31 Hours (22 page)

“Oh, Jake.” Carol pressed her hand against her mouth as if holding back words for a moment, then made a fist. “I don’t know what to do.” Her eyes became slightly glazed. “He’s the best of both of us. He learns while he sleeps; we used to tell him that, remember? And he’s passionate and moral and there’s this quiet streak that runs through him and that always calmed me. If he thinks he’s doing the right thing, nothing can stop him. But he also gets depressed. He feels like something’s missing, like the world is immoral and only he sees it.” Carol met Jake’s eyes. “All I know is I keep getting the feeling Jonas is in trouble. He’s in trouble and we need to reach him, and we need all the help we can get.”

Jake stared into his cup and then drank the last of the coffee in it. “Okay,” he said, and he rose from the table and squeezed her shoulder. “Okay, I’ll talk to the goddamn cops.”

“Good,” she said as they heard the buzzer. “Because here they are.”

NEW YORK: 7:07 A.M.
MECCA: 3:07 P.M.

Mara overslept. She overslept badly, and she knew it the moment she awoke. She didn’t stop to decipher what finally made her stir, whether external clatter like a car alarm or some shudder from within. She just jumped out of bed with her eyes barely open, kicked over the bell she’d set on the floor the night before, glanced at the clock to confirm her fears, tugged on a pair of pants, tucked in her nightshirt, and pulled a sweatshirt over her head. She slipped on her boots without socks, grabbed her coat, stuck the chosen rocks in her pocket, started out of the room, remembered the MetroCard on the floor, and returned to get it. She rushed past her mother’s door—closed, as usual.

Outside the apartment, Aaron was slumped down on the floor, leaning against the wall, his head resting on his backpack. He wore his coat, unzipped. As she stepped into the hallway, he opened his eyes and began to rise.

“I’m so sorry,” Mara whispered because she didn’t want to wake her mom, and then she closed the door as quietly as she could, turning the handle first. “Let’s go.”

She led the way to the elevator, and Aaron followed. He followed as she walked out the building, down the street, and around the corner to the subway station. Before she reached the stairs, she slowed and turned to talk to Aaron, but she weighed too little to anchor herself and felt
herself being gently carried forward through the narrowing of foot traffic at the subway entrance, her toes grazing the ground, making contact and then losing it the way they might if she were bobbing in a swimming pool. She moved in this fashion until she reached the foot of the stairs, and then she managed to expel herself from the pre-rush-hour flow of work-bound commuters and press her back against the wall. There she waited. Aaron saw her and steered himself in her direction. She took his hand. They held hands until they got to the turnstile, and then they separated to slide their cards separately through the machine.

“This way,” Aaron said, heading toward the downtown B-train, and then he cocked his head and said, “One’s coming,” so they rushed down the stairs and arrived just in time to get on the B, the recorded admonition, “Stand clear of the closing doors,” ringing out behind them. Standing room only. They found a place in the corner.

“Were you waiting there since six?” Mara asked as the subway screeched to a start.

Aaron nodded.

“You didn’t think I’d changed my mind?”

Aaron looked surprised. “No. I thought you’d overslept.”

“And you are still okay with this?”

He nodded again.

A woman was smiling at them. A man sitting next to her rose and spoke to Mara. “Would you like my seat?”

Mara shook her head, but Aaron said, “Sit,” and the man added, “Please,” so Mara did. She scooted over so Aaron could squeeze in next to her. They didn’t talk for a few stops. It was still early, and everyone in the car was quiet. A few people read magazines or listened to music on earphones. No one spoke. Then Aaron leaned close to Mara. “Is your dad still going to be there?” he asked quietly. “For sure?”

This was the question that Mara had been refusing to consider. Her father’s office hours had never been absolute. Sometimes, in the past, he’d left the house at 7 o’clock in the morning, sometimes he’d stayed home until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, editing in the apartment and then going to the office. But she didn’t want to share her uncertainty with Aaron. She needed his confidence in her.

“He’ll be there,” she said. “I’ll call as soon as we’re in the neighborhood.”

The subway emerged aboveground to carry them over the Manhattan Bridge. Aaron stood to look out the window, and Mara joined him. She’d never taken the B this far before. Out the window, she saw graffiti scrawled on the roof of Chinatown buildings, tags in spray paint like “Cake87” and “Skidman.” Also, a boat trail like a ribbon on the Hudson River, and the silver skyline of Manhattan, looking shiny and fresh. It seemed much prettier from a distance than it did up close, and she wondered briefly if that might be how it was with everything.

They changed at the Pacific/Atlantic stop. Mara stayed close to Aaron as they went down one set of stairs and up another to catch the next train. The number 4 was less crowded. A panhandler started at one end—she could hear him giving his spiel: “If you ain’t got it, I understand, ’cause I ain’t got it. But if you can spare . . .” He shuffled through the car. He paused in front of Mara, a look on his face that was puzzled and pained at once. She thought he must be waiting for her to give him some money, so she dug in her coat pocket, searching a little helplessly for change, but he just shook his head, said, “God bless, child,” and, after a moment, walked on.

They got off at Utica, the train’s last stop. Aboveground, it felt colder than Manhattan to Mara, though that seemed unlikely. At the corner, a stall selling homemade Caribbean-style chicken was already doing business.
Next door, a beauty-salon window was decorated with three pictures of black women, each with different hairstyles, that looked like they had been torn from magazines and taped up from the inside. The streets were busy, but Mara did not see any children. Some passersby eyed Mara and Aaron with open curiosity. Mara felt conspicuous, and, looking at Aaron, she could see he did, too.

Aaron reached into his pocket, pulling out a map that he’d printed out from the computer. “This way,” he said. They walked two blocks in one direction and three in another. At the corner, he pointed to the street sign.

“St. Johns and Kingston,” she said, grinning at him. “What time is it?”

Aaron wore a wrist-watch, something else that set him apart from Mara’s other classmates. “A little after eight.”

She wanted to get out of the wind to call her father. “C’mon.” She took Aaron’s hand and pulled him into a small deli.

The man behind the counter was selling a pack of cigarettes to a customer, but he paused as they entered. “You kids need some help?”

“Can I stand here to make a call?”

The man eyed Mara and Aaron for a long beat before answering, “Sure.”

Mara dialed her father’s new home number and let it ring. No answer. The store had only two aisles, and Aaron began walking down one of them, inspecting the shelves. “I’m going to try his cell,” she said.

Her father answered on the second ring. Mara felt relief shoot up her spine.

“Mara.” He sounded angry. “Are you at school?”

“No,” she said. “School doesn’t start until 8:40.”

“Then where the—?”

“I’m here,” she said.

“What do you mean
here?
”

“St. Johns and Kingston,” she said. “I’m at the corner.”

“What? How did you get there?”

“Subway. And now we’re in a deli.”

“No deli,” corrected the man behind the counter. “De-Morris Bodega.”

“De-Morris Bodega,” Mara repeated. “Can you come meet us?”

“The subway? Alone? Mara, you know—”

“I’m with Aaron,” she interrupted.

“Aaron?” Her father sounded incredulous. “Does his mother—”

“Dad, can you just come meet us?”

“You scared us, Mara. Damn. I’ve been calling everyone.”

“Dad.”

Her father let out a breath of impatient air. “I’m not there.”

Mara looked around guiltily. Aaron, still among the shelves about ten steps away, glanced over at her. She didn’t want him to know, not yet. She tried to speak quietly. “Where are you? How soon can you get here?”

“I’m here. I’m . . . I’m at home.”

Though her father spoke hesitantly and sounded confused, Mara was not. She suddenly saw with sharp clarity that prayer was a powerful tool. Her father had returned home. “Good,” she said. “Home.”

“I came to . . . to talk with you. I thought we could have breakfast together. Both your mother and I were surprised to find you gone. And we’re going to have to discuss your actions, Mara.”

“You’re moving back,” Mara said, barely hearing the rest of it. “He’s moving back,” she said to Aaron, who was closer now and watching her.

“Mara. No.”

“You’re not?”

“I wanted to talk with you over breakfast. I wanted to hear how things are going for you. School. Other stuff.”

“School?” Now she felt confused.

“Let’s save it for in person,” her father said. “Look, put Aaron on for a minute.”

Mara walked back to Aaron, who was standing in an aisle looking at a box labeled “Jamaican-style dough mix.” She handed him the phone.

“Hello?” Aaron said. “Yes, sir . . . yes . . . okay . . . okay, ’bye.” He handed the phone back to Mara.

“You two walk right back to the subway,” her father said. “It’s, let’s see... it’s about 8:05. You should be here by 9:25. I’m going to meet you at the station—I’ll be waiting there by 9:15, so call me as soon as you’re aboveground, okay?”

“Okay, but, Dad—”

“Just get back here, Mara. Then we’ll talk. I promise we’ll talk for as long as it takes. We can all be a little late today,” her father said.

Mara hung up the phone and looked at Aaron, who had gone back to inspecting the food.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “But maybe it’s good—I mean, he’s home and he wants . . .” She trailed off, suddenly noticing that Aaron was holding a jar of something called “Horlicks breakfast drink” and appeared to be intently reading the ingredients. She began to dig in her coat pocket. “You didn’t have any breakfast, did you?”

Aaron shrugged and put down the jar.

“Let’s get something.”

“Your dad said we should go right away,” Aaron said.

“We will. But . . .” She approached the man behind the counter. “What can you recommend for breakfast?”

The man grinned at her. He pointed to what looked like slices of pound cake, individually wrapped. “Coconut sweetbread, missy,” he said.

Mara dug in her pocket in earnest and pulled out seventy-eight cents. “How much for two slices?” she asked.

“Two dollars.”

“I have five dollars,” said Aaron.

“But I want to treat you. You got up early and you came all this way and—”

“It’s okay. If I hadn’t come, what would I have been doing? Just sleeping.”

Aaron said it so seriously that she laughed, and then he pulled out his money and she added her coins and they left with the coconut sweetbread, which they began eating as they walked back to the subway.

It was still cold and the sky looked thick, but just as they reached the subway station, the sun seemed to muscle aside the clouds for a minute. A ray of sunshine fell on Mara’s shoulders. She looked at the street behind them, the rush of life, and she thought perhaps she understood what her father meant by “authentic.” In fact, this might be the solution. It seemed a stroke of brilliance, and she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before. Mara and her mother should move to this neighborhood and live here with her father. She would discuss it with her dad. Maybe it was even what he planned to propose. Yes, that was probably it. This realization made her so excited that she reached over and hugged Aaron, and giggled at the startled expression on his face, and took his hand, and together they dipped down the stairs into the subway, leaving the sunshine behind.

NEW YORK: 7:47 A.M.
MECCA: 3:47 P.M.

Vic stood in the bathroom, waiting for the water running in the sink to warm up. She wasn’t going to worry, not yet, but she hoped her father would call back soon. It had been half an hour since he’d rung to tell her Mara was missing. She knew there had to be a reasonable explanation, probably something to do with school. Vic had always been the one to pull stupid stunts; Mara was reliability personified. Still, Vic had carried the receiver with her into the bathroom, setting it on the toilet so she wouldn’t miss her father’s call.

The dream she’d been having when the phone woke her was of tomorrow’s opening night. Not the performance so much, though she had dreamt of a stage lit with such force that shadows feared, an audience hushed in anticipation, her kicks precise, her body arcing as smoothly as the letter C. Most of the dream, though, had been of Jonas in the theater, smiling, and then Jonas at dinner afterward, the two of them in some dimly lit café, their fingers touching, the food unimportant, but nevertheless she dreamt of a bowl of kalamata olives and a plate with cubes of feta cheese, and wherever he had been and whyever he hadn’t called now explained and behind them. She dreamt of herself struggling to express something intangible, and him understanding at once, reaching to embrace her.

She glanced at the clock and pulled her hair back so she could wash her face. Out of nowhere conscious, she flashed on an image of Mara—a memory from last winter, when the two of them had made New York City–style s’mores, roasting the marshmallows over the kitchen burner using a rosewood-handled stainless-steel kebab skewer and then slapping them between graham crackers and chocolate and warming the whole concoction in the microwave for five seconds. She remembered Mara, her face glowing with an orangeish light from the flames, telling a joke—a knock-knock joke, something silly, what had it been? “Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” “Zeke.” “Zeke who?” “Zeke and you shall find.” And they’d both started giggling, Vic pleased to see Mara acting like a kid. Vic thought now that was the last time she could remember seeing Mara laugh.