All The Things We Didn’t Say

I gestured to the zoo’s cheerful gate. ‘Remember when we took Summer and Steven here?’

‘Yes.’ You said it very slowly, cautiously, as if I’d told a joke and you were waiting for the punch line.

‘Do you think all parents understand how great it is for kids to see animals?’ I asked. ‘I’ve been sitting here, watching, and every kid who has gone in is so happy. All parents understand this, right? All kids get to go to zoos?’

You turned your wedding ring around on your finger. ‘I thought you were sick. I even had Paul go into the bathroom and make sure.’

We went back to the party and explained that I’d run into an old friend and walked a ways up with him toward the reservoir. Your friends nodded and smiled and drank their drinks. The rest of the lunch, you had a hand on your bare knee, and you kept squeezing, squeezing. When you took it away once, I could see the fermata-shaped nail indentations in your skin.

After that, similar episodes came more frequently. I wasn’t where I said I would be. I wasn’t as dependable, wasn’t as cogent, couldn’t carry a conversation, missed days of work, spaced out for hours. Once, you caught me watching a Three Stooges marathon when I was supposed to be getting ready for a party. Another time you caught me on the Promenade, coaxing a baby squirrel toward my lap with a spoonful of peanut butter. I’d said I was going to the lab that day. ‘Have you been tricking me?’ you asked. ‘Have you always been this kind of person, but just hid it all this time?’

‘It’s hard to explain,’ I said.

‘Try,’ you said.

But it was about the same things, the things I’d already told you. And it was about the things I could only halfway tell-I was so afraid to tell it all. But maybe I should have; maybe I owed it to you. And maybe that’s why I waited for you in front of your old office building, that winter after you left-so I could come clean. Or maybe I wouldn’t have said anything, if I’d seen you. Maybe it would’ve been enough to know that you were still here, near us, close.

This is probably the part where I should tell you how I really feel. That I think what you did was terrible, and that you ruined lives, and that I’ll never forgive you. But there’s room in me to forgive, I think. Maybe, in some ways, I saw it coming. Maybe, in some ways, I understand.

4 (#ulink_901fab40-5463-5b2a-9cdf-3bb4fabb0307)

‘Do we have everything?’ I asked.

My father and I were standing in the doorway of our apartment, bags slung over our shoulders, the wheels of the suitcase caught on the lip between the door and the hall. Steven had already gone down the street to look out for the car service.

We shut the door and locked all the locks. My father stooped, jiggling the handles to make sure they were truly secure. We heard the shouting on Montague Terrace before we pushed our way out of the heavy wooden brownstone door and clomped down the building’s front steps. The bags Steven had brought downstairs were waiting patiently at the curb next to an old diesel Mercedes, but Steven was standing in the middle of the street, his hands on his hips, glaring at Renee Klinefelter, our forty-something neighbor down the block. Renee was in her uniform, jeans cut off at the knees and a slightly-too-small black t-shirt that stretched tight over her paunchy stomach. As usual, her two grumpy-faced pugs flanked her, one on each side.

‘Don’t pull that amnesty stuff on me,’ Steven was shouting. ‘That bomb could have decimated one of our most vulnerable buildings. He should’ve been shot on the spot.’

‘So what do you suggest we do?’ Renee shouted back, spitting a little. ‘Deport everyone? Take away political asylum as a whole?’

‘If that’s what it takes.’

‘Some people need political asylum.’

‘And some people who have it like to blow things up.’ Steven was moving closer and closer to Renee’s face. ‘And do you realize you’re arguing for terrorism? You’re arguing for people with those ideals to…to infiltrate here and do this to us when we aren’t expecting it?’

He wheeled around, glaring pointedly at Iqbal, who owned the M&J deli down the block. Iqbal had innocently walked into the street to check on the fresh flowers he sold, but when he realized Steven was near, he inched back inside. Steven had gone off on Iqbal a month or so ago-people from your country do this. How does that make you feel? Iqbal dealt with it quietly, neither calling the cops nor barring Steven from the store-although maybe he should have. During Desert Storm, there were several yellow ribbons affixed to Iqbal’s register. He still slipped me loose candy he kept in the plastic bins above the register, barrel-shaped Tootsie Rolls and mini York Peppermint Patties, whenever I went in there to buy a Coke.

‘If that van would’ve been a little closer to the concrete foundation in the basement, both buildings would’ve collapsed,’ Steven yelled to Renee. ‘Do you even realize that?’

‘Of course I realize that!’ Renee shouted. ‘But it doesn’t mean we should persecute everyone!’

‘You should do something,’ I murmured to my father, who, as usual, had halted, paralyzed, on the curb. He cradled his right hand in his left, running his fingers over the scar on his right palm he’d gotten a few months ago from the broken snow globe. The deep cut had healed, but he often thoughtfully traced the scar over and over, maybe finding the motion soothing, maybe remembering what happened. I never wanted to ask. A curious, passive crowd had gathered to watch Steven and Renee. People were stepping out of their buildings, heads tilted toward the noise, and passersby had paused, leaning against railings, reining in their dogs, trying to understand what was transpiring.

I moved out to the street and pulled Steven’s arm. He wrenched it away without even looking at me. Renee leaned over like a bull ready to charge. My father, finally, pushed around me. ‘We have to go,’ he said in Steven’s ear. ‘You’ve made your point.’

We both managed to pull Steven backwards, returning to our pile of luggage at the curb. Luckily, the car service rolled up then, and I waved it over. We threw our suitcases in the trunk fast, piling them on top of empty water bottles, frayed straps to secure luggage, and a little box that looked either like a tool kit or a small suitcase for a gun. Steven craned his neck to get a look at the driver, a pale man with high cheekbones. When he greeted us, he had a Staten Island accent. Visibly relieved, Steven got in.

As we pulled away, Renee remained in the middle of the street, her stance solid and righteous. A man I didn’t recognize approached her, and Renee’s mouth started moving fast. It wasn’t hard to figure out what she was saying. Steven used to be such a nice boy, so quiet. And then all that happened, with the mother. What a pity.

Steven ran his hand over his hair, which he’d recently taken my father’s beard clippers to. It was so short, I could see his skull in spots, pinkish and bumpy. ‘She started it,’ he muttered.

‘It doesn’t matter who started it,’ my father countered wearily.

The car took the exit for the Brooklyn Bridge. There were the mammoth Lower Manhattan buildings from a different angle than how we saw them from our apartment. Looming atop the Municipal Building was the giant Civic Fame statue, a bronze woman holding a shield, a bunch of leaves, and a crown. The World Trade towers jutted up like two prongs of an electrical plug. Out of habit, my eyes drifted to the North tower-last February, terrorists drove the truck into its underground parking garage and set off a bomb. Steven knew every detail of the incident: the bomb was made of urea pellets, bottled hydrogen and various other things. It was supposed to go up the ventilation shafts and suffocate everyone working there. Officials found bombbuilding plans in one of the terrorist’s suitcases when he entered the country, but he claimed political asylum so they couldn’t arrest him on the spot. Because of that loophole, 1,042 people had been injured, and six people had died. The New York Times listed the names of the dead, but not all those who had been hurt. Every day, when the paper came, Steven leafed through it, maybe checking, though he never explained.

Since then, whenever he wasn’t doing his NYU coursework, Steven read about airplane hijackings, bus attacks, and suicide bombings, most of which take place in far-flung countries like Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Israel. But Steven thought they could happen here, too. We could be walking down the street, he hypothesized, and boom. No more street. No more us. There was nothing we could do to control it.

Our car reached the highest point of the bridge. I eyeballed twenty-two flights from the top of the North tower. The entire floor was dark.

My father jiggled his legs up and down as we descended off the bridge and turned onto the looping road to the FDR. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Are you sure you’re okay to drive?’ We were headed for a car rental agency in the Village.

He shrugged.

‘I could drive,’ I volunteered.

‘You don’t know how to drive,’ Steven snapped.

‘Neither do you.’

‘I’ll drive,’ my father interrupted. ‘I’m the one who knows how to get there.’

He looked longingly over his shoulder for a moment, back toward Brooklyn, pulling in his bottom lip until it vanished.

‘It’s only three days,’ I said in his ear. He nodded quietly, as if this were the vitamin he’d been looking for, as though these few, simple words had made everything better.

Later, my father became talkative. ‘We couldn’t get that fishhook out of Petey’s foot, so we had to take him to the emergency room!’

There was a pause. He swiveled his head around at me, taking his hands off the steering wheel. I realized I was supposed to be paying attention.

‘That’s funny,’ I sputtered.

My father frowned. ‘It’s not funny, Summer. Petey’s dad’s car didn’t go much above forty-five. It took us over an hour to get to the hospital.’

We passed a truck stop. McDonald’s, Arby’s, Dairy Queen. We passed a field of cows and then a field of horses. ‘This is the real Pennsylvania,’ my father yelled, his voice diffused through the open window. His accent had changed between Brooklyn and here, less than a six-hour drive. ‘I bet you don’t remember this, huh Summer?’

‘Not really.’ We passed a red-painted barn. Someone had spray-painted Kill Niggers on the side of it. There was a big drip line from the base of the N to the waist-high grass.

Dear Claire, I composed in my head. Check this out! I could send her a photo of the barn. Perhaps she’d find it-what’s the phrase she always used?-très kitsch.

We passed what I guessed was the equivalent of a 7-Eleven. It was called Unimart, sort of like unibrow. There was a placard out front; faded, plastic interchangeable letters read, LOTTO HERE! MARLBORO $1.29.

‘It’s so funny, being here,’ my father said. ‘I feel like I know every tree personally.’