Do Not Become Alarmed(81)
“Mexico curves to the east,” Marcus said. He approximated the continents with his hands. “And so does the Isthmus of Panama. So South America is much farther east than North America.”
Benjamin had always felt a connection to Marcus. The way his mind worked seemed not unlike Benjamin’s own—a little spacey, enamored of logical systems. Marcus had barely spoken in days, and Benjamin was encouraged by this sudden volubility. “Do you know how the isthmus was formed?” he asked.
“Volcanoes,” Marcus said, and he settled back into a comic book in Spanish. He had broken his silence only to answer an actual question. He was not going to be drawn out by a grown-up’s idea of conversation.
An embassy chaperone took them to the airport terminal, and Benjamin felt curious eyes on them. Most people kept a respectful distance, but one intrepid soul in a swordfish T-shirt put a hand on Benjamin’s shoulder to congratulate him. He wanted to shake this well-meaning tourist and tell him: It was luck! Your car didn’t crash on the way here. This airport hasn’t been attacked. There hasn’t been an earthquake or a tidal wave. We’ve all been really fucking lucky, for one more day. That’s it! That’s all!
The plane took off, separated itself from the tarmac. A motherly flight attendant brought warm nuts in a ceramic dish, and a Bloody Mary. Benjamin didn’t usually drink, but what the hell? Beside him, Liv looked out the window at the retreating country. She and Nora seemed to have reached a détente, and she’d stopped talking about lawsuits. They had all given statements that they didn’t think Oscar should be prosecuted, to be used in the inquest, because Oscar had been protecting the children. Benjamin was secretly glad that Penny had gotten herself and her brother off the train, that his kids hadn’t been there to see the man killed. Not that he wished it on Marcus and June.
There’d been no word of Raúl’s brother yet, except from Penny, who said George was really nice. Hard to judge about that.
So now they would all have to reenter their life, carrying this beast they’d picked up on vacation: a hulking creature of reproach, grief, fear, guilt, and untoward luck, shaggily cloaked in the world’s lurid interest. He didn’t know how they were going to move forward, dragging the thing on their backs.
But then he thought of Gunther and Camila, and the grief that they were taking home with them. He kept thinking of old news footage of the fall of Saigon, those last-minute helicopters off the roof. He and his family had escaped, leaving chaos behind them. It was the American way.
60.
THE COUNSELOR, MS. HONG, led a very nonjudgmental discussion at a school meeting in the big hall, and Nora sat reluctantly in a folding chair in a big uneven circle, with kids on the floor and parents in the bleachers and in other chairs. It was the culture of their small school to have meetings like this, and it would have been considered strange to refuse, but she found herself wishing the teachers were a little less dedicated to processing everything, and they could just move on.
She kept waking in the dark of her own bedroom and “seeing” the hotel room where she had spent the worst week of her life. In her mind, she was still there, and so were the bedside tables, the credenza. She moved carefully around them to the door where she knew the hotel bathroom to be, and then she stood there, feeling the blank wall in Los Angeles with her hands, trying to understand where she was.
Raymond had refused to go to the all-school meeting, but his mother came, and sat with Marcus in a far corner. Dianne kept her handbag on her lap, as if she might have to bolt any second. Nora smiled when she caught her son’s eye, but Marcus looked away.
Junie sat beside Nora. She didn’t like to let her mother out of her sight. She followed her to the bathroom, clung to her at the supermarket. Nora had been staying at school all day, experimenting with leaving the classroom once June was engaged, but never going farther than the hallway outside the door.
Sebastian told the assembled circle the story of how his blood sugar had crashed after they left the train, and how he’d had a seizure while a woman was giving them a ride. He was unselfconscious about it, matter-of-fact.
Penny seemed utterly unscathed, enjoying the attention. Nora wondered if the trauma was in hibernation somewhere inside her, if she would have a delayed breakdown at twenty-three. If the rest of them hesitated before answering a question, Penny would jump in.
But then a girl in June’s class, Sunita, asked about the boy who died. Sunita was six years old. What to tell her? Nora expected Penny to speak, but Penny only blinked, and looked as if something had short-circuited in her brain.
Nora turned to the little girl. “You mean did we know him?”
Sunita nodded.
“Yes,” Penny blurted finally. “We knew Hector.”
“Was he nice?” Sunita asked.
“He was the nicest boy I’ve ever met,” Penny said, her eyes filling with tears.
There was silence in the room. Nora realized how struck Penny must have been by Hector—as struck as Marcus had been by Isabel. They had both lost their hearts to the Argentines.
Finally a mother asked, “What about the Ecuadorean girl?”
Liv said, “She’s in New York with her parents. They all have papers.”
A satisfied murmur passed through the room. Nora wanted to shout that there were lots of kids who didn’t get to their parents, who didn’t get papers. But then they had to sing the “Ode to Joy” in Spanish.