Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

  OK.

  Sometimes I felt like the space was collapsing onto us. Someone was on the bed. Mary jumping. Your father sleeping. Anna kissing me. I felt buried. Anna holding the sides of my face. My father pinching my cheeks. Everything on top of me.

  When your mother came home, she gave you such a fierce hug. I wanted to protect you from her.

  She asked if your father had called.

  No.

  Are there any messages on the phone?

  No.

  You asked her if your father was in the building for a meeting.

  She told you no.

  You tried to find her eyes, and that was when I knew that you knew.

  She called the police. It was busy. She called again. It was busy.

  She kept calling. When it wasn’t busy, she asked to speak to someone.

  There was no one to speak to.

  You went to the bathroom. I told her to control herself. At least in front of you.

  She called the newspapers. They didn’t know anything.

  She called the fire department.

  No one knew anything.

  All afternoon I knitted that scarf for you. It grew longer and longer.

  Your mother closed the windows, but we could still smell the smoke.

  She asked me if I thought we should make posters.

  I said it might be a good idea.

  That made her cry, because she had been depending on me.

  The scarf grew longer and longer.

  She used the picture from your vacation. From only two weeks before. It was you and your father. When I saw it, I told her she shouldn’t use a picture that had your face in it. She said she wasn’t going to use the whole picture. Only your father’s face.

  I told her, Still, it isn’t a good idea.

  She said, There are more important things to worry about.

  Just use a different picture.

  Let it go, Mom.

  She had never called me Mom.

  There are so many pictures to choose from.

  Mind your own business.

  This is my business.

  We were not angry at each other.

  I don’t know how much you understood, but probably you understood everything.

  She took the posters downtown that afternoon. She filled a rolling suitcase with them. I thought of your grandfather. I wondered where he was at that moment. I didn’t know if I wanted him to be suffering.

  She took a stapler. And a box of staples. And tape. I think of those things now. The paper, the stapler, the staples, the tape. It makes me sick. Physical things. Forty years of loving someone becomes staples and tape.

  It was just the two of us. You and me.

  We played games in the living room. You made jewelry. The scarf grew longer and longer. We went for a walk in the park. We didn’t talk about what was on top of us. What was pinning us down like a ceiling. When you fell asleep with your head on my lap, I turned on the television.

  I lowered the volume until it was silent.

  The same pictures over and over.

  Planes going into buildings.

  Bodies falling.

  People waving shirts out of high windows.

  Planes going into buildings.

  Bodies falling.

  Planes going into buildings.

  People covered in gray dust.

  Bodies falling.

  Buildings falling.

  Planes going into buildings.

  Planes going into buildings.

  Buildings falling.

  People waving shirts out of high windows.

  Bodies falling.

  Planes going into buildings.

  Sometimes I felt your eyelids flickering. Were you awake? Or dreaming?

  Your mother came home late that night. The suitcase was empty.

  She hugged you until you said, You’re hurting me.

  She called everyone your father knew, and everyone who might know something. She told them, I’m sorry to wake you. I wanted to shout into her ear, Don’t be sorry!

  She kept touching her eyes, although there were no tears.

  They thought there would be thousands of injured people. Unconscious people. People without memories. They thought there would be thousands of bodies. They were going to put them in an ice-skating rink.

  Remember when we went skating a few months ago and I turned around, because I told you that watching people skate gave me a headache? I saw rows of bodies under the ice.

  Your mother told me I could go home.

  I told her I didn’t want to.

  She said, Have something to eat. Try to sleep.

  I won’t be able to eat or sleep.

  She said, I need to sleep.

  I told her I loved her.

  That made her cry, because she had been depending on me.

  I went back across the street.

  Planes going into buildings.

  Bodies falling.

  Planes going into buildings.

  Buildings falling.

  Planes going into buildings.

  Planes going into buildings.

  Planes going into buildings.

  When I no longer had to be strong in front of you, I became very weak. I brought myself to the ground, which was where I belonged. I hit the floor with my fists. I wanted to break my hands, but when it hurt too much, I stopped. I was too selfish to break my hands for my only child.

  Bodies falling.

  Staples and tape.

  I didn’t feel empty. I wished I’d felt empty.

  People waving shirts out of high windows.

  I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone.

  Planes going into buildings.

  I had to go to the bathroom. I didn’t want to get up. I wanted to lie in my own waste, which is what I deserved. I wanted to be a pig in my own filth. But I got up and went to the bathroom. That’s who I am. Bodies falling.

  Buildings falling.

  The rings of the tree that fell away from our house.

  I wanted so much for it to be me under the rubble. Even for a minute. A second. It was as simple as wanting to take his place. And it was more complicated than that.

  The television was the only light.

  Planes going into buildings.

  Planes going into buildings.

  I thought it would feel different. But even then I was me.

  Oskar, I’m remembering you onstage in front of all of those strangers. I wanted to say to them, He’s mine. I wanted to stand up and shout, That beautiful person is mine! Mine!

  When I was watching you, I was so proud and so sad.

  Alas. His lips. Your songs.

  When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.

  Alas. Your songs.

  My parents’ lives made sense.

  My grandparents’.

  Even Anna’s life.

  But I knew the truth, and that’s why I was so sad.

  Every moment before this one depends on this one.

  Everything in the history of the world can be proven wrong in one moment.

  Your mother wanted to have a funeral, even though there was no body.

  What could anyone say?

  We all rode in the limousine together. I could not stop touching you. I could not touch you enough. I needed more hands. You made jokes with the driver, but I could see that inside you were suffering. Making him laugh was how you suffered. When we got to the grave and they lowered the empty coffin, you let out a noise like an animal. I had never heard anything like it. You were a wounded animal. The noise is still in my ears. It was what I had spent forty years looking for, what I wanted my life and life story to be. Your mother took you to the side and held you. They shoveled dirt into your father’s grave. Onto my son’s empty coffin. There was nothing there.

  All of my sounds were lock inside me.

  The limousine took us home.


  Everyone was silent.

  When we got to my building, you walked me to the front door.

  The doorman said there was a letter for me.

  I told him I’d look at it tomorrow or the next day.

  The doorman said the person had just dropped it off.

  I said, Tomorrow.

  The doorman said, He seemed desperate.

  I asked you to read it for me. I said, My eyes are crummy.

  You opened it.

  I’m sorry, you said.

  Why are you sorry?

  No, that’s what it says.

  I took it from you and looked at it.

  When your grandfather left me forty years ago, I erased all of his writing. I washed the words from the mirrors and the floors. I painted over the walls. I cleaned the shower curtains. I even refinished the floors. It took me as long as I had known him to get rid of all of his words. Like turning an hourglass over.

  I thought he had to look for what he was looking for, and realize it no longer existed, or never existed. I thought he would write. Or send money. Or ask for pictures of the baby, if not me.

  For forty years not a word.

  Only empty envelopes.

  And then, on the day of my son’s funeral, two words.

  I’m sorry.

  He had come back.

  Alive and Alone

  We had been searching together for six and a half months when Mr. Black told me he was finished, and then I was all alone again, and I hadn’t accomplished anything, and my boots were the heaviest they’d ever been in my life. I couldn’t talk to Mom, obviously, and even though Toothpaste and The Minch were my best friends, I couldn’t talk to them either. Grandpa could talk to animals, but I couldn’t, so Buckminster wasn’t going to be helpful. I didn’t respect Dr. Fein, and it would have taken too long to explain to Stan everything that needed to be explained just to get to the beginning of the story, and I didn’t believe in talking to dead people.

  Farley didn’t know if Grandma was home, because his shift had just started. He asked if something was wrong. I told him, “I need her.” “You want I should buzz up?” “It’s OK.” As I ran up the seventy-two stairs, I thought, And anyway, he was an incredibly old guy who slowed me down and didn’t know anything useful. I was breathing hard when I rang her bell. I’m glad he said he was finished. I don’t know why I invited him to come along with me in the first place. She didn’t answer, so I rang again. Why isn’t she waiting by the door? I’m the only thing that matters to her.

  I let myself in.

  “Grandma? Hello? Grandma?”

  I figured maybe she went to the store or something, so I sat on the sofa and waited. Maybe she went to the park for a walk to help her digest, which I know she sometimes did, even though it made me feel weird. Or maybe she was getting some dehydrated ice cream for me, or dropping something off at the post office. But who would she send letters to?

  Even though I didn’t want to, I started inventing.

  She’d been hit by a cab while she was crossing Broadway, and the cab zoomed away, and everybody looked at her from the sidewalk, but no one helped her, because everyone was afraid to do CPR the wrong way.

  She’d fallen from a ladder at the library and cracked her skull. She was bleeding to death there because it was in a section of books that no one ever looked at.

  She was unconscious at the bottom of the swimming pool at the Y. Kids were swimming thirteen feet above her.

  I tried to think about other things. I tried to invent optimistic inventions. But the pessimistic ones were extremely loud.

  She’d had a heart attack.

  Someone had pushed her onto the tracks.

  She’d been raped and murdered.

  I started looking around her apartment for her.

  “Grandma?”

  What I needed to hear was “I’m OK,” but what I heard was nothing.

  I looked in the dining room and the kitchen. I opened the door to the pantry, just in case, but there was only food. I looked in the coat closet and the bathroom. I opened the door of the second bedroom, where Dad used to sleep and dream when he was my age.

  It was my first time being in Grandma’s apartment without her, and it felt incredibly weird, like looking at her clothes without her in them, which I did when I went to her bedroom and looked in her closet. I opened the top drawer of the dresser, even though I knew she wouldn’t be in there, obviously. So why did I do it?

  It was filled with envelopes. Hundreds of them. They were tied together in bundles. I opened the next drawer down, and it was also filled with envelopes. So was the drawer underneath it. All of them were.

  I saw from the postmarks that the envelopes were organized chronologically, which means by date, and mailed from Dresden, Germany, which is where she came from. There was one for every day, from May 31, 1963, to the worst day. Some were addressed “To my unborn child.” Some were addressed “To my child.”

  What the?

  I knew I probably shouldn’t have, because they didn’t belong to me, but I opened one of them.

  It was sent on February 6, 1972. “To my child.” It was empty.

  I opened another, from another stack. November 22, 1986. “To my child.” Also empty.

  June 14, 1963. “To my unborn child.” Empty.

  April 2, 1979. Empty.

  I found the day I was born. Empty.

  What I needed to know was, where did she put all of the letters?

  I heard a sound from one of the other rooms. I quickly closed the drawers, so Grandma wouldn’t know I had been snooping around, and tiptoed to the front door, because I was afraid that maybe what I had heard was a burglar. I heard the sound again, and this time I could tell that it was coming from the guest room.

  I thought, The renter!

  I thought, He’s real!

  I’d never loved Grandma more than I loved her right then.

  I turned around, tiptoed to the guest room door, and pressed my ear against it. I didn’t hear anything. But when I got down on my knees, I saw that the light in the room was on. I stood up.

  “Grandma?” I whispered. “Are you in there?”

  Nothing.

  “Grandma?”

  I heard an extremely tiny sound. I got down on my knees again, and this time I saw that the light was off.

  “Is someone in there? I’m eight years old and I’m looking for my grandma because I need her desperately.”

  Footsteps came to the door, but I could only barely hear them because they were extremely gentle and because of the carpet. The footsteps stopped. I could hear breathing, but I knew it wasn’t Grandma’s, because it was heavier and slower. Something touched the door. A hand? Two hands?

  “Hello?”

  The doorknob turned.

  “If you’re a burglar, please don’t murder me.”

  The door opened.

  A man stood there without saying anything, and it was obvious he wasn’t a burglar. He was incredibly old and had a face like the opposite of Mom’s, because it seemed like it was frowning even when it wasn’t frowning. He was wearing a white short-sleeve shirt, so you could see his elbows were hairy, and he had a gap between his two front teeth, like Dad had.

  “Are you the renter?”

  He concentrated for a second, and then he closed the door.

  “Hello?”

  I heard him moving stuff around in the room, and then he came back and opened the door again. He was holding a little book. He opened it to the first page, which was blank. “I don’t speak,” he wrote, “I’m sorry.”

  “Who are you?” He went to the next page and wrote, “My name is Thomas.” “That was my dad’s name. It’s pretty common. He died.” On the next page he wrote, “I’m sorry.” I told him, “You didn’t kill my dad.” On the next page there was a picture of a doorknob, for some reason, so he went to the page after that and wrote, “I’m still sorry.” I told him, “Thanks.” He flipped back a couple of pages and pointed
at “I’m sorry.”

  We stood there. He was in the room. I was in the hall. The door was open, but it felt like there was an invisible door between us, because I didn’t know what to say to him, and he didn’t know what to write to me. I told him, “I’m Oskar,” and I gave him my card. “Do you know where my grandma is?” He wrote, “She went out.” “Where?” He shrugged his shoulders, just like Dad used to. “Do you know when she’ll be back?” He shrugged his shoulders. “I need her.”

  He was on one kind of carpet, I was on another. The line where they came together reminded me of a place that wasn’t in any borough.

  “If you want to come in,” he wrote, “we could wait for her together.” I asked him if he was a stranger. He asked me what I meant. I told him, “I wouldn’t go in with a stranger.” He didn’t write anything, like he didn’t know if he was a stranger or not. “Are you older than seventy?” He showed me his left hand, which had YES tattooed on it. “Do you have a criminal record?” He showed me his right hand, which had NO. “What other languages do you speak?” He wrote, “German. Greek. Latin.” “Parlez-vous français?” He opened and closed his left hand, which I think meant un peu.

  I went in.

  There was writing on the walls, writing everywhere, like, “I wanted so much to have a life,” and “Even just once, even for a second.” I hoped, for his sake, that Grandma never saw it. He put down the book and picked up another one, for some reason.

  “For how long have you been living here?” I asked. He wrote, “How long did your grandmother tell you I’ve been living here?” “Well,” I said, “since Dad died, I guess, so about two years.” He opened his left hand. “Where were you before that?” “Where did your grandmother tell you I was before that?” “She didn’t.” “I wasn’t here.” I thought that was a weird answer, but I was getting used to weird answers.

  He wrote, “Do you want something to eat?” I told him no. I didn’t like how much he was looking at me, because it made me feel incredibly self-conscious, but there was nothing I could say. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “What’s your story?” I asked. “What’s my story?” “Yeah, what’s your story?” He wrote, “I don’t know what my story is.” “How can you not know what your story is?” He shrugged his shoulders, just like Dad used to. “Where were you born?” He shrugged his shoulders. “How can you not know where you were born!” He shrugged his shoulders. “Where did you grow up?” He shrugged his shoulders. “OK. Do you have any brothers or sisters?” He shrugged his shoulders. “What’s your job? And if you’re retired, what was your job?” He shrugged his shoulders. I tried to think of something I could ask him that he couldn’t not know the answer to. “Are you a human being?” He flipped back and pointed at “I’m sorry.”