Katie says.

  Patrick smiles again and opens the door. “I’ll be down later,” he says. Then my door closes and he’s gone.

  “I think he did the right thing,” Katie says as she pulls the afghan back up over our shoulders.

  “Whatever.”

  “What do these pills do?”

  “They’re sleepy pills,” I say. “You feel like sleepy Jell-O.”

  “I can handle sleepy Jell-O.”

  We lean into one another, looking out the window as we listen to Mom working away in the kitchen. Running water, cabinets opening and closing. My good knife—a gift from Patrick last summer—tapping and scraping on my maple cutting block. I have no idea what she’s making in there, but whatever it is, I’m so happy she’s cooking. Dinner by Mom is a much needed anchor in reality right now.

  “Do you think Dad will come?” I ask.

  Katie snorts. “With Wilma? God, I hope not. Is it always foggy here?”

  “There are sunny days,” I say. “And it rains. In the winter it rains a lot.”

  “Is it a nice rain?”

  “I love the rain. Sometimes there’s rain. Sometimes there’s nothing.”

  “Do you want Dad to come here?” Katie asks.

  “Honestly? No.”

  “Didn’t think so.” Katie rests her head a little more on my shoulder. “Has he called? I wonder if he even knows.”

  “I have no idea. The volume control is on the handset. I can’t hear messages without the phone.”

  “I’ll go through them for you tonight,” Katie says. Then she yawns.

  “Patrick had better bring my phone back. And the computer cord. And everything else.”

  I smell something cooking, and there’s a new sound coming from the kitchen; brushing, or scrubbing.

  “Katie?” Mom calls. “Would you come in here for a moment?”

  “I’m kind of resting right now.” I feel her move closer to me. “Jess and I are resting.”

  “Just for a second. I need your help.”

  Katie mumbles something I can’t quite hear as she gets up, but I do understand her when she says “Whoa, sleepy Jell-O!” before stumbling toward my kitchen. I close my eyes and rest my head on the back of the couch.

  “Can you help me look for cleaning supplies? Or ask Jessica where she keeps them?”

  “Mom, do you have to do this right now? Why don’t you just come out and sit with us?”

  “I’ve already started straightening up, she doesn’t have anything in here, I can’t believe she doesn’t—”

  “Will you just take a break? We’ve been going like crazy for days, do you always have to be doing something? Take a break. Please?”

  “Katherine,” Mom says, and the way she says my sister’s given name is like a splash of cold water in my face. “If I do not keep myself busy, I am going to fall apart.” Those last two words sound like they have been squeezed from her body, and they hurt me as much, I think, as it must have hurt her to admit them.

  Neither says a word for a long time, and all I hear is water running in the sink.

  “Is falling apart such an awful thing?” Katie finally says, and the quiver in her voice makes me think she might fall apart herself. “You’re allowed to break down, Mom. We’ve all earned a breakdown here, I think.”

  “Please,” Mom says in a voice I can barely hear. “Please. Just find out where she keeps her paper towels. Ask her if she has any scouring powder.”

  The look on Katie’s face, when she returns to the couch, is a mixture of fear, resignation, and sorrow. I imagine it’s a lot like how my own face must look.

  “Did you hear her?” Katie asks in a low voice.

  “It’s all in the bathroom,” I say. “In the green metal locker behind the door. Down on the floor.”

  Katie goes back, and I hear her rustling through my things in the bathroom. Mom seems pleased with whatever Katie’s brought her. Maybe she’s just happy that she has raised a kid who keeps cleaning supplies in her home.

  “Thank you,” she says to Katie in almost a whisper. “Thank you.”

  Katie slips down by my side, and we don’t speak after she pulls the afghan up over us again. Mom is Mom, I’m thinking, and I know Katie is thinking it too. Poor Mom.

  I’m listening to Katie’s slowing breaths and the occasional stainless-steel gong sound that comes from my sink as it’s being cleaned. Maybe I doze. Maybe not quite. My sister’s head feels heavy on my shoulder.

  “Katie,” I say, despite the fact that I think she’s passed out, “was I sleeping with a guy who blew up a bus?”

  “No,” she says. I guess she wasn’t passed out after all.

  “Are you sure?”

  Katie sits up a bit. “Wait, what are you asking me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think Josh blew up the bus?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “Whoa, wait, Jessica, why are you thinking this? Where did this come from?”

  “There were some men yesterday. Like detectives or something. They just asked me some questions that made me wonder.”

  “Jess, you’ve been living with the guy—”

  “We weren’t living together.”

  “Practically cohabitating, then. For months. Do you really think he could have done something like that without you knowing?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Would he have?”

  I really want to sleep now and forget about this. “He was always talking to weird guys,” I say. “In Spanish.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. I mean, seriously. If someone was going to do something like that, wouldn’t you know? And what about his project, the scan thing?”

  “What about it?”

  Katie looks at me. “If you were dedicating your life to making something like that, would you work and work and work on it and then one day, just…boom?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Really, do you think he could have?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Good,” Katie says. “I don’t think he could have, either.”

  Her head goes back onto my shoulder, and we are quiet. This is just what I needed to hear, but there still isn’t much relief as I feel Katie fall into an easy sleep.

  24

  My kitchen table only came with three chairs, so Patrick brings down one of his own when he joins us for my mom’s dinner. A casserole dish, which I had forgotten I even owned, sits steaming in the middle of the table on a folded dishtowel, bubbling with some cheesy-looking contents that smell like, well, home. Like Sunday nights, in our kitchen back home. Katie would be reading, and I’d be doing homework. Mom would listen to classical music on publi
c radio and make a casserole.

  Exactly what I need right now, I think.

  Patrick has pulled my table into the center of the room to make space for his extra chair. It’s a little cramped, but comfortable. He’s across from me, Katie is to my left, and Mom is to my right. My back hurts so much now that I’m sitting straight up, and I’ve found that if I keep my chin lifted, the soreness in my neck is eased.

  “Would you have some wine, Maureen?” Patrick asks. “I could grab a bottle if you’d like.”

  “I don’t think we need any, thank you,” Mom says.

  “This is great, by the way,” he adds. I know he’s just being kind by saying it. He’s a snob with food just like he is with everything else, but Mom doesn’t know that, and she purses her lips and cocks her head and almost smiles. She’s never been good at taking compliments.

  “I might have a glass,” Katie says. “If it’s not a hassle for you.”

  “No, no,” Patrick says, starting to rise from his chair. I can tell he wants to win Katie over. “It’s not a problem—”

  “I don’t think we need any,” Mom says again, this time with a little more finality.

  “Well, this part of the ‘we’ would like some, Mom,” Katie says, lifting an eyebrow.

  “I know you’ve been taking those pills with your sister, Katie. Do you think drinking alcohol on top of them is such a good idea?”

  “I only had a couple, Mom. And I think I can make my own decisions, is what I think,” Katie says. She and Mom stare at each other, and then they both look at Patrick. I feel bad for him—if he goes and gets a bottle of wine, all the points he’s gained with my mother today will be lost, but if he doesn’t, he’ll be on Katie’s bad side.

  Honestly, I’m kind of with Mom on this. I’m really—really—not ready to be drunk, either, and I’d like to avoid even the temptation. And maybe it isn’t such a good idea for Katie to drink after those pills today? I’m pretty sure she had a third.

  Am I turning into my mother?

  “Maybe we could have some later, if we still feel like it,” I say.

  “You are not having any later, Jessica,” Mom says. I am programmed from my childhood to respond in a huffy way to a challenge like this, but I don’t. She’s right, anyway.

  “Later is maybe a good idea,” Katie says. I’m glad, for Patrick’s sake, that she’s backed down.

  “What was the name of the Romanian guy who used to live next door?” I ask.

  “Nick,” Patrick says between bites. “Big Nick.”

  “Did he ever yell at you when you gave, what was her name, Julia? The oldest one. Did he ever yell at you when you gave her violin lessons?”

  “He didn’t need to yell. He didn’t need to say a word, really. That guy scared the shit out of me.” Katie smiles at this and glances up at Mom, and Patrick looks suddenly embarrassed. “Oh, sorry, Maureen.”

  Mom is unfazed. “You teach the violin?” she asks, leaning in and looking sincerely impressed. I think she might have a crush on him.

  “I’m, ah, it was a side job thing. I needed some work. I really play the cello.”

  “That’s lovely!” Mom says. “Do you play well?”

  “I—”

  “He plays very well, Mom,” I say. Patrick doesn’t notice that I’m smiling at him. Just smiling about anything is good enough. Mom is smiling at him too.

  “I always wished I knew how to play the cello,” she says, and I know Patrick has scored big, big points with Mo.

  Patrick works at reconnecting the cables behind my TV stand while Katie and I wait for the computer to come up. Mom, who doesn’t seem to approve of me seeing any news about this so soon, has gone for a walk—only agreeing to go alone after Patrick convinced her that crime in our neighborhood is, in fact, very rare.

  Katie sits to my right with her hands on her knees, and she leans forward as I type in my password.

  “You sure you’re ready?” she asks.

  “Do you think I’m not?”

  “I think you are. I mean, I would want to look.”

  “I do want to look.”

  Patrick pushes himself up from behind the television and closes up his pair of pliers before twirling them and jamming them in his pocket like a gun into a holster.

  “I don’t know if I would want to see it so soon,” he says. “I mean, if it happened to me.”

  “Well, it didn’t happen to you,” I say. “I don’t even remember it. I want to see.”

  “I think you’re totally ready,” Katie says.

  The browser loads up and I go to the cable news page, and I close my eyes and bite my lower lip because I have no idea how I’m going to react when I see what they have posted. Katie makes a little “ha!” sound and I open my eyes and see not a picture of a smoldering bus, but a map and a headline reading, “Tennessee Floodwaters Threaten More Homes.”

  “What?” I say. Katie doesn’t say anything. There’s news about the Nashville flood, and a few headlines about the bombing in Miami, and some golf tournament, and an Alzheimer’s disease drug, and a recipe for heart-healthy fish. No buses. I scroll down the page a bit, and my sister points to the screen.

  “There it is. There.”

  The headline in the “National” section says, “SF Suicide Bombing Leaves Questions, Few Answers.” I almost click on it, but stop.

  Will I see Josh here? The passport photo with the long hair?

  I take a breath and click, and Katie leans in close to me as the page comes up. The picture isn’t a picture at all, just a generic graphic of an explosion over the words “DOMESTIC TERROR.” The name of the bomber has not yet been released, the story says, because of the ongoing investigation. It goes on to say that the improperly assembled bomb didn’t detonate all the way, and only nine people were killed.

  Only nine. Well, that’s lucky, isn’t it?

  Maybe this is why my bus is not so newsworthy?

  There are links to stories about some of the victims, and a photo gallery from the bombing, but I don’t click on any of them. Thankfully, I don’t see anything with my name. I’m just about to go to search on Google for other pages about the whole thing, but I see a link at the bottom of the page that makes me stop. Katie sees it at the same time.

  “RELATED:” it says. “New York exhibition goes on for artist killed in suicide blast.”

  “Go there,” Katie whispers. “Click it.”

  I do as she says, and this time, when the page loads, we see Josh. And I start to cry.

  “That’s him,” I say. The picture is of Josh in an apron, gesturing while he’s talking. It takes me a moment to remember it was one of the images from the presentation he gave at the Art Academy. The first night.

  “It’s okay, Jess.”

  “We were fighting. I mean, kind of. We argued. I argued. I was trying to break up with him. He wouldn’t listen.” I look over my shoulder to see if Patrick is still here, but he isn’t in the room anymore. I don’t want him to be here right now.

  “I understand, Jess.”

  “I was trying to end it. He wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  “He never listened to me. But he didn’t deserve that.”

  “It isn’t your fault.”

  “He didn’t deserve it, though.”

  “No one deserves it, Jess.”

  I sob for a while, and Katie puts her arm around my shoulders. It dies down and I’m almost through with it, but I look at the screen and see his picture again, holding his ink-stained hand out, palm up, talking with a half smile in front of the trees changing color through his studio window, and I fall into shaking sobs again. Each gasp makes my back hurt, and I want to stop crying, but I can’t.

  “It’s okay,” Katie says, and only then do I realize my strong little sister is crying too.

  I click on the gallery link in the story, and another window comes up with a bigger version of the picture of Josh in his studio. I scroll through the images, the
re’s some of his older stuff, flowers and things like that. There are no genitals. Then there’s one of his new ones.

  “That’s my shoulder,” I say with a sniffle.

  “Your shoulder has a lot of roads.”

  “Yes. That’s how he saw it.”

  “It really isn’t your fault, Jess.”

  “I know. Thank you. I don’t want you to go.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “No, I mean away. I don’t want you to leave me. But I want you to be on your boat.”

  “I’ve been thinking about maybe not going.”

  “No, no, Katie, you have to go. I didn’t mean that for real. You have to go. You have to.”

  “My flight is Thursday. I switched it so I can leave from here.”

  “I’ll go with you to the airport,” I say.

  I turn back to the computer to search for pictures of my bus. The crying is over for the time being; now I’m feeling analytical. I type “taraval+bus+bomb” into the image search page, and this combination is a winner: the very first result is some person’s photo blog with maybe a hundred little thumbnails from just after the explosion. The guy writes that he lives right above where it happened; apparently he was home and taking a shower and he heard a boom and when he came out in his towel his windows were gone and his floor was covered with glass and there was a bus on fire in the street. So like any smart person would have done, he grabbed his camera.

  We go through the photos, one by one, starting at the beginning. There are images with flames, and broken glass, and blankets and trash all over the sidewalk and road. There are pictures of the smoking bus with blackened seats, and when Katie sees me spending too much time trying to make out the dark unfocused shapes on board she puts her hand over mine and makes me click back to the thumbnail page.

  We pick and choose a little more. In one picture, some policemen are holding up a dirty striped blanket to hide something in the bus. There’s another that shows a man with gold teeth and blood on his face. A woman is yelling. Two men talking. Papers in the street. We scan over the images.

  “Click on that one, here.” Katie grabs the mouse from me and clicks. “Oh my God, it’s you,” she says with a gasp. It’s actually a whole series, six or seven photos, of me sitting on the ground with my bag and a half-wrapped sandwich in my lap, looking off with a blank, stupid expression on my face. There’s a bystander next to me, just a regular pedestrian, in some of the pictures. He’s pointing to something and maybe shouting for help, and in the last two there’s a medic-looking woman trying to talk to me with her hand on my shoulder. It doesn’t look like I’m saying much back to her.