Authors: Ariella Papa
I called Paul to find out what time he wanted me to come over.
“Actually, I was thinking of coming into the city tonight.”
“Why? Do you have to work?”
“No, I thought I could have an actual date with my lady.”
“You mean, instead of just doing it on the living room floor by the fire?”
“Yeah, I thought maybe we’d go back to Esme’s Eatery. What do you think?”
“Sounds fabulous,” I said. “I’ll try not to talk too much about how my co-op board is made up of a bunch of Orwellian assholes.”
“Really?” he asked, sounding generally interested.
“Yeah.”
“Well, you can tell me over dinner, but I want this to be a nice night.”
“Okay, wait, am I forgetting something?”
“Yeah, it’s our six-month anniversary.”
“It is?”
“Yep.”
“You mean I’ve been going out with someone for six months?”
“No. You’ve been going out with
me
for six months.”
“Cool.” I was really proud of myself.
“So. I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“Is it easier for me to just meet you there?”
“Voula, let’s go on a nice date. Okay?”
“Sure. See you at eight.” I hung up.
Would it be wrong to wear Jamie’s kimono top again? No, and I had to. It was the nicest thing I had. I had barely worn it last night. And with smoking going on only outside, it didn’t even smell worn. Even the smoking ban was working in my favor. The tyrannical co-op board no longer presented as big a problem. I was in a six-month relationship.
I sat back down. I had plenty of time to get ready
and
to read the paper.
I had no idea Paul was going to pop the question.
N
o! Not
that
question!
Paul wanted me to move in with him. To
Brooklyn.
He waited until we were on dessert to ask me. Right before he said it, I had just tried a gooey, delicious bite of his molten chocolate cake and couldn’t have been happier.
“So I was thinking you should scrap this whole co-op board thing and move in with me.”
“What?” I almost barked.
“I want you to move in with me.”
“To…Brooklyn.”
“Yeah. I figured we spend enough time together. You seem to want out of your place. This way, we could hang out even when I get home late.”
“We could still do that when I get the new place,” I said. “You can still just come over after your shift.”
“I know, but why have two places? Why wonder where my deodorant is because I left it at your place? Or what about when you left your new Tori Amos CD at my house and you said it was affecting your writing because you hadn’t put it in your iPod yet?”
“That was once.”
“Voula, I don’t know about you, but this relationship seems serious.”
“It is.”
“So why not take it to the next level.”
“The next level is Brooklyn?”
“Voula,” he said. He was taking a tone. “You’re from Queens. Don’t start subscribing to this bridge and tunnel bullshit.”
“I like living in Manhattan.”
“I thought you liked my neighborhood. You told me you wanted to pitch an article about how Brooklyn beats Manhattan.”
“I do. I actually did pitch it, but it had been done already.”
“You see. It’s just like the sign says.”
“What sign?”
“Brooklyn. Believe the hype.” He nodded, pleased that he had made a point.
This Brooklyn line of defense wasn’t working. I decided to try something else.
“I already signed a contract.”
“But you haven’t closed. I think you can get out of it. Say we’re getting engaged.”
“Is that what’s coming? Are we going to get married?” I asked before I could stop myself. Suddenly,
I
was popping the question.
“I don’t think it’s that far off,” he said.
“We’ve only been together for six months.”
“Voula, I know it’s soon, but I love you. I think we love each other. I would like to live together for a little while before we get engaged. If you need a time frame, I would say six months.”
He was getting ahead of himself. I could barely keep up. “I’m not giving you an ultimatum. I’m trying to slow you down.”
He looked down at his chocolate cake. I could tell that I was upsetting him. I didn’t really want to slow him down, I just didn’t want him to go any faster. I was still getting my bearings, and I knew that Jamie never considered herself serious with a boy until they had been together for over six months.
“I have to say, Voula, that I feel like you’re always pulling away from me.”
“What do you mean? Just because I don’t want to move in with you, I’m pulling away?”
“You never really want to come over when Joey’s there.”
“And that’s why you want me to move in?”
“I want you to move in because it makes sense.”
“To you. I just decided I wanted to buy this place.”
“You’ve never been sure about it. Not one hundred percent.”
“Look, there’s nothing in life that you can be sure of one hundred percent.”
He looked incredibly hurt. I stared down at my pumpkin crème brûlée.
“I’m not going to die,” he said quietly. “I’m not your sister.”
“You’re a fucking fireman,” I said, a little too loud for this dark restaurant. “Tell me what guarantee you have of that.”
He shook his head. “Of course it’s a dangerous job, but that doesn’t mean we can’t live.”
“I just don’t know if I can deal with it.”
“So you keep me at arm’s length.”
I kind of laughed. “You really have no idea how close you are to me.”
“So is this it? Is this as close as I can get?”
“No, but I just can’t rush into things.”
“Instead you can be pessimistic about everything?”
“This is just how I am.” I stared at him. “I guess I do still feel a little awkward about Joey. I don’t want to come between you. I know he comes first and I’m scared to be around him. If he doesn’t like me, what if that means you won’t either?”
“Look, I’m going to like you no matter what. It’s not a question. I just want you to trust me.”
“I do,” I said.
“But if you trusted me, you would talk about your sister, talk about your family.”
“I don’t talk about that stuff to anyone.”
“Maybe you should.”
I shook my head. “You never talk about 9/11—does that mean you don’t trust me?”
“I don’t talk about it because…” He stopped.
I almost didn’t want him to tell me. If he was showing his cards, I would have to show mine.
“I don’t talk about it because it feels cheap to talk about it. Everyone talks about it, but they don’t know. Everyone co-opts it. And I don’t talk about it because it makes me feel like a coward.”
“Why?”
“Because I wasn’t there.”
“What?”
“I was in Disney World with Joey. I could have taken him in the summer, but he wasn’t in school yet and I found a cheaper deal for after Labor Day.”
“You couldn’t have—”
“Of course not. It’s not my fault. Right? Not really. I mean, I drove straight back up—you know the airports were closed. I went there. I helped. But I wasn’t there when it happened, you know, I wasn’t with my guys.”
“No one knew what was going to happen,” I said. “How could you have known?”
He looked at me and I understood that it didn’t matter. There was nothing rational about feeling this kind of guilt. There was nothing that could be said. I just had to listen.
“If it hadn’t been for Joey, I’m not sure I could’ve made it. That whole way up 95, I made it a game, you know. We sang songs. And after, if he wasn’t around, I don’t know how I would have dealt with all of it. If it wasn’t for him, I might have done something desperate. Have you ever felt like that?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Well, you see, I knew that. I could see it in your eyes, standing out there on the street. I recognized some fear in you, some pain. I want to know that, Voula. I want to understand.”
“It’s not that easy.”
He gave me this sidelong glance, like he was sizing me up for something.
I took a deep breath. “It seems like there have been so many wrong turns. Like my family could never get it right. I tried not to blame anyone. I tried not to blame myself.”
I was talking now, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop. I told him I didn’t feel attached to it anymore, that I couldn’t let myself. “You know they were so strict with all of us. And Cristina, Cristina was so good and so pretty and it didn’t matter because they were so strict. And then all of a sudden they decided not to be. It was the summer she went to Cyprus and the rest of us stayed home. She said she wanted to go before she started at NYU. She wanted to see some guy. I don’t even know how long she had been writing this guy. My aunt in Cyprus ratted her out and Helen and I were scared for her, but for once my parents were cool. They talked to his parents, even. Suddenly they gave in. They should have made her come home when she asked to stay an extra week. At any other time they would have. This time, she could stay. Her flight home was supposed to be two days after it happened.” It was all coming out. The story, my tears—everything. “They were on a moped. I saw pictures of him when I cleaned out her room. Helen and I did it because my parents were in no position to. We would have done it anyway, in case there was something to hide. She had one picture of him. She had hidden it in one of her school-books, right on the shelf. In the picture, he was on the moped. A skinny kid looking proud of his death machine.”
“And?”
“And what? He was cute. He wrote I love you on the back of the photo.”
“It sounds like she wanted to be there.”
I nodded.
“It sounds like she was happy when she died.”
“I guess—”
I saw my sister then, with the kid on the moped. I saw her laughing with her hair blowing in the breeze as she crashed. Of course, she wouldn’t have messed up her hair with a helmet. I had never thought about how she may have felt—not in all this time. I had only thought about how we felt, how
I
felt. I began to sob, and Paul came over to my side of the table. He hugged me and then he paid the check. We took a cab to Brooklyn and I continued to sob quietly into his shoulder, although I stopped for a minute when he pointed to the sign on the Brooklyn Bridge that said Welcome To Brooklyn How Sweet It Is.
Back at his place, he helped me undress and tucked me in. Then he got into bed and kept holding onto me.
“I feel so safe with you,” I said. “It’s scary to feel so safe.”
In the morning I woke up well rested. Paul was looking at me.
“Hi,” I said.
“Good morning,” he said.
I sat up in bed. “Sorry I turned into such a freak last night.”
He pulled me back down and close to him. “You weren’t a freak. I’m glad you trusted me enough to talk about it.”
“I’m glad we talked about 9/11.”
“You know, I think your life is going to change if you let it. I mean, I can’t promise that nothing else bad is ever going to happen. For a while, I kept waiting, you know, waiting for another attack, waiting for something else bad. It fucked me up. When we went out on calls, I wasn’t focused. You need to be focused. I think we just have to accept that these things happened to us and keep on being good to each other and being there for each other. We’re never going to get a guarantee, but we have to keep on keeping on.”
“I love you,” I said.
“How sweet it is,” he said, and pulled the covers back over our heads.
My co-op board decided to reschedule without giving me much chance to get any of my financials together. That meant I definitely wasn’t going to be able to close the week of May third. They weren’t going to give me a new date until they saw what they wanted to see.
“They’re assholes,” I said to Maureen.
“I know, dear.” She liked calling me that now. “Just get them what they want, so we can all be a lot happier.”
And you can get your money,
I thought. I was on my way over to Jamie’s for a visit. The baby was almost a month old. Fewer people were coming over now, so Jamie had more time with the baby by herself. She said every day was a different story.
The story when I finally got over there was that the baby had thrown up all over her and she hadn’t been able to eat all day. She was wearing an open robe and sweats.
“I’ll make you something,” I said. When I turned on the gas of the stovetop, I held my breath the way I had ever since the fire. I started to make us grilled cheese sandwiches. I looked up to ask her if she wanted Swiss, American or provolone and noticed that she was holding the baby and looking really upset.
“I just don’t know if I can take this,” she said.
I abandoned the grilled cheese task and took the baby out of her arms. Immediately, she left the room.
I looked down at the baby. “You are going to make your mother crazy.”
The baby looked at me and cried. It was actually seeing me. It was starting to look less like an alien and more like a human. I found myself rocking it.
Her.
I found myself rocking her.
She was heavy, so I sat in the rocking chair and rocked us both. In a half hour, Jamie came back into the room. She had showered and put on a pair of yoga pants and a cashmere sweater.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You know if you need me to come over so you can shower or whatever, I can.”
“It was just a really rough day.”
“It—she—looks more alert,” I said. The baby was quite content for the moment.
“Yeah, she’s starting to track things. Watch this. Ananda—” She snapped her fingers to get the baby’s attention. The baby looked over at her and she walked back and forth. The baby followed with her eyes. “We’re lucky. She seems to be advancing at a normal rate even though she was a month premature.”
“Cool.” Jamie started to finish my grilled cheeses. “I can do that.”
“No, I’ll do it, if you don’t mind holding her. It’s just nice when someone else is here to help.”
“Have your mom and Ana been over a lot?”
“Yeah, and they’re only a phone call away. I just hate asking all the time. I need to figure this stuff out.”
“You’ll get it.”
She nodded, but didn’t seem sure. “There’s just no one I trust to reassure me.”
In my arms Ananda fell asleep. “She’s out.”
“Oooh,” Jamie said, springing into quiet action. “Okay, we have to try to get her into the crib without waking her up. We might actually get to eat in peace.”
Jamie guided me into the nursery and I laid Ananda down in the crib as carefully as I possibly could. There was a moment when the floor creaked and Jamie and I held our breath, but Ananda slept right through it. We smiled at each other.
Later we were eating burned grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. Jamie’s eyes darted to the baby monitor with every little noise.
“Is it going okay?” I asked.
“I just wish someone had told me how hard it would be. It’s like no one wants to say that. I don’t know if I’m abnormal. I mean, I wanted this. Sometimes I just feel so up and down. I know it wasn’t like this for Alice.”
“Alice likes appearances,” I said. “You can’t believe her about how perfect her baby was.”
“I know,” Jamie said. “But no one else says it either. Why? I can’t believe I’m the only one to ever feel this way.”
“I can’t either. It’s like a conspiracy of silence.”
She laughed. “I sense an article coming on.”
“I’m meeting with Eve Vitali next week to pitch this kind of thing for
On the Verge.
” Usually, I hesitated telling Jamie about my pieces before they came out. I know she often believed she was the cleverly disguised source. Sometimes she was. This time she actually smiled.
“I think it would be great if you did an article about these crazy feelings. It would be like a public service.”