Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (26 page)

try to live,' I declared nothing, I called your mother but I couldn't explain myself, I called again, she thought it was a joke, I called again, she asked, 'Oskar?' I went to the magazine stand and got more quarters, I tried again, it rang and rang, I tried again, it rang, I waited and tried again, I sat on the ground, not knowing what would happen next, not even knowing what I wanted to happen next, I tried once more, 'Hello, you have reached the Schell residence. I am speaking like an answering message, even though it's really me on the phone. If you'd like to talk to me or Grandma, please begin at the beep sound I'm about to make. Beeeeep. Hello?' It was a child's voice, a boy's. 'It's really me. I'm here. Bonjour?' I hung up. Grandma? I needed time to think, a taxi would be too quick, as would a bus, what was I afraid of? I put the suitcases on a pushcart and started walking, I was amazed that no one tried to stop me, not even as I pushed the cart onto the street, not even as I pushed it onto the side of the highway, with each step it became brighter and hotter, after only a few minutes it was clear I wouldn't be able to manage, I opened one of the suitcases and took out a stack of letters, 'To my child,' they were from 1977, 'To my child,'

'To my child,' I thought about laying them on the road beside me, creating a trail of things I wasn't able to tell you, it might have made my load possible, but I couldn't, I needed to get them to you, to my child. I hailed a cab, by the time we reached your mother's apartment it was already getting late, I needed to find a hotel, I needed food and a shower and time to think, I ripped a page from the daybook and wrote, 'I'm sorry,' I handed it to the doorman, he said, 'Who's this for?' I wrote, 'Mrs. Schell,' he said, 'There is no Mrs. Schell,' I wrote, 'There is,' he said, 'Believe me, I'd know if there was a Airs. Schell in this building,' but I'd heard her voice on the phone, could she have moved and kept the number, how would I find her, I needed a phone book. I wrote '3D' and showed it to the doorman. He said, 'Ms. Schmidt,' I took back my book and wrote, 'That was her maiden name.'…I lived in the guest room, she left me meals by the door, I could hear her footsteps and sometimes I thought I heard the rim of a glass against the door, was it a glass I once drank water from, had it ever touched your lips? I found my daybooks from before I left, they were in the body of the grandfather clock, I'd have thought she would have thrown them away, but she kept them, many were empty and many were filled, I wandered through them, I found the book from the afternoon we met and the book from the day after we got married, I found our first Nothing Place, and the last time we walked around the reservoir, I found pictures of banisters and sinks and fireplaces, on top of one of the stacks was the book from the first time I tried to leave, 'I haven't always been silent, I used to talk and talk and talk and talk.' I don't know if she began to feel sorry for me, or sorry for herself, but she started paying me short visits, she wouldn't say anything at first, only tidy up the room, brush cobwebs from the corners, vacuum the carpet, straighten the picture frames, and then one day, as she dusted the bedside table, she said, 'I can forgive you for leaving, but not for coming back,' she walked out and closed the door behind her, I didn't see her again for three days, and then it was as if nothing had been said, she replaced a light bulb that had worked fine, she picked things up and put them down, she said, 'I'm not going to share this grief with you,' she closed the door behind her, was I the prisoner or the guard? Her visits became longer, we never had conversations, and she didn't like to look at me, but something was happening, we were getting closer, or farther apart, I took a chance, I asked if she would pose for me, like when we first met, she opened her mouth and nothing came out, she touched my left hand, which I hadn't realized was in a fist, was that how she said yes, or was that how she touched me? I went to the art supply store to buy some clay, I couldn't keep my hands to myself, the pastels in long boxes, the palette knives, the handmade papers hanging on rolls, I tested every sample, I wrote my name in blue pen and in green oil stick, in orange crayon and in charcoal, it felt like I was signing the contract of my life. I was there for more than an hour, although I bought only a simple block of clay, when I came home she was waiting for me in the guest room, she was in a robe, standing beside the bed, 'Did you make any sculptures while you were away?' I wrote that I had tried but couldn't, 'Not even one?' I showed her my right hand, 'Did you think about sculptures? Did you make them in your head?' I showed her my left hand, she took off her robe and went onto the sofa, I couldn't look at her, I took the clay from the bag and set it up on the card table, 'Did you ever make a sculpture of me in your head?' I wrote, 'How do you want to pose?' She said the whole point was that I should choose, I asked if the carpeting was new, she said, 'Look at me,' I tried but I couldn't, she said, 'Look at me or leave me. But don't stay and look at anything else.' I asked her to lie on her back, but that wasn't right, I asked her to sit, it wasn't right, cross your arms, turn your head away from me, nothing was right, she said, 'Show me how,' I went over to her, I undid her hair, I pressed down on her shoulders, I wanted to touch her across all of those distances, she said, 'I haven't been touched since you left. Not in that way.' I pulled back my hand, she took it into hers and pressed it against her shoulder, I didn't know what to say, she asked, 'Have you?' What's the point of a lie that doesn't protect anything? I showed her my left hand. 'Who touched you?' My daybook was filled, so I wrote on the wall, 'I wanted so much to have a life.'

'Who?' I couldn't believe the honesty as it traveled down my arm and came out my pen, 'I paid for it.' She didn't lose her pose, 'Were they pretty?'

'That wasn't the point.'

'But were they?'

'Some of them.'

'So you just gave them money and that was it?'

'I liked to talk to them. I talked about you.'

'Is that supposed to make me feel good?' I looked at the clay. 'Did you tell them that I was pregnant when you left?' I showed her my left hand. 'Did you tell them about Anna?' I showed her my left hand. 'Did you care for any of them?' I looked at the clay, she said, 'I love that you are telling me the truth,' and she took my hand from her shoulder and pressed it between her legs, she didn't turn her head to the side, she didn't close her eyes, she stared at our hands between her legs, I felt like I was killing something, she undid my belt and unzipped my pants, she reached her hand under my underpants, 'I'm nervous,' I said, by smiling, 'It's OK,' she said, 'I'm sorry,' I said, by smiling, 'It's OK,' she said, she closed the door behind her, then opened it and asked, 'Did you ever make a sculpture of me in your head?'…There won't be enough pages in this book for me to tell you what I need to tell you, I could write smaller, I could slice the pages down their; edges to make two pages, I could write over my own writing, but then what? Every afternoon someone would come to the apartment, I could hear the door opening, and the footsteps, little footsteps, I heard talking, a child's voice, almost a song, it was the voice I'd heard when I called from the airport, the two of them would talk for hours, I asked her one evening, when she came to pose, who paid her all of those visits, she said, 'My grandson.'

'I have a grandson.'

'No,' she said, 'I have a grandson.'

'What's his name?' We tried again, we took off each other's clothes with the slowness of people who know how easy it is to be proven wrong, she lay face-down on the bed, her waist was irritated from pants that hadn't fit her in years, her thighs were scarred, I kneaded them with YES and NO, she said, 'Don't look at anything else,' I spread her legs, she inhaled, I could stare into the most private part of her and she couldn't see me looking, I slid my hand under her, she bent her knees, I closed my eyes, she said, 'Lie on top of me,' there was nowhere to write that I was nervous, she said, 'Lie on top of me.' I was afraid I'd crush her, she said, 'All of you on all of me,' I let myself sink into her, she said, 'That's what I've wanted,' why couldn't I have left it like that, why did I have to write anything else, I should have broken my fingers, I took a pen from the bedside table and wrote 'Can I see him?' on my arm. She turned over, spilling my body next to her, 'No.' I begged with my hands. 'No.'

'Please.'

'Please.'

'I won't let him know who I am. I just want to see him.'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Because.'

'Because why?'

'Because I changed his diapers. And I couldn't sleep on my stomach for two years. And I taught him how to speak. And I cried when he cried. And when he was unreasonable, he yelled at me.'

'I'll hide in the coat closet and look through the keyhole.' I thought she would say no, she said, 'If he ever sees you, you will have betrayed me.' Did she feel pity for me, did she want me to suffer? The next morning, she led me to the coat closet, which faces the living room, she went in with me, we were in there all day, although she knew he wouldn't come until the afternoon, it was too small, we needed more space between us, we needed Nothing Places, she said, 'This is what it's felt like, except you weren't here.' We looked at each other in silence for hours. When the bell rang, she went to let him in, I was on my hands and knees so my eye would be at the right level, through the keyhole I saw the door open, those white shoes, 'Oskar!' she said, lifting him from the ground, 'I'm OK,' he said, that song, in his voice I heard my own voice, and my father's and grandfather's, and it was the first time I'd heard your voice, 'Oskar!' she said again, lifting him again, I saw his face, Anna's eyes, 'I'm OK,' he said again, he asked her where she had been, 'I was talking to the renter,' she said. The renter? 'Is he still here?' he asked, 'No,' she said, 'he had to go run some errands.'

'But how did he get out of the apartment?'

'He left right before you came.'

'But you said you were just talking to him.' He knew about me, he didn't know who I was, but he knew someone was there, and he knew she wasn't telling the truth, I could hear it in his voice, in my voice, in your voice, I needed to talk to him, but what did I need to say? I'm your grandfather, I love you, I'm sorry? Maybe I needed to tell him the things I couldn't tell you, give him all the letters that were supposed to be for your eyes. But she would never give me her permission, and I wouldn't betray her, so I started to think about other ways…What am I going to do, I need more room, I have things I need to say, my words are pushing at the walls of the paper's edge, the next day, your mother came to the guest room and posed for me, I worked the clay with YES and NO, I made it soft, I pressed my thumbs into her cheeks, bringing her nose forward, leaving my thumbprints, I carved out pupils, I strengthened her brow, I hollowed out the space between her bottom lip and chin, I picked up a daybook and went over to her. I started to write about where I'd been and what I'd done since I left, how I'd made my living, whom I'd spent my time with, what I'd thought about and listened to and eaten, but she ripped the page from the book, 'I don't care,' she said, I don't know if she really didn't care or if it was something else, on the next blank page I wrote, 'If there's anything you want to know, I'll tell you,' she said, 'I know it will make your life easier to tell me, but I don't want to know anything.' How could that be? I asked her to tell me about you, she said, 'Not our son, my son,' I asked her to tell me about her son, she said, 'Every Thanksgiving I made a turkey and pumpkin pie. I would go to the schoolyard and ask the children what toys they liked. I bought those for him. I wouldn't let anyone speak a foreign language in the apartment. But he still became you.'

'He became me?'

'Everything was yes and no.'

'Did he go to college?'

'I begged him to stay close, but he went to California. In that way he was also like you.'

'What did he study?'

'He was going to be a lawyer, but he took over the business. He hated jewelry.'

'Why didn't you sell it?'

'I begged him. I begged him to be a lawyer.'

'Then why?'

'He wanted to be his own father.' I'm sorry, if that's true, the last thing I would have wanted was for you to be like me, I left so you could be you. She said, 'He tried to find you once. I gave him that only letter you ever sent. He was obsessed with it, always reading it. I don't know what you wrote, but it made him go and look for you.' On the next blank page I wrote, 'I opened the door one day and there he was.'

'He found you?'

'We talked about nothing.'

'I didn't know he found you.'

'He wouldn't tell me who he was. He must have become nervous. Or he must have hated me once he saw me. He pretended to be a journalist. It was so terrible. He said he was doing a story about the survivors of Dresden.'

'Did you tell him what happened to you that night?'

'It was in the letter.'

'What did you write?'

'You didn't read it?'

'You didn't send it to me.'

'It was terrible. All of the things we couldn't share. The room was filled with conversations we weren't having.' I didn't tell her that after you left, I stopped eating, I got so skinny that the bathwater would collect between my bones, why didn't anyone ask me why I was so skinny? If someone had asked, I never would have eaten another bite. 'But if he didn't tell you he was your son, how did you know?'

'I knew because he was my son.' She put her hand on my chest, over my heart, I put my hands on her thighs, I put my hands around her, she undid my pants, 'I'm nervous,' despite everything I wanted, the sculpture was looking more and more like Anna, she closed the door behind her, I'm running out of room…I spent most of my days walking around the city, getting to know it again, I went to the old Columbian Bakery but it wasn't there anymore, in its place was a ninety-nine-cent store where everything cost more than ninety-nine, cents. I went by the tailor shop where I used to get my pants taken in, but there was a bank, you needed a card just to open the door, I walked for hours, down one side of Broadway and up the other, where there had been a watch repairman there was a video store, where there had been a flower market there was a store for video games, where there had been a butcher there was sushi, what's sushi, and what happens to all of the broken watches? I spent hours at the dog run on the side of the natural history museum, a pit bull, a Labrador, a golden retriever, I was the only person without a dog, I thought and thought, how could I be close to Oskar from far away, how could I be fair to you and fair to your mother and fair to myself, I wanted to carry the closet door with me so I could always look at him through the keyhole, I did the next best thing. I learned his life from a distance, when he went to school, when he came home, where his friends lived, what stores he liked to go to, I followed him all over the city, but I didn't betray your mother, because I never let him know I was there. I thought it could go on like that forever, and yet here I am, once again I was proven wrong. I don't remember when the strangeness of it first occurred to me, how much he was out, how many neighborhoods he went to, why I was the only one watching him, how his mother could let him wander so far so alone. Every weekend morning, he left the building with an old man and went knocking on doors around the city, I made a map of where they went, but I couldn't make sense of it, it made no sense, what were they doing? And who was the old man, a friend, a teacher, a replacement for a missing grandfather? And why did they stay for only a few minutes at each apartment, were they selling something, collecting information? And what did his grandmother know, was I the only one worried about him? After they left one house, on Staten Island, I waited around and knocked on the door, 'I can't believe it,' the woman said, 'another visitor!'