All We Have Left (25 page)

At the top, we stand on the ledge and the world is at our feet. The sun has come out, and the wind is an orchestra of sound, the lower leaves of the trees tinkling in individual harmony and then building to a great rush of dancing treetops, the steady beat of tires on wet pavement below us keeping time.

“So why’d you do it?” he says as we stand there shoulder to shoulder.

We both know what he’s talking about.

“I—” The words get caught in my throat, and I shake my head helplessly. I
need
to answer this question, not only for Adam but for me, and for everybody who cares about me. If I can’t explain it now, when I’m standing on the edge of maybe and never, when will I ever?

I take a deep breath. “My dad never talks about my brother Travis. He won’t let any of us talk about him either. My mom says it’s because it hurts too bad, that he says a lot of horrible things about other people, about … Muslims … because he’s hurting inside. But right before I … did what I did … I found my father with a photo album full of Travis, and I realized that he did care, and he never told me, and that made me bitter. Because it was like I wasn’t supposed to care about my brother, and what happened to him, and here Dad was all these years caring, but not saying anything. It scared me that my dad, who always seems so strong, could be so hurt. I didn’t want to be scared. I got angry instead. I was furious that those terrorists, who didn’t even know us, could kill my brother and screw up Dad like that, and not only him but my entire family, and … me. I didn’t know who to be mad at, so I just got mad at everybody.”

I can’t meet his eyes because I’m afraid of what he’ll say. When did I begin to care this much about what he thinks?

“I get being mad because the world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be,” he says.

There’s a bitterness in his voice I’ve never heard before, and I know that somehow he understands what it’s like to feel anger that makes you feel powerful and powerless all at the same time.

“It sucks,” I say. “Neither of us had anything to do with what happened.”

“But we’re left dealing with the fallout,” he says.

I look out at the valley, the square blocks of houses and plots of land, the summer trees in a million shades of green, and cloud shadows moving slowly across all of it. I wonder why people climb mountains and build towers aiming for the sky. When we are so high, do we feel bigger than everything else? Or does it remind us how small we really are?

“I feel God the most when I’m up here,” I say, something I’ve never admitted to anyone. Sometimes religion seems so messy and full of arbitrary rules, and really, why does it have to be so complicated?

“Me too.” He stares out over the world that seems to go on forever. “Have you ever noticed that it somehow feels the same when you’re at the bottom looking up at a mountain as it does on the top looking down?”

I take a deep breath. “Can we start over?” I say. “Please?”

He doesn’t say anything for a long moment and then he turns to me with a crooked grin. “Hi, I’m Adam, and there’s something you should know about me.”

I wait.

“I take such great soil samples that my boss insisted I change my middle name to ‘the Great’ last week. It looks awesome on my license.”

I smile. “I bet it does. Hi, Adam, I’m Jesse. Nice to meet you.”

After the man in the blue shirt screams at me, I don’t run, exactly, but I walk really fast back to where Julia is still sitting in her office chair.

“Where’s Travis?” I say too loud.

“He hasn’t come back. What’s going on?” Julia’s voice is a breathy whisper.

“Nothing,” I say. “But we’ve got to get out of here. Come on, let’s go.” With or without Travis, it’s time to go, but I’m so scared that I want to cry.
I can’t do this. I really can’t do this by myself.

“Wait, not yet,” Julia gasps.

“Just a minute more,” I say, thinking about what the man had said
: Two have already hit—do you think there can’t be a third
? Two what? What was he talking about?

“How old are you?” Julia asks, wheezing softly. “You’re younger than I first thought. The scarf makes you look older.”

“Sixteen,” I say, feeling absurdly pleased that the scarf makes me look more grown up.

“Sixteen? Wow. You’re one brave girl.”

I frown. “I’m not brave.”
Lia
is the brave one. I’m always scared inside. Every day, I feel like I’m walking on ice and it’s cracking in every direction I turn.

She takes a deep breath and presses her hand to her chest. “My mom used to tell me when I was having one of my attacks that I needed to hold on for just one minute longer than I thought I could bear, and then one more. I think bravery is trusting yourself enough to know you can hold on for that one more minute. I don’t know what’s going on out there,” she says, waving a hand toward the window, “but I’ve seen what’s going on in here, in these stairwells and offices. There are angels walking among us today. And you’re one of them.”

I shake my head, because I know she’s wrong. I’m just trying to get through this.

“I just want to get home,” I say. “I just want to see my parents and my brother and my friends.”

Travis comes bursting through the stairwell door, and we both startle. He’s sweating, his shirt clinging to his chest, and he’s breathing hard.

“Hold on,” he says, when he sees that I’m getting ready to lift Julia to her feet. “I want to get something first.”

Without saying anything about where he had gone, or what he was doing, he runs down the hall. I ease Julia back
into the chair, but don’t take my eyes off Travis. I’m afraid he’s going to disappear again.

He stops in front of a vending machine, which I hadn’t even noticed. He messes with it and then comes running back with his arms full of bottled water.

“Thank God,” I say, and take the bottle he hands me. I open it, and the first few gulps washes the smoke and gunk out of my throat. I close my eyes and tip my head back, and,
oh
, the slide of smooth, cold water down my throat is wonderful. I can’t remember being this thirsty before, even when I was fasting. One of the gates of heaven is called the “Thirst Quencher,” and for the first time I really understand why.

When I finish the bottle, I open my eyes and see that Travis is watching me.

“What?” I ask, automatically putting my hand up to my head and tugging my scarf back into place.

“We need to get going,” he says, urging Julia to her feet. “I found another stairwell with fewer people.”

He swings her purse onto his shoulder, and she clutches his arm. We’ve stuck several waters into her purse, and I’m carrying three bottles. I’d intended on keeping them for us in case we needed them on the way down, but as soon as I step through the stairwell door and see the tired and desperate faces of the people trudging down the stairs, I hand out the bottles. Travis does the same, and we watch for a moment as people take a few sips and then pass them to the person behind them.

“Let’s go,” Travis says.

We head back down the stairs.

That night, I Skype call Hank fifteen times.

On the sixteenth time, my brother’s picture flickers onto the screen.

“Jesus, Jesse.” He runs his hand through his short, dark blond hair, and looks pissed and sheepish all at the same time.

“Really, Hank? You taking lessons from Dad?”

“I know, Jesse. I’m sorry I never called you back. I’ve felt bad about it.”

“At least you didn’t try to tell me you lost your phone, or your dog ate your computer or something,” I say. “But why, Hank?”

“Look, I’m not sure what you want to know. I’ve spent a lot of time forgetting what happened back then.” He shakes
his head. “Why do you think I moved over seven thousand miles away? What can I say, Jesse? It’s not a time in my life I like to think about.”

“I want to understand, Hank,” I say. “What happened to Travis? Tell me all the big, loud secrets that have messed up my life and I don’t even know why. You know something or you wouldn’t be avoiding me.”

“Do you really want to know? It’s all in the past now. What difference does it make?”

“It makes a
huge
difference,” I say fiercely. “I’m sick of all this secrecy. Why won’t anybody talk about him?”

Hank sighs. “I don’t know the whole story. I was sixteen and pretty heavily invested in my own life. Travis went away to college, and then almost at the end of his first year, he came back, and he was a mess. He holed up in his room, barely coming out to eat. Something happened, but no one would talk about it. It was all whispers and hush-hush. Travis was like the walking wounded, and Dad was seriously pissed. I know it seems strange now that I didn’t ask any questions, but it just didn’t seem worth getting everyone mad at me.”

I can’t help but nod, because I certainly understand
that
feeling.

“So, that’s it?”

“No, that’s
not
it.” Joshua crawls onto Hank’s lap, sucking his thumb and laying his head on my brother’s shoulder. My nephew stares at me unblinkingly for a long moment, and then his eyes drift closed.

“When he finally came out of his room, he had this what-the-hell-ever attitude.” Hank’s voice is barely above a whisper, and I have to lean in close to the screen to hear him. “He was drinking and staying out all night, and he started hanging around Topher McCall and those kids. Bad news, you know? Travis was getting in all these fights, and there was a rumor he was stealing. I mean, just stupid stuff. He and Dad got into this huge fight while I was at a party one night. I heard about it from one of the neighbors the next day after Travis moved out. After that, I only saw him once before he died. He was visiting Gramps in the nursing home, and I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he was crying. I was only sixteen, okay? I didn’t want my big brother to know I saw him like that, so I left. And that was the last time I saw him.”

He looks down at Joshua, and the sleeping boy curls an arm around Hank’s neck and snuggles closer.

“So, Travis was what? Some kind of juvenile delinquent?”

“No, that’s the thing. He wasn’t. Actually, he was a pretty smart dude—he even skipped a grade. I always admired him, because I could never get my crap together, not while I was in high school.”

“But why,” I say, “don’t any of you want to know what he was doing in the towers that day?”

Hank stares down at Joshua for a long time. I have time to think the screen must have frozen before he looks back up at me.

“I guess, some people want to know every detail of what happened to the ones who died. But for us … you don’t know what it was like back then. Mom and Dad were getting calls for interviews, and everyone was talking about Travis, Travis, Travis. I just wanted to forget, you know?

“One day I came home and Dad was screaming at someone on the phone. I thought he was going to have a heart attack, his face was so freaking red. He was almost hysterical, and when he slammed down the phone he yelled at me, ‘Don’t you think I
know
he was a coward?’ Which was the worst thing Dad could say about anyone. I have no idea who he was talking to, but after that Dad changed our number and refused to talk about Travis. There was a compensation fund set up for the victims and families, and he wouldn’t even take any money. It was crazy.
He
was crazy.”

“Say that again, in present tense,” I say, and he grins.

“I hear you. But … you can’t understand what it was like after it happened. I just … disappeared, and all anybody could think of when they saw me was Travis. I halfway expected them to play the National Anthem whenever I walked into a room. The whole country was so messed up for a while. We went to war, and I remember cheering when we started bombing. But then it all just spiraled. It seemed like we were willing to do about anything to make us feel safer, and it led to a lot of bad things.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “We were at the cemetery that day. On 9/11. Gramps’s memorial service was getting ready
to start, the honor guard was there, and I remember thinking how weird it was that Gramps, who loved his apartment in the Bronx, liked to play music, and who told really bad jokes, was in a little metal vase. I mean, he was sick for a while before he died, but still, how do you end up in a freaking vase? People were coming in and talking about what was going on with all the planes, and Dad was so mad because Travis wasn’t there, but we went ahead and had the service anyway.