to catch up on The World Outside from the beginning, click here
THEN
September 11th and Josh’s death: the twin tragedies of Joanna’s young life.
For weeks, and everywhere that Joanna looked, there were people hugging each other, crying, sharing their Where were you when…? stories, and all she could think about was Josh, bleeding out in a 12-passenger van, thousands of miles from home. American flags popped up from out of nowhere and were plastered on every imaginable surface, and it hardly felt like there was room for her in the mix. It enraged her, how much energy people wasted, thinking about something that had happened to strangers, hundreds of miles away, when she was here, losing her grip. For the rest of her life, she thought, the experience of losing Josh would be superseded by the images that still ran on a never-ending loop on every TV channel. Whenever people asked her where she was on 9/11, for the rest of her life, she would have to say, “I was missing my brother.” Rage—first, at the mere fact of her loss, and then compounded by its proximity to the United States’ loss—whirled through her veins, rage from which she studiously turned her face. She didn’t want to feel that. And so, for years, she tried not to feel anything.
Poppa took three weeks off of work. He let Joanna take as much time away from school as she was allowed. But, eventually, they both had to go back. Mary stuck to her like glue, walking with her between classes and spending every free afternoon at her house. They would sit together for hours—in Joanna’s room, in Mary’s car, at the beach. Joanna never remembered what they had talked about when they left each other. When Mary was busy, Erik made sure he was available. Most of the time, he just wanted to walk with her up and down one of the beaches dotting the coastline in their part of the state. He always said the fresh air would help her, but she often just felt exhausted afterwards. When the weather was bad, he came to her house and sat with her on the couch, watching old movies or reruns of Friends or Seinfeld. Joanna let Erik take charge without really noticing it. To the extent that she did notice it, she was relieved—she didn’t want to be alone either, and she certainly didn’t want to have to think.
Mary noticed though. Once, in November, she surprised Joanna with tickets to see Melissa Etheridge in Portland. “A girls night!” she exclaimed, waving the tickets in Joanna’s face. Joanna, who loved Melissa Etheridge, felt perhaps a flicker of enthusiasm, and she offered a small smile. Erik was with them, and when he saw the start time of the show, he furrowed his brow.
“Baby, are you sure this is a good idea? You guys won’t get home until after midnight.”
“Well…”
“Erik, you know I’m a good driver,” Mary snapped. “It’ll be fine.”
“I’m just saying, it’s a late night. I just want to make sure you guys are sure.”
“We’re sure. Right, J?”
Joanna felt so tired. She gave Mary a pleading look.
Mary raised her eyebrows. “Wooow,” she breathed. Then, “Okay, well we’ll do something else.”
“I’m sorry Mar,” Joanna whispered. She felt like crying all of a sudden, but she also just felt like closing her eyes and waiting until everyone else had gone and she could sit and never speak again. It was easier to just lean back against Erik’s chest while he rubbed her back in slow circles and to look away as Mary tore the tickets in two.
+++
Soon after, Poppa finally completed the necessary bureaucratic rigamarole with the U.S. Consul and the police department in Rio to retrieve Josh’s remains and bring them home. Joanna stayed with Mary and her parents while Poppa was gone; she hated watching him go. It was a different experience walking into the airport with Poppa than it had been three months earlier with Josh. There were police everywhere, and she wasn’t allowed farther than the ticket counter, so she had to say goodbye to Poppa in front of a bunch of strangers. He held her tight, promised he would be fine, and then let go. Mary and her mother, who had driven Poppa and Joanna to the airport, put their arms around Joanna’s shoulders, one on each side, and stood with her until he was out of sight. “Everything is going to be okay, Jo,” Mary’s mother murmured, like an incantation.
Poor Mary tried to recreate a slumber party atmosphere that night, and the next. They hadn’t had one in what felt like a long time, and she’d pulled out all the stops, but Joanna had no appetite for brownies or popcorn, and she couldn’t stay awake through any of the movies. Eventually, Mary gave up and let her cheeriness slip a bit. “Do you want to just lie down?” she finally asked. Joanna nodded. They lay down like spoons, Mary’s arms wrapped around Joanna’s waist from behind. It was the only way that Joanna could, eventually, fitfully, fall asleep.
+++
Poppa looked well-worn and haggard when he got back. He had Josh’s remains in a canister, wrapped in a bath towel, in the corner of his suitcase. He placed it in the middle of their mantel at home, moving a photograph of Joanna’s parents off to the side to make room. He and Joanna stood back and looked at it for several quiet minutes before he finally excused himself and said he was too tired to stay up anymore. He climbed the stairs, sounding, for the first time, like an old man, but Joanna stayed where she was. After a while, she moved to the couch, but still, she stared up at the container. Into the night, she stayed there, staring at it, trying to figure this all out. It seemed grotesque—how was it possible that she was able to pick him up, her larger-than-life brother, with her own two hands? And was it actually him in there? Which of the millions of particles in that container was Josh? And if he wasn’t in there, where was he? The thought that he must be in the same place where her parents were gave her some small measure of comfort—and then, childishly, a small measure of envy. It wasn’t enough that he’d been six to her four when they’d died; now he got them back at 18, while she had to wait? It was a loss that struck her all over again.
A few nights later, they had Erik and his mother and Mary and her parents over for a quiet dinner and a second, more intimate memorial, now that they had Josh’s ashes to contemplate. As at the first one, Joanna sat, mostly still and mute, with Erik on one side of her and Mary on the other. About halfway through the meal, Erik began to talk about how much it meant to him, and had always meant to him, to have a friend he’d known his whole life. It had made him appreciate Josh—“and his family,” he added, taking Joanna’s hand and looking at her meaningfully—that much more. He went on: “He was a kind, compassionate guy. He died in a place he didn’t have to be, doing work he didn’t have to do, loving kids he didn’t have to love. Classic Josh.” Joanna felt her insides twist, and she looked down at the table, biting the insides of her cheeks raw to keep from crying.
+++
The world continued to turn. Americans barely older than Joanna donned their uniforms, recited their pledges, and flew to Afghanistan. Cities she’d never heard of became part of the daily conversation. Terms like WMD and pre-emptive strike were batted around by specialists and nobodies alike.
Erik bought a puppy, a German shepherd he named Ro, and he spent every free moment he had training her. Mary started dating the senior class treasurer and talked about going to Boston for New Year’s Eve. Even Poppa kept asking her what she wanted to do for Christmas, as if anything at all could make the slightest difference to her. People were beginning to move on, but she couldn’t do it.
For her, the days rolled slowly, one into the next, with almost nothing to distinguish them from each other. She’d had an entire season to get used to a Joshless life, but she couldn’t do it. She kicked her way through the snow drifts piling up on the shore of another beach and watched the world go by without her, as if she were watching it through a scrim backstage.
By the spring, she had practically failed all of her classes (in truth, she probably had failed her classes, but she had kind, generous teachers) and had made no progress in dealing with the new shape of the world. Just hang on until June, she told herself again and again. It’ll be okay then. She would have work. Erik and Mary would both be busy, but the change in her routine would do her good. She just had to keep her head down and hang on a little longer.
+++
The summer wasn’t okay. But it wasn’t hopeless either. In her off hours, when Erik and Mary were both busy, Joanna sought out the smaller, tucked-away beaches that weren’t too touristy and sat wherever she could find a patch of sand or a relatively smooth piece of driftwood. She watched the waves cresting and then rushing in, imagining that their sound was washing her clean from the inside out.
Erik called her every morning and every night. When he did have a day off, she usually spent it with him—and Ro. Always Ro, now. They went hiking or, sometimes, to his mom’s house for a home-cooked meal. Mary usually stopped by before or after her shift at the ice cream stand downtown and gave her all the gossip about who had shown up with whom that day or the day before. Poppa and Joanna stayed up late many nights, playing Spit or a two-person version of Taboo; sometimes, they got up early and went kayaking before a big breakfast at the diner downtown.
During one of those early morning kayaks, Joanna blurted out the question she’d been wanting to ask him for months. “You lost your son, your daughter-in-law, your wife, and now your grandson. How can you go on? What on earth could possibly be left for you?” She was shaking as she asked it and grateful for the concentration it took to stay in a relatively straight line; it meant neither of them was looking directly at the other. Poppa maneuvered his way past the wake of a passing motorboat and then rested his paddle across his knees for so long, Joanna wasn’t sure whether he was thinking or had fallen asleep. Finally, he squinted up at the sky and began paddling again. “Your grandmother was the first loss,” he said quietly, “and I thought it would kill me. I wanted it to kill me, in fact, because I wasn’t brave enough to do the job myself.” He glanced over at her, as if to gauge whether or not the admission would shock her. It didn’t. “And then, because it didn’t kill me…life just sort of—went on. I don’t have a whole lot of wisdom to offer here, Jo. This was a terrible, terrible thing. One I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies. But—” He sighed. “Eventually, it does become a thing that happened, rather than a thing that’s happening.” He looked at her again. “Eventually, you won’t be the girl whose brother just died anymore. You’ll be the girl who…” Here, he shrugged. “I don’t know—cured cancer? Won an Oscar? Started a family? Robbed a bank?” He winked, and Joanna smiled. “And it will just be one facet of who you are.”
Joanna let his words sink in. She slipped her paddle in and pulled through the water.
Some people lose everything when they lose one person, she told herself. I haven’t.
It was something, anyway.
Hey. Just wanted to say: your seamless transitions between “now” and “then” are so good! At first, I wasn’t sure how it would go, because I hadn’t ever read your writing before. But you’ve done such a good job of making your readers invested in almost two (of course interconnected, dependent) stories at once, and it works brilliantly.🙂