All We Have Left (18 page)

Dad climbed today, led a tour for the first time in months, and he’s sweaty and red faced as he chugs a Gatorade, his eyes closed. I’ve seen pictures of my dad when he was younger, posing on top of a mountain, beside one, or hanging off one, the mountains as much a part of him as his glacial blue eyes or super-sized nose. He’s bigger now, gray weaving through his disappearing hair and scraggly beard, but sometimes when I watch him climb I can see that younger Dad.

I try to gauge his mood, and whatever alert sensors I have inside me stay quiet, and I relax. He looks better than I’ve seen him in a while. The hush and peace of the mountain clings to him.

“I took them up ‘Three Pines,’” he says, naming a popular easy climb. “The one girl was good. She reminded me of you. The other two were hang-dogging the whole time. Pretty much useless.”

I remember when he took me climbing the first time. We went out on a cool morning when the Gunks smelled of wet earth, the cliffs draped in frothy pink and white blossoms, and lady’s slippers quietly bloomed in the dappled
fall of sunlight. Dad walked me through the basics and then set me loose on the side of the mountain, his hands steady on the belay rope as he talked me through those first terrifying moments as my feet scrabbled for purchase. I was so excited, I was trembling, and when I got stuck halfway up, Dad got a friend to take the rope and free-climbed up next to me.

“Always look down when you get stuck,” he says, hanging on easily with one hand and his feet. “Figure out how to move your feet up first, and then stand up, don’t pull up. Girls don’t have as much upper body strength, but you don’t need it. You have all the power you need in your legs.”

I got through it, and when we stood together on the cliff top, hawks circling our heads, the sky so big and deep, I was untouchable.

“You’re not bad,” he said, and in Dad-speak that meant
you did awesome.
“Climbing isn’t about strength, it’s about balance and creativity; knowing what your body can do, and understanding what the rock is able to give.”

It’s probably lame to admit that the reason that I kept climbing at first was so Dad would look at me like that again. Later though, it was all for me.

Dad starts going through the pile of mail I brought up, using the pocketknife he always carries to slit open an envelope and pull out a bill.

Somehow the memory of us on the mountain gives me courage. “Dad, why was Travis in the towers? Do you know?”

He stops, the knife stuck in the middle of the envelope. My grandfather’s initials,
HLM
, are inlaid into the handle, and I focus my eyes on the letters shining in the sun playing peek-a-boo through the kitchen window.

“My father went to Vietnam and came back with a Purple Heart,” he says, and when I glance up, his eyes have turned as hard as granite. “That’s what kind of man your grandfather was. I try to live my life the same way. You do what you need to do, even if you don’t want to.

“What was your brother doing there that day? I have no idea. I know where he was supposed to be though. He was supposed to be at his grandfather’s memorial service, but he wasn’t man enough to be there.”

I stare at him speechless. It’s the most I’ve ever heard him say about my brother.

“Your mother wants to sit and chat about a boy who has been gone for fifteen years, and is never coming back. She says if I don’t go to this memorial they’re planning for him that she’ll stay gone. Well, fine. She has to do what she has to do, and so do I. There’s no point talking about it, do you understand? Nothing we say means a goddamn in the end.
Nothing matters, do you hear me?
”

Suddenly he is shouting, and I take a rapid step back.

“A group of jihad-loving maniacs took out your brother and three thousand other people and all the
talking
in the world isn’t going to change that!” He’s breathing so hard and his face is so red that I’m afraid he’s going to have a stroke.

I turn and flee for my room, hearing his rage echo like cannon blasts in my head even after I quietly shut my bedroom door.

Dad misses his shift at the shop again, and I fill in for him, trying not to feel funny that I’m in charge of two bubbly, giggling college students who spend more time on their phones than with the customers. I feel so much older than them. Thankfully, neither of them seems to know what I did, so I don’t have to field the furtive glances and meaningful pauses when I walk into the room.

It’s after seven by the time I get out. Even though I can drive by myself now, my birthday having passed mostly unnoticed in May, Dad has taken his truck, and Mom has her car at her new apartment. I go old-school and jump on my bike.

The darkening sky is full of neon tangerine clouds as I pedal down to the river and the cemetery. It’s been a while since I’ve been here, one 9/11 anniversary a few years back. I came by myself that day too, but Mom must have been there before me, because there was a fresh wreath on Travis’s grave.

I wonder if Dad ever comes.

I find my brother’s grave, and sit on the lush green grass beside his simple headstone.

T
RAVIS
H
AROLD
M
C
L
AURIN

D
ECEMBER
28, 1982–S
EPTEMBER
11, 2001

B
ELOVED
S
ON AND
B
ROTHER

I run my fingers over the cool stone.

What were you doing there, Travis?

A plane wings its way across the sky, and I stare up at it, wondering where it’s going, thinking about planes that were loaded with fuel as they began trips across the country, and instead turning all those thousands of gallons of jet fuel into bombs when they hit their targets.

I sit for a while as the air darkens, and then I get up and find my grandfather’s grave, which has a small “Veteran” medallion affixed to it.

I
N
M
EMORY OF

H
AROLD
L
AWRENCE
M
C
L
AURIN

J
UNE
5, 1941–S
EPTEMBER
6, 2001

A
LWAYS
B
RAVE

I’d never really thought about how close together my brother and grandfather had died. One had lived sixty years, the other only eighteen, but they had died within five days of each other.

My father said Travis should have been at my grandfather’s memorial service.

Why wasn’t he?

“I shouldn’t even be here. I’m supposed to be in school,” I say after a while, just to fill the awful silence.

The intercom has remained stubbornly silent. It makes me want to hit it.

“I’m not supposed to be here either,” Travis says in a muffled voice. “I should have just gone to his memorial service.” This last is almost inaudible, and I lean forward.

“Your grandfather’s memorial service? It’s today?”

He nods and looks at his watch, and reflexively, I do the same. It’s 8:58. “In about an hour.”

“But why are you here then?”

He shakes his head and looks away.

“I’m sorry to hear about your grandfather,” I say, when he doesn’t answer. “Were you close?”

“Yeah.” He fiddles with a button on his shirt and won’t meet my eyes.

“I’m sure he’s in heaven,” I say gently, trying to ease his obvious pain. “From what you’ve said, he sounded like a wonderful person.”

“My family goes to church every Sunday, and I thought I believed in God, but lately I’m not sure I can believe in a God who sits back and lets so many bad things happen to good people. I kind of envy people with all that faith; it would make things so much easier.”

I can’t imagine what it must be like to not have something to believe in. I remember lying in bed when I was younger, listening to my father softly reciting the Quran. I floated on the melodic chanting and fell asleep to the music of the words, feeling as if my very soul beat with them.

I don’t pray five times a day like I’m supposed to, but I pray as often as I can. That’s when God speaks to me in my heart, where there are no words, and I feel sorry for this boy that he can’t feel that for himself.

The smoke is getting thicker, a cloud lazily swirling around the overhead light.

“Are you sure you don’t have a phone?” I’d kill for a cell phone right now. A few kids in my school have their own, and I’d asked my parents for one, but they said it was too expensive, even though
they
both had one.

“I left it at home,” he says shortly. “I didn’t want anyone calling me.”

“Why?”

“I just didn’t, okay?” he says. “Just because we’re stuck in here together doesn’t mean I have to tell you every last thing about myself.”

I focus on the smoke, trying not to cry.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Travis says, and shakes his head. “It’s just a pretty bad day for me.”

“Sure, okay.” I don’t
want
to be mad at him. He’s the only person I have right now.

He jumps up again and starts pacing around the elevator. I watch him, worried, because I still can’t help but feel sudden motions are going to send us plummeting.

“Hey!” he yells suddenly, pounding on the elevator doors. “Can anyone hear me? We’re stuck in here! Hey!”

He yells like that for a while, and then stops and turns to me.

“I can’t stand the waiting. We’ve got to try to get out of here.”

“But how?” I ask. “How do we get out of here?”

“I don’t know.” He looks up at the smoke, which has gotten even thicker. He puts one foot on the railing and then pushes himself up so he can reach the ceiling.

“Push up, don’t pull,” he says, and I look at him with eyebrows raised. He smiles a little. “It’s a climbing thing my dad always says.”

“You climb?”

“Nah. Dad was never able to talk me or my brother into
loving it the way he does. He’s got one more kid to try to brainwash—maybe it’ll work on her.”

He feels around the ceiling, holding his breath against the smoke, but it’s smooth metal panels, with no obvious way to remove them. He pounds on them with the heels of his hands.

“We need to get the doors open.” He climbs down and turns to the gleaming metal doors.

“How?”

“I have no clue!” he snaps. “Instead of asking
how
every five seconds, why don’t you try to come up with some ideas?”

“You don’t need to yell!” I yell. I grab my backpack and dump it onto the ground, looking for something that might help. My notepad spills out, and Travis picks it up.

“This yours?”

“Yes,” I say, trying to take the pad from him.

He flips forward to the last thing I drew and looks at it for a long moment and then back up at me.

My face is burning, because it’s a picture of
him
, the one I sketched quickly in the elevator after I saw him in the sky lobby the first time. The one with hearts trailing from his head as he stares at Lia.

He grins, a quick flash of smile, but all he says is “you’re good,” and hands me the pad back.

Completely humiliated, I take it, and then shake out the rest of my backpack junk: schoolbooks, folders, pens and pencils, my insulated lunch bag. I unzip that and look at the
bottle of Coke and sandwich and a Tupperware container of my mother’s
nasi gila
, or “crazy rice.”

Travis watches me, then reaches into his pocket and comes out with a pocketknife. Something else comes out with the knife, a small paper bag, which he shoves back into his pocket quickly.

I stare at him curiously.
What was that?
But he turns his head away and toys with the knife, so I focus on that instead. “Why do you have a knife?”

He doesn’t answer, and I huddle back against the wall, realizing I don’t know this guy, and I’m stuck in here with him. And how did he get the knife past security anyway?

Travis ignores me as he unfolds the knife. I notice there are initials on the handle, and I lean forward so I can see them.

HLM
.

No
T
for Travis.

It’s not his.

“Oh, I get it,” I say. “You stole it.” I feel disappointed, though I’m not sure why.