Incredibly Close

A short story by Per Grankvist, inspired by the work of Jonahan Safron Foer.

With a beep, the answering machine kicks in.

”Are you there?” I ask.
Why isn’t he picking up the phone? Oskar should be home by now. On the radio they said a while ago that all schools have been closed and that all the kids have been sent home.

I just want to hear his voice.
Just one time.
One more time.

I’m sitting on the floor, back against the elevator shaft, not far from my desk, with the phone in my hand. I’m trying to cover the microphone with the other hand to make it easier for him to hear what I’m about to tell him but also to muffle the sounds around me.
”Are you there?” I ask another time.

The sound of someone breaking another window reaches me. I hope I managed to keep him from hearing it. Some people are still screaming but there’s less hysteria than before. Most of them are crying instead; hushed cries, silent cries or have become like me: run out of tears. You can only cry for so long.

I can feel a slight breeze through the office. At a desk nearby, it’s peeling sheets of paper the top of a stack of documents placed in a tray marked “inbox”. They land uneven on the grey wall-to-wall carpet in front of the desk like flakes of ash from a camp fire.

Yet, it’s not a windy day today so I guess the breeze is created when the air is pushed through the building through one of the smashed windows on the west side. Although there’s some smoke leaking in from around the door to the stairwell, it doesn’t smell too much. The smell of plastic or perhaps heated rubber is stronger. I felt the same smell after that PepsiCo-truck that braked in panic into the intersection of 38th and Lexington on Saturday.

People react very differently when they give up, when they realize that they are doomed. Some people, like Rhonda, belongs to the screamers: they scream, scream, scream. I wonder where they find the energy to continue to scream. Mark belonged to another group: those who don’t scream at all but focuses on acting, get a grip on things, establish control. But this situation is incontrollable.

We’re trapped up here.
The power is out. The elevators have stopped. The stairs are blocked. Mark and myself were among the first to open the door to the stairwell and so became among the first to realize this might not end happily.

Mark was also one of the first to jump. When nothing else could be managed or controlled, he at least made that decision himself. Having closed the door to the stairway, He marched up and down the main aisle a few times like he use to do when contemplating a problem, still ignoring the fact that we use to tease him for that he looks like something a Batman would to in that series from the 1960s. Occasionally, he stopped and addressed no one in particular and asked questions like “do anyone see any rescue helicopters hoovering around us?” He then stopped by the coffee machine, poured himself a cup of java in the same fashion he always did before entering a meeting that he felt a bit uneasy for, such as the staff meeting a few month a go where he had to let the us know that there would be layoffs. He finished his cup and started walking to the window and I only then did I realize what he had decided to do.

I didn’t see the jump. I turned away seconds before, just the same way as mom always told me to turn away as there was something scary happening on tv. “You don’t want to have those images stored in your head” she said, adding that images like that will always come back and haunt on, sooner or later. Maybe she was right. I can count the number of nightmares I have had in my life on one hand.

We always try to control what we can, tell ourselves that we can manage how things unfold. All those little things in life we try to control as a way to make it look like we also control the high things in life. By focusing on the details we avoid seeing the full picture.

We make sure we stretch after a workout to avoid muscle sorriness but cannot detect if we have cancer. We try to teach our kids about all things of life but cannot control anything about how their life will be. We make sure everyone is buckled up before we leave but cannot control if the truck driver is being blinded by the morning sun in a way that makes him not notice the red light in an intersection and smashes into a car heading north on Lexington. Oskar and I were three cars behind that car.

”Are you there?” I try to sound as calm as possible when I speak in order to give him the courage to pick up. To make him feel it’s ok to pick up.

The smell of his pajamas. The way the skin on his shoulder feels beneath my fingers. His hands in mine, on one of our expeditions. All that is incredibly close to me. It required no effort to sense him and all the symbols for what he is:
That little smile.
The bubbly desire to tell me something he learned.
His feet, the cute little feet in striped dirty socks.
How he stretches in our bed in the morning.
His green jacket hanging on the hook in the hall.
His head resting on my arm when we were talking in bed.
My beautiful little seven-year-old.
His lingering way of asking things ”dad?”

Hi said it last night, after I told him the story about the Sixth Borough. Hi said ”Dad?” and I said ”Yeah, Buddy?” and he then said ”Nothing”. It happens often: he’s on his way of asking something but then changes his mind. Often I interpret it as he’s finding the answer as soon as he starts so ask me, as if the question in itself works as a catalyzer. Other times there’s something in his voice that I interpret as if there’s nothing that prevents him from following through, a fear of asking the wrong question, of not fitting in. For the record: I never said that something he hashed was wrong or stupid. Really: never.

Oskar is seven. He’s the big boy and the little guy at once. The big boy who has stopped agreeing with me all the time and instead is validating if it’s true or not. At the same time: the little guy who speaks in a childish voice from the past when he asks if he can sleep in our bed or if I want to share his, who still loves to sit on my lap and who feel life is at its best when we go out on our little expeditions, as I call it.

Not too long ago, I set us up to the task of finding something from every decade during the 1900s. He purred like a cat during the entire expedition, as we found on thing after the other and ad ad the end of the day he got me to agree that we would expeditions at least once a month month for the rest of our lives.

I was about to tell him that I suspect that in a few years he’d rather hang out with his friends on weekends than go on expeditions with his dad to find random stuff all over the city, but I didn’t.

You never know how long it will last. You never know how long you will top a popularity chart. Never know how long you will live.

“Are you there?”
It’s the fifth time I’m trying to reach him. The first times I just wanted to calm him because he must have heard in school what has happen. Or do they perhaps leave to the parents to tell their kids themselves? Maybe they just tell them that something big has happened an leave to the parents to explain the details of it, allow them to answer questions like “why do those plane fly into the towers, daddy” in the way they prefer.

They must have told them, haven’t they? They would find out anyway as soon as they got home and parked themselves in front of the tv to watch the morning cartoons only to find that all shows were canceled and that all networks were live. At least that’s what they are saying on the radio.

It’s a funny feeling hearing something being told in third person when you’re experiencing it yourself. Rhonda’s radio surprised a lot of us by having batteries. It’s a generic radio, probably bought at discount at a discount store, connected to a socket somewhere under her messy desk by a long white cord that people curse over every time someone trips over and falls because of it. She bought the radio in one Monday morning, asked if I did mind her listening on WKTU 103,5 FM while working. I said no and since then it has never been switched of. She has never changed channel — not once! — as if she had realized that all the other buttons we’re fake and she was too embarrassed to admit it and so she claims that she loves WKTU.

Shortly after the big bang, after Mark and I realized the stairway was full of smoke and fire, we returned to our desk in order to evaluate our options. That’s when we hear the radio was still on, like nothing had happened. In the short shake that followed the bang, surprisingly few things fell over. A high ugly glass vase with plastic flowers that has been greeting our visitors at the front desk, a few binders from the top floor of the bookshelf behind Rhonda, a milk carton somebody had places too close to the edge in the kitchen. That’s about it, at least looking out from where I am.

The outside view is relayed to us through a silver coloured radio speaker the size of a coffee saucer. It told us all schools were closed and because we live so close, Oskar is allowed to walk home. I’m the one supposed to pick him up from school today, as Linda flew to Los Angeles for a meeting early this morning and so I got this idea of calling him telling him everything will be fine.

That’s what I’ve been telling the answering machine the first four times I’ve been calling. I’ve said he needn’t worry and that things will be fine, one way or another.

But our view has been dimmed, and not only from the smoke rising outside the windows on two sides of the tower, originating somewhere below us. A few minutes ago, I heard a voice through the silver speaker say that there are hundreds of us trapped on the top floors of the south tower and that there’s not much anyone can do. We had hoped for them telling us that there were rescue on the way, that they’ve been ordering as many helicopters there is in the greater New York area to take to the sky to save us, one by one. Surely there must me more than a hundred choppers in the area, I thought. We had also hoped that they would be saying that the air force would soon be hovering above us, troopers abseiling on the facade to winch us up and to safety.

Instead we’re told all air traffic in the US is grounded and ordered to to land at the nearest airport possible because of other jets flying into other buildings. Only a miracle can save us, said some expert on the radio. It was then people started jumping.

“Are you there”
For heavens sake, Oskar, pick up the damn phone! That’s what I’m thinking at the same time I try to sound composed. I’m convinced he’s at home by now, probably listening. I feel it.

I don’t know why he woke up last night and yelled at me. Maybe he had dreamt something? Sometimes he shares what he dreams with me and it can be anything. There’s nothing wrong with the boys imagination, as his grandmother used to say.

When I had told him the story about the Sixth Borrow and he had asked and then taken back his question we were just laying there on our backs for a while, looking at the stars painted in the ceiling. After a while, it felt like he was asleep.

Although I didn’t like the song “I am the Walrus” from the beginning it has become our special song and because I sense he likes it, I always try to whistle it or hum it when I’m around Oskar as it always makes him smile. So I whistled it low, almost like a lullaby, as I left his room and returned to my bed.

I check my watch: 10.23 AM. It’s only been ten hours since we were together in his bed.

This morning we hardly exchanged any words, as if we both felt there was no need for words after the coyness we had last night.

This morning everything was normal. I shaved. Brushed my teeth. Drank coffee out of my mug. Read the New York Times. Went to the metro and swiped my Metro Card. Took the train trough the tunnels under Manhattan to my stop. Went to the WTC, stepped into the elevator and pressed the buttons for the top floor. Sat down at my desk. Found myself humming “I am the Walrus.” Please Oskar, pick up the phone. Please!

I just want to say…
Where shall I begin? I want to say I love you and that I’m so sorry that I will never see you again. I want to say that you and mum must be careful and take care of each other and that things really will be fine even though they didn’t on this day. I want to say that I think you’re clever and caring and so nice to everyone and I’m so proud of that you always want to learn new things all the time. Your curiosity is endless Oskar and I love you for that too. I love when you find out something new, says “oh!” with your sweet little voice whenever another piece fall in to place in your big puzzle of how the world works. I want to say I do hope you find someone as hungry to understand the world as you are and that I’m so sorry I will never get to meet your kids and that they will never get to know your dad.

I want to tell you it is as lovely to be with your kids as it is for kids to be with their parents, we just don’t always understand it or voice it there and then. And so I’m sorry for the times when I didn’t say how much I’ve appreciated your company, Oskar. The time we give our kids is in reality time you give us and we ought to be more grateful for that.

I want to tell you how incredible much I’ve appreciated all those things we’ve done together, all those adventures we’ve embarked on as a team. I did say it, but I feel I should have said it twice as often. I might be at the top of your popularity chart this week Oskar, but you will be at the top of mine, forever.

I want to tell you that I already bought your Christmas gift: a deck of cards with fun facts from the world that I though you could play with everyday when you come from school, like now when you’re waiting for me to come home. I ordered it to the office so that you wouldn’t find it by accident. It’s the third drawer of my desk, already in Buzz Lightyear-wrapping paper. I want to tell you how sorry I am that you won’t get something from me this Christmas, Oskar.

Oh, I so want you hear with me, Oskar. I do realize it would mean you would too going to die but I still would want you to be here with me and that we at least could explore what happen after this life, together. Just you and me, Oskar. Just the two of us. You in my lap. Your little hand in mine. My arm around your shoulders. And even if there is no such thing as a life after this, even if it just stops and goes black the same way a move ends, we would discover that together and none of us would have felt left behind. I know this all sounds selfish but I think it would be the best for you to. Because just thinking of how sorry you will be when you realize I lied when I said everything will be ok or how indefinitely sad you will be from knowing that we will never meet again, never play again, never cuddle again makes be feel like the seams of my chest is to be torn open, makes my head too small, causes my jaws hurt from the tension. I would want so save you from all that.

So Oskar, let me please talk to you one more time. Please, let me say something of all this that I want to say to you. Please don’t let me be taken away without the chance to say good buy to you, sweetie. And so I ask yet another time “Are you there?”

The voice you hear on our answering machine is Oskar’s. He tries to makes himself appear slightly older than he is and recorded the message the other day standing on top of the stool in the kitchen, as if the added length would transcend into the caller assuming he was older.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Schells residence. Here’s the fact of the day: It’s so cold in Yukatia, which is in Siberia, that the breath freezes instantly with a cracking sound they cal the whispers of the stars. On extremely cold days, the towns are covered with a fog caused by the exhaled air of people and animal. Please leave a message.” And then a beep.

I’ve heard the fact of today five times today.

This will be the longest message on the answering machine if he doesn’t pick up anytime soon. Is he really not hearing me? Isn’t the call coming through? Am I in some radio shadow behind the elevator shaft? How typical. What if what can be heard is only noise? Maybe my previous messages haven’t gone through either? The concrete wall is more than lukewarm now so I might as well change place.

How often haven’t I worried about loosing Oskar. I’ve worried that something would get stuck in this throat when nobody’s watching, to get run over by one of the taxis that speed, for him being involved in a car accident when his grandma is taking him to her cabin up north because of her poor eyesight, for her not watching him when he’s getting something stuck in his road or him getting cramp when swimming. I’ve worried that he would poke in the toaster with a fork, that someone would kidnap him when he was in kindergarten or that his particular school would be the first site for a school shooting in NYC.

Every day when I drop him at school, these thoughts run through my head. Every day. If he’s going on an excursion then I worry that he will get lost in Central Park or that something will come crashing down on him and his class mates from one of the many construction sites around town on their way to or from the excursion.

But not once have I worried for myself. Not once.

When I’ve told Oscar that I always would be there for him it has been a promise that I intended to keep. Every time I have to go out of town for a few days, I always say “I promise, nothing will happen to me” to sooth his worries. “It’s important that you’re careful when I’m away — I don’t want anything to happen to you, buddy” I say, as if the responsibility was his alone. And then it turns out, the thing that happens, happens to me.

“Are you there? Are you there? Are you there?”
I’m afraid to worry him, scare him even, but it’s really hard to remain calm. I’m standing up now and I can see a group that has gathered on the floor in from of the coffee machine. It’s right where we usually have Monday meetings, like the one yesterday. Mark had then told us there wouldn’t be as many layoffs as initially planned since American Airlines expected increased demand during the fall and thus would be needing us to to take on more work for them.

There are seven, maybe eight, people sitting on the floor. Their eyes are closed, their hands joined together. They are ready. Somebody even seem to have turned of Rhonda’s radio. The on-off-button was apparently real.

But I’m not ready yet. I understand what’s going to happen and how this will end, but I’m not ready yet. Not until I’ve talked to Oskar.

There’s more smoke now, it seems to be covering our windows on all sides of the tower. There’s more smoke in here too. A few feet below the ceiling, the smoke resides like a dark grey indoor cloud and I can see how it spoils out through the smashed windows and is running upwards, like an inverted stream of muddy water running towards heaven rather than to the ground.

People seem to have stopped jumping.

I approach the group by the coffee machine with my phone to my hear. There’s something cracking up close to the elevator shaft. Panes of glass are breaking for no reason.

We’re close to the end. We’re incredibly close.

Suddenly, I temporarily loose balance. The floor isn’t even anymore but is at an angle and in the next moment I feel that imploding feeling in my belly. It’s feels just like at the very top of the roller-coaster at Six Flags, as the cars starts pointing downwards and start coming down. We’re falling. And yet I ask Oskar, one last time:

“Are you there?”

-

With homage to Jonathan Safron Foer, inspired by his novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”.