Love Is the Higher Law (6 page)

The movie started, and I wasn’t remotely interested in it. I slid a little closer to him, but it was a completely missed signal. After a while I realized how late it was getting, and I wondered if Peter was planning on going home or staying over. Finally he pointed out that it was almost midnight, and it was really clear in his voice that he wanted to stay. I thought of him trying to get the subway all the way back, and I knew I couldn’t do that to him. But I also didn’t want him to think he
had
to stay, because I knew I was going to crash pretty soon. When I asked him if he was going to get in trouble with his parents, he told me he’d already made up an alibi for them. This got my attention—he was playing a little more of a game than I’d pegged him for. Still, he didn’t make a move. I figured we could start making out during the rest of the DVD, so we restarted it, and I realized too late that even though it has music,
Cabaret
is a fucking downer of a movie, as most things that end with the Holocaust tend to be.

Soon Sally Bowles’s party was over, and it looked like ours was going to follow suit. I could barely keep my eyes open, and every time I yawned, Peter would echo it with another yawn. I tried to feel some kind of sexual current in the room, but came up with more yawning. Maybe my receptors were out of commission.
I told him it was probably time to call it a night. And I realized that there was no way we were going to sleep in the same bed—that would lead him on too much, and I didn’t want to lead him on. The right thing to do was to leave him alone.

I could hear the rain outside, and I opened my window and breathed a little of it in before I got the sheets for the couch. I could’ve given him my parents’ room, but I could imagine them making a late-night arrival at JFK, then cabbing home to find a complete boy-stranger in their bed. (It would be even worse if they found him in my bed … with me.) I knew I should have explained this to him, but I was too tired even for that. I figured he’d just go with it, and it would be fine.

But he looked disappointed when he saw the sheets, and even though I told him the sofa was really comfortable, I knew it wasn’t the sleep that he was worried about. I felt like my blood was venom now, for ruining this kid’s night like this, but I wasn’t in the mood to be with anyone. At least not until I was back in my room with the door closed, trying to go to sleep. I’d made the mistake of hugging him good night, and it was odd how that stayed with me. It wasn’t meant as anything but friendliness. But I started to imagine him in my bed, us just holding each other, and that started to sound good to me. Outside, it was all thunder and lightning—real spooky-movie stuff. I could hear him shuffling around in the living room, watching the TV on low, trying to fall asleep to the news that was keeping us all awake. I had no idea what I wanted, only that I wanted
something
, which is the worst kind of wanting. I sat up in bed and stayed like that
for a good fifteen minutes. Finally I decided I’d just go and check on him, and when I did, I found him completely awake. There was no place on the couch to sit, so I just sat lightly on his legs.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” he said.

Little simple words.

“Isn’t the couch comfy?” I lifted myself a little so I wouldn’t crush him, then eased back down.

“I guess,” he mumbled.

I was still going back/forth, yes/no, leave/make out.

Finally I pushed it.

“But why are you sleeping here?” I asked, falling back on flirtation. When I didn’t get a response—yes, he was a little miffed—I stood up, gave him my hand, and told him to come on. I was still searching for that current—or maybe I was trying to manufacture it. But even as we walked to my room, holding hands, I felt the voltage start to diminish. We veered toward the open window and stood there silent for a little while. Even on a regular night, hard rain like this would have made us notice. But now it seemed almost biblical in its appearance. Wash us clean, maybe. Or drown us all.

I’d let go of his hand without really meaning to. It’s just hard to hold a hand for that long. But then he made this completely obvious move to take it back, and I thought he was finally going to push me into something. Instead he backed away.

I goaded him. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?” A line I’d used before.

And it worked, because almost immediately he was leaning into me. And it didn’t work, because the emptiness came back.

It made me angry. Mostly at myself. And also at him. For his stupid innocence. For making me think I could be woken up by a kiss.

I found myself saying, “Is that all?” Goading him again. Pushing him harder. Letting it be like that.

And he heard that. He kissed me again.

I wanted to feel something. But I couldn’t get to it. Maybe with someone else, someone yet to be found. But not with him.

“What’s going on?” he asked. Like I knew. Like any of us knew.

“I guess it’s raining,” I said, wanting him to find me on his own, because I couldn’t find myself.

And I got that disappointment again.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said.

What did I feel? Something between sleepwalking and defeat. Something between victim and victimizer.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This was a bad idea. I should have left you alone.”

This was not what he wanted to hear.

“I’ll just go back to the couch,” he said, already moving to leave.

“No,” I said, trying to stop him. “You can stay here. We can just sleep.”

Not sex. Just us next to each other.

But he couldn’t see it. He insisted on returning to the
couch, and I felt he was giving me my own punishment, one I deserved. I tried to hold him—I tried one more hug, tried to get what I needed there—but it didn’t last for long. The night was over. He stared out the window, and there was nothing to see—not Manhattan, just Brooklyn. Nobody working around the clock, nobody digging, nobody searching for a miracle. Just rain and lightning and darkness.

I could hear him after he left. Back on the couch, shifting from side to side. I stayed standing by the window. I had no idea what had just happened, and I knew he didn’t, either. I had never felt so much like my life was not my own, that I was just a vessel for things I would never understand. I didn’t want him … but if I didn’t want him, what did I want? I didn’t want to be alone … but if I didn’t want to be alone, then why didn’t I want to be with anyone else?

Limbo is the state where there are only questions.

That was as far as I’d gotten.

I CAN’T SLEEP
Claire

I can’t sleep.

It’s not just the sound of the rain outside. It’s not the unfamiliarity of the bed I’m lying in. It’s not my mother’s deep, uneasy breathing next to me. It’s the thoughts. They will not go to sleep, so I cannot go to sleep.

The bedroom we’re sleeping in was once Rana’s. Now it’s a guest room. You can only find traces of her in the folds, the corners no one cares about. Even though this is our third night sleeping here, I’m still not used to it. Nor am I used to sharing a bed with my mother. I can’t remember ever climbing into bed with her when I was a girl, not even after a nightmare or during a storm like this. She wasn’t that kind of mother, and I wasn’t that kind of daughter. I don’t think we’re about to start now. She looks older when she’s asleep, and this alarms me. She looks like the act of sleep is exhausting her as much as the act of living.

I wanted to go back to our apartment, but we were told we couldn’t. Three times, we walked down to the barricades on Canal Street and let the police officers know where we lived. Each time, they said it was still too dangerous. They asked us if
we had a place to stay. “We just want to see it,” I said, even though I knew there was no point.

When I picture my room, I imagine everything covered in ashes. I know the windows are closed. I know the door is shut. But I imagine death as a fine dust that’s gotten in through the cracks, that covers my unmade bed, my clothes, my carpet. In my mind, it looks like a hundred years have passed, draining away all the color. The air itself has decayed and fallen to the floor.

I try to think of other things, but there are no other things. This is the only thing I can think about.

Every time I’ve walked downtown—every time I’ve looked downtown—it’s been the same. First the smoke. Then the source of the smoke. And the disappearance. How the other buildings, which once seemed so small in comparison, have now revealed their true height.

Gone
. One of the words that’s hardest to fully comprehend.
Gone
.

I feel the urge to weep, the kind of weeping that feels like you are choking on a thick black cloud. I manage to keep it in, but barely. Walking back here tonight, right before dinner, a woman passed me, and she was laughing. A dancing, happy laugh. I can still see her. She was walking downtown—she could see the smoke, if she looked. And she was laughing at something her companion had said. And I thought,
How can you?

It is unbelievable to see the city so shut down. It is unbelievable that there are no planes in the sky. It is unbelievable that none of us know the full impact yet.

I could take the leather-bound
Little Women
off of Rana’s bookshelf and read it in the bathroom, where the light won’t disturb anyone. Or I could go into the den, where Sammy’s asleep, and turn on the television, muted, looking for the one channel that will pretend nothing’s happened. If only I still had my faith in old books and reruns. They are among the things I feel have been taken from me, along with humor and hope and the ability to savor. I could go into the kitchen and steal some ice cream from the freezer, but it would only taste like cold on my tongue. I could put on headphones and listen to a CD, but it would only sound like disturbed airwaves, not music. So I stay in bed until the thunder stops and Mom’s sleep-breathing slows and my thoughts become so loud that I can’t take it anymore. Because after the storm there’s something even scarier outside—an astounding, uncitylike quiet. I don’t hear any cars going by, no voices. There are no clocks ticking in the apartment, no gusts of wind pressing against the glass. It’s as if the rain has washed all the life away, except for the water finding the openings in the pavement, seeping down.

I have to get out of here. Being here makes me remember that I’m not home. It makes me remember why I’m not home.

I set my feet quietly on the floor, careful not to take any of the sheets with me, trying to levitate from the mattress so Mom won’t feel me shift. I have been sleeping in my clothes, and nobody has questioned this. Now that I’m up, I feel unwashed, but I worry that the simple act of turning on the faucet will wake up not just the sink and the pipes, but the whole apartment. So I
change into new socks and carry my shoes into the den. I want Sammy to be up, so I can ask him to come with me. But when I look at the couch, I find him floating in a dream cloud. The least I can do is let him have that.

It’s only when I get to the front door that I put on my shoes. I unlock the security bolts and take the spare key. This is new territory for me—I never sneak out. But this thing—this thing that’s happening—has made me not care what I normally do. Sneaking out now doesn’t have to mean that I’m used to it, or that I’ll ever do it again. It’s what this specific moment calls for.

I close the door and walk down the hallway, my steps as silent as the walls. No one is watching TV at this hour. No one is arguing. If there are sleepwalkers, they hide their presence the same way I do. Once I’m out the door, I realize I should have left a note. But it’s too late. I need to keep going.

I don’t have a watch on or a phone with me, so I don’t know what time it is.
2:18, 3:12, 3:45, 4:06
—what’s the difference, really? I walk outside and it’s absolute night, not yet softened by the coming of the day. There is some reassurance in the fact that the streetlamps are still working and the air is, at least temporarily, less caustic as I inhale. I wonder if the storm has put out the fires at Ground Zero or if this is only a pause before the smoke from below reaches back into the sky. It is too dark and too distant for me to see if the plumes are still there. On Eighteenth Street you can’t see much farther than Eighteenth Street. When a cab drives by, I’m almost grateful for the sign of life.

Crossing Third Avenue, I start to see people. Not many, but
a few. This is not a late-night crowd. These are not people coming home from bars or clubs. Nor are they workers coming home from a graveyard shift. I can tell: These are people like me. The relocated. They have not been sleeping in their own beds. They are wrecked by the devastating side effects of such helplessness, most notably insomnia. They might be tourists stranded in hotels. There are some, I have no doubt, who are still looking for the missing, still clutching the thinnest available hope. I don’t make eye contact with them. I’m afraid of their stories. That’s what it’s been like lately—we have the ability to glimpse each other as souls. Damaged, frightened, confused, caring souls.

The posters—all those homemade posters—are sagging under the weight of the rain. The words bleed as the damp paper pulls against the Scotch tape. The posters around telephone poles have shaped themselves to the wood, the old staples showing through like scars. Others have fallen face-first onto the sidewalk, or have been carried into clogged gutters. Nobody was thinking of rain. Nobody would have waited the extra hour to make the posters waterproof. The words that remain intact are the biggest ones, the ones you’d most expect—MISSING and HAVE YOU SEEN ME? It’s the photos and the phone numbers that have lost their focus. If you look at them with your naked eye, it’s like you’re seeing them through tears. They have the same kind of blur.

I was going to walk aimlessly, one direction as good as any other, but now I want to go to Union Square. If I can’t go home,
I’ll go there. Seeing the rain-ruined posters, I want to turn my wandering into a pilgrimage. I want to see the shrine. I want to go back to see all the candles and portraits and banners and notes. For the past three days, people have been going to Union Square to mourn and pray, leaving their remembrances alongside everyone else’s. I have no idea who put the first candle down, which strangers first gathered and named it a gathering place. I went there on Wednesday morning because I saw other people were going there, and ever since, I haven’t been able to come back to Ted and Lia’s apartment without stopping there first. It’s what I need. Even in the middle of the night, even (especially) when I’m alone. Every inch of it is heartbreaking, and that’s what I want to do right now—I want to break my own heart.