Hope and Other Punch Lines(52)

My grandmother has always had that effect on people; since childhood, all I’ve wanted to do was sit at her feet and learn.

“I have a talent for ruining good things,” I say. “That’s not narcissism. It’s a fact.”

“Ha! Wow, so narcissistic and melodramatic. Add in moody and you hit the teenager trifecta!”

“You’re just being mean,” I say, though I’m smiling. I feel soggy with love for my grandmother. I want to tackle-hug her, pin her down like a thumbtack on a wall map. I want to hold her old hands, make her fix me in place too. It may be narcissistic and also dramatic, but in my mind two words echo: Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go. I can’t lose her.

“Sorry not sorry,” Paula says, and whips out a file she must have been hiding in her pocket and starts to shape her fingernails. “But, girl, you need to buy some Listerine. Solves this problem, easy peasy lemon squeezy.”





A few hours later, my mom knocks on my door and doesn’t wait for my Come in. Probably because she knew she wasn’t getting one. I’m lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling. She sits at my feet, doesn’t make eye contact.

“Do you remember when you were little, how we used to cuddle in the mornings before I went to work?” she asks, and takes my bunched-up blanket and folds it into a perfect rectangle. “That was the only thing that got me through losing your dad. The way you’d curl your little body against mine. You used to not let me turn around because you liked looking at my face. I mean, you were always bursting with so much sweetness. You’d hold my hand when we were walking from room to room. I felt like the luckiest unlucky person in the world. I might have lost him, but I had you. Do you remember any of that, Noah?”

I don’t answer.

“Of course not. Those are the sorts of memories mothers hold on to, not sons.” She shrugs, wipes a tear from her cheek. Clears her throat and starts again, calm this time: “Your father saved six people, including a pregnant woman. Seven if you count her baby.”

I stay quiet, because I don’t trust myself to speak. The anger takes root. I should be feeling grief instead—though it’s hard to miss something you never had. I want to put my fist through the wall. I want my knuckles to bleed. I want to unfold that damn blanket.

“He was so close to coming home. So close! You can see it in that horrible photo, which I hate, by the way. Hate. It’s like being slapped in the face every time I see it. He’s running toward us. You were so tiny then. With that literal broken heart. You, in that little hot box, with wires and breathing tubes and the bruises all over. That should have been enough to keep him putting one leg in front of the other. That should have been enough. Why wasn’t it enough?”

My mom starts to weep. She gives up on wiping away the tears. Lost cause. I do nothing to comfort her.

“He went to work that day to get his lucky hat. ‘I’ll be back in no time,’ he promised. ‘In and out.’ We were both so scared for you. We were desperate. He thought the hat would help. He needed to feel like he was doing something.”

“You lied,” I say. Two words. I can manage two words. They come out like spit.

“I don’t know how to explain this.”

“Try,” I demand. I close my eyes, one sense down. There, easier. “You didn’t not just tell me. I asked you straight out and you lied.”

“I couldn’t do it, Noah. I’m still so angry at him. So unbelievably angry, which isn’t fair. I know that. How was I supposed to tell you about all those people showing up at our door to say thank you, as if I deserved gratitude for what your dad did? As if I were happy that they got to live when he chose to die? I wanted to slam the door in their faces. Even the pregnant woman, with that swollen belly and those swollen eyes. I even begrudged her. ‘God bless you,’ she said to me, sitting right at our kitchen table, your dad’s and mine, and I laughed right in her face, I really did laugh, like it was funny, because what I wanted to tell her was God has nothing to do with this. God has left the building.”

My mom stands up, as if we are done, as if we don’t have almost sixteen years of lies between us. She sits back down, wipes the still-flowing tears with the arm of her shirt.

“We ran into that lady once. In a mall, right in front of Macy’s, and her baby wasn’t a baby anymore, though she was pregnant again. He was around your age, five-ish, and you looked at each other, peeking around our legs. Before either of us could say a word, she started to cry, like she had the right to cry, not me, and yes, I realize no one has a monopoly on pain, but still. Her son had a mom and a dad and soon a baby brother or sister. She wasn’t doing it alone. I picked you up and ran to the parking lot. Once we got into the car, I broke down, I lost it, and I swear I’ll never forget this. You, all buckled up in your little seat in the back, said, ‘Mommy, why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine!’ You were trying to make me laugh. Even then, you were you, Noah.”

“You lied,” I say again, because the other words—Why didn’t you tell me?—are too hard right now. I don’t want to hear stories about me as a baby. I’ve seen the pictures. I used to be adorable. Who cares? Nothing lasts forever.

“I didn’t want you to feel that somehow we weren’t enough for him to come home to. I couldn’t bear that. I wanted you to not to have a single bad feeling about that pregnant lady. Was that wrong? Because that’s the truth. I didn’t want to infect you with those feelings of betrayal.”