Hope and Other Punch Lines(9)

“Did he get joint custody of her too?” I ask.

“Funny,” my mom says, but she doesn’t laugh.

“I can help,” I say, serious, because my mom’s eyes are beginning to well, and I’m not sure I can handle seeing her cry, especially here in line with only one other customer before we have to order. At least when strangers unload on me in town, I know the encounters will eventually end, that after I’ve hugged them and they’ve dried their tears, they will go one way and I will go another. I have no obligation to take their grief with me. But with my mother, whose cheery martyrdom doesn’t usually allow for tears, I can’t separate our feelings so easily.

I have no idea who my parents were pre-9/11, but sometimes I think that the fact that they were two of the lucky ones, that they were among the random survivors, explains everything about who they are now. Like they hope to retroactively earn their ridiculous good fortune by being good sports about whatever else life throws their way.

“We’ll figure it out,” I say.

“Of course we will. We’ll be fine,” my mom says after a moment, again smiling, her mask slipping right into place, where it fits best, just in time to order. “We’re always fine.”

“Chocolate hemp with a ribbon of bone marrow, please,” she says, turning toward the ice cream guy.

When it’s my turn to order, I order the closest thing to a flavor I recognize—Madagascar vanilla with roasted turmeric and sea salt—and ask for rainbow sprinkles and two cherries to add a little cheer.

I consciously relax my furrowed brow.

I am, after all, my mother’s child.

I too am a lucky one.

And so I smile back. Because she’s right.

We are always fine. We will always be fine.





I should make clear this is not the first time I’ve tried to get information on the Baby Hope photo. I’ve attempted other, less direct routes. The Internet, of course, which has led me nowhere. There are only so many times you can Google “University of Michigan,” “Baby Hope,” and “Blue Hat Guy” in various combinations.

A few years ago, I dragged Jack on a research mission to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, which turned out to be, at least for me, the weirdest freaking place on earth. It’s free for family members of the victims. Not that anyone should have to pay. Obviously they shouldn’t. But why would anyone want to go?

Maybe one day when I’m older and possibly wiser, I’ll find the museum cathartic or beautiful or respectfully commemorative, and maybe I’ll even be grateful for its existence. But at the moment, it pisses me off. I can’t understand why anyone would want to see the place where the most horrific thing you can imagine happening actually happened. Worse, why would you want that turned into a tourist attraction?

Do some people think, While we’re here, let’s make sure to buy a commemorative hat from the gift shop. I’ve always wanted to turn a mass tragedy into a material possession!

I’m pretty sure that’s not what we mean by Never forget.

There’s this whole special area reserved for VIPs, where you stand in the Reflection Room and view the remains repository. Those are literally the words they use, Reflection Room and remains repository, as if its patrons are kindergarteners or Kardashians and take comfort in alliteration. This is an underground lookout point—a window onto a cavernous room filled with mood-lit drawers. A gold star to anyone who can guess what’s in those nifty cabinets. Yup, those lucky people who were so incinerated there aren’t even DNA traces left.

That’s what you’re supposed to reflect on. In your free time. By choice. They provide complimentary tissues.

Unidentified remains.

Here’s the strangest part of all: the museum has its own Twitter feed. A fucking Twitter feed. Of course it’s about the most depressing shit imaginable. They don’t even try to be funny.

Which is a long way of saying the 9/11 museum turned out to be a dead end. No pun intended.

I’m really hoping Abbi isn’t.





The girls swim with two instructors while a lifeguard named Charles—who is hot in exactly the way lifeguards are supposed to be, all tanned abs and disinterested glare—watches from his perch on the side of the plake with a flotation ring in his lap.

“You look sort of familiar to me,” Julia says, and these are the first words she’s said to me all day that haven’t been some sort of command. “Where do I know you from?”

“I get that a lot. I have resting I know you from somewhere face,” I say. I cup my hands over my eyes and pretend to be fascinated by the girls’ swimming progress. I’ve come too far to be outed now. “So how are things with you and Zach?”

“I used to think he was cool—did you know he meditates every day?—but last night we went out and he seemed over me already. It’s only been a couple of days, which I realize is like a month in camp time. Still…” She trails off, and we both turn our attention to Charles the Lifeguard, because he has his whistle between his lips, and that’s all he has to do, bring a whistle to his mouth, to get girls to look at him.

What’s camp time? Is it like dog years? Perhaps there was some sixth sense at play when I picked this job—perhaps I somehow knew this summer would feel longer and bigger when it was all over.