Hope and Other Punch Lines(37)

“Why are we doing this?” I turn to face him. His eyes are now dry. I suspect he wiped them on his sleeve, as I did mine. I wonder what he looks like without the protection of his glasses. If his big, kind eyes seem even bigger. “I mean really? Why?”

“Which this? Me eating this whole bag of Oreos? I may not even share.”

“Come on. This, as in ripping open old wounds. This, as in blackmailing me to do it with you.” I’m full of big questions today.

My picture hangs above Sheila’s toilet. She chooses to remember every single damn morning when she looks in the mirror. To take the worst thing that ever happened to her and transform it into something powerful and productive. To become a better person.

I’m not sure I am strong enough to do that.

I look at Noah, but he looks away.

“I won’t tell anyone you’re Baby Hope,” he says, so low I almost can’t hear him. Sheila gets up each day and laces up her black sneakers and takes a train into the city like a warrior heading into battle. And yet she’s leveled by the memory of holding her dead husband’s hands. I bet she, like me, dreams of empty boxes underground, of thick dust, of how the entire world can unravel in the span of a single minute.

All it takes is a tiny, inexplicable tear in the fabric of the moral universe.

I wonder if she ever looks at that Baby Hope photo and instead of remembering to be grateful, she gets angry about being left behind.

I wonder what Noah sees when he looks at that picture.

I wonder what tattoo he would really want to get.

I wonder why the hell we are doing this.

“I wouldn’t have sold you out. If you don’t want to do the rest of the interviews, I understand. I won’t tell anyone at camp either way. I was never going to,” he says. “I want you to know that.”

My stomach hollows at Noah’s words. He won’t tell. Still, there’s no relief, only a blast of regret. It turns out I don’t want to stop doing this. I like riding in Go! (the name for my Prius that I’m secretly trying out in my head) to previously unexplored parts of New Jersey with Noah. I like having him as my copilot. I like that he deposits only three gummy bears in my hand at a time, the exact right number that I can handle in a single bite. I like feeling part of something important in a way that’s intentional, not accidental. I like thinking that maybe there’s still a chance for me. That, like Sheila, I can find a way to digest what has seemed indigestible.

If my mother were sitting in her therapist’s chair, she might argue that this project is healthy, an unearthing. If my mom were sitting in our kitchen, though, she’d smile a fake smile and say “Eh, let bygones be bygones.”

“Just tell me why,” I say, softening, because I know that Noah lost so much that day almost sixteen years ago. His reasons must go well beyond this article he’s planning. I’m tempted to touch his face, where there were tears moments ago. I feel an urge to trace a line with my fingertips, cheek to jaw.

I don’t actually do it. Though I guess that would be one kind of blaze of glory.

“I think I deserve that much,” I say.

“It’s complicated.”

“Please,” I say. “I want to understand.”

“Okay, so, not sure if I already mentioned it, but my dad died on nine-eleven.”

Noah doesn’t look at me as he talks. He stares out the windshield, at the closed garage door, at the old basketball hoop that presumably belonged to the family who lived in this house before Sheila moved in. I nod. Of course he didn’t mention it. Of course I already knew.

“I guess I thought this would be a good way to learn more about it. What happened. What that day was like. I need to learn about the survivors. It’s not only me who’s interested. That’s why Baby Hope is so famous. Still. Even now. That’s why I think that photo is so important.”

Noah squeezes the bridge of his nose. The gesture is cute and sad and makes me want to tap his sneaker. I like how he refers to Baby Hope as something altogether separate from me. A symbol, not a person.

He didn’t say That’s why you are so famous.

He takes off his glasses, cleans them again with his shirt, slowly—what I’m learning is a nervous habit. I get to see his face. Same Noah, only bigger, brighter, more vulnerable. He pops them back on. Noah restored.

“The fact that everyone’s still standing. It gives me faith,” he says, like he’s made some secret decision.

“But we’re not,” I say.

“We’re not what?” he asks.

“All still standing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Connie? The woman who is carrying me in the picture? Who saved me? She’s dead.” For some reason, saying Connie’s name gives me the jolt I need to put the key in the ignition and start the car. Driving is a great excuse to not have to look at Noah anymore. It’s becoming too much. He was born days before 9/11. Would it have been better if Noah had been five or ten years old when his father died? Or would it have been crueler for him to have been given an exact measure of what he’s lost?

“I didn’t know,” Noah says. “I Googled her.”

“She changed her name when she got married.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I met her a few times, but I didn’t really know her know her. I was really upset when she died, though.”