The Opposite of Hallelujah (5 page)

As much as my parents thought they knew what to expect, I don’t think any of us did. There wasn’t a whole lot of parking at the train station, so Dad waited in the pickup lane and Mom dragged me inside to look for Hannah. I wasn’t sure I would recognize her; after all, so many years can change a person. But when we ascended the escalator, there she was, the tiniest of suitcases in hand, looking for all the world like a normal twenty-seven-year-old woman. Well, a normal twenty-seven-year-old woman with severe agoraphobia. In the whirling dervish of noise and people that was the Northwestern train station, Hannah appeared to be totally freaking out.

It took me a few minutes to realize that she was wearing the same clothes she’d gone into the convent with. They were simple: long black pants, a pressed white shirt, sensible black flats. Nothing flashy, nothing … worldly.
She wasn’t wearing any jewelry, not even a cross. Not that I had expected her to wear a cross. After all, she’d left the convent—I assumed she’d left God behind, as well.

But Hannah’s clothes weren’t the first thing I noticed about her.

“She’s so
thin
,” I whispered to Mom, who shushed me. But I couldn’t stop staring at her. I hadn’t seen Hannah in a long time, but I didn’t remember her looking that bony and drawn. And weirdly, her hair seemed to be a different color. In all the pictures, it was so light it was almost platinum; now it was way darker, even darker blond than mine. I’d had no idea that could happen to a person.

“Don’t say a word,” Mom warned me.

Hannah relaxed slightly when she saw us. Her expression, terrified in the presence of so many people, changed as we walked toward her. For a minute I thought she’d drop her suitcase and run to us, arms open, but she didn’t. She let us get right up to her, smiled finally, and then said, “It’s so good to see you.”

If I had been a cat, my back would’ve gone up. She sounded like a TV news anchor greeting her audience. Mom reached out and put her arms around Hannah, but I stopped short. Hannah stepped easily into the hug, and she closed her eyes, still smiling.

When they finally let go, Hannah stood there, waiting for me to embrace her. I didn’t even try, so she stepped
forward and I felt Mom’s hand on the small of my back. I leaned into her hug; it was gentle but not particularly familiar. She smelled foreign, like soap and train. Her shoulder blades were sharp beneath my fingers, and for a second I felt like I was falling. How had this happened? I pulled back and gave her my biggest smile, because I knew I should.

“You’re so tall,” Hannah said.

“I know,” I said. “I … grew.”

“It’s been a long time.” Hannah brushed a thick strand of hair out of my eyes and looked into them. She seemed to be searching for something, but I couldn’t guess at what. I stared back, struck by this sudden thought:
Our eyes are the same color
. I knew that already, of course. I’d seen pictures. But it was different in the flesh.

“Okay,” Mom said, a little too loudly. “Let’s get going, Dad’s waiting with the car.” She picked up Hannah’s bag and charged into the crowd. I shrugged at Hannah, who looked a little lost without her sole possession, and marched after Mom, Hannah trailing behind me.

Back in the car, Dad wore a toothy grin. “Hey there, Goosie,” he said, reaching past his headrest to grasp Hannah’s hand. She let him, grinning back. They had the same smile. I’d never noticed that before. I’d also never known Dad to call Hannah “Goosie”; I guessed it was
a nickname from a long time ago, maybe even a time before me.

“Hello, Dad,” she said. She was sitting upright and stiff; when Dad let go of her hand, she let it drop softly to her lap. “How long have you been waiting?”

“Oh, not very,” he told her. “Everybody buckled up?” We nodded. “Then let’s get out of here.”

I looked out the window as we sped through the city. The expressway flung us out into the suburbs, where brick buildings gave way to identical houses, and trees as green as jewels lined the quiet streets. I kept checking my phone for a text or a missed call from Derek, but there was never anything. Maybe he hadn’t gotten home yet, I reasoned. Maybe he was tired and took a nap. At least I wasn’t going to have to make excuses or tell him about Hannah. The thought of explaining the situation to anyone was exhausting, and I planned to put it off as long as possible.

“Are you waiting for a call?” Hannah asked, gesturing at my cell phone, which I was gripping so tightly my knuckles were whitening.

Dad glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “What did I tell you about that phone, Caro?”

I shrugged, letting go of it; it fell into my lap. “My boyfriend gets home from camp today. He said he’d call.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.” She sounded surprised, although I couldn’t tell if it was because I had
a boyfriend or because nobody had told her. For the first time it occurred to me that I didn’t know exactly how much, or what, my parents chose to share about me in letters, or during their annual visits with Hannah. Maybe I wasn’t the only one going in blind. Maybe I was just as big a mystery to Hannah as she was to me.

“Yeah, I do,” I said.

“What’s his name?”

“Derek,” I told her. “We’ve been going out for about four months.”

“How long has he been at camp?”

“About two of those,” I answered. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him, and now I probably won’t get a chance until tomorrow.”

I didn’t even mean it like she was the reason, though of course she was, but Hannah stared down at her hands and I felt guilty, then silly for feeling guilty. Mom turned around in her seat and eyeballed me dangerously, which didn’t help.

“You’ll live,” she said, a note of warning in her voice.

“That reminds me. Mom, can I borrow the car tomorrow? Reb invited me over to use the pool.” I didn’t really have any plans with Reb, but I was laying the groundwork for a quick escape in case I needed one.

“I was going to take Hannah shopping,” Mom said, shaking her head. Hannah looked up shyly at her name. “I’ll drop you off, though.”

“That’s
almost
the same thing,” I grumbled.

“Caro,” Dad said.

“That’s fine,” I told Mom. She raised her eyebrows but nodded and turned back around, so that was the end of it.

“When does school start?” Hannah asked.

“Monday,” I told her, staring at the back of my dad’s headrest and flipping my cell phone over and over in my hands, willing it to ring but knowing it wouldn’t.

“Are you excited?”

“For junior year? Not really,” I said. “It’s the hardest year. It counts the most for getting into college. At least, that’s what my teachers keep saying. And the academic Nazis up there.” I jerked a thumb at the front seat.

Hannah laughed, a soft, staccato sound, like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond. Erin once told me my laugh sounded like a flock of geese honking, but I was pretty sure she was just trying to be funny. “Yes, I remember junior year,” Hannah said. “Vaguely.”

“It must feel like a long time ago,” I said. Eleven years. That was how long it had been since Hannah had been where I was. I glanced at Hannah; she was sitting behind our mother, facing the same direction, and I was surprised to notice that they had the same profile, the same perfect, straight nose. Absently, I touched my own nose, wondering if I had it, too.

Hannah stared out the window. “It really does.”

4

Mom and Dad had changed Hannah’s room (or, I guess, my old room) into an office–slash–sewing room a couple of years earlier. Mom had run around the entire week since we’d found out Hannah was coming home, trying to approximately re-create Hannah’s old space, but it didn’t really work. Her aversion to clutter won out over her desire to make the room look like it had eight years before, so most of Hannah’s possessions—stuffed animals, school notebooks, journals, her eraser collection—stayed in the garage. Her books had migrated to my shelves about a year after she’d left, when our parents finally had
to admit she was gone, and the walls were bare. They had bought her a new set of furniture from Ikea, new bedding and curtains, had the carpet shampooed, and scrubbed the room from top to bottom. It was less like Hannah’s old room than ever.

The new Hannah appreciated the ascetic cleanliness, though. “It sort of reminds me of my cell,” she said when Mom asked. Mom looked at her in horror, but Hannah just angled her head and gave a closed-mouthed smile. “I love it, Mom, it’s great. Neat and simple.”

“Are you sure?” Mom’s eyes crinkled at the corners with worry; behind them her brain was whirling like the Tasmanian Devil, trying to process Hannah’s comment and recalibrate accordingly. In no way did she want to remind Hannah of the convent, although she probably couldn’t have explained why. Was it because Hannah had left the cloister and Mom didn’t want to remind her of her former unhappiness, or was it because she didn’t want to tempt her back to it? “We can go to Target tomorrow on the way to the mall and pick up some new things. More colors, maybe.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Hannah insisted. “More than fine. Fantastic. I hope you didn’t go to too much trouble.”

“It was no trouble at all,” Mom said, beaming. “I’m going to go start dinner.”

“Do you want help?” Hannah asked. I did
not
ask, trying as always to fade quietly into the background and
praying Mom forgot I was there. I hated helping with dinner. In our house, whoever didn’t cook dinner had to do the dishes. I much preferred that.

“No, you should rest,” Mom told her. “Caro can help me.”

I let a quick breath out through my nose.

Hannah glanced at me. “Mom, really. I do that—I used to do that all the time. I like to cook.”

“No,” Mom said firmly. She put her arm through Hannah’s. “You can come sit in the kitchen and talk to me, though.”

“Okay,” Hannah agreed, walking with her into the hallway and down the stairs. I followed, my eyes trained on their retreating backs.

They say idle hands are the devil’s workshop, and Hannah must have subscribed to that philosophy, because she refused to do nothing while Mom and I prepared beef Stroganoff—her favorite, or it had been eight years earlier. She begged for something to do, so I passed her an onion and commanded, “Chop.” She took the knife up and began turning out thin, perfect slices of onion without shedding a tear.

“Caro,” Mom said, grabbing my arm.

“What?”

Mom cocked her head at Hannah and gave me a
stern look.
Talk to her
. I shook my head, but she persisted. I sighed.

“You must be a really good cook, Hannah,” I said.

“No,” Hannah said. “I’m not at all. But everyone had to cook, and I had plenty of turns, so I can do the basic things.” She gestured with the knife toward her pile of onions. “Ta-da.”

I nodded. “That’s pretty impressive. What kind of stuff did you guys eat, um, in there?”

“Normal stuff,” Hannah said. “We raised our own vegetables, so everything was really fresh. Lots of meat and potatoes. Lots of stew. I don’t know.” She shrugged. It was hard to gauge how much to push her to talk about the convent, but it was the only point of reference I had. I foresaw a whole lot of awkward silences in the near future.

I shot Mom an
I gave it the old college try
look and went to the pantry to grab a bag of egg noodles.

“What do you think you might want to do after high school, Caro?” Hannah asked.

I hesitated. “I … don’t know. Don’t worry, I don’t want to become a nun or anything.”

“Caro!” Mom looked like she wanted to lock me in my room until I learned some manners. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that was probably never going to happen.

“I wasn’t suggesting that,” Hannah said, looking down at the cutting board, where her onions sat gleaming.
“Either way. If you wanted to, I certainly wouldn’t try to talk you out of it.”

“You wouldn’t?” I asked. Mom glared at me, but I was genuinely curious now. “Didn’t you hate it?”

“I didn’t hate it,” Hannah said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Then why did you leave?”

Hannah looked up from the counter at me and smiled a smile that was like the shutting of a door. “It’s complicated.”