Like No Other (11 page)

D
evorah

S
EPTEMBER
7, 4
PM

I
saiah 43:18 says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” And yet here I am, back exactly where I started. As in literally the same gray plastic bucket seat where I waited for news of Liya’s birth ten days ago. Only now, the duct tape is gone from the big window, and outside it’s gorgeous and sunny, the perfect late summer day. We have school on Sundays, so it’s never been a “weekend,” but it’s hard not to think of it that way sometimes, when everyone else is going to the park, sunning on their stoops, letting their fingers get sticky with ice cream. Or, if you’re my family, hanging out at the hospital. Not that I don’t want to visit Liya—of course I do—but now this place just makes me depressed. Because I could ride the elevator all day long and there would still be no Jaxon.

On Wednesday I waited for an hour. I stood leaning against the wrought-iron fence that separates Washington Avenue from the squat glass greenhouses of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I wore my highest hemline, a skirt that I technically outgrew last year, and a lightweight pink top that I changed into in a Dunkin Donuts bathroom after I left the store, telling my father I had to work on an assignment with Shosh. I plucked my eyebrows in that dingy bathroom mirror, which might as well have been a dented tin can for how little I could see. I put on lip gloss. And then, my stomach performing a series of nauseating flips, I stood there, stock-still, for
an hour
getting catcalls from the beer-bellied, wife-beater-clad men streaming in and out of J & J Food Market (“
THE
SANDWICH
PROFESSIONAL
”—a doubtful piece of proud advertising on its awning) across the street. First it was “Waiting for someone, gorgeous? He’s a lucky man!” Then it turned into “You can come to my house if he don’t show, sweetie. Heh heh heh.” Finally, at six o’clock, my humiliation was compounded by their hollow condolences. “He stood you up, princess!” “You’re too good for him!” I would have left, hidden in the lobby of the apartment building a block north, or taken refuge in the gardens, but I was convinced that the second I left, he would finally appear, out of breath and grinning, explaining it all away, making nothing else matter.

But apparently, something else mattered more. I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around it and make it okay, but I can’t. He seemed so happy to see me, so eager to meet again. When I left the restaurant I was floating. I could barely sleep that night, planning my outfit, what I would say, what he would say. Debating whether he might try to kiss me, and if I would let him.

I couldn’t have made all of that up, could I? Was he just a flirt? Was my crush one-sided? Maybe not having had many crushes (and barely having touched a member of the opposite sex) puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to reading body language, but I thought he really liked me. What could have happened in twenty-four hours to change that?

For the first two days after the failed meeting, I vacillated between sadness and anger, and I’m not sure which felt worse. The intermittent urges to weep in the middle of math were embarrassing, but not as scary as the flashes of shame-laced outrage that made me want to turn my desk upside-down and storm out of class. I couldn’t pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes at a time, and I couldn’t vent to Shosh because I knew she would be mad at me for going to see him in the first place. At the store, I forgot to restock shelves and priced an entire row of napkins at $199.99 a package. On Thursday I gave Mrs. Goodstein the wrong change, three dollars and ten cents in her favor. She noticed and returned the money right away, but I still knew.

Friday was the first time it occurred to me that something could have happened to him. Like, maybe he got sick or injured, and of course he would have no way of reaching me to let me know. It’s so stupid, but on our way home from work for Shabbos, Hanna and I passed a dead bouquet of roses on the sidewalk outside a Burger King, still in their deli wrapper, and I thought for a second that maybe they were from Jaxon, and that he got attacked before he could give them to me. And as unlikely as it was, I became obsessed with the thought of him bloodied and broken, lying in a hospital bed somewhere. I was so upset and out of my head that before my father came home for Shabbos dinner, I snuck into his study on the third floor and opened the web browser on his laptop. (He almost never uses the Internet at home, but he needs it occasionally to place orders and to check the business e-mail, which gets a lot of spam messages from Nigerian diplomats.) I feverishly typed “Jaxon” into the search bar, and then froze. Jaxon what?
Jaxon elevator boy
?
Jaxon Wonder Wings
? I finally settled on “Jaxon Brooklyn,” and ended up watching a video of a fat white baby’s first birthday party. Then I realized I didn’t know how to erase the search history, so I just shut down the laptop and hid it underneath a sheaf of papers. I hope it’s true that G-d protects fools.

“Devorah!” my mother says, pinching my arm.

“Ow, what?” I look up to find her, Hanna, Miri, Amos, Zeidy, and Jacob standing over me. Ugh,
Jacob
. Why can’t he be working on Sunday along with all of the other able-bodied men in the family?

“Did you hear me? We can go in and see Rose and the baby now.” She tugs me to standing and looks at my face with narrow-eyed intensity, like she’s inspecting a melon for bruises. “You haven’t been yourself lately. Are you getting sick?”

“No,” I say, batting her hand away.

“Well, something’s wrong,” she murmurs.

“Maybe she’s turning into a zombie!” Amos says. “Like on that show!” My mother whips her head around.

“What show are you watching? And where?”

“I saw a poster on the subway,” Amos says, holding his hands out and letting his tongue go slack. “Flesh-eating warriors!” Only because he’s not using his tongue it sounds like “shlesh eeing awriors!”

“Ew,” Miri groans.

“Awesome,” Hanna says.

“Let’s go,” Jacob says impatiently. “Devorah, bring your brain or leave it here, it makes no difference to me.”

I look at my mother, expecting her to give him a verbal slap, but instead she just chuckles gamely and takes his arm, and we all file down the hall toward the NICU, where I notice for the first time that the hallways are lined with framed photos of wrinkly, sleeping newborns curled up in watermelons and bean pods, as if they arrived on earth not through the birth canal but rather by special delivery from some idyllic organic grocer.

“Please tell me Rose isn’t going to do one of those photo shoots,” Hanna whispers, and we snicker.

Just as I’m crafting a retort about how I’ve always longed to make a nest out of challah, I stop short, the words caught in my throat like a chicken bone. Because that’s when I see him, standing at the end of the corridor near the waiting area, where we were just sitting. Jaxon. And he’s not bloodied, or broken, or any of the things I feared. Instead, he’s smiling at me and raising his hand in a tentative wave.

“Girls!” Jacob says. “Hurry up. These visits are on a schedule.”

Jaxon freezes just as I find my legs again. I meet his eyes, but before he has the chance to do anything, I panic. I turn my back. I walk away.

• • •

Liya is sleeping in Rose’s arms as we circle around them in the NICU, all smelling like the pomegranate hand sanitizer we’ve just doused ourselves in. I want nothing more than to be present in this moment and to lose myself in the sight of my sister, glowing and grinning and inexplicably already thin again, cuddling her daughter, a blanketed burrito topped with a tuft of downy, margarine-colored hair. But instead I’m focusing all my energy on not letting anyone know I’m completely freaking out.

What is Jaxon doing here? How did he know I would be here? Is it some incredible coincidence, or was he looking for me? And if he’s looking for me, is that thrilling or creepy? Did Hanna see him in the hallway? Worse—did Jacob? And what do I do now? I can’t let him leave without seeing him . . . but I also can’t let anyone else see me see him. For a minute I worry that my racing thoughts will make my head explode. At least I’m already in a hospital.

“She looks like your grandmother,” Mom whispers. “Don’t you think so, Papa?”

“Well . . . Deborah was a bit taller,” Zeidy jokes.

“Can I touch her?” Miri asks shyly.

“Gently,” Rose says, and guides my youngest sister’s small hand over the baby’s head. “She still has soft spots on her skull.”

“Cool!” Amos says. It’s the first thing about the baby he’s seemed impressed by.

“They’re called ‘fontanelles,’” Jacob explains, bending down to kiss Liya on the head while dutifully avoiding contact with Rose. “Her bones haven’t fully fused yet.” I stare down mutely at the baby, thinking that maybe
that’s
my problem: that I still have soft spots, places where my faith is weak.

“Devorah,” my mother says, “you’ve gone white. Are you sure you aren’t getting sick?”

“You should leave if you’re sick,” Rose says, furrowing her brow and clutching Liya against her chest. “Any germs are dangerous for the baby.”

“Another reason why I don’t trust hospitals,” Jacob mutters.

I shake my head and attempt a smile. “No, no, I’m just hungry, I think. Low blood sugar.”

“You ate a whole stack of pancakes before we left the house,” Hanna says, and I make a mental note to pinch her later.

“Why don’t you go downstairs and get yourself a banana or something?” Mom says, taking out her wallet and pulling out a five-dollar bill. She hands it to me, along with the perfect excuse to roam the halls alone. But just as I close my fingers around it, Jaxon appears in the long rectangular window behind my mother’s back. Luckily everyone but me and Rose is facing the opposite direction. His eyes widen as he sees us, and I shake my head quickly.

“You don’t want a banana? Fine, get whatever,” my mother says as I watch Jaxon retreat behind the heavy white door to the stairwell a few yards away, beckoning me to join him. I glance down at Rose, who is gazing beatifically at Liya, paying zero attention to me. Good. Maybe I can actually pull this off. It’s terrifying, though, like the time when I was five and I got stuck in the oak tree outside Aunt Varda’s house. Isaac and Niv were supposed to help me down, but they ran off together, and no one inside the house could hear me yelling. I clung to a frail branch ten feet above the ground for what felt like an hour before my father arrived, red-faced and panting from his unexpected sprint, to lift me down. Every second felt like the last second before my inevitable fall.

I slip past my family and out the door, the bill my mother gave me already damp and crumpled in my fist. The closest elevator faces the NICU window at a diagonal angle to the stairwell door. In other words, even if I pretend to wait at the elevator, there’s no way to double back without crossing in full view of everyone. But then I realize that I can take the elevator down one floor and enter the stairs
there
, climbing to meet Jaxon. So I push the button and make sure to wave conspicuously as I get on. I see Jacob say something that makes my siblings laugh, and I’m sure it’s a joke at my expense.
Someday,
I promise myself as the doors close,
I will tell him exactly what I think of him.

The third-floor layout is exactly the same as the fourth, so once I get off the elevator I walk the dozen feet or so to the stairs with my heart in my throat. The door is marked with a big red
EXIT
sign, and as I push down on its wide silver bar with all my weight, a thought drifts through my head like an ominous cloud in an otherwise clear blue sky:

In making this choice, will I ever be able to come back?

J
axon

S
EPTEMBER
7, 4:15
PM

T
he look on her face, man, when she saw me in the hallway? I almost convinced myself to turn around and go home. I had prepared myself for anger, but I didn’t expect her to freeze me out like that. Then again, I guess I took her by surprise. And her folks were with her—plus that dude Jacob who was here the night of the storm. I know they can’t know about me, or about us . . . if there is such a thing as us.

The thing that made me stay was actually something my mom said when I got home from picking up Joy (who, by the way, was fine and engrossed in a game on her coach’s iPhone when I showed up, greasy and despondent, to rescue her from imagined predators). I was apologizing for taking so long when she interrupted me with a cluck of the tongue and a kiss on the cheek. “I know I can always count on you, Jax,” Mom said. “You’re reliable, and that’s no small thing. You’re going to make your wife
very
happy someday.” At first I just brushed it off as the kind of affectionate, sort of embarrassing thing a mom says to her kid that’s really more of a pat on the back for her. But the more I thought about it, the more I got worked up. I
am
reliable. If I say I’m gonna do something, it’s done. If I say I’m gonna be somewhere, I’m there. I don’t make empty promises, and I don’t start things I don’t finish; that’s just who I am. It’s who I’ve always been. And I needed Devorah to know that. After a night of tossing and turning and having really obvious stress dreams involving a tidal wave crashing over Eastern Parkway, I decided that if she wanted to write me off I’d let her, but not until she knew why I stood her up, and why that will never happen again.

My first day at the hospital was Thursday. I only work Monday through Wednesday at Wonder Wings, and technically Thursday afternoons are reserved for basketball at Brower Park with Ryan and some guys from the neighborhood, but since Ryan was still avoiding me I felt fine blowing it off. I didn’t want to arouse suspicion, so I came in through the ER entrance and hopped right on the elevator without talking to the check-in nurse, acting like I was just coming back from a phone call. My plan was to go up to Labor and Delivery and pretend I was supposed to meet my friend (Devorah) who was visiting her niece in the NICU, to try to get the doctors to tell me when she was actually going to be there. But the nurse I started sweet-talking, a big woman with short, bright yellow hair and an expression my mom would call permanent bitchface, was having none of it.

“So you’re not related to the infant in question?”

“Uh . . . no. But—”

“And you don’t have your ‘friend’ Devorah’s last name.”

“I—”

“
Or
her phone number?”

I tried to change my tack. “Look, we just met,” I said, shooting her my best humble nice-guy smile. “Here, actually. We got stuck in an elevator when the power went out. But we made plans to meet today, and I just want to know if she’s here.”

Big Yellow looked at me without a glint of sympathy in her eyes. “That’s cute,” she said. “You can tell it to the security guard I’m about to call.”

So that went well. I almost didn’t come back on Friday, but I couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that came from knowing Devorah was out there hating me, or worse, thinking I had just played with her. So even though I had a tutoring job in Park Slope at four thirty, I raced over to Interfaith after my last class. I didn’t even have a plan, I was just going to do a quick lap and leave, but as luck would have it the minute I stepped off the elevator (
our
elevator, I couldn’t help thinking as I noticed the dent in the ceiling hatch where my Converse All Star had collided with the metal), I ran into the red-haired doctor who fixed Ryan’s shoulder. I introduced myself, and she seemed to remember me.

“Your friend, Tony, how’s he doing?” she asked.

“Tony?” I frowned, before I remembered Ryan’s ridiculous alias. “Oh yeah, he’s fine. Still stupid, but fine.”

She laughed politely and then looked away, the way you do when you want to end a conversation but not be rude. I knew I had to get down to it.

“I know this is a weird thing to ask,” I said, “but I’m looking for a girl I met here last week. You delivered her sister’s baby?”

“I deliver a lot of babies,” she said with a patient smile.

“This one was early, by like a lot,” I said. “And the girl and her sister, they’re, um, Hasidic?”

“Oh, sure, of course, I remember them,” she said.

“Have they been back here?”

“Well, the child’s mother has been here every day,” she said hesitantly. “But since you’re not a relative I can’t let you see her.”

“That’s okay; it’s really the sister I’m looking for,” I said. “Do you know if she’s coming today?” The doctor smiled again.

“Since it’s Friday I’d guess that’s unlikely,” she said.

“Why does it matter what day it is?”

“Sabbath starts at sundown,” she said. “They can’t work or drive or turn on lights until nightfall tomorrow.”

“Damn,” I say, and she laughs, genuinely this time.

“Damn is right,” she says. “I couldn’t do it.” She turns to leave but then pauses, giving me the kind of look you might give a lost puppy on the street. “They might come Sunday,” she says. “It’s a popular visiting day, especially after their schools let out. Good luck!”

So here I am. Hiding in a stairwell on a Sunday afternoon because I was dumb enough to think she’d come alone, and we’d have one of those slo-mo embraces like you see in movies when one character runs through an airport to stop another character from leaving, and somehow nobody gets Tasered by a rogue TSA agent.

I’m expecting her to come through the door, so when I hear footsteps on the stairs below me I whip out my phone and pretend to be on a call, in case it’s a doctor or nurse or someone else who might want to stop and frisk me.

“Grandma’s doing all right,” I assure the imaginary person on the other end of the phone. And then I see her, looking up at me like I’m crazy from the landing in between floors, those gray eyes big and searching beneath a mass of unruly curls.

“What are you doing here?” she asks flatly, not moving.

“I was . . . looking for you,” I say, putting my phone back in my pocket and trying to figure out something new to do with my hands, which suddenly feel like big bricks of cement.

“Then why are you talking about your grandma?”

“That was . . .” I start to explain, and then think better of it. She’s already wary of me. “It’s nothing,” I finish.

“So,” she repeats, still not budging from the landing, “you’re here looking for me.”

I nod.

“How did you know I’d be here?”

“Truthfully?” I ask, just as it occurs to me that the truth makes me sound like a stalker, “I’ve been here on and off for a few days. Just in case.”

“Jaxon,” she says with a sigh, exasperated, but her face visibly softens and she takes a step forward, her hands leaving the railing. “Why didn’t you just come meet me on Wednesday if you wanted to see me?”

“My sister needed to get picked up,” I say, so relieved to have a chance to plead my case that the words tumble out too quickly, too inarticulately. “It got sprung on me. And I couldn’t tell you, so I needed to see you so I could tell you that I’m sorry. And that I want to see you. Again. I mean, this doesn’t really count.”

“Why not?” Her hands are on her hips, but she’s almost smiling now; I can see it in her eyes.

“Because . . . we don’t have any privacy,” I say, “and your family’s waiting outside the door.
And
I’m not wearing my special outfit.” She smiles and starts to climb the stairs. Progress.

“What special outfit?” She raises an eyebrow.

I grin. “You’ll see it when we have our date. That’s incentive.” She takes another step.

“You want to go on a date?”

“Absolutely,” I say, walking to the top of the stairs with my palms out. “Please give me another shot.”

She breaks eye contact. “Jax, I like you, but—”

“Uh-uh, no buts,” I interrupt. “You like me. I’m gonna hold you to that, it’s on the record now.” She bites her lip to stifle a smile, which is exactly what I need to give me the balls to keep going. I take a deep breath, feeling the words swell again and knowing I’m powerless to stop them. “And I like
you
. More than like you, actually. And I hear it when you tell me this can’t happen, but I still can’t let it go. And even if I could . . .” I shrug helplessly. “I don’t want to.”

She looks at me like I’m crazy again and shakes her head. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know I’ve never felt this way about anybody,” I say, grabbing the railing, gathering my courage. “And I know I don’t care if you’re different from me. I mean, aren’t we past that? The Civil Rights Act and shit?”

“I wish it was that simple,” Devorah says, climbing one step and whispering now, like she’s afraid someone’s listening in. We’re only a few feet apart, and I can see her free hand trembling by her side. “But it’s not. I’m not allowed to date
anyone
.”

“Why not?” I say, knowing the answer. I just want her to say it out loud, so she can hear it.

“Because,” she says, getting flustered, her cheeks flushing crimson, almost the color of the roses I bought for her, and just as beautiful. “It’s the way I was brought up. It’s a sin. I have to wait.”

“For what?”

She narrows her eyes, aware that I’m baiting her. “For
marriage
.”

“You know it’s 2014, right?” I joke, and she shoots daggers at me from underneath those thick eyelashes. She’s getting mad now, but I don’t care. The air between us is electric, and I know she feels it, too.

“Look,” she says. “I know you don’t understand. And sometimes I’m not sure I understand, either, but . . . it’s just the way it is.”

“So you’re telling me you don’t feel anything?” I ask, taking a step down. I half expect her to bolt, but she doesn’t budge. Instead she lets out a slow, shaky breath.

“I didn’t say that,” she says. My heart beats wildly in my chest.

“What about Wednesday?” I say, taking another step. We’re face-to-face now, or would be, if we weren’t on a flight of stairs. As it is, her face is about in line with my ribs. “What if I had made it? What would have happened?”

“I don’t know,” she says softly. I’m towering over her, maybe scaring her. Without thinking, I jump down and around so that I’m two steps below
her
. She turns and smiles. Our faces are perfectly aligned.

“Was that a
date
?” I press, grinning. She averts her eyes and says nothing. “Oh,” I say, “so you were just waiting there to tell me you can’t see me, right?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

She laughs nervously. “I said I don’t know, why do you care?”

“Why do I care?” I ask softly, rhetorically, knowing I care way too much already not to freak her out. “Because I can’t stop thinking about you,” I say. “And maybe you’re right and I don’t know you that well, but . . . just tell me you don’t like me that way, and I’ll leave. I swear, I’ll never bother you again.”

We stare at each other silently for what feels like forever, our breathing falling into sync, out, then back in again, like overlapping waves as I watch her eyes flash gray, then blue, then gold, like some hypnotic kaleidoscope. I’m so dumbstruck by Devorah that it takes me almost a minute to realize what this silence means. I asked her a question, and she’s answering. Or not answering. Which is an answer in itself.

“So I’m not crazy?” I murmur. She shakes her head. And it’s too much. I can’t help myself. I lean in, and I kiss her.

I’ve kissed two girls in my life before this moment—two and a half if you count Hallie Fuller’s ear in fifth grade, when she turned her head at the last minute. Both were nice but awkward, a jumble of tentative false starts and unruly tongues and accidental teeth. Don’t get me wrong, I thought I saw fireworks. But it turns out they were just some dollar-store Roman candles. With Devorah, it’s fireworks. It’s the Fourth of July over the Hudson. Everything clicks instantly, and there are no false starts, no wrong angles. Just me tumbling headfirst into her soft mouth and sweet, hot breath, which catches in her throat as I press my lips to hers. I’m afraid to touch her with my hands, not sure how far is too far, but then she raises hers and cups my face, her index fingers tracing my jaw. I don’t know who pulls back first, but I know the kiss ends too soon. Suddenly we’re staring into each other’s eyes again, and this time I
do
see fear, even though her fingers are still on my neck, digging in like her life depends on it.

I want to tell her it’s okay, that we’ll figure it out, and that I’m scared, too. I want to confess that I’m falling in love with her. Hell, most of all I just want to kiss her again. But I can’t do any of that, because someone starts to bang on the door to the stairwell. Devorah drops her hands like I’m on fire.

“Go,” she whispers.

“Not without knowing when I’m going to see you again,” I say. The knocking gets faster.

“
Devorah?
” a male voice calls from outside. Her eyes widen with terror.

“I’ll find you; please, Jax, just
go
,” she begs.

That’s all I need to hear. I run down the stairs all the way to the lobby, where I throw open the heavy ER door like it’s made of tissue paper. I’ve never felt adrenaline like this before, never felt the air fill my lungs so sweetly or the sun bathe my skin so gloriously. I run all the way home, half a mile, my feet barely touching the pavement, my heartbeat flooding my ears again and again like a bass line that sings,
Devorah
,
Devorah
,
Devorah
.