We were both silent for a long time. I know you can never speak for anybody else, but I believe the same thought was dawning on both of us.
‘Another good thing about that,’ I said, talking over the obvious. My own personal filibuster. ‘Ben would get to know you two a lot better. And maybe he could even get comfortable enough that I could go to New York. You know. In, like … a decade.’
‘I take it he’s not big on the idea so far.’
‘He cried for hours.’
‘Oh.’
Another few seconds, and then I stood.
‘This is not the right way,’ I said. ‘Is it?’
‘You don’t have to go.’
‘Yes, I do. We’re going to do this right. I’ll see you at seven. Or a few minutes before. But I won’t be back in the kitchen.’
I forced myself to walk out without looking
back.
Otherwise I doubt I would have walked out at all.
Halfway across the parking lot I heard her call my name.
‘Russell.’
I turned. I was relieved. Because she’d asked me to turn. I’d wanted to turn. But I hadn’t been able to give myself permission.
‘I already miss you,’ she said.
Her voice had changed into something soft. Something I’d never heard before. I wondered if this was the first moment the softness had existed. Or if she’d just never allowed it in front of me until now.
My heart did that thing again. That drippy thing. It was a funny feeling. Pleasant, yet not. Still, I couldn’t help being relieved that my heart had finally stopped pounding around inside my chest. And started to melt instead. So much less violent. So smooth and quiet. Like resting.
Like finally getting to rest.
‘YOU’RE NOT HOLDING
still enough, Buddy.’
‘But it tickles.’
I was standing behind Ben in the TV room, trying to cut his hair. He was sitting on a kitchen chair, a towel wrapped loosely around his neck. I’d tried to wrap it more tightly, so he wouldn’t get hair down his collar. But he’d complained, and said it choked him.
I looked up at the TV just in time to see a rerun of an old 1950s sitcom come on. It was hard to be with Ben in the TV room because of the quality – or lack of same – of the programs he found amusing.
‘It’s getting all down into my collar,’ he said, sounding whiny.
‘Then you should have let me wrap the towel tighter.’
‘I don’t want to choke.
And
I don’t want hair down my back. I don’t want both. And I don’t see why I have to get my hair cut just because there’s company coming.’
‘That’s not the only reason. I told you days ago you needed a haircut.’
‘Maybe you already knew company was coming.’
Again, whoa. Was that another odd little bit of knowing on his part? Or just a shot in the dark?
‘You need your hair cut for everything. For any place you go.’
‘I don’t go any place. Except work.’
‘You need to look good for work.’
‘Nobody at work ever said I didn’t look good.’
‘Sooner or later they would have.’
‘One of the guys at the store has long hair.’
‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t let it get long. If you really want to grow it out, fine. But it still needs to look like you take care of it. Right now it’s all shaggy and …’
I looked up at the TV. A plane was headed for the South Tower. The voice-over had something to do with that night’s evening newscast.
I froze. I couldn’t move or speak. I wanted to scream to Ben to turn it off, but nothing came out. I couldn’t thaw in time.
I just stood there, mute. And watched the plane slice in. The heat and pain in my body matched perfectly with the collision. As though the plane had sliced into me. It was the first time I’d watched it since I’d actually watched it. I must have been the only human being on the face of the planet who hadn’t been glued to the TV in the days since. The only time I’d even gotten near a TV was during Ben’s cartoons. I hadn’t stayed long. I
didn’t
know if I’d had any conscious idea of what I was avoiding. I knew now.
Fire, papers, smoke billowed out the far corner. I stood like a statue, as horrified as if it were happening for the first time, right in front of my eyes. Maybe more so.
Then the scene changed … to the plane heading for the building again. Apparently they planned to loop that footage for as long as the promotional text lasted. The fear of having to see it again shocked me out of my paralysis.
‘Turn it off!’ I screamed.
It startled Ben so much that he fell off the chair.
I watched him fumble for the remote, but he was too upset to remember where he’d left it. He was too upset to function.
I lunged for it, thinking I was somehow in a race for my sanity. If I couldn’t turn it off before the tower got hit again, that would be that. I got my hand on the remote. But not in time. The terrorists won. Again.
Fire. Papers. A tickertape parade, ninety-some floors up. In my old world. In a few minutes, people would begin to jump.
My knees buckled, and I hit the rug. And I turned it off.
I leaned forward, pressing my forehead to the carpet. For a minute or two, I wrestled with whether I was about to be physically ill. In time, the feeling subsided.
I straightened up, still on my knees.
Ben was staring at me in abject horror.
‘Sorry,’ I said. I could hear my voice shaking. I know Ben could, too.
‘What happened?’
‘That upset me.’
‘Why?’
‘
Why?
It was thousands of people dying.’
‘But everybody’s seen that. A lot.’
‘It’s different for me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I was there.’
‘You were? You’re not burned up.’
‘I was close enough to see it, but not close enough to get burned up. I told you that. I told you the first day I was back. You don’t remember?’
He shook his head, still wide-eyed.
‘I was supposed to have been in one of those buildings. If I had been, I’d be dead.’
With the shift of my mood, the draining away of the most violent upset, Ben got up and came over. He dropped to his knees beside me, and draped an arm around my shoulders.
‘Why weren’t you where you were supposed to be?’
‘I was late, that’s all.’
‘I’m never late.’
‘I know. Sometimes I am.’
‘You would have been dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what would I have done?’
‘I don’t know, Buddy.’
‘Poor Buddy,’ he said, and threw the other arm around me. And held me tightly. Almost too tightly. But I didn’t argue.
‘You talking about you or me?’ I asked.
‘You, Buddy. I’m sorry the TV made you upset.’
I opened my mouth to explain to him that it wasn’t really the TV. It was the actual events of that day, relived. Retriggered. Then I decided that would be a colossal waste of time.
So I just stayed there on my knees, and let my brother Ben embrace me.
A few minutes later we tried to get right back to the haircut, but my knees wouldn’t seem to hold. I had to spend an hour in my room – well, my mom’s room – just pulling myself together. And, even then, I was hardly together. I was merely able to stand.
The El Sayeds were coming at five thirty. And I was officially an hour behind schedule.
‘I don’t know what you’re so worried about,’ Ben said, shouting to be heard over the sound of the vacuum cleaner. He was following me around, dust rag in hand, as I vacuumed the living room rug.
‘Just dust, Ben,’ I shouted. ‘We’re late.’
‘Why are you acting so nervous?’
‘I’m not nervous.’
‘You sure act like you are.’
‘I just want Nazir to like me.’
‘You said he already likes you.’
‘I just don’t want him to stop.’
‘Why would he stop?’
I turned off the vacuum. The silence felt stunning.
‘Please, Ben. They’re coming in less than three hours. I haven’t picked up the food yet. I haven’t made the mashed potatoes. Or the salad. The cleaning is going too slow …’
‘You wasted too much time finishing the haircut. I told you not to waste time finishing.’
‘I wanted you to look like someone takes care of you.’ Truthfully, I’d tried to leave it half-done, but Ben had looked actually laughable, like a kindergartner who took construction scissors to his own hair. I had to clean it up as best I could. ‘Now please, Ben. Go dust.’
It was 5.29 p.m. The El Sayeds would be ringing the doorbell any minute. And Ben was in a state of total meltdown because the hair under his collar made him itch.
‘Take off your shirt,’ I said.
‘That won’t help. It’s on my back.’
‘Ben! Please do as I say!’
He sulked. But he took off the shirt.
I ran into the bathroom and soaked the end of a towel, wrung it out as best I could, and then brought it back into Ben’s room. He was standing in front of the full-length mirror in just his good slacks. I could see
every
one of his ribs. His skin was painfully white, as though it hadn’t seen the sun in decades.
‘Hold still,’ I said, somehow knocked out of my irritation.
I used the wet towel to clean as much hair as I could off his shoulders and back. His shoulders were freckled. There was something childlike about them. Which may sound like a strange thing to say, when I had to stand on my tiptoes to see them. But his bare skin looked so completely helpless.
The doorbell rang, freezing my heart.
‘Put on your shirt,’ I said, and then ran to get the door. But three steps out of his room, I realized my mistake. I stuck my head back in. Sure enough, Ben was threading one arm into the same hairy shirt. ‘Not that shirt, Ben. That one has hair on it. A clean one.’
‘Oh. You didn’t say that. Which one?’
‘Any one. I have to get the door.’
Nazir, Anat and I had been sitting in the living room, making nervous small talk, for a good three or four minutes when Ben came lumbering in. How he could take so long to put on a shirt, I have no idea. Plus, he was still buttoning it when he arrived. Plus, he was buttoning it wrong. He was a full two buttons off from one side to the other.
I found this perplexing, since he dressed himself with reasonable success every day. Must have been the stress.
Oh. One more plus that was actually a minus. It was
the
most ridiculous shirt in the history of clothing. Pink and purple plaid. I had no idea he even owned a shirt so grotesque, not to mention why he chose it. But he had very specifically asked me which shirt to put on. And I had very specifically given him permission to choose for himself. So I said nothing. About that, at least.
‘Ben,’ I said.
‘What?’ He already knew he wasn’t going to like it. I could tell.
‘It’s not polite to come greet your guests until you’re finished dressing.’
‘I just have one more button.’
‘But you have it buttoned wrong.’
‘I do?’
He took the shirt by its tail, raised it as high as he could, and looked closely at the buttons, exposing his pasty white stomach. I didn’t dare look at Nazir and Anat for their reactions. It would just be too sad if they found my brother sad. I knew they did. How could they not? I just didn’t want to see it.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yeah. How’d that happen?’
And he began to unbutton the shirt again.
‘Ben!’ I shouted, louder than I’d meant to.
‘What?’
‘In your room.’
‘OK, OK. Fine.’
He ambled away, clearly hurt.
I turned to Nazir to speak, to apologize for Ben’s behavior. But he raised a hand to stop me.
‘No, don’t say anything,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to apologize for your brother. He is as he is. He is doing his best, I’m sure.’
‘Probably so. He’s usually better at taking care of himself than this. I think he’s nervous about having people over.’
At that moment Ben appeared again. This time he was far ahead of schedule. This time I had no idea how he’d managed so fast. His shirt was buttoned correctly, but not tucked in. I chose to let that slide.
His hair looked ridiculous. I was a very bad hairdresser.
‘I’m not nervous,’ he said. ‘You’re the one that’s nervous.’ He sat on the couch, so close to me that our hips almost bumped. ‘Rusty got really nervous today. I thought he was gonna die.’
A painful silence.
‘Ben was watching TV,’ I said. ‘And I was in the room with him. All of a sudden they showed that footage of the plane hitting one of the towers. I’d only seen it once before, and that was out my window. You know. Real time. While it was actually happening. I hadn’t seen the footage of it since then. I really did take it hard. It’s amazing how much I don’t think about that on a day-to-day basis. But when it got triggered, it was quite a shock.’
‘Poor Russell,’ Anat said.
Nazir said, ‘I can’t stand to watch it, either, and it has nothing to do with me personally. It’s very upsetting.’
‘No,’ Ben said. ‘Not that. He was already nervous.’
‘Well,’ I said, leaping to my feet. ‘Not to rush you to the table, but everything’s pretty much ready. Ben, come help me in the kitchen.’
‘OK,’ he said.
I stood watching as he slowly pulled himself to his feet.
‘I’ll be in,’ he said.
‘I’ll wait.’
I wasn’t taking a chance on leaving him alone with my guests. Not even for a few seconds.
I followed him into the kitchen.
‘Don’t talk about that,’ I whispered.
‘Why not?’
‘Just talk about something else.’
Ben followed my advice to the letter. He not only talked about something else, he talked about everything else. Through most of the first half of dinner.
Mostly he talked about his haircut. Primarily, how it itched. Every time I thought he’d gone off on a new tangent, the one hair I’d missed with the damp towel would tickle him again, and we’d be right back to haircut complaints.
I couldn’t decide which would be more embarrassing, to stop him or let him ramble. Then I realized the answer lay in whether he’d be hurt if I stopped him. And whether he’d react to that hurt by making a scene.
I let him ramble.